The Atheist's Guide to Christmas

My colleague, Anna Drew, received a gift copy of comedian and Guardian newspaper columnist Ariane Sherine’s book “The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas” today. This is because Anna and Ariane went for coffee months ago to chat about the Atheist Bus Campaign: http://tinyurl.com/alelhf (Scroll down to January 6, 2009, to listen to Anna and Ariane.)

(Ariane thanked Anna for being so lovely about the campaign in a message accompanying the book.) Judging from Ariane’s Twitter feed today, lots of others have received her book too (well, the book she has edited).

I have just read the “Welcome to this book” page which includes a classic joke about agnostics: “(In this book there are) an undecided number of jokes about agnostics (we wanted to write some, but we weren’t sure, and then we thought we might, but we weren’t certain.* For the purpose of this Christmas book, they should henceforth be known as ‘eggnostics’.)”

In The God Delusion, Professor Richard Dawkins actually reserves his greatest contempt for agnostics.

Nevermind the atheists - if there is any group that is not piping up and organising itself, it is the agnostics. Someone really should put the backbone back into agnosticism. I am just too busy at the moment.