the US Supreme Court has embraced a congressional scheme to maintain a cross on federal park grounds. says SCOTUS, essentially, the cross is now a secular symbol. more. Justice Scalia was typically stupid. this decision is not good news for church/state separation. why is it so often that the religious forget that the establishment clause protects religion from the government as much as it protects the government from religion?

myth: a consistent atheistic worldview is impossible and not livable.

"islam will dominate..." and "kill Gordon Brown" is not religious hate speech?

on the transcendental argument for god.

check out Tim Minchin's new song about the pope. (very NSFW!)

is there design in the universe that proves god exists?

the Vatican is promising to shake up one of the most powerful priestly orders as a result of that order being involved in the sex abuse scandal.

religious teens start drinking later, but not because they're religious.

should we clone neandertals?

Robert Gates doesn't want Congress to change "don't ask, don't tell" until after the military performs it's review. while we're on the topic, conservatives are arguing that a change to "don't ask, don't tell" would hurt military chaplains!

Reeling from sex-abuse scandals, the Roman Catholic Church is losing members in droves. Can it stem the decline?

Jerry Coyne comments on new evidence that seems to show that chimps understand death as something unique and final. Ed Yong weighs in as well.

Hector Avalos praises biblical IL-literacy.

more incredible images from NASA's new Solar Dynamics Obersvatory.

the president of Liberty Baptist Seminary is loved by the religious right for his past- he used to be a Muslim jihadist but converted to evangelical Christianity... except apparently he never was a Muslim or a jihadist at all and seems to have made the whole thing up.

a British judge rejected the "irrational" idea that Christianity deserves spe... from the law.

new research just released suggests accommodationism may be a strategy destined to fail.

watching a living brain in the act of seeing with single synapse resolution.

the pope's role in the sex abuse scandal is complex.

i hesitate to link to the nearly always idiotic Huffington Post but here goes: it's time to end the church of scientology's tax exempt status.

the pope may apologize for abuse by priests. but the higher ups are still defending the church's actions.

a new report says that religious on religious persecution is widespread and has some shocking numbers.

kin selection at work: grandparents favor their genetically closer grandchildren.

NASA is building a an instrument that will probe the universe's earliest moments.

seeing the closest aliens will take centuries.

why does popular science ignore neutral theory?

frost-covered asteroid suggests extra-terrestrial origin of Earth's oceans.

new measurements have made it clear that asteroid 2005 YU55 will have no chance of hitting us for at least another century.

72% of "millenials" are more spiritual than religious.

pedophile priest flees back to Ireland where he is a free man.

a Mississippi school removes all mention of a student from the school's yearbook upon finding out she was a lesbian.

a group of evangelicals hunting for Noah's Ark said they were 99% sure they'd found it, turns out it's all fake. big surprise given history.

the universe is not a black hole.

dinosaur feathers changed as the dino's got older.

melting ice in polar oceans causing sea level rise globally.

Take a bunch of unmarried students of diverse backgrounds at a university in the south-west of the USA. Now which of them has the raunchiest sex lives? Christians? Jews? The
nonreligious? Or atheists, perhaps?

a new neuroscientific study shows believers put their brains in neutral.

Carl Zimmer- the search for genes- how evolution is advancing medicine.

ah, yes, the "new atheism" is a passing fad...

heaven: a fool's paradise.

ethics vs. religious education in Australian schools.

what does it mean to say that something caused the universe to be? what must the cause of the universe be like?

question: what are god's views on the important social topics that occupy us today? answer according to new research: whatever you want them to be.

another scathing review of What Darwin Got Wrong. (via Coyne at WEIT)

Stephen Hawking says that aliens may be dangerous to humans. Phil Plait disagrees. Sean Carrol thinks that's about right. PZ Meyers recaps the links and comments.

high school students vote to have graduation prayer, judge says NO.