5 bombshells some atheists are not aware of

[Mister Agenda]

Following on from a recent post in another thread I decided to drop a few very interesting bombshells.

These can all be verified with a little effort (I'm not doing all the work for you).

1. Darwin never once uses either the word ‘ape’ or ‘apes’ in his work ‘On The Origin of Species’, so he could never have said Humans were descendants of or shared a common ancestor with apes.
2. Richard Dawkins has never called himself an atheist, he actually considers himself to be agnostic.
3. Early on in Dawkins’ book, ‘The God Delusion’, he points out that no one can have total certainty that God does or does not exist.
4. Darwin had little faith in fossil records ever proving his theory of Evolution, he considered them too incomplete.
5. Sir Isaac Newton had an interest in the occult, he studied alchemy and believed he would discover The Philosopher’s Stone, a material capable of turning base metal into gold. He also believed that metals ‘possessed a sort of life’.

Enjoy,

MM

2. Dawkins puts himself as a six on the Dawkins Scale. which he labels as 'de facto atheist'. He is an agnostic atheist, like most of us here.

---

[i]"... There was surprise when Prof Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100 per cent certain of his conviction that there is no creator.

The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: “Why don’t you call yourself an agnostic?” Prof Dawkins answered that he did."

Which would not have been news to anyone who read The God Delusion, where he spelled out his position in such simple terms that a child could understand it. Care to conduct a poll to find out how many people here didn't know Dawkins is agnostic? Care to conduct a poll to find out how many atheists here are also agnostic?

I think there are certain Christian groups that would want to categorise him as an atheist to justify their own simplistic view of the issues, and Dawkins certainly has anti-theist views (The God Delusion' case in point) but in his own words he is agnostic with anti-theist views. I'm not calling him agnostic, I'm just reporting that he calls himself agnostic.

There's nothing Christian groups would like better than to label Dawkins as 'not-an-atheist', which is why they got so excited about him being an agnostic. Thanks for the report, but it isn't news here.

Aww, Mr Grumpy.

I don't understand why you are arguing with me, I'm just a messenger, these are facts, what you chose to do with them is up to you. If you have an issue with Dawkins' agnosticism then take it up with him, he said it, not me.

You need to redirect your ire where it will better serve you.

MM

I don't see how ire isn't appropriately directed at someone too oblivious to get that no one here has a problem with Dawkins being agnostic, and likely no one here was unaware of it.

Maybe you shouldn't assume that other people are ignorant of things you've just discovered.