The new site went live sometime late last night, and our technical help slaved away to try and get everything working, if not beautiful. Check out Freethoughtblogs some time today, and say what you think. I’ve created a thread to collect suggestions and criticisms as we shake out the bugs, fine-tune everything, and eventually, make it pretty.

A new blog network is hitting the web on August 1. Led by two of the most prominent and widely read secular-minded blogs in the country – PZ Myers’ Pharyngula and Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars – Freethoughtblogs.com will, we hope, quickly become and important gathering place for atheists, humanists, skeptics and freethinkers in the blogosphere.

Freethoughtblogs will be more than just a place for people to read the opinions of their favorite bloggers. It will be a community of like-minded people exchanging ideas and joining forces to advocate for a more secular and rational world.

The network will launch Aug. 1 with a handful of blogs with many more to be added after the first three months of operation. Here are the six blogs that will lead the way:

Pharyngula. PZ Myers has built one of the most popular atheist blogs in the world. Never one to shy away from controversy, Myers has built an astonishing following over the last few years and has traveled around the world speaking to skeptical audiences. As a PhD biologist he is the scourge of creationists everywhere but he takes on a wide range of subjects in his blogging, including religious criticism, women’s rights and progressive politics.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Ed Brayton was raised by a Pentecostal and an atheist, sealing his fate forever as someone who is endlessly fascinated by how religion intersects with other subject, particularly science, law, history and politics. He is a popular speaker for secular organizations around the country, has appeared on the Rachel Maddow show and is pretty certain he’s the only person who has ever made fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

The Digital Cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are shy and elusive creatures; when necessary, they hide in their own ink. This particular cuttlefish has chosen as its habitat the comment threads of science, religion, and news sites, where it feeds on the opinions of those who are emboldened by the cloak of internet anonymity. Cuttlefish is an atheist, a skeptic, and is madly, passionately in love with science. The Digital Cuttlefish has, since October of 2007, been a repository of commentary and satire, usually (but not exclusively) in verse and now moves to Freethoughtblogs.

This Week in Christian Nationalism. Chris Rodda is the author of “Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History.” Since the release of her book in 2006, Chris has been blogging at Talk2Action.org and Huffington Post about the use of historical revisionism in everything from education to legislation. Chris is now launching her own blog on Freethoughtblogs.com that will accompany her weekly podcast, This Week in Christian Nationalism.

Zingularity. Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew is a 40 something former stock and bond trader and one time moderate conservative. He grew up in the Southwest and has long been fascinated by science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics, and astronomy. He is a frequest contributor to the popular progressive website Daily Kos and now blogs at Zingularity, where legit science disappears forever down an event horizon of petty snark and cynicism.

Comradde PhysioProffe. The pseudonymous PhysioProffe is, as the name suggests, a physiology professor at a private medical school who blogs about politics, academia, food, booze and sports. Not necessarily in that order.

This is only the beginning. Over the next few months we will add many more blogs to the network, including Greta Christina’s brilliant blog, a new companion to the award winning Reasonable Doubts podcast and many others.

Many more blogs will be added — we’ve got a list. We haven’t asked for them, but I’ve also got people already asking to join up…we’ll see. We’re planning on controlled, sensible growth, so look forward to incremental improvements.