A Reflection of Our Values
Like Everything We Do
Our Web Guide is, among other things, PAM’s attempt to reflect upon our carefully wrought (and often painfully wrought) values.
For example, this is a list of web sites that have attracted our attention. Each site listed here “earns its keep” (so to speak) because of its content, etc. For that reason, it would be a contradiction for us to engage in the popular practice
of
“link swapping.”
Most importantly, we try to list, whenever we can we try to limit our list to those entities whose values reflect our own business and personal “narrow road” (borrowing a word-picture from the worldview next door).
More than Simple Accessibility
Our Target Audience
We produce PAM for the benefit of those who already lack a belief that one or more gods exist. We are not out to deconvert anybody to our way of thinking. In
fact, with a good many of the religious folks who have written to us, we would just as soon these individuals retain a strong and enduring theistic faith!
While our writings, library choices, and essential messages are formed and tailored with atheistic readers in mind, our web site is open to all who wish to spend time in our humble abode. Our habitat is wrought in the reassurance that one’s ignorance
regarding a given question in no way obligates that individual to accept the first suggestion to come our way.
We refuse to list sites that place restrictions on who may or may not enter, particularly pay-to-enter sites. For now, this does not include register-to-enter sites, simply because if we did, our entire Web Guide might fit comfortably on the screen of an
Apple 2e.
But we have encountered numerous Web sites that, quite frankly, are unworthy of PAM’s readership — or (put it this way), PAM’s readers may learn about them from some other source: we want no part of what’s happening here.
For example: at least two sites that otherwise might have been routinely listed in our Web Guide used Java machinations to bump the reader to a special page if she or he surfed to the culprit domain directly from one specific site. Uhhh, no. Another site,
assembled by a stunningly arrogant specimen of self-flattery, returns a pompous error message stating (Get this!) that since you tried to visit using a certain brand of browser, you have been physically blocked from seeing his Web site.
(Jeezis! What next!?)
If you see any such sites listed here, please contact us so we can remove the listing post haste. We frown upon these and similar displays of arrogance on the Web. Web site owners have the right to do this, and we reserve the right to keep their Web sites
out of our listings.
Posting the Unposted
Our Working Definition of ‘Good Internet’
For our entire history, PAM’s approach has centered upon our refusal to post material unless it has no online home (at the time).
For example, one man spent hundreds of hours putting together the e-text, the HTML, and the fully linked index for the colossal book by Joseph
Lewis, “The Ten Commandments” (644 pages).
Why? First and foremost, this book singlehandedly changed his approach to atheistic activism in the United States. As such, this piece of writing meant a great deal to all of us us. He wanted more, and spent several days scouring the
Web (pre Google) for anything he could find on this refreshingly mysterious activist, Joseph Lewis.
The Internet, at the time, drew a big blank: he found nothing whatsoever online about the man who’d instantly become his favorite atheistic author!
So the old adage came to mind, if you can’t find it, then make your own. Okay, that’s doable, as they say!
By then the PAM Web site had drawn quite a bit of attention by posting “Letters From the Earth” by Samuel Clemens and “A
Free Man’s Worship” by Bertrand Russell. We conducted a copyright search and made good on our desire and promise to convert to e-text and bring to the online communities as much Joseph Lewis material
as we could get our hands on. Several hundred dollars later we had purchased the Joseph Lewis collection of one of our readers.
If it Has a Good Home, Then Leave it There
People deserve to reap all the benefits of the work they produce, of the efforts they put forth. I have no business taking from another person the credit, the feedback, and, as is often the case, the financial rewards due a person who
has created a work of self-expression.
Specific mention must be made of a clause in the Copyright Code of the United States (which itself is accepted as policy by countries the World over). The Fair Use Doctrine allows certain entities the right to consider certain works to
be the legal equivalent of Public Domain in certain, very limited respects. Again, only certain entities are allowed to do this, and this by no means gives anybody else the right to treat the works in question in the same manner; it applies only to the group
in question. Positive Atheism honors and respects the laws of the land in this regard, with a single difference: if anybody objects to our claim of Fair Use regarding their works, we promptly remove them at the owner’s request. (Material submitted to
Positive Atheism is dealt with differently, under the terms of our own contract with those who submit works to us.)
That said, we do not link to Web sites whose creators are known to have copied and posted, without permission and against our personally expressed wishes, material produced by Positive Atheism’s friends and volunteers specifically
for Positive Atheism’s exclusive use. And we seldom post donated material unless it is for our exclusive use.
Mirroring just plain sucks, period. It’s lousy Internet through and through, and we try to avoid it at all costs (although a great many atheists have, for fun and profit, built a Web enterprise with our sweat, our time, our money,
and our Saturday nights sitting alone at home, toiling away at this web project rather than out and about, frolicking in good fun like these lazy, self-serving toads no doubt did with the time they saved by forcing us, in a sense, to do the
truly hard part for them.)
Because mirroring has become such a destructive problem for us over the years, we reserve the right to list culprits as such and to describe our attempts to negotiate the return of our exclusive control over what we alone have the right to post, publish,
or “save for a rainy day” (as it were).
Be advised that once we have established that a certain culprit has done this to us, getting off our “list” becomes “no easy deal,” as my ex-con neighbor likes to describe kicking “the hard stuff.”
Well — stealing from people is very similar to being on “the hard stuff,” don’t you think? I mean, once a pattern of thievery starts, it’s next-to impossible to put the brakes on it.
And don’t expect very many people to want to get too close to you in the future. Ever.
On the above subject I speak from first-hand experience, and consider doing so part of my own compensation.
Our Pesky Little Warnings
PAM is beaucoup accessibility conscious.
We do not list sites that are inaccessible without Flash. That said, we publicly acknowledge the official Stevie Wonder online experience for responding to our letter in this regard. There must be a way to access the main gist of the Web project without
Flash — an obvious, clearly marked and easily seen way — or we will not allow the site to be listed. This policy does not include links to stand-alone Flash files, such as our favorite Monty Python bit, “Using Proper English.”
We warn about busy, flickering banners, Flash-based ads, and other intense animation because at least one health condition can be aggravated by such things. Most of us find these things distracting to where we have trouble reading a Web site’s content.
(Do these webmasters want us to read their Web sites? Do these sites exist only as placeholders for the ads? Do these questions need any thought at all?)
We have yet to implement a policy regarding accessibility such as for the visually impaired, etc.
Once More:
Listings on this page do not necessarily imply endorsement by Cliff Walker or any of Positive Atheism’s friends or associates.
Thank you for your interest!
— Cliff Walker
Saved on March 11, 2006
(It’s the file that was saved, silly!)
Our Atheism, Ourselves
The Tools We Use in the Discussion
Circulating Our Views?
Educating Our Fellows?
Urging Deconversion Among Believers?
Think of these lists of links as an extension of the PAM editors’ personal “Bookmarks”
files. The links listed herein point to the resources to which we constantly turn while authoring, formatting, styling, and otherwise maintaining the Positive Atheism Web Project. This includes maintaining the equipment that enables us to do this work
as well as the prescious moments of diversion that are so essential to a job well done! Several times per day — per hour, at times — we open up the shortcut that links to the online version of The Positive Atheism Web Guide’s “Resources” page.
This makes it a snap for us to find the sites, pages, articles, references, and guides that we use day-in and day-out (to say nothing about those special pages to which we refer only once in a blue moon — if that often — but listed them here knowing
that that some day we will want to be able to type in a vaguely remembered longshot keyword in the hope of finding that listing so we might avail ourselves of the sit at the other end of the link).
My Own Self-Image is My Own Greatest Hope
Ah, but this is really the reflection of much larger picture, we think.
The “Resources” section in particular, although newly renamed, has always been an example of our understanding of the personal meaning of atheism, that is, what my own atheism means to me. Rather, think of it
as my own atheism’s lack of meaningfulness for us and, indeed, for the vast majority among mind-your-own-business atheists. That’s one reason why this page has always emphasized the practical rather than the philosophical or the
political. The other reason this resource is not only here but meticulously maintained as well is a reflection of our hope that many of our readers might become proficient at self-expression — for whatever reason and to whatever end.
The awe that comes with the awareness of just how unlikely this all is —
both life itself as well as any given individual’s having come to be — can certainly enhance one’s appreciation of life, but this is not necessary. The fact that altruism is genetially “hard-wired” into our species is just
the beginning: the outlook that this is most likely everybody’s only crack at existence is easily our strongest motive for doing good to others.
This goes for the theist and atheist alike — at least, this is the outlook for which we strive and to which we point as our ideal. As dignity (respectability) goes, Positive Atheism makes no distinction between theist and atheist. We’re all
in this together, whether or not we realize it. There is no sense in antagonizing someone simply because she or he disagrees with us on a matter that is not subject to testing and emperical verification.
Without Theistic Faith: The Default Position
Atheism, to us, equals being human. Since theism is an added attraction, as it were, which some but not all people have decided to make a part of their identity, an atheist is nothing more than a regular person. It is the theist who is
special, having added religious faith to what was originally a normal existence, that is, an atheistic existence — one without theism. The atheist is, has, and can be everything that the theist does with that one exception, because atheism is humanity
in its completeness.
The vast majority of atheists have little if any interest in (or response to) what religionists have to say about their own religious rituals and doctrines. A small percentage of us, however, have decided, for some reason, that it’s an atheist’s
burden to try to dissuade religious people from living their own lives in the way they think suits them the best. The admittedly limited experience of this writer suggests that a significant portion of those atheists are probably deconverted religionists,
former church members who have simply switched loyalty and membership. Such deconverts would naturally bring with them many of the trappings that are normally unique to religion. One of those trappings, of course, is the sense of urgency that some religious
sects give to the religious conversion experience. (Often this is entangled with the urgent need to join their particular sect).
They seem oblivious to a viewpoint that vastly more common among atheists.
A large fraction of we atheists treat our atheism as nothing less (and nothing more) than full-on humanity. (Now, this humanity just happens, by the way [in parentheses and then in square brackets, placed into a footnote and relegated relegated to the very
back of The Queue Of Importance], to be unencumbered by religious faith. Imagine that!)
Our atheism is so unimportant to us that we rarely even think about it!
The atheism of a born-and-raised atheist is not simply a religious viewpoint that has no gods. Instead, this “natural” atheism is everything that goes into human existence — except that it has none of the trappings unique to theism! Whatsoever!
For example: I was raised to think for myself. I could never fit in with most religious groups because I am wholly incapable of yielding this sense of autonomy to an authority figure — a god (rather, what a religious leader or body has told me that
the god wants from me). In addition, I’ve never been able to make membership in a group like that work for me because I’m unable to incorporate something into my life that’s supposedly important without it becoming all-important in my thinking.
I will never find balance in this respect. There is no equivalent to the church, the religion, in my experience.
Many deconverts experience the very inversion of this problem: they’ve never struck out on their own, as far as thinking for themselves goes. Similarly, it must be quite a challenge to replace something that’s been extremely important for so
long with — nothing (that is, nothing of importance). Their atheism, their replacement for theism, plays a much more prominent role in their lives, probably because it’s so tough to see that even the importance is missing in atheism.
While the former is the style of atheism we recommend through the Positive Atheism project, we are entirely sympathetic to just how difficult it often is to even see this relationship, much less to incorporate it into our new way of thinking.
A Luxury We Can’t Afford?
Many of us, theist and atheist alike, desire truth over personal happiness. Other people, however, refuse to acknowledge the data and evidence that comes their way, imagining that an outlook contrived by a socially shared myth might make
life easier. And it does, in the short run.
Such people are often preoccupied with the serious job of raising kids, etc, and have, for these reasons, forfeited their own right (if you will) to ponder the deeper questions. Of course: as the uncloseted atheist Thomas
Edison mentioned, thinking takes work!
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.
As ascerbic as the intentions of Glowing’s Own Designer may have been, it is not our purpose or desire here to fault or otherwise glower at those who do not share our devotion to learning and truth. Our only hope, in this regard, is that others might
grant us the same sense of graciousness, at least accepting if not understanding that openly atheistic people, on the whole, are simply incapable of fooling themselves when it comes to the bizarre claims made by the various religions.
A Necessity We Can’t Afford to Be Without!
MetaPad {Software} (PAM Pick!) Windows
NotePad on steroids! While you’ll want to use NotePad to create MS-DOS batch
(.BAT) files and Windows registry (REG) files,
you’ll probably find yourself using this for just about everything else — including the creation of the files you eventually intend to save out in Notepad!
