Three teenage girls have been buried alive by their tribe in a remote part of Pakistan to punish them for attempting to choose their own husbands, in an “honour” killing case. After news of the deaths emerged, male politicians from their province, Baluchistan, defended the killings in parliament, claiming the practice was part of “our tribal custom”. The girls, thought to have been aged between 16 and 18, were kidnapped by a group of men from their Umrani tribe.

Children start their new schools this week for the 12th year under Labour. Who could have predicted that more pupils than ever will be going to religious schools this term, as the churches boasted gleefully? Pews empty but faith schools multiply. There are about 14,000 non-religious schools, and nearly 7,000 faith schools. This year the figure has risen again as new academies open: a third are faith-run – and religions have taken over some community schools.

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the “Who would you like to have a beer with?

A statue by Terence Koh of a tumescent Christ in Gateshead has led to predictable howls of outrage, followed by the now familiar scratchy noise of lines being drawn in the sand. “Enough gratuitous offence to believers!” says one side; “enough kowtowing to religious sensitivities!” say the other. I suspect a lot of people on both sides actually like a good blasphemy row. It gives both the opportunity to express that most satisfying of moral emotions: righteous indignation.

Radio 4 joins CERN on 10 September 2008 as scientists attempt to discover more about the origins of the Universe by recreating the aftermath of the Big Bang. The experiment is one of the most complex and significant of modern times – and one that raises a lot of questions! BBC – Radio 4 – Big Bang Day. BTW, no need to panic; the world will not end, as some silly people seem to think.

Tags: Atheism, US, You+Tube

On 8th August 2008 a young Swazi man, Musa Gamedze, was hunted down and executed in broad daylight at his home, in full view of his children. According to eyewitness reports the man who fired the fatal shot was the General Manager of a local private game reserve, Mkhaya, accompanied by three police officers. Musa was shot in the back. He was unarmed and not posing a threat or danger to himself or others.

The National Secular Society, together with the International Humanist and Ethical Union, has been working over the past year to try to raise the alarm about the concerted efforts by Islamic groups to write blasphemy laws into international human rights legislation. Our efforts seem to be paying off, as other countries and organisations begin to appreciate the profound dangers to free speech posed by proposals from the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC).

Following the leaking of the now infamous Tom Cruise video earlier this year, the internet saw the emergence of Anonymous, a protest movement dedicated to bringing down the Church of Scientology. On 10 February Anonymous burst from the internet onto the streets, with large numbers of masked teenagers and students picketing Scientology centres worldwide. They’ve been doing it every month since, and New Humanist’s Paul Sims and stand-up comedian Christina Martin paid a visit to one of their London protests to see what Anonymous are all about.

The recent debate in the UK about organ donation was surprisingly heated. People complained about a “nanny state” infringing on their post-mortem rights; some threatened to tear up their donor cards if the proposed change to an “opt-out” system went ahead. “Opt-out” means presumed consent, or a legal system in which people no longer have to actively join the organ donor register in order to become donors. Everyone is automatically treated as a potential donor, unless they actively opt out.

I’ve been tipped off that a nasty atheist has been making trouble locally. My source informs me, A self-confessed atheist took issue with a Christian neighbour who had placed a metal fish on the rear of her car. He went on to subject her to months of harassment and intimidating behaviour. The anti-social atheist was in court today. In anticipation of any “There, you see! Atheists are all nasty people!

Meet like-minded people for lunch in Sproughton. Let us know if you’re coming by 20th October, so we can grab a space – you can’t book at The Beagle. We’ll be discussing whether or not you’d say you’re anti-religious.

Creationism and intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons, according to a leading expert in science education. The Rev Prof Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, said that excluding alternatives to scientific explanations for the origin of life and the universe from science lessons was counterproductive and would alienate some children from science altogether. He said that around one in 10 children comes from a family with creationist beliefs.

Discrimination on the grounds of faith, race, gender, sexual orientation and disability is outlawed under UK and European human rights law. There would be an outcry if any school overtly refused entry to a black child, or turned down an Asian teacher on the grounds of race, yet schools can routinely refuse entry to children on the grounds of their religious adherence, or lack of it, because faith schools are exempt from the equalities legislation.

Two Nobel prize winners – Sir Harry Kroto and Sir Richard Roberts – have demanded that the Royal Society sack its education director, Professor Michael Reiss. The call, backed by other senior Royal Society fellows, follows Reiss’s controversial claim last week that creationism be taught in schools’ science classes. Reiss, an ordained Church of England minister, has since alleged he was misquoted. Nevertheless, several Royal Society fellows say his religious views make him an inappropriate choice for the post.

The OCR exam board planned to become the first to include the subject alongside six major religions in its draft GCSE syllabus. But its proposal was rejected by Ofqual, the exams regulator, which ruled that humanism was a “body of belief” and not a religion. The British Humanist Association (BHA) described the decision as a “kick in the teeth” and is seeking a judicial review. Legal row over humanism in religious studies at school – Telegraph.

With reference to an earlier post; Mr Brown is nothing to do with us and is clearly in need of psychiatric help. AN ATHEIST subjected a devout Christian woman to a “relentless” campaign of harassment in which he smeared dog faeces on her car and urinated on her doorstep. Timothy Brown, of Edwin Avenue, Woodbridge, may seek medical help after a year-long bid to change Helen Watson’s religious beliefs.

Europe’s first state-funded school for Hindus, which receives its spiritual guidance from the Hare Krishna movement, opens today in London amid continued concern about the divisive nature of faith schools. Krishna-Avanti primary school, in the north-west borough of Harrow, home to about a quarter of the UK’s Hindu population, is welcoming 30 children to its temporary base at Little Stanmore primary school. The school will gradually increase in size until 2014, when it will have filled places for 236 pupils, including a nursery.

The Church of England will concede in a statement that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin’s ideas. It will call “anti-evolutionary fervour” an “indictment” on the Church”. The bold move is certain to dismay sections of the Church that believe in creationism and regard Darwin’s views as directly opposed to traditional Christian teaching. The apology, which has been written by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the Church’s director of mission and public affairs, says that Christians, in their response to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, repeated the mistakes they made in doubting Galileo’s astronomy in the 17th century.

Biofuels are a false solution to climate change and are doing much more harm than good. The EU is proposing a binding target to increase biofuels use to 10% of road fuels by 2020. This massive increase in Europe’s demand for biofuels will have a devastating impact on the world’s poorest countries by: * Destroying communities. * Damaging wildlife. * Pushing up food prices. In recent months, report after report from esteemed organisations like the UN and the Royal Society have warned of the dangers of biofuels expansion.

Sheikh Muhammad Munajid claimed the mouse is “one of Satan’s soldiers” and makes everything it touches impure. But he warned that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney’s Mickey Mouse, had taught children that it was in fact loveable. The cleric, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, said that under Sharia, both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed

The Reverend Michael Reiss, the Royal Society’s Director of Education, is in trouble because of his views on the teaching of creationism. Although I disagree with him, what he actually said at the British Association is not obviously silly like creationism itself, nor is it a self-evidently inappropriate stance for the Royal Society to take. Scientists divide into two camps over this issue: the accommodationists, who ‘respect’ creationists while disagreeing with them; and the rest of us, who see no reason to respect ignorance or stupidity.

Turkish internet users have been blocked via a court order from accessing the site of prominent British biologist Richard Dawkins after complaints from lawyers for Islamic creationist author Adnan Oktar, the website of Turkish television station NTV reported on Wednesday. A court in Istanbul ordered that Turk Telekom block access to the site and since the weekend Turkish internet users seeking the site have been redirected to a page that says in Turkish ‘access to this site has been suspended in accordance with a court decision’.

On first appearances 12-year-old Caitlin McNabb is very much like any other schoolgirl. Sitting on the sofa with her parents, Wes and Jane, at their home in Greenwich, south-east London, Caitlin talks excitedly about her friends, her favourite subjects and the new school year. But there is one difference between Caitlin and the other pupils at Plumstead Manor: she is reluctant to believe everything she is told. “I was in a geography lesson and there was a lot of talk about ‘this is how old the Earth is’,” she says.

The British Humanist Association has issued legal proceedings against the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) over their decision not to allow the study of Humanism in a Religious Studies GCSE in the same way as religions are studied. The exam board OCR had included Humanism alongside religions in its proposed GCSE in Religious Studies, announced in April 2008, but a decision by the QCA has meant that it could not be included.

Religious believers, when mentioning heaven, have traditionally cast their eyes skywards, but the possibility of an afterlife may now be proved by looking down towards the ground. Doctors at Southampton University are placing pictures in resuscitation areas that can only be seen from the ceiling. These will test the stories of defibrillated patients, who claim they have looked down on the crash teams attending to their lifeless bodies. The theory is that any of the chest-thumped who successfully play this posthumous game of Where’s Wally?

The Police should be as enthusiastic about protecting free speech as they are about protecting the sensitivities of religious minorities, the National Secular Society told a conference of police officers and the Crown Prosecution Service in London yesterday (18 September). The NSS’s Executive Director, Keith Porteous Wood, told the conference — which was examining the implications of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act — that as well as the Human Rights aspects and powerful arguments in principle, protecting freedom of expression is also justified on pragmatic grounds.

Sixty years ago, the UN composed a document setting out a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It lists a set of basic principles, such as that everyone should be treated equally, torture and slavery are forbidden, and everyone has the right to life, liberty and security. It’s a lovely set of ideals, but it also has a set of enemies. To name just one: fundamentalists hate it. And, unfortunately, fundamentalists, especially Islamic fundamentalists, are quietly working behind the scenes to undermine it.

A video has emerged showing Sarah Palin playing a central role in a church service in Alaska in which witchcraft is denounced. Thomas Muthee, a Kenyan who is a regular preacher at Palin’s local Pentecostal church in Wasilla, made a passionate plea to defeat witchcraft and other supposed enemies of Palin during a sermon three years ago. The role of the witchfinder in the life of the vice-presidential candidate running mate raises new questions about how much his team investigated her background before naming her as John McCain’s running mate.

It has a “personality”? Here’s a new spin on the usual do-you—believe-in-God survey. The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion has questioned nearly 1,700 Americans on God’s personality, as part of their religion poll. “A lot of surveys ask do you believe in God. But surveys have not asked: Who is God? Is God angry? Is God judgmental? Is God friendly? Is God forgiving? Is He engaged with the world?

The London home of the publisher of a controversial new novel that gives a fictionalised account of the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his child bride, Aisha, was firebombed yesterday, hours after police had warned the man that he could be a target for fanatics. A petrol bomb is believed to have been thrown through the door of Martin Rynja’s £2.5m town house in Islington’s Lonsdale Square, which also doubles as the headquarters of his publishing company, Gibson Square.

State schools are increasingly “embarrassed” to talk about God, leaving a moral vacuum which has been filled by celebrity culture and the X Factor, a leading independent school head said yesterday. Tim Hastie-Smith, chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) which represents 250 private schools, said: “The retreat of God from education has left a moral and spiritual vacuum and the breakdown of any shared value system. In our schools we have the freedom, if we choose, to fight that malaise.

Millions of children in the UK are living in, or on the brink of, poverty, a report claims. The Campaign to End Child Poverty says some 5,500,000 children are in families that are classed as “struggling”. The parliamentary constituency with the highest number of children in, or close to, poverty is Birmingham Ladywood, with 81% (28,420 individuals). The campaign classes households in poverty if they are living on just under £10 per person per day.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain presents its first international conference – Political Islam, Sharia Law, And Civil Society – on Friday 10th October 2008 (International day against the Death Penalty). From 10am to 6pm (registration begins at 9am) at Conway Hall, London. For more information, go to their website. Tags: Council+of+Ex-Muslims+of+Britain, Conference