The Atheist Blogger

Way back in July, I responded to a tweet at showed up in my TweetDeck search that looks for mentions of words like “atheist”, “agnostic”, “skeptic”, etc. The tweet in question was from an astrologer on Twitter who I hadn’t come across before.

How deep a thinker is a skeptic, for the rest of the intellectual world to ever take notice of, when he MOCKS ALL people’s beliefs? – @edaugusts

Well evidently this was untrue; skeptics do not mock all beliefs, they challenge beliefs that have no evidence or explanation behind them. On the occasion we do mock (and I’m not denying this), we do it to beliefs that have consistently failed test after test. Beliefs like astrology, homeopathy, and applied kinesiology are openly mocked because they simply do not stand up to the rigorous tests that skeptics put them through. The tests aren’t impossible either; they are set up to test the exact claims that the belief makes, and if the belief was true, the test should be passed easily.

Knowing this, I sent a reply back to the astrologer:

Skeptics don’t embrace astrology because there is no evidence to suggest it works. In fact the evidence shows the exact opposite. – @ah8r

Angry reply after angry reply came back, attacking me for my atheism (saying I couldn’t find purpose in life), insulting the JREF and James Randi (although he curiously didn’t respond to my point about the JREF tests being set up and agreed to by the claimant), and generally acting like he had all the answers with none of the responsibility for burden of proof. Here are a few more of his tweets:

It does not take a genius to see that NO ONE would EVER be able to convince a devout skeptic like Randi about ANYTHING! – @edaugusts

Well nobody is trying to convince Randi; they are trying to pass the requirements (which are written in plain English) of the JREF $1,000,000 Challenge. The claimant contacts the JREF, and agrees to a test that would demonstrate the claimant’s powers. In all cases, the claimant comes up with the test, and the JREF come up with conditions that the test much adhere to in order to be fair. Mentioning Randi’s skepticism is nothing but a red herring.

Did you know James Randi (JREF) attacks many other targets, such as alternative medicine: http://cli.gs/YsNAUt – @edaugusts

Followed closely by another red herring. Just because the JREF attacks alternative medicine doesn’t mean their test for such pseudo-scientific claims is somehow flawed. The JREF was involved with the BBC a few years back to test Homeopathy. The BBC were the claimants (as an experiment) and helped set up the test, which failed miserably. The entire case is still documented at the BBC website, and the Horizon programme is probably still online somewhere.

To cut a long story short, I requested that he do a reading of my chart, since he said that such a reading would change my mind entirely. What follows are select parts of his finished reading (mainly because the thing is far too long to post here entirely), with comments interlaced from me. You can read the entire reading here.

This chart-work came up as a sort of ‘challenge’ on a Twitter thread a few days ago. The chart belongs to a young man who calls himself  ‘AtheistBlogger’.  He attracted my attention by making a wild comment on Twitter:  “Astrology is crap,” which seemed a scary-kind of blanket statement to apply to such a well-researched and ancient subject of inquiry.

Whoaaa there! I never said any such thing! As you saw at the beginning of this post, my “wild comment” that first attracted his attention was that skeptics didn’t embrace astrology since there was no evidence of it working, and that all the evidence shows the complete opposite. A much more eloquent (and honestly skeptical) way of telling him that astrology simply doesn’t work. At this point, I was quite taken aback, and what is most interesting is that the astrologer built up a characterization of me from the way he interpreted my tweets. What I see as honest skepticism; references to studies that have debunked astrology, he sees as aggressiveness and close-mindedness. This actually helped me out a lot, because his reading was skewed off course by his own bias, and he ended up reading this characterization of me into the entire thing.

His chart is an amazing ’stand out’ in the incredibly bad aspects it forms to MY personal chart, which really is a wonderful validation of Astrology — I’m so glad he appeared in the cross-hairs for this encounter — because his chart PROVES Astrology through the definition of its many significant comparison aspects with my own chart.   After all,  it wasn’t anyone who got into this dispute about Astrology in Twitter except him — and me!

The obvious irony in the above statement is that if Astrology was true, and my chart “proved” this, I would have no choice but to accept it, and we would no longer be enemies. Heck, I’d probably hire him to do more readings; knowing the future is important! Of course, this would cause a contradiction with his following statement:

You NEVER see this line-up of powerfully negative aspects between friends.  Maybe two enemies who meet in a killing field to cut holes in each other, but never friends!

He’s set up his position so that he cannot possibly lose though, since he again reverses his decision to allow for possible “understanding”:

There is, however, a ghost of a chance of some ultimate kind of limited understanding arising between us, based on his Libra Moon in a (weak)  5 degree trine to my Gemini Sun and his Gemini Venus being conjunct my Sun.

So, I deny Astrology, he wins. I accept Astrology, he wins (via a loophole). Of course, all this relies on friendships being predetermined by where and when you were born, something that is so astronomically bizarre that I doubt any astrologer would be able to demonstrate a good naturalistic method of how it works. But of course, they aren’t interested in demonstrating how it works; they just delude themselves into thinking that because people find it accurate in places, it must be true. However they fail to realise that their “predictions” are often so vague that they cover almost all bases.

Ed starts his reading in a truly skeptical sense though:

At first I wondered if he would give me his actual chart data, or use the birth date of some well-known public figure so that he could make fun of me afterwords for describing him using a chart belonging to some rap singer or football player!  I suspected a ruse, because that sort of thing has been done in the past on USENET sites, where skeptics used to gather before Google archiving put an end to their most rampant abuses.   But after looking at the chart for a few minutes, I wrote a message on Twitter stating that AtheistBlogger had been good as his word, and sent me his true birth data. How did I know? Because the major positions and aspects portray the person who came forward on Twitter.

Ok, he started out skeptical, but then deteriorated into a conclusion based entirely on faulty reasoning and…well…faith. As I previously showed, my attitude coming across on Twitter was pure skepticism; I challenged him in a polite manner, responded to his points, etc. I was met with anger, attacks on my disbelief, and just general insults on skepticism. I’m confused as to why skeptics giving wrong data is a “rampant abuse” though; surely if Astrology worked so well, you would easily be able to tell wrong birth data straight away? It’s a test; it might be sneaky, but at the end of the day, if the claim is that it can tell you information about a person just by birth data, then a test of giving the “wrong” birth data should still return information about the person it actually belongs to, rather than the person giving the information.

The Jupiter-Neptune aspect shows, surprisingly enough,  an actual connection with religion, a familiarity with it. Perhaps as a child he was coaxed to learn the Bible from a parent or grandparent who hoped to indoctrinate the child in that system of beliefs.   He didn’t reckon on AtheistBlogger disliking authority — other than himself!  — and challenging any such teachings.

The word “perhaps” doesn’t give me much confidence here. Yes, I have a “familiarity” with religion, but then you’d be hard pushed to find someone (even an atheist) who doesn’t. The vast majority of atheists were once religious. However, as a child I wasn’t indoctrinated by anyone. My mother was somewhat religious, but didn’t force me to read the Bible at all. We went to church rarely, usually only for harvest festivals or when some form of concert was on. My father wasn’t religious at all.

There is nothing at peace and rest in this square between Mars and Pluto. It causes a person to be unjustifiably wrathful, scornful, severe, and possibly violent against anyone who doesn’t share his personal opinions.   It invites violence in its turn, so as a child, AtheistBlogger may have had more than his share of personal challenges — wins — and losses.  It is as if at some point in his young life, he has already, or soon will, witness violence of a kind usually only seen in war.   He may even be at the center of an episode of some kind of violence!

Violent? Moi? I don’t think there has ever been a more absurd accusation. The closest I get to violence is killing aliens and Nazi’s on video games, and in the “real world”, I don’t get into fights, feel compelled to strike anyone, or do anything that could be considered “violent” by any sane individual. Anyone who knows my views will be aware that I am for a completely open free speech society, one where any view may be shared by anyone. Yes, that means even astrologers can peddle their ideas about the stars, as long as I (and anyone else) gets the right to call them out on their claims, and challenge their views. Again, Ed finishes this prediction with a lot of unsure language, nothing certain, so that he can claim he is correct either way.

His sibling(s) probably include a brother, shown by Mars (male) in the 3rd House (siblings).  He has at least twice the chance of having a brother than he does a sister…  If he does have a sister, which is not as likely, she will be more aggressive and a source of possible trouble to him than most sisters, since Mars marks-her-out.  In any case, there will be rivalries with this sibling over inheritance or other worries.  He or she may have a sporty affable nature, but be prone to accidents and dangers (Mars square Pluto).  He may lose a sibling because of Mars being in that house, that sign, and the way it relates to the other planets.  Traveling abroad for said brother, and/or driving in the same car with this brother, may be dangerous (square both Jupiter and Pluto).

I really did have to laugh at this part. I have one sister, and one half-sister (on my father’s side). Quite amusing for a claim that I have at least “twice the chance of having a brother than a sister”. Both my sisters are no trouble for me at all; they aren’t aggressive at all. Likewise, there isn’t any sibling rivalry in my family; my sister is into history and archaeology, subjects I dislike completely (she dislikes Computer Science in return)! Neither are prone to accidents, and I honestly cannot remember the last time my sister was rushed to Hospital, but if memory serves correctly, she was 5 (she’s now 19). I’ve broken both my hand and my finger in various accidents, my sister hasn’t broken anything.

Writing or teaching could certainly be good careers for AtheistBlogger,  and Jupiter and Mercury together also promise travel, so a Grand Tour is indicated. The  mind is adept at languages, indeed all symbol-systems veritably fall before him.

Writing or teaching are possible careers for me, so good work there. However the only languages I am “adept” at are English and various (English-based) programming languages. I had to take French and Spanish at school, and I failed miserably at them. I just don’t do foreign languages, let alone symbol-systems.

But he is an avid learner.  Libra Moon, well-aspected, makes him know how to behave among the fair and beautiful.  His Mercury conjunct Jupiter shows he learns farther and wider than most people.  He loves learning and is enthusiastic about information and news.

Finally…something I can actually relate to. Astrology makes a hit! Shame about all the other misses, but heck, if I only remember this thing, I can join the ranks of people who claim Astrology “works” for them.

He has ideas about becoming famous by challenging people’s beliefs.  This is basically a ’sales’ idea.  Various sales activities, not just atheism, would be appreciated by the general public and may be of interest to him.

Meh…not really. I have ideas about becoming famous by creating new internet technologies for people to use, but I doubt it’ll involve challenging people’s beliefs. I’d hate being in a “sales activities” position though; I’d much rather be the guy coding or leading the product than the person who has to sell it at the end.

The rest of the reading deals with potential fortune, relationship predictions, and various things about me dying in car crashes (apparently, I’d best use public transport…). Suffice to say, there are probably a lot of people who could relate to it better than I can. If you have more than one brother, speak fluent foreign languages, used to be religious, and like learning, please let me know.

It was a very interesting experience having my chart drawn up though. I’ll have to get it done more in future and compare the results. Who knows, perhaps if we eliminate the bias of reading into my tweets, it might turn out as an accurate representation of…me! I somehow doubt it though; for all the hits Ed got (and admittedly, there were some), he got at least 4-5 times as many misses, and that’s excluding all the vague generalizations that could literally apply to 90% of the population.

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.

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

This has been confusing both my Twitter followers and I for the past hour, so I think it’s good enough to share. There are a series of “intelligence” tests on this website where you are given a code like “24 H in a D” and you have to replace the capital letters with the words they represent. The example I gave is quite obviously “24 Hours in a Day”. Some of them are easy, some of them are extremely difficult. So far I’m stuck on the first test with 31/33 correct answers, but how can you do?

The first test is here: http://intelligence-test.net/part1/ and whilst it has some cultural answers, it is a nice starting point for the others. Whilst this may be an indicator of how intelligent you are, I don’t think it can be called a real “intelligence test”. It certainly doesn’t test visual pattern recognition or the ability to work out patterns with numbers. It does test how good you are at visualizing sentence structure and recognizing certain numerical attributes of objects though.

Good luck!

For those who are interested, I’m tweeting the BBC election coverage. If you have a Twitter client, why not join in and talk? :D

Just in a few minutes ago: BBC has called Kay Hagan’s win over Elizabeth Dole, so well done on ousting one Christian bigot for another (although slightly less intense) Christian bigot. Ah well, we can’t win everything!

Edit: “Tweeting” not “Twitting” according to ChickenGirl. I blame it being 2am and me having no sleep in 24 hours.