AGAINST THE NEW ATHEISM

A Graphic Refutation
by Vox Day

www.voxday.blogspot.com

Religion Causes War

Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism,
racism, or politics ever can... Consequently, faith inspires violence in at
least two ways. First, people often kill other human beings because they
believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it.
- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, page 80
I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all
than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism,
Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as
countless smaller infections.
- Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea
[Religion] must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or
heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the
next world, but it wants power in this one.... And it does not have the
confidence in its own various preachings even to allow coexistence
between different faiths.
- Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great, page 17

Religion Causes War

1,763 Wars by cause, 8000 BC to 2000 AD
Source: Encyclopedia of Wars
1

93.0%
0.9
0.8
0.7

Islam
Non-Islam

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1

3.8%

3.2%

Religious War

Non-Religious War

Religion Causes Violence

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any
time in the past.
- Sam Harris, The End of Faith, page 26
Religion kills.
- Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great, page 15
It would be interesting to know whether there was any statistical
tendency, however slight, for religious believers to loot and destroy less
than unbelievers. My uninformed prediction would have been opposite. It
is often cynically said that there are no atheists in foxholes. I'm inclined to
suspect (with some evidence, although it may be simplistic to draw
conclusions from it) that there are very few atheists in prisons.
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, page 229

Religion Causes Violence

Motivations for Murder
Source: FBI Crime in the United States 2005
18000

16,686
16000

14000

12000

Murders

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

Racial/Religious/Ethnic

Non-Religious or Unknown

Atheists Commit Less Crime

U.K. Prison vs General Population
Source: 2001 Census and 2000 Inmate Information System
0.8

71.8%
0.7

0.6

No Religion
Christian

0.5

39.1%

0.4

31.6%
0.3

0.2

15.1%

0.1

Prison

General

The Red State Argument

This is an argument first put forth by Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian
Nation. It so impressed Richard Dawkins that he quoted it in full in The
God Delusion. The Red State argument purports to disprove any strong
correlation between Christian conservatism and social health based on
Harris's comparison of the crime statistics of 25 cities with the percentage
of Republican voters in the states where those cities are located. Harris
writes on pages 44-45, (Dawkins p. 229):
If there were a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and social health,
we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We dont. Of the 25
cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in blue [Democrat]
states and 38 percent are in red [Republican] states. Of the twenty-five most
dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states, and 24 percent are in blue states.

The Red State argument is riddled with errors of logic and math. While
the entire basis of the analysis is fallacious, even if one accepts it at face
value, the conclusion Harris reaches is nevertheless precisely backwards.
Harris appears to have forgotten that in addition to the state, there is
another civic unit for which national voting data is available, and which
serves as a much more accurate indicator of a city's voting population
than the state. Namely, the county in which the city is located.

The Red State Argument

The 25 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities
By State vs By County
0.9

0.8

84%
76%

0.7

Red
Blue

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

24%

0.2

16%

0.1

By State

By County

The Extinction Equation

The Extinction Equation is the central theme of Sam Harris's The End of
Faith and provides his justification for calling for an end to religion. It
involves the hypothesis that the combination of science-based technology
with religion is a deadly danger to Mankind that will inevitably lead to the
extinction of the human race. On pages 13-14, Harris writes:
Our technical advances in the art of war have finally rendered our religious
differencesand hence our religious beliefsantithetical to our survival.... There is
no doubt that these developments mark the terminal phase of our credulity. Words
like God and Allah must go the way of Apollo and Baal, or they will unmake
our world.

Harris not only forgets that his argument cuts both ways, but also fails to
see how logic clearly dictates that the correct solution to the Extinction
Equation would be to put an end to science rather than religion. The five
major religions, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Christianity,
and Islam have collectively been around 33 times longer than modern
science without ever once threatening the species, whereas in a mere 350
years, science has managed to produce multiple threats to continued
human existence.

The Extinction Equation

Collective Number of Years
Science vs 5 major religions
14000

12000

11,600

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

350
0

Religions (5)

Modern Science

Religion Inhibits Science

The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is
unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of
religious dogma, the maintenance of religious dogma ALWAYS comes at
the expense of science.
- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, page 63
The Party cannot be neutral toward Religion because Religion is
something opposite to Science.
- Josef Stalin, TIME Magazine, Feb. 17, 1936
All attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to
failure and ridicule.
- Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great, pages 64-65
In parts of the United States, science is under attack from a wellorganized, politically well-connected and, above all, well-financed
opposition.... Scientists could be forgiven for feeling threatened, because
most research money comes ultimately from government, and elected
representatives have to answer to the ignorant and prejudiced, as well as
to the well-informed, among their constituents.
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, page 66

Religion Inhibits Science

Genetic and Biological Science,1996-2008
Source: SCImago, ARIS, CIA World Factbook
5

4.72

4.5
4
3.5

Christian
No Religion
Papers per capita

3
2.5

2.30

1.77

1.5
1

77%

76%

54%
0.5

32%

15%

11%

USA

Switzerland

France

Improbability of Divine
Complexity
This is an idea put forth by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion as an
integral part of his Ultimate 747 argument, which he describes as the
book's central argument. He writes on page 114:
However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a
designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the
Ultimate Boeing 747. The argument from improbability states that complex things
could not have come about by chance. But many people define 'come about by
chance' as a synonym for 'come about in the absence of deliberate design'. Not
surprisingly, therefore, they think improbability is evidence of design. Darwinian
natural selection shows how wrong this is with respect to biological improbability.

Dawkins makes several errors here. First, he confuses the specific

mathematical probabilities that are utilized in the anthropic principle which
underlies the aforementioned argument from improbability with an
imprecise and casual sense of the word improbable. Second, he fails to
define complexity, which serves as the basis for his non-specific, nonmathematical concept of probability. Third, unless his undefined concept
of complexity does not concern information, Dawkins is incorrect to imply
that Darwinian natural selection entails increasing complexity, as can be
seen by comparing the informational complexities of the various stages in
the assumed evolutionary progress from fish to amphibian to mammal.

Improbability of Divine
Complexity
Comparative Genomic Information
Source: Animal Genome Size Database
20

18.14
18
16
14

mean picograms

12
10
8
6

3.37

4
2

1.93

Fish

Amphibian

Mammal

Atheists Are Very Intelligent

Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and
scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate
the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national
discourse.
- Sam Harris, 10 Myths - and 10 Truths - About Atheism
'the higher one's intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to
be religious or hold "beliefs" of any kind.'
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 103 (quoting Paul Bell)
"Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general
population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have
higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the
general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to
believe in God."
- Richard Lynn, Times Higher Education Magazine

Atheists Are Very Intelligent

Average Intelligence Quotients
Source: Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2010
160

140

140

132

120

100

100

80

103

70

60

40

20

Retarded

Average

Atheist

Mensa

Genius

The Irrational Atheist

If you are looking for more information on addressing

common atheist arguments, you may be interested in
reading The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day. It is
available from BenBella Books and free downloads of
the complete text in PDF, DOC, PDB, and LIT format can
be found at http://irrationalatheist.com/downloads.html.

www.voxday.blogspot.com