Do athiest believe?

Question

Do atheist believe that a group of monkeys wrote the works of Shakespeare, or do they just accept that he did it?

Just to clear things up, there is a theory that given a large group of monkeys and enough time they could eventually make the writings of Shakespeare. I was making a parallel between the odds of that, and the odds that everything regarding our existance just happened out of accident.

Hey, this is the most answers I've ever recieved for a question. And, thank you for being so nice as to call me an idiot, a moron, a "god basher", and what not; I'm really glad to know that people don't resort to name calling when discussing a point.

Answer 1

No: the monkeys were all tied up with theological writings.

Interestingly, as the Bible was written before Shakespear got down to business, the posted question explicitly leads to the conclusion that the Bible had to have been written by either monkeys or monkey precursors...

Answer 2

The possibility that a group of monkeys would accidentally replicate the works of Shakespear given an infinite amount of time does exist. It's a very very high probability but it does exist. I'm sure it's much better odds than an all powerful deity that always was around creating everything too.

Answer 3

Those atheists who have pondered this question most likely have come to the conclusion that Shakespeare's works were not the product of "a group of monkeys", as you suggest. For anything productive to come out of monkeys at typewriters, there needs to be a number of monkeys (at least) approaching infinite.

Sourced is an article on atheists and monkeys.

Answer 4

Nice warping of scientific theories to make atheists look bad. You sicken me. It is irrelevant whether or not Shakespeare wrote his works. The true question is whether or not a group of monkeys randomly hitting typewriter keys would eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. The answer to this question is yes, given that they had an infinite amount of time to do so.

Answer 5

That's a really stupid question based on a very narrow viewpoint.

All an atheist believes is that mainstream views of religion and spirituality are not correct. They also believe that there is no God as defined in these mainstream religions. This does not automatically mean they are skeptical of everything else and that monkeys wrote Shakespeare. In fact an atheist may also not believe in evolution.

Answer 6

Actually, the works of Shakespeare might not even be done by him. There's a lot of speculation in the academic community that suggests that someone else wrote them and Shakespeare took the credit.

But if you're talking strictly about monkeys vs. Shakespeare, I'm sure that most believe that Shakespeare wrote them.

Answer 7

No but most probably believe that life on earth arose gradually in increasingly complicated steps, over many millions if not billions of years, starting from simple chemicals, rather than being created in its current form by a creator, and that in any case more complicated life evolved from simpler forms in gradual steps due to mutations and natural selections, in fairly well understood biological processes involving changes in DNA from mutations.

The process of random acts such as monkeys typing keys in a keyboard is different from random acts selected by some process, such as natural selection.

I gather that's what your questions is about.

Atheists would argue, that if the universe were created by an intelligent being, then the question arises who created the intelligent being.

If the answer is the intelligent being was always there, then they would argue, why wouldn't it be just as convincing to say the universe was always there.

The best argument for atheism may be Bertrand Russel's book, Why I am not a Christian.

Answer 8

If you have a true random character generator and enough time (millions and million of years), eventually some text (in some language) is going to be out. That’s not a theory is a fact, because you are going to have billions of combinations.

You know what, at the beginning I thought that this was a really dumb question, but at the end, with my answers I see a really nice way to explain evolution (nice).

I still do not see the relation with atheist, but nothing is perfect.

Thanks.

Answer 9

We have documented proof that he existed but if he actually did the writing is still a bit under speculation. I think that he probably did write all those plays but I'm not 100% sure. You don't have to belive in god to belive that a person lived hundreds of years ago. I'm sure Homer existed and wrote what he wrote and blieved what he believed but it doesn't mean what he wrote was the complete truth. What does this have to do with athiests, some have a stricter and stronger belief system than some believers in god.

Answer 10

Atheist typically reject supernatural revelation, to remain consistent, an atheist must find an alternate theory. Evolution is that alternate theory. In my opinion, most atheist don't reject belief in God on an intellectual level, some do. It is usually a moral problem, realizing that one is accountable to God for their actions; so to alieviate that problem, they turn to atheism. An atheist would in all liklihood believe Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him, there is no supernatural element to deal with in this case.