In Carnival of the Godless 27, PZ Myers, the Sultan of Cephalopoda, was disappointed that the vast majority of submissions was negative in nature and issued a call for this edition to feature the “virtues of godlessness.” I supported this concept and indicated that I would accept his challenge if provided with appropriate material. Unfortunately, the overwhelming response of the godless blogging community was to completely ignore him. If I had included only the submissions that met his criterion, you would almost be done reading by now. However, I will begin the carnival with the only two such pieces I received.

I’ve mostly allowed the submissions to speak for themselves by providing a small snippet of each as a preview.

The Virtue of Skepticism
by Chris Hallquist – The Uncredible Hallq
Chris talks about how skepticism and doubt allow us to better understand the world and promote progress.

…questioning the answers we get to profound questions puts us that much closer to the truth. So often, the simple answers only push the question back one step further without improving the situation any. What is the meaning of life? Not sure, but focusing on human existence rather than UFOs or ancient superstitions seems the best route to an answer.

Thanks
by Brent Rasmussen – Unscrewing the Inscrutable
Brent provides an atheist’s perspective on Thanksgiving and thanks the real human beings who are important to him.

Atheists also celebrate Thanksgiving in America, but we don’t give our thanks to an invisible, magical nonexistent being. Instead we give our thanks to those who truly deserve it – our fellow humans. I give my “thank yous” to people, to my family, to my friends.

We now resume the regularly-scheduled criticism and vitriol (mostly).

Atheists Among Us
by UberKuh – UberKuh: The Artistic Atheist
UberKuh offers a stirring piece of prose about the presence and ever-growing visibility of atheists in society.

There are atheists among us. You will see them on the street, in the supermarket, in the mall. You will meet them at work and at parties. You will meet them in the restroom and at the gym.

Why Not Believe? Reasons Why Atheists Don’t Believe in Gods
by Austin Cline – About Atheism
Austin essentially teaches a survey course on atheism, providing an extensive list of reasons why we don’t believe in gods.

Once a person gets beyond the bias in favor of belief, though, they can realize something critical: the burden of support lies with those claiming that belief is rational and/or necessary. Believers fail to meet this burden, however, and as a consequence fail to provide any really good reasons to accept their claims.

Inside the Mind of a Christian
by vjack – Atheist Revolution
Vjack comments on a frightening post by a Christian blogger who considers crashing into an atheist’s truck as a pretext under which to proselytize.

I ended up on a blog which allowed me to journey into the mind of a typical Christian. This does not appear to be a preachy pro-Christian blog at all. Rather, this appears to be a fairly ordinary person who just happens to share the same beliefs that around 85% of Americans report.

The Forward that Started it All…
by addict_no_more – Musings of a Liberatheist
In her first substantive post on a brand new blog, “Addie” discusses her feelings about a religious email forward from a friend who is well aware of her atheism.

I think her reply serves to illustrate the problems with theists. They don’t need to find out truth. They just blindly believe, and if something claims to be something, well then it must be! Once I thought about it a bit, I wasn’t nearly as angry… just sad for her…

Irreducible Complexity Impossible
by Zachary Moore – Goosing the Antithesis
Zachary uncovers a logical Catch-22 that allows him to obliterate claims of irreducible complexity in ID “science.”

What if the Principle of Inexplicability is NOT falsifiable? In principle, an IC system can then be proposed and the conclusion of ID is much closer to being a genuine conclusion. However, by sacrificing falsifiability for coherence, the ID scientist has also sacrificed his ability to refer to his hypothesis as “scientific.”

A Theological Argument Against ID
by Melody – Two Cents
Melody looks at a Catholic theologian’s indictment of intelligent design on purely religious grounds.

If you do believe in a designer, creator, god, or transcendent supernatural being/force of any description, Intelligent Design is not the way to prove its existence. Choosing faith in a God of the Gaps will only lead to your god and your faith diminishing as your understanding of science and nature increases.

Science and Common Sense
by Jerry Monacy – Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, & Culture
Jerry looks at the relationship between science and common sense, focusing on cultural influence and counterintuitive scientific findings.

How is it possible to convince another person to see that, in order to have a conversation in the first place, our notions of evidence and rationality must be grounded in something beyond our amorphous worldviews and our subjective cultural assumptions? Statements like ‘biology is in the face,’ and supposed conclusions that the face shows human racial sexual preferences, and that the fact of human diversity ipso facto means that there are human racial sexual preferences, need to be shown through reason and evidence in order to be accepted.

Against the Just War Doctrine
by Ruy Diaz – Western Resistance
Ruy dismantles the Just War Doctrine clause by clause, providing counterexamples from history to emphasize his arguments.

I’m about to criticize, to the point of rejection, the Catholic Church’s Just War Doctrine, but before doing so, I want to give it its due. First of all, I wish the JWD or something akin to it had been followed in many instances, and thus many bloody, senseless conflicts had been avoided.

Christianity as an Inter-Subjective System
by Francois Tremblay – Goosing the Antithesis
Francois attempts to explain why atheism is considered by theists to be worse than opposing religious viewpoints.

In essence, the most ridiculous, absurd, offensive beliefs can be made credible by virtue of having a strong inter-subjective group. This is also why atheism is not inherently credible, as individual atheists are irrelevant as long as there is no systematized inter-subjective agreement between them.

Book Review: What is Death?
by Vasha – Unscrewing the Inscrutable
Vasha gives a thorough analysis of a new book on the nature of death.

It is common for theists to wonder how anyone can bear to think of death without believing in any type of existance after. Biologist Tyler Volk (of New York University) offers offers an array of approaches to answering this question in this elegantly-written and accessible book.

Let’s finish up with a few laughs. Here are two amusing, satirical posts on religion.

Raining Willie Pete on your Christmas Parade
by smijer – Smijer & Buck
Smijer gives us some insights into the progress of the war on Christmas, including some creative gift ideas for the theists in our lives.

Time for all good fundies to take to the airwaves in defense of Santa, the Baby Jesus, Mistletoe, and all that is Sacred, while Godless, Babyeating, Secularist, Liberal Multicultural, Department Store Owners take aim at the Spirit of Christmas with their Happy Holidays banners and Seasons Greetings cards and their Creche-Seeking Tactical Attorneys.

Ask General Kang: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?
by Mark A. Rayner – The Skwib
Interplanetary Overlord, General Kang, finds the curious Earth custom of religion very appealing.

Before I came to conquer Earth and discovered its excellent fungi, I’d never heard of religion. It’s something you humans have invented. Of all the species in all the worlds that I’ve become overlord of, yours is the only one that has the god groove.

Carnival of the Godless will return to its home turf (Unscrewing the Inscrutable) on December 11. Submissions must be received no later than December 9. See the carnival homepage for the full schedule and carnival rules.

The GOD or NOT carnival will be hosted right here on December 5. The next topic is ‘Miracles.’ See the carnival homepage for submission guidelines and a schedule of upcoming hosts.

The God is a Dick series will return next Sunday.

~I AM~