The Atheist Blogger

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!

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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.

Db0 from A Division by Zero is intrigued by all the atheist blogs that are hosted on free services like blogspot, wordpress.org, livejournal, etc. He has set up a poll over at his website to find out why so many people use these free websites instead of having complete control with a hosted account. Of course, this isn’t just a poll to find out statistics.

Now rest assured that there is a method to the madness . I am not just doing it for my own amusement but I will actually utilise the results I get for your benefit.  I will reveal the how and why in one week, once I have (hopefully) enough answers.

If you fall into the group of bloggers who are using free services, go and vote now!

A few weeks ago I debunked a Christian’s view of Evolution and started a poll to see what percentage of readers believed Evolution. I predicted that the vast majority of atheists would believe in Evolution, although some might not for various reasons. I also predicted that the majority of theists would believe in Evolution, although not quite as much as atheists.

The results pretty much matched my expectations.

• A total of 203 people have voted so far; 182 were atheists, 21 were theists.
• 94.6% of those people (192) believe in Evolution.
• 97.8% of atheists believe in Evolution.
• 66.7% (13) of theists also believe in Evolution.

It is good to see a healthy number of theists believing in (and presumably understanding) Evolution, but what I’d really like to research more is the number of atheists who do not believe. If you are such an atheist, please leave a comment outlining what you believe, or why you don’t believe Evolution.

Matt posted a comment on the poll

I actually don’t like to say I believe in evolution. I accept it.

I agree with Matt, saying “I believe” often seems to imply that it isn’t a fact and could be wrong. However every knowledge implies a belief, and likewise, everything we “accept” implies that we believe it as well. You cannot accept gravity without already believing that it exists, and the same goes for Evolution. I doubt the results of the poll would have differed anyway.

Just a simple poll based on recent discussions about atheists coming out of the closet online. This poll is only about online closets, so you may be out in real life but not online for various reasons.

vjack asked:

To clarify, are you asking whether we blog atheist-style under our own names?

What I mean by “out of the closet online” is essentially your name having been related in some way to atheism. For instance, if you sign up to an atheist discussion forum with your real name, or have it in your forum signature, then you are out of the closet. Likewise if you use your name on your blog, or some other public site, you are out of the closet.

If however, you use facebook under your own name but don’t use your real name anywhere else (as in the case of amiable atheist) then I would count that as in the closet online, since not everyone knows amiable’s real name. The same goes for oliver at msatheists.

So in answer to vjack’s question, if you blog atheist-style with your own name, that would be out of the closet. If you blog using an alias, but might have your name on the internet somewhere (most people do), without linking that name back to your atheist blog, that would be in the closet.

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Recent debunkings of Creationist flaws leads me to ponder how many people believe in Evolution and what relation these results have with belief in gods. Thus I have constructed the following poll. It only covers atheism / theism and unless I have complaints it will stay that way. If you are a deist I would say to go with the theist grouping since deism is a vague subset of theism. Likewise with agnosticism, if you are an agnostic atheist put yourself in the atheist groupings, and agnostic theists go in the theist group. Very simple!

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It would be interesting to see what the results turn out to be. Obviously I have some predictions about atheist / Evolution but there may be some people who doubt it. Likewise I suspect the majority of theists believe in Evolution, but then it is usually Creationists who come to this blog so perhaps not.

I should also point out that I’ve added the Poll widget to the sidebar so the latest poll is always shown at the side nomatter which page you are browsing.