I recently upgraded to the newest version of WordPress. I was a little behind the times. Okay, a LOT behind. My version was getting left in the dust. The reason I didn’t upgrade sooner is the necessity of running SQL version 5 (I was still on 3), which can be a pain to upgrade. Still, the changes are worth the effort I think. I went ahead and started using the new WordPress theme, Twenty Ten, which is why things look a little different. And why I’m sporting a generic banner.

I’ll work on a banner (or maybe use an old one) and smooth out a few things. I don’t like how long it loads in Epiphany, and the columns are disjointed in my version of FireFox. But it loads quick and correct in Chrome. I haven’t tried IE or Safari yet, so if anyone has either of these and can share their experiences on loading/displaying, please do.

One thing I noticed that I’m really irritated about is the stray characters that are showing up in some of the posts, like the Billy Graham post below. This is probably an artifact of upgrading the SQL database and will probably show up where quotations, apostrophes, and the like were used.

This was sent to me by a reader and fellow blogger via email and I almost missed it. For whatever reason my ISP’s spam filter snatched it and I just happened to skim the spam to look for just such emails.

First, you have to check out this article by Simon Owens, “New CNN “Belief” blogger says he’ll give voice to atheist and nonbeliever issues,” in which he interviews Dan Gilgoff, the co-editor of Belief, the new blog at CNN. In this interview, Owens asks some pretty pointed questions of Gilgoff with regard

to the “balance” of the blogging that will go on there. Specifically, Owens was trying to pin down whether or not the atheist viewpoint might get some play. If you’ve foll

owed On Faith, a blog at the Washington Post.com, you may have noticed atheists such as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett among the panelists there. Gilgoff, whose been a columnist at U.S. News & World Report as well as beliefnet, didn’t say atheists would be among their bloggers, but, as Owens put it, you could say his response was a “mixed bag.”

“We’re not being pro religion, we’re not being anti religion,” he said. “We’re acknowledging that faith plays a huge part of the news and a lot of news organizations don’t have the will power or the man power to do this.”

You should definitely give Simon Owens post at Bloggasm a read.

So on to the Belief blog at CNN.

I gave it a look and found it interesting. While I didn’t see any posts from atheists like Dennett, Harris, Dawkins, et al, I did notice a couple by Stephen Prothero, who wrote, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter. He may not be in the New Atheist camp, but he’s definitely one that has a few theists’ feathers rankled. His posts include one on Sikism and one on Hinduism. Other posts include titles like “Louisiana lawmakers declare day of prayer to stop oil disaster” and “Cardinal’s deposition sheds new light on how church handled abuse.” The latter of these has a video clip from CNN that shows some of the recently released video deposition by Cardinal Mahony as he admits mishandling the child-molesting priest, Michael Baker.

No posts yet by obvious atheists, but perhaps this will happen if enough atheists show up in the comments to show the editors there’s a market for them. On the post, “Keeping the Faith in the Gulf,” one godless commenter writes, “keep kneeling and clasping your hands together and doing nothing. The real heroes aren’t the religious do-nothings, it’s the hard workers who are on the beaches actually doing something and cleaning the mess up instead of praying to non-existent deities.” This comment clearly offended a few believers, but it still shows the frustration that atheists the world over have when believers just pray in the face of crisis rather than taking action.

Belief Blog proves to be interesting in spite of the lack of atheist discussion, particularly if you have an interest in what people believe and why, and how those beliefs manifest themselves in contemporary times. By the way, I lifted the church sign in the image above from their slide show of user-submitted church signs. A few were funny.

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• Noticed my blog theme didn't render well in IE so I'm trying a new one. I like the flexible width of this one #
• @hemantmehta that would be @almightygod #
• @hemantmehta the least interesting is @christopherhitc -don't believe me? hitch has one tweet! #
• Yaaarrr! Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!
  Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile #

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If you’re an atheist and not on Twitter, where have you been!?

The atheosphere is alive and well there, thriving in a see of @Tweets, RTs, and #tags (like #atheist, #atheism) which are handy ways to sort the “tweets” -short, 140 character micro-blog posts that announce what’s up to your followers and whoever picks up your tag.

And, like all good social media, there are polls. Check this one out:

Atheists Dominate Twitter Poll

As a social tool, Twitter is effective at getting the word out. The recent Iranian protests demonstrated this, so its natural, perhaps, that atheists who consider themselves activists in the cause of consciousness-raising have found themselves on Twitter and being followed. Closely.

One of my favorite bloggers, vjack of Atheist Revolution has over 1150 followers. Hemant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist has over 1900 and PZ Myers of Pharyngula has over 8450! Incidentally, Hemant is following PZ, who’s following Richard Dawkins, who has over 13,516 followers! Vjack and I are following all three.

In an on-line article with the Religion News Service^[1] Hemant was quoted as saying:

Twitter is tool a for understanding people’s experiences with atheism in different countries and a convenient medium for exchanging brief, efficient messages, especially for atheists who don’t have the time or energy to commit to a full-blown blog.

If you want some truly interesting people to follow, check out Richard Dawkins’ follows. For as many followers as he garnered, Dawkins is only following a handful -21 to be precise. To round out the Four Horsemen, Dennett’s following/follower ratio is 0/0; Sam Harris is 0/0; and Christopher Hitchens is 0/6860. Hitch has a single tweet! Among Dawkin’s 21 “following”, however, is Phil Plait, Adam Savage, PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, and “David” who’s Twitter page is “Beeritforward” and who claims to tweet each time he takes a drink!

I recommend the RNS article, Atheists put their faith in Twitter. Its a good read.

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1. Atheists put their faith in Twitter, S.J. Velasquez

I noticed that the previous theme wasn’t loading right in some Internet Explorer windows and it occasionally took a while to load. Plus I also thought the text area was just too narrow.

Then I stumbled on this gem, which is simple and flexible in its style and is also flexible in its width. If you resize your browser, the theme will adjust.

I have a couple more pages I’d like to add along the menu halo along the top, namely a list of articles already posted here. If anyone knows of a plugin that does this, let me know.

I do want to point out the link above that says “Godless Search.” If you click it, you’ll see a searchbar for Google that I have set up which searches several dozen atheist and freethinker sites, helping you narrow down search terms to these sites. Try it out! If there’s an interest, I’ll publish the list of sites/domains and accept additions or suggestions. I have it on my iGoogle page and use it all the time.

Image via CrunchBase

You might have noticed that I don’t have a Reddit link on my blog. I used to. But the plugin I was using didn’t get upgraded or properly installed in the current version of WordPress and I never really figured out the social media thing anyway. I have links to StumbleUpon, Technorati, etc. in my sidebar, but I know I’m not using them to their potential. What I need is a tech-savy co-blogger

But I’ve been meaning to get the Reddit thing figured out for a while now. I like to visit the /r/atheism subreddit on occasion and see what’s being talked about and I see these sites are getting a lot of notice. One of the things I do have figured out fairly well is Twitter -I just don’t use it nearly as effectively as I could. It was on Twitter that I noticed VJack’s tweet “vjack: An explanation of why the atheism reddit does not appear on the default front page. http://is.gd/2AnGN (via @AlisonFreed) #atheism (about 6 hours ago from Tweetie).”

Atheist Revolution is probably one of the gold standards of the atheosphere. VJack has, hands down, some of the best content and good traffic to boot. So when he notices something like reddit’s explanation, it’s probably worth reading.

In a nutshell, it seems that the folks at Reddit noticed that the polar divisiveness of atheism and theism creates controversy and, from their perspective, inflates the issue. Here are some quotes (the full explanation is here):

attacking a reddit generates a lot of activity on that reddit and makes our algorithm think the reddit is more popular than it really is, making the problem even worse.

Given the nature and somtimes polarizing tone of the content on the atheism reddit, it will likely always garner the ire of many other users. Showcasing religious flame-wars only serves to lower the level of discourse on the site as a whole

/moviecritic and /atheism aren’t legitimate top ten reddits. They appeared that way because they were under attack, making them appear even more popular. Removing atheism from the top ten by hand isn’t about censoring, it’s about a shortcoming in our popularity metric.

In the words of one of the commenters, “r/politics and r/worldnews both make the front page, and they’re both full of conflict; so that argument smells like bullshit to me.”

This is a very good point and one that I immediately thought of as well. Politics is very divisive and creates probably just as much polarity as atheism if not more. I can’t imagine that they would even consider removing /politics from appearing on the front page. But when you think about it, the purpose of the /atheism subreddit is to bring in one spot a subject matter of interest to like-minded people -to see what’s new, hot, or popular on the web on a given topic. I visit /linux and /science for this reason as well. That controversy is created; that people want their voice heard on the topic is testimony to the vital nature of the discussion. There are accusations of censorship on the part of Reddit and childish bickering on the part of /atheism posters, but there exists a deeper issue: the topic of superstition versus rationalism and reason.

I’m not sure where I stand on the issue and whether I even have a right to voice an opinion. I’m a very casual and passive member of Reddit. I lurk and click. But I do want to share this comment that I noticed:

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Its often said that organizing atheists is like herding cats. And, while cliche, it’s probably closer to truth than not. Recent polls and surveys in the United States reveal a large and growing segment of the population who consider “none” to be their religious affiliation. Within the “nones” are, of course, atheists. And the “nones” dominate as much as 20% of the populations in some states.

According to the August 2009 Gallup Poll^[1], the none/atheist/agnostic category averages at 13.2% for the United States with at least 7 states exceeding 20% in this category.

"Nones" in the U.S. is a Growing population.

But, despite their large size (larger than Jewish populations and even blacks in many states), atheists aren’t an organized minority. This is because atheism really isn’t a political position or even a worldview. Atheism simply means that the individual stands unconvinced by arguments and claims for gods. Most atheists have no desire to spread “atheism” or convince others of their doubts. However, there are some, like myself, who do want to share their beliefs and who hope to convince others others that reasons for believing in gods are lacking and worth questioning if not outright harmful in some ways. And there are many more who want to let other atheits know that they’re not alone in their lack of belief.

The recent comments of DART officials in Iowa and by the governor of Iowa, Chet Culver, reveal the apprehension -the fear- that the religious have regarding the notion that atheists -nonbelievers- might organize. Should this happen, we would instantly become a minority with a voice -a voting presence that can effect change in policy. The very thing that the religious have been striving for (particularly the fundamentally religious) for decades with mixed success. Anyone who could move a non-religious minority with the potential to be as large as the numbers above, could feasibly eliminate religious goals and efforts from public policy. Issues like abortion, gay rights, women’s rights, public education standards, stem cell research, and others would be all but won since the mode of oppression within these issues is religious superstition. Without the weight of religious opinion and the so-called “religious right,” opponents of these issues would be forced to resort to reason and logic to argue their points and convince the middle.

In such a light, an ad on a public bus that reads, “Don’t believe in god? Your not alone” becomes a serious threat. The last thing the religious want, particularly those religious figures who hold positions of power and influence, is for the irreligious to realize just how large a group they are; or just how influential they can really be.

Which is why its important for atheists to not be uncomfortable or afraid to voice their atheism in their day to day lives. When asked about my religious affiliation at work or in social gatherings, I don’t hesitate to point out that I’m an atheist. The nature of the conversation dictates the delivery (sometimes its humorous, sometimes its pointed or blunt). I don’t wear my atheism on my sleave (though I did have the little “A” on my tie once), but if the subject is brought up, I’m there to meet it head on.

Part of the reason is that I know that there are other atheists out there and who are afraid to acknowledge it publicly or, perhaps, even privately. Another reason is that there are many religious people who just cannot fathom that they know anyone who doesn’t believe in a god. For them, if I believed in a god who looked like a blue elephant, this would be easier to understand than not believing in a god at all (that “belief in belief” that Dennett discusses in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon).

I like injustices like the DART response to the “offense” of the ad that “never should have been allowed on the bus” to begin with. Injustices like these serve to bring atheists together and to organize us faster and more efficiently than trying to reach out in normal grass-roots methods. The atheosphere, that space on the internet where atheist bloggers converge, is alive and active. But the atheist brand needs more exposure. We need to be seen as a force to be acknowledged; as a force that won’t go away; and as one that is to be respected. When that happens, we’ll have initiates that want to join our club.

This analogy might be wrong, but I think that’s one of the things that happened with the advent of the so-called “new atheists” -vocal authors and media personalities who spoke out, primarily in the wake of 9/11, of the negative nature of religion. This “new atheist” movement (if I can give in to the label for a moment) served as a rally point for like-minded and non-religious people the world over, but primarily in the United States. I know personally of several people who previously did not identify as atheist or agnostic (one even considered himself Christian) but do now after having read Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett and/or Harris as well as other “new atheist” authors.

If the post-9/11 “new atheist” awakening was the first step, then its time for step 2: Atheists must converge beyond the atheosphere and find a voice that resonates throughout society.

It is then that we’ll start effecting real change. The proof of this is in Iowa, where DART has agreed to put the bus ads back up. Evidently they received more calls and emails complaining that they were removed than they did complaining that they were up.

Bravo atheists.

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1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/122075/Religious-Identity-States-Differ-Widely.aspx#2

I’ve just added a “Godless Search Engine” to the menu bar at the top of the page. If you click it, you’ll be taken to a page with a single post displaying a search box powered by Google that searches more than a dozen or so sites relevant to godless information.

Included are some popular blogs like Atheist Revolution and Daylight Atheism, which post regularly and with topical material. But I’ve my main focus was to include repositories of information useful in on-line debates and research. Sites like “infidels.org” and “atheism.about.com.”

Here’s the full list of sites I have in the engine so far. If anyone has suggestions to make it more inclusive, post a comment on the Godless Search Engine page or email me at the link on the right side bar.

http://www.atheistrev.com/*

http://planetatheism.com/

http://www.investigatingatheism.info/*

http://www.examiner.com/x-8947-LA-Atheism-Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-8776-Boston-Atheism-Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-8948-Dallas-Atheism-Examiner

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/*

http://www.secularhumanism.org/*

http://www.religioustolerance.org/*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists

breakingspells.wordpress.com/*
www.daylightatheism.org/*
www.samharris.org/*
www.infidels.org/*
www.atheists.org/*
www.positiveatheism.org/*
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist
atheism.about.com/*
www.autodidactproject.org/guidathe.html
www.wonderfulatheistsofcfl.org/Quotes.htm

I’ve added a couple of links to the menu bar at the top: Godless Resources and Godless Bibliography. The first is still a work in progress right now, but it links to a page of links to many of the works found in the Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens. There’ll be some additional links in the coming days. The second is a listed bibliography in APA style, suitable for copy/pasting to plug into your own references or bibliography.

Finally, here’s a fun video. Old, but fun.

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… is up at A Division By Zer0.

As you can see by his banner image, DB0′s originality is well worth the visit. Click the link above to visit his blog or the image to visit the 102nd Carnival of the Godless.