site

In I predict more predictions!, I predicted not only more religious and other supernatural predictions, but also the rise of some system on this site for tracking the same. And... OMG IT REALLY HAPPENED!

Took me long enough, and the result is little more than a page both crude and ugly at present. (Heck, the whole site needs a face lift...) But underneath, the predictions are actually input as data records with a date. They can be sorted or displayed in various ways, and as their deadlines pass will automatically move from the "still active" to the "failed" section of the page. (Er, if their deadlines pass, I have to say! That Rapture just might happen, right?) 

A nice countdown feature is called for down the road, but what the list needs right now is simply this: More predictions! Your help here would be fantastic. When you see some soothsayer make a prediction with a trackable date, telling us of the Imminent Fall of Newtonism, the New Amended Re-revised Surefire Day of Armageddon [version 27c], the One World UN Jihad under Obammed the Anti-Jebus, or The New Ten Plagues #11-20 (boxer wearers, you're gonna hate #14), please drop a line and let me know! (And if you know of someone already doing a much better job of tracking these predictions, I'll be happy to send love and readers that way.)

Anyway. Prepare to leap into the world of that which may be, and that which somehow just didn't work out:

Prediction Watch!

If you've got an atheist blog, consider adding your vital info to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see a feed from other blog members to the right; head to the Blogroll site itself to see all 1000+ blogs on the list.

It's one more small way that the widespread, fractionated, largely independent, and often invisible atheist community can show off its impressive true size. Ask Mojoey at Deep Thoughts if you'd like more info.

And if you don't have an atheist blog, why not start one? Get a low-cost hosting service (I like DreamHost, which offers quick'n'easy installation of a number of blogging platforms), get a domain name, and start writing whatever's on your mind.

Oh, you're not atheist, you say? Well, that's even easier to fix. Just drop the religion – not only is it free, but you'll save money on churchy stuff! (Big money if you're shoveling cash to the Mormon church, Scientology, or televangelists.)

I owe great apologies to anyone who's tried to post a comment, only to receive a message about the spam filtering system being unavailable. I found a misconfiguration in the filtering set-up; it's fixed, and comments appear to be flowing once more. 

FYI, the spam-filtering system used is Mollom, which offers a nice benefit: It analyzes the text of comments, and unless it finds reason to suspect spam, won't bother you with a "captcha" or other "prove you're a human" test. I'd like there to be as little annoyance as possible for those kind enough to leave a message – which is why I'm very chagrined to find I've been unwittingly slapping down those good people for a long time now.

My apologies once again. I do look forward to your thoughts on what's good, wrong, or just plain dumb in this site's content. 

Configuration clumsiness on my part left visitors' comments in limbo. Comments should now properly appear on the site, as should my responses to those. My apologies to everyone who was kind enough to write; I welcome further comments and will make sure the system is working properly at all times.

Also, I misattributed an online text's author in my post Recycling an excellent anti-atheist argument. The text should have been attribued to Vox Day. This is very poor form for any writer, and I deeply apologize to the good sir whose name I mistakenly used.

I think I'm now supposed to eat some Confession wafers, and then throw ten Hail Mary passes, or something like that... sorry, we ex-JWs are completely ignorant on Catholic stuff.

With this site barely born, I really appreciate the acknowledgement on Scientificblogging.com's Darwin Day 2008 page:

When biologists talk about the nuances and complexities of evolution, it's easy to get lost. Defaithed tackles the issue for Darwin Day by writing Darwin Day fun: A layman explains evolution by natural selection ... Don't let their modesty fool you. They condense a lot of complexity into 5 easy-to-understand bullet points and then flesh them out nicely.

It's an honor to be mentioned, and to be a part of celebrating one of humanity's greatest intellectual accomplishments.

Hello and welcome. Call me Defaithed. Male, 40-ish, American. (Not that any of those matter.) 

The writings to follow have been a long time in coming. A really long time – over 20 years. There'll be a lot to say.

After so many years of having "lost the faith", I think the first public writing I've done on the topic – i.e., outside of private communications with friends/family – was a few comments in an article on the Richard Dawkins web site, Two Ex-Jehovah Witnesses to Tell Why They Became Atheists. Look there for comments by "defaithed"; that's me. An excerpt by way of self-introduction: Readeth thou more