I’ve been told multiple times by people that I’ve exceptionally good at explaining things (usually), and when I have an idea for a blog post, I want to research it as much as I can before I write about it. I usually read several sources, and the whole process takes a good hour at least, if not more. Hence my problem is finding a few hours free where I can work on the post without interruptions. Of course, the other problem is that Twitter has practically removed the need to write small updates on the blog. Not only do I stay in contact with a lot of my friends and readers via Twitter, I can post tiny bursts of information from literally anywhere with a 3G internet connection.

Another problem is that other projects have suddenly become popular, largely because of my advertising them on Twitter. AtheistForums.org for instance, has exploded with new members and posts in the past few months. Various events in the world have managed to piss me off so much that I’ve become increasingly more interested in politics, namely that of Libertarianism in the UK (a criminally underrepresented minority in my opinion). I could rant about so many things on this blog, but I’m worried it’ll just divert off to something of a personal blog again, rather than one focused on atheism.

Anyway, I’m going to plow ahead and see what happens. I want this blog to stay on track, and I certainly have no plans to take it down. I’ve been doing some “atheistic” work recently, so I’ll be blogging about that when I find the time. Tomorrow for instance, I’m going to the House of Lords (part of British parliament) with the President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist, and Secular Student Societies (AHS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA). Last week, I met Ariane Sherine at a book swap event in Windsor, and I have the photo to prove it:

@ah8r + @arianesherine = @awesomeness

So watch this space. It’ll be updated eventually, but possibly not as often as I have managed before. I’d just like to thank everyone who has supported the blog thus far, and that includes all my readers, all my twitter followers, and anyone else who’s stopped by and thought “cool blog”.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Happy 1st Birthday!
• A Photo Of Me
• Your Thoughts On A Possible Blog Merge?
• The Atheist Blogger Forums
• All Aboard The Atheist…Billboard?!?

If you can’t think of any sites, have a perusal of the Atheist Blogroll, and if you really can’t find a website with the starting letter (gold star goes to anyone finding a website starting with X), choose an interesting word from the dictionary and list it with its definition. Try to be imaginative! Remember, this is a great chance to discover blogs you may have not heard of before, so don’t feel that you have to put blogs in the meme that you read regularly!

Finally, link back to the blog who sent you this meme, and tag 5 other blogs.

1. About Agnosticism / Atheism
2. Bay of Fundie
3. CyberLizard’s Collection
4. Deep Thoughts
5. ExChristian.net
6. Friendly Atheist
7. God is Pretend
8. Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
9. The Invisible Pink Unicorn
10. Jewish Atheist
11. Kill The Afterlife
12. Life Without Faith
13. Moiz Khan
14. nullifidian
15. Oz Atheist’s Weblog
16. Pharyngula
17. Quiet Atheist
18. Radical Atheist
19. Sean the Blogonaut
20. toomanytribbles
21. Unreasonable Faith
22. The View from the Pond
23. Why Don’t You Blog?
24. xylomancy – divination by means of pieces of burning wood (lol)
25. You Made Me Say It!
26. ZackFord Blogs

For tagging, I choose: Friendly Atheist, Unreasonable Faith, CyberLizard’s Collection, and before you think I’m just spelling out naughty words, Life Without Faith & Sean the Blogonaut

Possibly Related Posts:

• Carnival of the Godless #122
• Carnival of the Godless #121
• My Atheist Ranking System
• Your Top 5 Atheist Blogs
• Six Things Meme

(Let me make the disclaimer, of course, that I’m not going to rag on the good intentions of so many people that will take the time to try to help a complete stranger with their problems. The motivation for setting up a site to help people in need obviously comes from a good place. The problem, of course, is that petitionary prayer doesn’t actually do anything, beyond a placebo effect at best; and that if you want to help someone in need, they will quite obviously be better off if you actually take action of some kind.)

You’d think that if God was going to respond to a prayer, he’d just do it, without factoring in if there was a massive effort on the part of many people. If the person praying has great needs, the last thing he or she needs is to have to find others that will echo the prayer around. Is there some kind of threshold criteria God uses to determine how he answers, or if he answers? For example, suppose I want divine help in looking for a new job. Is twenty other co-supplicants twice as good as ten? Why would it matter?

These are the kinds of questions I asked myself as I perused a bunch of prayer sites. I found many to be dull, but a few were interesting or funny for one reason or another. What follows is my top ten list.

10. Requestprayers.com

Pretty vanilla site, this is run by the Baha’i organization. Seems odd that they’d give it a commercial rather than organizational extension, but that was true for most of these places. They have one page that purports to have the most powerful prayer ever devised. Testimonitals include:

The Baha’is have some of the most beautiful and powerful prayers in the world. Add that power to a million souls across the globe praying on your behalf from all the religions, and the Light is dumbfounding. Need immediate help? You were guided to this site, and nothing happens by accident!

9. Liveprayer.com

The extremely conservative minister behind this site claims to have started the entire business of online prayer requests, apparently. He also claims to have personally received and re-prayed 60 million prayer requests. Wow! If that was not impressive enough, the main page devotes much attention to President Obama, naming him “God’s Enemy”; plus, they feature a tasteful, if amateurishly photoshopped, portrait of him next to Hiter. There is also extensive advertising for something called The Jonah Project, an effort to better Christianize the U.S. (and the world).

8. CarmelTemple.org

Not just your typical prayer submission site where your request is simply posted to a page for others to dutifully recite. No, this is the Home of the Crystal Prayer Bowl! (Yes, they have pictures of it, too.) Here is what they do with it:

The Crystal Prayer Bowl is used to collect prayer requests sent to Carmel Temple. It is placed under the Blue-White Healing Light at the beginning of healing sessions in the Sanctuary. The prayer requests then receive the energy and prayers of those present. We encourage you to place into the bowl the name (even the initials will do) of the person, persons, or situations that need prayer or healing energy. This procedure has been very effective and that bowl has an excellent reputation!

7. Donjuddministries.org

You can send them your prayer requests, which they will compile with all the others that they receive. Then they will print the entire list out. Why? So that they can “lay hands on the list” as they pray over it. Why not just lay hands on the hard drive and save time, paper, and ink?

6. Prayerblaster.com

I had high expectations for this page, and I was disappointed. I was hoping it would be a bit like Pingmyblog.com. Instead it is just a pedestrian list of links. Not much of a blaster at all, as you’d have to manually go through the list and submit your prayer to each site individually. This page might have been made in 1992.

5. Prayer.la

The folks running this site seem proud to offer an exhausting 218 pages of prayer requests that are all less than one month old. Apparently they expire after that. No stale prayers! Would take hours to go through them all and pray for each one, I’d imagine.

4. Prayerrequestweb.com

Much like prayer.la, in terms of sheer volume, but at least you won’t have to click through 218 pages of prayers. They are all on one very long page that you can just scroll down.

Here is an excerpt that I found particularly pathetic and sad, yet somehow representative of what you’ll find posted. There is a compulsory tone to it at the end… as if the author meant to finish with “Or else!”

Please pray GOD gives me all the desires of my heart that are righteous in GODs eyes.Pray GOD sends me on the mission He has for me now,Pray GOD raises me a mile above those used by Satan to glorify GOD,Pray GOD Blesses me financially now and always.Pray GOD heals my body completely now.Pray GOD brings me my soulmate now,the loneliness is tormenting me. In JESUS Name Pray.

3. Holylandprayer.com

Now this is a “dot com” that truly deserve that extension. Also fitting is the image of the glowing gold Jesus hanging on a cross that adorns their home page.

Here is what they offer, for some nominal fees: If you send them a prayer, they’ll have it prayed in Jerusalem, “steps from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.”

Or, they’ll light a candle for you there. Or do both together and get a discount!

Why would God care where the prayer originated from? Does it get more power coming from Jerusalem? Does that make it more bona fide, somehow? Or is God impressed that you are in dire enough straights that you’d send these people money? (Back in Dante’s time, accepting money for ecclessiastical favors was called Simony and earned one a very hot reward in the Eight Circle of Hell.)

Costs: $10 for a candle, $15 for a prayer. $20 for both.

2. Healinglifecoach.com Looking for something a little different from the same old prayer site? Then this is the place for you.

These folks offer special stones imbued with power because they are not merely prayed over, but “programmed.” Specifically, they tell us:

Programmed Stones can be effective and powerful tools for anything from Prayer, Freedom from Worry and Creative Visualization to Healing, Forgiveness, Gratitude and much more!

How are the stones programmed? They are cleaned and set in the Healing Sanctuary with your individualized and special requests with daily prayers being said over them for a minimum of 30 days. Then they are sent to you!

1. Ipraytoday.com

This was my favorite site because, beneath the name and prayer entry fields, it has a “capcha” device, so that you can prove you are a human being! To be fair, I suppose this is more to save the devout from being asked to repeat bogus prayers, but it struck me as hilarious to think of it as a spam filter for The Lord God Himself. I can only imagine Jehovah’s fury at realizing he was tricked into granting the request of a bot.

-S.A. Alenthony

www.blackburnianpress.com

Possibly Related Posts:

• Ultimate Praying Championship
• Death Toll: Theism Vs. Atheism
• The Children of the New BHA Billboards Are Not ‘Christian’
• The Pledge of Allegiance
• Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit Responds to Atheist & Christian Billboards

Go check it out, and maybe you’ll submit something to the next carnival, or put your own blog forward for the prestigious job of hosting the carnival!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Carnival of the Godless #121
• Carnival of the Godless #124
• The Atheist Alphabet Meme
• Carnival of the Godless #120
• Carnival of the Godless #114

Possibly Related Posts:

• Carnival of the Godless #122
• Carnival of the Godless #124
• The Atheist Alphabet Meme
• Carnival of the Godless #120
• Carnival of the Godless #114

With NoGodTube, we can continue to debate, but on our terms. Theists will be able to present their arguments based on reason, but if they disagree with our responses, they won’t be able to get us banned or flame us. Best of all, we can use NoGodTube to preserve our arguments for posterity.

Some may argue that we will be biased because of our name, NoGodTube. The way I look at it, the statement, “No God” is the default position. Just like “No Unicorns” is the default. The burden of proof is on the believer. In fact, using Carl Sagan’s statement, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” it is more important to claim “No God.” If we find out someday that there are unicorns, the impact on our daily lives would be much smaller. – Brother Richard

NoGodTube isn’t designed to be a replacement for YouTube, but rather a supplement to it. People can upload a video to both YouTube and NoGodTube, knowing that even if their account is suspended or their videos taken down, they still have a viewable backup copy. Plus, the new site won’t censor videos and is open to discussion from both sides of the argument, atheist and theist.

Hopefully a lot of people will start uploading videos relating to atheism, and perhaps some of the big YouTube names like Thunderf00t, The Amazin Atheist, and gogreen18 will create accounts to backup their videos. If I ever get back into video blogging (no promises) I’ll make sure to use it, and I reckon that under the leadership of Brother Richard this project can only get better.

Possibly Related Posts:

• YouTube Thursday – Mr. Deity, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Wiseman
• That Mitchell & Webb Look
• YouTube Thursday – Clifford Stoll, Dave Gorman, & Eddie Izzard
• YouTube Thursday – Fundies’ Words, Fundies Exposed, and Dawkins on Fundies

The second chat was released today, and has a much better interface. Firstly, it has the ability for users to use video/audio to chat. You can choose who you want to listen to, adding multiple people to a special “dock” which holds a maximum of 4. All of the interface is collapsible, so getting a larger area for chatting takes only a few clicks. The chat has already made some big impressions on Atheist Nexus users:

I think it’s a very interactive way to talk to Austrians about how they aren’t British. I also think it’s a great way for Adrian to say things that he doesn’t realise can be taken out of context to make him sound like a child molester on Twitter. It’s great fun, and if Adrian one day runs for British government, I will be able to blackmail him and I’ll be that much closer to becoming the Queen of England. – Splendid Elles

A female user named Cassie said the interface was like:

Fist-fucking.

Patch had this to say:

Incest – Patch has been banned.

Finally, Edwin the Drummer admitted of the interface:

It’s pretty cool.

So with all those rave reviews in mind, head over to Atheist Nexus to register and come chat!

Possibly Related Posts:

• I Am Alive
• The Atheist Alphabet Meme
• Carnival of the Godless #122
• Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit Responds to Atheist & Christian Billboards
• Carnival of the Godless #121

Firstly, as has been mentioned many times before, this ranking system does not say which blogs are the “best”. It only ranks by popularity, and although generally speaking the more popular blogs tend to be of high quality, it isn’t always the case (just look at Ray Comfort’s blog). Some of the attributes measured will depend somewhat on the age of the blog. Older blogs tend to have more links to them, although this too isn’t always the case. The good thing about this system is that it updates every week, so as blogs get older, their rank should become more accurate.

The attributes which are calculated are:

• Google PageRank (The rank of the blog homepage as used by Google in search results)
• Google Backlinks (The number of pages Google can find that link back to the blog)
• Google Readers (The number of people who subscribe to the blog through Google Reader)
• Alexa Rank (The rank of the website as calculated by Alexa, which uses a toolbar installed on various web browsers to collect stats)
• Alexa Backlinks (Same as Google Backlinks, only calculated by Alexa)
• Alexa Reach (The rank of the website calculated by number of visits)
• Technorati Rank (The rank of the website a calculated by Technorati)
• Technorati Authority (How many websites actively link to the blog over a period of 3 months)
• Technorati Backlinks (The exact number of links coming back to the blog – no defined period)
• Yahoo Backlinks (The number of pages Yahoo can find that link back to the blog).

Of course these attributes will probably change down the line. Through doing some research for this system, I became aware that some things like Technorati ranks are calculated by using the Technorati authority and backlinks. Having all those attributes doesn’t really help with the ranking, but it might be useful to still display them. I made sure to use the word “prototype” very carefully on the rankings page, since although the system currently works, it is far from complete. A prototype should be a system that works but lacks certain features and is made up of code stubs.

An example of how the system is a prototype can be seen by looking at the database where all the values are stored. The database currently consists of only one table, which stores every single piece of information in it. A screenshot of part of this table can be seen below.

NOT the way to do it.

Database programmers out there will realise why this is such a bad way of doing it. It isn’t easy to maintain, and each time I want to add a new ranking attribute I have to change the entire table. Luckily, I already have a better database system outlined on my whiteboard at home, and it makes use of 4 distinct tables. The great thing about this new design is that it can be used to store a “history” of rankings. Whereas the above database overwrites all calculated values when it updates, the new system simply adds new rows with the updated information.

My current plans for the system are outlined below:

• Ranks atheist blogs by various attributes, and displays paginated lists of the top sites, 20 sites per page.
• Options to rank sites by different values (e.g. Google PageRank) instead of the default overall rank.
• View the history of individual sites by attributes. A graph will be generated to show how attributes have changed over time.
• Interactive “badges” will allow sites included in the rankings to display an image that tells the world about their rank.
• A submit form will enable people to add their own sites to the system (and hopefully cut down on the number of emails I get asking to be added :P)

Of course, I realise the irony of having an atheist ranking system on my own blog; it means that my blog will simply rise up the rankings as more people visit it. For this reason, the first released version of the system will have its own website, on a separate domain. I’ve also received some interest in this project generally, and so when I have a working system I will be releasing the source code so people can use it to rank other types of site (or build a competitor to mine).

Finally, if you have any questions, want to point out a mistake in my system plan, shout abuse at how ranking systems are evil, ask for your site to be added to the prototype, or generally have a chit chat, please leave a comment :D

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Atheist Alphabet Meme
• Carnival of the Godless #122
• Carnival of the Godless #121
• Your Top 5 Atheist Blogs
• Some More Atheist Spot Interviews

One year ago today (even to this very minute – thank you Wordpress scheduling!), a 19 year old Computer Science student had a ridiculous idea; to register the domain “atheistblogger.com” and start a blog about atheism. He had no real experience in the blogging world, and the only reason he did it was that an atheist-related post he made on his dwindling personal blog got thousands of hits, and he realised there might be something to this “atheist blogging” lark.

So here we all are, a whole orbit of the Earth later, and what an orbit it has been. I wrote down 101 atheist quotes which got featured on the Digg homepage and managed to crash the server (leading to me pulling an almost all-nighter in order to fix it). I got in contact with hundreds of atheists online through various blogs, and through them found things like the atheist blogroll (which has been down due to technical issues for 4 months now! grrrr). I also saw the formation of new websites like The Atheist Spot and Atheist Nexus, as well as many new blogs.

I got introduced to the Secular Student Alliance via Hemant Mehta, and since then, my student group has picked up the pace and started running all sorts of events. I’ve also been sent a load of books by fans of the blog, and I promise I’ll get round to reading them eventually! I’ve started an atheist forum which has brought together atheists from all over the world and of all different ages to share life experiences, and one thing can certainly be said of all this:

I started blogging for me, and I ended up blogging for you. Many thanks to all my wonderful readers; here’s to another year!

Possibly Related Posts:

• I Am Alive
• My 21st Birthday!
• A Photo Of Me
• The Atheist Blogger Forums
• The Atheist Alphabet Meme

Unreasonable faith recently posted a list of the top 30 atheist / agnostic / skeptic blogs, with the top 5 being:

1. Pharyngula
2. Friendly Atheist
3. Cynical-C
4. Debunking Christianity
5. Atheist Media Blog

It’s a great idea, and there are certainly many blogs on the list that I subscribe to, and many that I have subscribed to since reading the article. I think my personal top 5 would be:

1. Pharyngula
2. Atheist Revolution
3. Friendly Atheist
4. RichardDawkins.net
5. Deep Thoughts

So what about you? What are your favourite blogs? Do you have a top 5, or a top 10 maybe? Let the mindless ranking begin!

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Atheist Alphabet Meme
• Carnival of the Godless #122
• Carnival of the Godless #121
• My Atheist Ranking System
• Some More Atheist Spot Interviews