4th Nov 2007 : Unless you are a professional philosopher or a committed atheist, you probably have not heard of Antony Flew. Eighty-four years old and long retired, Flew lives with his wife in Reading, a medium-size town on the Thames an hour west of London.

3rd Nov 2007 : Go ahead, roll in it. Revel in it. You're made of it. What, you prefer a meek, sterile world?

3rd Nov 2007 : I'm riding a rush hour #7 train from Queens to Manhattan when suddenly: I sense danger. My eyes dart to the left. No more than 15 feet from me, a woman is in possession of that common haven for misplaced trust: a bible.

3rd Nov 2007 : The Vatican is doing its utmost to frustrate him, but the Spanish PM's reforms are marching on, and they're going to be taught in schools.

2nd Nov 2007 : A.J. Jacobs is the senior editor at Esquire magazine. Over a year ago he decided to follow the rules of the Bible to the letter. For example, the Bible says a man should refrain from trimming the edges of his beard.

2nd Nov 2007 : At a stronghold of Roman Catholic doctrine, Christopher Hitchens debates a renowned Theologian and emerges as the more persuasive orator, by far.

1st Nov 2007 : To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.

1st Nov 2007 : Faith will unsettle politics everywhere this century; it will do so least when it is separated from the state

1st Nov 2007 : Substituting science for religion is like swapping a series of case-notes on senile dementia for King Lear

1st Nov 2007 : MYTHOLOGY can be a fascinating subject, consisting as it does of traditional stories emanating from a culture, largely concerned with how that culture began and how various matters progressed through time.

31st Oct 2007 : BALTIMORE - A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

31st Oct 2007 : Sacred texts, argues Carlin Romano, deserve to be approached politely even by those who see no merit in claims about their divine origins

31st Oct 2007 : For years, astronomers speculated that a giant, mysterious force lay at the center of the Milky Way, but it wasn't until four years ago that UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez definitively showed what it was.

31st Oct 2007 : Efforts to tackle extremism among young British Muslims must be centred on the internet as well as on mosques, the communities secretary has said.

31st Oct 2007 : The theoretical chemist is also widely known for his so-called Second Rule, which states that 'Evolution is cleverer than you are.'

31st Oct 2007 : Recently, the popular and successful books of atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens having been receiving some public criticism from religious quarters, with the most recent coming from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

30th Oct 2007 : Books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain's leading mosques, according to research seen by The Times.

30th Oct 2007 : VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Politicians and pharmacists in Italy responded angrily on Tuesday to an appeal by Pope Benedict for pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs such as the "morning after pill" if they object on moral grounds.

28th Oct 2007 : In adapting Philip Pullman's novel, New Line is in a tight spot between the book's true-believer following and those who find it anti-religious.

28th Oct 2007 : Rhetorical questions like this are used as an attempt to poke holes in the evolutionary explanation of morality, in the same way creationists or ID-ists look for "irreducible complexity" in biology.

28th Oct 2007 : A clash between secular and religious conscience could unfold in South Africa's education system -- and different interest groups are set to line up against one another.

28th Oct 2007 : Do you need to be religious to truly experience wonder at the world? This question lurks behind much of the ongoing debate about atheism. If everything can be explained by science, what is worthy of awe?

26th Oct 2007 :

26th Oct 2007 : If Richard Dawkins had his way, a fair number of you and, as it happens, me, would be had up for child abuse. According to him, that's what religious indoctrination of children by their parents is. And if you can sue for the long-term mental damage caused by physical abuse, he argues, why shouldn't you sue for the damage caused by mental child abuse?

26th Oct 2007 : Let's be positive.

25th Oct 2007 : Here is Eddie Tabash's brief to the California Supreme Court in the same-sex marraige case, with an argument based on church/state separation. The Chief Justice approved the brief on October 4th.

25th Oct 2007 : This is Sam Harris' talk from the AAI 07 conference in Washington, DC.

25th Oct 2007 : If you don't believe in God, you must not believe in anything.

25th Oct 2007 : The appeal that religion is generally moderate, and that it is only the extremists who are the problem.

25th Oct 2007 : "Religion created science" or "Without religion we wouldn't have science" or something like that.

25th Oct 2007 : "The US is (or was founded as) a Christian Nation." or a related point: "The idea of Church/State separation comes from Christianity"

25th Oct 2007 : This topic was covered in the Shermer vs D'Souza debate "Is Christianity Good For the World?".

25th Oct 2007 : In this month's audio podcast we celebrate our program's two-year anniversary by interviewing Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. HNN's Duncan Crary interviewed these best-selling authors, a.k.a. "The New Atheists", at the Atheist Alliance International annual conference in September. At the conference, Harris, author of "The End of Faith," told the crowd that they should not identify with the atheist label. Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens react. So does the Rational Response Squad and Pastor Deacon Fred of the Landover Baptist Church. Also, Sweet Reason gives advice on "coming out" as an atheist.

25th Oct 2007 : In January 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called "Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life" in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.

25th Oct 2007 :

25th Oct 2007 : I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career.

24th Oct 2007 : He is a former atheist who studied physics and biochemistry, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, and in recent times he's been a leading critic of Richard Dawkins and his runaway best-seller, The God Delusion. Alister McGrath has just been in Australia helping the Evangelicals brush up on their arguments against The God Delusion.

24th Oct 2007 : Atheism is self-refuting because it asserts that everything in the universe, including the atheist's own reasoning, came about as a result of non-rational forces. If that is indeed the case, every argument employed by the atheist is, according to his own assertions, incoherent and meaningless. Only the theist is able to claim coherence and true logic in his arguments because those arguments are founded on the notion of an all-knowing being.

24th Oct 2007 : Religionists like caricature non-believers as being unhappy, depressed, loveless, indifferent, etc. If you don't believe in God, then you must hate music, art, poetry, etc. As Hitchens has said, "distinguish the numinous from the supernatural."

24th Oct 2007 : Science can't tell us why we're here or what is the meaning of our lives.

24th Oct 2007 : It is common for the religious to ask you to prove that you love someone, as if this is an excuse for there being no evidence for God.

24th Oct 2007 : The Argument From Design can take many forms. Why is there something rather than nothing? What about the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants of the universe (The "Goldie Locks" proposition)? First Cause?

24th Oct 2007 : Pascal's Wager can still show up in debates, be ready for it.

24th Oct 2007 : One emerging favourite of the theists is to argue that science points towards theism on the basis that a Universe that follows "laws" implies a "law giver", and our ability to comprehend those laws is further evidence of the divine purpose of the Universe.

24th Oct 2007 : Weaknesses in evolution (gaps in fossil record, formation of the eye, bacteria with one protein taken out doesn't work, etc).

24th Oct 2007 : Another common method of trying to use religion against the non-religious.

24th Oct 2007 : This is an argument meant to level the playing field between science and religion.

24th Oct 2007 : This is a common one, used as an evasive maneuver.

24th Oct 2007 : Sometimes people claim that Atheism is its own religion, and that it is possible to be a "Fundementalist Atheist."

24th Oct 2007 : Use the comment space below the article to present your rebuttal. Let's try and be clear and concise, as if this were to be used in a debate.