Volume 126 Issue 2 March/April 2011

Editorial: Big books: Bibles, doubt and morality without God
Editorial: Creating confusion: Far from being an atheist straw man, Biblical fundamentalism poses a real threat to British schools

Cover Story

Things that go bump in the night: Why do people think they can see ghosts, ghoulies and gods? Richard Wiseman explains

Is it racist to criticise religion?: As the Conservative chair Sayeeda Warsi suggests Islamophobia has become acceptable, Paul Sims assesses the boundaries of free speech
What I owe the library: We can't do without our private places to read and think, says novelist Philip Pullman

Free to teach creationism?: Under the government's education reforms, 15 per cent of groups applying to open academies are religious. How would those schools handle evolution? James Gray investigates
Mortal fear? Laurie Taylor interviews Lewis Wolpert: Do we have to die? Biologist Lewis Wolpert talks to Laurie Taylor about the mysteries of ageing
Kitchen sink drama: On International Women's Day Sally Feldman asks is it a coincidence that women are being driven back into the home?
Natural history of the soul: Caspar Melville meets the man who thinks that spirituality is essential to consciousness, and science can tell us why
Rhyme & reason: 200 years ago Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Oxford for publishing ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. Jonathan Rée reassesses the romantic poet’s rationalism
Count yourself out: Winston Fletcher warns that the question asking your religion, included again in this year’s census, is designed to distort
Faultline: From the Philippines to West Africa the tenth parallel, the line of latitude 700 miles north of the equator, is a geographical frontline between Christianity and Islam. Eliza Griswold has researched the resulting conflict for seven years. This is her dispatch from Nigeria
The god confusion: In trying to make religion sound more logical and scientific, are educated Indians actually having a crisis of faith? asks Angela Saini

Endgame: Miles of sex: Laurie Taylor talks dirty
New Humanist Cartoons: A selection of cartoons from the current issue
Quiz: No eggs/pence spared: Break a few eggs and price up an omelette with quizmaster Chris Maslanka
Chown's Cosmos: Cosmic Accelerator: Six hundred million light years away, the ‘active galaxy’ Cygnus A fires huge quantities of particles at unimaginable speeds, finds Marcus Chown

Blood and guts: Dublin Science Gallery’s latest exhibition Visceral crosses the boundaries between art and biology. Owen Hatherley pays a stomach-churning visit

Book review: Ours Are The Streets by Sunjeev Sahota: Jake Wallis Simons isn't blown away by a debut novelist's take on homegrown radicalism
Book review: Justice for Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin: Conor Gearty takes a tour round Ronald Dworkin's remarkable mind
Book review: 33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey: Andrew Mueller has fun with an intelligent history of protest songs
Book review: The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene: Brian Green's dizzying new book offers a window onto the cutting edge of theoretical physics. Marcus Chown goes in search of the multiverse
Book review: The Immortalisation Commission by John Gray: Owen Hatherley tires of the same old song