24th Jul 2008 :
Believe what you will, but don't expect me to stop prodding you about why you're religious.

WASN'T it hilarious how World Youth Day was an attempt to make Catholicism appear all modern and trendy, but what it achieved was to highlight how deluded and anachronistic the religion is?

24th Jul 2008 : Whenever another honour killing hits the headlines or another Muslim female is vaporised into a forced marriage, the question I get asked more than any other is: "Why don't these women just leave?"

24th Jul 2008 :
Massive investments in recent decades by the European Union, China, Japan, Russia and India have leveled the international playing field in the sciences, according to the essay published in the July 24 issue of the journal Nature. The trend will likely put an end to the age of the "unrivaled scientific behemoth," a status the U.S. has enjoyed since the end of World War II.

23rd Jul 2008 : A Vatican official last night described the turmoil in the Anglican Communion as "spiritual Alzheimer's" and "ecclesial Parkinson's".

The damning verdict came from Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, who is the most senior Catholic delegate invited to the Lambeth Conference - the once-a-decade gathering of the world's Anglican bishops.

23rd Jul 2008 : Here is PZ Myers discussion from the new 'Episode 2' DVD, which is available now through the online store!

23rd Jul 2008 : The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.

23rd Jul 2008 : Last week, I discussed how evolutionary biology has changed since 1859, the year Darwin first published "On the Origin of Species." But the subject of evolution isn't the only thing that's changed since then. There's been plenty of actual evolution, too. For although we tend to think of evolutionary change as being something that only takes place over the course of millions of years, it isn't. It's going on here, now, all around us. So, this week, I thought I'd round up some examples of recent evolutionary change in nature. (What do I mean by recent? Within the last 40 years.)

22nd Jul 2008 :

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Ads promoting Islam are to be placed on New York subway cars in September, but a U.S. congressman finds people sponsoring the messages unacceptable.

22nd Jul 2008 : Those biologists who could be said to take their lead from the late Stephen Jay Gould regard all of evolution, including post-Cambrian evolution, as massively contingent—lucky, unlikely to be repeated in a Kauffman rerun. Calling it "rewinding the tape of evolution," Gould independently evolved Kauffman's thought experiment. The chance of anything remotely resembling humans on a second rerun is widely seen as vanishingly small, and Gould voiced it persuasively in Wonderful Life. It was this orthodoxy that led me to the cautious self-denying ordinance of my opening chapter; led me, indeed, to undertake my backwards pilgrimage, and now leads me to forsake my pilgrim companion at Canterbury and return alone. And yet ... I have long wondered whether the hectoring orthodoxy of contingency might have gone too far. My review of Gould's Full House (reprinted in The Devil's Chaplain) defended the unpopular notion of progress in evolution: not progress towards humanity—Darwin forfend!—but progress in directions that are at least predictable enough to justify the word. As I shall argue in a moment, the cumulative build-up of complex adaptations like eyes, strongly suggests a version of progress—especially when coupled in imagination with some of the wonderful products of convergent evolution.

21st Jul 2008 : It is extremely seldom that one has the opportunity to think a new thought about a familiar subject, let alone an original thought on a contested subject, so when I had a moment of eureka a few nights ago, my very first instinct was to distrust my very first instinct. To phrase it briefly, I was watching the astonishing TV series Planet Earth (which, by the way, contains photography of the natural world of a sort that redefines the art) and had come to the segment that deals with life underground. The subterranean caverns and rivers of our world are one of the last unexplored frontiers, and the sheer extent of the discoveries, in Mexico and Indonesia particularly, is quite enough to stagger the mind. Various creatures were found doing their thing far away from the light, and as they were caught by the camera, I noticed—in particular of the salamanders—that they had typical faces. In other words, they had mouths and muzzles and eyes arranged in the same way as most animals. Except that the eyes were denoted only by little concavities or indentations. Even as I was grasping the implications of this, the fine voice of Sir David Attenborough was telling me how many millions of years it had taken for these denizens of the underworld to lose the eyes they had once possessed.

21st Jul 2008 : In this July 21st, 2008 interview, Richard Dawkins appears on Al Jazeera English for a discussion with Riz Khan

21st Jul 2008 : President Bush's nominee for surgeon general sought to distance himself yesterday from his controversial 1991 paper on homosexuality and health, saying that it was not a scientific study and that many issues it raised are outdated.

20th Jul 2008 : At least eight women and one man are reported to have been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran.

The group, convicted of adultery and sex offences, could be executed at any time, lawyers defending them say.

The lawyers have called on the head of Iran's judiciary to prevent the sentences from being carried out.

20th Jul 2008 : On 1st November 2007, Professor Antony Flew's new book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind was published by HarperOne. Professor Flew has been called 'the world's most influential philosophical atheist', as well as 'one of the most renowned atheists of the 20th Century' (see Peter S. Williams' bethinking.org article "A change of mind for Antony Flew"). In his book, Professor Flew recounts how he has come to believe in a Creator God as a result of the scientific evidence and philosophical argument.

20th Jul 2008 : Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

18th Jul 2008 : His books sell in their millions, his TV programmes are rapturously received, and he's appeared in Doctor Who. Not bad for a 67-year-old academic. Now Richard Dawkins, scourge of creationists, is championing his Victorian hero

18th Jul 2008 : AUSTIN – The State Board of Education on Friday gave final approval to a rule establishing an elective Bible course for high schools, but the panel rejected the arguments of some members and key lawmakers – and left it up to local school districts to design the classes.

18th Jul 2008 : I would like to thank the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, for this welcome and timely initiative. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Spanish Government for hosting this important event.

There have been few periods in history when the need for dialogue among world religions has been greater. At a time of increasing divisions along cultural and confessional lines, faith communities have a crucial role to play in fostering mutual understanding and in promoting consensus on common values and aspirations.

17th Jul 2008 : We're all familiar with the popular chant among conservatives that "life begins at conception." But does that mean our government can say that life ends at contraception?

17th Jul 2008 :
(PhysOrg.com) -- Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe Friday in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

17th Jul 2008 : Even with the human genome in hand, geneticists are split about how to deal with issues of race, genetics and medicine.

Some favor using genetic markers to sort humans into groups based on ancestral origin – groups that may show meaningful health differences. Others argue that genetic variations across the human species are too gradual to support such divisions and that any categorisation based on genetic differences is arbitrary.

16th Jul 2008 : A group of Muslim religious scholars arriving from Turkey to participate in a reconciliation conference at the Hebrew University claim that the head of the Social Sciences Faculty refused to greenlight the event, calling it off in short notice. Professor Boaz Shamir, Dean of Social Sciences explained his decision citing the lack of proper coordination between the Students' Union, which was in charge of organizing the event, and the faculty's secretariat.

16th Jul 2008 :
A SOUTH African Catholic cardinal says the rampant HIV infection rate in Africa would not change if the church ordered its faithful to use condoms during sex.

Speaking on the SBS Dateline program tonight while visiting Sydney for World Youth Day, Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier said he had long been opposed to the use of condoms to prevent HIV.

16th Jul 2008 : Charles Darwin was a giant. He did not merely write "On the Origin of Species" — one of the most important books ever written by anyone — in which he describes how evolution by natural selection works, and what some of its consequences and implications are. He also wrote — and this list is not exhaustive— a treatise on the formation of coral reefs that is still thought to be correct; a definitive monograph on barnacles, both extinct and extant; a book about how earthworms make soil; a now-classic text on carnivorous plants (the ones, like Venus fly-traps, that ensnare and digest insects); a book about the strange ways that orchids get themselves fertilized; and an account of the five years he spent aboard the ship HMS Beagle, which has become a classic of travel writing.

16th Jul 2008 : Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried 'Ecrasez l'infâme!'. Scores of enlightened thinkers followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and which thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins is the most influential living example of this tradition, and his message, echoed by Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, sounds as loud and strident in the media today as the message of Luther in the reformed churches of Germany. The violence of the diatribes uttered by these evangelical atheists is indeed remarkable. After all, the Enlightenment happened three centuries ago; the arguments of Hume, Kant and Voltaire have been absorbed by every educated person. What more is to be said? And if you must say it, why say it so stridently? Surely, those who oppose religion in the name of gentleness have a duty to be gentle, even with – especially with – their foes?

15th Jul 2008 : A NEW row has erupted over Catholic Church rules for funerals.

It flared up after jazz musician Paddy Cole revealed yesterday that he was not allowed to play at his mother's funeral Mass.

The flames had earlier been fanned when priests in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan circulated a leaflet at the weekend setting out the rules for funeral Mass from the Bishop of Clogher, Joseph Duffy.

15th Jul 2008 : Once a Lutheran altar boy, University of Minnesota biology professor Morris P.Z. Myers has fallen from grace -- at least in the eyes of some Catholics and the conservative Catholic League. One of the more prominent atheist voices in America, Myers wrote a blog post on the furor sparked by a Florida college student who smuggled a communion wafer out of mass and, once found out, received threats of harm and death. Catholics believe the bread, once blessed by a priest, has been transformed into the substance of Christ's body and blood. Myers doesn't buy it. He wrote that if readers of his blog send him a consecrated host, "I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare."

15th Jul 2008 : Available now on DVD! Four fascinating discussions between Richard Dawkins and some of today's top scientists.

15th Jul 2008 :
To reach Edward O. Wilson's office on the Harvard campus, one must first push through a door with a sign warning the public not to enter. Then, enter a creaky old elevator and press two buttons simultaneously. This counterintuitive procedure transports one into a strange realm.

14th Jul 2008 : ScienceDaily (July 14, 2008) — It took a decade of painstaking study, the cooperation of hundreds of researchers, and a database of more than 200,000 fossil records, but John Alroy thinks he's disproved much of the conventional wisdom about the diversity of marine fossils and extinction rates.

14th Jul 2008 : BETHLEHEM, Pa. - The Dalai Lama said Sunday that "it's totally wrong, unfair" to call Islam a violent religion.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, appearing at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, offered a defense of Islam in response to a question about the rise of violent religious fundamentalism. He added that he has made a point of reaching out to Muslims since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

14th Jul 2008 :
The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us. Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

13th Jul 2008 : OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.

Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend.

13th Jul 2008 : I did a scornful post on Bill Donohue's attack on PZ and the Florida student at Butterflies and Wheels a couple of hours ago, and a commenter who is a former Anglican priest (a very very disenchanted one) pointed out that this desecration stuff is old anti-Semitic nonsense. I looked it up and Wikipedia confirms. I t

13th Jul 2008 : KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A man said he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while at a Knoxville church.

Now he wants Lakewind Church to pay $2.5 million for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering he said he's endured from his injuries

13th Jul 2008 : It is called the 'Zambelli Affair' and for the town of Lourdes, one of the world's most famous sites of pilgrimage, it could not have come at a worse time. Last week it was disclosed that Fr Raymond Zambelli, the priest in charge of the sanctuaries of Lourdes, was being investigated by financial police after a computer highlighted suspicious deposits in his personal account, amounting to £360,000. Rumours of money-laundering were soon rife and, since then, the town has waited anxiously for the next dramatic twist.

12th Jul 2008 : Pope Benedict XVI says he will use his visit to Australia, which starts today, to apologise for sexual abuse by Australian priests.

The Pope told reporters on his plane heading to Australia that the Catholic Church had to prevent, heal and reconcile, and added that the function of being a priest was incompatible with sexual abuse.

12th Jul 2008 : "And, in thy wisdom, forget not to smite female bishops, gay clergy and Richard Dawkins"

12th Jul 2008 : France has denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burqa on the grounds that her "radical" practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes.

12th Jul 2008 : ScienceDaily (July 12, 2008) — Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers at the University of Chicago, who used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.

11th Jul 2008 : I NEARLY choked on my cornflakes the other day when reading a letter in the London Times from Prof Richard Dawkins. It was not, as you might think, about his favourite subject, Darwinism, even though last week marked the 150th anniversary of the theory of evolution. No. It was a complaint about the misuse of a verb, writes Frank McNally.

11th Jul 2008 : The Vatican made a loss last year as the weaker dollar reduced the value of donations from the faithful in the United States.

Almost a quarter of the $79.8m (£40.4m) worth of offerings it received came from collections made in US churches.

10th Jul 2008 : A middle-aged woman suffering from ovarian cancer shakes back and forth, speaking in tongues.

A young child with spina bifida and splints on his legs tears them off and bolts across the stage. He cries as he declares that his legs have strength like never before.

"The boy's been healed," says the preacher as thousands cheer him on

10th Jul 2008 : Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

10th Jul 2008 : ScienceDaily (July 10, 2008) — Hidden away in museums for more that 100 years, some recently rediscovered flatfish fossils have filled a puzzling gap in the story of evolution and answered a question that initially stumped even Charles Darwin.

10th Jul 2008 : So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.

10th Jul 2008 : A marriage registrar was harassed for refusing to conduct same-sex ceremonies, a tribunal has ruled.

9th Jul 2008 : CLR INTERVIEW: Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University. His new book, The Black Hole Wars, details his battles with Stephen Hawking over the true nature of black holes. The resulting theory postulates that every object in our world is actually a hologram being projected from the farthest edges of space. Below is Dr. Susskind's interview with the California Literary Review

9th Jul 2008 : BARBARA FORREST knew the odds were stacked against her. "They had 50 or 60 people in the room," she says. Her opponents included lobbyists, church leaders and a crowd of home-schooled children. "They were wearing stickers, clapping, cheering and standing in the aisles." Those on Forrest's side numbered less than a dozen, including two professors from Louisiana State University, representatives from the Louisiana Association of Educators and campaigners for the continued separation of church and state.

9th Jul 2008 : It always happens the same way. A glance around the room to make sure no one else is listening. A clearing of the throat. A lowering of the voice to a conspiratorial tone. Then, the confession.

"I've never read 'On the Origin of Species.' I tried, but I thought it was boring."

9th Jul 2008 : The BBC today announces a season of landmark content to mark one of the most astonishing and influential scientific ideas ever conceived.

February 12 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and 24 November 2009 is the 150th of the publication of his book On the Origin of Species, which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection.

8th Jul 2008 : There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion.

8th Jul 2008 : STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist but is now an atheist
- His sudden lack of faith cost him his military career and put his life at risk, he says
- Hall sued the Defense Department; claims military is a Christian organization
- Pentagon official: Complaints about evangelizing are "relatively rare"

8th Jul 2008 : While travelling from Boston to San Francisco on the back of a motorbike two weeks ago (on my way to join New Scientist as an intern), I stopped at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. I felt a little guilty about supporting their agenda with my $22 ticket, but I learned an intriguing bit of information: Creationists have a subscription to New Scientist.

8th Jul 2008 : Do you ever get annoyed by those religious ads you see plastered all over town? TV comedy writer Ariane Sherine does, so she wrote an amusing article for The Guardian suggesting that atheists club together and pay for their own.

8th Jul 2008 : A couple sacked from a pub after their ban on swearing saw takings plummet have staged their own lock-in protest at the eviction.

John Fleming, 44, and his wife Krista, 36, both devout Christians, decided that foul language was beyond the pale at the King's Head and started barring any customers who broke the rule.

8th Jul 2008 :
There are billions and billions of reasons to hate McDonald's. They took the McRib away, for one, and that burns. (Sometimes I almost wish I'd never loved it at all.) There's at least one good reason to like McDonald's: They're being boycotted by the American Family Association.

What did McDonald's do to cross the AFA, its president, Donald Wildmon, and -- by extension -- Jesus (R-Nz.)? They donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. McDonald's' revenue runs about five billion dollars a quarter, so you can see their profound commitment to destroying the family through sodomy.

8th Jul 2008 :
Sir John M. Templeton, a Tennessee-born investor and philanthropist who amassed a fortune in global stocks and gave away hundreds of millions to foster understanding in what he called "spiritual realities," died on Tuesday in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he had lived for decades. He was 95. His death, at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, was caused by pneumonia, a spokesman, Don Lehr, said.

7th Jul 2008 : I believe in God. It seems that this isn't a very popular thing to admit lately what with Dawkins, Hitchens and others repeatedly naming religion as the root of all evil.

7th Jul 2008 : Richard Dawkins and John Lennox recently sat down for a discussion in Oxford. The two had previously debated in Birmingham, Alabama, which was sponsored by Fixed Point Radio (a Christian radio station). This was a private discussion, with only a tape recorder present.

7th Jul 2008 : Antonio Lazcano, a biology professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City, has studied the origin and early evolution of life for more than 30 years. He was trained both as an undergraduate and graduate student at UNAM, where he focused on the study of prebiotic evolution and the emergence of life. An academic deeply committed to public education, he has devoted considerable efforts to scientific journalism and teaching. He is the author of several books published in Spanish, including The Origin of Life, first printed in 1984 and which has become a bestseller with more than 600,000 copies sold. He is an avid promoter of evolutionary biology and the study of the origins of life in Latin America, and has been professor-in-residence or visiting scientist in France, Spain, Cuba, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States. In addition, he has served on many international advisory and review boards, including ones for NASA and other international organizations. He has just been reelected president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, the first Latin American scientist to occupy this position.

7th Jul 2008 : Penne Rigate will spontaneously insert itself into Rigatoni (order pasta) under liquid to gas transition conditions of H2O to create the previously unobserved species Noodleous doubleous. The estimated probability of this spontaneous generation event is too low to be explained by thermodynamics and therefore apparently represents

7th Jul 2008 : The Church of England has refused to deny that its most senior bishops held secret discussions with their Vatican counterparts this weekend in an historic union to topple the controversial Anglican push to admit gay unions and the ordination of women bishops.

6th Jul 2008 : CALGARY — Canada's newest and largest mosque opened Saturday in Calgary, praised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an "architectural treasure."

Harper also strongly defended the Ahmadiyya community - an offshoot Muslim sect persecuted in some countries - for building a mosque that demonstrates "the true and benevolent face of Islam."

6th Jul 2008 : A recent Observer Ipsos Mori poll found that the majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans, and believes, despite the assertion by 2,500 experts on the United Nations international panel on climate control, that scientists are exaggerating the problem. The poll concluded that many did not want to restrict their lifestyles and only a small minority thought they need to make "significant and radical changes".

6th Jul 2008 : According to a recent Pew survey, 21 percent of atheists in the United States believe in "God or a universal spirit," and 8 percent are "absolutely certain" that such a Being exists. One wonders if they were also "absolutely certain" they understood the meaning of the term "atheist." Claiming to be an atheist who believes in God is like claiming to be a happily married bachelor. Rarely does one discover nonsense in such a pristine state. Still this hasn't stopped many people from concluding that there is a schism in the atheist community.

5th Jul 2008 : JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

5th Jul 2008 : An education authority is investigating claims that two school pupils were punished for refusing to kneel down and pray to Allah during a religious education lesson.

5th Jul 2008 : Sam Harris and Richard Carrier talk about their differing views on the rapture.

5th Jul 2008 : Some of psychology's most famous experiments are those that expose the skull beneath the skin, the apparent cowardice or depravity pooling in almost every heart.

The findings force a question. Would I really do that? Could I betray my own eyes, my judgment, even my humanity, just to complete some experiment?

5th Jul 2008 :
WASHINGTON -- From climate change to volcanoes and earthquakes, the world's growing challenges have leaders in earth science proposing a merger of agencies that study the planet.

Creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency is urged in this week's edition of the journal Science, by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey.

4th Jul 2008 : A Christian group promoting intelligent design theory over evolution has sent teaching material to schools that critics say is religious propaganda and sloppy pseudoscience.

The Education Ministry says the unsanctioned material does not breach the Education Act and there are no plans to ban its distribution.

4th Jul 2008 : Pope watchers have been put on notice that the Vatican does not take kindly to facile labels like "retro" or "vintage" when discussing the sartorial choices of Pope Benedict XVI.

After insistent rumours that the pope's red shoes were from luxury house Prada, the Vatican finally put the matter to rest.

4th Jul 2008 : (CNSNews.com) - As the price of oil continues to rise, some are turning to God and prayer for an answer to their financial troubles.

The Pray at the Pump Movement, founded by Rocky Twyman, has been holding prayer vigils at gas stations across the country. On Monday, Twyman decided to take his movement from Exxon and Shell stations straight to the steps of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., hoping to encourage the oil-rich country to raise the amount of barrels they release each day from 200,000 to 1.2 million.

4th Jul 2008 : Principles of sharia law could play a role in some parts of the legal system, the Lord Chief Justice has said.

Lord Phillips, the most senior judge in England and Wales, said there was no reason sharia law's principles could not be used in mediation.

However, he said this would still be subject to the "jurisdiction of the English and Welsh courts".

3rd Jul 2008 : The New Zealand pizza chain said Thursday it had struck a deal with Walter Scott, 24, to buy a deed to his soul, shortly after an online auction site that initially agreed to the sale withdrew it from the Internet because of complaints it was in bad taste.

3rd Jul 2008 : In a moment, I am going to say some words, and I want to know if you begin to drift into a coma. The periodic table. Bunsen burner. Photosynthesis. Eyelids heavy yet? Teat pipette. Petri dishes of mould. Magnezzzzzzzium.

3rd Jul 2008 : Morris Iemma leads a Government whose members have displayed a truly impressive array of human failings. If we limit the list just to convicted criminals, it has harboured in its ranks a drink driver and a pedophile, not to mention a number of serial speeders. So it's no wonder an official visit from a man who can absolve sins is appealing to the State Government. But it's probably also not a surprise that the Government has, yet again, demonstrated bad judgment and made a bad law.

3rd Jul 2008 : Life on Earth might have emerged about 750 million years earlier than previously thought, new research suggests.

Researchers have found unusually light isotopes of carbon, a common indicator of life, in the Earth's oldest mineral deposit, found in the Jack Hills in Western Australia. The carbon dates to more than 4.25 billion years ago, a time known as the Hadean period.

2nd Jul 2008 :
AUSTIN – A former state science curriculum director filed suit against the Texas Education Agency and Education Commissioner Robert Scott on Wednesday, alleging she was illegally fired for forwarding an e-mail about a lecture that was critical of the teaching of intelligent design in science classes.

2nd Jul 2008 : ZANESVILLE, Ohio — With an eye toward courting evangelical voters, Senator Barack Obama arrived here on Tuesday to present a plan to expand on President Bush's program of investing federal money in religious-based initiatives that are intended to fight poverty and perform community aid work.

2nd Jul 2008 :
Nearly 800 clergy and lay leaders from the Church of England took the first steps yesterday towards forming a "Church within a Church" to be an evangelical stronghold against the ordination of gay people.

2nd Jul 2008 : A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.

Tayside Police's new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.

1st Jul 2008 : July 1, 2008 | With biologist Richard Dawkins leading the way, many scientists today are locked in an unending match of whack-a-mole with Christian creationists, who insist that God created heaven, earth and humanity in its present form, and with disciples of intelligent design who want to expel evolution from its scientific prominence in public schools. If you've been following the battle, you might be inclined to believe that Americans are faced with a choice between believing in God and scientific fact.

1st Jul 2008 : James P. Evans, a physician and molecular biologist, teaches genetics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He also directs the school's Clinical Cancer Genetics Services, counseling patients about genetic testing. On weekends Dr. Evans, under the auspices of the Advanced Science and Technology Adjudication Resource Center — a Congressionally mandated program — teaches the nation's judges about genetics. Dr. Evans, 49, was interviewed recently in New York; he had come to speak at the World Science Festival.

1st Jul 2008 : There is a surprising - and encouraging - gap in the government's new Equality Bill, which I columnized on yesterday. Discrimination on the basis of age, race, gender and sexuality will be outlawed - but not discrimination on the basis of religion.

30th Jun 2008 :

30th Jun 2008 : The Center for Inquiry urges the Afghan government to release Sayed Pervez Kambakhsh, a 23-year-old journalism student at Balkh University and reporter for the local daily Jahan-e-Naw (The New World), sentenced to death for insulting Islam.

30th Jun 2008 : Many of you will have seen the coverage in today's press of a new pamphlet on 'faith schools', published by the Centre for Policy Studies, written by Cristina Odone, which seeks to portray the UK 's state-funded faith schools as inclusive and under attack from hostile secularists.

30th Jun 2008 :
Faith schools are being undermined by a Government-backed "witch hunt", according to a new report.

Ministers have exaggerated claims that Christian, Jewish and Muslim schools cherry-pick the best pupils to justify a series of "plots and threats" against the religious sector, it is claimed.

30th Jun 2008 : This week sees the anniversary of one of the greatest landmarks in the history of science. Tomorrow we commemorate the great day, exactly 150 years ago, that Charles Darwin unveiled his theory of evolution by natural selection, the most authoritative scientific challenge to Biblical accounts of our origins in, well, the history of the universe.

30th Jun 2008 :
How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it's just a coincidence, it's a coincidence that's guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in tandem? Who puts the theory of evolution and the Civil War in the same sentence? Why would you, unless you're writing your dissertation on epochal events in the 19th century? But instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It's not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact coevals. Rather, it's because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world.

30th Jun 2008 : Astronomers can deduce that the early universe expanded at a mind-boggling rate because regions separated by vast distances have similar background temperatures.

They have proposed a process of rapid expansion of neighbouring regions, with similar cosmic properties, to explain this growth spurt which they call inflation.

29th Jun 2008 : The Times reports that Father Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican's chief astronomer, condones the idea that we have fellows among the stars, Little Green Men, so to speak, who are our brothers in Christ.

Fr Funes said that just as there existed a "multiplicity of creatures on Earth", so there could exist "other beings created by God, including intelligent ones. We cannot place limits on God's creative freedom." St Francis of Assisi had described our fellow creatures on Earth as our brothers and sisters, "so why can we not also speak of our extra terrestrial brothers? They too would be part of Creation." He said that aliens, like humans, would be able to benefit from the redemption offered by Jesus Christ and "the mercy of God".

28th Jun 2008 : A short video clip of Richard's recent appearance on Doctor Who.

28th Jun 2008 : FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.

28th Jun 2008 : A US sniper uses the Qur'an as target practice in Baghdad. A US Marine hands out coins to residents in Fallujah that ask in Arabic on one side: "Where will you spend eternity?" The other side is inscribed with a Biblical verse: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16." An American soldier who performed two tours in Iraq is denied promotion when his superiors learn he is an atheist, after he refuses to pray during Thanksgiving dinner (pdf). An anti-Islamic poster adorns the door of the Military Police office at Fort Riley, Kansas, featuring a quote from conservative pundit Ann Coulter: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." And as the New York Times reported this week, some cadets at West Point and the Naval Academy feel pressured by their schools to adopt a Judeo-Christian worldview.

28th Jun 2008 : When Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox, went searching for a consultant to run one of its management workshops in the fall of 2006, it bypassed the usual list of Silicon Valley gurus. Instead, Seagate's executive director of software engineering, Gabriel Lawson, invited Laura Day—a stylish New Yorker with no tech experience—to train his Colorado-based team. "She was amazing," Lawson tells NEWSWEEK, recalling Day's quick insights into the poor coordination between the company's research and marketing teams. "Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money's worth." What exactly is Day's expertise? While she likes to downplay it as mere "intuition," her clients prefer another explanation: she's a psychic.

28th Jun 2008 : A divided Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former Colleyville church Friday, saying church members who were involved in a traumatic exorcism that ultimately injured a young woman are protected by the First Amendment.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God staff's efforts to cast out demons from Laura Schubert presents an ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct that would unconstitutionally entangle the court in church doctrine.

28th Jun 2008 : In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, P.Z. Myers details his expulsion from a screening of Expelled, Ben Stein's documentary which claims that the scientific community is limiting academic freedom by not allowing Intelligent Design to be taught or discussed in the schools.