The Atheist Blogger

Religious bigots and enemies of free speech can all relax, the Atheist Bus Campaign is over! Now all you’ve got to put up with are some MASSIVE BILLBOARDS! Mwahahahahaha!

Ok, but seriously, the next stop on the Atheist Bus Campaign (which should really just be called the “Atheist Advertising Campaign” now) is a bunch of billboards set up in strategic locations across the UK; in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast respectively. The billboards display an important message concerning the religious labeling of children:

The "Please Don't Label Me" Billboard

The new advert (and similar variations of it) makes the rightful comparison between calling a child of Marxist parents a “Marxist child” and calling a child of Christian parents a “Christian child”. We shouldn’t be labeling children with the faiths or political views of their parents; we shouldn’t label kids at all. The billboard background is made up of a combination of political and religion labels for children, all the way from “Libertarian Child” in the top left, to “Liberal Child” in the bottom right.

Of course, like the buses, these adverts don’t have an agenda (although the religious will surely interpret one anyway). We aren’t telling people they can’t bring children up in their faith; we aren’t even telling them to stop labeling their children! What we’re asking is that parents let the child decide what they want to be called, and whether that happens early or later on in life is ultimately irrelevant, just as long as the child gets the final decision.

It’s a powerful message, and one worthy of more discussion. If you want to learn more about the campaign, or support it through donations, please visit the British Humanist Association campaign page.

This is just a quick blog post to highlight the reasons for my continued absence from the blog, as my last post was more than a month ago, and I haven’t posted on a “regular” basis for several months. There are a few reasons for this, the main one being an increased workload at university, given that I am now in my final year of study for my degree. It’s more than that though; I like writing blog posts, but I generally think that blog posts that aren’t at least a few paragraphs long are ultimately pointless unless they are really meant as quick placeholders to let people know what I’m up to.

I’ve been told multiple times by people that I’ve exceptionally good at explaining things (usually), and when I have an idea for a blog post, I want to research it as much as I can before I write about it. I usually read several sources, and the whole process takes a good hour at least, if not more. Hence my problem is finding a few hours free where I can work on the post without interruptions. Of course, the other problem is that Twitter has practically removed the need to write small updates on the blog. Not only do I stay in contact with a lot of my friends and readers via Twitter, I can post tiny bursts of information from literally anywhere with a 3G internet connection.

Another problem is that other projects have suddenly become popular, largely because of my advertising them on Twitter. AtheistForums.org for instance, has exploded with new members and posts in the past few months. Various events in the world have managed to piss me off so much that I’ve become increasingly more interested in politics, namely that of Libertarianism in the UK (a criminally underrepresented minority in my opinion). I could rant about so many things on this blog, but I’m worried it’ll just divert off to something of a personal blog again, rather than one focused on atheism.

Anyway, I’m going to plow ahead and see what happens. I want this blog to stay on track, and I certainly have no plans to take it down. I’ve been doing some “atheistic” work recently, so I’ll be blogging about that when I find the time. Tomorrow for instance, I’m going to the House of Lords (part of British parliament) with the President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist, and Secular Student Societies (AHS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA). Last week, I met Ariane Sherine at a book swap event in Windsor, and I have the photo to prove it:

@ah8r + @arianesherine = @awesomeness

So watch this space. It’ll be updated eventually, but possibly not as often as I have managed before. I’d just like to thank everyone who has supported the blog thus far, and that includes all my readers, all my twitter followers, and anyone else who’s stopped by and thought “cool blog”.

The latest Carnival of the Godless is up at Radical Atheist, so go check it out! It’s a great carnival, and has two great reviews of the new book “The evolution of God” which were very informative.

Remember to submit something to the next carnival, or put your own blog forward for the prestigious job of hosting the carnival!

As a side note, I’ve been meaning to update this blog a lot more often, but every time I’ve sat down to write a post, something else has barged in the way, whether it be important emails I have to answer, work that has to be done, or (most recently) a breach of my PayPal account which almost cost me $300 I don’t have. Nevertheless, I’m finally emerging from the flow of “more-important-than-blogging” things, and there will be a few articles up this week on my adventures in Egypt, and my delving into Astrology!

Given that Twitter is a far better (and quicker) way of getting my thoughts out, if you miss me you can always follow my thoughts there. My account is @ah8r.

S.J. Velasquez of Religion News Service has written a great report on how atheists are coming together through Twitter. It has quotes from interviews with P.Z Myers (of Pharyngula), Hemant Mehta (of Friendly Atheist), and Blair Scott (of American Atheists).

There is also a mention of “one atheist [who] has taken it upon himself to tutor other nonbelievers in effective use of Twitter.” Wait a minute…that’s me! Yup, I got a nice chunk of paragraphs in there too. The whole article is a nice secular take on atheists getting through the hate and misunderstanding in order to find others like themselves, and is well worth the read.

Here’s a fun meme I thought up late last night. For each letter of the alphabet, choose an atheist blog or atheist related website that begins with that letter and link to it. To make things easier, you can remove preceding articles such as ‘a’ or ‘the’ to unlock more letters. For instance, this website “The Atheist Blogger” could be used for both the letter ‘T’ and ‘A’. Converting numbers to their word forms is also acceptable.

If you can’t think of any sites, have a perusal of the Atheist Blogroll, and if you really can’t find a website with the starting letter (gold star goes to anyone finding a website starting with X), choose an interesting word from the dictionary and list it with its definition. Try to be imaginative! Remember, this is a great chance to discover blogs you may have not heard of before, so don’t feel that you have to put blogs in the meme that you read regularly!

Finally, link back to the blog who sent you this meme, and tag 5 other blogs.

1. About Agnosticism / Atheism
2. Bay of Fundie
3. CyberLizard’s Collection
4. Deep Thoughts
5. ExChristian.net
6. Friendly Atheist
7. God is Pretend
8. Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
9. The Invisible Pink Unicorn
10. Jewish Atheist
11. Kill The Afterlife
12. Life Without Faith
13. Moiz Khan
14. nullifidian
15. Oz Atheist’s Weblog
16. Pharyngula
17. Quiet Atheist
18. Radical Atheist
19. Sean the Blogonaut
20. toomanytribbles
21. Unreasonable Faith
22. The View from the Pond
23. Why Don’t You Blog?
24. xylomancy – divination by means of pieces of burning wood (lol)
25. You Made Me Say It!
26. ZackFord Blogs

For tagging, I choose: Friendly Atheist, Unreasonable Faith, CyberLizard’s Collection, and before you think I’m just spelling out naughty words, Life Without Faith & Sean the Blogonaut