It's carnival time again!!! And a fantastic batch of godless thoughts have arrived in my inbox this past fortnight, so let's jump right in!!!On being an atheist
Twice tells a lovely deconversion story of how understanding a past religion led to new insight about religion in general. VJack follows with a letter to a new atheist. Riversider discusses atheist networking through "Internetionalism" and the symbolism of the circle.
Philosophy
No More Mr. Nice Guy gives us Footsteps: an atheist parable.
The skeptical alchemist gives a good discussion and explanation of framing atheism.
A couple of bloggers write to us about their experiences working things out in that strange space between religion and unbelief: Zen Atheist Cat's Got My Tongue and Questions of God.
And we have three posts covering different facets of the question of how religion and atheism relate to morals: Materialism's Foundation for Moral Agency, The Best Arguments for God’s Existence…and Why They Fail: The Argument from Morality, Some comments on religion.
Ethics + Behavoir
Aaron Ross Powell discusses how atheists should act with respect to religion, and on a related note, Stephen Littau is critical of atheists celebrating Fallwell's death, and how that affects public perception of atheists. The atheist ethicist in particular doesn't care for the fact that it's common in public discourse to slam atheists for the (supposed) good atheists would not do.
Speaking of how atheists should behave, Mojoey talks about small lies (including contempt of court).
And the behavoir of the religious? Misanthropic Bastard discusses How Religion Hurts The World: Division.
Religion + Politics
CapeTownDissentator gives an interesting overview (with statistics) of religion and politics in America.
Freedom of religion for other religious minorities affects freedom of/from religion for atheists. So let's have a look at some cases of less-favored religions seeking the same treatment as Christians: Damned Witches! and NC believes in magic....
We have some interesting new analysis of the religious right's favorite issues: abortion (If humans were marsupials) and gay marriage (Mitt Romney: Gay Marriage Makes Baby Jesus Cry). Then speaking of Mitt and Mormon political influence, Æsahættr tells us about religious political influence: Mormon style.
In other news, the Pope decries the evils of both capitalism and communism. Exmoron wonders what he's hoping to replace them with, and Advice Goddess suggests maybe religion should be on the list as well.
Religion + Culture
Mutant Cat translates Christian t-shirts, and in other Christian pop-culture fun Jul brings us some funny photos of signs you may be in the Bible Belt.
On the less-amusing side of Christian culture, the Voltage Gate describes "Quiverfull" as seen on TLC.
Creation Science
If creation is a science, then it should have a museum, right? Complete with dinosaurs!!! Well, it does, and we've got a couple of fun posts about it: Creatin' Science and Adam and Eve In The Land Of the Dinosaurs.
And who can forget everyone's favorite creationist media personalities, Cameron and Comfort? Axis of Jared offers $10k to anyone that can prove Ray Comfort isn't an idiot, and Unashamedly Atheist is kind enough to carefully explain the problems with Comfort's argument, in terms of an understanding of the mechanism by which something is made.
Miracles
Some people still believe in miracles though, and when they do, the skeptics are right there to say "You've got to be kidding...." The prize goes to finding Jesus in a plop of bird poop (is it even possible that's not a joke?). Then a skeptic visits a healing crusade and doesn't mince words about what a shameless scam it is, profiting from people's desperate hopes. Then Action Skeptics deconstruct another moneymaking miracle, The Seed Principle.
Reviews
We've got a batch of reviews for your reading pleasure: Aardvarchaeology reviews God, the Failed Hypothesis, Generative Transformation reviews The Albigen Papers, and The Uncredible Hallq reviews all of J.P. Holding's scholarship.
Stories
Saving the best for last, we have our stories. Rickey Henderson recounts his weekend of doom attending a Bat-Mizvah.
Then who could forget the most fabulous atheist-interest coming of age novel ever written? It's got all of the misadventures of youth through the eyes of Mormon teens and atheist young adults!!! Our heros are currently attending Youth Conference where we've seen Let the Manhunt Begin!, Doomed Unrequited Love, and Sexual Purity, with the conclusion Another Great Year at Youth Conference coming up soon!!!
That's it for this carnival -- the next one will be held June 10th at Action Skeptics!!!
Submit your post here to be included in the next Carnival of the Godless!!! (Or if it's more about Humanism, consider The Humanist Symposium.)
11 comments:
This carnival seems to get bigger every time. It really is encouraging to see such growth even during the brief couple of years in which I've been involved.
Hey VJack!!!
I know -- I was amazed by how many submissions I received!!!
That's one reason I felt I should mention "The Humanist Symposium" at the end. It's better to specialize than to just let this one get so big that it's not reasonable to expect people to read the whole thing. ;^)
oh so very nice! Thanks!
I was excited to find this carnival, and even more excited to see it's hosted by a fellow expat. Looking forward to reading more!
Thanks Mojoey, Thanks Jul!!!
If you could get Ham labeled a child abuser for teaching this stuff to kids, like Dawkins and PZ Myers suggest, you could get him thrown in prison.
Lets face it, isn't that where believers belong.
What a fascinating post. So many interesting and entertinaing links; it will keep me happy for hours!
I never knew about this carnival before. How encouraging to know it even exisits.
Hey Ulyanov!!!
The Creation Science Museum is dishonest and it's deliberately designed to decieve children about how science works, however I wouldn't go so far as to call it child abuse...
Hey Nicholas!!!
I think there are blog carnivals for just about every topic. ;^) CotG is a fun one though -- glad you liked this episode!!! :D
Thanks for the good work, Chanson. I know it's a lot of work and it's clear that you took the time to read each post so that you could present them thoughtfully.
Just thought I'd kiss ass a little between reads.
Thanks Mel!!!
It's true I read them all (as everybody should -- they're great!), but it wasn't really that much work to organize them by topic. It's less work than writing a careful original essay.
p.s. You don't need to brown-nose me -- I don't have any particular influence. If you're just hoping to earn incoming links, you'd be better off brown-nosing PZ Myers -- he can give you some quality incoming links!!! ;^)
Need ... need? Who said anything about that? It's my pleasure. :P
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