Some local godless heathens got mentioned in the Mankato Free Press, in an article titled “Becoming atheist akin to finding religion”. It highlights August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists and an attorney, Jim Manahan, who say pretty much the exact opposite of what the title suggests. The article itself is good and explains a little bit about how one comes to abandon religion, but I suspect the title is an example of an editor doing some editorializing.

Here’s some useful local information from the Minnesota Atheists, too: A brief history of disbelief is being broadcast next week in the Twin Cities. Check the website for specific times.

We also have a couple of distinguished speakers coming to the big city: Steve Pinker on the 20th of September (Skatje will probably go “oooh” and tell me I have to take her), and Ian McKellen will be speaking in October (Skatje might just go “squeee!” and tell me to take her to that one, too.)

Oh, and big news: the Twin Cities will be hosting the American Atheists National Convention on March 21-23, 2008. I shall have to be there.

John Allen Paulos, in an interesting essay on the co-option of mathematics into religious apologia, makes a useful explanation. To counter the idea that the elegance of mathematics is a reflection of the divine, he suggests otherwise — it is a reflection of the natural world.

The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. That great bugbear of creationists, evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought are consistent with the workings of the universe. The usefulness of mathematics is thus not so unreasonable.

Sad to say, the comments to the article are a bit depressing: the creationists descend and start yammering about transitional fossils and mangling Gould and that sort of thing, the usual foolishness we expect from them. It deserves better.

A new poll seems to be showing that the efforts of those ferocious agitating atheists are working — either that, or the corruption of the theocratic right is driving more people into our arms. Daylight Atheism reports that atheists are at 25% of the American population, which isn’t quite right: the numbers include atheists and agnostics at 18%, with another 6% preferring not to say. It would be more accurate to say that about one in four Americans is a freethinker of some sort…and I suspect that that is an underestimate. There are many who affiliate themselves with a church for reasons of tradition and the lack of other social outlets, but don’t really believe in this weird personal god others favor.

The article in The Nation on this subject is interesting and positive, although I also see a little timidity in its efforts to find much to criticize in the “New Atheists” (I also object to the title…this “New” nonsense is inaccurate and tends to minimize the fact that atheism has a long and worthy intellectual history). This part is right on, though.

The great success of the New Atheists is to have reached them [unbelieving citizens], both speaking to and for them. These writers are devoted, with sledgehammer force and angry urgency, to “breaking the spell” cast by the religious ascendancy, to overcoming a situation in which every other area of life can be critically analyzed while admittedly irrational religious faith is made central to American life but exempted from serious discussion.