The latest Carnival of the Godless has been posted at Mind on Fire. As usual, there are a lot of good posts. Here are a few that I especially liked, because they relate to things that have happened here recently.

If you read the comments on this blog, you’ll occasionally see a fundie drop Pascal’s Wager on us, like it’s some sort of divine revelation. They’re always so proud of themselves, like the cat who brings you the dead gopher. They’re both old dead things that have no current use, so stop dropping them on me. The kitty and the Christian are both eager to swallow their prizes whole. Daniel at The 327th Male isn’t. He has an excellent article about Pascal’s Wager. He explains it very clearly and then disposes of it easily. He won’t even vomit up the skin a day later.

I am frequently criticized for not respecting religion, as if it has some special protection that I’m violating. I respect the respectful parts of religion, and the respectful people. Everything else gets blasted. The Chaplain over at An Apostate’s Chapel addresses the question of respect in her article “What’s so Bad about Religion?” Here’s the part I agree with the most:

If believers want their beliefs to be considered as plausible foundations of social, economic, international, educational, or any other public policies, then I will critique those beliefs just as scrupulously as I would critique the beliefs of a Marxist, a Maoist, or a monarchist. Religious beliefs are simply one class of ideas among many that have the potential to do real damage to individuals, societies, and nations (though it seems self-evident to me that false beliefs will seldom pass muster as suitable foundations for good policy decisions). All ideas, religious and otherwise, should be scrutinized ruthlessly before one renders judgments regarding their soundness. Religious ideas are no more special than any others, they are simply more widespread and more deeply ingrained than most.

Another repeating theme, both in my articles and in the comments, is about offensiveness. At The Frame Problem, Ron Brown writes about a Dutch problem in “‘Freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to offend’; Dutch government bracing self for violent Muslim protest to anti-Muslim film”. Ron writes:

False. Freedom of expression does entail freedom to offend. In fact, in many ways freedom of expression is the right to offend. No one ever fought for the right to say nonoffensive things. No one ever censored nonoffensive statements.
…
Quick question: At what point will Westerners stop rewarding these theocratic dogmatic terrorists? At what point do we say “No, you are not going to tell us what ideas we can and cannot criticize. You are not the arbiters of what is and what is not okay to say.”

The last article I want to call special attention to is by vjack at Atheist Revolution. My own blog is about Christian fundamentalism in general, and Christian extremism in particular. What are these things? Vjack has some good definitions in “What Is Christian Extremism?”. He defines Christian fundamentalism as having these characteristics:

• Biblical Inerrancy/Literalism (at least with regard to creation)
• Evangelism
• Premillenialism (expectation of second coming, rapture, etc.)
• Separatism/Sense of Persecution

Next come the Christian extremists. Vjack gives us the additional characteristics of these people:

• Exclusivity (conviction that those who do not share their religious viewpoint are not “real” Christians)
• Other-Condemnation (intolerance and condemnation of the other)
• Anti-Intellectualism (especially with regard to science)
• Social Conservatism and Anti-Liberalism
• Theocratic Strivings (biblical law takes precedence over secular law)
• Opposition to Modernism

Finally come the Christian terrorists. Fortunately these are rare, but they’re the folks who blow up abortion clinics and engage in other acts of violence.

Those are the highlights of the latest Carnival of the Godless, but they are by no means the only good articles. Go on over and check them all out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Religion, Blog Carnival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.