26th May 2007 : Scholar says scientist has overstepped the ethical mark, writes John Huxley.

26th May 2007 : A scheduled three-day celebration of the US Air Force's 60th anniversary, sponsored in part by evangelical Christian organizations, has prompted a military watchdog group to threaten legal action against the Department of Defense.

25th May 2007 : District mandates handouts that violate religious beliefs

25th May 2007 : Al Gore lowers the boom on the boudary between entertainment and news, and dubs Jon and The Daily Show the equivalent of a medival court jester.

25th May 2007 : It's becoming a trend: Evangelical Christian institutions that try to do science inevitably demonstrate breathtaking inanity of their own. The latest victim is the Pawleys Island Christian Academy.

25th May 2007 : Richard Dawkins, the best-selling author, yesterday ridiculed a new postgraduate course for Christian sports workers by comparing it to a Monty Python sketch.

25th May 2007 : On February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati express train arrived in the station of Godhra, in the state of Gujarat, bearing a large group of Hindu pilgrims who were returning from a trip to the purported birthplace of the god Rama at Ayodhya (where, some years earlier, angry Hindu mobs had destroyed the Babri mosque, which they claimed was on top of the remains of Rama's birthplace). The pilgrimage, like many others in recent times, aimed at forcibly constructing a temple over the disputed site, and the mood of the returning passengers, frustrated in their aims by the government and the courts, was angrily emotional. When the train stopped at the station, the Hindu passengers got into arguments with Muslim passengers and vendors. At least one Muslim vendor was beaten up when he refused to say Jai Sri Ram ("Hail Rama"). As the train left the station, stones were thrown at it, apparently by Muslims.

25th May 2007 : The biologist and the philosopher meet up to talk about God, evolution, incest, and of course, ants.

25th May 2007 : The No. 1 book on Amazon.com right now is "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" -- no big surprise there. Of course, Hogwarts had nothing on the real-world deathly hallows sought by the thousands of "Christian"-Americans who are currently buying the No. 2 book on the list, ahead of Christopher Hitchens and Walter Isaacson and even John Grogan and his adorable deceased dog.

25th May 2007 : To most of the world, highly revered figures such as Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are larger-than-life symbols of love, peace and charity. But how much of our perception of "sainthood" is built on hype and not facts? This episode reveals the dark side of the so-called enlightened ones and delves into why we're so susceptible to buying into their bullshit.

25th May 2007 : Jerry Falwell's prosaic death in his Liberty University office -- just another body, unresponsive and pulseless, on a random floor -- has elevated speaking ill of the dead to the level of sacrament.

25th May 2007 : Hitchens to Jehovah: "Had Enough?"

25th May 2007 : Unlike large numbers of people who have been invited off the street to take this famous personality test of theirs, I have only good and happy memories of my short excursion into Hubbardland. It was all in all an instructive and rewarding experience with considerable entertainment value.

25th May 2007 : Ministers have bowed to pressure to allow the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for research.

25th May 2007 : GALVESTON, Texas (AP) -- A woman blames the devil, and not her husband, for severely burning their infant daughter in a microwave, a Texas television station reported.

25th May 2007 : A British stand-up has been accused of spreading 'racist hate speech' in California.

25th May 2007 : Apparently, my position on immigration is that we must deport all 12 million illegal aliens immediately, inasmuch as this is billed as the only alternative to immediate amnesty. The jejune fact that we "can't deport them all" is supposed to lead ineluctably to the conclusion that we must grant amnesty to illegal aliens — and fast!

25th May 2007 : LONDON (AFP) - A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organisation said Monday.

25th May 2007 : While I was in the Galapagos the Rev. Jerry Falwell, as you know, walked into the funhouse mirror. (If you're a Cocteau fan, you get this).

25th May 2007 : Italy's public broadcasting corporation, RAI, was accused yesterday of withholding approval for the screening of a controversial BBC documentary that accuses Pope Benedict of covering up sex crimes by Roman Catholic priests.

25th May 2007 : So normally you just wouldn't bother with the New Age stuff. The people are pretty friendly and harmless, and they tend not to make too many scientific claims. But Tony Blair stepped over some pretty significant lines.

25th May 2007 : I received an anonymous tip from an acquaintance living on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska in the form of the above clipping from the Kenai Peninsula Clarion, the region's daily rag. I've done a little research into the area, and other than the occasional moose attack (which makes the front page of the news) it seems like a normal sort of area.

25th May 2007 : Creationist Periodic Table of the Elements.

25th May 2007 : Endangered species.

25th May 2007 : It's not a secret that the general population hangs on to no end of non-scientific beliefs despite contrary evidence; the Nobel Intent forums have been visited by proponents of homeopathy and intelligent design, to give just two examples. Two developmental psychologists at Yale are now suggesting these and many other non-scientific beliefs—their list includes "unproven medical interventions; the mystical nature of out-of-body experiences; the existence of supernatural entities such as ghosts and fairies; and the legitimacy of astrology, ESP, and divination"—all originate in childhood. Becoming scientifically literate, in their view, requires overcoming our early mental development.

25th May 2007 : Cairo, Egypt - Al-Azhar University, one of Sunni Islam's most prestigious institutions, ordered one of its clerics Monday to face a disciplinary panel after he issued a controversial decree allowing adults to breast-feed.

25th May 2007 : Are silent prayers transmissible to, or readable by, a supernatural being? A brief examination of this question using modern information about the brain.

25th May 2007 : The science and religion debate in America has seen its fair share of controversy, much of it bitter. From the moment that Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, Americans have debated evolution, its place and role and significance, especially with respect to Christianity. Almost immediately, two leading Harvard professors, Louis Agassiz, the transplanted Swiss ichthyologist then building the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Asa Gray, the diminutive professor of botany, clashed over the truth of evolution. Although both appealed to scientific facts, it was clear that religious issues were close to the surface. A decade later the leading American Presbyterian theologian, Princeton Seminary professor Charles Hodge, wrote a little book titled: What is Darwinism? He answered the question himself: It is Atheism!

25th May 2007 : WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Primitive fish already may have possessed the genetic wiring needed to grow hands and feet well before the appearance of the first animals with limbs roughly 365 million years ago, scientists said on Wednesday.

25th May 2007 : The testimony of a British surgeon about the "miraculous" recovery of a baby has helped pave the way for the canonisation of Malta's first saint.

25th May 2007 : Casting out demons and healing the sick with prayer will be on the lesson plan at a school for evangelists.

25th May 2007 : What's even worse than the debate raging in American schools about the teaching of the soulless doctrine of evolution, is the non-debate over an issue that rational Americans have foolishly conceded to the secular among us: the issue of Heliocentrism, or the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

25th May 2007 : PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

24th May 2007 : The time for polite debate is over. Militant, atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and reaching the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment over the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers.

24th May 2007 : A bolt broke off an arm and a hand and damaged a foot at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden. The sisters hope the 22-foot piece can be repaired.

24th May 2007 : On Tuesday night, Chris Hedges and Sam Harris debated "Religion, Politics and the End of the World." The following is Hedges' opening statement, in which he argues that Harris and other critics of faith have mistakenly blamed religion for the ills of the world, when the true danger lies in the human heart and its capacity for evil. We will post Sam Harris' statement and a recording of the debate soon.

23rd May 2007 : Richard Dawkins, author of the bestselling The God Delusion, will appear in a week of screenings to be held in Second Life, launching on Tuesday 29 May.

23rd May 2007 : "I promise you four papers," the young patent examiner wrote his friend. The letter would turn out to bear some of the most significant tidings in the history of science, but its momentous nature was masked by an impish tone that was typical of its author. He had, after all, just addressed his friend as "you frozen whale" and apologized for writing a letter that was "inconsequential babble." Only when he got around to describing the papers, which he had produced during his spare time, did he give some indication that he sensed their significance.

23rd May 2007 : For most of my adult life, I was what you might call, a casual evolutionist. You know, the type of person who could handle your run-of-the-mill, cocktail-party conversation on Darwinism. All the obvious stuff just seemed to make sense, like how giraffes with longer necks had a better shot than their shorter cousins. Or that stronger lions killed more zebras than the weak ones. Or how Donald Trump is still able to date fashion models because…

23rd May 2007 :

23rd May 2007 : Faith healer says he embodies God's power to repair dental problems -- and, sometimes, to perform alchemy

23rd May 2007 : BustedHalo.com -- An online magazine for spiritual seekers in their 20's and 30's.

23rd May 2007 : It was the 'virgin birth' that baffled scientists for years. But now the mystery of a hammerhead shark born at a zoo where there were no male sharks has been solved – it seems females of the species can reproduce without having sex.

23rd May 2007 : How old are the oldest stars" Using ESO's VLT, astronomers recently measured the age of a star located in our Galaxy. The star, a real fossil, is found to be 13.2 billion years old, not very far from the 13.7 billion years age of the Universe. The star, HE 1523-0901, was clearly born at the dawn of time.

23rd May 2007 : Simple, passionate, straightforward, rational, uncontrived and uncompromisingly honest, 'The God Delusion' is perhaps the most important work by Richard Dawkins.

23rd May 2007 : A scene from The Root of All Evil?, a two-part television series on religion by Richard Dawkins, shows Dawkins accusing the evangelical pastor the Reverend Ted Haggard of running worship sessions in the way the Nazis ran their rallies.

23rd May 2007 : WASHINGTON - One in four younger U.S. Muslims said in a poll that suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances, though most Muslim Americans overwhelmingly reject the tactic and are critical of Islamic extremism and al-Qaida.

23rd May 2007 : Two bishops at the centre of divisions in the US over homosexuality have not been invited to next year's Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion.

23rd May 2007 : LYNCHBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- A first-year Liberty University student was arrested in what police said was a plot to detonate explosive devices Tuesday, the day of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's funeral.

22nd May 2007 : When, more than 70 years ago, William Beebe became the first scientist to descend into the abyss, he described a world of twinkling lights, silvery eels, throbbing jellyfish, living strings as "lovely as the finest lace" and lanky monsters with needlelike teeth.