1. Belief, God Genes, and the Findings of Science
(Religion/Atheism)

...is isn’t just a way of talking – the meme for, say, ‘belief in life after death’ is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems ...

2. Origin of the Specious: Race, lies and stereotypes in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy
(Religion/General)

...eparate races, and arranging them in groups of “higher” or “lower racial forms”, is actually “racist”. It’s going on now. How can anyone know which of Steiner...

3. Who Started the War on Christmas?
(Religion/Atheism)

...” a “faux-holiday.” “Teaching children about Hanukkah, rather than the beliefs that actually sustained Jews on their sometimes tragic and tumultuous historical journey,” ...

4. It's not what the papers say, it's what they don't
(Medicine/General)

...Those results aren't just incompatible with an increased risk of asthma following MMR vaccination, they actually support the hypothesis that MMR vaccination is associated with a reduced risk of as...

5. Shofar Christian cult mobilizes in the Western Cape
(Religion/Shofar Shogood)

...gies, and this is not helping the future prospects of our students on any level. The fact that these people actually go after recognised and accepted scientific theory (that actually has sweet nothing...

6. Anger over Satanism lesson
(Religion/General)

...e exposed to all sorts of things on MXit, on the internet, in shopping centres and in the media, and it was actually essential that they received an "educational, corrective perspective" on ...

7. An Atheist Manifesto
(Religion/Atheism)

... the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, re...

8. The Neuroscience of Illusion
(Science/General)

...ck here to view a slideshow of illusions It’s a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination. Although our sensations feel accurate and truthful, t...

9. Trouble ahead for science
(Religion/Evolution vs Creationism)

...self. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leaders...

10. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks
(Religion/Enforced religion)

...adan who, while lionized by liberal Europeans as the epitome of cosmopolitan Islam, cannot bring himself to actually condemn honor killing in round terms (he recommends that the practice be suspended,...

11. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda
(Religion/General)

...er of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how human...

12. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord
(Good news/Humour)

...ot; He loves the thought that somewhere a young boy might watch Captain Jack with his family and say, "Actually, I've got something to tell you." "That's it! That kid is still r...

13. Expelled!
(Religion/Evolution vs Creationism)

...nd of sleeve or lightweight carrier used to surround a piece of munition fired from a gun. It isn't the actually load intended to strike the target, but may even be discarded as it leaves the barr...

14. The Great Tantra Challenge
(Paranormal/General)

...ar, commented a scientist during the program. It needs enormous courage and confidence to challenge them by actually putting one's life at risk, he said. By doing so, Sanal Edamaruku has broken th...

15. Hatred and Ignorance on the Web
(Religion/General)

... maturity (see later Rants). I want to focus on the mindset of these “people” and show how they actually aggravate, rather than lessen the problem. Let me give you some notion as to the m...

16. More Americans leaving religious ties of their youth
(Religion/General)

... Some think that secularism is underreported as people may check a box correlating to a faith group without actually believing its tenets or following its practices. Others think the growth of the una...

17. Getting the public to pay attention to good science
(Science/General)

... make sense to a nonscientific audience. "Only use metaphors when what they're substituting for is actually confusing," Goldston said, "and make sure they aren't more confusing ...

18. US military accused of harboring fundamentalism
(Religion/Enforced religion)

...ot; But Weinstein argued that most personnel are "too terrified" to speak out. "When you actually fight against them, they make your life hell," said Hall, adding he has been p...

19. What would Darwin have made of the Human Genome Project?
(Science/General)

...nes, each about 1,500 letters long, in a genome of 3.4bn nucleotides. This means just 1 or 2% of our genome actually codes for protein. Our genes are like railway stations separated from each other by...

20. Why multiculturalism must be abandoned
(Religion/General)

...a feel-good doctrine mindlessly celebrating "difference", without looking at what that difference actually means. Yet many people feel instinctively uncomfortable when we talk about ditchi...

21. Atheism and Violence
(Religion/Atheism)

...g, protest against God is understandable, [nonetheless] the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accide...

22. Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights
(Religion/Enforced religion)

... confrontation between Afghanistan and the West. It comes in the wake of Mr Karzai accusing the British of actually worsening the situation in Helmand province by their actions and his subsequent blo...

23. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?
(Religion/Atheism)

..." are clearly trying to start and sustain an intellectual movement. What is strange is that, when one actually reads them, one gets the feeling that the real target of the "new atheists&quo...

24. God's journal
(Religion/Evolution vs Creationism)

...ote a literal reading of the Christian creation myth needs a more scholarly underpinning. Yes, these loons actually believe that the Earth was created in 7 days a few thousand years ago, and they hav...

25. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism
(Science/General)

...Life, they might have gained some inkling of the racism propagated by this controversial theorist. Had they actually read Origin, they likely would be shocked to learn that among Darwin's scientif...

26. Questions Delay Creationist Master's Degrees
(Religion/Evolution vs Creationism)

... review: - Online learning. "Given all the research that demonstrates that science is best learned by actually doing it, how are you going to give students the proper exposure to the experimenta...

27. The Great Afterlife Debate: Michael Shermer v. Deepak Chopra
(Religion/General)

...be “seen” as a tunnel. Similarly, in the OBE the experience of visualizing things from above is actually just an extension of a normal process we all do called “decentering” &m...

28. I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions
(Medicine/Self Help)

...9;s popular programs on recovery from various (and questionable) addictions actively discourage people from actually helping themselves. (Self-help is usually a misnomer for how-to programs in identit...

29. Belief in Belief
(Religion/Atheism)

...who regard poverty and death as a secondhand share in the "mystery" of the Crucifixion. There are actually quite a good number of activists of the first type (I spent some time there once, w...

30. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?
(Religion/Atheism)

...ay feel as we turn the pages: "This is not it. Whatever the religion being attacked here, it's not actually what I believe in"'. Perhaps we atheists have misread people like Williams...