Carnival of the Godless #40

Welcome to the 40th edition of the Carnival of the Godless! It's been a while since I last hosted this carnival (the 3rd edition back in February 2005) so it is nice to see that CotG is going strong and getting stronger. With no further ado, and without any especially-creative thematic hosting, let's dig into excellent entries I received over the past two weeks....

Jeff G of Stop That Crow! wrote about Religious Beliefs in Science and Politics:

"Have you ever been engaged in a debate with somebody online, probably concerning evolution, and you come to realize that something fishy is going on?"

Jeffperado from The Big Picture analyzes Cameron's Creationism. The post is about a short video that Kirk produced, which has in its first five minutes a "refutation" of evolution and "proof" of creationism:

"Creationism in all its forms (Intelligent Design, Old Earth Creationism, and Young Earth Creationism) has as its main weapon a certain intuitiveness to it."

TNG of Neural Gourmet asserts that Bavarian Catholics hate cartoons too:

"Just because something is a humorously drawn image meant to invoke laughter doesn't mean it can't offend your sensibilities."

Zachary Moore of Goosing the Antithesis develops, then demolishes, the Argumentum ad Bananum:

"Now, I realize that in the realm of Christian apologetics, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are low-hanging fruit, but what the hell, it’s Friday, and they’re always good for a laugh."

No More Mr. Nice Guy! reviews the book and the whole hullaballoo surrounding it in The Da Vinci Homeland Security Color Code:

"The Da Vinci Code may be a piece of fluff, but if it gets people thinking for themselves, and questioning authority instead of blindly swallowing the pablum that is spoon-fed to them, it will have achieved something worthwhile."

The top-down ur-capitalist monopolies are anti-thetical to free markets but go well with religious hierarchies. The Radical Libertarian makes that excellent point (though we may quarrel about terminology) in Religion - the prime enemy of anarchy:

"Why should we expect religion to be the worst enemy of free markets? Because religion is a form of discrimination that is beyond rhyme or reason. Usually, in a free market, discrimination is not profitable."

GreenSmile of The Executioner's Thong has been on the roll lately. No way I could make choices among these three posts, so here they are - all three for your reading pleasure:
Who's Counting? is a humanist understanding of the notion of Karma.
One Man's Dignity is his Neighbor's Indignity takes a stab at why suicide is so disconcerting to people who believe in an afterlife.
Irreducible Beauty is the argument that a fear of "reductionists" killing our sense of wonder is a boogeyman argument. Awe, if anything, expands with expanding knowledge ... but that approach does require more vigor than ignorant worhsiping:

"I consider those of us who trust there is irreducible beauty in this world to be the lucky ones."

Mark A. Rayner of the Skwib: Ask General Kang: What do you do when you ask God to smite your enemies, but no smiting ensues?:

"Ah, you human monkeys and your penchant for violent fiction!"

Do I need say more?

Les of Stupid Evil Bastard provides yet another example of how Christianity undermines your ability to reason (hint: Nigeria):

"Namely that if you’re willing to buy into the idea of an invisible sky daddy on the basis of faith alone then you’re pretty much a prime candidate for every scammer and conman out there."

Brent Rasmussen at Unscrewing The Inscrutable on Angry Atheists:

"Rabbi Marc Gelmann of the "God Squad" newspaper column makes up a strawman called an "Angry Atheist" and then tries to "understand" it. UTI's tagline, "I'm not angry, I just don't agree with you," never seemed so appropriate."

The Uncredible Hallq understands very well why Rabi Gellman doesn't get it:

"So yes, many atheists are angry, with good reason."

CFeagans of Hot Cup of Joe wrote a book review of 'Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life':

"Having read much of the work of Richard Dawkins, my curiosity overcame my general disdain for theological writings and I promptly added the text to the pile under my arm & checked them out with the librarian."

This came in late, but it is so good, I just have to include it anyway. Punkass Marc from PunkAssBlog wrote an excellent analysis of the similarities between organized religion and organized crime: Jesus: I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. Also, if I refused to include this post, I was going to get a horse's head delivered to my bed tonight (Marc has some VERY powerful friends)...

It kinda works that way, doesn’t it? Either you’re an unquestioning friend to the Don, in which case you get tons of perks, or you’re an enemy, at which point you find a horse head (your soul) in bed (aka eternal hellfire damnation).

Next edition of the Carnival of the Godless will appear in two weeks from today on Frank's Atheistic Ramblings. Send your submissions to cotg-submission@brentrasmussen.com, as usual, and see you all there.