Here is a gut-wrenching story from The Guardian about a young Iraqi woman brutally killed by her father and brothers because of an infatuation with a British soldier. The police did not detain the father, and even supported him. By and large, the local community considers such honor killings right and proper. Honor killings, indeed, … Honor killings

In confronting miracle claims skeptics and naturalists look for flaws and weakness in the evidence put forward for specific miracles, and ask critical questions like, “Do we have eyewitness testimony for the event?”, “Are the eyewitnesses credible and reliable?”, “Are the accounts of the eyewitnesses consistent with each other?”, and “Is there physical evidence that … Richard Purtill “Defining Miracles”

Adnan Oktar, the public face of the very successful Harun Yahya Muslim creationist phenomenon based in Turkey, has just been sentenced to three years in prison, on a racketeering charge. If carried out, I doubt it will put a dent in the popularity of Islamic creationism. It may even give Oktar, who has always had … Harun Yahya sentenced

Here’s another book I want to recommend: Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, edited by Louise M. Antony (Oxford University Press, 2007). Half the book is taken up by informal descriptions by philosophers of why they don’t believe. Many are very interesting, and the more informal reflections are, I think, a … Philosophers Without Gods

The Conclusion of Chapter 4In the final paragraph of Chapter 4 of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins draws one of his main conclusions: If the argument of this chapter is accepted, the factual premise of religion – the God Hypothesis – is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist. This is the main conclusion of … Dawkins’ Definition of “God”

A Turkish barber working in Saudi Arabia has been condemned to execution, based on testimony that he had sworn at God during a personal quarrel. (Think of it as a Muslim equivalent of denouncing the Holy Spirit: completely unforgivable.) You can read about it in the Arab News or Turkish Daily News.

For a while now, I’ve been an Honorary Fellow of The Jefferson Center in Ashland, Oregon. When I was first invited to speak there, I thought of it as an ultraliberal religious organization, and soon discovered that quite a few people associated with it were at least ambivalent about supernatural beliefs. I got to know … Jefferson Center

When you write skeptically on religion, you get some interesting reactions. My favorite so far is is a Muslim comment on An Illusion of Harmony: . . . that book by the enemy of Allah, and the mini-dajjal of our era Taner Edis. (I ran across it on an online forum discussing a nasty review … “Mini-Dajjal”

In Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed interpret results from a Gallup World Poll to describe what a large and apparently representative sample of Muslims think. As with any popular work by Esposito, it has an overriding concern to counter the demonization of Islam. And … Islam and American Christianity