We know there are atheists in the military; about a third of active duty soldiers don’t have a religious affiliation. Yet many Veteran’s Day services include religious elements that are off-putting to many of the very people who are supposed to be honored. Johnny Pike, American Atheists’ state director in Kentucky and an Army veteran himself, has some excellent advice for anyone looking to honor soldiers this weekend.

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have concluded that war, from the practical standpoint, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more important moral standpoint, it is unethical.” Some time later, he received the United States Selective Service System’s Form 150, asking him to detail his objections to military service. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first question: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?”

Religious education in schools needs a major overhaul to reflect an increasingly diverse world and should include the study of atheism, agnosticism and secularism, a two-year investigation has concluded. The subject should be renamed Religion and Worldviews to equip young people with respect and empathy for different faiths and viewpoints, says the Commission on Religious Education in a report published on Sunday.

The island country of 330,000 nestled in the North Atlantic is making big waves. No one under the age of 21 will be indoctrinated into any religion, sect, or cult. Iceland’s parliament, the Alþingi, passed the National Minimum Religious Indoctrination Act (NMRIA) overwhelmingly. No parent or caretaker may expose a person under the age of 21 to religion by bringing them to church, temple, or mosque. And no religious fables (The Great Flood, Passover, Mohamed riding on a Buraq) can be fostered onto young and impressionable minds.

There are a lot of U.S. laws that privilege religious institutions over other non-profits, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation has been working to expose those differences and get the courts to put everyone on a level playing field. The most famous example of this involves a case in which FFRF’s co-presidents applied to the IRS for a tax break on their housing — just like the “Parsonage Allowance” that pastors receive.

Twenty-four hours after Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren shocked the political world with a five-minute video (and a mountain of documentation) aimed at putting to bed the controversy over her claims of Native American heritage, it's becoming increasingly clear the strategy amounts to a swing and a miss.

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...

Here are 11 things that are technically banned by the Bible. (All quotes are translations from the New American Standard Bible, but, because I'm actually trying to maintain serious journalistic integrity here, I cross-referenced several other translations to make sure I wasn't missing the point.)

Atheism in the UK has reached record levels, so why are people losing faith?

Like any religious conflict, this debate can only be settled with a point system.

The lavish lifestyle of a bishop who is spending 31 million on building a new headquarters in west Germany was exposed on Friday, when it emerged he has spent 783,000 on a garden, 25,000 on a table and 15,000 on a bath tub.

Is it important to you that a wedding have religious elements?

A letter capturing the first seeds of Christianity, and how it was initially received. Really interesting to read.

An atheist group is considering a human rights complaint after it says a billboard company refused to run its advertisements in Vancouver.

In 13 countries around the world, all of them Muslim, people who openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion of Islam face execution under the law, according to a detailed study issued on Tuesday. And beyond the Islamic nations, even some of the West's apparently most democratic governments at best discriminate against citizens who have no belief in a god and at worst can jail them for offences dubbed blasphemy, it said.

Pope Francis reached out to atheists with a story that concluded, "Just do good, and we'll find a meeting point."

Chris Arnade: I've been reminded that life is not as rational as Richard Dawkins sees it. Perhaps atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy.

An Afghan citizen has been granted asylum in the UK for religious reasons - because he is an atheist. The man fled to the UK from a conflict involving his family in Afghanistan in 2007, aged 16, and was allowed to stay in the UK until 2013. He was brought up a Muslim, but during his time in the UK became an atheist, his legal team said.

Amal Farah, a 32-year-old banking executive, is laughing about a contestant singing off-key in the last series of The X Factor. For a woman who was not allowed to listen to music when she was growing up, this is a delight. After years of turmoil, she is in control of her own life.

American Way: Atheist activists' numbers are growing in the US as they take on Big Religion, but many keep quiet for fear of alienation in one Bible-minded Virginia town