This week I learned that anti-blasphemy laws aren’t the only statutes U.S. state governments still have on their books to enforce religion on citizens. Constitutional articles in seven states still specifically prohibit atheists from holding public office, and an eighth, Pennsylvania, also, in effect, disallows atheist public officials but with more round-about language. Those states with a direct constitutional prohibition are Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The statutory language for each is shown here.

There are a handful of famous arguments for the existence of a god. Some have been around for centuries, and new arguments are popping up every day. One such argument is the kalam cosmological argument. A classic which has recently been re-polished and re-popularized, it has withstood the test of time in its field.

Among the 21 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination, virtually every ethnic, religious and sexual identity is represented. There’s a gay man, six women, three African Americans, a Chinese American, multiple Catholics and Protestants, even a Hindu. (Hindus are 0.7 percent of the population.) But there is one conspicuous absence: Not a single candidate publicly identifies as an atheist. That’s not to say they are all religious believers. But if they aren’t, they are keeping it to themselves.

President Donald Trump’s personal religious views mostly appear to an afterthought — his primary belief is in his own greatness. But as president and as the leader of the Republican Party, he has embraced and has been embraced by the evangelical Christian community, and he professes to deeply hold a belief in God.

If you go into a Reform or Conservative temple, it’s likely that you will notice two things: The congregation is becoming smaller and older. Across the United States and Europe, Jewish congregations are aging at a rapid rate, a phenomenon increasingly common for mainstream religions across the high-income world.

Back in 2014 when I finally came to grips with the fact that I was no longer a Christian—and in fact, an atheist—I made the decision to “come out.” A number of reasons supported this decision, even though I knew by doing so I’d be causing pain and anger and risking rejection and disapproval from family, friends, co-workers, and even possibly future employers. (I was both right and wrong, by the way. While a number of people did react just as I feared, more people than I expected reacted with love and inclusiveness and support.)

While Western world is crazy about so called “religious rights”, China uses quite straightforward methods to fight Islam. One million Muslims are being held right now in Chinese internment camps, according to estimates cited by the UN and U.S. officials. Former inmates — most of whom are Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority — have told reporters that over the course of several months, they were forced to renounce Islam, criticize their own Islamic beliefs and those of fellow inmates, eat pork and drink alcohol.

In the introduction to his 2006 book “The God Delusion,” author Richard Dawkins boldly declares his goal: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.” It is a goal that has meant Dawkins’s books have courted controversy ever since. Now, a group of translators wants to get Dawkins’s books in front of a new group of religious readers: Muslim readers, in Muslim-majority countries where atheism is rare.

In early March, more than 30 atheist, humanist and secular leaders gathered at a residence overlooking Southern Californian vineyards to discuss politics, social issues and how to draw in more people at a first-ever SoCal Secular Leadership Summit.

This fall, voters in the Midwest elected two Muslim women to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first female members of their faith to enter Congress. The same day, Arizona elected Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who, while not the first of her kind, is even rarer: Sinema is the only person serving in Congress to identify as religiously unaffiliated — putting her in a caucus of less than 0.2 percent of the lawmaking body.

Yes, here it is again, the ubiquitous claim that atheism = Stalin/Pol Pot = moral atrocities. This is a complex one, so hang around. It is commonly claimed by Christians, and I had a debate about this on the Unbelievable forum on Facebook recently with many who did, that secular atheism was responsible for the atrocities of the twentieth century perpetrated by the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot (Mao Zedong is often thrown in for good measure).

Science and Religion are considered as antonyms of each other, generally. In your brain also, science and religion are ‘fighting‘ with each other. Not only in metaphorical sense, but in a real, physical altercation. These results are found by researchers from Case Western Reserve University (Ohio) and Babson College (Massachusetts). The researchers found that theists are more likely to be involved in religious practices and their faith often suppress their brain to think analytical thinking. The religious people, instead, engage the empathetic network.

There are a number of common arguments for the existence of God. But most of these arguments are not as effective as many Christians would like to think.

The moment Solomon lost his faith, he was standing on the D train, swaying back and forth with its movement as if in prayer. But it wasn’t a prayer book that the young law student was reading – he had already been to synagogue, where he had wrapped himself in the leather thongs that bound him to Orthodox Judaism, laying phylacteries and reciting the prayers three times daily.

For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity, according to a new analysis by a political scientist. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey. Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion.

According to a new Gallup poll, people who belong to a church or some other religious institution has dropped 20 percentage points over the last 20 years, hitting a low of 50 percent last year. In 1999, church membership was at 70 percent but has fallen ever since. In regards to the percentage of adults in the U.S. who claim no religious affiliation, that number has jumped from 8 percent to 19 percent.

Most residents of British Columbia believe or tend to believe that God is real, but significantly fewer actively participate in religious ceremonies, a new Research Co. poll has found. In the online survey of a representative provincial sample, 39% of British Columbians are “convinced” that God exists, while 22% “tend to believe” that God exists. Conversely, 16% of residents are “convinced” that God does not exist, and 13% “tend to believe” that God does not exist.

Whenever I feel down, this one lifts me up. Nuthin' to do with religion, everything that makes me feel good.

A study conducted by the University of Chicago has found that children raised in non-religious households are kinder and more altruistic than those raised with religion. The study which was published in the journal Current Biology looked at 1170 children between the ages of 5 and 12 years in six countries (Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, USA, and South Africa) and examined “the religiousness of their household, and parent-reported child empathy and sensitivity to justice.”

Whether you are commemorating the birth of Jesus or marking all that's positive about humanity, this is a time to rejoice.

I managed to make an exact replica of the original deleted video. I wish I could give credits to the original uploader but I don't remember his username.

It's the latest cruel tactic in the Pakistani Taliban's battle to stop girls and women from getting an education: acid thrown in their faces to scar them for life and deter others from following in their footsteps.

In Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God--or risk 12 months in prison.

Man was suspec­ted of burnin­g copies of Holy Quran at mosque in Dadu.

Pope Benedict on Friday signaled the Vatican was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage.

Take from this what you want..

About Adam and Eve messing up everything for everyone.

In a book coming out next week called The Bonobo and the Atheist, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that morality is built into our species. Rather than coming to us top-down from God, or any other external source, morality for de Waal springs bottom-up from our emotions and our day-to-day social interactions, which themselves evolved from foundations in animal societies.

Surely, other travesties belong on this list; but these make up some of the most atrocious horrors that religion has helped spawn throughout human history.

We non-believers are often requested to explain where we get our morality from, if not from a god. As a result, the phrase, “good without god,” has become quite ubiquitous in the atheist community and emerges when we atheists are put in the nonsensical position of explaining how it’s possible to be a decent person despite the absence of a belief in a god.

Just do good, and we'll find a meeting point, says Francis in marked departure from Benedict's line on non-Catholics.

Frans de Waal talks about religion. Do we need it?

National Secular Society takes Woking council to court over 'worshipper-only' free parking, which it claims is discriminatory

The number of disbelievers is growing, but they remain America's least trusted minority. Why?

Ireland will compensate a number of women who suffered horrific abuses while institutionalized in the now infamous Magdalene Asylums, also known as the "Magdalene Laundries", where young girls were sent by the state as a form of punishment. The Catholic Church profited immensely from the forced unpaid labor which young girls (many of whom were guilty of no crime yet had the misfortune of being orphans or who suffered from developmental and/or learning disabilities...