A major problem for soft atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens is that they insist on talking in terms of right and wrong in spite of the fact that they have no objective standard by which to measure the morality of a human action.

They both appear to imbue evolution with the ersatz numinous quality of producing a tribal barometer of what is good or evil – but then, by their lights,  Hitler and Stalin were fairly advanced products of evolution and few atheists would claim what they and their followers did was good in any sense. So when Dawkins becomes upset by creationists who, he believes, distort the truth, his reaction isn’t particularly rational since to tell the truth is an ethical imperative which, by his own relativistic standards, is not necessarily better than telling a lie.

There is a similar problem in setting the standard for the kilogram:

More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the time.

In Paris, scientists polished and weighed it carefully, until they determined that it was exactly one kilogram, around 2.2 pounds. Then, by international treaty, they declared it to be the international standard.

Since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, that cylinder has been the standard against which every other kilogram on the planet has been judged. But that’s creating problems. According to scientists, the cylinder’s mass appears to be changing.

As it stands, the entire world’s system of measurement hinges on the cylinder. If it is dropped, scratched or otherwise defaced, it would cause a global problem. “If somebody sneezed on that kilogram standard, all the weights in the world would be instantly wrong,” says Richard Steiner, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.

Sneezing on the kilogram standard may blow a flew molecules off and make all the other weights in the world slightly incorrect. Sneezing on an atheist’s ethical framework completely blows it away.

In debates, Christopher Hitchens issues the following challenge ad nauseam:

Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.

There is no entirely satisfactory answer to this since it is the wrong question. The point is not so much whether atheists could do the same ethical acts as believers, but do they?

In practice, they don’t: here is an illustration from someone who does not have an axe to grind since he is an agnostic:

A few weeks ago I was in hospital. The only visitors I received who were not relatives were Christian ones: five in all, including two Catholic priests. None of them tried to convert me – and I didn’t stop the evangelical layman who asked if he could say a prayer over me – but I appreciated their brief visits even though I told them I was no longer a believer. They were performing a charitable act, unselfishly and compassionately.

I didn’t get any hospital visits from atheist visitors. What might they have said to me: “This is as good as it gets, mate?” The fact that I am edging towards their camp – I guess I am at the agnostic stage – does not exactly cheer me. It just makes me sad.

Richard Dawkins is indulging in the fashionable compulsion to apologise. In this case for Alan Turing’s suicide:

Richard Dawkins last night joined the campaign to win an official apology for Alan Turing, the code-breaking genius and father of the modern computer who committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for being homosexual.

Professor Dawkins said that an apology would “send a signal to the world which needs to be sent”, and that Turing would still be alive today if it were not for the repressive, religion-influenced laws which drove him to despair.

Apologising for something one is not responsible for is all the rage now, possibly because it diverts attention away from the things one is responsible for. Anglicans do it, so do politicians. Now Dawkins is eager to jump on the bandwagon. Is this an example of False Apology Syndrome – I’m sorry for your sins?

I don’t think so. It appears to be yet another Dawkins anti-religion salvo, under the guise of saving us all from “repressive, religion-influenced laws”.

In actual fact, no-one really knows exactly why Turing committed suicide – or, indeed if it was suicide. Turing died from cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple. Some believed it could have been an assassination since Turing’s homosexuality was seen as a security risk. His mother was convinced that it was an accident caused by Turing’s sheer carelessness at storing laboratory chemicals.

One thing is known: we have no evidence that Alan Turing killed himself because of “repressive, religion-influenced laws”. This is not enough to hold back the ostensibly evidence obsessed Dawkins, though, to whom, when it suits him, a lack of real evidence does not stand in the way of yet another mindless jab against religion.

A. C. Grayling wants a good world with peace and freedom for all. According to him, the way to achieve this is to throw out religion and concentrate on science. This is an odd contradiction for someone who claims to place reason over revelation: science is concerned with the investigation and explanation of physical phenomena and has nothing to say about the value of the phenomena. Goodness, peace and freedom are values that existed long before science and will exist long after it; they are outside its purview.

He has written an extraordinarily foolish article in the Guardian; there are so many errors in it that it is hard to know where to start. One stands out in particular because it is in the title: he quotes incorrectly from the bible:

Someone once said “by their works ye shall know them”.

I’m not sure who the someone was, other than Grayling, but Jesus said, Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matt7:16). If he can’t even get the title of the article right, can we expect much better from the body. Here’s another tidbit:

the battle that underlies it all: the battle (to put it in Voltaire’s terms) between those who seek the truth and those who claim to have it.

Voltaire actually said:

Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

Good advice, since, by Voltaire’s standard, we should beware the likes of Grayling and Dawkins as they and other devout atheists of their ilk are adamant that Darwin found, in evolution, the truth about how life appeared. Christians would not claim to either have the truth or to have found it; truth is revealed to humanity by God, principally through the incarnation of his Son and through the bible.

There is a lot more nonsense including the usual accusation that religion produces violence – even though the 20-21stC atheist regimes have killed more people than all religions put together; religion stifles science – even though many of the greatest scientists were Christians; and proponents of intelligent design are all half witted even though some of the brightest minds of today argue in favour of it.

The entire article by this bombastic phlyarologist is here, for those who have the stomach for it.

Camp Quest is the atheist summer camp for children. The camp prides itself on teaching children to think critically. Hence we have the invisible unicorns:

Astronomy, critical thinking, philosophy and pseudo-science are covered at Camp Quest.

One of the most popular exercises is the invisible unicorn challenge. The children are told there are two invisible unicorns who live at Camp Quest but that they cannot be seen, heard, felt or smelt, and do not leave a trace. A book about them has been handed down through the ages but it is too precious for anyone to see.

All counsellors – as the adults are called – are said to be staunch believers in these unicorns.

Any child who can successfully prove that the invisible unicorns do not exist is rewarded with a prize: a £10 note with a picture of Charles Darwin on it signed by Richard Dawkins, or a “godless” $100 bill, printed before 1957 when “In God We Trust” was added to paper currency in the US.

Clearly, the unicorns are supposed to represent God. The purpose of the exercise appears to be to show that the burden of proof lies with the unicorn-believers. The problem is, the councillors don’t actually believe in the unicorns so they obviously can’t give reasons for their pretend belief, the book – the unicorn bible – is not something that can be read and the unicorns have no discernible effect on reality.

None of this corresponds to Christianity where God does act, the bible is not only read but has been the inspiration for all that is best in our culture, and people actually do believe and can explain why they do. While this does not offer proof of God’s existence, it does illustrate that a belief in God is no less rational than a disbelief in him; the believer is under no more burden to provide iron-clad proof of his belief than the atheist of his non-belief.

The unicorn exercise is not one of critical thinking but of constructing and demolishing a straw man: very rational.

Antony Flew, British philosopher and former atheist, looks at the same evidence as Richard Dawkins and comes to the opposite conclusion:

The discussion of soul-shrivelling tedium here –  which is representative of just about any exchange with an atheist – started me thinking about the seeming incapacity of many atheists to go back to first principles and inspect their unstated assumptions.

Atheists proudly exhibit a benighted resistance to logic that would be a source of extravagant rejoicing to an enemy of religion were he to discover it in a Christian.

The following are among the numerous ideas that are beyond the mental capacity of most atheists:

If God does not exist anything is permitted. Atheists generally respond: but atheists can be good people – avoiding the main point that with no absolute standard “good” becomes relative and ends up having no meaning.

A rationally intelligible universe is an a priori of science and points to a rationally intelligent Designer. An atheist will respond: scientific methodology itself is rational – avoiding the point that scientists don’t try to make irrational hypotheses fit reality.

If the numinous does not exist, the human mind is mechanical and to rely on it to examine a superset of its own mechanism requires a leap of faith much larger than a belief in a Designer. This appears to be completely beyond the comprehension of any atheist I’ve encountered.

The existence of something as complex as human self awareness points to a self aware Creator, not an accidental combining of molecules. Atheists often try to point out that the “creator God solution” is really no solution since we then have to ask “who made God”. This is a category error since, by definition, we are created and God isn’t.

The universe had a beginning which implies a Creator. The atheist tends to respond with the previous objection – it has the same flaw.

I will probably regret posting this since it will undoubtedly provoke the usual deluge of inane nonsense: if you do want to respond, try to think first.

The Richard Dawkins propaganda machine is at full throttle:

Every secondary school in England and Wales will receive a free DVD by renowned atheist Richard Dawkins to celebrate the anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

The speech was originally delivered as part of the professor’s 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for children, and is being distributed by the British Humanist Association with funding from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

“Increasing young people’s understanding of science has never been more important,” Professor Dawkins said.

Why, I wonder, does the author of “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” think that endeavours to spread his anti-God message have any more purpose than the purposeless universe of which he is a part?

I doubt that there will be any outcry at this attempt to infiltrate atheist dogma into the schools; there would be if it were Christian dogma, though.