A major problem for soft atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens is that they insist on talking in terms of right and wrong in spite of the fact that they have no objective standard by which to measure the morality of a human action.

They both appear to imbue evolution with the ersatz numinous quality of producing a tribal barometer of what is good or evil – but then, by their lights,  Hitler and Stalin were fairly advanced products of evolution and few atheists would claim what they and their followers did was good in any sense. So when Dawkins becomes upset by creationists who, he believes, distort the truth, his reaction isn’t particularly rational since to tell the truth is an ethical imperative which, by his own relativistic standards, is not necessarily better than telling a lie.

There is a similar problem in setting the standard for the kilogram:

More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the time.

In Paris, scientists polished and weighed it carefully, until they determined that it was exactly one kilogram, around 2.2 pounds. Then, by international treaty, they declared it to be the international standard.

Since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, that cylinder has been the standard against which every other kilogram on the planet has been judged. But that’s creating problems. According to scientists, the cylinder’s mass appears to be changing.

As it stands, the entire world’s system of measurement hinges on the cylinder. If it is dropped, scratched or otherwise defaced, it would cause a global problem. “If somebody sneezed on that kilogram standard, all the weights in the world would be instantly wrong,” says Richard Steiner, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.

Sneezing on the kilogram standard may blow a flew molecules off and make all the other weights in the world slightly incorrect. Sneezing on an atheist’s ethical framework completely blows it away.

In debates, Christopher Hitchens issues the following challenge ad nauseam:

Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.

There is no entirely satisfactory answer to this since it is the wrong question. The point is not so much whether atheists could do the same ethical acts as believers, but do they?

In practice, they don’t: here is an illustration from someone who does not have an axe to grind since he is an agnostic:

A few weeks ago I was in hospital. The only visitors I received who were not relatives were Christian ones: five in all, including two Catholic priests. None of them tried to convert me – and I didn’t stop the evangelical layman who asked if he could say a prayer over me – but I appreciated their brief visits even though I told them I was no longer a believer. They were performing a charitable act, unselfishly and compassionately.

I didn’t get any hospital visits from atheist visitors. What might they have said to me: “This is as good as it gets, mate?” The fact that I am edging towards their camp – I guess I am at the agnostic stage – does not exactly cheer me. It just makes me sad.

Richard Dawkins is indulging in the fashionable compulsion to apologise. In this case for Alan Turing’s suicide:

Richard Dawkins last night joined the campaign to win an official apology for Alan Turing, the code-breaking genius and father of the modern computer who committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for being homosexual.

Professor Dawkins said that an apology would “send a signal to the world which needs to be sent”, and that Turing would still be alive today if it were not for the repressive, religion-influenced laws which drove him to despair.

Apologising for something one is not responsible for is all the rage now, possibly because it diverts attention away from the things one is responsible for. Anglicans do it, so do politicians. Now Dawkins is eager to jump on the bandwagon. Is this an example of False Apology Syndrome – I’m sorry for your sins?

I don’t think so. It appears to be yet another Dawkins anti-religion salvo, under the guise of saving us all from “repressive, religion-influenced laws”.

In actual fact, no-one really knows exactly why Turing committed suicide – or, indeed if it was suicide. Turing died from cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple. Some believed it could have been an assassination since Turing’s homosexuality was seen as a security risk. His mother was convinced that it was an accident caused by Turing’s sheer carelessness at storing laboratory chemicals.

One thing is known: we have no evidence that Alan Turing killed himself because of “repressive, religion-influenced laws”. This is not enough to hold back the ostensibly evidence obsessed Dawkins, though, to whom, when it suits him, a lack of real evidence does not stand in the way of yet another mindless jab against religion.