1.
(User blogs/Default Category)

... the experts the earth has undergone disastrous changes in the past - much more severe than what happened recently.  there were dry, cold, wet, dark periods in the past before humans ex...

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

...n 20 March 2007 in the science section of The New York Times the science writer Nicholas Wade wrote about recent research with chimpanzees and other primates. Wade emphasised how wrong most religions ...

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

...l, blasphemy remains punishable by death in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. In addition, Ireland recently introduced a defamation law making blasphemy punishable by fines up to 25,000 euros (...

4. Public schools flout national laws on religious instruction
(Religion/Enforced religion)

...lim God, or the God of any other religion? And how does the child distinguish between these gods?) Genis recently openly and sarcastically rejected the complaints by parents against Christian religio...

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

...s itself off to employment tribunals, broadcasting standards agencies and various handlers of complaints. Recently, we have seen a ludicrous fellow who could not see why his Leviticus-derived ravings ...

6. On a wing and a prayer
(Religion/Enforced religion)

... Jong-Il was suitably taken in by the cult of his own personality to stay at home for treatment after his recent brush with the other side. But rumour has it that a French neurosurgeon was imported to...

7. "Child-witches" of Nigeria seek refuge
(Religion/General)

...;treating" a child every night for two weeks, and holds them captive until the bill is paid. He has recently refined his techniques for dealing with child witches. "I killed up to 110 peopl...

8. Anger over Satanism lesson
(Religion/General)

...ty is sparked and they begin experimenting with the wrong things, which can lead to incidents such as the recent sword attack at a school," the father said. The particular chapter of the Grade 1...

9. How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results
(Science/General)

The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not. On the

10. An Atheist Manifesto
(Religion/Atheism)

...hamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors. The Nature of Belief According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the nex...

11. Movie : Constantine's Sword
(Religion/General)

...ll religious hatred, exposing the cross as a symbol of a long history of violence against Jews (and, most recently, Moslems). The film brings the history of religious intolerance to life, tracing it a...

12. Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill
(Science/General)

...egative way. Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays a...

13. Put a Little Science in Your Life
(Science/General)

...ativity, quantum mechanics — a symphony of discoveries that changed our conception of reality. More recently, the last 10 years have witnessed an upheaval in our understanding of the universe...

14. The Neuroscience of Illusion
(Science/General)

The Neural Correlate Society recently announced the winners of its annual Best Visual Illusion contest. To celebrate the event, Mind Matters invited Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik, two n

15. The Mind-Altering Role of Incense in Religion
(Religion/General)

...als stay alive and pass on genes, then religion is evolutionarily important, even if we made it up. The recent research, published in the online FASEB Journal (Federation of American Societies for E...

16. Scientists Know Better Than You--Even When They're Wrong
(Science/General)

...#39;s learned the hard way about the work that goes into acquiring specialized scientific knowledge. In a recent book, Rethinking Expertise, he says that what bridges the gap—and what keeps scie...

17. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour
(Religion/General)

...tumble from 200,000 to 42,000 and in Scotland, from 550,000 to 140,000. The figures take into account the recent boost to Catholicism from the number of Polish immigrants to Britain, particularly in S...

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

...civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna ("strife" in Arabic) over the inte...

19. Citing Faith, Bush Defends War Actions
(Religion/General)

...nvention, Mr. Bush called upon European allies to step up their efforts in Afghanistan, and conceded that recent security gains in Iraq "are tenuous, they're reversible and they're fragil...

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

It seems unlikely that many of the 850 or so people at the Society for Ethical Culture on a recent Saturday night believed that God was still extant. But evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author

21. Old Tibet no Shangri-La
(Religion/General)

Pre-1950s state was a feudal theocracy short on peace, harmony but not oppression and torture. Recent uprisings in Tibet have raised international attention because of the spotlight on the Beijing Ol

22. Immune system differences found
(Science/General)

... risk for drug side effects." She added: "Population differences in gene expression have only recently begun to be investigated. "We believe they play a significant role in suscepti...

23. New Atheists Are Not Great
(Religion/General)

...ghtful book, What's So Great About Christianity, falls into the second category. It sets out to rebut recent exuberant atheist tracts, such as Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great and Richa...

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

...oice to every Tom, Dick, and Sally to spew the views about anything. I am no exception. I found a comment recently in a Facebook group, that there Hate groups starting everywhere. Even on a social uti...

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

... statistic masks significant turnover. The percentage has held up primarily because of the huge number of recent Latino immigrants, who are largely Catholic, the survey found. Sixty-eight percent of p...

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

...eparating the scientific wheat from the chaff The importance of quality information was driven home by a recent study that revealed a tendency for false or misleading information regarding breast can...

27. View from the lab: creationism
(Religion/Evolution vs Creationism)

...nd branches in every other religion. Evolution's own giant terrapin is the idea that life was created recently, in one of several kinds of miracle (which you believe depends on where you were brou...

28. UK Measles cases jump to record high
(Science/General)

...ious infection." A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "MMR uptake has increased in recent years - now about 17 out of every 20 children have the MMR vaccine before they are two ...

29. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology
(Religion/General)

...echnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small. Addressing sc...

30. Exorcism undergoes a revival across Europe
(Religion/General)

...ociated with medieval witch-burnings and the 1973 Hollywood horror film, "The Exorcist." More recent horror stories have also taken their toll. In Germany, memories are still fresh of a 23...