The Atheist Blogger

Oz Atheist tagged me in this “six random things about you” meme that’s going around. I started writing this out this morning before lectures, and had to run out the door, leaving it incomplete. Then, when I get home, I find out that Hannah has also tagged me, and seeing as she lives in the same county of England that I come from (Wiltshire FTW!) I am honour-bound to respond to both tags. Update: Heather also tagged me! Firstly the rules:

Rules

1. Link to the person tagged you (Linked to both).
2. Post the rules on your blog (doing so now).
3. Write six random arbitrary things about yourself (that’s gonna take some thinking).
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them (hehehehehe).
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog (Geez…let me finish the meme first).
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up (in my todo list).

Six Random Arbitrary Things About Myself

1. My middle name is Michael (after my father). Not exactly a random thing but I doubt I’ve told anyone before on this blog.
2. I have a slightly crooked little finger on my right hand due to the fact that I broke it at school, and my mother refused to take me to hospital because she didn’t think anything was wrong with it. A few weeks later when it had swollen a bit she took me, and the doctor told us it had broken and fused in the wrong place. Of course, there is no point re-breaking and re-setting a little finger, so I still have the crooked thing to this day (although admittedly it isn’t as noticeable as before).
3. I have used the same small blue backpack for the last 10 years to carry stuff in. It might have a broken front pouch; its torn in places where it really shouldn’t be torn, and it probably needs another wash, but its my lucky pack dammit! (Not that I believe in luck of course, but “lucky pack” sounds cooler than anything else).
4. I installed putty on my Nokia E71 phone, just so I could log into my server from anywhere in the world. I then used putty to watch the first Star Wars movie in ascii-animation over a telnet connection whilst very bored in a Information Security lecture last week.
5. There are two distinct shelves on my bookcase. One for computing books:
   • Software Engineering 8
   • Using UML
   • 3 C++ books
   • 4 books on PHP, MySQL, and Apache
   • 2 books on CSS
   • Visual Basic 2005 (eurgh)
   • HTML 4 (awwww, so old…)
   • ASP.NET 2.0 (never touched, thank FSM)
   • Visual C# 2005
   • Database System Concepts
   • Big Java 3rd Edition
   • Design Patterns
   • 3 books on JavaScript
   • Ajax

   …and one for atheistic books:

   • The God Delusion x 2 (hardback, paperback)
   • 50 reasons people give for believing in a god
   • The Quotable Atheist
   • The End of Faith
   • Letter to a Christian Nation
   • Climbing Mount Improbable
   • The Selfish Gene
   • A Devil’s Chaplain
   • Freedom Evolves
   • The Demon Haunted World
   • Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
   • The Blind Watchmaker
   • The Jesus Puzzle
   • The Portable Atheist (not portable in any way, shape, or form)
   • God is not great
   • How to be a good atheist
   • I Sold My Soul on eBay
   • Imaginary Friend

   I am an atheist computer geek…and I love it.

6. I used to have 20:20 vision. Hours of staring at computer screens last year, coupled with horrible lighting effects used in a video game I made, finally wore my eyesight down to the point it is at today. If you work with computers, heed my words: When they tell you to take 20 minute breaks every 2 hours, do it.

My 6 victims targets choices

Friendly Atheist

The Atheist Jew

Moiz Khan

A Division By Zero

Splendid Elles

Chicken Girl

Right…now I’m off to tell people about this.

The other day I added my facebook profile to the sidebar of the blog, and I’ve had quite a few friend requests from people who subscribe which is always nice. Being an “out of the closet” atheist, I don’t see anything wrong with random people finding me on facebook. It would certainly be nice to chat to some of my blog readers beyond the confines of the comments.

So, please do add me.

I’d also like to thank everyone who reads the blog, especially those who comment and leave me feedback. It really makes a difference on how I view the blog as an aspect of my life, and it is nice to see an increase in subsribers despite the fact I’ve been away from blogging recently :P

Furthermore, I checked my WordPress “Incoming Links” recently and was surprised to see how many other blogs there are that keep me on their blogroll or “My Fave Blogs” lists. It’s a reminder that I’d better actually update my own sometime!

I guess I just felt I needed to say something! Coursework is more or less done, so I’ll be getting back to some kind of schedule very soon. Watch this space.

My Feeds

I subscribe to quite a few blogs; some technical, some webcomics, most atheist-based. However I do subscribe to a few Christian blogs for various reasons:

“Atheist Central” by Ray Comfort

Ray Comfort’s blog is a great place if you want to have a laugh, or simply want to watch a load of bigoted hatred emerge out of the “love” theists have for our souls. Whether he is busy redefining science or claiming that light is invisible, Ray Comfort always manages to bring a smile to the face of any atheist. Heck, he even has his own bunch of debunkers.

Stuff Christians Like by Prodigal John

This blog is rather atheist-friendly since atheists aren’t actually mentioned, so it is a nice look into the minds of Christians when they aren’t all riled up over our “atheist faith”.

Debunking Atheists by Dan

Debunking Atheists has a special place not only in my feed reader but also in my blog’s blogroll because the author challenged me to put him there after he wrote answers to the Atheist Thirteen for me. Dan (the author in question) has a current series trying to “Debunk Evolution” which is hilarious to read, mainly because he doesn’t understand the fundamentals of the science and simply repeats well-known lies.

Uncommon Descent by William Dembski (originally)

A blog about Intelligent Design, which of course spouts the same rubbish and regurgitated debunked “facts” they’ve been talking about for years. The site logo is still the I.D mascot, the bacterial flagellum, which of course has various explanations for its existence through Evolutionary theory. Still, it’s great fun to read on all the “controversy” surrounding these issues.

So what Christian blogs do you peruse? Why do you do it? Do you actively take part in discussions or just sit in the sidelines?

Carnival of Evolution is a new blog carnival that describes itself thusly^[1]:

Do you care about the science behind evolution? Do you marvel at the tiny molecular machines spewing out coded messages to the microscopic inhabitants of your own bodied world? Do you grow irate at the ignorance pushers, the peddlers of relatively impotent gods, and the disintegration of science education in the modern world? Do you like to stay abreast of current topics and scientific findings in the study of the organismal existences surrounding us or those long gone?

If so, this is the blog carnival for you.

Their tagline is awesome: “3.7 billion years of molecular changes culminating in the emergence of matter inspecting its own origins and existence”

Of course like all new blog carnivals they need to be advertised, and people need to start submitting posts. At the moment it seems like the carnival is stationary (on the single blog), but that may change in the future, who knows.

The 1st carnival consisted of 10 incredible and fascinating insights into Evolutionary biology, and one article in which a man who knows next to nothing about Evolution compared to the other guys writes about how Ray Comfort is a moron. *cough*

But seriously, thanks for the include. I am certain that my article would stand out and cause people to want to write much better articles. The more of these carnivals there are, the better people will understand evolution, even if they take tiny steps at a time.

Digg-like site for atheists, “The Atheist Spot” has been holding a series of interviews with atheist bloggers. The latest ones have been all “foreigners” (i.e. not in the USA) like myself, and they show a great diversity of atheism across the world.

The Amiable Atheist tells of growing up a US baptist before discovering atheism, Db0 from Division by Zero tells of growing up in the highly religious country of Greece (99% Christian according to him) before moving to Germany to start a career in the tech industry, and Ramon Garcia from the Philippines who is married to a Christian wife and says that he “respect[s] Adrian Hayter the most” for having the balls the question an entire organisation (Atheist Nexus) despite not having many allies (I’m now blushing…).

All the interviews are very well thought out and great reads, and I would advise subscribing to the Atheist Spot Blog to read the rest (I’m sure there will be plenty more).

If you are an atheist blogger and want an interview, contact The Atheist Spot with your details!