American atheists welcomed Pope Francis’ comments that God redeems nonbelievers, saying that the new pontiff's historic outreach is helping to topple longstanding barriers.

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In an attempt to recreate the plot of multiple recent superhero movies, a team of Australian scientists is looking into the regenerative properties of salamanders--and into how humans can pull off the same trick.

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They call themselves Catholic Whistleblowers, a newly formed cadre of priests and nuns who say the Roman Catholic Church is still protecting sexual predators.

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Over the past few months I have been feeling quite depressed. A few weeks ago I gave in my resignation to leave the Mormon Church, who make it extremely difficult to leave, and I feel like I have commited social suicide. I was born a Mormon and grew up in a Mormon dominant community in Hamilton, New Zealand. I went to a Mormon highschool where I was Student Body President and served in various positions within the church helping those who were interested to get baptized into the church. I also taught a daily class to teenages about the Book of Mormon and I was such a devout Mormon that I even flew over to Utah to learn more about the history of the church (according to the LDS church). I typically got married to a return missionary of the Mormon church and had kids straight away as it was my "honour and duty" to do so, however he was abusive that over the years I left him which eventually led me meeting a rational thinker and then leaving the the church. 

My entire family no longer want to speak to me (I have 8 siblings) and my Mother has sent me many text messages telling me that I am possessed by demons and am a follower of Satan and that she will do all she can to fight against me. I live in a Mormon community in a town that has a very high percentage of Mormons but I stay because I have almost finished my Bachelor of Honours degree and will commence work on my PhD straight after. My partner is also an athiest and it was after meeting him that I realized how false my church was. I had never questioned its doctrine or even thought deeply about the impact on the rest of humanity let alone evolution. We had had a few arguments that made me so upset with him for even questioning my beliefs that I realized if I couldn't answer his questions then that meant I didn't know enough about the church I was in, so I decided to study the doctrine in order to defend the church against him and low and behold I found out the truth that all I had believed in was a lie and that the very religion that had dictated my actions throughout my life on the most important decisions was based on a lie. 

I study biology so after allowing myself to finally "think" I know for a fact that the LDS church is false. I feel so disappointed that I was fooled and that all the people I grew up with don't like me anymore because I have left and they blame my partner and tell me to leave him. They call me anti-mormon and say that I am persecuting their religion because I post things on my facebook page against religion. They think that I am just going through a phase and that I am just being influenced by my partners ideas but over the past few months I was studying intensely to find out information about the true history of the LDS church which is kept so well hidden within the Mormon community. As a Mormon you feel so guilty for doing that as if it is a sin. So as a 'sinner' I decided to look and found my answers that the founder Joseph Smith was a fraud. I just thought it absurd that his successor Brigham Young taught the Mormons that there are people living on the sun and the moon!

On top of this I just could not agree that humans are only 4000 years old and that Adam and Eve were American and that Adam is God. It just didn't match up with Joseph Smith's claim of The Book of Mormon. Anyway so much evidence against the church that I wish my family could see. I am definitely teaching my children science and the truth as we know it based on science. I will not teach them mindless fairy tales. I just feel sad that I lost my family and my old friends. Its amazing what a religion can do to relationships but I don't feel like I should change back to believing in the Mormon doctrine in order to make them happy with me again. I hope that I can make some new friends of like mindset.

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Linguistic relativity (known to some as the The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) postulates that specific types of language and/or specific usage of that language could influence the way we think and how we act towards others and could shape the entire culture of a people.

This is not a new concept but has, in my opinion, not been sufficiently extrapolated to take a look at the things we say in general. These common day to day utterances, platitutes if you will, concerned with religion are in my view a reinforcing factor for religion and should best be avoided.

Do you think this is a valid point?

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A new study by archaeologists at the University of York challenges evolutionary theories behind the development of our earliest ancestors from tree dwelling quadrupeds to upright bipeds capable of walking and scrambling.

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There is still some tweaking going on with the layout and functionality.  Please leave your comments below with any suggestions or issues you find. 

On another note, the feature which allowed you to view all comments by a particular user is back.  It was turning for a brief time due to a security issue that needed to be patched.

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University of Delaware researchers are developing sensors that they hope will allow real-time, in situ detection of water and air pollutants in an inexpensive and environmentally friendly manner.

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Pope Francis’s pronouncement that God has “redeemed all of us … even the atheists” Wednesday surprised both believers and nonbelievers around the world, who are used to stricter edicts from the Catholic church. It also got us wondering where the world’s atheists live.

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