SIR — We were perplexed by your Editorial on the work of the Templeton Foundation ('Templeton's legacy' Nature 454, 253–254; 2008). Surely science is about finding material explanations of the world — explanations that can inspire those spooky feelings of awe, wonder and reverence in the hyper-evolved human brain.

The shining example of free thinking said to characterize the French Enlightenment was Voltaire. In the face of dogmatic clerics, both Protestant and Catholic, he urged reasonable people everywhere to "crush the infamous thing."

His argument was as obvious then as it is today: organized religion not only divides humanity into believers and infidels, it authorizes the former, with a beatific smile, to extinguish the latter. Often religion claims to be doing so for the good of the infidel.

AGASSIZ, B.C. — A British Columbia health official says a spreading mumps outbreak began with a Fraser Valley religious group that shuns immunization.

"It's part of their belief system that this is not the right thing to do," said Dr. Elizabeth Brodkin, medical health officer for the Fraser Health Authority. Brodkin said Tuesday that people who aren't vaccinated are at highest risk to contract the viral disease that's passed from person to person through saliva.

Recently, the two men who want to be next president of the United States appeared in a televised two-hour forum on faith, hosted by megachurch minister Rick Warren.

Religion has been problematic for both candidates in their campaigns. Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made controversial, conspiracy-laden statements about AIDS and racism, while John McCain's spiritual advisor Rod Parsley claimed that America's "divine purpose" is to destroy Islam, which he considers a "false religion."

THE wife of fraud pastor Michael Guglielmucci has vowed to try to save their marriage, despite the humiliating revelations of his cancer hoax and pornography addiction.

Speaking exclusively to The Advertiser, Amanda Guglielmucci, 29, defended her husband, who faked a two-year battle with cancer.

The Catholic Church is under growing pressure to abandon the "homophobic" exhumation and reburial of the body of one its most famous cardinals, in defiance of his wish to lie for eternity next to the man he loved.

Aug. 25, 2008 | The bronze figure of Giordano Bruno that stands at the center of Rome's Campo de' Fiori may be the most successful commemorative monument in the world. The average statue in a park or square usually rates no more than a glance: Either you already know who the guy is, or you don't care. But the hooded and manacled effigy of Bruno, with its haunted stare, immediately catches the eye, and the gruesome story attached to it -- Bruno was burned at the stake in that very spot, for the crime of heresy -- cements him in memory. Practically every tourist who comes to Rome tromps through the Campo and hears that story, even if they've never heard of Bruno before. The students who commissioned the statue in the 1880s, as an emblem for freedom of thought and the division of church from state, really got their money's worth.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2008) — Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have shown capuchin monkeys, just like humans, find giving to be a satisfying experience. This finding comes on the coattails of a recent imaging study in humans that documented activity in reward centers of the brain after humans gave to charity.

Last week, the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition — Liberal chief Stéphane Dion — sat down with me for a one-hour interview on my TV program, The Michael Coren Show. Within the first 10 minutes of the discussion he made several mentions of God. These weren't passing phrases or clumsy slang but obvious, absolute references to the entity so fashionably unfashionable in left-wing circles these days. You could have knocked me down with a Gospel tract!

150 years ago, Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution were first announced in public - to a meeting of the Linnean Society in London. Oddly, almost no one noticed!

A national organization that promotes freedom from religion and separation of church and state is hoping to get Phoenix commuters talking with five controversial billboard ads that will go up this week.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., paid advertising company CBS Outdoor to put up five signs that read "Imagine No Religion."

Richard Dawkins was interviewed about 'The Genius of Charles Darwin' TV program on 'Talkback' August 5th, 2008. Part 1 is the interview, and part 2 consists of call-ins to the show, some being relevant and some discussing other topics.

An Italian priest is holding a beauty contest with a difference — it will be open only to nuns.

Father Antonio Rungi, of Mondrag-one, near Naples, said he expected at least 1,000 nuns to enter the Sister Italia contest. It would run online at first, but he hoped that it would become a "real pageant" along the lines of the annual Miss Italy contest.

ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote "Evolution" in the rectangle of light on the screen.

PhysOrg.com) -- A multidisciplinary team at the University of Reading has developed a robot which is controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured neurons. This cutting edge research is the first step to examine how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how a brain stores specific pieces of data. The key aim is that eventually this will lead to a better understanding of development and of diseases and disorders which affect the brain such as Alzheim

Two young women fight poolside about the existence of God, rather than whether Miller Lite tastes great or is less filling. The ad promotes the newly released Beyond Reasonable Doubt: A Lawyer's Case for Disbelief in God by Geoff Henley, which provides an attorney's perspective in a debate often dominated by scientists and clergy. Throughout the work, Henley charges that all religious myths are bad alibis and hearsay and that faith and God's law cruelly violate traditional principles of due process.

ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote "Evolution" in the rectangle of light on the screen.

He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.

A toddler falls over a railing, 24 feet down, into the gorilla enclosure of the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago. There he lies, unconscious, among seven apes, some with poundage and power exceeding that of an adult man. As one of them approaches the boy, onlookers tense.

Social conservatives are growing more wary of church involvement in politics, joining moderates and liberals in their unease about blurring the lines between pulpit and ballot box, a new study found.

Fifty percent of conservatives think churches and other places of worship should stay out of social and political matters, up from 30 percent four years ago, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had voiced support for religious institutions speaking out on such issues.