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.

It should’ve been easy for the Catholic Church to rid itself of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin. Earlier this month, he announced he would resign from the Church after a secular court found him guilty of not reporting a pedophile priest who had sexually abused minors.

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.

There is zero chance that sharia law – as a repressive criminal code used in certain Muslim majority nations – is going to be enshrined in Australia. Zero. It seems ridiculous that this sentence even needs to be written. But the spat between Senator Jacqui Lambie and TV presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Q&A recently, and the brouhaha that has followed, suggests that it does.

SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah teacher on administrative leave apologized Monday for making 9-year-old Catholic student William McLeod wash off the Ash Wednesday cross from his forehead, saying it was a misunderstanding.

A national charity that works to save old buildings estimates that 9,000 religious spaces in Canada will be lost in the next decade, roughly a third of all faith-owned buildings in the country. National Trust for Canada regeneration project leader Robert Pajot says every community in the country is going to see old church buildings shuttered, sold off or demolished. "Neighbourhoods are going to have multiple churches closing," Pajot said. "Some people qualify this as a crisis, and I kind of agree. It is going to hit everybody."

We are all going to die! In physiological terms the deaths that all will die will be broadly similar, in the sense that either suddenly and unexpectedly or maybe over a long period of time, the systems that keep us active and sentient will cease to function. However, throughout the world, people make important distinctions between a body that has expired and a dead person; that is, as someone who is connected to others through complex social relations which bring into question any simple notion of a finite ending.

A Texas judge has received a public warning for asking a jury to keep deliberating because God told him the defendant they convicted was innocent. Comal County Judge Jack Robison reported himself to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct after his outburst while presiding over the January 2018 trial of Gloria Romero Perez, who was charged with continuous sex trafficking and the sale or purchase of a child.

One of the great imponderables of the current political scene is how conservative white evangelicals have become so beholden to a thrice-married, casino-owning, scandal-ridden serial philanderer. A group that used to throw around terms like moral majority and traditional values has morphed into a cheerleader for relativism and ends justifying the means.

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.

After decades of controversy, Pope Francis has announced that he will open the records of Pius XII’s papacy to researchers—along with other restricted Church holdings.

The ancient world was home, for a brief period, to a remarkable divine person. Even before he was born, it was clear that he was no ordinary human. Prior to the birth, a figure appeared from heaven to his mother and told her that the child she would deliver was no mere mortal, but a divine being.

#ExposeChristianSchools was launched shortly after it was reported that Karen Pence was teaching at a Christian school that excludes LGBTQ students and teachers. It quickly went viral with many sharing their own stories of surviving Christian schooling.

Casting serious doubt over his commitment, self-professed atheist Edward Horvath came under intense scrutiny Monday after sources revealed that despite ample opportunities, he has never once barged into local churches screaming that the parishioners are all “brainwashed fools.” “This guy fancies himself some kind of true non-believer, but I’d bet my imaginary soul he’s never snatched a Bible out of a stranger’s hands and ripped out the pages one by one,” said roommate Dan Taylor...

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.

Buddhist authorities in Thailand do not accept the female monks of Nakhon Pathom. But one woman, Dhammananda, is hoping to change that one ordination at a time.

In a remarkable admission, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said Saturday that documents that could have contained proof of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church were destroyed or never drawn up. "Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed or not even created," said Marx, the archbishop of Munich and president of the German Bishops' Conference.

Marveling at the mysterious sanctum that his new book explores, the French journalist Frédéric Martel writes that “even in San Francisco’s Castro” there aren’t “quite as many gays.” He’s talking about the Vatican. And he’s delivering a bombshell. Although the book’s publishers have kept it under tight wraps, I obtained a copy in advance of its release next Thursday. It will come out in eight languages and 20 countries, under the title “Sodoma,” as in Sodom, in Western Europe and “In the Closet of the Vatican” in the United States, Britain and Canada.

When the Supreme Court turned a blind eye to President Trump’s hostility toward Muslims last summer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned, in dissent, that the majority was undermining the Constitution’s “foundational principles of religious tolerance.” In so doing, she said, the court was sending a message to “members of minority religions in our country that they are outsiders, not full members of the political commu­nity.”

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.