By Steve Mayes, The Oregonian

OREGON CITY – A Clackamas County jury spent one hour deliberating Tuesday before unanimously finding an Oregon City couple guilty of felony criminal mistreatment for treating their infant daughter with faith-healing rather than taking her to a doctor

Timothy and Rebecca Wyland face up to five years in prison but are likely to receive probation and possibly some time in jail. They will be sentenced June 24.

As the verdict was read, Timothy Wyland slipped his arm around his wife's waist, and the couple stoically faced the judge. The Wylands made no comment after the proceedings. They walked out of the courtroom surrounded by supporters from their church, some of them sobbing.

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Earlier this week, a disabled gay couple were kicked out of a public pool in Hazard, Kentucky. A staff member at the Hazard Pavilion recreation center told the two men and their aids that they needed to leave because "'gay people' weren't allowed to swim there." And why not? Apparently, because "it's in the Bible."

The two men, who are developmentally and intellectually disabled, arrived at the pool accompanied by staff from Mending Hearts Inc. The organization provides support for people with certain disabilities and helps guide their behavior in public. "Neither of these young men was exhibiting inappropriate public behavior as witnessed by their direct support staff," said Julia Oiler Spiegel of the Kentucky Equality Federation.

Shirlyn Perkins, Mending Hearts' Executive Director, told the Kentucky Equality Federation that "Pavilion staff immediately entered the pool area and asked my clients and their staff to leave the Pavilion."

"My staff asked The Pavilion staff why they were being asked to leave, and they were informed that 'gay people' weren't allowed to swim there. [They] told this man that what he was trying to do was discrimination," Perkins continued. "The man stated that what he was doing was in the Bible and he could do it. My staff continued to argue with this man, but was ultimately forced to leave."

The Kentucky Equality Federation called the incident "completely outrageous." "The Pavilion is owned by the City of Hazard and paid for by our tax dollars," said Jordan Palmer, the organization's president. "[Religion] has no place in government." The Advocate reports that Palmer's group and others are planning to protest at the Pavilion and Hazard City Hall.

"My clients, whom already feel ridiculed and different, left the city-owned facility crying and embarrassed for trying to participate in 'normal' activities that everyday 'normal' people do," Perkins said of the incident.

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By Greta Christina, AlterNet

Do atheists have better sex? Yes. According to science, that is -- and more specifically, according to the recently released "Sex and Secularism" study.

In January 2011, organizational psychologist Darrel Ray, Ed.D. (psychologist for 30 years and author of The God Virus as well as two books on psychology) and Amanda Brown (undergraduate at Kansas University, focused on sexuality and sex therapy) conducted a sex survey of over 14,500 people -- atheists, agnostics, and other people in the secular community. The survey was looking at religion, atheism, and sex: how religion affects sex, how leaving religion affects sex, whether lifelong atheists feel differently about sex than people who have recently deconverted, and so on. The report -- "Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion?" -- is on the Internet, and if you want all 46 pages of the naughty details, including the charts and graphs and personal stories, you can download it free (you just need to register on the site).

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More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea – one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery – for "spiritual atheist" scientists.

The research will be published in the June issue of Sociology of Religion.

Through in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at elite universities, the Rice researchers found that 72 of the scientists said they have a spirituality that is consistent with science, although they are not formally religious.

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By Nigel Barber, via Psychology Today

Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries, particularly the social democracies of Europe. In underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists. Atheism is thus a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Why do modern conditions produce atheism?

First, as to the distribution of atheism in the world, a clear pattern can be discerned. In sub-Saharan Africa there is almost no atheism (Zuckerman, 2007). Belief in God declines in more developed countries and is concentrated in Europe in countries such as Sweden (64% nonbelievers), Denmark (48%), France (44%) and Germany (42%). In contrast, the incidence of atheism in most sub-Saharan countries is below 1%.

The question of why economically developed countries turn to atheism has been batted around by anthropologists for about eighty years. Anthropologist James Fraser proposed that scientific prediction and control of nature supplants religion as a means of controlling uncertainty in our lives. This hunch is supported by data showing that the more educated countries have higher levels of non belief and there are strong correlations between atheism and intelligence (see my earlier post on this).

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