The Atheist Blogger

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.

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!

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I’ve recently installed a poll plugin for wordpress seeing as it may come in handy for the future. I may even start having weekly polls on various topics if it gets popular. Anyway, this post is really to test the feature out so I know how it works, and more importantly, if it works!

So, the simple question: Are you atheist, theist, or agnostic?

I get quite a few visitors to the blog, and some people leave comments suggesting they belong to certain religious groups, some not. This is an anonymous poll to see what percentages of people read the blog, that’s all.

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