For those of us interested in ancient Christianity, the National Geographic Society has announced a new manuscript find. Those don’t happen everyday (or even every decade) so it’s pretty exciting news. The text is of the gospel genre, written in Coptic around 300 CE like those found at Nag Hammadi, and is entitled Gospel of … Gospel of Judas Found

According to a story published in today’s New York Times, scientists have discovered a “missing link” between fish and land mammals. The transitional fossils are “so clearly an intermediate ‘link between fishes and land vertebrates,’ they said, that it‘might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx,’ which bridged the gap … Transitional Fossil Announced

Due to a Guardian op-ed attacking Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, some disagreements between Dennett and Michael Ruse have become more public. Ruse thinks the more atheistic commentators on Darwinian evolution, such as Dennett and Dawkins, are (a) intellectually mistaken, and (b) unwittingly helping creationists politically. Dennett has briefly replied to the charge. Now, generally … Dennett-Ruse squabble

The “Science Times” section of the New York Times today has a note on an oceanographer, Doron Nof, who proposes to explain Jesus’ walking on water with his standing on a bit of ice. I wonder, when I occasionally see something like this, if the 19th century practice of finding rational explanations for Biblical miracles … Biblical Miracle in NYT

Interesting article by Kevin Phillips in the Washington Post today, “How the GOP Became God’s Own Party.” And he has a book out, naturally — yet another one I’ll have to add to my reading pile. Actually, I don’t hugely care about religion per se. I’m interested mainly in supernatural fact claims, since they make … God’s Own Party

Carnival of the Godless #37 is up at the Neural Gourmet.

John Allen Paulos’ latest “Who’s Counting” column addresses the Univ. of Minnesota study on American distrust of atheists and the facts (or rather, lack thereof) behind Liberty University’s claim to be the #1 debate team in the U.S.

When countering anti-evolutionary views such as those put forth by the intelligent design (ID) movement, anti-ID commentators often refer to “methodological naturalism” as a “ground rule” of science. I’m not entirely happy with this, but I don’t see any great problem either — provided we think of this “ground rule” as a pragmatic rule, not … Methodological naturalism revisited

Adherents.com has data on the top 50 countries with the highest percentage of people who do not believe in God (though may not self-report as “atheists”) and the top 20 countries with the largest number of nonbelievers. The data comes from Phil Zuckerman, “Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns,” in Michael Martin’s The Cambridge Companion to … Atheists and nonbelievers, by country

Ed Brayton has been carrying on some very interesting discussions on a specific topic of biblical morality, the subject of slavery and why the Bible doesn’t condemn it. It’s fascinating to see how some Christians have tried to argue about the subject with him. The subject of slavery in the Bible is one of the … Slavery and the Bible