Currently more than 80 percent of the world's energy is obtained from fossil fuels: petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Another 10 percent comes from biomass and waste, leaving only 10 percent from sources other than carbon burning.

According to the World Health Organization, urban outdoor air pollution is estimated to...

On Oct. 7-8, Houston was invaded by some 700 atheists, agnostics, humanists and other unclassified nonbelievers for the annual Texas Freethought Convention. This year the event was also co-sponsored by the Atheist Alliance of America. The program included talks by several of the most prominent atheists...

In a previous post "No Cause to Dispute Einstein" I explained that travel faster than the speed of light c is not forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity, despite recent media reports. I pointed out that the real problem with superluminality is the way it can interchange...

As someone who worked in neutrino physics for thirty years before retiring from research in 2000, I should be more excited than most by the report from CERN that neutrinos have been observed moving faster than light. And I am. The experiment looks very well done and the...

In his 2009 book Who Made God: Searching for a Theory of Everything, Christian chemist Edgar Andrews challenges many of the statements made in new atheist writings including my 2007 book God: The Failed Hypothesis. I have placed a point-by-point rebuttal to Andrews' criticisms...

In my previous blog I claimed that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. To reiterate, the reason I gave was their differing epistemologies. Science relies only on what we observe with our senses, while religion claims an additional inner sense that reveals another world beyond.

Now let me...

Many historians and sociologists have denied the there ever was a war between science and religion. Some have even claimed that Christianity was responsible for science! But they have ignored the most important historical facts. Greece and Rome were well on the way to modern science when Christianity interrupted its...

A widespread belief exists that even if it is not true religion is worth practicing because of its benefits. In fact, any health benefits are problematical. The only definite positive correlation between religious practice and health is with church-going, and it is not proven that this is anything supernatural. It...

In a recent post The Folly of Faith I mentioned that a connection exists between global warming denialism and religion. Here I would like to provide more justification for this claim.

Evidence exists that many who deny the dangers of global warming do so out of religious conviction....

Presented at the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference May 15, 2011, Irvine, CA.

"People of faith" are universally treated with great deference. The religious are assumed to be persons of the highest moral standards -- exemplars of goodness, kindness, and charity. But why should that be? How does faith qualify...

A recent HuffBlog "The Spiritual Lives of Atheist Scientist" by Adelle M. Banks generated a lot of comments, including references to my own 2007 book God: The Failed Hypothesis. The article describes the work of sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund on the so-called "spirituality" of atheist scientists....

I just finished watching 48 half-hour lectures of the Teaching Company Great Courses series "Big History," a new historical discipline, with San Diego State professor David Christian. Excellent. Highly recommended. It starts with the big bang 13.7 billion years ago and ends with heat death a...

Aristotle introduced the principle of Final Cause in which objects move in the direction toward their ultimate goal. For example, of the four elements, fire and air move up while water and earth move down because each is heading toward its natural resting place.

Today many theologians and some...

The metaphors people have used throughout human existence to describe reality depend on the models they use to describe their experiences. Seeing animals all around them, primitive people attributed natural phenomena to the action of animate spirits that were contained in all things, living and nonliving. When agriculture developed and...

A major contrast between religious or spiritual thinking and science concerns whether or not physical phenomena can simply be reduced to the sum of their parts. Basic physics, as described by the standard model of elementary particles and forces, is fully reductionist. This notion sticks in the craw of those...

A vast literature exists attempting to explain humanity's continuing obsession with religion. See, for example, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by anthropologist Pascal Boyer, and In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion by anthropologist Scott Altran.

If I were to...

Robert Lanza, MD, is a regular blogger on Huffington Post. On his website he bills himself as "one of the leading scientists in the world." I first learned about Lanza in 1992 when he wrote an article called "The Wise Science" published in The Humanist Vol. 52, No....

The following is the second half of an interview to be published in the Greek weekly newspaper Eleftherotypia. Read Part 1 here.

Interview with Professor Victor Stenger

7. When a person says that he/she believes in God, should that person also prove the existence of...

The following is the first half of an interview to be published in the Greek weekly newspaper Eleftherotypia. The rest will appear later.

Interview with Professor Victor Stenger

1. You are one of the so-called new atheists. What does the concept refer to?

New atheism was the name attached...

The Grand Design
By Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Bantam, 2010.
To appear in Free Inquiry.

Stephen Hawking is no doubt the most celebrated scientist in the world....