"The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians," said Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "Most home-schoolers will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program."

he new year is still fresh upon us, but just like late winter's crocuses, the Academic Freedom bills are beginning to sprout.

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has released its list of the top ten incidents of anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination in the US from last year.

How do people believe things that aren't true.

The organization Secular Life has been making waves over the last couple of weeks with its Green Hills billboard advertisement featuring the following: "Not Religious? You're not alone." The brainchild of Nashvillian Thaddeus Schwartz, the group seeks to provide community for fol …

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.

Ohio's three largest cities are home to new chapters of the Coalition of Reason.

Supernatural beliefs about mind, morality and the self are losing plausibility as naturalistic explanations gain traction. In response, supernaturalists argue that gaps in these explanations are evidence for the failure of naturalism.

The sky cake is a lie!

We commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question "Where does evolution leave God?" Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

The Madison, Wis.-based association, representing nearly 14,000 nonbelievers nationwide and more than 2,000 in California, is unveiling 75 "king" exterior signs with the messages: "Imagine No Religion" and Mark Twain's "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Bo …

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.

The day his son died, Greg Swezey told sheriff's investigators he knew Zakk would die 10 or 15 minutes before the teenager passed away.

In an 18-page order, Judge Thomas Wingate said the General Assembly created an official government position when it passed a law requiring the office to acknowledge "the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation.

Could it be divine intervention that's kept Florida safe from hurricanes since Gov. Charlie Crist took office? Crist told a group of real estate agents Friday that he's had prayer notes placed in the Western Wall in Jerusalem each year and no major storms have hit Florida.

The secular left claims we are evolutionary accidents who managed to crawl out of the slime and by "natural selection" stand erect and over millions of years outsmart our ancestors, the apes. If that is your belief, then you probably think health care should be rationed.

I finally got around to reading Carl Sagan's The Variety of Scientific Experience, a volume edited by his wife, Ann Druyan, and based on a series of Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology that Carl delivered in 1985 at the University of Glasgow.

The Creation/Evolution Journal was first published in 1980. In 1997, it became a part of Reports of the National Center for Science Education.

Some readers will consider any criticism of Collins' views to be an overt expression of "intolerance." Indeed, when I published an abbreviated version of this essay in the New York Times, this is precisely the kind of negative response I received.[8] For instance, the biol …

After a wave of complaints, Des Moines Area Regional Transit buses will no longer display advertisements that acknowledge the existence of atheists in Iowa.

On one hand you have faith that makes people fly planes into buildings, genitally mutilate young girls, murder abortion doctors (in church), stone adultresses, outlaw certain forms of consensual sex or even just make it impossible to buy beer on Sunday in some states.

The message, in white lettering on a sky-blue background, is nonconfrontational by design. It doesn't attack religion or say there is no God. It simply says: "You don't have to believe in God to be a moral or ethical person." Hard to gainsay that thought.

Exams for an Evangelical Christian curriculum in which pupils have been taught that the Loch Ness monster disproves evolution and racial segregation is beneficial have been ruled equivalent to international A- levels by a UK government agency.

Dr. Collins is regularly praised by secular scientists for what he is not: he is not a "young earth creationist," nor is he a proponent of "intelligent design." Given the state of the evidence for evolution, these are both very good things for a scientist not to be.

A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

In the discussion period I couldn't stand it any more and challenged the speakers: "I'm Dan Dennett, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and we are forever being told that we should do our homework and consult with the best theologians.

You're the land of happy stoners, gay marriage, shopping for sex, abortion, and death with dignity…but worst of all, you are "militantly secular". Don't worry, though — while Fox News treats you as an object of horrible fascination, I think I love you.

Another of my favorite scientists gives his opinion on what science is, how it should be pursued, and what he thinks the appropriate attitude is with which to approach religious claims.

The reason why science and religion are actually incompatible is that, in the real world, they reach incompatible conclusions. It's worth noting that this incompatibility is perfectly evident to any fair-minded person who cares to look.

Here's an amusing video of Pat Robertson answering a question on the 700 Club from a woman who is a Christian and is engaged to an atheist. He says she has to break up with him because he's working for the devil.

Bloomington was first on the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign's list of places it hoped to run bus ads.

Americans find atheists a particularly repugnant minority. According to Gallup, they are more disliked than any other major religious group, with the exception of Scientologists.

Some of you may recall February stories about Washington resident Kimberlie Struiksma's efforts to put an anti-evolution ballot initiative before Washington voters.

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress.

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people's lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out.

AS A book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda.

Weiss and Nisbet are trying to use Darwin as a positive example to contrast with their presumed negative example of the New Atheists.

"It's a somewhat arty science fiction romance thriller." "It's a genre of no genre." "It's an urban fairytale fantasy drama, with a parallel-world aspect to it." Even the people making Franklyn struggled to explain it.

So, I saw this U. of Minn. survey that came out a while back. Perhaps you saw it as well. It asked Americans, who do you trust? And they broke it down into categories: Do you trust a Christian? Most said yes. In fact, Christians were at the top of the list.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has urged the Arkansas legislature to act to remove the constitutional provision banning atheists from holding public office or testifying in court.

Christian think-tank Theos just released their report "Reclaiming Darwin", a rallying-cry to religious people everywhere to reject creationist nonsense and enter into a dialogue to think about how science and religion coexist.

Three separate pro-God advert campaigns on the sides of London buses are set to hit city streets. Buses adorned with the slogan "There definitely is a God" are from the Christian Party, while the Trinitarian Bible Society chose a Biblical verse.

For the past few days I have been in contact with Mr. Richard Mullens a school teacher in Brookeland Tx. Brookeland Tx, is an incredibly "Conservative" area of Texas, and only 16 miles up the road from Jasper Tx. the scene of several incidents of racial violence and murder.

Removing the names of Charles Darwin and Galileo Galilei seemed to be the sticking point last night for a resolution that would declare February "Science Month" in Whitehall.

To proponents of the separation between Church and State, the virulence of opposition voiced by the Christian Right seems surprising, if not misguided.

A U.S. District Court judge struck down the state's much-maligned "moment of silence" law, ruling that it was too coercive and crossed the First Amendment line barring government from establishing a religion.

About a month after Kara's death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann.

The government-funded targeting of the children of our servicemen and servicewomen by Christian religious organizations is an issue that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has been gathering information on for some time now.

The BBC has been forced to apologise to an acclaimed psychologist and writer after editing her derogatory comments about religion so that a radio programme broadcast "the opposite" of what she had said.

A newly-launched bus advertsiement which claims there is 'probably no God' has been reported to the ASA by a Christian group. The ad, the brainchild of comedy writer Ariane Sherine, says: 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life'.

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has prepared a Top Ten list of the most egregious acts of Christian Bashing in American in 2008.

I'm very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, "There's probably no God.

Perhaps the most debated display purported to entangle Church and State in the modern era, the Ten Commandments have repeatedly been the subject of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits.

I've seen so many truly insane, not to mention blatantly unconstitutional, ways that the military is playing with the mental well being of our troops since I began working for MRFF that I really didn't think it was possible for me to be surprised by anything anymore.

The British Humanist Association, which is running a campaign get rid of faith schools and wants to end the Church of England's position as the established religion, was given the grant by the Government's equality watchdog and is using it to stage a series of debates about the p …

The book's short but emotional preface sets its tone: "To anyone who has enjoyed the spectacle of various smarmy insects shuffling along the tenure track at Harvard or Stanford. . .

Under state law, God is Kentucky's first line of defense against terrorism. The 2006 law organizing the state Office of Homeland Security lists its initial duty as "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

Complaints have led to removal of an atheist group's "Imagine No Religion" billboard in Rancho Cucamonga.

A coalition of atheists and agnostics wants the new White House to protect young military members from what they see as rampant religious discrimination in the services.

The Rt Rev Patrick O'Donoghue, the Bishop of Lancaster, has claimed that graduates are spreading scepticism and sowing dissent. Instead of following the Church's teaching they are "hedonistic", "selfish" and "egocentric", he said.

United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said on Tuesday that the world body should ban defamation of all religions and disagreed that such a move would impinge upon freedom of speech.

The Vatican has informed a Roman Catholic priest in the United States that he will be excommunicated next week for participating in a ceremony it considers illicit and invalid: the ordination of a woman as a priest.

Christians have warned of a backlash of art world vandalism, following a decision to halt a private prosecution of a Gateshead gallery which exhibited a statue of Jesus with an erection. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) ruled that there was "no case to answer" for the Baltic  …

...so hard that you can probably still see the palm print.

Shocking new figures show that 400 children have been identified as possible victims of sex abuse by priests in the Dublin Archdiocese -- proportionately even higher then the catalogue of horrors found by a Government investigation into the Diocese of Ferns.

"Is religion good for the world?"

The church, which believes that "God is hateful," hasn't changed its grim outlook since Nate's time there 30 years ago, but it has expanded its fame.

Dole began airing a second ad featuring a fundraiser for Hagan in Boston. The event, which was hosted by Democratic supporters, was held at the home of a man associated with the Godless Americans PAC, a group opposed to references to God in government.

Is morality driven by faith? Few things unite believers and atheists more firmly than the suggestion that moral judgments draw their strength from religion. To be sure, many a virtuous atheist has denied it, and with good reason.

Although I can't speak for all of them, naturalists, who take scientific and philosophical inquiry as the most reliable means of knowing reality, are most certainly not bent on subverting moral responsibility.

I see this financial breakdown, moreover, as being not merely a moral crisis but the monetary expression of the broader degradation of our values – the erosion of duty and responsibility to others in favour of instant gratification, unlimited demands repackaged as 'rights'  …

In her campaign battle against Kay Hagan, Republican Elizabeth Dole has apparently decided that she can improve her chances of winning by making explicit appeals to anti-atheist bigotry among North Carolina voters.

A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin—author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement—made manifest on a concrete wall in downt …

Jesus Christ had a homosexual relationship? Those words, written on a poster above the image of a topless man tenderly kissing Jesus on the neck, angered dozens of students Thursday night at Lorain County Community College.

A report from the U.S. Copts Association reveals that the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Egyptian Medical Association is trying to prohibit any organ transplants that would involve a Muslim donor and Christian recipient or vice versa.

It's a commonplace that to call yourself an atheist in the US is to render yourself unelectable. Richard Dawkins' agent, John Brockman, told me once that he would never identify as an atheist, even though he is one.

A toddler in the US was starved to death by members of a religious cult, including his own mother, for not saying "amen" after meals.

Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

The University of Central Florida takes religion seriously. Too seriously, apparently. It wants to expel Benjamin Collard for the audacity of attending a Catholic church service.

On July 8th, blogger PZ Myers-- famous for his opinions about atheism and evolution, and infamous for having been kicked out of a screening of Ben Stein's Expelled-- wrote a post about a cracker. Not just any cracker, mind you, but the holiest of crackers-- the Eucharist.

Chapman Cohen was a noted atheist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in September of 1868 and died on the fourth of February, 1954 at the age of 85. His career between the two dates was largely taken up by the promotion of freethought and secularism.

[W]hen it comes to religion, history and culture trump neurology. I quickly noticed that the same neuroscientists who were experimenting on Dawkins, among other more amenable test subjects, were also enfolding American religious history into their neurotheological data.

John Loftus served in the ministry for 14 years, first as a youth minister, then a minister, then a senior minister for a number of (conservative) Christian churches of Christ. He studied under the likes of Dr.

If there is one agreed-upon point in the current war of words about religion, it is that religion is a very powerful force.

Assume that a community that is 85% white, where 100% of its elected officials are white, adopts a community pledge to our white community. However, they do not require non-whites to say this pledge.

"I believe this because the Bible says so."

Did you know that there are people in this country who want prayer out of schools, "Under God" out of the Pledge, and "In God We Trust" to be taken off our money?

I'm often asked why I just can't ignore folks with a superstitious bent, and let them spout off unopposed about whatever kooky supernatural belief they strongly hold.

The Wedgwood Document Top Secret – NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE INSTITUTE OF DISCOVERY 2008

Despite the recent spate of major bestsellers touting the virtues of atheism, polls show consistent, stubborn reluctance on the part of the public to cast their votes for a presidential candidate who denies the existence of God.

Episode 13In addition to sharing DNA, both Christopher and Peter Hitches posses a passion for ideas, eloquence of speech and razor-sharp wit. But this is where the similarities end.

State Representative Monique Davis is apologizing a week after she blasted an atheist activist during a hearing over a million dollar grant for a South Side church.

Davis works herself into a lather, ending in the spitting, angry demand for Sherman to "get out of that seat" and accusing him: "You believe in destroying!"

I have to admit, I had nothing to do with the creation of this video, but seeding it just wouldn't have done it justice. You need to see some screenshots to give you the full effect and lure you in.

Want to know why state mandated respect for religion is a problem?

That, minus the question mark, is the title of a new article by theologian John Haught in the current issue of The Christian Century. The subtitle is "Why the New Atheism isn't Serious." Sadly, the article does not seem to be available online.

As more atheist-centered books and movies make their way to mainstream culture, two best-selling Christian apologists are encouraging churches to better equip their congregation to respond to what they call a more outspoken and "confident" atheism.

The Science Network has provided access to a full list of videos from the Beyond Belief 2006 conference, including lectures by many notable authors on science and religion- Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Paul Davies, Patricia Churc …