No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Happy Twenty-First Carnival of the Godless!

It's carnival time here at No More Mr. Nice Guy! Welcome to the twenty-first Carnival of the Godless. We have quite a turn-out today, with about twenty floats celebrating god-free living, rationality, and the occasional bit of snarkiness.

Leading the parade is PZ Myers of Pharyngula, with a cranky manifesto: "Warning: this weblog is run by an atheist." His message: atheists are not gonna stay in the closet! Amen brother, so to speak.

Jeff Shaumeyer at Bearcastle Blog has a more conciliatory tone on how Christians can accept the apparent contradictions between science, especially evolution, and what their scripture tells them. In "Mystery and Creationism", he suggests that believers takes these words to heart: "Truth cannot contradict truth. Believing Christians should accept the perceived contradiction as a mystery, rejoice in it and move on." Heh heh... pretty sneaky, Jeff.

Religious attacks on evolution are on many bloggers' minds in the wake of George Bush's endorsement of teaching "intelligent design". Kid Various at The Idiom laments, in "Oh Man, Why Does He Say This Kind Of Stuff?" "Why do let him go unscripted like this? What could this possibly get us? Solidify the base? What does he need that for? All this does is make it more difficult to prosecute his agenda, including The War." I feel your pain, Kid.

Amid disturbing signs that the Catholic Church is backing off from its previous stance in support of evolution, Ricardo Azevedo of Newton's Binomium, in a post called "Murky Waters" is encouraged by some remarks of George Coyne, the Director of the Vatican Observatory. "If he got rid of the God bit, then we would be in almost complete agreement."

In "Quit pretending they're compatible", Chris Hallquist of The Uncredible Hallq comments on a Slate article on evolution and religion. Somewhat confusingly, it's the Slate article that says religion and evolution are incompatible, and Chris feels that this argument is counter-productive. I'm reminded of the response of the wife of the Bishop of Worcester on learning of Darwin's theory: "Let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known."

Over at Atheist Revolution, vjack asks: "What if Religion Isn't the Core Problem?" He considers the possibility that religion is a tool used by those in power to manipulate the people in service to a larger strategy.

A Rational Being would no doubt completely agree. In "Intelligent Wedge", he makes the case that ID is simply being used as a wedge issue. Expect to hear lots more IDiocy as the 2006 U.S. elections approach.

Personally, I feel it's a bit too simplistic to say either that the religious right controls the corporatist elite, or vice versa. In reality there is a symbiosis and cosy working relationship between them. And many of those in power really do swallow all that BS, as Will Franklin at WILLisms demonstrates with a pair of posts: Religious Denominations In The U.S. House Of Representatives and Religious Denominations In The Senate.

Surprisingly enough (at least to me), Catholics form significant majorities in both houses. Maybe it's because the Catholic Church is a little bit like the Hotel California; Once in, Never out, as Stephen Brophy puts it. Have you ever though about how hard it is to get yourself excommunicated?

Meanwhile, the fur really flies at The Common Man, where Playing With Fire features two anarchists ("so-called" in each other's eyes) plus a supporter of a radical Muslim group, in a wide-ranging discussion about who is a real anarchist, the importance of class warfare and violent revolution, and the privacy rights of bloggers. Okay, just let me know when the dust settles...

Lawrence Manes writes, Pity the Poor Atheist with no god to tell him who to kill. Yes, I know it's unusual to include a "letter to the editor" in a blog carnival, but Mr. Manes graciously gave me his godless blessing to be listed. Besides, it's my carnival, so there. (HT to Brent for the link.)

Let's wrap up the political section of the Carnival with one of Peter Fredson's trademark rants: How Horror Came To Us. I'm a connoisseur of anti-Bush rants, and I approve this message.

Moving on to sports, unfortunately it's Another Black Eye for Pro Sports, as Hank Fox investigates the growing Pray for Play scandal.

No word yet on whether Quidditch is affected, but Gullyborg in Schools: fantasy v. reality explains why Christian conservatives should approve of the Harry Potter books. "Hogwarts teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts, which, if anything, is like a fantasy-world equivalent to having the N.R.A. come to your school to teach your kids how to lawfully defend themselves against criminals and terrorists!" Damn straight! You can have my magic wand when you prise it from my cold dead hands! But wait a minute - how come the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher gets offed every year?

Next time you're staying at a hotel, you should remove the Gideon's bible, says Seth at Spoiled Honey in a post entitled To arms. There's some discussion in the comments about whether this is theft. Maybe we should get a bunch of bible warning stickers and stick them on the cover. But then, that would probably be considered defacement. Rats!

To be honest, I went five years as a road warrior spending every second week in a hotel, and Gideon's bibles don't make my list of top ten peeves. One thing that does, however, is when there's an accident like the recent crash landing of a jet in Canada, and everyone gushes about what a miracle it was that no-one died, while ignoring the rescue workers who deserve the credit. Darwin's Little Darling takes up the theme in "That's the thing about miracles..." in which he describes a friend's near-death experience in what sounds like just another day on Phoenix freeways.

Steve Pavlina waxes philosophical on near death experiences in "Unraveling the Mortality Conundrum". If you knew today was the last day of your life, how would you live it? As Steve says, "The finality of mortality endows reality with vitality."

Scott Hagaman at Scottish Nous also waxes philosophical in "What If S Would Have Believed Otherwise?" At least, I think that's what he's doing... "When the obtaining of some contingent epistemically irrelevant factor f is a part of the cause of S believing that [y exists and is identical to x], then would S have believed that [y exists and is identical to z and x is not identical to z] if f' had instead obtained, S is not justified in believing that [y exists and is identical to either x or z]."

Umm... okay... but have you considered the implications of the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? I say, teach the controversy! Let children see both sides, and decide for themselves! Matt at Pooflingers Anonymous has some words of wisdom on the issue in Pasta: Chapter 23.

Richard at Philosophy, et cetera, in his post "Expecting Infinity", shows that if Pascal's Wager is sound, then going down to the pub for a beer has infinite expected utility. Now that's the kind of philosophy I can get behind!

Finally, I didn't have time to write a post for this carnival, so here's one I prepared earlier (as Julia Child would say): "They hate us for our freedom from religion", in which I dissect the religious right soundbite about America being founded on "Freedom of religion, not freedom from religion" (FORNFFR).

Well, that wraps up another Carnival of the Godless! Thanks to all who participated, and to Brent for working tirelessly behind the scenes, and especially for starting the grand COTG tradition. The next Carnival will be at Austin Cline's About Atheism on September 4. So get writing and send your posts in! Make Baby Jesus cry! See you next time!