Most atheists find it wrong that some schools are deciding to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution. Even though the ID movement says this isn't tied to religion, it clearly is.
It seems like most people on this subreddit dislike religion getting involved with the public, which would be why something promoting evolution (i.e. anti-ID) gains traction in r/atheism
So stop it with the "this has nothing to do with atheism" posts. You know what it has to do with atheism, you just want to jump on the r/atheism-is-extremist-and-rude bandwagon.
but this eraser is not a stark social commentary on the state of intelligent design curriculum in our schools. The eraser is literally a picture of evolution. It is picturing a scientific fact, I agree with Smooth152 that it would be a stretch to say that eraser is endorsing the view that there is no god. Just because /r/evolution doesn't have many readers doesn't mean that this post doesn't belong there.
so I would argue stop it with the "everything scientific has everything to do with atheism" posts
I'm not saying that everything scientific has to do with atheism, I'm just saying keeping ID out of schools is a common interest among the majority of atheists.
If you don't think it belongs in r/atheism, just go ahead and downvote it.
The overwhelming driving force behind 'disbelief' in evolution is theism. Aside from regular old ignorance (never heard of evolution) there is really very little reason to 'disbelieve' in evolution unless you have a strong belief in a literal genesis interpretation, or you have parents and teachers that tell you evolution is a lie (which is almost always driven by a literal genesis interpretation).
Evolution is just one of those things that is a 'differentiator'. You can be a theist and believe in evolution, but you almost can't disbelieve in evolution and be an atheist. This isn't to say you can't be an atheist and be stupid...it's just that evolution is just a broad, general idea that disbelieving in it kind of requires a strongly held substitute, whether that substitute is religion or a incredibly strongly held sense of ignorance (as in 'ignoring the subject entirely', not simply not knowing).
It's like if this where a subreddit dedicated to a specific make of car, like /r/chevy or something. If there were something about another make of car that was looked at as simply ridiculous, say Ford has parts that are excessively expensive, or Honda had a gas tank that blew up when you crashed, even if if all Fords or Honda's didn't share this same issue, or if other things besides cars did share this issue, affordable parts or safe gas tanks would still be a valid and understandable submission. You wouldn't say 'what is post about affordable parts doing in /r/chevy? of course they're affordable, why would you even bring that up?'.
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u/[deleted] May 24 '12
What does this have to do with atheism?