The philosopher René Descartes famously pondered the question of the possibility of God's deceit. If God was deceitful, we as his creations could never trust anything we contemplate or perceive; it may simply be a deceitful, omnipotent God directly warping our faculties or, as our creator, deliberately constructing us with faulty, unreliable faculties to start with. To dodge this disturbing possibility, Descartes argued that God, a perfect being, could not be deceitful because deceit is a fault, an imperfection. This simple stratagem appeared to satisfy Descartes. But was Descartes on to something more insidious and unthinkable than he was willing to contemplate; was he too hasty in sweeping this concern under the rug?

As far as I can tell, Christianity in the UK is moving slowly in small steps towards rationality and away from the excesses of fundamentalism that we harp about. Rationalists should recognize this, helping people to make the small changes they are willing to take rather than making them change all their beliefs at once and thus giving them an impossible hurdle to jump over.

"The Ten Commandments (Really!)" is a casual, sometimes sarcastically humorous, but honest, review of the story of the Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus. Do you think that you know the Ten Commandments? The author doubts that you do.

Have you ever seen those nature documentaries where the narrator describes how perfectly designed, say, the cheetah, the polar bear, or the chameleon is for its environment? Of course, calling an animal perfectly designed is just shorthand for saying that the slow processes of evolution have led to that animal's well-adapted features. Yet evolution hasn't always generated the best designs, or at least not the best from an engineering perspective. In fact, some features seem downright poorly designed. This should come as no surprise when we understand a little about how evolution works.

"Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are among the most intellectually formidable, witty and persuasive atheists currently writing. Although Harris tends to attack theism from a philosophical standpoint, and Hitchens prefers consulting history and using religions' own texts against them, both have elegantly articulated a sound, unanswerable argument against Christianity (and every other religion currently vying for adherents among people who ought to know better). I shall call it The Argument from Mundanity."

"I often find myself humbly suggesting that it is possible to raise children every bit as ethical, caring, loving, humane, inspired and well-adjusted without religion as with it. I don't believe parenting without religion is merely "as good" as parenting with it--I think it is immeasurably better. I think it blows the doors off religious parenting in every respect--powerful inquiry, reasoned ethics, ecstatic inspiration, cosmic humility and profound humanity. No need to waste time raining reason on the deaf ears of the faithful. Let the baby have his bottle. Our time is better spent clearing a space for the rest of us to dance with our children."

The Left, unashamedly, allies itself with Islamists in North America in the name of politically correct cultural relativism that says that the social and moral values of immigrants should be interpreted in the terms of the culture they have migrated from. It is quite ironic that the Left that is in constant struggle against the Christian Right on issues like abortion, gay marriage, teaching evolution in public schools, etc. is engaged in this unholy alliance with Islamists who have an identical social agenda as the Christian Right.

Nearly every religion asserts that human beings possess a soul or immaterial eternal essence, a "ghost in the machine" that animates our flesh. However, this extraordinary assertion is backed by essentially no hard, scientific evidence. Science makes it quite clear that the brain is the place in which one's personality, character and memory are stored. Only one conclusion can be drawn from the available scientific evidence: "Mind" is merely a self-organized emergent property of matter.

Edward Tabash, a constitutional and civil rights attorney, critically analyzes Faith on Trial by attorney Pamela Binnings Ewen. Whereas Ewen attempts to show that a trial conducted under the Federal Rules of Evidence would uphold the claim that Jesus was supernaturally resurrected following his execution, Tabash argues that the so-called evidence of Jesus' supernatural resurrection would not even be admitted into evidence, thus the jury would not even get to hear it--let alone decide if it were true.

Ever wonder how you can be saved? Christians can't agree, and the confusion is embarrassing. A survey of sixteen major denominations proves the point.

Can you apply a skeptical empiricism to religious beliefs? The author answers, "yes"--and religion comes up short. In place of theism, Young offers what Einstein called "a cosmic religious feeling," in this excerpt adapted from his book.

For two millennia in Christendom every generation has been the last generation. Just in time, Edward Babinski is here to explain the delay.