5th Jan 2009 : When Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on novelist Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, it was the opening shot in a war on cultural freedom. Two decades later, the violence continues, and Muslim fundamentalists have gained a new advantage: media self-censorship.

2nd Jan 2009 : The Vatican City State, the world's smallest sovereign state, has decided to divorce itself from Italian law.

31nd Dec 2008 : The Religious Test in Campaign '08

8th Dec 2008 : An extended profile of Johnson published Sunday by the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals that the evangelical Johnson is unwilling — or unable — to separate religion from science.

28th Nov 2008 : Under state law, God is Kentucky's first line of defense against terrorism.

24th Nov 2008 : I am writing to express my concern at reports of a Turkish court compromising freedom of expression in the context of Turkey’s application to join the EU.

20th Nov 2008 : Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.

19th Nov 2008 : As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

16th Nov 2008 : As the dust settles on Washington following the Barack Obama earthquake, one group more than any other is expecting to be out in the cold.

13th Nov 2008 : I have been a Mormon my whole life. But after the church's campaign of hatred to ban gay marriage, I finally renounced my membership.

13th Nov 2008 : The country's lack of religious freedom betrays its lofty rhetoric. The real aim of its 'dialogue' is to promote a global blasphemy law.

12th Nov 2008 : The nation's Catholic bishops decided yesterday to fire an opening salvo at the incoming Obama administration, pledging to work with the new president on issues such as immigration and healthcare but also warning that the Catholic Church will do everything it can to oppose his support for abortion rights.

10th Nov 2008 : JUST days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced tough new measures to name and shame foreign-based extremists and prevent them coming from abroad to stir up hatred in the UK, firebrand preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad cocked a snook at her new initiative, the Evening Standard can reveal.

9th Nov 2008 : Barack Obama will move swiftly to unpick many of what he sees as the most egregious acts of the Bush administration when he enters the White House in January, including restrictions on stem cell research and moves to allow oil drilling in wilderness areas, a leading member of his transition team said yesterday.

6th Nov 2008 :

5th Nov 2008 : Victory for an array of donating conservative organizations, including the Knights of Columbus, Focus on the Family and the American Family Assn., along with tens of thousands of small donors, including many who responded to urging from Mormon, Catholic and evangelical clergy.

5th Nov 2008 : Isn't it pathetic that in this day and age, in this country founded on the idea of religious liberty, whose settlers came here to avoid religious persecution, that one could be criticized for one's religious beliefs or lack of beliefs?

4th Nov 2008 : Today is the day.

2nd Nov 2008 : The evangelical movement is fearful on many fronts, Mark Hennessy discovers in Colorado Springs

2nd Nov 2008 : The idea of intelligent fundamentalists, like the theory of intelligent design, does not stand up to 30 seconds' scrutiny.

29th Oct 2008 : We are made to believe that religion is merely about faith, spirituality and morality, without which humanity will lack any sense of ethics, goodness and humanity.

29th Oct 2008 : Falling behind in her reelection race, Sen. Elizabeth Dole has uncorked one hell of a charge: The Democrat running against me is godless.

28th Oct 2008 : The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.

22nd Oct 2008 : For several years, a coalition of Islamic states--aided by Russia, China, Cuba, and a group of developing countries--has placed the "defamation of religions" high on the U.N. human rights agenda.

20th Oct 2008 : A clip from "Now on PBS". A right wing religious woman and her reasons for disliking Barack Obama.

13th Oct 2008 : Richard Dawkins at Conservative Humanist Association launch event at The Conservative Party Conference 2008 in Birmingham

5th Oct 2008 :

26th Sept 2008 : Defying a federal tax law they consider unjust, 33 ministers across the country will take to their pulpits this Sunday and publicly endorse a candidate for president.

18th Sept 2008 : Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

15th Sept 2008 : Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing "inappropriate content".

15th Sept 2008 : I'm an atheist liberal academic who strongly leans Democrat. But I'm stunned at how blind so many of my colleagues and soul mates are to the historical underpinnings of American political culture and the genuine appeal of religious conservatism for so many of our fellow citizens.

2nd Sept 2008 : Three months before she was thrust into the national political spotlight, Gov. Sarah Palin was asked to handle a much smaller task: addressing the graduating class of commission students at her one-time church, Wasilla Assembly of God.

30th Aug 2008 : Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wants creationism taught in science classes.

20th Aug 2008 : At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.

7th Aug 2008 : So Thursday's Terrorist Threat turned out to consist of four lads from Leeds, Yorkshire and Aylesbury. Suicide-murder is something we used to associate with the refugee camps of Gaza, the rubble of Grozny, or the market-squares of Baghdad. Now we are confronted by something that looks like jihadism as scripted by Richard Curtis.

25th Jul 2008 : Along with energy policy, political and economic systems must also evolve.

10th Jul 2008 : A marriage registrar was harassed for refusing to conduct same-sex ceremonies, a tribunal has ruled.

8th Jul 2008 : STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist but is now an atheist
- His sudden lack of faith cost him his military career and put his life at risk, he says
- Hall sued the Defense Department; claims military is a Christian organization
- Pentagon official: Complaints about evangelizing are "relatively rare"

30th Jun 2008 : The Center for Inquiry urges the Afghan government to release Sayed Pervez Kambakhsh, a 23-year-old journalism student at Balkh University and reporter for the local daily Jahan-e-Naw (The New World), sentenced to death for insulting Islam.

20th Jun 2008 : Few Americans would invite an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, but that's exactly what Minnesota pastor Gus Booth wanted when he stood behind his pulpit and told his congregation God wanted them to vote Republican.

8th Jun 2008 :

13th May 2008 : Democrats, Republicans agree on need, disagree on issues; health care tops list

26th Apr 2008 : FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

14th Apr 2008 : Is it important? Well, if you want to stop America's seemingly inexorably decline, it might be absolutely critical.

8th Apr 2008 : Well said Mr. Olbermann.

7th Apr 2008 : The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out.

3rd Apr 2008 : Supporters rally behind Republican caught up in YouTube controversy

31rd Mar 2008 : For the past eleven years the organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yesterday, 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.

21st Mar 2008 :

6th Mar 2008 : After an acrimonious debate in which the bogeyman of secularism was repeatedly invoked, the House of Lords on Wednesday March 5 2008 accepted the amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that abolishes the common law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

4th Mar 2008 : Quentin Letts' new BBC Radio 4 series "What's the Point Of..." kicked off today with a 30-minute investigation into the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with particular reference to Dr. Rowan Williams' recent suggestion that sharia law should be operating in Britain.

1st Mar 2008 : Christopher Hitchens was one of the guests on Real Time with Bill Maher on Feb 29th, 2008.

29th Feb 2008 : Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch activist facing death threats for her outspoken criticism of Islam, is to come under national police protection anywhere in the European Union, the top justice official in Brussels said tonight.

28th Feb 2008 :

28th Feb 2008 : Public policy decisions should be based on evidence. So why are taxpayers funding faith schools and alternative therapies?

27th Feb 2008 : Don't answer that, Mister Huckabee. And the pandering is on both sides of the aisle. This video from The Interfaith Alliance proves what I said in December of 2006, that athiest author "Sam Harris and company will have to hold their noses when Obama gives his acceptance speech in Denver…"

25th Feb 2008 : ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Conflicting reports emerged out of Pakistan on Tuesday over the duration of a Pakistani government block on the video-sharing Web site YouTube for showing a "highly blasphemous Dutch" video. The video, which the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority described as "highly provocative" and "anti-Quranic," featured Dutch politician Geert Wilders and had "the potential to cause more unrest and possible loss of life and property across the country," PTA said in a statement on its Web site.

24th Feb 2008 : 'What they call my trial lasted just four minutes in a closed court. I was told that I was guilty and the decision was that I was going to die'

21st Feb 2008 : Former CIA official, now an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, argues that a 9/11-type attack would have been likely anyway

10th Feb 2008 : 'Sharia is nothing but a human concoction of medieval religious opinion

10th Feb 2008 :

5th Feb 2008 : The West screwed up badly when the denunciation of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie was not closer to unanimous. (I will never forget or forgive the shameful silence of some writers who shunned the invitation to join in a firm but not hostile rebuke.) The West screwed up badly again when the Danish cartoons were not reprinted world-wide. What many didn't understand was that the staged riots were a political strike against moderate Muslims, not non-Muslims. The "tolerance" urged by many voices outside the Muslim world played into the hands of the radical Islamists. Now we get a third chance to come to the aide of moderate Muslims all over the world, but so far, I haven't heard much outcry. Several days ago I sent the following letter to the Boston Globe, which has not yet indicated that it will publish it:

4th Feb 2008 :

4th Feb 2008 : Twelve Irreligious Questions for the Candidates Before "Tiw's Day's" Elections

29th Jan 2008 : Richard Dawkins discusses the role of religion in schools with other panel members on The Big Debate.

23rd Jan 2008 : KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan court in northern Afghanistan sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for distributing an article from the Internet that was considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, the judge in charge of the court said Wednesday.

22nd Jan 2008 : Pat Condell on Islam.

20th Jan 2008 : Jan. 11 - Flush with last year's success in passing H.Res. 847, "Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian Faith," Christian nationalists -- those who would have the United States be governed as a Christian theocracy -- are pushing H.Res. 888, another resolution which promotes a false and distorted Christian nation reinterpretation of our history. Generally, we do not take action regarding resolutions because they are ceremonial in nature and express the non-binding opinion of one chamber. They do not have the force of law.

19th Jan 2008 : We've got to find a way to take the conservative symbolic message of faith talk out of American politics.

16th Jan 2008 : (I)n Warren, Michigan on Monday, Huckabee declared his personal crusade to amend the Constitution by copying and pasting from the Bible

15th Jan 2008 : Unlikely as it sounds, an extinct Canadian fish with foot-like fins is set to make a serious splash in the U.S. presidential race.

Tiktaalik roseae -- a 375-million-year-old fossilized "fishapod" discovered on Ellesmere Island in 2004 -- has been hailed as an "evolutionary icon" because it represents the crucial transition from sea to land for some of the Earth's most primitive creatures.

9th Jan 2008 : Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris will tomorrow table an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill calling for the abolition of 'blasphemous libel'. Here, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society explains why such a crime has no place in a liberal society

3rd Jan 2008 : God and rock'n'roll were invoked by the Republican Mike Huckabee in his final campaign rally in Iowa, with quotes from the Book of Isaiah and calls for tonight's caucus-goers to get on their knees to ask for God's wisdom.

2nd Jan 2008 : Mitt Romney crafts a solution that, if nothing else, works really well for him.

16th Dec 2007 : EDINBURGH — We may never know exactly why 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was strangled in Msissauga this week. Her father, Muhammad, has been charged with murder, and he is, by all accounts, a very religious man, whereas his daughter didn't want to cover her head in the style favoured by Muslims in his native Pakistan.

13th Dec 2007 : Our priorities in the West are wrong. Secularism is what we should be spreading across the globe

10th Dec 2007 : Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.

7th Dec 2007 : MITT ROMNEY'S WINDY, WORTHLESS SPEECH.

7th Dec 2007 : "Thank you, Mr. President, for your kind introduction.

"It is an honour to be here today. This is an inspiring place because of you and the first lady and because of the film exhibited across the way in the presidential library. For those who have not seen it, it shows the president as a young pilot, shot down during the Second World War, being rescued from his life raft by the crew of an American submarine. It is a moving reminder that when America has faced challenge and peril, Americans rise to the occasion, willing to risk their very lives to defend freedom and preserve our nation. We are in your debt. Thank you, Mr. President.

6th Dec 2007 : On one side of the Atlantic sits Lord Black. On the other, Judge Luigi Tosti. Both are convicted criminals, both proclaim their cause and their innocence.

4th Dec 2007 : OVERWORKED nurses have been ordered to stop all medical work five times every day to move Muslim patients' beds so they face towards Mecca

2nd Dec 2007 : No one is happier than I am about the latest development in stem-cell research. Scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have independently figured out how to turn ordinary human skin cells into something like pluripotent stem cells. These are the cells that have caused so much excitement in recent years because they are like a biological gift certificate that can be turned into other kinds of cells as needed. These cells have also produced much controversy because they are derived from human embryos. I have the disease — Parkinson's — for which stem cells hold the most immediate promise. The hope is that they can be turned into the type of brain cells that produce dopamine, the missing ingredient in Parkinson's patients.

30th Nov 2007 : Crowds of people have marched in Sudan's capital Khartoum to call for a tougher sentence for a British teacher imprisoned for insulting religion.

29th Nov 2007 : KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- A Sudanese court found a British teacher guilty of inciting religious hatred and sentenced her to 15 days imprisonment Thursday for allowing a teddy bear to be named "Mohammed," British authorities and her lawyer reported.

28th Nov 2007 : A young woman has been sentenced to 200 lashes after being gang-raped. The Western world has expressed outrage – which has, in turn, provoked anger among the Saudi establishment. Now, for the first time, the woman tells her story. By Daniel Howden

27th Nov 2007 : WHY ROMNEY NEEDS TO TALK ABOUT HIS FAITH.

25th Nov 2007 : Tony blair has sparked controversy by claiming that people who speak about their religious faith can be viewed by society as "nutters".

20th Nov 2007 : From the Fox News program "Your World with Neil Cavuto."

20th Nov 2007 : The world's scientists have done their job. Now it's time for world leaders, starting with President Bush, to do theirs. That is the urgent message at the core of the latest — and the most powerful — report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,500 scientists who collectively constitute the world's most authoritative voice on global warming.

17th Nov 2007 : America's founding fathers would not have been impressed with the holy alliance of Pat Robertson and Rudy Giuliani

16th Nov 2007 : An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped.

15th Nov 2007 : I'm trying to find the extended 'Expelled' trailer which was online a few weeks ago. It supposedly went up, and then quickly disappeared. It featured Richard being grossly misedited. This version has now disappeared from the internet and only the abbreviated trailer remains. Does anyone have a copy of the original? I'd really like to find it so we can repost and bring attention to it. Can anyone help us out with this request?

13th Nov 2007 : After their notorious legal defeat, intelligent design proponents are resurfacing with insidious new assaults on science.

11th Nov 2007 : The head of the Muslim Council of Britain does not mince his words on integration, report Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson

9th Nov 2007 :

1st Nov 2007 : Faith will unsettle politics everywhere this century; it will do so least when it is separated from the state

25th Oct 2007 : Here is Eddie Tabash's brief to the California Supreme Court in the same-sex marraige case, with an argument based on church/state separation. The Chief Justice approved the brief on October 4th.

25th Oct 2007 :

23rd Oct 2007 : Eddie Tabash's talk at AAI 07 titled "The Present Threat of the Religious Right to Our Modern Freedoms."

23rd Oct 2007 : TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The rapid spread in Latin America of the virus that causes AIDS is made worse by the Roman Catholic Church's stand against using condoms, a U.N. official said on Monday.