You will probably see a lot more posts relating to religion and American politics, since the two seem to have become hopelessly tangled lately. Welton Gaddy explains some of the basic rules surrounding religion and elections, and talks about the importance of keeping things separate: The leader we choose may have a faith of his own, but he must lead members of all faiths present in the nation - as well as t ...

Republicans aren't the only ones dragging faith and religion deeper into the American political landscape. Here's DNC head Howard Dean talking about the Democratic party's attempt to 'increase its displays of religiosity': Faith is faith,he exclaimed. Faith in God is something that is common to human beings. He was quick to acknowledge that secular people in the Democratic Party still have values. Dean su ...

Here's Richard Dawkins reading some of the love letters he receives from religious people. ...

Wow, who could have foreseen this one. From the AFP: DHAKA (AFP) - A crocodile killed and devoured a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh who waded into a pond next to a shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal, police said Thursday. Inspector Humayun Kabir told AFP that Rubel Sheikh and his mother travelled 50 kilometres (30 miles) from their home to visit the Muslim Khan Jahan Ali shrine, where the attack happe ...

From the New York Daily News: Tom Cruise is named in a $250 million federal lawsuit that is using the RICO statute against the Church of Scientology. Ex-Scientologist Peter Letterese, a longtime critic of the church, filed suit in Southern District Court in Florida on July 15 alleging, among other things, that members of the church harassed him after he left. In court papers provided to The News by investig ...

From BBC News: Diners have been flocking to a restaurant in northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner says are inscribed with the name of Allah. What looks like the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad were discovered in pieces of beef by a diner in Birnin Kebbi. He was about to eat it, when he suddenly noticed the words in the gristle, the restaurant owner said. Next week's ...

I've never been able to figure out why religion and guns go hand and hand so often. From KOCO.com: An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference. Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend.The church's youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it's a way of trying to encourage ...

We talked about those penis thief sorcerers on an earlier radio show (Jake doesn't label stuff properly so I couldn't tell you which one off-hand). Now here's a really in-depth article from Harper's on the subject so you can understand what the dilly is with that whole situation: According to Ilechukwu, an epidemic of penis theft swept Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. Then there seemed to be a lull until 1990 ...

From MSNBC.com Demonstrations on the town square show how divided people are over the school board's decision to fire a science teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs in the classroom and burning crosses on students' arms. John Freshwater, 52, was fired last month after an outside consulting firm released a report concluding that he taught creationism and was insubordinate in failing to remove a ...

Personally I'm not really a fan of Christopher Hitchens so I enjoyed this a little too much: Late last year, the writer, polemicist and fierce proponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq Christopher Hitchens attempted, in a piece for the online magazine Slate, to draw a distinction between what he called techniques of "extreme interrogation" and "outright torture". From this, his foes inferred that since it wa ...