One of the first things you should do when creating a new blog is to register with Technorati. You can think of Technorati as a massive blog directory, but it is actually much more than that. If you have not already created a Technorati account and claimed your blog, you will want to do so now. It is well worth the effort.
If you do not already have a Technorati account, visit Technorati and click on "Join." This will allow you to create a free account. You will also want to claim your blog as part of this process. To make sure you have done this, sign into your account, click the "Edit" text next to your account name, and then click on the "Blogs" tab in the "My Account" section. You should see your blog displayed under "My Claimed Blogs." If it is not there, you can claim it by scrolling down to the "Claim a Blog" section. As you go through the claim process, make sure to assign accurate tags (i.e., keywords) to your blog.
Once you have claimed your blog, I recommend adding one of the Technorati buttons to your blog to make it easy for readers to make your blog one of their favorites. There are all kinds of other widgets you can add if you like, but these are optional and more than we need to mess with here. A later tip will cover effective use of Technorati tags with your blog.
Tags: Technorati, blog, blogging, blogging tips, tags, widgets
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Blogging Tip #2: Add Your Blog to Technorati
Thursday, May 15, 2008
America the Intolerant: Attitudes Toward Atheists Revealing
We Americans often pride ourselves in being a fairly tolerant bunch. However, the often cited University of Minnesota study of Americans' attitudes toward various religious groups casts serious doubt on the accuracy of our common self-perception. Even in 2008, being an atheist in America is no picnic. This should give every American cause to examine his or her own tolerance.
Equality gaps certainly remain, but most would agree that women and persons of color have made significant progress over the last few decades. Even the GLBT community has made great strides, much to the dismay of the Christian extremists among us. And yet, the picture is far less positive for American atheists.
Writing in The Tahoe Daily Tribune, Damian Sowers reports on the American Mosaic Project, which used telephone surveys of over 2,000 Americans to study attitudes toward religion. According to the authors, their study showed that "Americans draw symbolic boundaries that clearly and sharply exclude atheists in both private and public life." Moreover, "From a list of groups that also includes Muslims, recent immigrants, and homosexuals, Americans name atheists as those least likely to share their vision of American society."
If, as the authors suggest, public attitudes toward atheists can be used as an indicator of socio-political tolerance, the results of the study are unfortunate. While tolerance for various religions appears to have increased over the past 40 years, no such trend was observed for atheists. According to researcher Penny Edgell, "it is possible that the increasing tolerance for religious diversity may have heightened awareness of religion itself as a basis for solidarity in American life and sharpened the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in our collective imagination."
Damian Sowers, himself an atheist, writes:The very fact that atheists are distrusted by the masses is not very surprising, but I never fully recognized how feared and hated we truly are. For instance, the authors found that rejection of atheists is even higher than anti-Muslim sentiment in the post-9/11 era, and "Americans construct the atheist as the symbolic representation of one who rejects the basis for moral solidarity and cultural membership in American society altogether."
Sowers argues that continued prejudice against atheists in America is most likely attributable to the presumed link between religion and morality. I agree completely. To the degree that atheism is construed as synonymous with immorality (or even evil), atheists will be feared and despised. Sowers is also correct to point out that the erroneous but popular efforts to link science and secularism with the Holocaust simply strengthen anti-atheist bigotry. This is why it is important to discuss Expelled.So what does this study tell us about the underlying nature of American culture? Equality is supposed to be a staple of the modern era, but it seems that American prejudices don't ever diminish; instead, they merely drift from one marginalized clique to another, following the capricious tides of mob-sanctioned intolerance. As of now, slandering atheists has not yet been labeled politically incorrect, and many people, including priests and rabbis, have taken full advantage of this impunity.
We atheists have a clear stake in helping to define anti-atheist bigotry as an unacceptable form of intolerance. To date, our organization and our outrage have been insufficient to make much progress toward this goal. It is up to us now. Are we serious about pursuing equality?
Tags: America, intolerance, atheism, atheist, tolerance, equality, American Mosaic Project, prejudice, bigotry, anti-atheist bigotry, religion, morality
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Feelings About Evangelism
A recent post at Friendly Atheist asked readers about their worst experiences with Christian evangelism and whether there were any forms of evangelism to which readers might listen. Christian evangelism provokes an immediate and intensely unpleasant emotional response for me. Regardless of whether it is door-to-door proselytizing or unwelcome encounters in public, I have the same visceral reaction each time I am confronted by someone wanting to share their "good news." It is hard to verbalize, but it feels like a mixture of rage, disgust, and revulsion.
The intensity of my emotional reaction is clearly disproportionate to the actual stimulus. After all, the ignorant sod who feels the need to tell me about Jesus does not mean any harm. She might even think she's doing me a favor. There is no reason for me to feel threatened, and mild annoyance or even pity would seem to be more appropriate reactions on my part.
The thoughts that race through my head in these situations, fueling the nature and intensity of my emotional response, shed more than a little light on my reactions. I tend to interpret acts of evangelism as unwanted invasions upon my privacy."I don't want to hear about your delusion!"
You get the idea. These thoughts are not particularly rational, and my tendency to interpret evangelism in this manner certainly exacerbates my intense reaction.
"How dare you shove that mind rot in my face!"
"What makes you think I am stupid enough to be impressed with this?"
"How would you like it if I came to your home in the middle of dinner?"
Since I do not enjoy these emotional responses, I have at least two options:
So far, I've focused on #2. I have added a combination of "no soliciting" and anti proselytizing signs around my front door to deter these visitors. In fact, the frequency of their visits has declined significantly. However, I need to do more with #1 because I continue to encounter these lunatics in public (and sometimes even at home).
Tags: atheist, Christian evangelism, evangelism, proselytizing, Jesus, privacy, reframing, thoughts, evangelists, no soliciting, cognitive restructuring
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Blogging Tip #1: Collecting Traffic Data
Remember hit counters? Back when the web was in its infancy, virtually every site had a numerical hit counter proudly displayed to track incoming hits. They did little else. Fast forward to the present, and webmasters and bloggers now talk of "traffic" or "metrics" instead of simple hits. Now we monitor things like what browser our readers are using, what countries they come from, what times of day our traffic peaks, and more. Whether you just started your blog or have been at it for awhile, it is never too late to adopt more sophisticated methods of collecting traffic data.
When I started this blog, I used StatCounter. It worked well but did not provide all the data I wanted. I soon moved to the basic (and free) version of Sitemeter. In fact, I still use Sitemeter because it is necessary for the TTLB Ecosystem (a topic for another post). Sitemeter provides a great deal of useful information, and is certainly worth a look, even though it is no longer my primary source of data.
What I use now and what I recommend you look into is Google Analytics. This free service provides an astounding amount of information, allowing bloggers to do far more than simply track hits. You can learn quite a bit about your visitors and how they interact with your blog using Google Analytics. I am confident that I have not even come close to utilizing the full potential of this service, but that it what is so nice about it - it gives you all the basics plus room to grow in how you use it.
Tags: blogger, blogging, blogging tips, Sitemeter, Google Analytics, hit counter, traffic, blog
Monday, May 12, 2008
Two Atheist Blog Carnivals
In case you haven't already found them, Carnival of the Godless #91 is up at State of Protest, and the Humanist Symposium #19 is up at Letters From a Broad. Time to get reading.
Tags: atheist, blog, blog carnival, Carnival of the Godless, Humanist Symposium
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Christian Extremist Parents Charged For Death of Daughter
While we celebrate Mother's Day today, I ask you to remember what can happen when a mother becomes lost to the grip of Christian extremism. Back in March, we learned of the sad story of a Wisconsin couple who allowed their 11-year-old diabetic daughter to die because they preferred prayer to medical treatment. It now appears that the state has decided to prosecute the parents on charges of second-degree reckless homicide.
I am happy to see criminal prosecution in this case, and I hope it helps to remind other religious fanatics that allowing their children to die because of their delusion is not acceptable.Family and friends had urged Dale and Leilani Neumann to get help for their daughter, but the father considered the illness "a test of faith" and the mother never considered taking the girl to the doctor because she thought her daughter was under a "spiritual attack," the criminal complaint said.
A conviction carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. While I seriously doubt that a sentence anywhere close to that will be imposed, it does signal that the state is taking this seriously.
At the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse on this one, I feel the need to say that these parents represent the danger of acting on the basis of faith, the failure of the American educational system, and a culture which desperately needs to be rid of Christian extremism. No one factor, not even religion, is responsible for this, but we as a society need to do a better job of preventing this sort of tragedy.
Tags: Christian extremism, Wisconsin, prayer, homicide, law, criminal, delusion, faith, religion
New Blogging Tips Series
In an effort to give something back to the growing community of atheist bloggers who continue to inspire me, I am starting a series of blogging tips. Each brief post in the series will include a single tip, and I may periodically post compilations around particular themes to make them easier to pull together. I will label each post in the series with the "Blogging" label so that you'll always be able to find them here.
Fine, you say, but what does this have to do with atheism? Obviously, most of the tips I'll be providing are not somehow specific to atheists. The way I look at it is that anything I can do to help you be more effective, reach a wider audience, or tell you about some tools you might not be utilizing, helps to strengthen the atheist movement. Remember, helping one of us is generally good for the rest of us.
Tags: atheist, atheist bloggers, blogger, blogging, blogging tips
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Faith Section In Your Local Paper?
Do you have any sort of section devoted to religion in your local paper? My local paper has one called "Faith and Values" that appears every Saturday. As might be expected from my location (Mississippi), this is exclusively Christian. Moreover, it clearly promotes Christianity in the community. Many newspapers do something like this, and some occasionally print op-ed articles written by atheists in this section. Not surprisingly, this infuriates some Christians.
My local paper does not include material written by atheists in this section but has printed some op-ed articles written by a local atheist in the Opinion section. These have, of course, generated some lively discussion on the paper's Internet forums. Most of the discussion is civil, but there is sometimes a sense that local Christians would prefer not to be exposed to what atheists think. It is almost as if simply being reminded that atheists exist is interpreted as a lack of respect for their religion.
This may surprise you, but I really don't have a problem with having a religion section in my local paper. I wish they would call it something other than "Faith and Values" because these terms, when used together, have an unpleasant political connotation. I'd also like to see broader content rather than having it so Christian-focused. Then again, I realize that the overwhelming majority of subscribers are Christian and would oppose anything else.
Tags: faith, values, newspaper, media, religion, Mississippi, Christian, Christianity, atheist, op-ed
Friday, May 09, 2008
Almost Time to Buy a New Computer
My ancient Dell Dimension is simply no longer cutting it for Photoshop work even though it continues to meet most of my other limited computing needs. I've held off for long enough, and it is time to settle on a replacement. When faced with such decisions, it is sometimes helpful to walk through a series of decision points. I figured I might as well share my thought process in case anyone else would find it useful.
These have been my decision points so far:
Build or Buy?
Initially, I thought I might use this as an opportunity to build my first computer. This way, I could get exactly what I need without throwing money away on things I do not need. I am not into computer gaming at all, and the video cards in most systems seems to be overkill. At the same time, drive space and speed are rarely adequate, expandability tends to be limited, and there are never enough or the right kind of ports. However, I soon decided against building because I simply don't have the time (or interest, if I'm being honest) in researching components, etc. I may build eventually but not this time. Decision made.
Windows Vista or...What
I used to use Macs but switched to Windows several years ago because I needed to use Windows-only software regularly for work. I've been generally content with the stability of Windows XP SP3 on my home computer even though I've had a bit of ongoing trouble at work. After reading the reviews of Vista, including SP1, and talking to various friends using Vista, I decided that there was simply no way I was willing to go Vista. No apparent upside and many downsides. Some have suggested Linux, but that is not for me, at least not yet.
Sticking with Windows XP is certainly viable but seems the OS is clearly showing its age. Besides, the ongoing sort of problems I've had with it at work make me less eager to put it on another machine. Still, if I replace this PC with another PC, I've pretty much decided that it will run XP. But should I consider returning to Mac?
Mac or PC?
The thought of getting a Mac for Photoshop work and still having my old Dell to use as a music server and for the times when I do need to run PC-only software at home (so I won't even need Windows on the Mac) is certainly appealing. I can get an Apple educational discount and get the Mac version of MS Office free through work. I need to upgrade Photoshop anyway, so switching platforms shouldn't be too difficult. The current Mac OS sounds wonderful, and it would be great to have a more stable system that required less constant tinkering and updating.
Where the Mac decision gets hard is when the question of which Mac comes up. I've ruled out the Mini for a variety of reasons, I don't need a laptop, and the Mac Pro is overkill in many ways. This leaves me with only the iMac as an option. Fine except I hate the idea of all-in-one systems where I'm stuck with the monitor that houses the computer. Widespread reports of uneven screen brightness also make me a bit nervous.
In the end, it looks like critical question will be whether moving to Mac OS X is so desirable that I'm willing to live with the limitations of the iMac. I think it probably is, and I am leaning toward picking up a new 24" iMac in the next month. We'll see.
Tags: Dell, Photoshop, computer, build, Windows, Windows Vista, Vista, Windows XP, XP, PC, Mac, Apple, iMac, OS X
Thursday, May 08, 2008
The Nobility of Atheism
As a philosophical stance on the question of god(s), atheism is more than just the default position. There is a certain nobility in bucking tradition, appeals to authority, and the pressures of social conformity to permit reason and evidence to influence one's worldview. Even while recognizing that there are multiple paths to atheism, there is a certain shared joy that comes from living in accordance with reality.
In a recent rant by at ExChristian.net, Bob Patterson wrote:For reasons not easily understood, humans seem to have a basic need to want to believe that an invisible, omnipotent and omniscient deity -- one that is entirely responsible for everything and that demands our unquestioning devotion, obedience and respect for everything good that happens -- is watching over us.
We can talk about the irrationality and sheer absurdity of such a belief system until we are blue in the face, but it does reveal a simple truth about humanity. Religious belief seems to have always been part of the human psyche. Some argue that we are hard-wired for it, but regardless of whether this is accurate, it is difficult to deny that religious belief is part of the human condition.
And yet, an equally simple truth prevents us from falling into some sort of fatalistic acceptance of religion - there are atheists. We have managed to transcend religion and learned to interact directly with reality. In spite of the pressure we experience to conform to a magical worldview, we do not. We find appeals to authority or tradition lacking and see little reason to grant religious beliefs some special status whereby they are immune from reason, logic, or science. We may pay a price for our defiance, but we do so with open eyes.
When it comes to religious belief, Bob asks, "Can there possibly be a more noble or honest position than atheism?" I don't think so.
Tags: atheism, atheist, reason, evidence, science, worldview, conformity, religion, god, belief
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Time For Atheist Churches?
With increasing numbers of freethinkers "coming out" and openly identifying themselves as atheists, agnostics, and/or secular humanists, some are suggesting that secular churches may be useful. Of course, atheism is not a religion, and the concept of atheist churches strikes some as a bit silly. Still, I do not think we should hastily dismiss the idea without carefully considering the advantages they might bring. Besides, calling an institution a church does not necessarily mean that it must resemble religious churches.
Imagine having an atheist church in your community. What would be the potential benefits? I suggest that they would include at least the following:
For more on atheist churches, see this op-ed from Digital Journal.
Tags: atheist, atheism, atheist churches, freethinkers, secular, agnostic, secular humanists, religion, community, organization, activism, education, mentoring
