Path: solano.community.net!uunet!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail From: mathew Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.atheism.moderated,news.answers,alt.answers Subject: Alt.Atheism FAQ: Overview for New Readers Supersedes: Followup-To: alt.atheism Date: 18 Aug 1994 10:00:12 +0100 Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK. Lines: 213 Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Expires: 8 Sep 1994 09:00:04 GMT Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: sunforest.mantis.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Summary: Hi. Please read this before you post. Keywords: FAQ, atheism Xref: solano.community.net alt.atheism:125583 alt.atheism.moderated:4887 news.answers:27035 alt.answers:3997 Archive-name: atheism/overview Alt-atheism-archive-name: overview Last-modified: 6 July 1994 Version: 2.1 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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 . 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 mathew@mantis.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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6ui iQCVAgUBLhqD9HzXN+VrOblFAQGzJgP/SYjE+1vQ3xlVeky7czkXUIZ0rHY5kQ8g nxEDls3nZaVR6oZ/EkM0TminKG64htm85iLpWlpx0ow2Wm7QmGcXHJiybuz2iIVx nBGH9LggVfDdArqPn/qmfBiIKk/bOHcckFCxnXVqOhEUF0bDmfrJ60hVmPqkrs6d XSoYQBh82P0= =qCo8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- For information about PGP, send a blank mail message to pgpinfo@mantis.co.uk. -- http://www.mantis.co.uk/~mathew/ Seeking: Bug-tracking systems for UNIX, DOS and Windows which aren't GNATS. Information on Uniplex e-mail. Information on construction of housing using geodesic domes. Reasonably priced recumbant bikes.