I read Pharyngula, which leads to reading Skatje, which led to Ebon Musings, a big site of atheism essays, many of which I've now read, in a great gorging upon sympathetic ideas. Some particular finds:

Atrocities, and related articles on God as domestic abuser (perfect fit!), and the evil great sage.

What archaeology has to say about the Old Testament. No evidence for patriarchs, emphatic absence of evidence for Exodus and conquest -- and isn't it rather odd that Exodus doesn't *name* the Pharaoh? The Bible is hardly name-averse, after all.

Did Jesus really exist?

The Argument from Locality -- not a new idea, and one I've had, but he names it well.

Faith vs. reason in religion, with something at the end which made me think happy Technocratic thoughts again but that's me.

Relatedly, see the Catholic Encyclopedia defend censorship.

Eighth grade, sex, and cognitive science. A long essay on old thoughts,
recent elaborations, and tangents. Incidentally, posting this is a
triumph of text-mode browser technology.

A summary: Gaza strip news, "An Inconvenient Truth", octopus brains, aquatic ape-bashing, libertarian paternalism. 

David Brin may be bombastic, but I think he's right, at least here.
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/06/allocation-vs-markets-ancient-struggle.html

I'd known of these ancient Indian atheists from Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History. I don't remember reading this much about them before. They seem to have been near clones of Epicureanism, or modern humanism. 300 years ealier (600 BC), no atomism, also no silly autistically happy gods like Epicurus had, more explicit feminism than I've seen in surviving Epicurean writings (though Epicureans are said to have welcomed women).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvaka
http://www.humanistictexts.org/carvaka.htm
http://www.swaveda.com/elibrary.php?id=17&action=show&type=book

UPDATE: Indian atomism. I don't know if it's linked to the Carvaka but it's mildly interesting anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism#Indian_atomism

Libertarian blogger has neat lecture notes from Hernando de Soto on property law, poverty, and wealth creation.  Her Stiglitz notes are interesting as well, even though she didn't agree with him.

http://jacquelinepassey.blogs.com/blog/2003/11/hernando_de_sot.html

Apart from some childhood animism (apologizing to doors I kicked, mercy-killing my breakfast sausages) and fear of an unnamed but Zeus-like thunder god ("to whom it may concern, if you're going to strike my house, could you please wait until my parents get home so I'm not out on the street by myself?"), I've always been an atheist. (I think atheist and agnostic overlap a lot, but called myself agnostic once out of cowardince on a school bus, and was promptly shamed out of that.)  Or "godless", to be more general.  But over the years many debates, over atheism and religion, over libertarianism, over AI, made me realize that this was only one of two key issues, and possibly the less important one.  Many an atheist will try to argue the impossibility of God, which I think is a crock, since I can easily imagine us being in some big comptuer simulation.  The Christian deity is tres unlikely, but a Deistic Creator, while uninformative, is certainly possible.  Heck, a meddling Creator is equally possible.

[Edit: I found a transcript of a similar though short talk from Stanford 2000:
http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_play_stream.html?stream_id=256 ]

As mentioned, this happened yesterday at A-Life X. He said it was a longer version of what he gave at the Singularity Summit in Stanford in May, and now I understand why the extropians list wasn't in as much of a tizzy as I expected -- I'd thought he'd be more harshly skeptical.

Executive summary: he largely talked about Ray Kurzweil's books, and his own reaction to the ideas, and how it seems like a confusing (to him) mix of crackpottery and seriously referenced material, and he doesn't know quite what to make of it, but thinks it has to be taken seriously.

"Do I believe in the Singularity? I don't know. But the ideas aren't entirely cracked. And even if I say I think the Turing Test will be passed 100 years from now, or 500, that's just putting off the scenario." -- my paraphrase. 

Robin Hanson says no. If you're a truth-seeking rational thinker who understands disagreement theory, and you meet another such, you should come to agree on all matters of fact. The agreement might be on a probability distribution, i.e. agreeing on uncertainty, but that's not the same as agreeing to disagree. If you believe X is true, and another meta-rational believes Y is true, and you meet, something should change.

He mentions Gulliver's Travels, in that the Houyhnhnms agreed too much to seem human; here's a relevant link to the text.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052506F

"Economists are probably also more open to immigration than the typical member of the public because of their ethics -- while economists may be known for assuming self-interested behavior wherever they look, economists in their work tend not to distinguish between us and them."

http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/408410.html

2 year old analysis of France, Muslims, and demographics, debunking the "sharia in Europe" claims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diptych
Medieval PDA!

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5323762
The Economist, analyzing French anti-Americanism and saying it's because we're so alike.

I wrote up a couple of essays for my lab's mailing list, on free will and DNA regulation.

I've usually called myself atheist. I called myself agnostic once on the school bus, out of cowardice. The other kids didn't know what it was, except for one who explained it was what atheists called themselves when they were chicken. This isn't true in general, but it was for me, and I felt shame, and resolved not to sell out again. I usually mean "weak atheism", "I lack belief in God" vs. "I assert there is no God"; sometimes I've gotten into arguments about atheism vs. agnosticism but really, the usage of both terms overlaps heavily, with an extension to militant atheists in one direction and can't-know-anything skeptics in the other.

And of course atheism isn't a religion, though it might have been for Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and Communism might be a sort of religion, with an atheistic component; also Objectivism, at least the way some people do it. I've dabbled in Unitarian Universalism communities but was never able to take it that seriously. Too vague and umbrella-like. Might be a nice place to hang out but I can't get to mine easily and like to sleep Sunday mornings. Well, most mornings.

On the other hand, I've known since 8 or 10 about Democritus and Epicurus, and identified fairly strongly with Epicureanism, without ever doing so publically. Felt too quaint, I guess. But really, atomism/materialism (from first principles, no less), sensation (especially touch, direct contact) as the ultimate source of truth, concentrating on enjoying this life, seeking out pleasure and avoiding pain, doubting the gods because (a) you don't see them and (b) does the world look like it's run by an omnipotent being who cares for us? No -- it's all me. Both the good questioning parts and the bad part of being a lazy ass happy to spend my life sitting in a garden and reading or chatting with friends.

So yeah, I'm Epicurean. Not quite a religion; I've called it and Stoicism "moral philosophies", Hecht (see below) calls them "graceful-life philosophies". I guess you could apply them to Communism and Objectivism or environmentalism too, depending on where you want to focus on presence of the supernatural or dogma vs. a way to live one's life and something binding (-ligio-) one to a community.

This post provoked by finishing Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History, a big fun book on the 2600 year history of doubt, from Epicurus and Buddha to the present day, and with a notable recurring role for Epicurus and Lucretius -- including in the Aramaic words for heretic or unbeliever in the Talmud.