And from Christine, “This is one of the easiest-to-navigate, most-inviting Carnivals I’ve seen. Very nicely done!”

I hope to be able to create such a satisfactory COTG again. (Fortunately, this time I didn’t get repeated submissions about how “The Secret” is real, but I did get some pro-God submissions, yay.)

Not only is today a day that we are, once again, robbed of a precious hour, but it is also International Women’s Day. Please, in some way, celebrate the fact that none of us would be here were it not for women, and mourn the fact that women are still treated like second-class citizens (or much worse) all over the world today.

And now, without further French, Carnival of the Godless #112!

Oz Atheist suggests that you should Never put your cashews to the side. I know that whenever I buy cashews, I can’t stop eating them! However, Oz Atheist tells the sad story of someone who did put her cashews to the side, and how that’s an analogy for how religious people live their lives.

One evening she was having Chinese chicken and cashews for dinner at a relatives. As she found a cashew she would put it aside on her plate so she could enjoy all the cashews at the end of her meal.

Oz Atheist follows up his Cashew article with The Helicopter, or “somewhere someone is having a worse day than you.”

Recently whilst on a short jog (and thinking how my life had turned to shit) the rescue chopper flew overhead. I looked up and thought, “if you need the rescue chopper then you must be in serious trouble.”

Guest poster Mathurine at Tree Dreamer answers a collection of Questions for Ex-Muslims:

I don’t have an agenda against Islam, I’m not doing this because I suffered some trauma at the hands of Islam. Rather, I would like people to know some of the other aspects of the religion – the questions and answers you’re not going to get from your local mosque or Muslim Students Association.

A few articles dealt with the questions for atheists that Lee Strobel submitted to Friendly Atheist:
Hank at Dangerous Intersection follows up on those questions with some questions of his own for theologists and apologists in I ask; will the apologists answer?

How do you discount other religions, many with an equal or greater number of followers, which make similar claims to divine inspiration? How do their various claims of divine inspiration, miraculous occurrences and absolute moral authority fail to meet your standards of evidence?

and Friar Zero at Apple of Doubt joins the gang of atheist responders with his own answers to Strobel’s questions in An Atheist Snipe Hunt.

[Strobel's] questions are not the silver bullets that some seem to believe. They are not the best arguments against atheism or the questions most likely to plant the seeds of conversion in the godless.

finally, Conversational Atheist challenges Strobel in Response to: Who Would Die for a Lie?

Then Ask: Is a supernatural explanation allowed in order to explain the claims of Jesus’ disciples that they witnessed him resurrected and the 500 people that Paul talked to?

If no: then the person you are talking to isn’t a Christian. Simply explain that one cannot embrace the supernatural in his/her version and forbid others from using it in their explanations.

If yes: Propose the following situation:

The disciples were possessed by spirits who claimed that Jesus was resurrected.

Anthroslug thinks about morality in Thinking About Morality.
(Morality is a theme I’ve been assaulted with a lot in the past few weeks)

That religion is not the bulwark of morality against a rising tide of social ills is further illustrated by the fact that the non-religious make up a smaller portion of the prison population than of the general population. Independent of the question of whether or not religion causes social ills (a very complex question outside the scope of what I am writing here), it should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that if religious belief was in fact the source of morality, then belief in gods would correlate with higher rates of moral behavior, but this proposition is demonstrably false.

Cereal at Separate Spectrum (Your daily dose of bible thumping fun-time) addresses Systems of Right and Wrong.

I think it’s time for a new outlook on how we treat the guilty of our “people’s democratic justice system.”

From the Best Blog Names file, Wenchypoo at Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket compares the relationship between followers and the church to the relationship between citizens and the government, with regard to belief and expectations, in A Faith-Based Nation.

For decades, certain segments of our society have put blind faith in government in the same way that some put blind faith in a god. Like the so-called “miracles” of loaves and fishes, parting the Red Sea, walking on water, and so forth, our own government is expected to do similar things…

Ila, trying to find a place in the world, asks What is atheism? Rather than settling with a mere (stereotypical) definition, Ila, instead, encourages atheists to reach beyond disbelief, but in a positive way.

I cross referenced these two terms in the dictionary and came with “The doctrine or belief that there is no God. A lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.” and “Someone who denies the existence of god.” But i would like to see atheism in a different perspective.

Mark Koester at The Mystic Atheist (Understanding what it means to be “the still point of the turning world”) compares the Word of God (a story already told) to The Word of Science: A Story Still to Tell

Atheists often find blatant error in religious people’s claim at truth and meaning in such sources. But such a judgment ignores that people generally don’t look at these stories and communities through the lenses of scientific reasoning but through the lenses of a broader, more primordial human phenomenon: narrative truth and storytelling.

Cubik’s Rube disassembles Pascal’s Wager, explaining why the gambit isn’t convincing to non-believers.

His most famous argument for believing in God, based on his analysis of the odds and outcomes of belief versus disbelief, is repeated more often than any twelve episodes of Friends on late-night satellite TV channels, and judging by the way it’s often used, has shown as little progress or development in the three centuries or so since it was first proposed, as Ross did over ten seasons.

Greta Christina addresses the origin of the “Shut up, that’s why” arguments against atheists and atheism in Curiosity and the “Shut Up, That’s Why” Argument. Greta’s summary:

Why are conversations between atheists and believers often so frustrating for both sides? And is there anything we can do to make those conversations go better? The thesis of this piece: In atheist/ theist debates, atheists assume that believers are insatiably curious and looking for a consistent and plausible worldview… and believers assume that atheists are looking for an appealing worldview and a peaceful resolution to the conflict. We need to recognize these differing, cross-purpose goals if we want these conversations to be productive.

Sound byte:

I think that, when we argue with theists, atheists tend to assume that of course theists want to know the truth. Of course they want to follow the God question to its logical conclusion. Don’t they?

and then Greta Christina, in Atheism and the Argument from Comfort, counters the argument that religion offers comfort while asserting that atheists should stop arguing against it. Greta points out flaws in the argument and offers strategic suggestions on how to deal with the believers who make it.

It’s an argument that tends to drive atheists batty… since it’s not, in fact, an argument. It’s an emotional defense for hanging onto an argument that’s already been lost.

Romeo Vitelli at Providentia tells the tale of an almost forgotten tragedy from history, in Fallen Women.

Long before Dan Brown and his DaVinci Code, the legend of Mary Magdalene was a strong part of early Church doctrine. Despite the lack of any scriptural basis, the tradition of Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute who found salvation through repentance made her the natural patron saint for convents in which “problem” women could be redeemed.

Luke Muehlhauser at Common Sense Atheism analyzes The Explosion of Early Christianity, (Explained), asserting that it’s simple math, not a miracle, and it’s much less impressive than the growth of Mormonism or atheism in the 20th century.

Exponential growth explains the explosion of Christianity perfectly. In fact, it also explains why Christianity seemed insignificant until about 300, when it suddenly became a huge force in the Roman Empire.

SocraticGadfly shares some poetic reflections on religious outcasts, starting with the literal ones in India, in Outcasts in the name of gOd.

In the American South, in the land of cotton,
Old bible passages were not forgotten
But were twisted, to look away from the evil
Of black slavery in Dixie land.

Eric Michael Johnson at The Primate Diaries (Notes on science, politics and culture from a primate in the human zoo) discusses a new study about the origins of moral disgust in The Bad Taste of Moral Turpitude.

The greed and avarice responsible for the current economic meltdown has resulted in a growing distaste for business as usual. As it turns out, evolution may explain just why this is.

Angus Stocking at Belief Systems and Other BS asks a profoundly simple but ignored question about the nature of the Christian god in relation to that deity’s alleged son, in Oh Jesus.

In fact, Jesus appears to be stating in the plainest language possible the core message of all mysticism: that even though humans live in separation, union is possible – that we poor, pitiful, separate and alienated humans can, by grace, directly experience unity with the divine.

As Crowley said of Jesus, “I don’t blame the man for the religion foisted upon him after his death.”

Seth at Whiskey Before Breakfast tells us the story of the skinny gay kid.

Kids, if your parents are a hypocritical, child beating, cable stealing, environmentally moronic creationist fuckwad Methodist Deacon and his cowering sycophant of a wife, do not bring your crazed, hard drinking, drug taking, sexually liberal debate veteran friend home to stay for Easter Weekend.

(Nominating that for the quote of the year)

Matt Pritchard at Christian 2.0 (not an atheist blog, but the article does relate to atheism, and I felt it was fair to post it here) posts a compilation of conversations between himself and atheists from the atheist blog site Uniform Velocity, and asks (apparently Christians) whether their aim is to mend or to destroy when conversing with atheists, in Atheism: Mend or Destroy? Of course, the author could have been asking atheists. Perhaps both.

To the Christian reader: I want to show that it is possible to have a real conversation with someone who holds different beliefs, about their beliefs (or non-belief), without being hostile.

Danny Boy at Verbal Razors writes about The god of the gaps.

We have much to be thankful to our current state of knowledge. But just as we are marching forth into the future, people still stuck in the past are planting their feet in the ground and demarcating areas where our inquisitive spirits must not go.

Ron Britton at Bay of Fundie (Keeping the Radical Right at Bay) hammers Creationist Kevin Wirth’s article promoting the teaching of intelligent design in schools, in This Dork Couldn’t ID Farce if it Were Designed by God.

The ridicule and the insults are for our amusement! Watching you creationists is like going to the old circus freakshow and laughing and pointing at the freaks, but without the guilt!

PhillyChief at You Made Me Say It… explores the need to indulge the inner child and imagination, and what happens when you don’t, in Inside-Out Jammies.

The past two days were fun escapes from reality, indulgences in the unrestrained fun, excitement and imagination of childhood. I don’t see any serious harm in such escapes, and certainly I don’t see why one’s imagination must be shelved along with other toys and trinkets of childhood.

Chris Hallquist at The Uncredible Hallq examines The Plantinga-Dennett debate.

On the “low” half of the argument, Plantinga has some ideas about how maybe false beliefs could work out to be adaptive, somehow, but none of it amounts to a real argument that the odds actually are against us.

Samson Blinded (a Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict) suggests that Christian friends might not be ours.

A Christian state of America rather than Muslim Egypt forced Israel to give away the Sinai. Christian powers finance the Arab wars with Israel by oil purchases, and enable those wars by selling Arabs advanced weapons.

Z at It’s the Thought that Counts shares a thought experiment to illustrate how it’s possible to have moral principles regardless of your belief in God, or in the absence of a god’s commandments, in Choosing between God and Satan.

So let’s imagine that two beings manifest themselves to you, both claiming to be God, and both demonstrating extreme power, far beyond your comprehension. How do you tell them apart?

Last, but not least, Andrew at Evaluating Christianity explains Why The “Minimal Facts” Model is Unpersuasive.

The underlying problem is one of selection bias: if an intelligent and informed person thinks the Bible is probably true and therefore significant, he or she is more likely to pursue a career in biblical study and then publish his or her findings (confirming that the Bible is true). If, however, an identically-qualified person thinks the Bible is probably false and therefore not significant, he or she is dramatically less likely to trundle off to seminary regardless, and is exponentially less likely to publish his or her findings confirming that the Bible is false.

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Thank you for your submissions and your support!

Please keep submitting on the rolling Carnival of the Godless submission site. The next COTG host will be at Daylight Atheism.

It’s not easy not believing in God in the USA. That’s why a group of non-believers is trying to shed the strident image of past atheists by promoting a better side of those sitting on religion’s sidelines.

Being an atheist is not easy in this age of great public religiosity in America. Not when the overwhelming majority of Americans profess some form of belief in God. Not when many believers equate non-belief with immorality. Not when more people would automatically disqualify an atheist for the presidency (53%, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll) than a gay candidate (43%), for example, or a Mormon (24%).

Anti-atheism might have found its ugliest public expression during an episode in the Illinois Legislature this spring. As atheist activist Rob Sherman attempted to testify against a $1 million state grant to a church, Rep. Monique Davis railed, “This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children. … It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! … You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying!”

Lest we dismiss the legislator’s harangue as an anomaly, consider the organizations that bar atheists from membership — the Boy Scouts of America and American Legion, to name two, as well as some local posts of the Veterans of Foreign Wars — and the conspicuous absence of openly atheist politicians on the national stage.

Mindful of atheism’s reviled reputation, a new current in non-belief is intent on showing the public what atheists are for. You might be surprised by what’s on their short list. Because, save for the belief-in-a-deity part, it sounds a lot like what most Americans value. Care for one’s community and fellow human beings, love of country and cherished American principles, the pursuit and expansion of knowledge — these are the elements of the new “positive atheism.

Read the full article here

-HAL