This morning, when I was checking Planet Atheism, as I always do (like I've always said, I created it mostly for selfish reasons: I love reading what other atheist bloggers write, in a convenient place :)), I found a couple of references to ChallengeReligion.com. What's this, I thought? A new competitor?
So, naturally, I checked. Here are my first impressions: ChallengeReligion (CR from now on) is an interesting mix of a Digg, a Technorati, and a normal aggregator such as PA. It's like Digg because posts are ranked by popularity, like Technorati because it measures "popularity" according to incoming links from other blogs (unlike Digg, where people vote), and like an aggregator because you can then read posts from there -- though they only publish excerpts. I believe they do the latter because, unlike PA, they didn't ask permission from the bloggers; since they just publish excerpts, it's OK, I guess.
Oh, and it looks quite good, which is no surprise, as they have a whole team behind it... and many others. Yes, CR is just one of many Digg/Technorati/aggregators; they have others, about many different subjects. More power to them. :) I could create PA clones in minutes, too (though it would take time to get member blogs, since I prefer full aggregation, and that implies asking first).
It may be useful as a source of extra traffic, but it's not useful to me, because... "all together now..." I like to read blogs in a convenient place. :) Also, while the posts populary feature is interesting, it may also have its drawbacks; for instance, what if a blogger is publishing a series of posts, the first appears there, but the next ones aren't linked enough, and therefore never appear?
Note that I'm not actually criticizing CR or saying that there's something wrong with the concept; I just prefer a normal aggregator, which to me works like the "morning newspaper" (or afternoon, or evening, or whenever I open the page :)).
1 comments:
I challenge atheists who say we just don't have our brains in gear: 166 years ago Abbott' s 'Flatland' showed that contiguous geometrical worlds explain where God is and why we can't see him. So we wrote 'Techie Worlds' for mechanical people and did the scientific thing: we looked at Christian teachings like the Trinity, like resurrection, judgment, the idea of a soul. In contiguous geometrical worlds these things are logical and understandable, even though to 'this-world-only' atheists they are ridiculous imaginings.
We see a lot of belief in devils, in miracles, in good and evil spirits. Just talk with your friendly Wiccas and Satanists. Their recognition of spirit worlds makes it more probable that our view of the world is correct. Besides, there is Pascal's wager, pointing out that Christian belief can reward while atheism surely leads to death. The labels: Thinking, Logical, Reasonable, Rational really belong to Christians more than to those proudly acclaimed agnostics. Get a copy of 'Techie Worlds' from amazon.com and see the reasonableness of Abbott's explanation.
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