The Gumball Analogy
Introduction You are presented with a jar full of gumballs. There are no broken gumballs inside the jar, they are all whole gumballs. Most sceptics and atheists will have heard the Gumball Analogy already. It’s a pretty common analogy used by sceptics and atheists who have discussions on places like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Fans of The Atheist Experience will certainly recognise it, as it’s an argument created, used, and popularised by Matt Dillahunty. Though I have also had people......
Confused Claims, Contradictions and Incoherence
Confusion is rife on the internet, especially on places like Twitter where people seem more interested in “beating” the last tweet in a discussion than maintaining a coherent thought process. Many of us atheists might think these contradictions might be limited to god claims, holy books, and fundamentalists but that is far from the case. Recently I’ve had some conversations with people that whilst I might not agree with their individual statements they could be valid on their own, however,......
Misunderstanding The Null Hypothesis and Knowledge.
The null hypothesis is used in science, and we atheists tend to have a lot of respect for science, the scientific method, scientific and empirical evidence. We think of ourselves as logical and rational people. We feel we know a lot about the topics we discuss, especially when it comes to science. In conversations with religious folks, especially many young-earth creationists, we will correct their misrepresentation and misuse of terms like evolution and scientific theory and demand they “learn the......
Scepticism, Dogma, and the Definition of Atheism
Introduction The collective moans of all those reading the title of this article can be heard. I wouldn’t blame you for moaning either. After all, who needs another article arguing for what the definition of atheism is? And I would agree with that! There are plenty of arguments out there about what the ‘true’ definition of atheism is, and why it is the ‘true’ definition of atheism. Getting into an argument about the definition of atheism is also pretty simple. ......
Why Do I Believe No Gods Exist?
I’ve written many articles about atheism, atheists, theists, gods, logic, rationality, ethics and morality etc. but as this is my 100th published post on Answers in Reason I wanted to do a special post. I wanted to give you an insight into my past and what lead me to my present, as well as how AiR came about and eventually lead to our podcast and YouTube channel. I felt it would be good to address why I believe no gods......
There Can Be Only ONE!
The repetitious nature of folks trying to prescribe a singular definition of atheism, and claiming that other definitions are, “talking about something else” or are “wrong”, seems to never die. What’s worse, these folks who take you saying that there are actually multiple uses of atheism claim that YOU are the one being prescriptive and restrictive, yet you’re the one saying there are multiple definitions… This article discusses some of the recent behaviours and examples of bad logic and mental......
Why Agnostic and not Agnostist?
On my walk today, I was considering a number of conversations I’ve had recently with folks arguing for default states and atheist rocks and some of the things I’ve said in response. IST and ISM One of the key points I brought up is an IST is a follower of an ISM, which is why we can’t be born an IST. It’s also another why describing atheism purely by the absence of a psychological state doesn’t really work for an......
Atheist Community?
It’s common to hear folks say things like “there is no atheist community” and “saying atheist community is like saying non-stamp collector community, I don’t see one” and on the surface this is understandable, you generally don’t see a community of non-stamp collectors or non-believers in Bigfoot, but can we say the same for atheists? What is a Community? a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. the condition of sharing or......
It Begs the Question…
Begging the question is a fallacy in which the premises of an argument assume the truth of the conclusion instead of supporting it. You may have also heard of this being called circular reasoning. The phrase begging the question originated in the 16th century as a mistranslation of the Latin petitio principii, which in turn was a mistranslation of the Greek for “assuming the conclusion”. The most common example of this we see on social media is variations of “It......
Is The ‘lack of belief’ Definition of Atheism The Most Common One Used?
There are some people that like to claim the lack of belief, or absence of belief, definition of atheism is the most common one. I contest that, whilst it is common on social media due to political parties like the American Atheists and American YouTube shows like The Atheist Experience, it isn’t that common outside of the internet and certain circles in America. Ways to Discuss Atheism Atheism is polysemous. That means there are many definitions. With the way language......
