It’s Sunday morning! It’s that time when we lounge about in robes and jammies and mock (or feel pity for) the faithful, trudging off to be lied to at church. Here are a few fun links for us atheists:

• Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists of UMM has a preliminary web page, designed by Skatje, and also has a forum. Their first meeting is on Thursday at 7 (pizza party at the Pizza Hut in Morris!), but the big initial recruitment fair is tomorrow — so she is looking for suggestions. She needs stuff she can put together now, but she’s also thinking longer term — ideas for tabling at the student union, for instance.

• Kirk Cameron is getting feisty again in his own ridiculous style — he’s asking if we’ve “patronized blasphemy lately”. The answer is yes: frequently and with vigor, especially since the religious insistence on trivia makes it absurdly easy to commit blasphemy. S.Z. takes poor Kirk down a few notches. My favorite part: Kirk pines for the good old days when the Hays Code forbade blasphemy in the movies. S.Z. points out that the Hays Code also forbade miscegeny. Wash and Zoe: abomination!

• Awful as it must be to be Kirk Cameron, I feel more pity for Matt Nisbet. Revere calmly pulverizes his liver, rips out his lungs, and gives him a classic Stooges eye poke. Nyuk nyuck nyuck. I don’t get it — I’m not averse to the principles of framing, but why is it that its proponents suck so badly at implementing it?

Out of curiosity, I’d just like to know … how many recent instances are there of atheists using death threats, threats against family members, and various other kinds of intimidation to discourage Christians from openly professing their beliefs?

Sam Harris has a letter in Nature today, urging scientists to unite against religion — even the moderate religion that so many are willing to support.

But here is Collins on how he, as a scientist, finally became convinced of the divinity of Jesus Christ: “On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains… the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.”

What does the “mode of thought” displayed by Collins have in common with science? The Language of God should have sparked gasping outrage from the editors at Nature. Instead, they deemed Collins’s efforts “moving” and “laudable”, commending him for building a “bridge across the social and intellectual divide that exists between most of US academia and the so-called heartlands.”

He seems to feel the same way about Collins that I do.

It’s a stupid internet poll, and it’s very badly phrased, but you should vote anyway. Larry King wants to know “which religion do you associate with?” — and atheism is one of the choices.

(I know, I know, atheism isn’t a religion. Argue about it later.)

Heh. The poll is currently registering 71% of the voters as atheists. They say you can’t herd cats; if you point the pride at a slow, stupid, old gazelle, though, you can get them all to take a bite. Now we just have to work our way up to bigger and less gamey prey.

It looks like my talk to the Minnesota Atheists (you know, the one Egnor viewed by remote sensing or something) is available on the Atheist Talk Podcast. I haven’t seen it — I am constitutionally incapable of watching myself without curling up into a quivering ball and mewing piteously — so don’t tell me if it’s hideous or not. I really don’t want to know.

I’m in St Paul, about to give a talk on evolution, and in these few minutes before I get behind the lectern I thought I’d throw together a few links to entertain you all. Have fun, I have to babble!

Share your stories of abandoning faith at Coming Out Godless.

Revere’s Sunday Sermonette is on Fred Phelps and our local ex-bridge.

Casual violence isn’t a surprising event in the fundagelical community, as in this story of pastor dragging a girl behind a van for the sin of insufficient stamina. The amusing part? The name of the church group is “Love Demonstrated”.

How about a few fine examples of theistic hypocrisy? Mitt Romney, who thinks atheists shouldn’t run for office, doesn’t like the idea of someone saying Mormons shouldn’t be in office.

Dr Carlin thinks the proper order of things is that Christians get to criticize atheism, while well-mannered atheists will sit back and take it. Turnabout is definitely not fair play.

Not all Christians are such mindless bigots. Thomas Robey thinks it is just fine for non-Christians to express themselves. That’s refreshing, and that’s the way it should be — I also think theists should be speaking out openly (if only to make their arguments clearer targets.)

Ken MacLeod (yes, that Ken MacLeod) summarizes 21st Century Atheism. You knew he wouldn’t bat an eye at a gang of revolutionaries.

Richard Dawkins has a new television series, The Enemies of Reason, that will be broadcast in the UK. I have not heard if it will make it to the US; if it’s anything like our experience with his last program, Root of all evil?, it will be buried in post-midnight showings on scattered PBS stations, with little information on when or where in any of the channel listings. The premise of discussing this new show is how Gordon Lynch begins a recent column, but then, somehow, it turns into a wild-eyed accusation in mannered language that this modern atheism stuff is a cult-like phenomenon, just like those crazy evangelical Christians.

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While it’s nearly impossible to get a group of atheists to do anything together (the reaction to the Out campaign demonstrates that!), you’ve all got to agree^* that at least the Secular Student Alliance is a good idea. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like for new students entering a university, but getting them involved in student organizations is an important step in getting them involved in the university — our administrations know that, and they push and we faculty advisors push, all to get these students who have left home and are facing a new and challenging and sometimes intimidating environment to make these informal connections with their peers. And what student organizations are waiting for them, licking their chops and looking forward to recruiting new bodies for their cause? A huge part of the collection are religious: we have Campus Crusade for Christ, Chi Alpha- FUSION, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Catholic Campus Ministry, Free Church Campus Ministries, Lutheran Campus Ministry, Lutheran Student Fellowship, Morris Community Church Campus Ministries, the Dungeons and Dragons Club, you get the idea. This is fertile recruiting ground for the cults.

The SSA tries to foster groups to give students a secular alternative. At the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, for instance, we have Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists working to keep a lively freethought community going; we’re starting a chapter here at UMM (web page is under construction, sorry). Universities are one of the best places we’ve got to build secular leadership.

So what we need, though, is support. Maybe you hated the idea of buying a scarlet “A” t-shirt with Richard Dawkins’ name on it — but are you also going to refuse to donate to the Secular Student Alliance? It’s a great cause. Do what you can to help out.

^*It’s like throwing a bone to a dog … you people are all going to rush to disagree now, aren’t you?

Pat Condell wants to know why faith deserves respect.

Jesus and Mo explain why.