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Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to.

Pope Francis has said reliable data indicates that "about 2%" of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles. In an interview with the Italian La Repubblica newspaper, the Pope said that abuse of children was like "leprosy" infecting the Church.

For centuries, European and American missionaries have gone to Africa to spread the word of Christ. That trend is now working in reverse, with a Nigerian minister in Texas who plans to build churches as numerous as Starbucks coffee shops.

The website is based on a simple premise: people submit their requests for prayers, and others pray for them - an act known as intercessory prayer.

A study carried out by the University of Maryland in the US has found prayer and spiritual healing may reduce pain and speed up the recovery of patients.

Patients admitted to hospital with heart problems suffer fewer complications if someone prays for them, according to scientists in the US.

From a growth in Christianity to a revival of Buddhism. How Mongolians are replacing the all-embracing belief system that vanished with the fall of communism.

Despite the abundance of evidence that human perception is penetrated by beliefs and expectations, scientific research so far has entirely neglected the possible impact of religious background on attention. Here we show that Dutch Calvinists and atheists, brought up in the same country and culture and controlled for race, intelligence, sex, and age, differ with respect to the way they attend to and process the global and local features of...

Oxford University's former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Richard Dawkins, is one of the world's staunchest defenders of the theory of evolution...