One reason for my absence (from WotM and every other blog I author) was the changes in my life during these past months. New job, several new places of work (in the same job), new girlfriend, and even many physical changes at my home. Now, this by itself should have only affected my blogging for a couple of weeks or so, but then, as any blogger probably knows all too well, it’s hard to come back; you always feel that you have to apologize for “not doing your job”, and it’s easier to delay it… and delay… and delay…

Another reason is that, while my interests and hobbies tend to remain forever, they change in intensity. I’ve always gone through “phases” in my life: more reading, more video games, more socializing, and so on; and even each of those also tends to vary; for example, while reading atheism-related blogs was my passion in 2006 and 2007, these days I tend to go for, incredibly enough, U.S. politics (go, Obama!). If you don’t read, you don’t feel inspired to write, after all… so you get the idea of what happened. I’m happy to report that I’ve began to read Planet Atheism again for the last couple of days, and I’ve only just realized how much I’ve missed this subject for the last 5 months.

(incidentally, Planet Atheism is yet another problem – I have more than 100 new blogs and blog changes in my “to-do list”. But that’s a subject for another post, coming later today, or tomorrow.)

Since recently I’ve been fascinated with the U.S. elections, as I’ve said, until November I’ll be writing about them as well (probably mostly about them). Atheism and religion will go back to being the main themes afterwards.

Anyway, sorry about my absence; the least I could have done was to explain things, and I didn’t do so. I’ll try to be more careful about it in the future.

Again, sorry about this. I’ll be more careful in the future. I believe that anyone who takes the time to comment here (except when the comment is insulting, off-topic or spammy, of course) should have their “work” respected and preserved, and I always endeavor to do that.

Reading Planet Atheism, from time to time I see someone mentioning an “enemy” site (say, one by creationists, or liars… but I had no need to say it twice), and saying something such as “I’d link to that site / page / article, but I don’t want to support it.”

While this is perfectly understandable, it may also be counterproductive not to direct your readers to what you’re talking about. In other words, what you probably want is to show your current readers that page, but not “support” it, in terms of having a permanent link to it which will be picked up by search engines such as Google. To search engines, a link is akin to a “vote of confidence”; indeed, a huge part of search engine optimization is getting other sites to link to yours.

So, what if you don’t want to promote a site, but still want to show it to your readers? Easy: you use the rel="nofollow" parameter.

A normal link goes like this:

<a href="http://www.wayofthemind.org/">Way of the Mind</a>

While a link you don’t want search engines to pick up as a vote of confidence goes like this:

<a href="http://www.expelledthemovie.com/" rel="nofollow">Creationist anti-science dishonest ad-hitlerum propaganda</a>

See the difference? With the second method, you can show a site to your readers, but not improve its ranking in search engines.

Of course, if your site is hugely popular (think Pharyngula), the simple fact that your “army” of readers visits that site may be seen as “promotion”… but, then again, if you’re pointing out a site filled with wrong claims, attacks, lies, and so on, your regular readers are unlikely to turn into regular visitors of that site (unless they want a good laugh, of course).

• Edit your comments: for 30 minutes after posting a comment, you can edit it as you will. This allows you to correct typos or any other mistakes you notice immediately after posting, or to add something you remembered when you were re-reading what you just posted. The 30-minute limit is so that users can’t cowardly pretend that they didn’t say something way back in the discussion.
• Subscribe to comments: below the comment text box, there is a checkbox labeled Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. By checking it when posting a comment, you can be warned of replies to that discussion by email (of course, you’ll have to include a real email address in the “email” field for it to work; that email is never shown to other readers, though). Every email includes a working “unsubscribe” link, in case you change your mind later.

Any problems, please let me know.

Obviously, any comments on those posts (and, indeed, on any post) will be welcome.

Hopefully, the first one will appear tomorrow; I already know what it’ll be about. But don’t worry, the “normal” posts will still be written from time to time.

The bad news is that the server where this blog was hosted, apparently, couldn’t cope with the StumbleUpon effect of so many hits per second. Who’d guess that my 16 Common Myths about Atheists post would get so popular again? Therefore, I had to temporarily move Way of the Mind to my old server, located at my home in Portugal. Bandwidth may be worse (though it should still be OK), but the server itself is much more powerful, and it laughs at the StumbleUpon effect.

I’ve contacted the hosting people for a server upgrade, and in a couple of days (hopefully) this blog should be physically in the U.S. again. Other sites such as the forum and Planet Atheism are still in the American server.

Is it too obvious that I’m a sysadmin as well as a blogger?

(*) 7 now.

Since August 2006, this blog has been mostly about atheism and what’s wrong with religion. I’ve been criticized for that, and lost some of my previous regular readers, though I also gained some new ones. But it’s what I’ve wanted to write about… I’m still allowed to do that, right?

And, yet, every time a post of mine, criticizing religious belief, is more popular than usual, I get the same kinds of criticism – sometimes, “trolling” would even be a better word. Many commenters don’t even read what I write; they simply think “atheist… enemy!”. You can see, for instance, that most of the replies on my 16 Common Myths about Atheists post weren’t about the myths themselves, or about whether they existed or not, or about whether atheists were like that or not. No, most were about whether God existed or not (and almost everyone said he did, of course). And a lot of replies called me – and atheists in general – “arrogant” – again, not because of what I wrote, but simply because I, like other atheists, have the nerve to say that there is almost certainly no god, and that millions of believers are, therefore, wrong. Because, again, it’s not arrogant to believe without evidence, but it is arrogant to disbelieve due to that lack of evidence, apparently…

It is not in my nature to deliberately offend. It is, however, in my nature to be as honest as I can, and to say what I believe to be true. And, yet, with so many accusations such as the ones I’ve read in several months of comments, I have found that I have been more “careful not to offend” than, I, perhaps, should have been. Because people who get offended when I say that they have no real evidence for the existence of God, and, therefore, are guilty of wishful thinking, are usually the same ones who say that atheists are pure monsters living on earth, putting their “faith” in science, being too “arrogant” to believe in God, and disbelieve (or say they do) simply because they don’t want any rules of morality above them.

That, dear readers, is a much greater insult than saying “you are wrong”. Even than saying “you are deluded”, or “you are refusing to think”. And yet, it is I who have been, perhaps, saying less than I should, who have been censoring myself.

Oddly enough, other bloggers don’t seem to have this problem. Take God is for Suckers!, or The Martian Anthropologist. Both are blogs I read every day, and both say much worse (but true) things about religion and believers than I do. Any believers who go there know that they will be required to present evidence, or be treated as delusional, and that witnessing, threatening eternal damnation, or stating Pascal’s Wager again simply will not work – in fact, it will be treated as trolling.

Maybe I should start being more honest with myself, and stop all self-censorship. Maybe my current readership will change, and for the worse – at least in terms of quantity. Who knows. But it has to happen.

You know what brought this realization, today? Reading this article at The Huffington Post. It’s called If You’re a Christian, Muslim or Jew – You are Wrong, and the author says things like this:

Osama bin Laden is insane. He believes God whispered in the ear of Mohammed 1,400 years ago about how he should conquer Arabia. Mohammed was a pure charlatan — and a good one at that. He makes present religious frauds like Pat Robertson look like amateurs.

He said God told him to have sex with as many of the women he met as possible. I’m sorry, I meant to say “take them as wives.” God told him to kill all other tribes that stood in his way or that would not placate him with assurances of loyalty or bribes. God told him, conveniently, that everyone should follow him and never question a word he said.

And:

George W. Bush is the most powerful man alive. He is a class A imbecile. He is far less intelligent than the average Christian. But like most of the others, he believes Jesus died for his sins. That idea is so perverse and devoid of logic it should shock the conscience. Instead, it gets him elected, and earns him the reverence of a great percentage of America. America! The most advanced country in the world — run by a bunch of villagers who still believe Santa Claus is going to save them.

There is no damn Easter Bunny. There is no Jesus waiting to return. Moses never even existed. These were all convenient lies from the men of those times to gain power. Their actions were rational — they wanted to deceive their brethren so that they could amass power. I get their motivations. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand our motivations, thousands of years later, still following the conmen of yesteryear into our gory, bloody, violent end.

Jesus is said to have said on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.

Excellent marketing by some of his followers would later rescue his botched effort. How many people saw his miracles? One? Twelve? Eighty? Why didn’t he show the whole world? Not because this is some giant pop quiz by God to test us — but because he did not perform any miracles!

And even:

If a man today killed his only son to show how much he loved other people, he would be considered a madman, locked in jail and earn society’s contempt. Yet we think this is some sort of noble act by our Father in Heaven.

In Heaven? What, with the harps and the winged angels and the 72 virgins? My God, how stupid do you have to be to believe that?

Oh, and:

Did I mention Judaism? The chosen people? Come on, get off it. People walk around in clothes from 18th century Russia, thinking they have been chosen by God when they look like a bunch of jackasses. I’m tired of all the deaths because we did not want to give offense. Orthodox Jews are wrong and ridiculous.

As are the orthodox and fundamentalists of all of the religions. It says in the Bible that it is an abomination to wear clothes made of two different cloths or to eat shellfish. If you think God will hate you because you mixed wool and linen or because you ate some shrimp, you are insane.

How long are we going to dance around the 800-pound gorilla in the room? The world is run by madmen. It’s not just Bush and bin Laden. It is the leader of all of the countries in the Middle East, almost all of the Americas and most of the rest of the world.

Have I offended you? That’s too bad. Stop killing each other in the name of false and ridiculous Gods and I will stop ridiculing you. Trust me, your offense is much worse than mine.

Now, how would the readers of WotM react if I wrote something like that?

I guess we’ll see in the future. Because, while this blog isn’t just about atheism, it is an atheist’s blog. And religion has done – and still does – terrible things to the world. It’s time to stop being afraid of offending believers. Why should believers be “above offense”, when nobody else is? Why should religion be a shield against criticism? Why should a religious claim be simply “respected”, while any other kind of claim (say, about physics or mathematics) is tested, and dismissed if it fails the test? Why should rational people be afraid of offending religionists?

One other thing: in the future, please try to remain on topic. If I write a post about, say, atrocities in the Bible, or discrimination against atheists, don’t ignore it and write about how sure you are that God exists, and how I’m “arrogant” for not believing so. That’s off-topic, and will be treated as such.

(sound of most readers deleting their WotM bookmarks… )

Sorted by number of visits, in ascending order:

10 – The problem of Agnosticism, part 2 – it’s a “part 2″ (see below for part 1), but it’s perfectly readable on its own. Discusses the contradiction of being “agnostic” about Yahweh, but “atheistic” about every other made-up deity.
9 – Christian myths about Atheism: discussion – there were so many comments for the “16 Common Myths about Atheism” post (see below) that I had to close that thread and open a new one, or my web server would have been very, very angry at me.
8 – The problem of Agnosticism – explores why agnostics are agnostic, and what’s wrong, in my opinion, with it.
7 – How I’ve become an atheist – one of the oldest posts on Way of the Mind, this tells of my own “deconversion”, and links to a brilliant Douglas Adams interview
6 – Why Atheism is not a religion – oddly enough, many people seem to think that it is – in other words, that it requires as much “faith” as theism. This post shows why that is not the case.
5 – Are the myths about atheists real or not? – after the popular “common myths” post, many people said I was creating “straw men” – in other words, the myths didn’t really exist. A simple search on Google News proved otherwise.
4 – “Closed minds” – disputes the common (and unfortunate) belief that “being sure of something is closed-minded” (also known as “reality is fluid”).
3 – Deism and Pantheism – a latecomer, this post describes those two not-very-well-known beliefs, whose proponents included many of the U.S. Founding Fathers, and Albert Einstein.
2 – Atheism: arrogance? – discusses why believing that 2+2 will still be 4 tomorrow isn’t “arrogant”.
1 – 16 Common Myths about Atheists – a list of what many theists believe — wrongly — about atheists in general. No, we don’t sacrifice babies. We don’t even boil young goats in their mothers’ milk.

However, there’s a second thing I’d like to ask you: if you have any links to this site on your own site or blog, please update them as well. Whether it’s a link to the main page, or to a particular post. I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: a link to the Way of the Mind Forum would also be nice.

The old address will redirect to this one, with a warning. If you try to access an old post directly, you will also be taken to the same post on the new address.

However, to spare my poor home server and save bandwidth, please update your bookmark(s), and, from now on, use the new address. I appreciate it.

Meanwhile, the new forum is up, right here: Way of the Mind Forum! I hope you register and participate. It’s still somewhat empty (naturally…), but I hope that that changes in the near future, with your help. I, myself, will use it (and keep writing in the blog, which I hope you keep commenting on as well). The main point of the forum is that you people can start your own threads.

Any problems with it, please let me know. There are still few categories, but more will be created when necessary.

While I love to write here, and to read and reply to comments, I also find that, quite often, people end up talking about something different. It’s a very small community, here, so far, but it’s there… and maybe it should be encouraged.

I don’t know when I’ll launch the forum; maybe in a month or so. My plans are for it to have several sub-forums (christianity, other religions, atheism, politics, society, individualism, maybe others), and anyone can start new threads, as long as they’re appropriate for the sub-forum.

The forum will be described as being for atheists, humanists, individualists, libertarians, objectivists and such; it will not be restricted to those, of course, and intelligent posts by Christians (for instance) will be welcome. Insults, threats of eternal damnation and similar, however, will not be welcome at all.

So… do you think this is a good idea? Do you see yourself participating in that forum (while still reading and commenting on this blog, of course )?

As I said, it won’t be up for a month or so, I think.

EDIT: change of plans. It may actually be up sooner than I thought – probably in less than a week. Naturally, I’ll announce it here when it happens.

While I disagree that “bias” is the correct term, I feel I must address this.

The dictionary definition of “bias” is: “a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.”

Is that the case here? I think not.

Yes, I’m an atheist. And not just because I felt like it, or because I wanted to “rebel”, or anything like that. I’m an atheist because I thought about it. Both atheism and religion are subjects that interest me, so it’s natural that I write a lot about them. Some commenters have, indeed, complained that this site has turned into “all atheism, all the time”. I’ve tried to write some posts about other subjects, but I can’t be condemned for writing, most of the time, about what I currently want to write about.

About the “bias” thing, let’s consider a different situation. Instead of being a Portuguese blogger in 2006, imagine I was an American writer for a newspaper, in 1800. Slavery, then, was still considered accepted and “normal”. I, however, was repulsed by it, and while the newspaper I wrote for wasn’t about slavery, most of my articles were. It was a subject that concerned me, and I wrote about how wrong it was, often. I denounced several particular situations I observed, argued about why slavery was wrong, and refuted pro-slavery arguments.

It’s quite likely, in that situation, that I, as a writer, would be accused of an “anti-slavery bias“. But how is such a “bias” different from having an opinion, a strong, considered one, and sticking to it? Should I be writing some pro-slavery articles as well, to maintain the “balance”? I don’t think so. Slavery was wrong, even if society didn’t see it; slaves are as human as myself or anyone else, and have the same capacity for both suffering and joy. Treating them as cattle, as property, as pieces of equipment is wrong – and I’d say it, even if it annoyed people. After all, anyone who though slavery was a good thing could always just read another newspaper.

I think the situation here, concerning religion, is similar. And, yes, I hope that some day religion will go the way of slavery, though I don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime.

Am I “biased”? No. I simply have a strong opinion about the matter, and my writing reflects it. I won’t do any kind of self-censorship. If my anti-religion posts annoy you, you can always stop reading and move on to the next post as soon as you see the “atheism“, “religion” or “christianity” categories.

Because I won’t stop speaking my mind. Sorry.

Here’s what’s new:

• New theme: you’ve probably noticed that one already. It’s based on K2, instead of being based on one based on another based on another (whew!) based on the old Kubrick. I hope you don’t hate the colors too much. My main goal was for it to be readable and easy on the eyes, instead of “pretty”.
• Recent comments list: it’s on the right sidebar. The commenter’s name is more visible (darker) when the comment is more recent, and you can also see the total number of comments, or click on the commenter’s name to go there.
• Time since each post: as in “Published by Pedro Timóteo 1 week, 2 days ago”.
• Improved quoting: there’s a “Quote” link near each comment, which will automatically quote it all into the new comment entry area (though you can, and should, edit out the parts you’re not replying to). You can also select a part of a post or comment, and click on “Quote selected text”, under the entry area, to quote it. Try it, it’s makes it much easier.
• Minor usability improvements: for instance, adding a new comment doesn’t require a page reload anymore.
• More visible “search”: it was already working perfectly, but it’s more visible now, and it already has some instructional text (automatically erased when you start typing) in the search box.
• “Related posts” list moved: It’s on the sidebar, now. Naturally, it’s only visible when you’re viewing an individual post, not on the front page.

By the way, there are still a few alterations to be done, and I’m already aware of a couple of problems (for instance, the “About the blog” and “About me” pages are gone, but they’ll be back). Still, if you have any suggestions, or have spotted other problems, please let me know, I’ll appreciate it.

Oh, and there will be a new, real post later today. I apologize for the delay.

While I’m guessing that most people who come from those social bookmarking sites are more technically inclined than the norm (seen, for instance, in the stats – there are almost twice as many Firefox users as there are Internet Exporer ones), still, as this is not a technical blog, and many people also come here from search engines, or through links in other blogs or sites, it’s possible that you don’t know about this “feeds” stuff.

Feeds are, quite simply, a way to “subscribe” to the site. Just click on this icon on the sidebar: (or on this very one, right here), and you’ll get some instructions on how it works. For an even easier tutorial, see here – it’s written by me, but don’t let that put you off.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to bother with feed readers, you can simply get new articles by email. You never get more than one email per day, even if there are more than one post. And the service is provided by FeedBlitz; I don’t even get to know your email address, so you don’t have to worry about your privacy.

If you already knew about all that stuff, I apologize.

Now, on a more personal note, today (August 25) is my last day of employment! Yes, starting from tomorrow, I’ll be working at home, as a freelance blogger and writer. Therefore, my other blogs will finally get some needed attention, and I may even start a couple of new ones. For some of my reasons for not wanting to have a “normal” job any more, see this brilliant post by Steve Pavlina, 10 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job. I, myself, will probably write about this subject in the future.

And now for something completely different! While it may currently seem otherwise, this blog is not just about atheism. I have been writing about it a lot, because my “16 myths” post was incredibly popular, and the hundreds of comments I received inspired me to address several other points about atheism, Christianity, and religion in general. But, while I’ll certainly write more about it in the future, there are also other subjects I want to write about, much like I did in the past; just click on any of the categories in the huge list on the right to see some of my past articles about other topics.

Finally, if you’re new here, welcome to Way of the Mind. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I’ve also changed the feed so that it has the posts in full, instead of just excerpts.

See you in a couple of days…

Replace

• http://www.dehumanizer.com/wayofthemind/feed/

or

• http://www.wayofthemind.org/feed/

with:

• http://feeds.feedburner.com/WayOfTheMind

Thanks!

The old address, including all internal links, still work, as they are redirected to the correct new address. However, I ask you to please change your bookmarks, to avoid the need for that redirection.

1. you don’t need to bother with moderation again
2. you get to choose a password for yourself, which means that no one can ever post with your name.

It’s up to you…