Carnival of the Godless 79 -- Pie Now on Earth

Welcome everybody to the Carnival of the Godless, a bi-weekly collection of good blogging from a perspective unclouded by notions of friendly guys in the sky who provide pie when you die.

• Alexander the Atheist explains why both Christians and the god they worship
  >need Satan.
• Franklin's Journal tells us why
  >Franklin is an optimist.
• Austin at About.com gives us a run-down of the various ways in which religion, religious groups, and religious beliefs are privileged.
• Aerik at The Science Ethicist relays three Kansan newspaper letters-page entries about atheism.
• Greta Christina compares the theistic trope, "How can you experience any meaning to your life without God?" to the secular tropes of "How can you experience any meaning to your life without children, art, political activism, Battlestar Galactica, etc.".
• ... and then she muses about the meaning of death.
• The Whited Sepulchre discusses Mitt Romney, Mormons, Moses and Muslims.
• ... and the Oral Roberts Jr scandal.
• Elena at Godless in America has written a letter to Mitt Romney.
• Susie Bright gives us her deconversion story in "The Night I Stopped Believing".
• Doctor Biobrain vents his frustration with a religious demonstration obstructing a Hallow'e'en celebration.
• Hell's Handmaiden comments on seven Columbian youths' alleged visit to Heaven
  .
• No More Mr. Nice Guy! reports that Westboro Baptist Church, led by Fred Phelps of "God Hates Fags" infamy, has been sentenced to paying $10.9 million in damages to the family of an Iraq casualty whose funeral the congregation disrupted. Yay!
• Ridger at the Greenbelt explains that theology is all about assuming the desired conclusions as premises of an argument. "God is good, ergo, God is good. QED."
• Francois Tremblay takes a look at two major ways in which people fail to understand basic moral concepts.
• Doc at Everyone Needs Therapy offers a piece of playwriting on The Gift of Speech.
• Miller at Skeptic's Play ponders Hell vs Altruism.
• Stefan at Polypyloctomy gainsays John McCain regarding the essential christanness of a certain country in the New World.
• EnoNomi takes a look at ethical aspects of
  >bonking inanimate objects such as bicycles and human cadavers.
• Chris at The Uncredible Hallq expresses his disgust with the people who are taking advantage of poor old Antony Flew.
• Kevin Z at The Other 95% offers a music video explaining that invertebrates do not believe in God.
• Aaron at Symbolic Order points out an advantage of atheism: solidarity and empathy instead of sin as bases of morality.
• Alonzo at Atheist Ethicist discusses two models of godless living: Living Large vs Living Right.
• Ron at Bay of Fundie examines hostile christian responses to the forthcoming Golden Compass movie.
• Rebecca at Protoscholar responds to a
  >recent religious-apologist article in the Economist.
• Akusai at Action Skeptics examins the "X is just another religion" claim.
• Charles at Science and Reason discusses the way that religion and war may be associated starting from research described in the October 26 issue of Science.
• Vjack at Atheist Revolution is reading The Old Testament and reports some astonishing finds. God hates yeast! Somebody register the website before Fred Phelps does!
• John at Debunking Christianity is most emphatically not a "New Atheist".
• Mike White offers a linguistic perspective on why the god hypothesis doesn't lend itself to refutation.

And Bob's your uncle. If you've enjoyed the carnival, feel free to FedEx me some pie. The next instalment will appear in the virtual flesh on 25 November at Sexy Secularist. Submit here.

[More blog entries about atheism, agnosticism, religion, christianity, politics, ethics, godless; ateism, agnosticism, religion, etik, politik.]