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Deconversion stories are almost always entertaining, so you might enjoy Andy Welfie’s. When you read about his Catholic home-school education, you’ll be amazed he still has a functioning brain. How would you like to learn history from a book called Christ the King-Lord of History: A Catholic World History from Ancient to Modern Times?

Shortly, Atheists Talk radio will be on the air with a conversation with Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. They’ll be discussing the upcoming national convention in Chicago.

The show will air at 9 AM Sunday, Minneapolis time. Since all you foreigners always complain about my quaint temporal provincialism, here’s a guide to the broadcast time that will help you out.

Nothing will satisfy you guys. All right, I’ve replaced the original short list with this much longer list:

At 9am Sunday on Atheists Talk radio, it’s me! I’ll be telling you all about My Summer Vacation, my trip to the Galápagos. Tune in and call in!

Afterwards, at 11, we’ll be meeting for brunch at Q. Cumbers — stop by if you’re in the area and say hello.

If any of you are going to be in the neighborhood of CalTech around the 4th of October, you might want to sign up for the big Origins conference — it definitely has some great speakers. Sean Carroll, Leonard Susskind, Paul Davies, (wait…what’s with all the physicists?), Donald Prothero and Christof Koch (OK, that’s better) will be presenting there. The late afternoon will feature the comedy stylings of Hugh Ross, crazy creationist, getting spanked by Victor Stenger. The evening will be topped off by a visit from Mr. Deity — how can you miss that?

One disappointment in the schedule to me is the afternoon panel discussing “Does science make belief in god obsolete?” While the four speakers lined up are interesting people, they aren’t the kind of people who will get it into a good brawl over the issue — I predict that the answer they’ll deliver is a waffly “no”, emphasis on the waffle. Maybe some of you readers can show up in the audience and add a little godless fire to the proceedings.

As part of an exercise in shredding Steve Fuller, AC Grayling makes several felicitous comments. Fuller makes the “tired argument that modern science is the kindly gift of 16th-century religion,” and claims that “atheism has done precious little for science”. He’s got a few good answers to that one.

And what has atheism done for science? Well, let’s see: it removed the risk of scientists being burned at the stake for controverting the divinely revealed truth that “the lord hath laid the foundations of the earth so that it shall not be moved for ever” (Psalm 102, beloved of Bellarmine in his efforts to shut up the astronomers and philosophers of the era of Descartes). It removed the necessity of having to distort observations, facts, experimental results and observations to fit an antecedent doctrine as far from what observation and experiment revealed as one could possibly get. (Think about seeing the moons of Jupiter through a telescope in an age when the earth was – by order! – at the centre of the universe and man and his man-made religion was the most important thing in it, with the Pope and the Office of the Inquisition daring you to think otherwise.) In short, it liberated the mind and enquiries of mankind. Decreasing religious hegemony and rapidly increasing scientific and technological knowledge have gone pari passu during the last four centuries, in mutually reinforcing tandem: the less religion, the more science; the more science, the less religion. And this is a universal phenomenon (see the Pew polls on the decline of religion, even in the USA).

Once again, Atheists Talk radio will be broadcast from the Minnesota State Fair at 9am Sunday. This week, they’re going to explain what humanism is.