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Carnival of the Godless #43
The Carnival of the Godless is up over at Silly Humans! Michael did a great job of putting the carnival together on this fine Sunday. Go get godless! :-)
Welcome to the Carnival of the Godless!!
Today is Sunday, June 11th. I am your host - The Atheist Mama. ;-)
We have a lot of great submissions today. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!
Our first submission was written by Zachary Moore over at Goosing the Antithesis. He writes of a project that was taken on by the Atheist Spy. There are some pretty good points made here.
Is Atheism a Spiritual Orientation?
…some people are just born religious, and others are not- the obvious analogy is that of sexual orientation, and which the Atheist Spy refers to as a “spiritual orientation.”
Next we have a post written by “Agnostic” over at The Agnostic Reader. This is a great, short read. Agnostic discusses why he considers himself agnostic, and what he feels is more important than the worship of a possible God.The Irrelevance of God
Is there a God? Who cares?
The next submission comes from Richard over at Philosophy, et cetera. Here, he offers an interesting twist on “The Golden Rule.” Make sure you read the fascinating comments that follow.The Plutonium Rule
We’re all familiar with the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It famously suffers from the problem that others might have wildly different preferences from you. This has lead some to propose the Platinum Rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” That seems an improvement, though of course you can’t give everyone what they want, and doing so wouldn’t always even be good for them (say when people have ignorant or self-destructive desires). Still, I think the underlying idea here could be captured even better by what I will call - for want of a more sensible name - the Plutonium Rule…
Now we have a post over at Paul’s Tips. Paul talks about how intelligent people are conned, everyday, all over the world. He makes some great points! Religion isn’t mentioned in this particular post, but it’s safe to say that the same ideas can be applied.The easiest way to fool smart people
Most smart people have a hidden weakness and it’s that they’re absolute suckers for anything that sounds clever.
This is an interesting entry sent in by Steve at the Speculative Catholic. Apparently there is a race to get to the top of Technorati’s Archaeology blog list. The race is between an Evangelical and a Skeptic (there - a link for each of you :-).Claude vs. Martin
This post won’t affect the outcome either way, having an equal number of links to both sites, but I also blogrolled Claude to give him a bump. Why not do the same?
The next post was submitted by Chris Hallquist over at The Uncredible Hallq. As stated in the beginning of his post, Chris offers a summary and some commentary on a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the evidence for the resurrection. He links to the debate, which is a pretty lengthy .pdf file. Thanks for the summary Chris!!Craig-Ehrman debate
Ehrman began by explaining that the gospels are not ideal historical sources. They were written decades after the fact by noneyewitnesses. Ehrman describes in some detail how oral traditions were circulated, emphasizing just how many hands a story might have passed through before finally getting written down.
Our next submission comes from Ebonmuse over at Daylight Atheism. He discusses how most of humankind is helplessly dependant on a certain substance. Can you guess what it is?Fossil Fuels
Nevertheless, our technology has a weakness. Like the biblical King Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of a greatstatue with a head of gold and feet of frangible clay, there is a vulnerable point upon which the whole system depends.
Next, J.A. Bartlett over at Best of the Blogs talks about how our planet is treated as a rental apartment. How would things here be different if we treated the planet Earth as a home purchase instead??The Screen Door and the Apocalypse
Remember the apartment you had in college? The one with the toilet that ran all the time unless you jiggled the handle just right? The one with the screen door that always got stuck? You could have fixed the toilet or the screen door with a couple of dollars’ worth of materials and half-an-hour’s time, but you probably didn’t. You weren’t going to live there forever, so what difference did it make?
The next entry comes from GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted). She talks about how her Catholic neighborhood celebrated the Eve of The Rapture! $100 says that her neighbors are all still there…The Rapture of the Week
666? The Mark of the Beast? The End Times? Or is 666 the emergency number for the local fire department?
Next is a post that was submitted by Jon Swift at Jon Swift. He is talking about Ann Coulter and her shameless appearance on The Today Show to promote her book, Godless. He discusses how Ann attacked the widows of 9/11 for enjoying their position in the spot light.Ann Coulter Tackles the Menace of Widows and Grieving Mothers
Coulter is understandably frustrated at how the liberal media fawns over these women and hangs on their every word, while she has struggled to get her message out through the occasional television appearance, talk radio, college campus tours, her syndicated column, her website and her bestselling books.
Interestingly, and absolutely coincidental, our next entry comes from Modem Butterfly at the Neural Gourmet | Feed Your Brain where she begins with her own thoughts on Ann Coulter. She goes on to discuss how the Left is trying to “out-god” the Right lately.You say ‘godless’ like it’s a bad thing: politics and religion don’t mix
Mixing religion with politics has been a great way for the GOP to get votes, but it’s been a disaster for our nation. Why the Democrats seem to wish to join this healong rush to theocracy is beyond me.
The next entry is a hysterical piece from Mark over at the skwib. He talks about the unfortunate sectarian violence erupting between the Pastafarians (satire, of course).Pirates, Vikings and The Lost Boys
Like other Pastafarians, they believed that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But while other worshipers thought it was the declining number of pirates that has caused the increase in global warming,
hurricanes and earthquakes, Dr. Tundra had been preaching that, in truth, it was a lack of Vikings.
Noell, over at Agnostic Mom talks about a recent experience at a local wine bar and bistro. Was her experience about the wine? The music? Chemicals in her brain? Or was it God?Spirituality At Your Favorite Alcohol Distributing Venue
It was one of those experiences that will mean less to you as you read about it on your computer. You were not in the moment, but at the time, my heart swelled up to my throat and I felt how incredible it is to exist.
The next entry was submitted by hell’s handmaiden. The maiden talks about something very evil, and absolutely harmful. You’ll just have to go and read for yourself…The Five Letter Word
It is worse than the four letter words, and the four letter combos and permutations. It cuts deeper and infects the wound. Carlin’s list, original or revised, has nothing on this five character, two syllable utterance. Yet the FCC
doesn’t bat an eyelash.
Last, but not least, this entry comes from Greensmile at The Executioners Thong. This is an excellent post about gambling, and how we seem to belong to a “wagering species.” This is a great read!Something odd about playing the odds
I can’t quite put my finger on the nature of the error that lets us think we can manipulate the unknown. I suspect it is founded upon a less detectable error that makes us want to have control when the critical information is unavailable.
I hope that you enjoyed the submissions! Leave a comment and let us know what you think!!
Freethinking Women Jamboree 2
Ok, I admit it. I totally forgot about the last FWJ. I would have forgotten this week but we have a submission!!
This one is coming from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted). I think this is the first time I’ve visited this blog. It’s great (as are most of the blogs over at ScienceBlogs.
GrrlScientist writes a great piece entitled Audubon’s Aviary. She talks about her trip to the New York City Historical Society and the John James Audubon Exibition. Beautiful pictures, and great details on the paintings that really caught her eye!
Of course, next we have Girl Friday - #8: This Just In - War STILL On!. Jennie talks about her thoughts on the war in Iraq and how it is affecting wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and everyone else who is being touched by the conflict.
Jennie’s post on Iraq brings me to my own thoughts on Democracy. While listening to NPR this morning, I heard a man say that the exporting of democracy is undemocratic. Democracy is a government by the people. How is this something tha can be given to one country by another?? Isn’t this something that a country needs to accomplish on their own? Just a few thoughts on the subject…
Freethinking Women Jamboree 2 coming up!
The second FWJ will be this Friday (March 17).
We have no host yet (other than here) so if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll fill ya in.
Entries are due anytime before Friday!
Added:
Send them to fwjsubmissions_at_ theatheistmama _dot _ com
Freethinking Women Jamboree - The Début
Welcome to the first FWJ!
Unfortunately we have 0 entries. :-)
That’s ok, because we have had a little interest, and in time, I’m sure this “event” will grow.
There are a few things to mention though. Jen, over at For the Love of Bluegrass has posted her weekly “Girl Friday.” For those of you who don’t know, “Girl Friday” was the inspiration for FWJ. Every Friday, Jen profiles a woman in Bluegrass.
>Behind the biggest bands and the most important festivals is an intricate network of wives, business partners, mothers, sisters, and daughters, well known and relied upon by practitioners, but somewhat invisible to the rest of us.
Today, she takes a look at the life of Louise Scruggs, wife to Earl Scruggs. Make sure you drop by and take a look! Jen’s posts are always very touching.
As for me - today suddenly took on new meaning. My great aunt is at the hospital right now. I found out a few days ago that she has breast cancer. She’s about to have a mastectomy. What she isn’t sure of is if she’ll be waking with one breast, or no breasts at all. The doctors will be making that call while she’s in surgery.
Not only that, another woman in my life had a heart attack a few days ago. It’s another great aunt of mine, and the sister to the aunt who has breast cancer. She’ll be having angioplasty in the next couple of days.
Today, I urge the women and men reading this to think about health.
Ladies, make your appointments if you are due. You know what I’m talking about!
Men, help the women in your lives take care of themselves. Remind the to make that appointment. It may have slipped their minds. I know it slips my mind sometimes.
Take care!
Tomorrow is the day!
So the entries for “The Début” of the FWJ are due tomorrow.
Entries from MEN & WOMEN accepted!! Men, women are a big part of your lives!! We freethinking women affect you too.
The first Jamboree will be hosted here, and we need hosts for the future.
So don’t forget, mmm ‘kay?