On Saturday there was a “Protest The Pope” rally in London which 10-15,000 people attended and heard Richard Dawkins speak.

laser precision from xkcd

To whet your appetite for this excellent podcast – well worth a listen – here are some excerpts from AC Grayling’s talk from the Global Atheists Convention

Easter messages: so little right, so little honesty, so much brushing aside of the child-abuse that is tearing apart the credibility of the church and its pope

The Pope shouldn’t resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, child-raping institution while it tumbles

if Dennett and LaScola are right that belief is mostly aspirational for most people, it follows that few people actually do believe but merely wish they could

Richard Dawkins’ speech about his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth”, was recorded for ABC’s for Big Ideas. Here are a couple of brief excerpts

if you like your cause-and-effect “gee-whizzz!” then take a look at this falling dominoes video from OK, Go

Cherie Blair, wife of the notorious war criminal, suspended the sentence of a man who broke another man’s jaw in a bank queue, because he is “religious”.

P.Z. Myers has revealed his itinerary for his trip to Australia, where he’ll speak at the Atheist Convention, Melbourne, and visit some notorious Canberrans.

I have no quarrel with individuals who have faith. But damned if I’m going to have the battles won by the Enlightenment abdicated by a new Dark Ages.

“Do you think there’s a practical reason for having a religious belief?”
“Well there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true.”

god may be dead but don’t let’s upset the natives – they’ve got guns and bombs and exploding underwear and if you’re unkind to them they might set them off. So let’s pretend for the sake of a peaceful life that he’s not dead, okay?

religious zealots and catholic crackpots taking over civil society to spread their preposterous beliefs and protect their absurdities from public critical scutiny. So the Republic of Ireland has just brought in its new Blasphemy Law. Not everyone is happy about that, including Atheist Ireland which has published a list of 25 so-called “blasphemies”.

Discworld’s Terry Pratchett explains his cosmology – or to put it another way, why he doesn’t believe in “god”. Plus “Sumerians confused as god creates world”