{"id":3099,"date":"2016-11-05T05:33:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T12:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3099"},"modified":"2016-11-05T05:33:35","modified_gmt":"2016-11-05T12:33:35","slug":"material-for-a-paper-on-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3099","title":{"rendered":"Material for a Paper on Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Cherish:<\/strong>
\nHi, I am doing a research paper on atheism and was wondering if I could ask you some questions so that I can get an atheist’s view on it. <\/p>\n

1. First off I would like to ask you a little bit about yourself, age now and age you were when you first became an atheist.
\n2. What things do you support that a religion such as Christianity would not?
\n3. Do you have any sort of belief other than atheism?
\n4. And also, why is it that you find the big bang theory more believable than thinking someone of greater power created it?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nHi Cherish. The answers to most or all of these are probably available in my other writings, so feel free to search for some keywords, but I’m happy to recap it all. I’ve added numbers to your questions above for easy reference.
\n
\n1. 36 now, 26-27 when I realised<\/em> I was an atheist. It was probably a few years earlier that my belief faded and I actually became<\/em> an atheist but I was too preoccupied with other things to notice. The media attention for “New Atheism” made me think about it again.
\n
\n2. I support secularism in government and society, which some Christians do and others do not. I support legal marriage between any two consenting adults (this is still a battlefield here in Australia), which some Christians do and others do not. I support reproductive rights for women such as abortion and surrogacy, which again some Christians do and others do not. In all three cases, the reason why people do not support these things is almost invariably their religion and the “values” their religious upbringings have instilled.
\n
\n3. I believe all sorts of things. I believe hard work pays off better with planning, I believe Colin Baker wasn’t as bad in Doctor Who<\/em> in the 1980s as people make out, I believe I left a bag of toiletries in York on my way to Edinburgh. I don’t believe in anything supernatural though, so nothing like ghosts or ESP or astrology.
\n
\n4. There’s evidence<\/a> that the Big Bang happened, whatever caused it or whether or not it needed a cause. There’s no available substantive evidence for the kind of “greater power” that could deliberately trigger the birth of a universe, so to entertain the idea of this happening you basically have to make up this entity and ascribe arbitrary qualities to it, and to the universe. And there’s something I’ve tweeted before: whatever constraints you apply to the universe in order to necessitate God, you immediately have to break in order to allow God.
\n
\nCherish, I’d appreciate it very much if you could comment and tell us what kind of course or other academic pursuit this research paper is for. I like to know who’s doing this kind of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Cherish: Hi, I am doing a research paper on atheism and was wondering if I could ask you some questions so that I can get an atheist’s view on it. 1. First off I would like to ask you a little bit about yourself, age now and age you were when you first … Continue reading “Material for a Paper on Atheism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[563,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-text"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-NZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3100,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099\/revisions\/3100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}