Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats’ new leader, has defied political convention with a frank admission that he is an atheist. During a round of media broadcasts on the morning after his election to the post, he was asked by one interviewer: “Do you believe in God?” “No,” Mr Clegg answered simply, during an appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live. Nick Clegg says: ‘I don’t believe in God’ -Times Online.

The latest salvo in creationism’s increasingly ferocious battle with evolution is about to be fired in Lancashire. Not in a fiery sermon preached from the pulpit, but in the form of a giant Christian theme park that will champion the book of Genesis and make a multi-media case that God created the world in seven days. The AH Trust, a charity set up last year by a group of businessmen alarmed by the direction in which they see society heading, has identified a number of potential sites in the north west of England to build the £3.

E-mail: mail@suffolkhumanists.org.uk Event description: Suffolk Humanist Nathan Nelson will report on his latest stint as a volunteer at the Sangkheum Centre for Children, Siem Reap, Cambodia. Nathan writes: “I’ve been living and working in Cambodia for five months now. Cambodia is a country that constantly surprises, amuses and frustrates, where the few rich ride Lexus and Mercedes, while most of the population still live on a dollar a day or less.

I make a mental note of new words I hear or read if I think they may come in useful. Last week someone used the word “anthropocentric”, and I had to look it up because it had been used in connection with Humanism. Anthropocentric is an adjective that means regarding humans as the central element of the universe, or interpreting reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience (I’m not sure how else we might interpret reality, but that’s another matter).

E-mail: mail@suffolkhumanists.org.uk Event description: Margaret Nelson will be interviewed about Christmas by presenter Rachel Sloane on BBC Radio Suffolk. BBC Radio Suffolk’s FM frequencies are 103.9 (Ipswich), 104.6 (west Suffolk), 95.5 (Lowestoft), 95.9 (Aldeburgh). It’s not available on medium wave or DAB, but you can listen live online – see link below. You can read about Christmas on our site, and buy R J Stovold’s little book, “Did Christians steal Christmas?

Professor Dawkins will be answering questions on the BBC’s World Service Have Your Say programme on Sunday 9 December at 2.06 pm. Pope Benedict has attacked atheism in his latest encyclical. He says it is responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history. He adds “man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope”. Professor Dawkins says “many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense … September 11th 2001 changed all that.

An angry Italian priest has persuaded soft drinks company Red Bull to withdraw an advertisement setting its product in a nativity scene on the grounds it is disrespectful to Christianity. Father Marco Damanti, from Sicily, wrote to the makers of the caffeinated energy drink denouncing their commercial as “a blasphemous act” and said yesterday he had received a prompt reply promising to remove it from Italian television. Tags: Red+Bull, Italy, Blasphemy

Europeans who have no religion are increasing in number but are becoming increasingly disadvantaged in the political process. This was the claim by the National Secular Society at a meeting in the European Parliament on “Religion and Politics in the New Europe” sponsored by Catholics for Choice. Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society said: “The majority of the EU population are either non-religious or do not actively practise any religion and they are being betrayed because increasingly strident religious influence on moral matters in EU institutions.

Report Launch: Proposed public service reforms risk discrimination against employees and service users and negative effects on social cohesion The British Humanist Association (BHA) today [28/11/07] announces the launch of a major new report into the contracting out of public services to religious organisations. The launch of the report is being supported by the TUC and its conclusions endorsed by public figures including Lord Warner, former minister at the Department of Health.

Libby Purves writes: Of all the sure ways to promote a film, one of the surest is to get it criticised by the religious right. On that basis Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, out in the US (in time for er, um, Christmas), is on a winner. Pullman has responded. Newsweek reports on the row; the Catholic League is incandescent. Parents are being warned not to let their children see the film as it is “spiritual poison”.