I thought for a moment I was reading The Onion, but this story is from what at least sometimes purports to be a real newspaper, the UK’s Daily Mail: The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism. Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as … Pope forming exorcist squads to wage war on Satan

Australia’s Daily Telegraph ran a story “Christ-miss for atheist celebs” on Christmas eve which features a gallery of celebrities who are atheists (but not celebrities because of their atheism), such as Keanu Reaves, Angelina Jolie, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Branson, Bob Geldof, Bill Gates, Katherine Hepburn, Jodie Foster, Marlon Brando, Ricky Gervais, John Malkovich, and Bjork. … Celebrity atheists gallery

The year-end issue of The Economist has three articles of interest regarding religion. One article, “The battle of the books,” describes how Christianity and Islam are competing to distribute their holy books and convert followers, and how their respective demographics have changed dramatically since 1900. In 1900, Islam had about 200 million followers concentrated in … The Economist on Mormons, the Bible vs. the Koran, and New Age

Philosopher Antony Flew has a new book out titled There Is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. But what’s interesting is that he didn’t write it–Christian apologist Roy Abraham Varghese did. Today’s New York Times has the fascinating and disturbing story about how some evangelical Christians have exploited an aging … Antony Flew’s new book

CNN reports that the Church of Scientology is partnering with Christian churches in low-income areas to offer free tutoring (and indoctrination in L. Ron Hubbard’s “study technology”). This is actually not a new development–Scientology has long partnered with a number of pastors of Baptist churches to promote its “Applied Scholastics” program, such as Rev. Alfreddie … Scientology offering “Hubbard study tech” to low-income Christian churches

(Hat tip to Ed Babinski, who found this at the Wittenburg Blog. The music is titled “Det snurrar i min skalle” and is from a Swedish group called Familjen–they’ve got several other songs on YouTube.) I found an apposite quote about this in an Economist article published last year titled “Christianity reborn”: “A Pentecostal service … Pentecostal rave party

During her life, Mother Teresa wrote numerous letters which she asked to be burned upon her death. They were not burned, but have instead been published in the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. These letters show that “for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever.” At … Mother Teresa’s crisis of faith

The Secular Outpost’s Taner Edis is interviewed in a feature story at Salon.com about “The religious state of Islamic science,” a subject which he is extremely qualified to comment on. Also check out his book, An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam (2007, Prometheus Books).

William Lobdell, religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has written a moving account of the some of the stories he has covered and his journey into and out of faith.

Jonathan Edwards, who won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, was an evangelical Christian who “decided to risk everything to follow God’s revealed path, moving to Newcastle in 1987 to become a full-time athlete in the belief that his preordained success would enable him to evangelise to an unbelieving world; since he … Born-again British Olympic gold medalist becomes atheist