The Atheist Blogger » book club

50 Reasons People Give For Believing In A God By Guy P. Harrison

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:58:29 +0000

The book for October’s book club is “50 reasons people give for believing in a god” by Guy P. Harrison. It is available from Amazon and hopefully I will be able to contact the author and invite him into a live discussion like we did with Hemant Mehta.

For this month, the book is “Biblical Nonsense” and we are abandoning the live discussion due to lack of interest. At the end of the month, a forum discussion will be put up where people can post their views. I hope one day to bring back the live discussion, but I think we need more dedicated members for that.

For now, the live discussion will be reserved for books in which I can contact the author.

UPDATE: Guy P. Harrison says he would love to do a live discussion of his book. We will confirm a date nearer the time.

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Book Club Vote – October 2008

Adrian Hayter — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:13:42 +0000

This month’s book is “Biblical Nonsense” by Dr. Jason Long, and I’m thinking about scrapping the live discussion. It is fun when you get to invite the author along (as with Hemant Mehta) but otherwise it usually ends up with 2 people discussing the book for about 5 minutes, and then turning onto something else.

So the discussion for this book will simply take place over in the forums.

We need to start choosing a book for October.

Do not vote unless you wish to read the book or take part in the discussion!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I’d also like to know who out of my readership is interested in the book club, so please make a comment if you think you’ll be able to subscribe to it regularly. I’d also love some feedback on it.

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Postponing Carl Sagan

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:38:20 +0000

Sorry for the late announcement, but I’ll have to postpone the online discussion of Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World” until Tuesday 2nd September. That gives everyone an extra 3 days with the book in case they need to finish the final chapter!

I need to get up early tomorrow as I am attending my dad’s wedding, and so I won’t be online to oversee the book club meeting tonight. I’ll be back in action on the 2nd, and if I get access to a computer before then I will update everyone with information. Hopefully I’ll be able to set up a vote for October’s book on the 1st.

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Taking A Few Deep Breaths

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:55:35 +0000

This is my first blog post since the “Digg Effect” effectively made my site slower than the inner workings of Ray Comfort’s brain. I managed to get over 3,400 votes on Digg, which I think is pretty impressive given the content, and I really must thank everyone who took the time to read the quotes, vote, and leave a nice comment. According to FeedBurner, the people who handle my RSS feeds, I have 622 subscribers now. Hello whoever you are!

If you are new here, you might wish to read the interview that I did for The Atheist Spot. It will at least tell you who I am, why I’m blogging, and what I do when I’m not being caught off-guard by a Digg Effect at 4am.

I didn’t really have much planned to write about today other than on the subject of forums. The blog has its own forum which handles general chat as well as our book club. If you wish to join our book club then you should find all the information on that page. At the start of each month, we vote for a book we want to read the next month (giving people a load of time to get the book). We then discuss the book in an IRC channel, followed by a forum discussion for those who couldn’t make the live discussion.

The book for September is “Biblical Nonsense” by Dr. Jason Long.

I have also just re-launched an atheist orientated forum after some initial mess-ups with the ownership of its predecessor. The new forums has started off well since most of the users of the old one were behind the move. These forums can be found at: http://atheistforums.org

Anyway, now that I have a larger audience I’d better start thinking of stuff to write. Damn you Digg! Making me do some actual work for once! Grrrr….

Edit: Oh yes, and I now have Twitter. You can follow me at: http://twitter.com/ah8r

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Busy Busy Busy

Adrian Hayter — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:30:03 +0000

Woah! A whole two days of nothingness on the blog. It feels empty to me so I guess it probably feels empty for my readers! I have an excuse though:

Refurbishing an entire house is hell.

Not literally hell of course, for obviously no such place exists. However if I were to believe in a hell, it would probably have me cleaning and tidying a student house for all eternity. All my housemates have arrived now, and in addition to all the house-keeping, we’ve been setting up phonelines, internet connections, and routers. We now have cable running through the entire house which on two occasions has nearly caused me to break my neck (it gets caught around my feet easily).

A couple of days ago I got a visit from a representative of the UK Brights who came to talk to me about our plans to hold a “Brights Awareness Week” at the university (part of my student group Atheist & Agnostic Alliance). Our hope is to hold an event that beats the crap out of the Christian Unions “Jesus Awareness Week”, which is why we have started planning so many months in advance.

Finally, I totally missed the book club result for September, which is:

Biblical Nonsense by Dr. Jason Long

Luckily it is a book I suggested in the forums, and therefore I already have it in my bookcase. Its available on Amazon though. Preliminary date for discussion is Saturday 28th September.

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Book Club Vote – September 2008

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:28:13 +0000

So this months book is “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, and the discussion will be held on Saturday 30th, at 23:00 UTC. Again, if you need to work out your time follow these steps:

Visit the website http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
Scroll down past the first table of countries and you will see another box that has the words “Current UTC (or GMT/Zulu)-time used: “
With the time/date shown in that box, you can work how how far ahead or behind you are of UTC.

Everything will be confirmed nearer the time.

Now for the vote for Septembers book.

Do not vote unless you wish to read the book or take part in the discussion!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Voting lasts 7 days.

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Freedom Evolves But I Messed The Discussion Up

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:38:15 +0000

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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Book Discussion: Freedom Evolves

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:05:44 +0000

This month’s book club discussion will take place tomorrow (Sunday 27th July) at Midnight UTC+1. For people who want to figure out what time that is where you live, use the handy world clock. UTC+1 corresponds to the current time of London on the site, so simply work out the differences with your nearest city.

As always, use our guide to the IRC server to get connected to the chat, and I hope to see some of you there!

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The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark By Carl Sagan

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:35:42 +0000

With 2 votes ahead of the other books, Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World” is the chosen book for August’s book club. Just to make sure everyone is up to date on the new book club voting system:

This book is for August. It will be discussed at the end of August, probably on the 30th. This new system gives you the rest of July to order the book online or buy it, and then you get the full alocated time (August) to read it. The book is available in paperback from Amazon.

The next vote will take place on August 1st for September’s book. Please submit book suggestions to the forums.

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Some Changes To The Book Club Procedure…

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:21:03 +0000

The problem with running an online book club is that we don’t do a vote on the day of discussion, instead saving it till a later date and having 7 days of voting so everyone has a chance to choose the book they want. This leads to some problems with getting the book, and then reading it, all before the month “deadline”. This month Oliver managed to get through the entire book, but I only made it to the final chapters. So essentially Oliver could talk about Hemant’s conclusions whilst I had no idea.

I have hence devised a more complicated system which should make things easier. Instead of having a 7 day vote starting on the 23rd of month 1 to choose the book for month 2, we will have a 7 day vote starting on the 1st of month 1 to choose the book for month 2.

The book for July has been chosen already, and although it was a narrow vote (3:2), Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves” has been chosen. I usually try to keep the discussions on the weekend, so that might mean a slightly early date of 26th/27th July. I am also thinking of putting the time forward slightly so that people in the USA can get home from work, and (more importantly) our Aussie members can get out of bed!

We’ll worry about the date somewhere down the line. I already have enough things to do this month (including moving into a new house) without that on my mind too early.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs up, we are using a new voting system. Today is the 1st of July, so here is a 7 day vote for the book for August. On the 7th of July I’ll announce the result and you can go and buy the book if you so wish. You may even start reading it if you aren’t reading Dennett’s (or if you are a freak and can read multiple books at the same time).

I got fed up of the lacking submissions of new books, so I added a few new ones I have recently bought.

As always, do not vote if you do not intend to read the book or contribute in the discussion!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.