Adrian Hayter’s Blog

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

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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!

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I haven’t made a blog post for a week or so, and even though I have meant to quite a few times, things have come up at the last minute. However, I’m now free for 20 minutes or so, so I thought I would crack one off.

Last week was my last week at work, and it started well (with a bank holiday Monday to relax on) and the weekend prior had been filled with fun at the beach and great weather. Things started going wrong there though, and I felt ill through Sunday evening and all day Monday. Assuming I had recovered on Tuesday, I went into work, sat down, and promptly threw up all over my desk. Evident that things were just going to get worse, I went home and spent the entire day in bed.

The next couple of days (Wednesday and Thursday) were also spent at home while I shook off the stomach bug I had apparently contracted. By Thursday I had practically starved myself for 2 days so I spent the day building up my strength again. On Friday (my last day) I finally actually went to work for the last time. It was a great day, and I will miss all of my friends that I made there.

On Friday afternoon, Jennie, my girlfriend came down to stay for a week which is great! We haven’t seen each other in over a month due to various commitments on either side but at least I have her all to myself for a week. The next time I’ll see her is after my freshers week at University, which is in just less than a month.

Speaking of University, things are really starting to heat up and get exciting. With only a few weeks until I leave, people are talking about it all the time, especially on sites like Facebook. I can’t wait to get there and meet everyone I’ve met through the various Groups I’ve joined on it. I’ve finally got my Student Insurance sorted out, and my student bank account should be available to use within a few days. The Student Loan Company haven’t sent my declaration form through yet though (and they said they would send it last week) so I’ll have to give them a phone call tomorrow.

As for other things in life, even though I’ve been following the Bioshock story since last year, I somehow totally managed to miss the release of the actual game. I bought it a few days ago and my initial reactions to it are good. The entire look and feel of it is breathtaking, as are the abilities you can use in it. The only thing that I can find fault with at the moment is the physics engine, which somehow manages to throw enemies through walls that they really should bounce off…to the point that two Splicers I had just killed fell through a tunnel and into the water outside.

The story behind it is great though, and I look forward to playing it more and more in the next few weeks.

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