Even though it is logically consistent with their beliefs, I still laugh my ass off when Christians attribute horrible disasters to God, and not Satan. And of course, being an event caused by God, they consider it a moral act. In this highly competitive ideological marketplace, the Christian sales pitch is sorely lacking.

Sam Harris writes amazing books, and I love reading them. But it's even better when you see him speak, because it looks like it's Ben Stiller who is slaying religion.

Nevermind, this was busted by Snopes (see comments). I wouldn't be surprised though if congregations disavowing any responsibility for catastrophes they prayed for did exist.

Religion is an endangered species and may become extinct in nine nations. Sadly, the United States is not on the list. I hope the US (and every country) gets on the list soon. Atheism could become more popular in the developed world than theism within a generation.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

"In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%," Dr Wiener said.

I bet these kids will all be atheists within 10 years.

A guide to combating an epidemic that never existed:

Disengaging from a thing increases its irrelevancy. Sometimes disengagement is more effective than direct opposition.

If we stop believing in something, does it cease to exist? If we stop believing in the Pope, will he cease to exist?

Thousands of tickets for open-air Masses during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain this week are yet to be sold just days before he is due to arrive.

The Pope starts his visit in Scotland on Thursday. The largest organised event is an open-air Mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow on the opening day of his four-day trip to the UK.

The capacity has been reduced to 80,000 after a slow take-up of tickets.

Dioceses in England and Wales have also reported thousands of unfilled places for a London vigil in Hyde Park on Saturday and the service to beatify Cardinal Newman in Birmingham on Sunday.

Officials have blamed the early start, with pilgrims having to leave home at 2am in order to board official coaches heading to the venue, rather than the cost of tickets.

The Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales remains confident that the first-ever state papal visit to Britain will prove a success.

Blaming slow ticket sales on "the early start?" Nah, I'd blame it on atheism.

Hawking has something to say:

LONDON - God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the Universe due to a series of developments in physics, British scientist Stephen Hawking said in extracts published Thursday from a new book.

In a hardening of the more accommodating position on religion that he took in his 1988 international best-seller "A Brief History of Time", Hawking said the Big Bang was merely the consequence of the law of gravity.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist," he writes in "The Grand Design", which is being serialised by The Times newspaper.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going," added the wheelchair-bound expert.

Hawking has achieved worldwide fame for his research, writing and television documentaries despite suffering since the age of 21 motor neurone disease that has left him disabled and dependent on a voice synthesiser.

In "A Brief History of Time", Hawking had suggested that the idea of God or a divine being was not necessarily incompatible with a scientific understanding of the Universe.

But in his latest work, Hawking cites the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star outside our own Solar System as a turning point against Isaac Newton's belief that the Universe could not have arisen out of chaos.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions — the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass — far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he wrote.

Hawking argued earlier this year that mankind's only chance of long-term survival lies in colonizing space, as humans drain Earth of resources and face a terrifying array of new threats.

He also warned in a recent television series that mankind should avoid contact with aliens at all costs, as the consequences could be devastating.


Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/create+Universe+Hawking/3473347/story.html#ixzz0yOXX6KgZ