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It feels great to be able to report good news for a change. Here's a quick rundown of some of the encouraging changes that have taken place in the last few months: 1. Our book 'Hope After Faith' is on bookstore shelves all across the country and it's doing GREAT! THANK YOU!!! :'-) 2. NOW the audiobook …

Help RDFRS Combat this!  See our laest action alert Save Our Secularism- Stop the Anti-Vaccine Gospel! —————————————————————————————————– Measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, but anti-vaccination beliefs may be playing a role in bringing the disease back, a new government report suggests. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated more than a …

A University of Texas scientist is expressing serious concerns about the qualifications of fellow reviewers examining new biology textbooks proposed for public high schools in the Lone Star State. A letter he sent to State Board of Education members this week also highlights concerns that SBOE Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, might have inappropriately tried to influence …

The sight of butterflies flocking onto the heads of yellow-spotted river turtles in the western Amazon rain forest is not uncommon, at least if one is able to sneak up on the skittish reptiles. But the reason why butterflies congregate onto the turtles may be stranger than you think: to drink their tears.    The …

As letters to the editor go, it was certainly out of the ordinary, stretching to more than 2,500 words and not one of them veering on the irate or indignant. But the missive received by Eugenio Scalfari, co-founder and former editor of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, nonetheless made it into print on Wednesday – on the …

I got two books in the mail that, if they could have, would've poked, scratched and ripped each others' pages out. I don't know if Martin Gardner and Patricia Churchland ever met, but their books show that there are radically, even ferociously, different ways to think about science. Gardner died last year. He was a …

This autumn, the schoolbags of pupils attending the Savonlinna Teacher Training School of the University of Eastern Finland are much lighter than before, thanks to tablet computers. Approximately half of the school's pupils and teachers now use personal tablet computers instead of traditional textbooks. The project includes a group of first graders who began their …

Billionaire Bill Gates is seeking to revolutionise the way history is taught in high schools across the world, based on the work of Australian academic Professor David Christian. He designed a course called Big History which covers nearly 14 billion years of history from the Big Bang to the internet and beyond. It gives students …

The advent of megachurches has led to a debate over the purported uses of religion as a money-making tool. Critics claim that such churches are more concerned with entertainment than religion, while concerns have also been raised over the churches’ application of corporate business models. Many of these churches generate millions of dollars in revenue …

An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a 6.1-million-year-old relatively complete and largely undistorted juvenile cranium of the fossil ape Lufengpithecus lufengensis at the Miocene site Shuitangba in Yunnan Province, China. Juvenile crania of apes and hominins are extremely rare in the fossil record, especially those of infants and young juveniles. The Lufengpithecus fossil is only …

Strong, fierce, smart, and talented, Ajax is one of the greatest warrior heroes in classical mythology. He wins every campaign and every battle he enters, earning the name Ajax Unconquered. Yet as Ovid tells it in the Metamorphoses, “Unconquered, he was conquered by his sorrow”: he dies when he chooses to fall on his own …

Can refusal to fold hands during prayer be called indiscipline, asks Bench Nashik-based teacher Sanjay Salve, who refused to fold his hands during religious prayers at his school, has found support from the Bombay High Court. “How can a state-funded school term this indiscipline,” asked a Division Bench on Friday. The Bench of Justices Abhay …