Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll and other stuff.

Mojoey of Deep Thoughts maintains what is probably the internet's longest blogroll for atheists and agnostics which is called, wait for it, "Atheist Blogroll".

Regular reader Plonka, of Plonka's Blog has just signed up and suggested that I join too. And so I did, just like the sheep that I am. It wasn't long before I was happily completing my details in that everlovin' email to Mojoey that gets a blog link at 483 other blogs around the freethinkerspace.

You can see mine down the bottom right hand corner of this blog.

Says Mojoey:

"The Atheist Blogroll is a service provide to the Atheist and Agnostic blogging community. The blogroll currently maintains over 350 blogs. Membership is limited to Atheist and Agnostic bloggers."

I don't really endorse the exclusionism in the last sentence. I may have to chat to Mojoey about this, because this is a little bit uncharitable. It's not like theists would be queueing up to join such a blogroll or anything.

It's a good thing that Mojoey embraces agnostics, because the other blogroll that Plonka has joined is The Richard Dawkins-endorsed OUT Campaign. And they most decidedly don't.

Says the Out Campaign:

"Atheists are far more numerous than most people realize. COME OUT of the closet! You'll feel liberated, and your example will encourage others to COME OUT too. (Don't "out" anybody else, wait for them to OUT themselves when they are ready to do so)."

Oh, yes please!

And by joining the blog roll, you get to wear a big, red letter "A" on your blog, which is your way of telling the world, "We're here, we're, um, atheist, we will not disappear!" There was no mention of agnostics here, so I sent a question off to the blog organisers asking them about this:

Hi,

Why specifically atheists? Why not agnostics as well?

Cheers, Dikkii.

And not long after that, I got this in return:

I'm just one of the many admin's doing link and web stuff so I don't know the official RDFRS answer to that but from my personal viewpoint believing it's possible to have a god but you can't disprove it goes along the same lines as being agnostic about teapots orbiting close to Mars. You can't disprove it but it's silly. You can't disprove something for which there is zero evidence and saying that lack of evidence is proof that it's possible just isn't a valid argument.

Regards,
/Mike

Dawkins schools them well. For someone who doesn't know the Foundation's official line, he knows the next best thing is to paraphrase The God Delusion.

I must admit, I wasn't expecting that ol' straw man agnostic from The God Delusion. You know, the pants-wetting fence-sitter who assigns equal probability to existence alongside non-existence? The generalisation that I blogged about in Why did you end up agnostic (part 4)? The stereotype which doesn't exist? The negative caricature which demonstrates that even scientists as brilliant as Richard Dawkins can put both feet in their mouths at once, occasionally?

Of course, I had to fire off a response to this:

Hi Mike,

Good answer, but agnostics aren't interested in proving the negative, particularly when they know the difference between the null hypothesis and an extraordinary claim. Agnostics also recognise that it's silly.

Some would say that invoking Russell's teapot to an agnostic is a little bit insulting, patronising and irrelevant, but I wouldn't go this far. I noticed in March this year that Dawkins fell into the same trap in The God Delusion, so you're in good company.

Cheers, Dikkii.

I don't expect a response to this.

It appears that this is a blogroll I won't be joining in a hurry.