Abstract

The use of current developing communication tools has increased the sharing of ideas, while diversifying people's social relations, religious approaches and beliefs has found various areas of interaction on common platforms, as well as many regions of ideological, political, and cultural communication. These virtual places, where people from all classes can express their opinions, are created through social media and internet sites. Amongst are also websites of atheists. Atheists both gained the opportunity to express themselves actively on social media, discussing the reasons for not believing in God on their platforms. These sites, which mostly discuss the inconsistency in religious claims, the criticism of current religious issues, and the problems faced by atheists in social life, also help them organize, come together, make their voices heard, and give the impression that their number is increasing day by day. In this study, three sites advocating atheism, namely 'pozitifateizm.wordpress.com', 'ateizm.blogspot.com' and 'ateistmedya.wordpress.com' will be investigated by evaluating how their supporters define themselves, and some of their main claims will be discussed at descriptive level. The primary aim of this study is not to respond to the claims of them, but to highlight the most basic arguments that define themselves and to analyze what they defend. In doing so, their internal inconsistencies and weaknesses of their criticism will also be pointed out. First of all, we tried to reveal their opinions by focusing on how atheists draw the boundaries and frameworks of their hypothesis. We then examined three issues that they heavily debated between the anti-God and anti-religious claims, which are discussed under many headings on atheist sites. These three building blocks of the main argument are that (i) the evidence for the existence of God is insufficient, (ii) the theory of evolution versus the idea of creation, and (iii) the clash of religion and science. As it is known, besides the cosmological, ontological, and teleological proofs of the existence of God, some different versions of these or derived from them can be seen as secondary proofs. In atheist sites, the "inconsistencies" of the evidence were first examined by dealing with these three basic pieces of arguments. According to them, besides this, no other evidence provides valid and sufficient reasons to believe. Following their arguments, atheists have stated that the evidence claiming God's existence is inconsistent or unfounded. Considering the universe and the living creatures in it as evidence of God's existence, which is one of the most important proofs used by theists, is an important criticism area for them. For, according to them, this issue is within the boundaries of science. Therefore, unlike theists who use the theory of creation to explain the diversity of life in the world, atheists, who resort to the theory of evolution, have argued that it is possible to explain the diversity of living things without reference to God. In the second chapter, we examined how they deal with the theory of evolution, which is defended against the creationist theories in atheist sites. Atheists have stated that evolution based on natural selection and mutation is sufficient in explaining the formation of life on earth. Although not all theists reject the theory of evolution, they object to some of the problems that the theory brings with it, some of which are that this theory, which attempts to explain life, is entirely dependent on blind mutation and natural selection; the claim that human ancestors are related to the ape species; and the primitive mutation system's capacity to create intelligent and conscious creatures. Atheists also made explanations to these objections on their websites and tried to commit the theists' opposing arguments. Another issue atheists emphasize is the relationship between religion and science. This contemporary issue continues to be discussed under the title of “conflict between religion and science” in many platforms, as supporting or not affecting each other. In this respect, our third chapter has emerged as atheists' view of the relationship between religion and science. In this chapter, we discussed on what grounds atheists explain the claim that the structure of religious thought, revelation, and the institution of prophecy do not support scientific thought, on the contrary. As a result of all these analyze, we can say that while atheists prove their claims, they use scientific data in a fragmentary and pragmatist arbitrariness and thus, imprison themselves in a populist discourse.