9th Nov 2007 : ATLANTA --What to do when the rain won't come? If you're Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, you pray.

9th Nov 2007 : The question of the nature of reality is one that likely will never go away. There will always be those who support the belief that this mysterious "something" exists, and there will be those on the opposing side. We must work with the tools available to us, and those just happen to be limited to our five innate senses and the knowledge that we have gained through science and reason.

9th Nov 2007 : Turkana Boy, considered the most complete early human fossil, is being removed from his bomb-proof vault to take centre stage at an exhibition that curators say will provide the most complete record of the evolution of Man.

8th Nov 2007 : Hello again, Michael Behe*! Im glad you found the time to reply to my essay, as your response provided me with yet another opportunity to write about really cool research that you are blissfully (arrogantly?) unaware of, and yet another opportunity to expose the fact you are a charlatan to the entire planet! Yay!

8th Nov 2007 : Even private schools in La belle province must adopt one-size-fits-all religious classes

8th Nov 2007 : One day after endorsing former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for president, televangelist Pat Robertson explained his decision, saying that a Giuliani presidency features prominently in the Book of Revelation.

8th Nov 2007 : PARIS (AFP) - Small, fast-moving carnivorous dinosaurs had air-sac respiratory systems similar to modern-day penguins and other diving birds, scientists reported on Wednesday.

8th Nov 2007 : I am 32 and, until this year, I never had many Muslim friends. At first I thought it was because I grew up in a small town and my family didn't socialize much with other families. Then I blamed my – predominantly white, predominantly middle-class – education and employment choices.

7th Nov 2007 :

7th Nov 2007 : Richard has a new flea!

7th Nov 2007 : In 2007, Richard Dawkins' scarlet "A" campaign is making coming out as a nontheist easier for so many people than it had been just a few years ago. I like to hope that the existence of the Secular Coalition for America ( http://www.secular.org ) has also helped during the two years that the SCA has been lobbying Congress explicitly representing nontheists (atheists, humanists, naturalists, brights, rationalists, agnostics, and people claiming dozens of other personal identifiers with one thing in common – they do not rely on the existence of any god or gods.) I know it feels easier for me to talk about my godless beliefs now, than it did on my first day as the Director of the Secular Coalition for America, September 19, 2005, when I "outed" myself to a few million people on Fox's Big Story.

6th Nov 2007 : In Book 10 of Milton's "Paradise Lost," Adam asks the question so many of his descendants have asked: why should the lives of billions be blighted because of a sin he, not they, committed? ("Ah, why should all mankind / For one man's fault… be condemned?") He answers himself immediately: "But from me what can proceed, / But all corrupt, both Mind and Will depraved?" Adam's Original Sin is like an inherited virus. Although those who are born with it are technically innocent of the crime – they did not eat of the forbidden tree – its effects rage in their blood and disorder their actions.

6th Nov 2007 : The New Atheism deserves our cheers. This is not a time for hyper-scrupulous misgivings about how robustly religion should be criticised, even leaving aside the relative mildness that the New Atheists actually display. Books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great should give confidence to anyone who embraces secularism and deplores the political influence of religion. These books will convince at least some intellectual opponents, or play a role in doing so, expose the population to the idea (doubtless shocking for some) that there are alternatives to theism, and provide a rallying point for opposition to religious influences on public policy.

6th Nov 2007 : Are humans "wired for empathy"? How does this affect what Chomsky calls the "manufacturing of consent"?

6th Nov 2007 : A movie adaptation from Philip Pullman's children's book, "The Golden Compass," is drawing controversy for strong anti-Catholic and anti-religion themes. Is the movie an example of 'atheist evangelism'? Discussing the issues of the movie, the book, and religion itself is Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and Fox News religion contributor Father Jonathan Morris. (30 Oct 2007)

6th Nov 2007 : For half a century, social psychologists have been trying to figure out the human gift for rationalizing irrational behavior.

5th Nov 2007 : Richard Dawkins' talk at AAI 07

5th Nov 2007 : Washoe, a female chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept.

5th Nov 2007 : As the nights lengthen and the mist swirls, as the first frost crinkles and the bones begin to chill, we are entering the season of scary movies. The sides of buses right now are decorated with pictures of severed heads and disgorged entrails by way of promotion for the latest offering of slasher porn.

5th Nov 2007 : If the people of Congo save the mountain gorilla, might the gorilla return the favor?

5th Nov 2007 :

5th Nov 2007 :

5th Nov 2007 : A young mother has died after giving birth to twins, amid claims that she had refused a blood transfusion because of her faith.

4th Nov 2007 : Tina joins the circus!

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.