‘One of the most robust and effective conspiracy theories on the right, the notion that “secularism” – or, just as often, “Secular Humanism” – is a religion is meant to be taken entirely literally: right wingers genuinely believe it refers to an actually existing religious practice.’

Read more: Behind the Right’s Phony War on the Nonexistent Religion of Secularism

‘For most of the 20th century, smart people assumed — with smug certainty and probably more wishful thinking than they’d be willing to admit — that humanity’s long obsession with religion is finally winding down. God is dead — done in at last by the forces of enlightenment and reason. Humanity is now free to chart a new course, without worrying about the Big Bad He-God In the Sky. But, as the last 30 years have rather brutally demonstrated to American progressives (religious and otherwise), those reports of the death of religion turned out to be greatly exaggerated.’

Read more: Atheism Rising, But God Is Not Dead Yet: 10 Ways Religion Is Changing Around the World

‘Though Santorum paints a rosy picture of homeschooling in the United States, and calls attention to the “responsibility” all parents have to take their children’s education into their own hands, he fails to acknowledge the very real potential for educational neglect among some homeschooling families – neglect that has been taking place for decades, and continues to this day.’

Read more: Barely Literate? How Christian Fundamentalist Homeschooling Hurts Kids

‘Christianity is waning in England and could be outnumbered by nonbelievers within 20 years, according to a new study.’

Read more: Atheists likely to outnumber Christians in England in 20 years

‘As a child, Alix Jules saw people in church speak in tongues, tremble, fall and have what appeared to be very genuine connections with God. But not him. “I never tingled,” he said.

By his twenties, Jules was an atheist. But he never told his family, who were deeply rooted in their predominantly black Catholic congregation. They believed he was having a crisis of faith — turned off by organized religion but still a believer. For years, he let them think that.’

Read more: For atheists of color, ‘coming out’ can be painful

‘It sounds naff at first glance. But the British philosopher Alain de Botton has decided to go into the mimicry of religion, into its replication. Cunningly, he hopes to accommodate religious impulses while remaining an atheist.’

Read more: Do Atheists Really Need a Temple?

‘The modern world, in its self-awareness, is the product of the disengagement of the secular from the religious, which makes the discussion of this issue particularly fraught. The religious overshadowed the secular at one point in the history of the Western world. The secular realm then emerged from under the shadow of the religious, by liberating the political, the legal, and the educational dimensions of public life from religious dominance. We have now reached a point, when the secular overshadows the religious to such an extent, that it is the secular constitutions which guarantee religious freedom. In the heyday of secularism, right after the Second World War, the progressive secularization of the rest of the world, along the lines it had occurred in the West, especially Europe, was considered axiomatic. This belief was shared by the otherwise rival economic systems of capitalism and communism, and also by the rival political systems of liberal democracy and totalitarianism. Liberal democracy saw religion as ultimately turning into a purely private affair, like one’s appreciation of art and music; Marxism foresaw not merely its retreat from public life but from life itself. Thus the general intellectual climate, in the middle of the last century, saw religion as on its way out of the public square, if not out of life altogether.’

Read more: The Religious and the Secular in the Modern World

‘Alain de Botton’s suggestion of a “temple to atheism” has received quite a bit of press coverage. It is just one of many suggestions that stem from his new book, Religion for Atheists, which looks at the question that has been asked on many a Sunday morning: why can’t atheists take all the good bits of religion without the unfashionable sexual morality, the strict rules, the occasional intolerance and, most of all, the actual core beliefs?

De Botton looks at the many advantages that religion brings: the sense of community, the generosity, the architecture, the optimism and, least commented upon, the structure; and asks whether atheists can mimic all of this without mentioning the G-word.’

Read more- Church of Oxymoronity: Religion for Atheists is like Alcohol-Free Lager

‘“Good without God” has become a catch-phrase of the increasingly vocal atheist and freethinker movement — from books to billboards, the non-religious are asserting the strength of their humanist ethics. As atheists emerge from the closet and stand up for themselves, one message they’re bringing along is that charity is far from an inherent monopoly of the religious.’

Read more: Why You Don’t Need God to be Good: the Rise of Atheist Charities

‘Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can — and should — be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.’

Watch Now: [Video] Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions