19th Feb 2008 : You will no doubt have heard the (admittedly not particularly funny) joke about there being two versions of The God Delusion: one of them moderate, reasonable and utterly convincing and only bought only by atheists, and the other vicious, aggressive and offensive, and exclusively bought by Christians. It is clear that religion is an emotive issue and that the reader's beliefs (or lack of them) will strongly colour his or her reaction to any writing on the subject. For this reason I'm going to lay my cards on the table right at the start: I am an atheist, a great fan of Richard Dawkins' books and an enthusiastic contributor to this website when time allows.

31th Oct 2007 : Recently, the popular and successful books of atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens having been receiving some public criticism from religious quarters, with the most recent coming from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

21st Nov 2006 : 15 hours of video from the conference in San Diego, CA.

6th May 2007 : It's popular these days to equate those who question God with the worst kind of zealots, but it's not fair

22nd Mar 2007 : George Carlin on religion.

20th Jul 2007 : Stand-up comedian Marcus Brigstocke delivered a seven-minute rant during this evening's Now Show on BBC Radio 4, on the evils of religion (I think he's been reading The God Delusion).

4th May 2007 : Lou Dobbs interviews Christopher Hitchens author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything this is the interview Jon Stewart should have done, but couldn't and still try and be funny.

1st Apr 2007 : Richard Dawkins' review of Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

12th Nov 2006 : Richard Dawkins reads excerpts from The God Delusion and anwsers questions at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

14th Mar 2007 : The speech is from a debate at Hart House, University of Toronto. Hitchens speech is in opposition to a proposed amendment to criminalize hate speech. A big thanks to Scott T.

31th May 2007 : This interview was filmed for the TV documentary "Root of All Evil?" but was left out of the final version. Time restrictions dictated that not all interviews filmed could be used. This was especially regrettable in the case of the McGrath interview, which is therefore offered here now, unedited.

24th Dec 2006 : There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all, along with a little backstory that will help you to understand the name.

I call it the Courtier's Reply. It refers to the aftermath of a fable.

5th May 2006 : Der Digitale Planet (lecture) featuring Douglas Adams, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker.

8th Jun 2007 : Religious belief is inconsistent with reason and corrosive to the human mind - and I don't want to live in a world where it is respected.

14th Dec 2007 : On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen.

9th Sep 2007 : The controversy stirred up by Dawkins's latest book The Fascism Delusion really seem to be heating up. Here is one recent review, from many, that takes him to task

6th Sep 2007 : There is much fluttering in the dovecots of the deluded, and Christopher Hitchens is one of those responsible. Another is the philosopher A. C. Grayling. I recently shared a platform with both. We were to debate against a trio of, as it turned out, rather half-hearted religious apologists ("Of course I don't believe in a God with a long white beard, but . . .").

23rd Mar 2007 : Christopher Hitchens: "The Moral Necessity of Atheism." Convocation Hall February 23 at 4:30 p.m. Sewanee University.

28th Mar 2007 : Richard Dawkins has been named Author of the Year by the Galaxy British Book Awards!

14th May 2007 : The Ethics of Hell.

4th Aug 2007 : I have been asked to comment on whether the universe shows signs of having been designed. I don't see how it's possible to talk about this without having at least some vague idea of what a designer would be like. Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

30th Apr 2007 : Description: Book TV presents LIVE coverage of the LA Times Festival of Books. At 1:30pm ET/10:30am PT, a panel on the mixing of religion and culture featuring: Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great"), Zachary Karabell ("Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence"), and Jonathan Kirsch ("A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization"). The panel is moderated by Thane Rosenbaum.

6th Jun 2007 : Whether he knows it or not, Brownback's forthright declarations, denying any possibility that empirical matters of fact might differ from those assumed by his creed, amount to nothing less than a rejection of the whole institution of science. Who is "we", and where did "our" conviction and certainty come from? Would Brownback believe these "spiritual truths" if he hadn't been taught them as a child, or brought up in the United States instead of China?

27th Jan 2007 : I'm an atheist. I'll just say that up front, so there's no confusion. I suffered a horrible tragedy, and continue to endure lasting effects.

3rd Oct 2006 : (Review of the new documentary film 'Jesus Camp') "Raise your hand if you think that God can do anything!"

7th May 2007 : Short YouTube clip about a bunch of monkeys.

26th Oct 2006 : Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) interviews Richard Dawkins on his radio show.

17th Jan 2007 : Most Americans oppose violence spurred by religious fundamentalism, but few agree on how to address it.

18th Oct 2006 : Richard Dawkins is interviewed by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.'

11th May 2007 : A debate on TV Ontario with Richard Dawkins.

20th Mar 2008 : There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I'm blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.

4th Oct 2007 : The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science presents Andy Thomson's lecture titled "We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers." This video was taken at the AAI 2007 conference in Washington, D.C.

2nd Aug 2007 : A few readers sent me a link to this interview with Alister McGrath; most thought it was worth a laugh, but one actually seemed to think I'd be devastated. I'm afraid the majority were correct: everything I've read by McGrath suggests that here is a man whose thoughts have been arrested by a temporal lobe seizure that he has mistaken for a lightning bolt from god.

31nd Jul 2007 : During the greater part of last week, Slate's sister site On Faith (it is jointly produced by Newsweek and washingtonpost.com, both owned by the Washington Post Co., which also owns Slate) gave itself over to a discussion about the religion of Islam. As usual in such cases, the search for "moderate" versions of this faith was under way before the true argument had even begun. If I were a Muslim myself, I think that this search would be the most "offensive" part of the business. Why must I prove that my deepest belief is compatible with moderation?

19th Jun 2007 : During a recent trip to the Galapagos with the Center for Inquiry, Richard Dawkins gave a reading of his new preface to the paperback edition of The God Delusion. This video is of the reading, and a separate video (coming soon!) will have the Q&A session that followed.

4th Jun 2007 : One cannot criticize religious dogmatism for long without encountering the following claim, advanced as though it were a self-evident fact of nature: there is no secular basis for morality.

14th May 2007 : This is taken from the book. Having him read to you is something else. Enough said. Take a listen and leave comments please. Email this video to atleast one other person, its your moral duty.

12th May 2007 : In the end, many Americans may still reject evolution, finding the creationist alternative psychologically more comfortable.

19th Apr 2007 : Bishop Harries and Richard Dawkins have collaborated on several occasions to promote the proper teaching of science in UK classrooms. This is the full unedited interview, which was originally filmed by IWC for the Channel Four documentary 'Root or All Evil?'

29th Mar 2007 : Fresh Air from WHYY, March 28, 2007 · In his most recent book, British scientist Richard Dawkins writes about the irrationality of a belief in God, examines God in all his forms and sets down his arguments for atheism. The book is The God Delusion.

6th Mar 2007 : Here's an oldie that's always worth watching again for a good laugh. Stephen Colbert debates Steve Carell, back when everyone was still on The Daily Show.

12th May 2006 : How is it, asks Richard Dawkins, that despite science having exposed old religious myths, militant faith is back on the march?

11th May 2006 : Richard Dawkins is astounded that religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth based on hard evidence.

20th Apr 2008 : On 18th April, the day Ben Stein's infamous film was released, Michael Shermer received the following letter from a Jew, whose identity I shall conceal as "David J".

23rd Mar 2008 : The blogs are ringing with ridicule. Mark Mathis, duplicitous producer of the much hyped film Expelled, shot himself in the foot so spectacularly that the phrase might have been invented for him.

14th Jul 2007 : It's uncommonly generous of Michael Gerson[" What Atheists Can't Answer," op-ed, July 13] to refer to me as "intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind," since (a) this might be taken as proof that he hardly knows me and (b) it was he who was so kind when I once rang him to check a scurrilous peacenik rumor that he was a secret convert from Judaism to Christian fundamentalism.

10th Apr 2007 : In London's Westminster Central Hall on March 27, some 2,000 people turned out to hear Hitchens, Dawkins and philosopher A.C. Grayling debate a trio of religious authorities on the question "We'd be better off without Religion." (The motion carried, 1,205 to 778.)

29th Mar 2007 : Professor Richard Dawkins has described religious believers as "sucking on dummies" for comfort and said that giving children a religious education was comparable to "erecting a firewall in their minds" against scientific truth.

14th Apr 2008 : Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss sat down for a public discussion at Stanford University on Sunday, March 9th 2008. The focus was on Science education, but the discussion also covered religion, physics, evolution and more. This video will be released on DVD soon at RichardDawkins.net , along with other unmoderated discussions with Richard Dawkins.

6th Mar 2008 : Imagine being able to explore the realm of science and advance its causes.

Imagine searching the vastness of the universe, discovering pulsars and unveiling evidence for gravitational waves, or helping concerned scientists of the world to surmount the enormous and complex task of climate modeling, and in doing so, to understand how to prepare for the future of our planet.

6th Dec 2007 : Note to radical Muslims: I've now named my favorite coffee mug 'Muhammad.' Hope that helps

2nd Oct 2007 : To begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary. The year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary God. America is now a nation of 300 million people, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet this influence is being steadily corrupted, and is surely waning, because 240 million of these people apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.

29th Aug 2007 : Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC, 08/28/2007

18th Jul 2007 : With a close reading of the major religious texts, Hitchens documents the ways in which he believes religion is a cause of dangerous sexual repression and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos, and frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason. Presented by the Town Hall Center for Civic Life and University Book Store.

13th Jul 2007 : Sam recently spoke at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.

9th Jul 2007 : As I stated at a Manchester festival debate on Saturday, religion is the lunatic fringe of human thought - scores are murdered daily in the name of faith.

6th Jul 2007 : Daniel Dennett gives his thoughts on philosophy, science and religion.

3rd Jul 2007 : On the face of it, the Bishop of Carlisle and the young man who staggered blazing from that Jeep at Glasgow Airport on Saturday afternoon don't have a lot in common. The Right Reverend Graham Dow is a grey-haired man with a twinkling smile, rarely armed with anything more lethal than a crozier.

18th Jun 2007 : For readers who weren't able to attend the Truthdig debate between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges, we now have full coverage. So sit back, relax and enjoy the fireworks.

12th Jun 2007 : Browsing the websites of different colleges, a prospective biology student finds an unusual statement on the page of the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University.

30th May 2007 : The purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for me and to document the destruction of my faith.

17th May 2007 : Forget the hate crimes bill -- it's time for a bill that would prohibit intolerance of the intolerant.

30th Apr 2007 : Richard Dawkins believes science's ability to admit ignorance is one of its greatest strengths. On the flip side, he proposes that faith remains arrogant and all too certain of its validity without any rational set of proofs.

15th Apr 2007 : Standing on a hill in East Jerusalem, amid the clash of religious and political orthodoxies, stands a musty old museum devoted to human progress.

12th Dec 2006 : Ken Miller's talk on Intelligent Design at Case Western University.

11th Feb 2007 : Sir, Alister McGrath (Faith, Feb 10) has now published two books with my name in the title. If I seem "grumpy", could it be because a professor of theology is building a career riding on my back?

13th May 2006 : Jonathan Miller interviews Colin McGinn during the summer of 2003 for the BBC4's 'The Atheism Tapes.'

13th May 2006 : Jonathan Miller interviews Daniel Dennett during the summer of 2003 for the BBC4's 'The Atheism Tapes.'

24th May 2006 : Sam Harris responds to Christain criticism.

15th Aug 2006 : In this essay, the bestselling secularist author of "The End of Faith" delivers a scathing review of "The Language of God," a new book by Human Genome Project head Francis Collins that attempts to demonstrate a harmony between science and evangelical Christianity.

3rd Oct 2006 : NPR interviews Sam Harris about his new book 'Letter to a Christian Nation.'

4th Oct 2006 : Sam Harris is interviewed on KCRW about his new book 'Letter to a Christian Nation' along with Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Kirsch.

15th May 2006 : I write this on the eve of war, haunted by my countryman W H Auden's lines on September 1st, 1939...

27th Mar 2007 : Roy teaches a satirical lesson in cosmology. Performed at the Skeptics Society conference.

17th Aug 2007 : The Out Campaign--we interview organizer Josh Timonen, who is working with Dr. Richard Dawkins on a new campaign aimed at getting atheists to acknowledge their lack of religious belief. We will talk with Josh about why he and Dr. Dawkins started the campaign, and where he thinks that it will go from here.

17th Aug 2007 : The author's book tour—for God Is Not Great—takes a few miraculous turns, including the P.R. boost from Jerry Falwell's demise, a chance encounter with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and surprising support for an attack on religion.

28th Jul 2007 : The RDF has started the Out Campaign, an effort to get atheists to publicly and proudly declare their status. It has a slightly different meaning — it's not exactly a symbol of atheism, but more a symbol of the willingness to come out about your disbelief — but it's nice, it's simple, it's clean. It's a simple red Zapfino "A", the scarlet letter.

3rd Jul 2007 : Why on earth do people keep saying, "There but for the grace of God …"? If matters had been very slightly different over the past weekend, the streets of London and the airport check-in area in Glasgow, Scotland, would have been strewn with charred body parts. And this would have been, according to the would-be perpetrators, because of the grace of God. Whatever our own private theology or theodicy, we might at least agree to take this vile belief seriously.

26th Jun 2007 : Imagine that the year is 1507, and life is difficult. Crops fail, good people suffer instantaneous and horrifying turns of bad luck, and even the children of royalty regularly die before they have taken their first steps. As it turns out, everyone understands the cause of these calamities: it is witchcraft. Not all witchcraft is at fault, of course -- there are "white" witches who use their powers to heal -- but there is no question that some witches have formed an alliance with the Devil. Happily, the Church has produced many learned and energetic men who are equal to this challenge, and each year hundreds of women are put to death for casting spells upon their innocent neighbors.

11th Jun 2007 : So, who want to argue the case against Mother Teresa? Christopher Hitchens.

8th Jun 2007 : A short questionnaire with Richard Dawkins.

25th May 2007 : The biologist and the philosopher meet up to talk about God, evolution, incest, and of course, ants.

21st May 2007 :

30th Sep 2006 : In this talk, titled, "Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science," Richard Dawkins suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe.

17th Mar 2007 : A humorous religion parallel between God and "Hank".

27th Mar 2007 : Does religious belief damage the health of a society, or is it necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society? Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion in discussion with Professor Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford Univ, chaired by Joan Bakewell

28th Jan 2008 : A lot has been written about a group of recent best-selling authors that, back in November 2006, Wired Magazine dubbed "the new atheists". Principally, they are the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), the neuroscientist Sam Harris (The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation), the philosopher Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell) and the journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist).

27th May 2007 : It's been a time of nonstop travel. I had a long-standing engagement to lecture on a Galapagos cruise ship, but the trip grew and grew. Time Magazine invited me to New York for a posh celebration, and I built the diversion into my route to Galapagos. Then I was offered an unexpected lift to New York in the private jet of the entrepreneur Elon Musk, en route to Los Angeles.

14th May 2007 : "Jerry Falwell's God" is on Roy's CD "Homeland," available at www.royzimmerman.com. Here, he performs the song at the Skeptics Society conference.

2nd May 2007 : "An anti-religion education video."

22nd Mar 2007 : NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.

18th Apr 2008 : If we were visited by aliens from a distant planet, would we fall on our knees and worship them as gods? The difficulty of getting here from even our nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, constitutes a filter through which only beings with a technology so advanced as to be god-like (from our point of view) could pass.

17th Apr 2008 : Anticipating success with their feature film Expelled, Producers Mark Mathis, Logan Craft and Walt Ruloff have already leaked a teaser trailer for the film's sequel.

11th Apr 2008 : Richard Dawkins was the guest tonight on Real Time With Bill Maher.

22nd Feb 2008 : How I went from Jesus-loving Christian to a fun-loving infidel... in one afternoon

10th Feb 2008 : Full version of the Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Debate at New York's 92nd Street Y.

8th Feb 2008 : Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species changed the world. Here Richard Dawkins introduces a 34-page celebration of the book and its author, available FREE with tomorrow's edition of the Guardian

5th Feb 2008 : Emory University, 5-16-2007

29th Jan 2008 : Nicky Campbell and Sonia Deol host a series of moral, ethical and religious debates on topical issues live from Oxford. On the panel are former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, Professor Richard Dawkins, Ann Widdecombe MP and Jonathan Bartley, joined by special guest John Barrowman.

4th Jan 2008 : Does God Exist? A debate between best-selling authors Rabbi David Wolpe and Sam Harris.