To those of you visiting from the Skeptic’s Circle, welcome!¬† On the surface, Mind on Fire is my personal blog, and charts my tortuous journey from Mormonism to unbelief; dig a little deeper and you find a community of believers who value doubt and skeptics who embrace spirituality.¬† I’m still on a pilgrimage to find the right balance between criticism of and respect for religion and spirituality, and Miko, our resident guest blogger, and a cadre of insightful commenters help keep me honest.

Other features include my OC Pilgrimage: reflections on visits to religious sites in Southern California, and The End of Faith Book Group, which is a multi-blog, virtual and real-life reading group focusing on Sam Harris’ controversial book.

For the MoF faithful, I should let you know that my Call for an Atheist-Believer Alliance was accepted at the 45th Skeptic’s Circle! (A blog carnival for skeptics and skepticism)¬† Karl at Inoculated Mind is trying out a new format: the links are listed on the blog, but the introductions are done via a podcast-style audio file (each of the bloggers was asked to introduce themselves and to read an excerpt from their posts).

Carnivals are great opportunities to have more of your life sucked into that great Blog Hole at the center of the Internet. With each new carnival I encounter, I end up subscribing to another 2-3 rss feeds (my Google reader is currently at 135+). When I have more time (still lots of Foucault to read and a paper to write by tomorrow), I’ll post links to some of my favorite carnivals.