2nd Apr 2008 :
Comedian Ben Elton has accused the BBC of prohibiting jokes about imams and said the corporation was too "scared" to allow gags about Islam.

He told Third Way, a Christian culture magazine: "I think it all starts with people nodding whenever anyone says, 'As a person of faith ...'

2nd Apr 2008 :

2nd Apr 2008 : Professor Sean Carroll was on the BBC Radio 4 "Today Programme" this morning, talking about the subject of his new book The Making of the Fittest, and he mentions that the argument against creationism/intelligent design is now stronger than ever.

1st Apr 2008 : Two followers of a fundamentalist Christian church that favours faith healing over conventional medicine are to be prosecuted for manslaughter after their daughter died of a treatable infection.

Carl and Raylene Worthington were indicted by a grand jury in Oregon's Clackamas county following the death of their 15-month-old daughter Ava in March.

1st Apr 2008 :
WASHINGTON -- If a city allows a monument with the Ten Commandments to be erected in a public park, must it also allow other religions and groups to display monuments of their choosing? The Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up that question in an unusual dispute over the reach of the 1st Amendment and freedom of speech.

1st Apr 2008 : Last week, irked by what I saw as the use of wild exaggeration by church leaders in the embryology Bill debate, I challenged one of them - the Bishop of Durham - to justify one of his more outrageous claims. Tom Wright had accused the "militantly atheist and secularist lobby" behind the Bill (a Bill, as it happens, supported and sponsored by many practising Christians) of believing "that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people."

31st Mar 2008 : VATICAN CITY - Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

31st Mar 2008 : For the past eleven years the organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yesterday, 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.

31st Mar 2008 : The Christian Founders 3D Adventure is a great tool to show the truth about America's founding fathers! Defeat the "Deist argument" with quotes from the founders themselves.

31st Mar 2008 :

30th Mar 2008 : My plan for de-baptism started to formulate when travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

30th Mar 2008 : Video-hosting site LiveLeak pulled the controversial anti-Quran film Fitna Friday afternoon, citing a barrage of threats.

29th Mar 2008 : The argument goes like this: There weren't actually any dinosaurs. They didn't exist. Couldn't have. Archeological science puts the age of the oldest dinosaur at about 250 million years; the Earth itself, 4.5 billion. Yet, according to the writings in The Holy Bible, the Earth was created only about 6,000 years ago. That's a discrepancy of about 4,499,994,000 years, give or take, putting the creation of the Earth well after the supposed dinosaurs allegedly lived. Therefore, the theory goes, they didn't exist.

28th Mar 2008 : Some of you know that the producers of Expelled had a conference call this afternoon…a carefully controlled, closed environment in which they would spout their nonsense and only take questions by email. I listened to it for a while, and yeah, it was the usual run-around. However, I dialed in a few minutes early, and got to listen to a tiresome five minutes of Leslie and Paul chatting away, during which time they mentioned the secret code (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!) for the two way calls. I know. Sloppy, unprofessional, and stupid, but that's the way they work.

28th Mar 2008 :

28th Mar 2008 :
IOWA CITY, Iowa - County officials have given their informal OK for ghost hunters to check out a one-time Iowa insane asylum to see if any spirits are lurking about.

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors took the initial action on the request from the Johnson County Historical Society, which gives tours of the 153-year-old building.

28th Mar 2008 : It is hard not to notice the bells that ring on Sunday morning. But at churches, synagogues and mosques around the globe there are some for whom that religion is lost. This group is part of America's atheist minority.

While Christians, Muslims and American Jews can celebrate their beliefs, and fellowship in the company of others in churches, mosques and synagogues, where can non-believers find a spiritual home?

27th Mar 2008 :

26th Mar 2008 :
I was delighted to read that PZ Myers' expulsion from a screening of pro-ID documentary Expelled has been the biggest story in the blogosphere over the past few days. You'll see that the press release is actually from the makers of Expelled, trying to twist the publicity their own way, but it's still great news, and a look at BlogPulse, which tracks the popularity of items in the blogosphere, shows that PZ's original post on the matter is currently the fourth most popular blog post in the world.

26th Mar 2008 :

26th Mar 2008 : Today, Marth 26th, 2008, is Richard Dawkins' 67th birthday! Happy Birthday Richard!

Please use the comments below to send him your birthday wishes.

26th Mar 2008 : WESTON, Wis. — An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.

26th Mar 2008 :

25th Mar 2008 : Since I was one of the group who watched Expelled at the Mall of America last week with Richard Dawkins and (not!) PZ Myers, I thought I should do my part to expose the movie for what it is. Richard and PZ have written responses, and a conversation between them about their experience is now online. I think the best contribution I can make to all of this is to give you as detailed an account of the actual film as I can, so that you don't have to give Mark Mathis any money in order to know what Expelled is all about.

25th Mar 2008 : Austin Dacey serves as a representative to the United Nations for CFI, and is also on the editorial staff of Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times. His new book is The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life.

25th Mar 2008 :

25th Mar 2008 : Traditionally Easter used to be the time when hellfire and stoppage was preached from the platforms of competing teachers' conferences. These days, regrettably, the Churches are getting in on the act. Over the weekend the fabulous Norman pile at Durham surrendered its calm to the far-from-pacific message delivered by its bishop, Tom Wright. Sermonising about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, currently before Parliament, the bishop criticised the Government for "pushing through, hard and fast, legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby".

24th Mar 2008 : Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath (author of 'The Dawkins Delusion') at Bristol University on the motion that "belief in God is a dangerous delusion". This event took place on November 13, 2007.

23rd Mar 2008 : The blogs are ringing with ridicule. Mark Mathis, duplicitous producer of the much hyped film Expelled, shot himself in the foot so spectacularly that the phrase might have been invented for him.

19th Mar 2008 :

21st Mar 2008 :

23rd Mar 2008 : At Easter I, a longstanding atheist, find myself feeling affinity with religious folk

23rd Mar 2008 : Simon Jenkins replies to John Gray's challenge to Dawkins et al

21st Mar 2008 : This is a short clip from an upcoming discussion between PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins. I thought I should post the relevant piece about the film Expelled today.

21st Mar 2008 :

21st Mar 2008 : It's almost too perfect: P.Z. Myers tried to see the movie, "Expelled," at the Mall of America Thursday.

But he was expelled.

21st Mar 2008 : I'm expected to say something about the events that occurred last night at Expelled, but you all know the shenanigans involving my dad being expelled, but Dawkins getting in. Here's my impression of the movie:

20th Mar 2008 : There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I'm blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.

19th Mar 2008 : In a dazzling display of erudition, this book presents a cogent argument for secular liberalism. Dacey, a philosopher who teaches at Polytechnic University and the State University of New York at Buffalo, claims that values and ethics—defining what is right and wrong, good and bad—are not the sole domain of theologians.

19th Mar 2008 : COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Even in death Arthur C. Clarke would not compromise his vision.

The famed science fiction writer, who once denigrated religion as "a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species," left written instructions that his funeral be completely secular, according to his aides.

"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.

19th Mar 2008 :

19th Mar 2008 : Former residents say separation contracts, a ban on physical contact and teachings by an 'ex-gay' are part of Mercy Ministry's attempts to stamp out lesbianism in its flock, reports Ruth Pollard.

WHEN Mercy Ministries says it helps young women with "life-controlling issues", it means in part that it aims to teach them not to be lesbians.

19th Mar 2008 : IT IS one the biggest mysteries in physics - where did all the antimatter go? Now a team of physicists claims to have found the first ever hint of an answer in experimental data. The findings could signal a major crack in the standard model, the theoretical edifice that describes nature's fundamental particles and forces.

In its early days, the cosmos was a cauldron of radiation and equal amounts of matter and antimatter. As it cooled, all the antimatter annihilated in collisions with matter - but for some reason the proportions ended up lopsided, leaving some of the matter intact.

19th Mar 2008 : DEMONSTRATING the Lord works in mysterious ways, University of Oxford academics have received a research grant of pound stg. 1.9 million (which equals the Tasmanian budget on the present exchange rate) to investigate why people believe in God.

That the question has come up at all is a sign, not necessarily a divine one, of the times.

A century ago the answer would have been obvious: people believed in God because the supreme being's existence was manifest, what with him (never her) being omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.

18th Mar 2008 :
The group that asked Hudsonville to remove God from the city's mission statement says it is having a hard time placing a billboard espousing its position.

"This is new, that a billboard company is censoring us," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The Madison, Wis.-based group, dedicated to the separation of church and state, bills itself as North America's largest group of atheists and agnostics with 12,000 supporters.

18th Mar 2008 : Legendary British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

He came to fame when his story was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, by director Stanley Kubrick in 1968.

Once called "the first dweller in the electronic cottage", his vision captured the popular imagination.

18th Mar 2008 :

18th Mar 2008 :
For a second time in two weeks, religious groups have called for the closure of Russia's cartoon channel 2X2.

Christian and Muslim groups are demanding that 2X2 be shut down because it airs cartoons, such as South Park, which they deem to be anti-religious, violent as well as promoting homosexuality.

18th Mar 2008 :

18th Mar 2008 : A belief in God could lead to a more contented life, research suggests.

Religious people are better able to cope with shocks such as losing a job or divorce, claims the study presented to a Royal Economic Society conference.

Data from thousands of Europeans revealed higher levels of "life satisfaction" in believers.

However, researcher Professor Andrew Clark said other aspects of a religious upbringing unrelated to belief may influence future happiness.