4th Aug 2007 : I have been asked to comment on whether the universe shows signs of having been designed. I don't see how it's possible to talk about this without having at least some vague idea of what a designer would be like. Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

4th Aug 2007 : Hot on the heels of the million-selling, God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has put his name behind the Out Campaign, an attempt to bring atheists out of the closet, so to speak. You can even buy a specially-made T-shirt.

4th Aug 2007 : In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people's judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

4th Aug 2007 : On evening of 9th July 2007, the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation keynote event was held at London's Natural History Museum. Featuring Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Lewis Wolpert and chaired by Peter Bentley, a discussion on evolution and complexity took place in front of an audience of 600 people. On this page you can listen to the discussion and take a look at some of the photos of the event.

3rd Aug 2007 : A household name in Turkey, the 'Foundation for Scientific Research' is now distributing its books – published in 59 languages including Chinese and Swahili – to 80 countries.

3rd Aug 2007 : When Martin Nowak was in high school, his parents thought he would be a nice boy and become a doctor. But when he left for the University of Vienna, he abandoned medicine for something called biochemistry.

3rd Aug 2007 : Stephen's guest Michael Behe author of The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. I thought this was one of Stephen's better interviews. He raised some good questions while maintaining his fundamentalist persona.

3rd Aug 2007 :

2nd Aug 2007 :

2nd Aug 2007 : When the next US presidential debate airs, voters should swiftly reject any
candidates who flaunt their scientific illiteracy, says Lawrence Krauss

2nd Aug 2007 : A few readers sent me a link to this interview with Alister McGrath; most thought it was worth a laugh, but one actually seemed to think I'd be devastated. I'm afraid the majority were correct: everything I've read by McGrath suggests that here is a man whose thoughts have been arrested by a temporal lobe seizure that he has mistaken for a lightning bolt from god.

2nd Aug 2007 : Wold Book Club interview on The Selfish Gene.

2nd Aug 2007 : A 38-year-old man who spent more than five years in a mute, barely conscious state as a result of a severe head injury is now communicating regularly with family members and recovering his ability to move after having his brain stimulated with pulses of electric current, neuroscientists are reporting.

2nd Aug 2007 : Sure, we know about the sexual side effects of SSRIs. But researchers now wonder if that's the only aspect of romance the drugs can influence.

1st Aug 2007 : As often happens when a topic lands in the eye of a media hurricane, Darwinian evolution is now being examined from a sensationalistic extreme. "Creation science" serves as the reliable bogeyman lurking on the outskirts of reason. Also known as "intelligent design," this account of life's origins seriously propounds that the world is only a few thousand years old, God directly created it, and the biblical flood was a real event that mercifully left standing a pair of each animal species.

1st Aug 2007 :

1st Aug 2007 : The cover of The Irrational Atheist claims to dissect the "Unholy Trinity," but I think we have to give this one to Sam due to the cover design!

31st Jul 2007 : During the greater part of last week, Slate's sister site On Faith (it is jointly produced by Newsweek and washingtonpost.com, both owned by the Washington Post Co., which also owns Slate) gave itself over to a discussion about the religion of Islam. As usual in such cases, the search for "moderate" versions of this faith was under way before the true argument had even begun. If I were a Muslim myself, I think that this search would be the most "offensive" part of the business. Why must I prove that my deepest belief is compatible with moderation?

30th Jul 2007 : In the dark days of 1940, the pre-Vichy French government was warned by its generals "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." After the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill growled his response: "Some chicken; some neck!" Today, the bestselling books of 'The New Atheism' are disparaged, by those who desperately wish to downplay their impact, as "Only preaching to the choir."

Some choir! Only?!

29th Jul 2007 : In this conversation with D.J. Grothe, Philip Kitcher explores the implications of Darwinism for both literalist religion, and for liberal faith, and to what extent the implications of Darwin's theory for belief in God should be taught in the public schools. He also discusses the role and benefits of religion, and explores alternatives to it, such as secular humanism, and offers ideas for how secular humanism might become more popular in society.

29th Jul 2007 : Brother Brigstocke's Travelling Secular Salvation Show suggests that: "Religion is hard, it's too hard for most people, whereas humanity is relatively easy. All you have to do is be you and try not to be a dick."

28th Jul 2007 : The RDF has started the Out Campaign, an effort to get atheists to publicly and proudly declare their status. It has a slightly different meaning — it's not exactly a symbol of atheism, but more a symbol of the willingness to come out about your disbelief — but it's nice, it's simple, it's clean. It's a simple red Zapfino "A", the scarlet letter.

28th Jul 2007 :

28th Jul 2007 : On July 16, I attended Christians United for Israel's annual Washington-Israel Summit.

26th Jul 2007 : The capacity to resist peer pressure in early adolescence may depend on the strength of connections between certain areas of the brain, according to a study carried out by University of Nottingham researchers.

26th Jul 2007 : Texas had the nation's highest birth rate among teenagers ages 15 to 19 in 2004, according to a newly released study of children's health.

26th Jul 2007 : A group called "Righteous Response" (surely a play on The Rational Response Squad) has posted a video where they show comments from the RichardDawkins.net forum and claim that these are endorsed by Richard Dawkins -- which they are obviously not. I think we all understand how forums work and who is responsible for the views in each post, so I won't belabor the point. Instead I would like to share this satirical video of Stephen Colbert hitting the nail on the head:

26th Jul 2007 : We have sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of the extinct American mastodon (Mammut americanum) from an Alaskan fossil that is between 50,000 and 130,000 y old, extending the age range of genomic analyses by almost a complete glacial cycle.

25th Jul 2007 : Christopher Hitchens in his book God Is Not Great has confused religion with religious institutions and beliefs with dogma.

25th Jul 2007 : Los Angeles Times religion reporter William Lobdell was an evangelical Christian when he took the job, and during his time on the beat he almost converted to Catholicism. But he says after covering religion for eight years, he has lost faith in Christianity and left the religion beat. Lobdell talks with Alex Cohen.

25th Jul 2007 : Support for suicide bombings against civilians has fallen sharply across the Muslim world since 2002, a major survey has suggested.

25th Jul 2007 : Now and the hour of our death; these two moments in life are inevitably drawing closer together. For the 26 Polish pilgrims killed so tragically in a coach crash in France on their way home, the two moments unexpectedly became the same moment. The knowledge that they had been visiting the shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary at La Salette only underlined the poignancy of this sudden, unmerited death.

25th Jul 2007 : Barbara Kay rightly mocks the term "brights" that some atheists use to describe themselves, but in her drive to diminish an otherwise serious school of inquiry she tars too many of us with the same brush. Yes, unfortunately it was Richard Dawkins who coined it, but many of us are embarrassed by such conceit. Christopher Hitchens, for one, describes it in God Is Not Great as "cringe-making."

25th Jul 2007 : The first hour at the Chinmaya Mission day camp unfolds as at any other camp. Children shriek through tag, while a few others play Uno.

24th Jul 2007 : In a HardTalk inteview first broadcast on 24 July 2007, Stephen Sackur talks to Professor Richard Dawkins.

24th Jul 2007 :

24th Jul 2007 : In 1977, Steven Weinberg, then two years shy of the Nobel Prize in Physics, decided to do a little of what some theorists call "ambulance chasing."

24th Jul 2007 : Hameeda Sarfraz, 19, lively eyes sparkling out of a black burqa, was describing the boons of the afterlife.

23rd Jul 2007 : Dan Dennett explains his thoughts on consciousness.

23rd Jul 2007 : In every age, taboo questions raise our blood pressure and threaten moral panic. But we cannot be afraid to answer them.

22nd Jul 2007 : After the publication of "The God Delusion" (TGD), the minister of Christ Church in Cambridge, Revd. Steve Midgley, gave a talk responding to the book and posted it up online.

22nd Jul 2007 : THE probing about his Mormon beliefs has by now become familiar to the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But when Mary Van Steenis, a teacher at a local Christian school, took the microphone at a recent "Ask Mitt Anything" forum in Pella, Iowa, to ask her question, it still felt as if some sort of unspoken boundary of social etiquette had been breached.

22nd Jul 2007 : Sarah Jones'S first real sense of what it might be like to be a marine biologist came during summers at Seacamp San Diego, a camp for middle-school and high-school students.

22nd Jul 2007 :

21st Jul 2007 : The Centre for Inquiry Ontario office is on the main floor of an old row house in downtown Toronto, but has the look of a spacious church basement. It has a piano, folding chairs in neat rows, and shelves of books, many with God in the title. But because it is a drop-in centre for atheists, humanists and secularists, the books are entitled, The God Delusion, Can We Be Good Without God? and Road to Reason; the magazines include the Canadian Free Thinker and Skeptical Inquirer; and there are T-shirts for sale emblazoned with "Darwin" and "Heretic." There is a kitchen in the back to cook the occasional mass spaghetti dinner.

21st Jul 2007 : A reporter looks at how the stories he covered affected him and his spiritual journey.

20th Jul 2007 : Popular modern books on religion lack serious engagement with previous work, says Gordon Lynch

20th Jul 2007 : Stand-up comedian Marcus Brigstocke delivered a seven-minute rant during this evening's Now Show on BBC Radio 4, on the evils of religion (I think he's been reading The God Delusion).

20th Jul 2007 : The most unpredictable presidential race for a generation is well under way in the US, and so far, issues of personal faith have never been far from the headlines.

20th Jul 2007 : A live Madagascar hissing cockroach; a giant blue nose that sneezes spray at visitors; an I-beam on which visitors precariously perch; chronicles of epidemics; creatures that sting and bite; Imax footage of Hurricane Katrina hitting the bayou: These are the signs of an aggressive and sometimes distressing world that emerge at the ambitious $109 million transformation of the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City.