The Atheist Blogger

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!

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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).
4. Ray from What Would Ray Do? carefully analyses and refutes a video making the idiotic claim that the Bible has been proved through science.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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?
8. On the subject of the Pew Survey, Ionian Enchantment has a more analytical article on its strange findings.
9. 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).
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. Archvillain comments on the anniversary of Darwin’s theory of Evolution and how on that day, religion devolved to the point of ignorance.
16. Executed Today brings us an interesting piece about the execution of Frenchman Chevalier de la Barre for blasphemy in 1766.
17. 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.
18. larryniven eloquently counters Peter van Inwagens argument for God in “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on God?.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. Should atheists start organizing themselves? The Antichristian Phenomenon thinks so, and tries to answer some serious questions we all may have to consider.
22. Possibly related the the article above, Atheist Ethicist writes about how to motivate atheists.
23. 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.