20th Nov 2009 : Primary school children in England will have to learn about evolution and British history under a shake-up of the national curriculum.

20th Nov 2009 : Let us support the courageous Muslims who, often at great personal risk, are campaigning against religious extremism. Note that there is a rally in London on Saturday.

20th Nov 2009 : Who should win the 2009 Bad Faith Award? Vote now using the poll at the top right of this page - see shortlist below for more on the challengers.

19th Nov 2009 : Richard appeared on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2

19th Nov 2009 : Chase is giving out $5 million to various charities

19th Nov 2009 : 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. He speaks here with Phil Kafcaloudes about the non-religious life.

18th Nov 2009 : If the wingnuts show up on your campus distributing Bananaman's version of Origin of Species, go out with as many friends as possible, and snap up as many copies as you can. Do everything possible to waste Bananabrain's money.

18th Nov 2009 : The final phase of the atheist bus campaign will challenge the idea that children can be labelled with their parents' religion
[UPDATE]added link to an article in politics.co.uk

18th Nov 2009 : A new Nashville organization classifies itself as non-religious, but the group's billboard has stirred up a religious debate

18th Nov 2009 : Debate - Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett vs Dinesh D'Souza, Shmuley Boteach, Nassim Taleb. Neutral: Robert Wright. La Ciudad de las Ideas 2009 Re-evolution

18th Nov 2009 : Go to the NCSE's Don't Diss Darwin site

17th Nov 2009 : Trust rules that Radio 4 programme does not breach impartiality by not including views from atheists, secularists and humanists

17th Nov 2009 : Seven salient facts about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

17th Nov 2009 : Bill Maher responds to Open Letter from Michael Shermer.
[UPDATE]A couple of links added

16th Nov 2009 : ...CFI is pleased to announce that Ken Peters of California is the Grand Prize winner of its Blasphemy Contest...

16th Nov 2009 : John Denham pours scorn on secularists with his plans for an advisory body which represents less than 10% of the population

16th Nov 2009 : IN the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.

16th Nov 2009 : Debate - Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett vs Dinesh D'Souza, Shmuley Boteach, Robert Wright.

15th Nov 2009 : Why do courts give believers a pass?

15th Nov 2009 : Faith groups are to be given a central role in shaping government policies, a senior minister has vowed.

14th Nov 2009 : In the wake of multiple, significant threats, the downtown billboard that says “Don’t Believe In God? You are not alone” came down early Thursday morning.

13th Nov 2009 :

13th Nov 2009 : An interview with a Taliban trained Suicide Bomber With English Subtitles.

13th Nov 2009 : Mr. Deity and cast perform live skits from their excellent web series. Brian Dalton (Deity) explains his personal journey from Mormonism to creating the show.

12th Nov 2009 : In response to the recent tragic events at Fort Hood, Texas, the Center for Inquiry has released a statement from Ibn Warraq, Islamic scholar and leading figure in Quranic criticism.

11th Nov 2009 : Dan Dennett's talk at the AAI 2007 Conference in Washington, D.C.

11th Nov 2009 : Richard Dawkins talks about "The New Atheism" at the AAI 2007 Conference in Washington, D.C.

11th Nov 2009 : Please take a moment to fill in a short website survey.

11th Nov 2009 : Mr. Deity has to deal with an angry Death, whose day goes from bad to worse.

10th Nov 2009 : My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility.

10th Nov 2009 : The ways of the Lord, they say, are infinite, but will nevertheless not be able to hide ALL of the billboards that the UAAR of Pisa has posted around the city

10th Nov 2009 : Iran is about to execute three men for the crime of atheism…well, specifically, apostasy, rejecting the Islamic faith.

9th Nov 2009 : Jesse/Jesus (Sean Douglas) attempts to make his way through the nonsensical "Mr. Deity and the Identity Crisis" script.

9th Nov 2009 : This article is an excerpt from 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), edited by Udo Schuklenk and IEET Fellow Russell Blackford.

9th Nov 2009 : The government is ready to put evolution on the primary curriculum for the first time after years of lobbying by senior scientists.
[UPDATE] Another article on the guardian.co.uk

8th Nov 2009 : U.S. critics of evolution help translate their ideas for a society already torn between Islam and secularism

8th Nov 2009 : Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?

7th Nov 2009 : In this interview with D.J. Grothe, Russell Blackford explains the need for 50 Voices of Disbelief.

6th Nov 2009 : Civility has its uses, but we should not be afraid of satire and mockery as weapons against religious power

6th Nov 2009 : The billboard went up Sunday on eastbound Memorial Boulevard near Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.

5th Nov 2009 : Two hundred years after Darwin’s birth, scientists still can’t agree on whether evolution and religion can happily coexist

5th Nov 2009 : The Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, has stirred up controversy in the German media with his All Saints’ Day sermon, in which he compared the ideas of Richard Dawkins to those of the Nazis.

5th Nov 2009 : Lord Sacks said that Europe was the world?s most secular region and the only one experiencing population decline

5th Nov 2009 : Having lost the power of the gun in the West, apologists of religion have a new weapon: being offended.

5th Nov 2009 : In a nation in which millions go bankrupt and/or die from not having health care insurance the decision to include prayer healing into the insidiously partisan healthcare deliberations is an outrage.

4th Nov 2009 :

4th Nov 2009 : European court of human rights rules crucifixes that hang in classrooms violate religious and educational freedoms

3rd Nov 2009 : Creationism is growing in the Muslim world

2nd Nov 2009 : Egyptian Clerics Encourage Martyrdom in Gaza

2nd Nov 2009 : There's a schism alright, and I seem to find myself on the unfashionable side of it.
The question: Is there an atheist schism?
[UPDATE] - links to articles by PZ and Jerry Coyne

1st Nov 2009 : Can people be good if they don't think Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist in the English language?

1st Nov 2009 : Celebrities and news-makers are grilled by Matthew Stadlen in exactly five minutes in a series for the BBC News website.

31st Oct 2009 : I had intended to leave this subject behind, at least for a while, but Josh Rosenau has a lengthy post up that I think merits a reply

31st Oct 2009 : Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State & Pat Robertson's demonic threats of Halloween.

30th Oct 2009 : Dan Dennett talks about purposely-confusing theology and how it's used. He also describes his new project interviewing clergyman who secretly don't believe anymore, and introduces a new term: "Deepity."

30th Oct 2009 : Many of the beliefs held by religious moderates -- smart people who respect science and the separation of church and state -- are as untenable as the dogma of fundamentalists.

30th Oct 2009 : This is an article/book from 1994 on the Phelps family and Westboro Baptist Church that was made available on the web after the author ran into difficulties getting it published.

30th Oct 2009 : Video in which dubbed lines from Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler explain their atrocities and have two analysts conclude that these were crimes in the name of atheism.

30th Oct 2009 : Austin Dacey is former representative to the United Nations for the Center for Inquiry and the author of "The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life."

30th Oct 2009 : PORTUGAL: Bible Is "A Catalogue of Cruelties," Says Saramago

29th Oct 2009 : Why is Richard Dawkins, promoting his new evolution book, regularly being asked about his atheism, and why he is “strident,” “polarizing,” etc?

29th Oct 2009 : Time was when science was considered a value-neutral pursuit. That seems like an eternity ago.

29th Oct 2009 : As a new member of the UN Human Rights Council, the US must persuade other countries not to go along.

29th Oct 2009 : How governments decide whether a religion is real or not.

29th Oct 2009 : "Good Without God?" posters in the Boston subway.

28th Oct 2009 : Richard Holloway's `third way' approach has riveted the U.K.

28th Oct 2009 : A rebuttal to the Dvir Abramovich article from a few days ago.

28th Oct 2009 : Mr. Deity and Jesus try to figure out their relationship

28th Oct 2009 : Jerry Coyne's post on the book 50 Voices of Disbelief (released yesterday 26-Oct in the US) by Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk

27th Oct 2009 : What I've learned from debating religious people around the world.
[UPDATE] Fox & Friends YouTube video of Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson.

27th Oct 2009 :

27th Oct 2009 : The Paul Haggis news has gone viral. (Scientology)
[UPDATE]links to a few more news articles added

26th Oct 2009 : Norman Levitt (1943-2009)

26th Oct 2009 : What major institution most deserves the title of greatest force for evil in the world?

26th Oct 2009 : British Council poll finds UK adults overtake Americans in wanting science teaching in schools to include intelligent design.

26th Oct 2009 : She takes a series of statements about god that she says need rethinking, but her thinking is a complete mess.

26th Oct 2009 : Jason Ball, President of the University of Melbourne Secular Society and one of the coordinators of the Global Atheist Convention

25th Oct 2009 : A flurry of books bashing religion are making best-seller lists and grabbing a lot of attention — so much so that anti-religion publications seem to have become a lucrative genre all their own.

25th Oct 2009 : ...The pope has parked his tanks on the Church of England’s lawn; Rome has made a hostile takeover bid for Canterbury....

25th Oct 2009 :

25th Oct 2009 : “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove collective worship from all non-faith schools.”

24th Oct 2009 : This isn't Beatrix Potter here. It's more like "Dangerous Liaisons" by way of Quentin Tarantino. With tents, sand, and sheep.

24th Oct 2009 : 'It is business as usual," said the Archbishop of Canterbury at the press conference announcing the Vatican's latest attempt to poach disaffected Anglicans. And how right he was. The Roman Catholic Church is a giant multinational corporation, differing from its business equivalents only in that they pay their taxes.

23rd Oct 2009 : Last month, atheists marked Blasphemy Day at gatherings around the world, and celebrated the freedom to denigrate and insult religion.

22nd Oct 2009 : Let's move beyond faith versus reason.

22nd Oct 2009 : So we may soon have ourselves a conservative Bible. Besides Fox News, I mean.

22nd Oct 2009 : The leading creationist in the Muslim world.

21st Oct 2009 :

20th Oct 2009 : I have just witnessed a rout – tonight’s Intelligence Squared debate. It considered the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry,...

19th Oct 2009 : Atheism is coming to the subway — or at least subway ads promoting it are.

19th Oct 2009 : The author who is being sued for libel, says bloggers and scientists are increasingly reluctant to write anything critical for fear of ruin

19th Oct 2009 : Ayaan Hirsi Ali has put her life on the line to defend women against radical Islam.

18th Oct 2009 : His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

17th Oct 2009 : A convicted murderer faces execution in Texas after jurors consulted the Bible while deliberating on his sentence.

17th Oct 2009 : Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, to the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

17th Oct 2009 : [UPDATE]- important video links
From 5-10 July 2009, in its 800th anniversary year, the University of Cambridge hosted a major international Festival to mark 200 years since Charles Darwin's birth and 150 years since the publication ofOn the Origin of Species.

17th Oct 2009 :

16th Oct 2009 : Tribunal rejects claim that far-right Dutch politician's presence could 'lead to inter-faith violence'

16th Oct 2009 : This is approximately the talk I gave on October 3rd at the Atheist Alliance International convention.

16th Oct 2009 : Problem of Evil held at the University of Melbourne last month. Speakers: Russell Blackford, Barney Zwartz, Peter Adam, and Lyn Allison.