1. Next week, blasphemy gets its own holiday
(Religion/Atheism)

...as a witchcraft trial, blasphemy remains punishable by death in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. In addition, Ireland recently introduced a defamation law making blasphemy punishable by fines ...

2. The religious find a friend in the law
(Religion/Atheism)

...tateeth Toothpaste Does Absolutely Nothing For Your Teeth And Gums" and seeing if the ASA requires the addition of the word "probably". All very amusing, but Mr Green's tactics he...

3. Evolutionarily Preserved Signature Found In The Primate Brain
(Science/General)

...s or damage to the brain," says team leader Professor Elena Jazin, at Uppsala University, Sweden. In addition to the results mentioned above, the researchers also report on evolutionary speeds ...

4. Quackery quashed, but Rath’s legacy lives
(Medicine/General)

...of Aids. He is, according to the website of his Dr Rath Health Foundation — an organisation which, in addition to its operations in Cape Town, has branches in Germany, the US and Russia — ...

5. Lizards make adaptive change
(Science/General)

...research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Fund for Scientific Research in Flanders. Additional members of the study team included researchers from Harvard University, Universit...

6. Make Way for Superfrog
(Science/General)

...ls from Cameroon, Blackburn's team had to do their anatomical studies on preserved museum specimens. In addition to the talon-shaped finger bones others had seen, the researchers found a small bon...

7. Religion a figment of human imagination
(Religion/General)

...unseen "enforcer" - God – who can see and punish all wrong-doers. "Once you have these additions of the imagination, maybe theories of God are inevitable," he says. Journal r...

8. If God Is Dead, Who Gets His House?
(Religion/General)

...son explains it this way: "Our members have left religion and don't want any part of that." Additionally, many atheists see the challenge of tearing down the pillars of organized relig...

9. The Catholic Church's devillish practice of exorcism
(Religion/General)

...Pope will soon undertake a new campaign to unleash a fresh batch of four hundred exorcists on the world, in addition to the thousands already in operation. “Thank God,” he said, “we ...

10. Britain cannot put its faith in religiously divided schools
(Religion/Enforced religion)

...elves to remove "unnecessary barriers to the creation of new faith schools", to give such schools additional funding from central government and to encourage fee-paying religious schools to ...

11. The Moral Instinct
(Religion/General)

...e truths and not others. (No one who understands the concept of two, the concept of four and the concept of addition can come to any conclusion but that 2 + 2 = 4.) Perhaps we are born with a rudiment...

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

... press release noting the initial approval received from the advisory committee and pledging to provide the additional material requested by Paredes. The press release said that the institute was &qu...

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

...periments and found no evidence for psi, concluding that psi data are non-replicable. Bem countered with 10 additional ganzfeld experiments he claims are significant, and he has additional research he...

14. Confessions of a Former Iridologist
(Medicine/General)

...s on how I could document our results better as well as studies that we needed to look for or instigate. In addition to working in a clinical setting, the health care consultant program included studi...

15. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists
(Religion/Atheism)

...oke any mechanism to ''sustain'' a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to s...

16. Designer microbes to save us all
(Good news/All)

...omputer and Internet firms.      Khosla Ventures is funding Amyris and Codon Devices in addition to LS9. Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is backing Codon Devi...

17. Study holds new promise for spinal injuries
(Good news/All)

...ead to new therapies for the estimated 250,000 Americans who suffer from traumatic spinal cord injuries. An additional 10,000 cases occur each year, according to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundat...

18. Devolution
(Religion/Evolution vs Creationism)

...e; the part is not, at this stage, essential for function. But, because subsequent evolution builds on this addition, a part that was at first just advantageous might become essential. As this process...