Do you believe a religious leader who fights to save Section 28 and says gay people spread disease is a fulminating bigot? Do you believe a “leading cleric” who advocates stoning gay people to death should be denounced? Do you believe sharia law – which requires gay people to be lashed or stoned – is always and forever unacceptable? Then, according to an energetic and aggressive group of white straight boys who surreally consider themselves to be on the left, you are an “Islamophobe” and “objectively pro-Nazi”.

From P Z Myers’ blog: … there is no one absolute make-or-break piece of evidence for evolution — evolution is a conclusion from the totality of the evidence. There are thousands of cases that demonstrate that the principles of evolution work and are useful for understanding the natural world; there are no cases where creationism has improved our understanding. Tags: P+Z+Myers, Pharyngula, Evolution

Iran has suspended the punishment of death by stoning, state media say. A judiciary spokesman said four people sentenced to die by stoning had had their sentences commuted and that all other cases had been put under review. BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iranians suspend death by stoning. Tags: Stoning, Iran, Execution

Ariane Sherine writes in Comment is Free: In June, I blogged for Cif about the rather unsettling religious adverts which were running on London buses. These ads featured a link to a website warning that non-Christians would “spend all eternity in torment in hell” if they failed to recognise Jesus Christ other than at the height of passion. A solution, I suggested, was for 4,680 atheists to spread reassurance by each giving £5 towards a bus ad saying: “There’s probably no God.

The Saudi religious police have reportedly vowed to strictly enforce a ban on the sale of pet cats and dogs in Riyadh and walking animals in public. A senior official said it was to stop a rising trend of people trying to evade strict rules on sex segregation. The claim is that men were using their pets as an excuse to meet women, which is banned in places like restaurants and cafes between non-married people.

Last week, Mr Justice Silber ruled that Aberdare Girls’ School in South Wales had been guilty of racial discrimination when it excluded Sarika Watkins-Singh for insisting on wearing a religious bracelet. It was a trivial case, which made you wonder about the dogmatism of both sides and the quality of their lawyers. The school could have given way – the bracelet was little more than a slim band. Watkins-Singh’s parents could have accepted that they had a duty to uphold the authority of the teachers.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain presents its first international conference: Political Islam, Sharia Law, And Civil Society Friday 10 October 2008 – International day against the Death Penalty – 10am-6pm (Registration begins at 9am) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL (Closest station: Holborn) Speakers: Mina Ahadi, Mahin Alipour, Roy Brown, Andrew Copson, Richard Dawkins, Giles Enders, AC Grayling, Johann Hari, Ehsan Jami, Houzan Mahmoud, Rony Miah, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Fariborz Pooya, Terry Sanderson, Joan Smith, Bahram Soroush, Hanne Stinson, Hamid Taqvaee, Ibn Warraq, Keith Porteous Wood, Zia Zaffar

For centuries, mankind knew all there was to know about the shape of the Earth. It was a flat planet, shaped roughly like a circle, with lots of pointy things hanging down from the underside. On the comparatively smooth topside, Europe sat in the middle of the circle, with the other continents scattered about the fringes, and parts of Africa hanging over the edge. The oceans lapped against the sides of the Earth, and in places ran over, creating currents that would pull over the edge ships that ventured too far out to sea.

All through Sunday night Anglican bishops were leaving their student rooms on the campus of the University of Kent and getting into mini-buses and taxis for the airport, and journeys to most of the 160 countries they represent. After almost three weeks in Canterbury what would they have to tell their scattered flocks about the state of the fractured Anglican Communion? Did they succeed in bringing it back from the brink of schism?

From Rosie Millard in The Times… Dawkins is about to chew up religion again now, in a television series about his hero, Charles Darwin, which holds up to ridicule those who refuse to accept the theory of evolution. Astounding though it may seem, 150 years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, there are many people who don’t believe its findings, he says. Some of these are evangelicals in far-off countries who think that God created everything in six days and that rainy days began with Noah’s Flood.