The Eloquent Atheist has been back up and running, for about five months. During that time, we have published 214 new items, more than half of all the columns published in our entire history. During that short time, we have had many thousands of readers stop by and read our offerings hundreds of thousands of times. Not a bad record for just five months. Read on…
Curiosity got the better of me yesterday and I looked to see how this little web site was doing. The answer both surprised and impressed me. In our short life, we have had 214,039 visitors to our site. I’ll keep track and let you all know when we get to a quarter million. Read on…
Our reader survey regarding preferred content drew relatively few responses, but those which we received had something to say. First, the basic genre question had some surprises. The folks that answered the survey had five choices in the basic Genre category. The genres and the number of votes each got are as follows: Read on…
Those of you who have read my posts here and elsewhere will know that I miss the Freethinking Unitarian church that I joined in the 60s and which the parent organization has tried to turn into just another christian denomination over the past twenty or so years. I have other Web sites that are dedicated, in part, to reversing that catastrophe. Now, along with a few others who feel the same way, a new think tank has been formed to … Read on…
Our readers and authors have once again sent me in the direction of unifying two seemingly disparate thoughts: many thanks to Timothy Travis for the link to a Steven Pinker essay on Group Selection and to Afzal Moolla for his recent poetry submission. You should read Mr. Pinker’s essay and Mr. Moolla’s poem. Both will help you to be a better world citizen and probably also cause you to reconsider a position or two. I will not belabor either the … Read on…
The editors of the Eloquent Atheist want to provide our readers with the specific content that you want to see. Help us do that by filling out this short survey, selecting the genres you want to see and the type of content you want to read or see. Clearly, the more information that you give us, the better this site will serve you. Please tell us what you want! We will publish results in a couple of weeks, and edit … Read on…
Much progress has been made on making it possible for you to comment on Eloquent Atheist content. We have installed code and selected options that will allow users to join the site as members, and to thereafter log into the site to leave comments about all content thereon. We have tried hard to make the process as easy as possible while still allowing good site security. All current authors and subscribers will be receiving an email soon giving you the … Read on…
A recent editorial post (A bit of light housekeeping) outlined our dilemma with comments: we’d like to give readers the opportunity to comment, but would rather avoid the annoying background noise generated by Mormon holy underwear fans everywhere. For more on this, see Ground rules for the Eloquent Atheist, which discusses the reason commenting was turned off in the first place. It is simply a huge time-waster to moderate comments that come down to “Because it’s in the bible!” As … Read on…
Once upon a time, this site accepted comments. That was until the Great Mormonism Furor of 2007, which resulted in new Ground Rules for the Eloquent Atheist. You might want to follow that link if you have not previously done so. Even after, or perhaps because of, the Ground Rules post, persons clearly unable to abide by those rules continued to yammer on about the details of Mormon holy underwear construction and other equally weighty subjects. We are not anti-debate, … Read on…
A gentleman named Marvin used our contact form to ask a question that should have been answered before he could ask it. His actual question is as follows: Hi. Do I have to be an atheist to submit my works here? I am actually an agnostic but I sometimes wonder and speculate the non-existence of God. Somehow, I am an adherent of atheistic existentialism by Nietzche. As the fellow that should have arranged to answer this question in advance, I … Read on…