 Morgantown, WV -- Atheists and agnostics in Morgantown, West Virginia, have organized around an electronic billboard on Mileground Road. The billboard reads, "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." These words are superimposed over an image of blue sky and clouds. Four groups of freethinkers and humanists have pooled their efforts to launch the new Morgantown Coalition of Reason, sponsor of the billboard. Their aim is to educate the public about their worldview and what their groups do. The billboard invites like-minded people to visit the coalition's website at http://www.morgantowncor.org/. Motorists traveling west on Mileground Road into Morgantown will see it between Hartfield Road (the Airport) and Memorial Highway, Route 201, on the right. Under the co-sponsorship of the United Coalition of Reason, a national coordinating body, this billboard is part of a larger nationwide campaign aimed at raising the public profile of nontheists and organizing nontheistic groups in major cities. The United Coalition of Reason plans to fund billboards in a dozen additional states before year's end. More...See also: Coalition of atheists puts out call on billboard
Subversive US cartoonist Robert Crumb, whose take on the Bible is about to be released worldwide, says people are "totally nuts" for taking the book so seriously for so long. More...Amazon link HERE.
NEW YORK -- Organized religion was already in trouble before the fall of 2008. Denominations were stagnating or shrinking, and congregations across faith groups were fretting about their finances. The Great Recession made things worse. More...
A 58-year-old director of religious education at a small Catholic church on Willoughby near Taaffe Place was accused Friday of molesting a 10-year-old boy. The man, Angelo Serrano, of St. Lucy-St. Patrick Church, was arraigned Saturday on one count of first-degree sexual abuse and held on $150,000 bail, NY1 reports. According to WABC-TV news, Mr. Serrano may be linked to as many as 17 other abuse cases. The Post reported that Mr. Serrano confessed to fondling more than a dozen other young boys. More...
The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger. More...
ANTIGONISH, N.S. -- The bishop of a Roman Catholic diocese in Nova Scotia has resigned less than two months after the diocese reached a $13-million settlement with alleged victims of sexual abuse. More...
A Muslim woman sentenced to be caned for drinking beer wants to quickly get the punishment over with now that it has been confirmed by an Islamic appeals court judge, her father says. More...
A lull in violence during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in Iraq was shattered by a series of bombings targeting both Shi'ite and Sunni areas across the country. Eighteen people were killed and at least 58 others were wounded in the blasts. More...
Americans who don't identify with any religion are now 15% of the USA, but trends in a new study shows they could one day surpass the nation's largest denominations -- including Catholics, now 24% of the nation. More...
Blink and you'll miss them -- or at least you think you will. But researchers have found that not only are subliminal messages capable of getting through to an audience, but that the more negative the subliminal message, the more likely it'll stick. More...
LONDON, England -- A new drug for melanoma has been shown to rapidly shrink malignant tumors in an early trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. More...
Researchers analysed the DNA of 132 individuals with wide-ranging backgrounds from 25 diverse groups around India. They found evidence of strong inbreeding leading to genetic groups that had been isolated from each other for thousands of years. More...See also: Ancestral Populations Of India And Relationships To Modern Groups RevealedScandinavians Are Descended From Stone Age Immigrants, Ancient DNA RevealsJewish Priesthood Has Multiple Lineages, New Genetic Research Indicates
The discovery of five remarkable new fossils has confirmed that birds evolved from dinosaurs, Chinese scientists said last night. More...
ScienceDaily -- When it comes to understanding a critical junction in animal evolution, some short, simple flatworms have been a real thorn in scientists' sides. Specialists have jousted over the proper taxonomic placement of a group of worms called Acoelomorpha. This collection of worms, which comprises roughly 350 species, is part of a much larger group called bilateral animals, organisms that have symmetrical body forms, including humans, insects and worms. The question about acoelomorpha, was: Where do they fit in? More...See also: Getting A Leg Up On Whale And Dolphin Evolution: New Comprehensive Analysis Sheds Light On The Origin Of CetaceansMutations Make Evolution Irreversible: By Resurrecting Ancient Proteins, Researchers Find That Evolution Can Only Go Forward850 new species discovered living underground
CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV/WIS) - The organizers of a Charlotte music festival have made a controversial decision to give the money raised by their event to an organization promoting evolution and atheism. More...
A former crack user says she kicked her addiction because she found Jesus at Minnesota Teen Challenge. A man says that God healed his liver after a prayer service at the Christian drug treatment facility. While its clients sing its praises -- some claiming it saved their lives -- should such an overtly religious program be receiving taxpayer funding? According to state records, MNTC has gotten more than $2 million from the state of Minnesota in order to run its faith-based chemical dependency treatment centers. More...
A new book published by Americans United for Separation of Church and State gives educators and families detailed information about the law governing religion and the public schools. More...See also: Religious Right Organization Misleads Clergy On Church-Based Politicking, Says Americans United
Critics contend the measure, called the Louisiana Science Education Act, is aimed at injecting religious themes into public schools. More...
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has once again qualified for inclusion in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The CFC is the only officially sanctioned program for soliciting federal government employees on behalf of charitable organizations. The CFC conducts annual campaigns in the federal workplace and allows federal employees to make donations through payroll deductions or other forms of payment to an approved list of charities. It's part of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. More...See also: Irreligious Billboard Mini-Blitz Hits Detroit
Several thousand Muslims convened on the Capitol grounds for a peaceable day of prayer Friday, voicing their religious fervor and solidarity with American values while ignoring scattered protesters of other faiths. --snip-- One such group, whose members displayed two oversized tablets similar to those seen in Biblical depictions of the Ten Commandments, called itself "Operation Save America" and distributed pamphlets saying: "Abortion is Murder!! Homosexuality is Sin!! Islam is a Lie!!" More...
GuideOne Mutual Insurance didn't see any problem with offering special benefits to god-fearing consumers, but atheists and agnostics, not to mention the federal government, sure did. The Department of Justice sued GuideOne in federal court in Kentucky after receiving complaints about the insurer's "FaithGuard" policy that offered homebuyers, owners and renters in 19 states special benefits and discounts if they were churchgoers. More...
The clergyman bragged repeatedly of his plans to 'replace all the older women with young women with big boobs,' according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. More...
PZ Myers, an outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist, had some nice things to say about Fargo on Thursday. More...
Former teen idol Kirk Cameron has it out for Charles Darwin, and is making no apologies for his controversial (and mocked, see below) plan to distribute thousands of altered copies of 'The Origin of Species' to college students. More...See also: Darwin Defenders Lash Out at Creationist Origin of SpeciesA creationist edition of The OriginOrigin of Stupidity (YouTube Video)
It is a book about Christmas but there's not a manger, virgin birth or angel in sight. More...
Weekly attendance by Anglican congregations fell below 1 million in 2007. Congregations are ageing, church buildings crumbling. More...
The Catholic church was yesterday accused at the United Nations Human Rights Council of covering up child abuse. More...
Glasgow -- A YOUNG mother yesterday wept as she told a court how she was allegedly raped by a student who quoted from the Bible and said St Christopher told him to do it. More...
AN Indian man chopped off his tongue then danced until he collapsed unconscious to display fearing and devotion to a Hindu goddess, the Press Trust of India news agency reports. More...
(CNN) -- The civil warfare and social instability in Somalia have prompted the flight of more than 50,000 refugees to neighboring Kenya this year alone, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday. --snip-- Somalia has been in turmoil for years. Clashes have raged between pro-government forces and rebel groups such as Al-Shabaab, the Islamist militia with ties to al Qaeda. And this fighting has prompted widespread displacement in the war-wracked nation. More...
The King Abdullah Science and Technology University opened Wednesday is meant to break ground on Saudi Arabia's scientific learning and gender norms. More...
(AP) A judge in Malaysia has upheld a court verdict to cane a Muslim woman for drinking beer, news reports said Monday, re-igniting a controversy over Islamic justice in this moderate Muslim-majority country. More...
Iranian police have warned shopkeepers not to display female mannequins without a hijab, or showing bodily curves, Irna news agency reports. Display of bow ties and neckties, and the sale of women's underwear by men are also banned, the police said. More...
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Seventeen people were killed Saturday in three separate blasts in northwest Pakistan, police said. More...See also: Suicide bomber kills tribal leader, bodyguardsPro-government tribal elders killed in Pakistan attack
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- August had the most fatalities this year for civilians in Afghanistan because of the country's disputed election, and violence could rise again when the final results are released, a U.N. report warns. More...See also: Five US soldiers killed in Afghanistan: NATO
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police in east Jerusalem stretched into Sunday evening after a visit by a Jewish group to one of the city's holiest sites. More...See also: A hostile takeover of ZionismIsrael's Supporters Ask, "What Sin?"
Washington, D.C. -- "Millions are Good Without God," said the American Humanist Association (AHA) on a new billboard put up in Moscow, Idaho yesterday. The billboard is one of several that have gone up in the Moscow area, part of an advertising campaign to spread awareness about being good without God. An image of the display can be found here: http://www.americanhumanist.org/2009/moscow/billboard. "We want people to know that you can be good without God," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. "Too many think that morality is the exclusive domain of the religious -- we're here to prove that assumption wrong." "We also want to reach out to other nontheists to let them know there is a community out there for them and that they're not alone,"said Speckhardt. More...See also: DART Commission Approves "More Open" Advertising Standards
Why would the nation's largest group of freethinkers spend good money to put ads that make light of religion on buses in San Francisco? "If there's any group of people overall that will take our message to heart, it's San Franciscans," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ad sponsor. "The city has a well-deserved reputation for openmindedness and tolerance," Gaylor adds. More...See also: Freethought Gets Aboard 75+ San Francisco BusesIndianapolis Asked to "Imagine No Religion""Imagine No Religion" Billboard Goes Up in Suburban St. Louis, Mo.
INDIANAPOLIS -- City buses in Bloomington and South Bend carry ads telling passengers "You can be good without God." A billboard going up in Indianapolis will ask commuters to "Imagine No Religion." And a local group of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and others is hosting "Religion Under Examination," a three-day conference this weekend seeking to show the Bible and the Quran, Islam's holy text, are fiction. More...See also: Secular Camp Quest Texas Is A Success
Intolerance is a bitter beast. There are many groups in America that are subject to discrimination and prejudice, but none are more hated than atheists. Research conducted a couple years ago at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis found that atheists are more distrusted than muslims or homosexuals in the US. More...See also: Atheists 'more Successful at Online Dating'
(RNS) -- The number of atheist or agnostic student groups on U.S. campuses has more than doubled in the past two years -- from 80 to 162 -- according to the Secular Student Alliance (SSA), the national organization for the secular student movement. More...
It's a question that all animal-loving Christian evangelicals must address: who will look after their pets on Earth when the Rapture comes and they are taken up to heaven? More...
U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests. More...
A belief in faith healing could jeopardise recovery from illness, according to a new study by a University of Ulster researcher. More...
(CNN) -- Scientists have discovered the first confirmed Earthlike planet outside our solar system, they announced Wednesday. More...
Biologists at the University of California, Riverside report new evidence for evolutionary change recorded in both the fossil record and the genomes (or genetic blueprints) of living organisms, providing fresh support for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. More...See also: Molecular Evidence Supports Key Tenet Of Darwin's Evolution TheoryAncient Oceans Offer New Insight Into Origins Of Animal LifeScientists propose new hypothesis on the origin of life
Washington, DC -- Today the American Humanist Association, alongside a broad coalition of 57 other religious, civil liberties and education organizations, called for the review and withdrawal of a 2007 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo that threatens religious liberty and civil rights. The groups, who issued their request via a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder, argue that the Bush-era memo inaccurately interprets the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as allowing religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of religion when hiring for taxpayer-funded positions. More...See also: Americans United, Allied Groups Urge Attorney General To Reverse Bush-Era 'Faith-Based' RuleObama Cautious on Faith-Based InitiativesAnd... D.C. Voucher Program Has Failed To Yield Positive Results, Americans United Tells Senate CommitteeFederal Appeals Court Made Correct Call On Religion At School Graduation, Says Americans United
A Phoenix-area pastor has started to draw protesters to his congregation after he delivered a sermon titled, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," and told his parishioners that he prays for President Obama's death. More...See also: Americans United Denounces Arizona Preacher's Death Prayers Against Obama
An Atheist civil rights group today criticized the Kentucky Attorney General's office for appealing a case challenging laws that it says allowed the Commonwealth to establish religion. More...
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is challenging a decision by the Buildings and Grounds Committee of Chippewa County, Wis., to keep a Christian memorial for fallen police officer Jason Zunker at the County Courthouse. At first, the same committee had voted to erase the Christian-wording on the monument, which had been erected in July. Last Thursday, however, the Committee voted unanimously to keep the monument on county property, at least until October. Part of the memorial reads: "You must ask Jesus into your heart, believe he died for you and believe he rose again." The rest of the passage includes references to God and the bible. More...See also: Support FFRF Victory -- Keep Washington Capitol SecularFFRF Contests Memphis Council's Prayers, Chaplain, Goody BagSchool District Backs Off Christmas Break ChangeFFRF Questions Prayers at Tehachapi Council MeetingsFFRF Settles Federal Lawsuit in Denver
(CBS) On this Jewish New year a centuries old tradition is adjusting for the H1N1 virus. More...
ST. PETERSBURG -- St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster believes, contrary to the overwhelming majority of scientists, that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. He believes the world was created in six literal days, and he once complained to school officials when his son was taught about Darwin's theory of evolution in fifth grade. Is that relevant to the campaign for mayor of Florida's fourth-largest city? More...
(CNN) -- Two Florida school administrators were due to appear in federal court Thursday to face contempt charges for saying a prayer at a school luncheon. Frank Lay, principal of Pace High School in Pace, Florida, and school athletic director Robert Freeman are accused of violating a consent decree banning employees of Santa Rosa County schools from endorsing religion. More...
A woman who described herself as a former stripper in Miami has filed a petition for a restraining order against a South Florida priest, who she now claims fathered her baby. More...
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 study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders. More...
Philomena was one of thousands of Irish women sent to convents in the 1950s and 60s, taken away from their homes and families because the Catholic church said single mothers were moral degenerates who could not be allowed to keep their children. Such was the power of the church, and of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that the state bowed before its demands, ceding responsibility for the mothers and babies to the nuns. For them it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence. At the time young Anthony Lee was born, I discovered that the Irish government was paying the Catholic church a pound a week for every woman in its care, and two shillings and sixpence for every baby. And that was not all. More...
A 38-year-old Massachusetts man who claims he was abused by a priest of the Diocese of Springfield as he entered adolescence has filed suit against Bishop Thomas Dupre, Bishop Joseph Maguire, and a third diocesan official. The man alleges that Dupre, while chancellor of the diocese, was partly responsible for allowing Father Alfred Graves to continue in ministry after the diocese was made aware of other instances of abuse. Graves was laicized in 2006. More...
LOS ANGELES -- A former high-ranking official with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles testified that Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered a subordinate to delay reporting clergy abuse claims to the police until the priest in question could be defrocked, according to court papers filed Friday. More...
THE ROMAN Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., is arguing that it cannot be sued for assigning priests with a history of sexual abuse because such placements are ecclesiastical decisions, and that documents dealing with the assignments are protected by religious privileges in the First Amendment. More...
For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country's most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican's backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold. A year-long Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by websites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States. More...
The book which is due to be published at Easter next year, argues that St Paul came up with the ''story'' that Jesus had a divine link. More...
In his previous books the British biologist has presented new ways of looking at evolution, demolished barriers to understanding it and traced the family tree of all life back through its branching points to a single origin. These books all started with evolution. But in the bicentennial year of Darwin's birth Mr Dawkins fills a gap in his oeuvre by setting out the evidence that the "theory" of evolution is a fact -- "as incontrovertible a fact as any in science". More...See also: Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show On EarthReview: The Greatest Show on EarthThe Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins: reviewThe Greatest Show on Earth
Nearly three years on from a final political settlement in Northern Ireland, emergency evacuations of families under intimidation are on the rise. A summer of high tension has seen hundreds of attacks on both Catholic and Protestant individuals and premises, including churches, being reported to police. There have been 65 emergency re-housing cases in the five months since April; the total for the whole of last year was 100. These include families subjected to petrol-bomb and stoning attacks on their homes. A total of 1,500 sectarian attacks - an average of four a day - were recorded in the past year, almost exactly the same as in the previous 12 months. An example of how life can be affected when a family comes under attack was given by a Protestant man living in the Co Antrim village of Rasharkin, where what are described as "Catholic hoods" have been active. The village has been the centre of controversy over a loyalist marching dispute which gave rise to many incidents in recent months. More...
MONTREAL -- Christian parents who objected to their children being taught about other religions in a mandatory new Quebec school course have suffered a serious setback with a ruling this week that the teachings do not infringe their religious freedoms. Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois dismissed a bid by parents in Drummondville, Que., who said the course on ethics and religious culture introduced across the province last year was undermining their efforts to instill Christian faith in their children. --snip-- "What parents were demanding was the right to ignorance, the right to protect their children from being exposed to the existence of other religions," he said. " This right to ignorance is certainly not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of religion does not protect the right not to know what is going on in our universe." More...
Figures just released by the Bureau of Statistics show that registered marriages are at a 20-year high, and weddings officiated by civil celebrants are increasingly popular. In 2008, civil celebrants performed 65 per cent of marriages. More...
Have Turkey's secularists and Islamists reached a decisive point in their battle for control of the country's media? More...
COPENHAGEN - Denmark's Conservative Party shelved a proposal to ban the burka after lawyers warned it could violate human rights, the justice minister said Thursday. More...
BRUSSELS - Dutch-language public schools in Belgium will ban Muslims from wearing headscarves in classes, school officials in the Flanders region announced Friday. More...
ARIS -- It is a measure of France's confusion about Islam and its own Muslim citizens that in the political furor here over "banning the burqa," as the argument goes, the garment at issue is not really the burqa at all, but the niqab. More...See also: Niqab ban is inevitable in secular France: experts
A Sudanese woman whose arrest on the charge of wearing trousers drew worldwide attention, escaped a public lashing yesterday but now faces up to a month in prison. Lubna Hussein was convicted of indecency but did not receive the typical sentence of 40 lashes as the judge opted to fine her. More...See also: Muslim Women Fight for Right to Pants, BeerWomen in Trousers and Torture
Muslims have lived in South Africa for hundreds of years - but Islamic marriages remain unrecognised in law, making divorce potentially disastrous for women. More...
An Arab organisation is to be put on trial in the Netherlands over its publication of a cartoon deemed offensive to Jews, prosecutors say. More...
Six Malaysian Muslims have been charged with sedition for parading a severed cow's head to protest against the planned construction of a Hindu temple. More...
Religious leaders in Bulgaria have blamed Madonna for a boating accident which killed 15 people on Saturday - insisting her decision to perform in the country on a holy day brought bad luck. More...
An engaged Muslim couple who tried to have sex in a car have been sentenced to be caned by a Sharia court in Malaysia. More...
Married people who commit adultery could be stoned to death under new law unanimously passed on Monday by MPs in the devoutly Muslim Indonesian province of Aceh. More...
British terrorists planned to blow up at least seven transatlantic flights from London, murdering more than 1,500 people in a plot on a scale to rival the September 11 attacks, a jury found today. More...
ISLAMABAD - A successful army offensive, a shift in public opinion against the militants and the killing of top Taliban leaders have given grounds for cautious optimism in Pakistan as progress across the border in Afghanistan appears stalled amid spiraling violence and postelection turmoil. More...
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- At least 39 people were killed Friday morning when a suicide car bomb exploded near a crowded market in northwest Pakistan, police said. More...See also: Suicide attacker kills two in PakistanDozens killed in Pakistan fighting
Al-Shabaab, the Islamist militia with ties to al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the African Union. More...See also: Suicide bombers use U.N. disguise in Somali attack9 killed in mortar attack by Somali insurgents
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- A United Nations report issued Tuesday says both Israel and the Palestinians committed actions amounting to war crimes during Israel's military incursion into Gaza from December 27 to January 18. More...See also: Rights group: Israeli offensive killed mostly civiliansNetanyahu rules out freeze on Israeli settlements, source saysIsrael approves construction of more settlements
(CNN) -- An audio message purportedly from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has accused President Barack Obama of being unable to fulfil his election pledge to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. More...
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