Adrian Hayter’s Blog

I’ve recently discovered quite an interesting real time game on the internet, and one that is blog related. “BlogShares” takes information regarding incoming and outgoing links from a lot of blogs on the internet, and then calculates their “net worth” (excuse the pun). Users can then buy shares in any number of blogs, and sell them if the blog starts doing badly (i.e. less links are found going to it). I thought this was quite a clever idea so I registered, and low and behold found The Atheist Blogger (my other blog) on there…and doing rather well.

I told the system that I owned the blog, proved it with some html on the main page, and was given 1000 shares that were being reserved for the owner. These shares (thanks to the massive amount of people visiting and linking to my blog) were worth $15,000,000 each at the time, so I’ve now got a nice net worth of $15 billion. I’m unfortunately not majority owner of the “company”. That honour goes to a fellow by the name of “The Undertaker”, who has a net worth of $2,248,152,639,818,087.00. Yes, I worked it out…that’s 1000 trillion (or a quadrillion).

Anyway, it’s quite a fun game, and since it’s in real time you only need to spend a few minutes on it every day trading stocks…that is, until you start earning big!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Since my favourite atheist quotes became such a success through StumbleUpon (even making it to one of their featured pages), I decided to create a new blog devoted entirely to atheism.

This blog is called “The Atheist Blogger” and can be found at http://atheistblogger.com or http://theatheistblogger.com.

Hopefully I will be able to make this site a successful blog about atheism!

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you add me on facebook and scroll down to my favourite quotes section, you will see a large collection of atheist and anti-religious quotes from various people. Anyone who knows me well will understand that I believe 100% in each of them, and will freely admit to be anti-religious. So for those who don’t have facebook, here are my favourite quotes:

‘An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.’

‘I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.’ - Steven Roberts

‘And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.’ - Bertrand Russell

‘Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.’

‘We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.’ - Gene Roddenberry

‘Without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.’ - Steven Weinberg

‘Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.’

‘Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.’ - Robert A. Heinlein

‘I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.’ - Thomas Jefferson

‘Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?’ - Friedrich Nietzsche

‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.’

‘Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people.’ - Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney

‘Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.’ - Richard Dawkins

‘The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.’ - John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

‘You do not need the bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate.’ - Richard A. Weatherwax

‘They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it’s a good thing.’ - Steven Weinberg

‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?’ - Epicurus

‘It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.’ - Ludwig Feuerbach

Popularity: 100% [?]

Well, this is my last blog post for 2007, and it has been a really great year for me. I’ve completed my first term at university, converted to Ubuntu Linux, and played Portal, BioShock, and Halo 3 for hours on end. However, instead of commenting on the year that has past, I thought I’d comment on my hopes for 2008, in reference to things that will affect me.

facebook

For a student, facebook is a very important tool. It’s a linking point between everyone you know, whether they are at university or not. You can plan events, share photos, send messages (either publicly on the wall or privately), and do hundreds of other things thanks to the growing number of applications. However, there are still drastic improvements to be made:

• Generate news feeds in real time. When one of my friends changes their name, I want to know immediately, not several hours later. There is no reason why they can’t do this already, and it would certainly keep everyone up to date with things.
• More control over notifications, especially those concerning applications. I’ve really had enough people inviting me to “become a werewolf” or “see what kind of eyes you have”. Either ditch the invitations, or include an option to turn all application invitations off. I know they have an “application blocker” feature, but I don’t want to have to go through every single application I don’t want to be invited to and block it…
• Remove the 60 photo limit on albums. This is the 21st century facebook, people have digital cameras now. They can take more than 60 photos at a time. Again, there is no reason for the limit. You can create unlimited albums, but only have 60 photos in each one? It’s absurd.
• Remove the limit on the number of groups you can join. Honestly, if they think people can only have a maximum of 200 beliefs/ideas/viewpoints/favourite (actor/tv show/film) in their lifetime then they have led some very sad lives. I’m already a member of 169 groups, and at the rate I join / create them I’ll probably be at 200 in a few weeks. I don’t want to go through them all and decide which ones I “don’t really agree with that much anymore”.

On a final note for facebook, thanks for removing the “is” from statuses. It gave me quite a few laughs over the next few days when I saw people who hadn’t realised it had gone. Stuff like “John going to the cinema” and “Jane tired” were great for a grammar Nazi like myself.

Linux

Not much I can say about Linux, seeing as it is already a fantastic operating system. I look forward to Ubuntu 8.04 in April, which has an awesome new default theme, and better compiz support. One thing I would like to see on it is the BBC iPlayer, which they have been forced to make available to Linux and Mac thanks to a nice lawsuit. I’m also be trying out Linux Mint in the new year, because apparently it is better than Ubuntu.

MyBB

Hopefully we will see the release of 1.4 in 2008, as well as a complete release of the MyBB Merge system. There are a lot of other plans for MyBB, both official and unofficial, but for obvious reasons they cannot be revealed just yet.

Atheism

After creating a group on facebook for “Atheists at Royal Holloway”, I’ve got a few more members for a possible Atheist Union / Society at Royal Holloway. Nothing is official yet, but we are definitely on our way. We’ve been invited to a debate by the Christian Union in February on the subject of belief, which should be fun.

I’m gonna end it there, I’m sure there will be far more to look forward to in 2008, but I must get things ready for the New Year party tonight!

So, farewell 2007, roll on 2008!

Popularity: 6% [?]

I was reading the BBC News website today, and I see that Tony Blair has been “converted” to Catholicism in a surprise move which is being questioned by everyone. The main reason for the questioning is his prior stance on abortion, safe sex, and gay marriage, which was all positive. Why is it now then, that he has chosen to go in the opposite direction? Now of course I know that there are a lot of Catholics who agree with those issues, but it is safe to say that the Catholic Church itself is against them, and as Ann Widdecombe said, did he vote for those issues because it was convenient for him? Whatever the case may be, this article led be onto another, entitled “‘Atheistic fundamentalism’ fears”.

In the article, the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan said that the greatest problem facing the world was the rise of “fundamentalism”, which is a fair enough point, but he didn’t focus on the obvious Muslim fundamentalism, or the Christian fundamentalism that has gripped the USA. No, he focused on what he calls “atheistic fundamentalism”, which is a completely nonsensical phrase. The idea of a fundamentalist is someone who has “strong adherence to any set of beliefs in the face of criticism or unpopularity”. That surely gets Atheism out of the picture straight away? How can an atheist have a strong adherence to not believing in something? Christian fundamentalists will say “believe in God or burn in Hell!”…Atheist fundamentalists would say “don’t believe in God…or…well, nothing much will happen either way…just don’t do it!”. You see? It’s utterly ridiculous!

The Archbishop doesn’t come across as a “nice” Christian by any sense anyway. In one quote from the article he talks like a radical anti-secular person…hardly one to make judgement on non-believers:

As well as leading to Christmas being called “Winterval,” the archbishop said “virulent, almost irrational” attacks on Christianity led to hospitals removing all Christian symbols from their chapels, and schools refusing to allow children to send Christmas cards with a Christian message.

Well, as far as hospitals and schools go, they are government run facilities that allow members of any faith to access their services. A Christian would hardly like it to walk into a hospital chapel and find it decorated with images from Islam, or receive a Jewish Hanukkah greeting in a card from their child’s school now would they? Some people really don’t think things through. The separation of the church and state is a good thing. It keeps everyone happy (apart from non-secularists of course). So until the world is united under one religion (and I really hope it never is), we’ll stick with plain hospital chapels and normal holiday greetings in cards.

As for his comment about “Winterval”, he really didn’t do any research about this at all. Birmingham City Council decided to call all activity over the Christmas period “Winterval” to respect people of different beliefs. Christmas was still called Christmas, Hanukkah was still called Hanukkah, but the entire period in which they both happen was referred to as Winterval. It didn’t openly offend anyone, which was what the council was aiming for. However the Bishop completely forgot about other religions and views again, and decided it was an open attack on Christianity.

The reason I decided to talk about this issue was because I stumbled on a blog post by someone called Alex Parsons, an atheist like me, who was dumbfounded by the Bishop’s comments, and the hypocrisy of his statements.

The bottom line is, there is no such thing as Atheistic Fundamentalism. As Alex Parsons says:

Whilst many atheists might not say it so bluntly out of politeness, atheism is the belief in an absence of gods; by definition we see most of religion as untrue and useless superstition. That’s not being an extremist or militant atheist, that’s just being a normal one.

The Bishop should stick to correcting fundamentalism in his own church, and stop blaming innocent people whose only “fault” is that they have looked at the Bible, Koran, Torah, or whatever religious text you have, and seen no logical reason to believe a word of it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

A while back I purchased the domain name atheistforums.org and set up a MyBB forum on it aimed towards discussion of atheism by atheists and other religious groups. I showcased it in the MyBB Community Forum and through that action, labrocca found it and posted a reply that he had been planning to make such a forum with the domain atheistforum.com:

“Interesting. I actually own atheistforum.com and plan to launch it eventually but goodluck on your site. Atheism is surely a topic you can discuss and gain members with.”

I contacted him via PM and proposed that instead of creating two competing sites of the same nature, we should combine the sites and create one large Atheist discussion board. Now, labrocca and I have not got on well in the past, which is mainly my fault and has led to certain jests and “pokes” at one another. At the end of it all, I apologised and we sorted things out between us. He decided to take me up on my offer, and even host the forum on his server.

Now it is slowly growing and we hope that once the site is discovered by people, we can start debating and discussing everything related to Atheism. If you are Atheist or Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, you can join and debate for your religion, or discuss Atheism with the people that support it.

Atheist Forum

Hopefully this will end up a large and popular community for Atheist discussion!

Popularity: 12% [?]