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- Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.atheism.moderated,news.answers,alt.answers
- Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!harlqn.co.uk!meta
- From: mathew <meta@harlequin.co.uk>
- Subject: Alt.Atheism FAQ: Overview for New Readers
- Message-ID: <overview_786566808@holly.cam.harlequin.co.uk>
- Followup-To: alt.atheism
- Summary: Hi. Please read this before you post.
- Keywords: FAQ, atheism
- Sender: meta@harlequin.co.uk (mathew)
- Supersedes: <overview_785772053@holly.cam.harlequin.co.uk>
- Organization: Harlequin Ltd, Cambridge, UK
- Date: Sun, 4 Dec 1994 18:46:50 GMT
- Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu
- Expires: Sun, 25 Dec 1994 18:46:48 GMT
- Lines: 193
- Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu alt.atheism:120562 alt.atheism.moderated:6388 news.answers:30551 alt.answers:6025
-
- Archive-name: atheism/overview
- Alt-atheism-archive-name: overview
- Last-modified: 6 July 1994
- Version: 2.1
-
- THE ALT.ATHEISM FAQ WEB
-
- Overview
-
- This is the ASCII version of the FAQ files for the Usenet newsgroups
- alt.atheism and alt.atheism.moderated. The FAQ files are regular
- postings aimed at new readers of the newsgroups.
-
- The hypertext version of the FAQ files is available on the World Wide
- Web at the following addresses:
- * http://www.mantis.co.uk/atheism/
- * http://bigdipper.umd.edu/atheism/
-
- All sites should contain the same documents, so pick whichever is
- nearest.
-
- For information about WWW, try the FAQ for the newsgroup
- comp.infosystems.www.
-
- Many newsgroups of a 'controversial' nature have noticed that new
- readers often come up with the same questions, mis-statements or
- misconceptions and post them to the net. In addition, people often
- request information which has been posted time and time again. In
- order to try and cut down on this, the alt.atheism groups have a
- series of five FAQ documents:
- 1. Overview for New Readers
- 2. Introduction to Atheism
- 3. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- 4. Constructing a Logical Argument
- 5. Atheist Resources
-
- Each item is reposted to the newsgroups at least once a month, with
- "Alt.Atheism FAQ" at the start of the subject line.
-
- This is Part 1, the Overview. Please read Sections 2 and 3 before
- posting to the newsgroups. The others are entirely optional.
-
- You might be impatient to post, and you might not want to read a
- lengthy document. If that's the case, take a look at the Quick Index
- of FAQ topics to see if your posting is covered somewhere.
-
- If you are new to Usenet, you may also find it helpful to read the
- newsgroup news.announce.newusers. The articles titled "A Primer on How
- to Work With the Usenet Community", "Answers to Frequently Asked
- Questions about Usenet" and "Hints on writing style for Usenet" are
- particularly relevant. Questions concerning how news works are best
- asked in news.newusers.questions.
-
- Credits, corrections and copyrights
-
- Please send any changes or corrections to mathew
- <meta@harlequin.co.uk>
-
- The plain ASCII text versions of the alt.atheism FAQ files are free;
- you may distribute them to anyone you wish. The hypertext (HTML)
- versions are not free (yet), so please ask before distributing
- copies or mirroring them.
-
- Please do not re-post copies of the ASCII documents to alt.atheism; it
- does nobody any good to have multiple versions of the same document
- floating around the network.
-
- People sometimes ask whether the FAQ documents are original, and if
- so, who wrote them. It's not an easy question to answer. Some parts I
- wrote myself; many others were contributed by the readers of
- alt.atheism and of other Usenet newsgroups. The articles are therefore
- a massive collaborative effort, of a sort which would not have been
- possible without electronic networking.
-
- I have written, rewritten and edited a great deal of material, but
- these FAQ files would not have been possible without the efforts of
- hundreds of people. In particular, I'd like to thank the following
- people for their contributions (in no particular order):
-
- kck+@cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge)
- perry@dsinc.com (Jim Perry)
- NETOPRWA@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu (Wayne Aiken)
- chpetk@gdr.bath.ac.uk (Toby Kelsey)
- jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
- geoff.arnold@East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold)
- torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
- kmldorf@utdallas.edu (George Kimeldorf)
- roe2@quads.uchicago.edu (Greg Roelofs)
- arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
- madhaus@netcom.com (Maddi Hausmann)
- J5J@psuvm.psu.edu (John A. Johnson)
- dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
- mayne@open.cs.fsu.edu (William Mayne)
- ajr@bigbird.hri.com (Andy Rosen)
- stoesser@ira.uka.de (Achim Stoesser)
- bosullvn@unix1.tcd.ie (Bryan O'Sullivan)
- lippard@ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
- s1b3832@rigel.tamu.edu (S. Baum)
- ydobyns@phoenix.princeton.edu (York H. Dobyns)
- schroede@sdsc.edu (Wayne Schroeder)
- baldwin@csservera.usna.navy.mil (J.D. Baldwin)
- D_NIBBY@unhh.unh.edu (Dana Nibby)
- dempsey@Kodak.COM (Richard C. Dempsey)
- jmunch@hertz,elee.calpoly.edu (John David Munch)
- pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
- rz@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Richard Zach)
- tycchow@math.mit.edu (Tim Chow)
- simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
- PHIMANEN@cc.helsinki.fi (Pekka Himanen)
- MINER@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Ken Miner)
- mayoff@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Rob Mayoff)
- hhallika@tuba.calpoly.edu (Harold Hallikainen)
- mmwang@mv.us.adobe.com (Michael Wang)
- lwloen+@rchland.ibm.com (Larry Loen)
- pmt6jrp@leeds.ac.uk (Dr J. R. Partington)
- Andrew.Martin@prg.ox.ac.uk (Andrew Martin)
- dpw@sei.cmu.edu (David Wood)
- mmestern@cs.uct.ac.za (Mark Mestern)
- roorda@cs.rug.nl (Dirk Roorda)
- ai815@freenet.carleton.ca (greg erwin)
- edis@eta.pha.jhu.edu (Taner Edis)
- dt650@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (David J. Mullenix)
- adept@yar.cs.wisc.edu (Mark McCullough)
- jpinto@speedway.net (John Pinto)
- jss@lucid.com (Jerry Schwarz)
- s2361905@techst02.technion.ac.il (Sharon Roy)
- eeinma@eeiuc.ericsson.se (Niall McAuley)
- mbarry@u.washington.edu (Matt Barry)
-
- ...and countless others I've forgotten.
-
- Disclaimer
-
- The editor of these FAQ documents has attempted to verify the accuracy
- and correctness of the information contained in them, as far as is
- metaphysically possible. Mistakes can and do happen, and so far it
- seems no omnipotent beings have intervened to correct them. If you use
- the information in these FAQ documents, you do so at your own risk.
-
- However, the editor hereby guarantees that reading these documents
- will not cause your soul to perish in eternal damnation. Offer void
- where prohibited by natural law.
-
- Finding Stuff
-
- If you are on Usenet, the ASCII versions of all the FAQ files should
- be somewhere on your news system. Here are some suggestions on what to
- do if you can't find them:
- 1. Check the newsgroup alt.atheism. Look for subject lines starting
- with "Alt.Atheism FAQ:".
- 2. Check the newsgroups alt.answers and news.answers for the same
- subject lines.
- 3. If you don't find anything in Steps 1 and 2, your news system
- isn't set up correctly, and you may wish to tell your system
- administrator about the problem.
- 4. If you have anonymous FTP access, connect to rtfm.mit.edu
- [18.181.0.24]. Go to the directory /pub/usenet/alt.atheism, and
- you'll find the latest ASCII versions of the FAQ files there.
-
- FTP is a a way of copying files between networked computers. If
- you need help in using or getting started with FTP, send e-mail to
- mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with
-
- send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/faq
-
-
- in the body.
- 5. There are other sites which also carry news.answers postings. The
- article "Introduction to the news.answers newsgroup" carries a
- list of these sites; the article is posted regularly to
- news.answers.
- 6. If you don't have FTP, send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu
- consisting of the following lines:
-
- send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources
- send usenet/alt.atheism/faq
- send usenet/alt.atheism/introduction
- send usenet/alt.atheism/logic
- send usenet/alt.atheism/resources
- 7. There's a small FTP site at ftp.mantis.co.uk [193.129.10.1] which
- carries articles relating to alt.atheism. Look in the directory
- /pub/alt.atheism/faqs, and please READ THE README FILE.
- 8. (Last resort) Mail meta@harlequin.co.uk, or post an article to the
- newsgroup asking how you can get the FAQ files. You should only do
- this if you've tried the above methods and they've failed; it's
- not nice to clutter the newsgroup or people's mailboxes with
- requests for files. It's better than posting without reading the
- FAQ, though! For instance, people whose email addresses get
- mangled in transit and who don't have FTP will probably need
- assistance obtaining the FAQ files.
-
- mathew
- <meta@harlequin.co.uk>
-