announcement: blog carnival for atheism

CLHanson of Letters from A broad alerted me to a new carnival opening up, one specifically for "promoting atheism as a positive, joyous world view." See the announcement below. The blog can be found here: Daylight Atheism. I've submitted a post. Do consider submitting if you have entries that would fit. I can't wait to read all the submissions. Our society tends to think of atheism as lacking something; I love the idea of making it something positive. (I realize I have theist readers, too. Please don't let this push you away. We are many people with many world views, and that's a good thing.)

Welcome, friends, well-wishers and regular readers! I have something to tell you all about which I'm very excited. There's an issue that I've been mulling over for some time, and tonight I intend to announce its resolution.

Specifically, I've been thinking about carnivals. The Carnival of the Godless, founded in March 2005 by Brent Rasmussen of Unscrewing the Inscrutable, is a wonderful forum for atheist writing and is still going strong. However, since that time there's been a proliferation of new atheist weblogs, and I think the CotG has gotten just a little crowded. I believe there's more than sufficient interest to sustain multiple godless carnivals, and there are some wonderful, eloquent new voices in the atheist corner of the blogosphere that deserve to be better known and could only be helped by a new forum in which to promote their writing. Also, the CotG has plenty of posts debunking and criticizing religion, but I don't think it has enough of the kind of posts I really like to see: posts promoting atheism as a positive, joyous worldview.

With all this in mind, I'm here tonight to announce a brand-new carnival for atheists and freethinkers: the Humanist Symposium. Like the CotG, this carnival will showcase some of the best non-religious writing out there. However, this one will have a slightly different emphasis. Rather than general posts on atheism and religion, the purpose of the Humanist Symposium will be specifically to defend and uphold atheism as a positive worldview of morality, reason and purpose, a desirable and attractive alternative to belief systems based on religion.

The first edition of the Humanist Symposium will appear right here at Daylight Atheism on Sunday, April 29, and I'm now officially accepting submissions. So long as it furthers the purpose described above, any and all freethought writing is welcomed! (For more details and guidelines, see the carnival home page.) Assuming the first edition is a success, I'm also seeking volunteers to host future editions, which will appear every three weeks thereafter. All correspondence and entries can be e-mailed to me, or sent through the submission form on the carnival home page.

Finally, if you have a blog, even if you don't plan to submit something yourself, you can help get the word out! Feel free to copy and republish this announcement. The Humanist Symposium needs all the entries it can get, and the more we have, the more powerfully we can make the point that atheism is a worldview that any rational person should be glad to live by!