25th Apr 2008 : WASHINGTON (AP) -- Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.

25th Apr 2008 : NEW YORK (AFP) - Beatle John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono is suing two companies over the rights to videos of her late husband, one of which shows Lennon smoking marijuana, composing songs and wondering if he should drug Richard Nixon.

25th Apr 2008 : A US federal court has granted permission for a teenager to wear a t-shirt with the slogan "Be Happy, Not Gay" during a Christian day of action held in response to a gay rights protest.

25th Apr 2008 : For all its appearance as a ferocious predator, Tyrannosaurus rex was just an overgrown chicken, researchers have found.

24th Apr 2008 :

23rd Apr 2008 : Since the publication of Sam Harris' The End of Faith in 2005, the English speaking world has seen a spate of books on atheism, most notoriously perhaps Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (2006). The publication of Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great (2007), Sam Harris' The End of Faith (2005) and Michel Onfray's 'Atheist Manfesto' (2007), among others, have added and expanded the debate. However, despite the popular success of these publications, the 'new atheists' have had a mixed reception, not only among the religious (as is to be expected) but also among fellow atheists and agnostics, who have often accused them of oversimplifying the issues.

23rd Apr 2008 : KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

23rd Apr 2008 : The first generation of World Wide Web capabilities rapidly transformed retailing and information search. More recent attributes such as blogging, tagging and social networking, dubbed Web 2.0, have just as quickly expanded people's ability not just to consume online information but to publish it, edit it and collaborate about it—forcing such old-line institutions as journalism, marketing and even politicking to adopt whole new ways of thinking and operating.

23rd Apr 2008 : NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge ordered a public school system to stop allowing in-school Bible giveaways, saying the practice violates the First Amendment separation of church and state.

"Distribution of Bibles is a religious activity without a secular purpose" and amounts to school board promotion of Christianity, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Barbier ruled in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana against the Tangipahoa Parish School Board.

22nd Apr 2008 : Prof Daniel Dennett and Lord Winston present their arguments ahead of tonight's public debate

22nd Apr 2008 : In response to Richard's article 'Gods and Earthlings'

21st Apr 2008 :

21st Apr 2008 :

21st Apr 2008 :
One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

21st Apr 2008 : SPEAKERS at a Doha conference on Mecca's importance said that the holy city, not Greenwich, should become the reference point for world time, reigniting an old controversy that started some four decades ago.

21st Apr 2008 :
PHILADELPHIA - A new exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania about human evolution gives a new meaning to the expression "nobody's perfect."

20th Apr 2008 : Everyone should take the opportunity to see "Expelled" — if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism. But it's far more than that. It's a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little.

20th Apr 2008 : On March 28, 2008, some of the editors of Scientific American watched a screening of Expelled at our offices and had a discussion with the associate producer* of the film, Mark Mathis. This is the entire recording of the discussion, uncut. The first voice you hear is John Rennie, the editor in chief of Scientific American.

20th Apr 2008 : On 18th April, the day Ben Stein's infamous film was released, Michael Shermer received the following letter from a Jew, whose identity I shall conceal as "David J".

20th Apr 2008 :
ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2008) — In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes.

20th Apr 2008 :

19th Apr 2008 :
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The founder of a Christian school is confronted after 13 Undercover catches him soliciting sex from a parent, who's trying to get her daughter a high school diploma.

19th Apr 2008 : Skepticality interviews Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer.

18th Apr 2008 : This half-hour programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this morning. It features several 'child preachers' including Samuel (now 8 years old) who was in that Channel 4 documentary "Baby Bible Bashers" ( http://richarddawkins.net/article,2279,Cutting-Edge-Baby-Bible-Bashers,Atheist-Media ). The radio programme is available via the BBC's 'listen again' service here:

18th Apr 2008 :

17th Apr 2008 :

18th Apr 2008 : If we were visited by aliens from a distant planet, would we fall on our knees and worship them as gods? The difficulty of getting here from even our nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, constitutes a filter through which only beings with a technology so advanced as to be god-like (from our point of view) could pass.

17th Apr 2008 : If you think you understand it, you don't know nearly enough about it

17th Apr 2008 : Anticipating success with their feature film Expelled, Producers Mark Mathis, Logan Craft and Walt Ruloff have already leaked a teaser trailer for the film's sequel.

16th Apr 2008 : Having ruffled feathers in the scientific community, the filmmakers behind a documentary questioning evolution theory have now incurred the wrath of one of the most powerful figures in the popular music business, Yoko Ono, and have generated a blogosphere mini-drama in the process.

16th Apr 2008 : Nobel winner battles plan to let teachers challenge Darwin's theory

15th Apr 2008 :

15th Apr 2008 : Even as he told reporters on his flight to America that he was "deeply ashamed" over the church sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict was accused by victims of protecting some 19 bishops accused of sexually abusing children.

15th Apr 2008 : A senior Anglican education official in NSW has declared that people who believe in the Bible should not expect to be allowed to take same-sex partners to school balls because Christianity frowns on homosexuality.

14th Apr 2008 : Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss sat down for a public discussion at Stanford University on Sunday, March 9th 2008. The focus was on Science education, but the discussion also covered religion, physics, evolution and more. This video will be released on DVD soon at RichardDawkins.net , along with other unmoderated discussions with Richard Dawkins.

14th Apr 2008 : Is it important? Well, if you want to stop America's seemingly inexorably decline, it might be absolutely critical.

14th Apr 2008 : A mile beyond the town of Bharatpur in Rajasthan, where the highway is being widened to four lanes, traffic slows down for roadworks. But the workmen who lounge by their bulldozers have their eyes on something else - a cluster of makeshift shelters where girls, several under 18 and at least two younger than 15, can be seen strolling or sitting, in view of the dusty carriageway.

14th Apr 2008 : (From Chapter 9 of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins)

14th Apr 2008 : Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning. Last week I watched, open-mouthed, a Newsnight piece on the spread of "Brain Gym" in British schools. I'd read about Brain Gym before - a few years back, in Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science column for this newspaper - but seeing it in action really twisted my rage dial.

13th Apr 2008 : And so the stellar casting in Doctor Who continues with the news that Professor Richard Dawkins, biologist and bestselling author of The God Delusion, is to appear in the current series as himself. On Outpost Gallifrey, the definitive Doctor Who website, I read that Russell T Davies, the show's executive producer, and all the crew were delighted to see Dawkins. "People were falling at his feet," says Davies. "We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins that people were worshipping."

13th Apr 2008 : Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins by Keith Ward

13th Apr 2008 : With all the sophisticated sophistry besieging mass audiences today, there is a need for the study of rhetoric now more than ever before. This is especially the case when it comes to the contemporary assault on science known as manufactured controversy: when significant disagreement doesn't exist inside the scientific community, but is successfully invented for a public audience to achieve specific political ends.

11th Apr 2008 : A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery - a snake with two legs.

11th Apr 2008 : Richard Dawkins was the guest tonight on Real Time With Bill Maher.

11th Apr 2008 : When the Pope visits the United States next week, he will likely make the case that religion is a force for peace in the world. But a few of his fellow religious leaders are better known for preaching messages of hatred and violence.

11th Apr 2008 : But, after being on the receiving end of a week's worth of public criticism, Davis called Sherman yesterday to apologize.

11th Apr 2008 : David Bolinsky copied me in on this eMail, and I asked his permission to reproduce it on our website. David is the medical illustrator chiefly responsible for The Inner Life of the Cell, the magnificent animation of the internal workings of a cell that was ripped off, first by William Dembski, and then by the makers of 'Expelled', as the following eMail explains.

Richard Dawkins

11th Apr 2008 : Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study
Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nature, Britain's top science journal.

The overwhelming majority of these med-taking brainiacs said they indulged in order to "improve concentration," and 60 percent said they did so on a daily or weekly basis.

10th Apr 2008 : WHAT happened before our universe began? According to two theoretical physicists, if there was a universe before ours then it should have been remarkably similar to this one, with the same basic ingredients and properties. It may even be possible to see a faint picture of our parent universe imprinted on the sky.

10th Apr 2008 : WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A rare and primitive frog living in a remote Borneo stream has no lungs and apparently absorbs oxygen through its skin, researchers reported on Wednesday.