Carnival of the Godless, No. 135 - Darwintine's Day Edition

Welcome to the 135th edition of the Carnival of the Godless blog carnival. Is that love in the air… or just beetle pheromones? Are you attracted to your partner’s gifts of chocolate, giant teddy bears and roses… or their sensuously-evolved secondary sexual characteristics? Ooh yeah baby, that’s right, it’s time for some lovin’ – Darwin style.

Valentine’s Day on the 14th of February has become boring. And while this edition of the blog carnival comes out a day too late, I hearby declare that the 13th of February shall be known as Darwintine’s Day, where science lovers (in more ways than one) celebrate their love for Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection – and each other. Who needs a deity for love when you’ve got the whole Tree of Life?

But before we get into the job of showcasing this edition’s sexy, sexy blog posts, let me introduce myself – we probably haven’t met before. I’m Jack, a first-year university student from Melbourne, Australia, and I blog at Homologous Legs about evolution, creationism, intelligent design, religion and general skepticism. Feel free to check out some of my recent posts, including my thoughts on celebrities and ideologies in the skeptical movement, a satire about Meryl Dorey and her anti-vaccinationist organisation, and my breakdown of a mathematics professor’s rant against evolutionary theory.

I’m also a Twitterphile, and I always love new followers – and new people to follow.

But enough about boring old (young?) me. You’re here for the posts: and what a selection of posts we have! My my, these’ll get your gametes dividing, that’s for sure.

Paul Fidalgo from Secularism Examiner starts the Darwintine love off with a look at the response to the Haitian earthquake from the On Faith panel at the Washington Post website, and why they seem to be at a loss to explain the actions of their supposedly benevolent God in the light of such a disaster, in Dodging theodicy: ‘On Faith’ panel stumbles over Haiti and God.

In a complex display of philosophical knowledge – something I’m sure Darwin would have been interested in – Chris Hallquist over at The Uncredible Hallq talks about the epistemology of religion and the “reformed epistemology” of Alvin Plantinga in Luke on reformed epistemology and moral realism.

There’s so much we don’t hear about in Australia that is all over the news in the US, like the “Idaho Baptist child snatchers”. Lucky that I have SocraticGadfly to tell me all about such events, eh? Without him, I wouldn’t have known about the Baptists that were illegally adopting children out of Haiti – excellent behaviour, people, excellent behavious. Read all about it in Ugly evangelical Americans’ — I hope Haiti has a ‘hanging judge’.

Where would godless and skeptical blogging be without The Digital Cuttlefish? A lot less poetically-enlightened, that’s for sure. So it’s with great pleasure that I link to one of their poems, Nothing To Talk About?, a response to an article that was published in The Age newspaper here in Melbourne about the Global Atheist Convention, criticising it for there being “nothing to talk about” if none of the people at the event believe in a God. Great stuff.

Richard Shelmerdine presents us with an interesting post on thoughts about meditation and how it can be used to interpret some of the teachings of Jesus in a godless context. I know some of you might not agree with absolutely everything he says, but it is great to have slightly different viewpoints on a range of topics every once in a while, and Richard’s writing is refreshing. Read it at Why “I Am” is A Deep Spiritual Truth.

Kylie Sturgess is a cheeky evolutionary descendant of a monkey-like creature, sending in from her blog Podblack Cat an announcement about Daniel Loxton’s new children’s book, “ Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be”. Seriously, this looks like a great book to educate children about evolutionary biology, something that a lot of children in Australia (and certainly the US) could stand to learn a lot ore about. Get all the info at ALERT! Evolution Hits The Shelves At Skeptic.Com!

Luke Muehlhauser from Common Sense Atheism tears down the perception of atheists and philosophical naturalists being boring and cynical people out of necessity in a world without God. And holy crap, does he list some awesome things that you can do! Check them all out at Atheism and the New Sincerity. Unironic high-five, everyone!

Using a classic argument, Mat Wilder from Protostellar Clouds writes about the story of Exodus in the Old Testament, and how the actions of the God that Christians supposedly believe in are not the ones you’d expect from such a supreme being, in The Gross Injustice of the Supposed God. Keep trying, Mat, it’ll get through to them all one day. One day…

vjack, blogging from the fine site Atheist Revolution, shows us that the US media has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to news stories that pertain to acts by Christian extremists. I wonder how much this can be translated over to other First World countries such as Australia and the UK? Then again, we don’t really have as much Christian extremism over here… Read about it and see what you think at U.S. Media Has Blind Spot For Christian Extremism.

I’m personally partial to a good live-tweeting session, where you constantly tweet about something that you’re currently watching, usually with hilarious consequences. So I’m glad to announce that James over at Cubik’s Rube live-tweeted a documentary about the Ten Commandments, hosted by the conservative politician Ann Widdecombe. Very, very funny. Soak up the hilarity with I have to fake interest in Ann Widdecombe for how long??

Phew, here we have an older post from Ken at Arizona Atheist – a HUGE review of David Aikman’s “The Delusion of Disbelief: Why the New Atheism is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness”. Wow, that’s insane. He read (and analysed) this anti-atheism book so you all don’t have to – I’d thank him for it, if I were you. So, leave a comment after you finish reading The Delusion of David Aikman: A Review of The Delusion of Disbelief.

And our final post for the 135th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is from Andrew Bernardin from The Evolving Mind, and he writes about abstinence-only sex education (a relevant topic for Darwintine’s Day – you wouldn’t want your gametes to actually meet, now, would you? Well, perhaps if you wanted to pass on some genetic mutations to the next generation…). But wait, he’s not going all-out against it? It appears… Ooh, there’s some research out suggesting that it could actually be effective. See what Andrew makes of the study at Being Fair to Abstinence-Only Sex Education.

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And that’s it! This (nearly) Darwintine’s Day edition of the Carnival of the Godless has come to an end. But there were some bloody good entries in there this time, eh? They were really, really good. Well done to everyone who submitted posts and took the time to write those posts. Unironic high-fives, ala. the New Sincerity, all ’round! Charles Darwin would have been proud, I know he would.

The next edition of the CotG will be at The Barefoot Bum on the 28th of February, so send some posts their way through the carnival submission form when you’ve lovingly crafted a few more entries.

Cheers,
Jack