The latest Carnival of the Godless is godlessly carnivaling at Right to Think. There’s a bunch of stuff over there. I really liked “Against the Gods: Arguments Against God’s Existence” by Ken at Arizona Atheist. It’s a long, thoughtful argument that refutes many of the arguments for God’s existence. Check it out.

I also have to put in a strong recommendation for “The Republican Master Plan” at Polymath From Portsmouth. You’ll want to read it.

I haven’t been trying to neglect the blog lately. I was hoping to cut back to two or three articles per week, not two or three weeks per article. It’s amazing how merely re-prioritizing the blog from #1 hobby to #2 hobby has robbed it of so much attention. The photography class I’m taking ends in March, so this isn’t permanent.

The latest edition of the Skeptics’ Circle has just arrived at The SkeptVet Blog. It’s definitely a good one. It’s jammed full of great articles. You need to go check it out.

The best article of the bunch is “Discovery Channel: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” by Akusai at Action Skeptics. I gave up my cable TV almost two years ago, so I still have favorable memories of the Discovery Channel. This was the home of Mythbusters, after all. Sure, many of the Discovery Channel’s shows had succumbed to the Least Common Denominator, but at least they didn’t have any of those horrible ghost-hunting shows. Then lately I started hearing about some horrid dreck called Ghost Lab. And it’s on the Discovery Channel! How depressing.

Anyway, Akusai fills us in on what little is still good on the Discovery Channel. He lists Mythbusters first, but even that is apparently sliding. Say it isn’t so!

He also mentions a show I’ve never heard of: Time Warp. Apparently the program is full of all sorts of amazing footage of ordinary things photographed in high-speed video. That sounds like a great show. In fact, I was experimenting with high-speed photography myself last Sunday (See result above. That was shot at 1/2000th of a second.).

Akusai then goes on to tell us about the Bad and the Ugly on the Discovery Channel. Some of it sounds very ugly. If you’re as disgusted as I am with the dumbing-down of science television, you should go read “Discovery Channel: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. After that, check out the remainder of the Skeptics’ Circle.

The latest Carnival of the Godless has arrived. You can find it over at Null Session. There are several good articles. I recommend starting with “The Intelligent Design Falsifiability Myth?” by Naon Tiotami at Homologous Legs.

Creationists. I hate those guys.

However, the last two comments made me decide to run this as is. The article only addresses those comments peripherally, but it contemplates the broader issue arising from them.]

The 127th Skeptics’ Circle has arrived at Unibrow One Brow. Go check it out.

One of the articles there has dredged up one of the ongoing dilemmas of this blog. The article is “The Trouble With Skeptics” by James Cole over at Stuff and Nonsense. The article consists of his comments on the 10 “skeptic fails” twittered by Daniel Loxton of Junior Skeptic magazine.

I especially liked fails 8 and 9:

Skeptic Fail 8: Thinking your skepticism makes you immune to error; it should make you more aware of your own fallibility.

Skeptic Fail 9: Assuming that your fellow skeptic is (or ought to be) an atheist.

The one that bothers me the most is #5:

Skeptic Fail 5: Using ad hominems. Ad hominems are as ugly and offputting coming from us as from anyone else.

First of all, a lot of people don’t really know what an ad hominem is. Here’s the Wikipedia definition:

An ad hominem argument… is an argument which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

It takes the following form:

Person 1 makes claim X
There is something objectionable about Person 1
Therefore claim X is false

As you can see, that is a fallacious argument. It is also something I have never done.

However, I have been accused of making them. Just look at that last article, where I call Ray Comfort retarded. Wikipedia tells us about common misconceptions:

Gratuitous verbal abuse or “name-calling” itself is not an argumentum ad hominem or a logical fallacy. The fallacy only occurs if personal attacks are employed instead of an argument to devalue an argument by attacking the speaker….

I called Ray Comfort retarded, because he thinks that evolutionists contend that a male animal evolves into a new species and then has to sit around and wait for a female animal to evolve into this same new species. No scientists contend this. It has been explained to him numerous times, yet his tiny brain is unable to comprehend it. Ergo, he is retarded.

OK. That leads to fail #10:

Skeptic Fail 10: Thinking that disrespect and mockery are ever effective outreach. At best, superiority entertains the base.

I know I’m not convincing anybody out there. I gave up on that belief long ago. Really, the only thing this blog does is “entertain the base”, if it even does that.

I wonder if I’m doing more harm than good.

I do this blog, because I would have stepped in front of a speeding train long ago if I had to keep all this frustration bottled up.

Look at “Climategate”. The fact of global warming hasn’t changed, but now we have a bunch of retards who have discovered that they were actually called “retards” by some scientists.

Somehow, in their retarded brains, they think this is proof that global warming isn’t real. I know, they’re “really” claiming it’s because they see words like “trick” in the emails. Actually, though, they’re just pissed off about the venomous rhetoric. It must be very painful to go through life not knowing that you’re the village idiot and that everybody is laughing at you, and then to one day gain that realization all at once. They’re reacting the only way they know how: By retreating into the comfortable beliefs that they know so well.

Likewise with the creationists who come across this site. I’m just making them stronger. OK, well those people were unreachable anyway. But what about the fence-sitters? I’m sure I’m turning 100% of them to the other side. Who wants to be on the team with the smug elitists who think they know everything?

We don’t know everything, of course. In fact, we know very little. But we do know a few things with virtual certainty: The age of the Earth, that life evolved and approximately how it did so, etc.

So should I cut the justified insults? Do they really accomplish anything?

It has been quite a while since I participated in a Carnival of the Godless. Now that my life is partially back to normal, it’s time to rejoin the fun. This week it is being held over at The Gaytheists. You’ll find ten good articles.

The best of the bunch is “A Torture Device on a Christmas Tree”
(by) ((Billy)) (((the))) ((((Atheist)))) (((((.)))))

It tells us that some people are so concerned about the alleged War on Christmas that they’ve created a Christmas tree built out of a cross. That’s the monstrosity you see at the top of this post. Billy writes:

This CHRIST-mas tree, a propaganda release for the imaginary War on Christmas, has now taken the Christmas joy and tossed in blood, gore, torture and execution. What better way to celebrate peace and goodwill than a torture device? How better to enjoy family and togetherness than looking at a Roman execution device?

Go read that article, and then check out the rest.

The latest Carnival of the Godless is up over at (((Billy))) the Atheist.

You should have a glance at all of the articles, but the one I thought was the most spot-on was “‘God Sent the Shooter:’ White Christian Terrorism and the Assassination of George Tiller” by Sikivu Hutchinson. She writes:

So while the U.S. condemns Muslim religious fundamentalism and trumpets itself as a beacon for individual and civil liberties unbridled by theocratic intolerance, it has become a breeding ground for the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist terrorist movement in the world.

The 118th Carnival of the Godless has arrived at Right to Think. It’s an especially big one this time. It’s even bigger than New York! So if you don’t have time to read all the articles, you must—I repeat MUST—at least check out “Does This Excite You?” at The White Sepulchre. It’s the sort of crazy stuff that originally inspired this blog, but it’s even crazier than that.

You have been warned.

Carnival of the Liberals #91 is now up at Crowded Head, Cozy Bed. Most of the articles are exclusively political, and they’re good reads, but I’m looking for anti-fundie articles. There are several of those, and my favorite is “The Desperation of the Powerless” at And Doctor Biobrain’s Response Is…. The good doctor tells us why we should worry when James Dobson concedes the culture war. Check it out!

Ken Ham Bonus!

While I was searching for an image about the culture war to decorate this post, I came across an article at Tiny Frog about Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis. According to Tiny, the AIG website gets way more traffic than the Discovery Institute. That surprised me. Since the DI has been so successful in spreading confusion about evolution, I assumed that they had more public mindshare than they do. I guess their message is getting out, but people don’t take the next step, which is to buy into that whole Intelligent Design creationism fraud. It looks like the public is even stupider than I thought. They much prefer AIG’s laughable young-earth creationism, which doesn’t even pretend to be scientific.

Here’s a picture from Tiny Frog’s article. He pulled it out of a book Ken Ham published in 1987. You should pay him a visit to see the rest.

The Carnival of the Godless #117 has arrived at State of Protest.

Since I am a strong separationist, my favorite post of the bunch is “Reprint Of My Resolution” at Not a Potted Plant. Written as a proclamation, Transplanted Lawyer rattles off a bunch of examples of how we were very specifically founded as a secular nation. Check it out.

Update: 5/21/09@8:40 AM

At Barbara’s prompting, I went to a great site called Govtracks.us. You can see an overview of the bill. That link includes all co-sponsors. You’ll want to look at that. There are currently 50 of the grubby little things, all glomming onto this bill as an easy way to curry favor back home. They’re from a bunch of different states, not just the ones she listed. You should check to see if your congressperson is selling you out for 30 pieces of silver.

The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. You should check whether your representative is on that and let him know what you think.

You should read the full text of the bill. It’s rather repugnant. I had just assumed they were going to make one of those pointless proclamations that they’re always doing and then be done with it. They’re actually trying to make it an annual pointless proclamation, which I find a lot more offensive.

The bill starts with a long list of Whereases that list all of the major violations of church/state separation in our history. It then uses these to justify the bill’s own violations.

The bill is mostly symbolic, but it is clearly an endorsement of Christianity. This makes it a weak “establishment of religion” in my book.

Here are the resolutions of the bill:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the United States House of Representatives—

(1) affirms the rich spiritual and diverse religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history, including up to the current day;

(2) recognizes that the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation’s most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America’s representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures;

(3) rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation’s public buildings and educational resources; and

(4) expresses support for designation of a `America’s Spiritual Heritage Week’ every year for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.

Carnival of the Liberals #90 appeared last week at Quiche Moraine. Sure, I’m late telling you about it, but that’s because I like to read them all first. You can’t have it until I’m done with it.

I especially liked “Photos of the First 100 Days” by Manila Ryce, over at The Largest Minority. It’s pretty funny. Check it out first, then the rest of the stuff.

The latest Carnival of the Godless came out last Monday, and you can find it over at Anonymously Blogging My Heart Out.

One article I thought was amusing in its naivete comes from Paul Fidalgo and his blog DC Secularism Examiner. In his article “Nonbelievers and the etiquette of name-calling”, he reports that he took some flack recently for calling Kirk Cameron a “loon”. Yup. That’s all he said. When being called on it, it put up a quasi-apology:

Point taken. Indeed, I’m pretty weary of the mock-the-Christians genre of atheist blog posts myself (not that I am totally innocent of this).

He needs to spend some time over here and stiffen up his spine.

To be clear, I don’t mock all Christians. I only mock, ridicule, and berate the crazies. Having a Yahweh-belief or a Xenu-belief or even a pasta-belief is completely fine with me. Except for the latter, I see no good reason for such, but I really don’t care how other people choose to waste their neurons (and some of those people have so few neurons to waste!).

Even if the extreme Christians (a.k.a. fundies) merely believed some of the craziest stuff in the world, this blog wouldn’t exist. It’s when they act on those beliefs, to the detriment of the rest of us, that my tolerance ends and the ridicule begins. If you try to push your craziness on the rest of us, then you have opened yourself up to public reactions by the rest of us. Some us us choose to call ‘em like we see ‘em.

The bulk of Fidalgo’s article, however, is devoted to the distinction between mere name calling and actual oppression. It’s a pretty good article, despite how easily he buckled. Check it out.

There are two other articles I’d like to quickly point out. The Whited Sepulchre has some interesting speculation on “How Jesus Evolved”. Wynters Wonderland has a great short article on “The Trouble with Adam and Eve…”.

I just can’t keep up with my civic responsibilities these days. Carnival of the Godless came out last Saturday. Go there and read some good articles. Then Carnival of the Liberals came out yesterday. You should check that out, too.

Since I like to read these carnivals anyway, I have always been in the habit of pointing out an article or two that I like. This started when I discovered that there was usually at least one article that related in some way to what we’ve discussed here. I like to send people over to read it to get a different perspective or because the other article does such a good job of summarizing my own opinions.

Since I won’t get to read either carnival until this weekend, I thought it best to point you to them now. You can let me know if there is an especially good article that relates to something we’ve discussed.