What were they thinking?

Last week I was startled to discover a targeted email from Amazon offering me “New and Notable Releases in Religion and Spirituality”.

Offering to me.

A Geologic Fancast

George has very kindly posted the fancast that I mentioned earlier on his regular podcast feed.

My part in the production was very small, with that dynamo of niceness, the lovely CarrieP the main creative force behind it all, and a whole lot of content from a bunch of people with more creativity and skill than you could fit in a telephone booth. A big one.

It might not make much sense unless you are a listener of the Geologic Podcast. So if you’re not then then you should ignore this bloody well subscribe and then download the fancast.

You don’t get off the hook that easily.

The Geologic Universe

One of the things I’ve been tied up with over the last month has been my novice attempts at putting together audio content to contribute to a fancast celebrating the one year anniversary of the Geologic Podcast. It’s been something of a steep learning curve, but overall quite rewarding.

The Geologic Podcast is an intelligent and humorous (though often NSFW) layered blend of music, sketch comedy, rants, atheism, skepticism, science and bald jokes. If that’s not enough to get you interested, he’s just posted a video clip for the Assumption. Take a look, it’s brilliant.

Atheist coming out video

While you’re at the Minnesota Atheists, having a look at the current Media of the Week, a positive atheist coming out story:

Atheists Talk

For anyone looking for more atheist themed media, the Minnesota Atheists have started a new weekly radio show Atheists Talk on Air America.

I’ll post a link when the feed goes up for the new show, but while you’re waiting have a listen to their old podcast only show (available via iTunes, direct download or just grab the feed here). I’m working my way through the old shows now – some of the audio quality is a little sketchy, but the content is quite good.

EDITED TO ADD: The feed for the new show is up. Either follow the link above to the radio show page for details, or just grab the direct feed here.

via Pharyngula

Blatant fictional atheism

Flicking through my news alerts today I came across the following letter to the editor at Dailypress lamenting the Golden Compass, the movie version of Phillip Pullman’s “blatantly anti-Christian book” Northern Lights. It got me wondering about the whole uproar over the movie and book. Are people complaining because the book (slash film) is atheistic or because it’s anti-theistic, because although they not mutually exclusive, they really aren’t the same thing at all.

Atheism advances

From the Baptist Press, Penna Dexter writes about what she sees as the negatives of the growth of that nasty atheism in the US.

It’s a telling read. The bulk of the article is spent lamenting the secularization of Christmas, making a reasonably fair point about the misapplication of political correctness. Unfortunately, towards the end it veers off to outline other nasty atheist behavior and kind of jumps the rails, complaining about attempts to have references to god removed from the Pledge of Allegiance and the currency, berating Hollywood for outright promotion of atheism to kids* and a quick drive-by bitch slap to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens on the basis of a couple of cherry picked statements.

A good atheist

I came across an interesting piece in the Tri-City Herald, as part of a week long series on “What we believe”. The series is made up of a selection of vignettes of the lives of various people of differing beliefs and this installment is about an atheist, Fernando Aguilar.

I’m not entirely sure that I agree with atheism being treated as a belief system (and I thought the little side-bar describing atheism and agnosticism is a little narrow) but the piece itself does an excellent job of describing a brave, good person, who tries to help others and to leave the world a better place, without any hope of eternal reward or fear of punishment.

Argumentum ad Hitlerum

I must have missed this one in the pre-Christmas mayhem. The Age reporting on the Christmas address of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, our old buddy George Pell:

Religion has been unfairly blamed for conflicts around the world in recent years, but Christians should remember the benefits of their devotion, Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell says.

They’re Sacrelicous!

My daughter found these for me as a Christmas present.

That is so cool.