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 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:

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

Prayer request sites… I’m sure this sort of thing has been around for a while. But I had no idea just how many sites there are out there that allow one to post to their prayer requests to the electronic world at large, for the purpose of having other people Retweet their petitions up at God.

(Let me make the disclaimer, of course, that I’m not going to rag on the good intentions of so many people that will take the time to try to help a complete stranger with their problems. The motivation for setting up a site to help people in need obviously comes from a good place. The problem, of course, is that petitionary prayer doesn’t actually do anything, beyond a placebo effect at best; and that if you want to help someone in need, they will quite obviously be better off if you actually take action of some kind.)

You’d think that if God was going to respond to a prayer, he’d just do it, without factoring in if there was a massive effort on the part of many people. If the person praying has great needs, the last thing he or she needs is to have to find others that will echo the prayer around. Is there some kind of threshold criteria God uses to determine how he answers, or if he answers? For example, suppose I want divine help in looking for a new job. Is twenty other co-supplicants twice as good as ten? Why would it matter?

These are the kinds of questions I asked myself as I perused a bunch of prayer sites. I found many to be dull, but a few were interesting or funny for one reason or another. What follows is my top ten list.

10. Requestprayers.com

Pretty vanilla site, this is run by the Baha’i organization. Seems odd that they’d give it a commercial rather than organizational extension, but that was true for most of these places. They have one page that purports to have the most powerful prayer ever devised. Testimonitals include:

The Baha’is have some of the most beautiful and powerful prayers in the world. Add that power to a million souls across the globe praying on your behalf from all the religions, and the Light is dumbfounding. Need immediate help? You were guided to this site, and nothing happens by accident!

9. Liveprayer.com

The extremely conservative minister behind this site claims to have started the entire business of online prayer requests, apparently. He also claims to have personally received and re-prayed 60 million prayer requests. Wow! If that was not impressive enough, the main page devotes much attention to President Obama, naming him “God’s Enemy”; plus, they feature a tasteful, if amateurishly photoshopped, portrait of him next to Hiter. There is also extensive advertising for something called The Jonah Project, an effort to better Christianize the U.S. (and the world).

8. CarmelTemple.org

Not just your typical prayer submission site where your request is simply posted to a page for others to dutifully recite. No, this is the Home of the Crystal Prayer Bowl! (Yes, they have pictures of it, too.) Here is what they do with it:

The Crystal Prayer Bowl is used to collect prayer requests sent to Carmel Temple. It is placed under the Blue-White Healing Light at the beginning of healing sessions in the Sanctuary. The prayer requests then receive the energy and prayers of those present. We encourage you to place into the bowl the name (even the initials will do) of the person, persons, or situations that need prayer or healing energy. This procedure has been very effective and that bowl has an excellent reputation!

7. Donjuddministries.org

You can send them your prayer requests, which they will compile with all the others that they receive. Then they will print the entire list out. Why? So that they can “lay hands on the list” as they pray over it. Why not just lay hands on the hard drive and save time, paper, and ink?

6. Prayerblaster.com

I had high expectations for this page, and I was disappointed. I was hoping it would be a bit like Pingmyblog.com. Instead it is just a pedestrian list of links. Not much of a blaster at all, as you’d have to manually go through the list and submit your prayer to each site individually. This page might have been made in 1992.

5. Prayer.la

The folks running this site seem proud to offer an exhausting 218 pages of prayer requests that are all less than one month old. Apparently they expire after that. No stale prayers! Would take hours to go through them all and pray for each one, I’d imagine.

4. Prayerrequestweb.com

Much like prayer.la, in terms of sheer volume, but at least you won’t have to click through 218 pages of prayers. They are all on one very long page that you can just scroll down.

Here is an excerpt that I found particularly pathetic and sad, yet somehow representative of what you’ll find posted. There is a compulsory tone to it at the end… as if the author meant to finish with “Or else!”

Please pray GOD gives me all the desires of my heart that are righteous in GODs eyes.Pray GOD sends me on the mission He has for me now,Pray GOD raises me a mile above those used by Satan to glorify GOD,Pray GOD Blesses me financially now and always.Pray GOD heals my body completely now.Pray GOD brings me my soulmate now,the loneliness is tormenting me. In JESUS Name Pray.

3. Holylandprayer.com

Now this is a “dot com” that truly deserve that extension. Also fitting is the image of the glowing gold Jesus hanging on a cross that adorns their home page.

Here is what they offer, for some nominal fees: If you send them a prayer, they’ll have it prayed in Jerusalem, “steps from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.”

Or, they’ll light a candle for you there. Or do both together and get a discount!

Why would God care where the prayer originated from? Does it get more power coming from Jerusalem? Does that make it more bona fide, somehow? Or is God impressed that you are in dire enough straights that you’d send these people money? (Back in Dante’s time, accepting money for ecclessiastical favors was called Simony and earned one a very hot reward in the Eight Circle of Hell.)

Costs: $10 for a candle, $15 for a prayer. $20 for both.

2. Healinglifecoach.com Looking for something a little different from the same old prayer site? Then this is the place for you.

These folks offer special stones imbued with power because they are not merely prayed over, but “programmed.” Specifically, they tell us:

Programmed Stones can be effective and powerful tools for anything from Prayer, Freedom from Worry and Creative Visualization to Healing, Forgiveness, Gratitude and much more!

How are the stones programmed? They are cleaned and set in the Healing Sanctuary with your individualized and special requests with daily prayers being said over them for a minimum of 30 days. Then they are sent to you!

1. Ipraytoday.com

This was my favorite site because, beneath the name and prayer entry fields, it has a “capcha” device, so that you can prove you are a human being! To be fair, I suppose this is more to save the devout from being asked to repeat bogus prayers, but it struck me as hilarious to think of it as a spam filter for The Lord God Himself. I can only imagine Jehovah’s fury at realizing he was tricked into granting the request of a bot.

-S.A. Alenthony

www.blackburnianpress.com

CyberLizard (@CyberLizard) is one of the atheists I met through Twitter, and his blog is hosting the 122nd Carnival of the Godless! Not only are there some great articles frrom all over the atheist blogosphere, but my article on how to be a “twitter atheist” is in the carnival too!

Go check it out, and maybe you’ll submit something to the next carnival, or put your own blog forward for the prestigious job of hosting the carnival!

I’ve been using Twitter since August 25th, 2008, and it is a fantastic medium for promoting your ideas, discussing topics with like-minded (or non-like-minded) individuals, and getting all sorts of news and updates from various areas of life. Using a Twitter account, you send short 140 character messages to nobody in particular. People can find your “tweets” in searches, or choose to follow you, meaning that they get presented with a list of your tweets on their homepage.

I won’t pretend that getting as many followers as possible isn’t one of my aims, but I want to do so legitimately, and I want my followers to find my tweets both interesting and entertaining. Over the months I have changed my approach to Twitter many times, seeing what works and what doesn’t. I want to share my experiences of the last 11 months in the form of suggestions that I think will help those just starting out on Twitter to gain followers and enrich their Twitter experience. Since this is an atheist blog, some of my suggestions will be focused on the Twitter atheist community specifically, but they can be adapted to suit any person.

Write a decent description!

You can learn a surprising amount from the 140 character tweets that people send out, but it is a good idea to use the 160 character “One Line Bio” feature to explain your views in a more precise way.

This bio is displayed next to all your tweets on the main Twitter site, underneath your name. If you have a website or blog, make sure to include it in the “More Info URL” field, as it will also display (as a hyperlink) underneath your name. Given that 160 characters is still not much room, I suggest using single word descriptions as tags (comma separated). My bio reads:

Atheist, Blogger, Skeptic, Freethinker, Rationalist, Computer Programmer, Student, High Priest of the Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit ^[1].

Anyone now viewing my Twitter page can now see how I describe myself, and what groups I associate with. This description could mean the difference between a passer-by and a new follower, and a further advantage is the use of descriptions in third-party Twitter applications (which I will go into later).

Use a good Twitter client!

Whilst the web interface is fine for tweeting general messages, if you want to have a better experience, I would advise installing a Twitter client. The company behind Twitter have released an extensive API, meaning that clients can be made for all manner of devices; PCs, phones, iPods, etc.

The Twitter client I recommend is TweetDeck because it is very powerful and supported on all platforms (even iPhone/iPod). There are great features like url-shortening included, making sure your tweets are as content-filled as you can get them. TweetDeck allows you to view multiple columns of tweets, so you can see the people you follow, your mentions, direct messages, and even searches as they update.

Although TweetDeck is filled to the brim with features, there are other alternatives such as Seesmic Desktop which might be preferable. I suggest you take your time and pick out the client that suits your needs; there are certainly many to choose from. Remember, there is nothing stopping you from changing your choice at a later date either!

Say something interesting!

Twitter is a place for conversation, for spreading ideas, and for getting your voice heard. Yes, it can be used for status updates (“Just going to eat lunch”, “Night night Twitter *yawn*”), but people will respond to you more if you have something interesting to say.

Write questions to your followers, or ask them to comment on something. I asked my followers what they used Twitter for, and the response was unanimous: talking to other people (atheists) and sharing links. Don’t be afraid to post something controversial or ask questions. More importantly though, be yourself; if you find a video funny, post it; it you have a random thought, post it! Think of Twitter as a gateway into your mind more than a way for celebrities to talk to their fans.

Reply to tweets!

Once you have started following people, you will find them asking questions or asking for comments on certain things. Replying to them not only gives them feedback, but also makes them aware of your existence. A well thought out reply will always be appreciated, and they may follow you for it. Not everyone will follow someone for making a reply, but it is certainly a factor, and you have nothing to lose by doing it.

Don’t feel the need to respond to every tweet you see though, and certainly don’t just respond to somebody and say “I agree” or “lol”. A reply should add to the conversation, and if you mention something that prompts them to reply to you, well then all the better! Since all replies are public, the reply to your comment will be sent to everyone who follows them, and you may get even more followers from it.

Retweet!

Retweeting is a special kind of reply, where you literally send someone else’s tweet again from your account. Usually the tweet has the prefix “RT”, and I would advise always having the name of the person you are retweeting as well. Clients like TweetDeck do this automatically, but if you are using the web interface you will have to add them yourself. Retweets are generally used if someone says something that you find particularly funny, interesting, or thought-provoking. By sending the tweet onto your followers, you are spreading the message, and your retweet may even get retweeted itself!

By far the most popular things that are retweeted are links to various websites. News is spread this way over Twitter, as are popular YouTube videos, and just about anything with a http:// in front of it. Many people add a comment to the retweet message before sending, but you could always send a separate reply to the original tweeter. A problem with retweeting is that if the message is already near to 140 characters long, adding the name and “RT” will go over the limit. Most people get around this by either shortening words (through -> thru, are -> r, etc) or removing / rewording sections of the tweet.

Hashtagging!

Quite simply, this is the action of putting a tag onto the end (or wherever) of your tweet. Tags are called “hashtags” because it is standard to put a hash symbol (#) in front of the tag, so atheism becomes #atheism. Hashtags are interpreted by the Twitter website, and other clients, as links to the Twitter search. So if you wanted to see a load of tweets about atheism, you would search for #atheism in Twitter search, and find a load of hashtagged results!

Hashtagging is useful because you can subscribe to certain hashtags via several clients (or even the website), and have a constant real-time update of that specific tag. For instance, during the confusion over Michael Jackson’s supposed death, the hashtags #mj, #michael, and #michaeljackson were used to track updates sent around Twitter.

A lot of tweets are hashtagged these days, and you might find yourself asking, what on earth does #tcot mean? Luckily, a website has been set up that acts as a dictionary for hashtags, and a quick trip there will tell you that most people use it to mean “Top Conservatives On Twitter“. There are other definitions, but they are not as widely used.

Search for keywords!

Hashtags are useful for putting tweets into a category, but they are useless unless you actually use them to search for other people to follow. Since you only get updates from people you currently follow, finding new people can be difficult. Luckily, there are simple ways to find people who you can reply to or retweet.

TweetDeck has the ability to show search results that update every minute or so. The results include everyone who tweeted your search term, even if you do not follow them. The advantages of this should be pretty obvious, as you can search for things like the atheism hashtag (#atheism) and get a list of tweets tagged with it. You can create multiple searches, or combine search terms with the OR operator (make sure you use capital letters for the OR).

For example, I have a single search column set up in TweetDeck that gives me results for any tweet that contains the words (not just hashtags) “atheism”, “atheist”, “agnostic”, “freethinker”, “skeptic”, etc. I choose not to use hashtags because I wanted to start conversations with theists who talk about atheism (and who do not generally use the atheism hashtag). A search for “#atheism” will return only the hashtagged results, whilst a search for “atheism” will return both hashtagged results and just mentions of atheism.

If you are using the web interface, you can do the same thing, but you will have to open up a new tab at the Twitter search engine and enter your terms. You could create a bookmark to the search url in order to speed up this process. Remember to reload the tab to see new results!

Follow Friday!

Follow Friday is a Twitter meme that happens every Friday (duh!). On that day, you create a tweet containing the names of people you recommend following, and then tag the tweet with either #followfriday or #ff. People who follow you will now have your recommendations, and may start following them if they are not already doing so. Of course, what you are hoping is that other people are writing Follow Friday tweets with your name in them, and you can track this in TweetDeck by looking in the “Mentions” column. If you are using the web interface, you can do a search for your name and see what comes up.

If people do put you in a Follow Friday list, sending them a quick thank you is always a nice thing to do. The problem with Follow Friday is (like many problems in Twitter) related to the 140 character limit. After a while, you want to put more names in your Follow Friday tweet, but end up running out of room. There are several solutions; sending multiple tweets is one, but the solution I have recently started using is having a static page (http://atheistblogger.com/follow-friday) that I add names to.

With the page set up, I can list people I think are worthy of following, as well as a short description of why. I can update the list, and then every Friday I simply send out the url with the #followfriday hashtag. My list is incomplete; I still need to add more names and the descriptions, but it is a good example of how such pages work.

Mr. Tweet is your friend!

As I previously mentioned, the release of the Twitter API gave way to a large number of applications. Mr. Tweet is one of these applications, and it aims to suggest new people to follow based on the types of people you already follow. In other words, if you follow a lot of atheists, it will give you a load of other atheists as suggestions.

Mr. Tweet works by some clever analytical code, but also through users recommending others for following. Recommending someone is easy to do, and you can read more about the benefits of doing such recommendations on the Mr. Tweet page. Other than recommendations, Mr. Tweet checks your friend’s tweets and determines the users they respond to or mention. This is another great reason why you should reply and retweet people! Your efforts are being noticed by Mr. Tweet, and you will get suggested to people you probably have never even encountered.

Other applications include WeFollow, which tracks people according to three different categories they assign themselves under (mine are atheism, atheist, and blogger), and Twibes, which allows you to join specific groups in Twitter and post to them using hashtags. Be sure to join the Atheists Twibe and the JaffaCakes Twibe (because you know there is a God, and McVities be His name).

Sync your blog!

There are an awful lot of atheist blogs out there, and it would be a shame to use a micro-blogging service like Twitter without posting links to your own blog. If you are gaining followers on Twitter, why not gain readers of your blog at the same time? Luckily, you don’t have to remember to post links to your blog every time you make a post. With twitterfeed you can link your RSS feed to your Twitter account, so that when you post something new on your blog, twitterfeed will (depending on the update rate you set) post the link on your Twitter account for you.

Twitterfeed allows you to customize the tweet it sends, so you can add a prefix of something like “New Post:”, and suffix it with a hashtag (like #atheism). This will increase the chances of your post being picked up and retweeted by the Twitter community.

Start conversations!

140 characters doesn’t seem much, but you can make several points if you word them correctly. Twitter tracks conversations remarkably well, and applications like TweetDeck improve this process. Repeated responses to a single person is very noticeable in a Twitter feed, so you may get people joining the conversation, or starting a new one with you

Don’t go for people who have the same opinions as you, but instead seek out people who you can have a proper discussion with. Over the weeked, I started numerous conversations with a Christian concerning proof, knowledge, what would make me believe, etc. Yesterday evening, I challenged an astrologer who was mouthing off skeptics to prove astrology worked. After a bit of back and forth banter (the JREF and the $1,000,000 prize were mentioned on more than one occassion), he agreed to draw up a chart for me and see how accurate it was.

What is my point? Well, during these conversations, numerous people were reading them, sending me messages, etc. My follower count jumped repeatedly. Evidently, people were interested in what I had to say. I think that by using my above tips, you will be well on your way to gaining many followers, and a larger outreach in the atheist Twitter community.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow me (and say hello!) on Twitter: @ah8r

The 121st Carnival of the Godless is now up at State of Protest, so go check it out! As always there are some fantastic posts featured, and if you haven’t submitted a post to the carnival, do so; it’s a great way to get visitors to your blog! Whilst you’re at it, why not request to host the carnival in the future?

Mojoey over at Deep Thoughts has posted the latest Carnival of the Godless, and I submitted my article about Religious Child Abuse which was featured. Anyway, there are a load of great articles over there, so go check it out!