A science writer who is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association is to fight on after a preliminary judgment against him was opened up to appeal today.

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Although their number remains insignificant and most of them hid their identity, the fact that some people are leaving Islam and becoming atheists is a troubling news in conservative Iraq.

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The moment evidence is provided, we will be happy to accept it and to change our minds accordingly. This is not the fluffy open-mindedness of the ‘spiritual’, the ‘New Age’, or the ‘seeker’. This is not an open-mindedness that says, ‘I can imagine it, therefore it must be possible’. This is genuine, healthy open-mindedness: a mind that is open, but judiciously so, as opposed to a yawning chasm that has no filter for sifting out the genuine from the phony, the rational from the irrational, the true from the false.

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Congregations around the U.S. are modifying their rituals to help prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus. A little vodka on the Communion chalice helps.

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Richards Dawkins bravely subjects himself to an interview with Bill O’Reilly, which O’Reilly then calls a debate.

O’Reilly starts off “I believe in creative design. I believe in evolution, but I think it was overseen by a higher power, because as we just stated and you acknowledged, you guys still haven’t figured out how it all began.”  And it goes downhill from there.

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How religion tamed the human species; how a form of theological expression from the Middle Ages could help us recover our understanding of God.

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Article about Dawkins’s new book, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution’.  “Dawkins is very keen to establish that his new book is not ‘The God Delusion.’ He wants, as much as possible, to distance it from conversations about God. ‘I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed,’ he says.”

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The debate over automatic elevators and whether they violate the Sabbath is reminiscent of medieval scholars arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

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A physicist at the lab that houses the Swiss Large Hadron Collider, built to replicate the conditions of the ‘Big Bang’, has been arrested on suspicion of terror links.  Suspects are innocent until proven guilty, but if the police are correct, here’s another example of Sam Harris’s worry about people who are intelligent enough to be nuclear physicists, but still believe in 42 virgins in the afterlife.

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Two Pennsylvania parents now face criminal charges due to the death of their infant, as a result of bacterial pneumonia. This death could have been prevented by consulting a physician and the use of Tylenol or an antibiotic, however the parents elected to try and combat the illness with prayer, rather than medicine.

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A “triumphalistic, self-righteous atheism” inspired by the work of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris is winning a following among American young people, leading to “atheist clubs” in high schools, according to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

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Riyadh: A Saudi court on Wednesday sentenced a man to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes for boasting about his premarital sexual conquests on a TV talk show.

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Jon McNaughton Painting Shows Crippled Kids, Soldiers With Jesus; Lefty Journalists, Professors With Satan

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In a comic vein, Tarico suggests a playlist for ex-Christians.

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A long legal fight involving a cross in California’s Mojave desert is being considered by the US Supreme Court.

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Thousands of people are expected in Oxford to view the remains of St Therese of Lisieux, a 19th Century Catholic saint.

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It is not the Harry Potter kind of witchcraft, but it’s equally spellbinding, say elders in Taiwan’s Paiwan tribe.

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Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence.

In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution.

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Conservative Egyptian lawmakers have called for a ban on imports of a Chinese-made kit meant to help women fake their virginity…

“If this thing enters Egypt, the country is going to go to waste. God protect us,” commented a reader on the Web site of Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabie.

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Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/conservative-bible-projec_n_310037.html

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