[+/-] The Carnival of the Godless Christmas Extravaganza!

Welcome to the Carnival of the Godless Christmas Extravaganza! We have loads of godless goodness for your reading pleasure today. Grab a cup of eggnog and settle into the superstition-free zone.

First off, we have from Ron's Blog, Festivus for the rest of us, where he is working out what to celebrate (or not) as an atheist parent.

And For My Next Trick... is from the common man. TCM provides a brief rant about godly impotence.

Ebon Musings gives us "An Essay on Christmas" which provides a critical analysis of the religious right's paranoid "war on Christmas" meme and a study of what the holiday season should really mean to an unbeliever.

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers presents "True Christians don't do science," where I think he speaks for many of us free-thinkers when he states, "I think it's a bad idea to afflict a society with an institution dedicated to opposing critical thinking, the acceptance of dogma, and belief in unsupported and frankly, ludicrous claims."

EarlyRiser, gives us two posts. The first tracks his views on Christmas with Coming To Terms With Christmas. In the second, he provides his thoughts on being an atheist Republican in an anti-capitalist Unitarian Church, in On Being a Capitalist Unitarian-Universalist.

An exasperated No More Mr. Nice Guy! at No More Mr. Nice Guy! presents Chipmunks roasting on an open fire, where he asks, "Okay, I've had it. Where do I sign up for the war on Christmas(TM)?"

Brent Rasmussen of Unscrewing the Inscutable gives us the humorous, Allegory & Metaphor where he reviews the new furry-porn masterpiece, the "Chronicles of Barnia: the Lion, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe Malfunction". Heh.

In a non-holiday-themed post, Buridan's Ass examines the recent Dover ruling in The Dover Ruling versus Public Opinion. He argues the effectiveness of public opinion for supporting ID in the public sphere was drastically diminished with the Dover ruling.

Ron at God is for Suckers! presents a little allegory about people who come to atheist blogs to witness for Christ, in Can I get a witness?

Mark A. Rayner at The Skwib presents some holiday humor with Ask General Kang: Do you have Santa Claus on your home planet?.

Another humorous port is from Madeleine Begun Kane at Mad Kane's Notables. Check out Bill O'Reilly's Faux War On Christmas Song Parody. Go caroling with your free-thinking relatives!

Richard at Philosophy, et cetera, examines how atheist ethics, "allow for a deeper respect for humanity" in "Positive Atheism: Ethical Stability".

Limerick Savant offers us Season's Bleetings in "Finding Solace in the Solstice".

Coralius at Revolvo Inritus presents a discussion of how fundamentalists tend to mistrust and misunderstand technology and science, and how that feeds back into their fundamentalism, in "Fundamentalism and the Mistrust Of Technology."

David Gross at The Picket Line asks if the secular anti-war movement somehow become as effective as righteously stubborn without getting lost in a tempting garden of balderdash, in If Christianity is neither true nor necessarily helpful, what can activists learn from it?

Keri Hulme, the New Zealand author of "The Bone People," presents "Celebration." Her joie de vivre really shines; check it out.

We have two entries for today's COTG from Goosing the Antithesis. The first, by Francois Tremblay, is entitled, "Christmas is OUR holiday." It explains why the author claims Christmas for atheists everywhere, both in historical grounds and on moral grounds. The second, by Aaron Kinney, is on a lighter note: "You might be a Christian if...".

Socratic Gadfly at The Philosophy of the Socratic Gadfly gives us two thoughtful posts. The first, "Ezra, Meet Snopes" looks at how Photoshopping pictures and distributing them online gives a refutation by analogy to fundamentalists who refuse to believe biblical authors could get anything less than the absolute truth to circulate that quickly. The second, "Genesis 6 retold," provides a skeptical poetic look at the flood myth.

Daniel Morgan from Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin' gives us "Master Painter?" which serves as an allegory using the subjectivity of interpretation of art to highlight the absurdity of religious dogmatism.

UberKuh from UberKuh - The Artistic Atheist, in "Something is Wrong with Theists" asks a question burning on all our minds today: what in God's name is wrong with theists?

Finally, I offer my own bumper sticker as a counter to an annoying pin my mother-in-law always wears this time of year.

That's it! Enjoy your Solstice/Saturnalia/Kwanzaa/Christmas/Hannukah/Festivus/Sunday. Remember to begin writing your eulogy today: be kind.

The next Carnival of the Godless will be hosted at Buridan's Ass January 8th, 2006. Send your submissions to cotg-submission@brentrasmussen.com. In addition to writing "COTG Submission" in the subject of the email, please include the following information:

• The name of the blog where the post is from
• The post title.
• The post author's name or handle.
• The post's permanent link.
• A short description of the post.