The Atheist Blogger

The forum discussion for Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves” is up. Apologies to anyone who went to the live discussion, which I had put an hour later so that Aussie readers could get out of bed. It seems people still thought it was the same time, so I showed up an hour “late” and nobody was there.

Just so everyone knows for future reference, the book club live discussion is now taking place at midnight (UTC+1). So if you go to this world clock website and scroll down, you will see the time written in UTC. When that time is 23:00, it’s time for the discussion!

Voting for Septembers book will take place tomorrow.

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Regular visitors to the blog will have noticed that a few weeks ago I added a random quote generator to the top of the site, which serves an atheist quote every time the page is loaded. The quotes were originally from one of my first blog posts “101 Atheist Quotes“, with the occasional one added in when I find it.

I’ve also recently purchased the book “The Quotable Atheist” which is full of quotes about atheism / religion from popular people, so a few more should be added when I flick through it and find great ones.

The thing is, anyone can make atheist quotes. The popular ones are made by well-known people since they have a massive advantage of getting the quote out in the public domain. Some other popular ones are marked as “anonymous” but logic confirms they must have had some kind of origin. Why should atheist quotes be confined to anonymous people or popular philosophers / thinkers?

Back in May, I asked my forum members to come up with their own atheist quotes, which would be added to the random quote generator on the forums. Now that we’ve got a few I can fulfill my promise, but I’m also going to put them on the main site, and make the thread known to anyone who reads this post. So if anyone can think up any atheist quotes that are original (or witty modifications) please either join the forums and post, or post them in the comments to this article. They will *eventually* be added to the random quote generator with your name (if you give it) or your alias you use here. If you want your name linked to your website, please make it known!

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Book of Revelation 13:18

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Which is why I find this screenshot I took of the forums quite amusing:

No More Mr. Nice Guy has posted the 90th Carnival of the Godless over at his blog, and it’s well worth a look. This is the second time I’ve submitted something to the carnival, and I’m pleased to report that my article proposing an online atheist book club got through.

Speaking of which, we’re still working on the chatroom, and people can still post suggestions in the forums. Voting will be on May 1st.

On a further unrelated note, I won’t be posting as much for the next 3 weeks as I have revision followed by exams. I’ll still write the odd article, and if people want to sent stuff in (even short stuff) I’ll gladly post it for them. Wish me luck :D

Well quite a few people contacted me saying the book club would be a good idea, and so I’ve been busy organising things, and making sure everything can work. I’ve set up a new section of the forums so people can add submissions and discuss whether they would be a good idea to read.

All we need now is some actual book titles!

The updated idea is that anyone can register at the forums, and submit a title for the book club. Then, people can either agree or disagree with the title. If someone has read the book before, they might want to give their opinion on it and either recommend it or say it’s not worth reading. Likewise, if people find that they can’t get access to the book (perhaps it is only published in one country) then they can make their voice heard. The book club is a global group, and we are not going to review books that some people can’t access. Already we have had to “reject” a book that can only be found in Australia.

Rejection isn’t the end for a submission though. The book in question “The Purple Economy: Supernatural Charities, Tax and the State” sounds like an interesting read, and the only reason it’s not going to be in the May 1st vote is because of it’s availability. If you can get hold of it and read it yourself then that’s great. Perhaps you could write a review of it for us anyway!

We are aiming to get the IRC channel (chatroom) up and running on the 1st so people can drop in and talk. I’ll post details on how you can access IRC on the day, but for the non-technical people out there, I will install a Java applet on the site so you can connect easily.

For now though, we have 2 books submitted, and I’d like to have a couple more by the end of the week. Registration is free, and you have no obligation to participate in any book club reading. Everyone will be welcome in the live discussion, so if you haven’t read the book you will get a chance to hear some short reviews of it and you may be prompted to read it yourself.