The Supreme Court will hear two cases on Wednesday that never should have been filed in the first place. The outcomes in American Legion v. American Humanist Association and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission v. American Humanist Association, two consolidated cases considering the fate of a cross-shaped monument in Maryland, are as preordained as anything in the Supreme Court can be.

In 2009, Joseph Henrich, a professor in the Psychology and Economics departments at the University of British Columbia (now at Harvard), proposed the idea of Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs). He was looking for a term to signify people that “convey one mental representation but actually believe something else.” At the very least, he continues, they fudge their level of commitment.

I was asked today on Twitter why I would object to schools teaching children the morality of Jesus. Putting aside the question of whether Jesus existed, here are some examples of bad moral guidance given by the Jesus portrayed in the Christian Bible. I will start by acknowledging that some parts of the Bible portray Jesus as giving good moral guidance.

No no, I’m not about to start a religious rant or any indoctrination whatsoever. I’m not about to advice you either, what sort of belief system you should have. I’m just going to …

There is no governmental answer that will bring us back into harmony.

The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, which oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has sent legal notices to a watchdog group demanding the takedown of documents describing what Witnesses say and share with each other in private. Because nothing would hurt the Witnesses more than their beliefs being exposed to a wider audience…

Most people around the world, whether religious or not, presume that serial killers are more likely to be atheists than believers in any god, suggests a new study, which counters the common assumption that increasingly secular societies are equally tolerant of nonbelievers. Avowed atheists exhibited the same bias in judging sadistic criminals, the study found. The new report, appearing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, included more than 3,000 people in 13 countries, both secular states like the Netherlands and Finland, and deeply religious ones like the United Arab Emirates and India.

The 116th Congress is the most diverse in history, with incoming members expanding political representation on a number of fronts. For the first time, Congress now includes Muslim women, Native American women, an openly bisexual senator and the youngest woman ever elected to serve in either chamber. Yet despite that progress, Congress is once again beginning a new session without a single member who openly identifies as atheist, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest CQ Roll Call “Faith on the Hill” survey.

I learned this in a newsletter from the Secular Coalition for America (SCA) that raised an alarm about the recent success of the Religious Right in getting the current U.S. administration to pack Supreme Court and federal court benches with uber-conservative jurists who embrace “a twisted definition of religious liberty.”

In April of 2017, the Iowa House of Representatives respected my religious rights when I delivered the first atheistic invocation in that body’s history. The Iowa Senate, however, has denied my repeated requests to perform a similar invocation. In so doing, not only is the Senate directly discriminating against me, it is violating the Constitution, which protects all faiths equally. In its upcoming session, the Senate faces a stark choice: Continue to limit religious freedom or protect it for all Iowans.

The Dutch population is rapidly losing interest in going to church, according to social and cultural planning office SCP. The decline of the Christian faith also continues in the Netherlands. "Churches are losing in authority, binding power and popularity", the SCP said in a new report, RTL Nieuws reports.

Egyptian society simply doesn't recognize the reality of atheism, and often punishes anyone who declares it publicly.

As the West becomes more and more secular, and the discoveries of evolutionary biology and cosmology shrink the boundaries of faith, the claims that science and religion are compatible grow louder. If you’re a believer who doesn’t want to seem anti-science, what can you do? You must argue that your faith – or any faith – is perfectly compatible with science. And so one sees claim after claim from believers, religious scientists, prestigious science organizations and even atheists asserting not only that science...

A small-town Alabama police department this week alleged Beelzebub is responsible for a recent spike in homicides and it’s all thanks to nonbelievers in the rural community. The Opp Police Department shared the bold opinion on its Facebook page Tuesday. Written in all capital letters, it read, in part...

A wish list of changes from education funding to health care to property taxes for Premier John Horgan. Many atheists celebrate Christmas. We don’t believe Jesus was humanity’s saviour, so celebrating his birthday would be a bit bizarre. Yet for many atheists like me who grew up in a predominantly Christian culture, Christmas really is all around us.

Atheism is not a recent phenomenon; despite the tendency before Darwin and modern science to believe in supernatural forces and a creator—not to mention the penalties for challenging the doctrine of the Catholic Church—freethinkers throughout history have noticed the circularity of the god argument. (god created the universe because the universe can’t exist without god.)

The US Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office, however, being an atheist in politics has been a powerful political taboo in our nation. New research finds that this bias against candidates who don’t believe in God has notably weakened. A poll conducted by Lake Research Partners for the American Humanist Association and the Center for Freethought Equality and funded by the Stiefel Freethought Foundation shows that being nonreligious, agnostic, or atheist need not be considered an impediment to a candidate’s electoral success.

Legend has it that the physicist Niels Bohr had a horseshoe hanging above his door. A colleague asked him why, to which he responded, “it’s for luck.” The colleague then asked him if he believed in luck. Bohr reassured him that as a scientist he did not believe in luck. Puzzled, the colleague asked again why Bohr had the horseshoe hanging above his door. Bohr responded, “I’m told that you don’t have to believe in order for it to work.”

It may come as no surprise that the influence of Christianity in the United States is waning. Rates of church attendance, religious affiliation, belief in God, prayer and Bible-reading have been dropping for decades. Americans’ beliefs are becoming more post-Christian and, concurrently, religious identity is changing. Enter Generation Z: Born between 1999 and 2015, they are the first truly “post-Christian” generation.

Europe’s youth don’t practice Christianity anymore, according to a new European social survey. The Continent was once the home of the majority of the world’s Christians, but today many people between the ages of 16 and 29 claim they have no religious affiliation. In general, a high percentage of young people throughout Europe never attend religious services, never pray and don’t identify with any religious group.