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

There is a story that believers like to tell and it goes something like this: everyone is sinful. We are all tainted and filthy. We murder and steal and generally wallow in our lowly state. But religion lifts us up and brings us closer to God. Religious precepts makes us moral, so that we may … Our Alleged Fallen State

“I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old rocks are,” says an Arkansas geologist and science teacher. “I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD … but I am NOT to say that these rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old.” That and … The E-Word In Arkansas

Not surprisingly considering the content of the Bible, a Pew poll shows that 57% of those who are “secular” think that torture is never or only rarely acceptable, while only 42% of Catholics and 49% of white Protestants and white evangelicals feel that way. (I’m not sure why the poll only looked at white Protestants … The secular oppose torture more than Christians do