The Atheist Test

In case you haven’t heard of the Atheist Test, it is essentially an attempt to logically disprove atheism. This is obviously a very doomed idea, since all religions are based on faith, whereas atheism is largely founded in cold, unemotional logic. If you really want to, you can take the test yourself at quo.cc/atheist.htm, but I’m going to explain most of it here anyway.

It starts by telling a story about how the Coca-Cola can evolved out of rocks and aluminium, which is clearly silly (because as everybody knows they were originally made of steel and only evolved aluminium to avoid being hunted to extinction by the Magnet Fish). Then it suggests that “to say that the banana happened by accident is even more unintelligent than to say that no one designed the Coca Cola can”, based on the observation that bananas taste nice and are easily unwrapped. They seem to be missing a few key point here, which are that apes spread banana seeds by eating bananas, bananas which are pleasing to apes will therefore survive better, and apes are a lot like people. They then apply much the same argument to the human eye.

Having demonstrated that he has zero knowledge of evolution, the author (Ray Comfort) demonstrated a similar grasp of statistics:

Could I convince you that I dropped 50 oranges onto the ground and they by chance fell into ten rows of five oranges? The logical conclusion is that someone with an intelligent mind put them there. The odds that ten oranges would fall by accident into a straight line are mind-boggling, let alone ten rows of five.

Yes, that is exactly what happens inside molecules, but with two small changes. First, there are millions of atoms and therefore some of them are bound to be neatly arranged. Secondly, and more importantly, the atoms are nudged into a regular arrangement by electrostatic forces.

Clearly unsatisfied with his demonstrations of foolishness thus far, he decides that the reader may still suspect he has some idea of logic. Never one to resist a challenge, he quickly debunks this theory as well. He claims (essentially) that to prove God does not exist, you would need to know everything about everything, or else God might simply be hiding somewhere you haven’t looked yet. I take issue with this for two reasons. The first is the Problem Of Evil, which states that if god is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, then no evil can exist in the world, and since it does, logically God does not. There are a lot of arguments against this, mostly involving free will, but I’m not going to get into a philosophical debate here. The second reason is that religion is based on faith, and therefore if he calls someone who believes there is no God but can’t prove it an agnostic, then logically he must call himself an agnostic, since he has faith but can’t prove anything either. But don’t worry, he can allay your fears:

Almost every question you have about suffering humanity etc., can be adequately answered.

Exactly what the answers are appears to be left as an exercise for the reader, but it’s good to know there are answers, isn’t it?

His next argument is that God only appears to those who have no sin, and that you have sin. Yes, you personally have sin. In fact, you are very probably a murderer, since he classifies hatred as murder, in accordance with some obscure throwaway comment in the book of John somewhere. In fact, by his logic, God broke most of the commandments Himself. He doesn’t actually mention that the whole thing is rigged from day one in any case because everybody is born carting around something called “original sin”, but if he had it would lend weight to his argument (as well as the argument for “God is a jerk”). He signs off with a brief summary and a bible quote:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Yes, that’ll be it. Forgive my cynicism (lest I die in Hell), but what right did God have to do that? Jesus didn’t want to do it; God made Him. If God was such a nice guy He should have come down here Himself.