Carnival Of The Godless #95
I discovered the Carnival of the Godless a few months back as a relatively new guy in the atheist blogosphere, so I thought I’d approach my first submission gently and managed to “ease” in 101 Atheist Quotes before the deadline. When the COTG was published my article got about 2000 hits a day for a whole week and I quickly realized the power of blog carnivals in getting work noticed.
It seemed appropriate to give something back to the blogosphere and the carnival, so when pleas went out for new hosts, I was one of the first to step up and offer my services. I want to say I planned ahead but I’m not a liar (although Ray Comfort would probably disagree), and I’m currently stuck writing an introduction to the carnival at 23:00 on the 5th July. It’s probably already gone on too long and everyone who has stuck with it so far would most likely want to skip to the actual articles (you are forgiven if you do so).
Given that I’ll probably still be finishing off this post at 2AM, I’m officially warning all hosts after myself:
For the sake of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, don’t leave it to the last minute!
With my email inbox full of interesting articles, there is only one thing left on the agenda. Please fasten your metaphorical seat-belts, sit back, and enjoy the carnival!
- Starting the carnival off is Evolved Rationalist with a debunking of the unusual Christian fundamentalist claim that “atheists do not do charity“. There is no truth in the claim of course, and in fact the atheist ends up the moral victor. Doing charity work for no personal gain beats doing it for fear of eternal suffering hands down.
- An interesting blog called Clashing Culture follows with an article about the so-called “Godless Academia” in education systems and how, contrary to some Christian opinion, only 4% of educators claim to be atheists. What is interesting about the blog itself is that of the four authors, two are atheist and two are Christian (hence the name Clashing Culture).
- Next up, Jeff Dembinski talks to a confused friend who badly needs a dictionary to look the up the difference between spirituality and religion. Yes, religion and spirituality are very difference, but if you think Jesus is your Lord and Saviour you are subscribing to a religious belief (namely Christianity).
- Ray from What Would Ray Do? carefully analyses and refutes a video making the idiotic claim that the Bible has been proved through science.
- No More Mr. Nice Guy has a go at answering a popular atheist meme that went around a few weeks back. Nobody tagged him (the shame!) so he did the honourable thing and tagged himself.
- Andrew Bernardin at The Evolving Mind comes forward with a very interesting twist on the old Paley’s watch argument used by IDiots to disprove Evolution. Whilst trying to prove that some things have a grand designer, Paley managed to both counter monotheism and support Evolution along the way.
- SocraticGadfly comments on a recent Pew Survey which claimed that 1 out of 5 irreligious people were atheists but believe in God. Was it an administration error? Or was it plain old clueless americans?
- On the subject of the Pew Survey, Ionian Enchantment has a more analytical article on its strange findings.
- Next we have an emotional story of kc from Nothing You Haven’t Seen Before, who describes her childhood and religious background, her inquisitive mind, he darkest moments, and finally her deconversion to atheism. This is part 1 of a lengthy but worthwhile story (part 2 is linked at the bottom).
- Diana Hsieh from NoodleFood sent in a letter to the editor concerning proposed theocratic amendments to the Colorado constitution. The letter was published in the Vail Daily.
- Just to show this carnival (and atheism) is for every person on the planet, I present a non-english piece by agni adhirurho which I deduced was about the report correlating higher intelligence with atheism. I have absolutely no idea which language the article is written in other than it is a symbol based language, and online translation tools have failed me so I’d love to know what it actually says.
- Tangled Up in Blue Guy reports how he managed to keep his cool and not resort to deity worship when a series of unfortunate events came down hard on him and his truck.
- PhillyChief argues against calling atheism a “lack of belief” in his aptly titled article, Who’s Lacking? Whilst I usually like to stay out of semantic discussions over the definition of atheism, his new approach does make a lot of sense.
- Greta Christina debunks and counters the arguments of liberal Christians that Jesus’ teachings promote love and tolerance, and instead shows us the messed-up teachings of Jesus.
- Archvillain comments on the anniversary of Darwin’s theory of Evolution and how on that day, religion devolved to the point of ignorance.
- Executed Today brings us an interesting piece about the execution of Frenchman Chevalier de la Barre for blasphemy in 1766.
- C. L. Hanson from Letters from a broad submitted a humourous account of her childs understanding of sexual reproduction, which is quite extensive for a 6 year old.
- larryniven eloquently counters Peter van Inwagens argument for God in “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on God?.
- Jeffrey Stingerstein from Disillusioned Words brings us two articles for this carnival; one countering the “atheists in foxholes” argument, and another going over the definitions of various atheism-related words.
- vjack from Atheist Revolution comments on the recent episode of 30 Days where a fundamentalist Mormon went to live with a homosexual couple who have adopted 4 children.
- Should atheists start organizing themselves? The Antichristian Phenomenon thinks so, and tries to answer some serious questions we all may have to consider.
- Possibly related the the article above, Atheist Ethicist writes about how to motivate atheists.
- Next up, a humourous story about a man whose head exploded when watching the *cough*documentary*cough* “Expelled“, from Jim Linville at SHUFFL.
Well thats all for this carnival! The next COTG will be held over at Sean the Blogonaut on July 20th.
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2000 hits a day?! However did you manage that? I’ve never gotten more than a 100 hits coming from a carnival (seeing the referrer field). Either people don’t like me that much or your article had a catchy title. Dunno.
Thanks for including the ACP btw. Cheers!
db0
6 Jul 08 at 4:53 pm (GMT)
The 2000 hits a day started with the Carnival, and then loads of people started including the article in their blog posts. It was quite good for a young blog :)
Adrian Hayter
6 Jul 08 at 4:57 pm (GMT)
Ah OK, it makes sense after I saw you were stumbledupon ;) I had the same effect with my 10 firefox extensions for the workplace that was stumbled. However it is that, not CotG unfortunately, that is the effect :)
db0
6 Jul 08 at 6:15 pm (GMT)
[...] Edition Number 95 is out now, and should provide a full Sunday of reading. I have a couple articles, one from here and one from Clashing Culture, but I would like to point out an especially good one on a conversion from Catholicism to Atheism. I found some parallels in her story to my own. The link is in the carnival, so you need to find it there, but I will just leave you a teaser as to what kc at Nothing You Haven’t Seen Before discovered: And I am angry. I’m very angry that at a very difficult point in my life the people that I mistakenly turned to for help were shoving church propaganda down my throat and showing me slide shows of dead babies. I’m angry about the fact that me and several of my friends wasted much of high school struggling to cut ourselves away from an emotionally abusive group of people and a culture that encouraged people to hate themselves, think they were unworthy sinners, and then beg for forgiveness. I am very angry that I let myself be manipulated into believing that my depression was punishment for lack of faith, and angry that I let my religious issues keep me from getting real help for so long. I am angry about many destructive effects of religious belief that are much, much bigger than my own experience. I am angry about enough things to fill an entire post. [...]
Carnival of the Godless #95 | Tangled Up in Blue Guy
6 Jul 08 at 6:58 pm (GMT)
Hooray! #21 is db0 and I, glad to see us up. And Atheist Revolution! Bah, that should be #1. I’ll have to dedicate a day to reading all of these, wow. :)
Blue Linchpin
6 Jul 08 at 9:12 pm (GMT)
[...] new Carnival of the Godless is at The Atheist Blogger. Go check it [...]
Friendly Atheist » Carnival of the Godless #95
6 Jul 08 at 9:54 pm (GMT)
This is extremely well done. Thanks!
Mark
6 Jul 08 at 11:27 pm (GMT)
I got that many a day over 2 days… that was when PZ, at Pharyngula, linked to my blog post about him getting expelled from Expelled.
SocraticGadfly
7 Jul 08 at 1:44 am (GMT)
Carnival of the Godless #95…
Carnival of the Godless #95 is posted at the aptly named The Atheist Blogger. It is really neat to see how much this carnival has both grown and matured ov ……
Atheist Revolution
7 Jul 08 at 1:48 am (GMT)
One of the cool things about CoG traffic is that it lasts for at least a few days. Of course, you’ve been doing pretty well positioning yourself in the various social networks too. Good to see. I Digg, Reddit, and Stumble you whenever I run across a post.
vjack
7 Jul 08 at 1:58 am (GMT)
I always submit my stuff the del.icio.us, reddit, digg, atheist spot. I used to submit to StumbleUpon but they have a stupid monitoring system that doesn’t allow you to submit stuff from the same site more than a few times (which in my opinion is pretty stupid for a site sharing website).
Adrian Hayter
7 Jul 08 at 2:07 am (GMT)
[...] visit my fellow blogger’s site, The Atheist Blogger, and read his blog and the other selections. As all bloggers will tell you, we LOVE comments… [...]
Blog Carnival: Carnival of the Godless #95 « My Exercise in Futility
7 Jul 08 at 2:53 am (GMT)
Re: number 11, that looks like Devanagari, used in India.
Stephen D. Moore
7 Jul 08 at 5:32 am (GMT)
[...] over to Atheist Blogger to read the latest Carnival of the Godless. Related Posts:Kieran to host Carnival of the Godless #97Carnival of the Godless [...]
Carnival of the Godless #95 is now up | Kieran Bennett
7 Jul 08 at 6:16 am (GMT)
[...] as I was reading the articles of the latest Carnival of the Godless, I happened upon a perticular one from the Socratic Gadgly which was making fun of the U.S. [...]
I wonder who’s the clueless American after all… » A Division by Zer0
8 Jul 08 at 10:37 pm (GMT)
[...] of similar beliefs together. Such philosophies seem to have been completely lost when I hosted the Carnival of the Godless two days ago. SocraticGadfly had an article on the Pew Survey which claimed that 1 in 5 atheists [...]
Socrazy Gadfly - The Atheist Blogger
9 Jul 08 at 12:51 am (GMT)
Hey! Where’d the above trackback disappear to? :P
db0
9 Jul 08 at 7:00 am (GMT)
It’s up. I had second thoughts about putting it up shortly after I initially did, but Gadfly hasn’t acted rationally despite apologizing.
Adrian Hayter
9 Jul 08 at 1:47 pm (GMT)
[...] 90th Skeptic’s Circle at at The Millenium Project. *The Carnival of the Godless at The Atheist Blogger. *The 109th Tangled Bank is up at Greg Laden’s Blog. [...]
The Uncredible Hallq » Carnivalia
11 Jul 08 at 1:23 am (GMT)
Nice job, even if mine didn’t make it. Thanks!
The Ridger
11 Jul 08 at 10:23 pm (GMT)
I am so fucking sick of these asshats posting the same ad VERBATIM for that Zacharias book.
PhillyChief
14 Jul 08 at 1:16 am (GMT)
PhillyChief,
Thanks for pointing that out. I’ve deleted the comment. It managed to wind up on my personal blog as well.
Adrian Hayter
14 Jul 08 at 1:29 am (GMT)