In The News

In The God Delusion Richard Dawkins makes great play of the fact that so few "elite" scientists apparently believe in God. A more recent US study, by sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, surveying 1,700 scientists and speaking to 275 of them, found that "nearly 50% of elite scientists [in the US] are religious in the traditional sense and over 20% … though eschewing religion, still see themselves as spiritual".

Four people including a Muslim cleric have been arrested in Bangladesh in connection with the death of 14-year-old girl who was publicly lashed. The teenager was accused of having an affair with a married man, police say, and the punishment was given under Islamic Sharia law.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Pakistan's largest city on Sunday to oppose any change to national blasphemy laws and to praise a man charged with murdering a provincial governor who had campaigned against the divisive legislation.

If the circumstances were not so hideous, the successful attempt byPakistan to persuade the UN Human Rights Council to condemn blasphemers who defame religion would have been a black comedy. Every word its diplomats used in 2009 to protest against Islamophobia turned out to be a precise description of the prejudices the Pakistani state was appeasing at home.

 It's relationships with people—not God—that make religious people happy, a new study suggests. While several studies have shown that when it comes to life satisfaction, the devout are more satisfied than nonbelievers, the latest findings show that's because of the social network they build at church.

A hardline, pro-Taliban Pakistani Muslim cleric on Friday offered a reward for anyone who kills a Christian woman sentenced to death by a court on charges of insulting Islam.

Christian activists have notched up an important victory in their attempt to cleanse the art world of what they see as offensive use of religious images by forcing the National Portrait Gallery in Washington to remove a video about Aids from an exhibition on sexuality in portraiture.

Evidence of events that happened before the Big Bang can be seen in the glow of microwave radiation that fills the Universe, scientists have asserted.

Land mammals went from small "vermin" to giant beasts in just 25 million years, according to a new study.

Writing in the journal Science, researchers say mammals rapidly filled the "large animal" void left by the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago.