(A man jogs past a sign, which replaces traditional Christmas displays showing the nativity scene, along Ocean Avenue at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California December 12, 2011. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok )

Atheists, humanists and freethinkers face widespread discrimination around the world with expression of their views criminalized and subject in some countries to capital punishment, the United Nations was told on Monday.

In a document for consideration by the world body’s Human Rights Council, a global organization linking people who reject religion said atheism was banned by law in a number of states where people were forced to officially adopt a faith.

“Extensive discrimination by governments against atheists, humanists and the non-religious occurs worldwide,” declared the grouping, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) which has some 120 member bodies in 45 countries.

In Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan “atheists can face the death penalty on the grounds of their belief” although this was in violation of U.N. human rights accords, the IHEU said.

Further, in several others legal measures “effectively criminalize atheism (and) the expression and manifestation of atheist beliefs” or lead to systematic discrimination against freethinkers, the document declared.

It was submitted to the rights council as it opened its annual Spring session against a background of new efforts in the U.N. by Muslim countries to obtain a world ban on denigration of religion, especially what they call “Islamophobia”.

Three of the states with legislation providing for death for blasphemy against Islam, a charge which can be applied to atheists who publicly reveal their ideas, are on the council – Pakistan, Mauritania and Maldives.

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(A computer screen is pictured before a scientific seminar to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, near Geneva July 4, 2012. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)

Scientists at Europe’s CERN research center say they may be able to definitively announce at a conference next March that they had discovered the elusive Higgs boson.

But they dismissed suggestions circulating widely on blogs and even in some science journals that instead of just one type of the elementary particle they might have found a pair.

CERN researchers said in July they had found what appeared to be the particle that gives mass to matter, as imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs. But they stopped short of saying for sure it was the Higgs boson, dubbed the “God particle” for its role in turning the Big Bang into a living universe, pending further research.

“The latest data we have on this thing we have been watching for the past few months show that it is not simply ‘like a Higgs’ but is very like a Higgs,” said Oliver Buechmuller of the CMS team at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

“The way things are going, by the Moriond meeting we may be able to stop calling it Higgs-like and finally say it is the Higgs,” he told Reuters, referring to the annual gathering which will take place at the Italian Alpine resort of La Thuile, 120 kilometers (75 miles) from CERN, on March 2-9.

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(British atheist author Richard Dawkins stands on a bus at the launch of an atheist advertising campaign, in London January 6, 2009.  REUTERS/Andrew Winning )

Atheists and other religious skeptics suffer persecution or discrimination in many parts of the world and in at least seven nations can be executed if their beliefs become known, according to a report issued on Monday.

The study, from the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), showed that “unbelievers” in Islamic countries face the most severe – sometimes brutal – treatment at the hands of the state and adherents of the official religion.

But it also points to policies in some European countries and the United States which favor the religious and their organizations and treat atheists and humanists as outsiders.

The report, “Freedom of Thought 2012″, said “there are laws that deny atheists’ right to exist, curtail their freedom of belief and expression, revoke their right to citizenship, restrict their right to marry.”

Other laws “obstruct their access to public education, prohibit them from holding public office, prevent them from working for the state, criminalize their criticism of religion, and execute them for leaving the religion of their parents.”

The report was welcomed by Heiner Bielefeldt, United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, who said in a brief introduction there was little awareness that atheists were covered by global human rights agreements.

The IHEU – which links over 120 humanist, atheist and secular organizations in more than 40 countries – said it was issuing the report to mark the U.N.’s Human Rights Day on Monday.

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(Paul Kurtz, 19 October 2006/Center for Inquiry)

Paul Kurtz, a leading U.S. philosopher who devoted his life to fighting prejudice against people who reject belief in a god and promoting a non-religious stance in life, has died at the age of 86.

The secular humanist Center for Inquiry (CFI), which he founded in 1991, said the one-time SUNY Buffalo university professor – who as a young soldier helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 – died in Amherst, New York, at the weekend.

“He was one of the most influential figures in the humanist and skeptical movements from the late 1960s through the first decade of the 21st century,” said an obituary issued by CFI -which he had left over a succession dispute in 2010.

Kurtz was especially important for founding in 1969 the not-for-profit publishing house Prometheus Books that issues works critical of religion that many other publishers are reluctant to handle. In recent years, the U.S.-based Prometheus has brushed aside threats to publish studies on the origins of Islam that question the traditional history of the faith, and on the situation of atheists and agnostics in Muslim countries.

Kurtz, born into a New York Jewish family in 1925, wrote or edited more than 50 books on ethics without religion, critiques of religion and the paranormal, and on skepticism, or the challenging of received wisdom. When receiving a lifetime award for his work in 2007, he declared: “I am a secular humanist because I am not religious. I draw my inspiration not from religion or spirituality but from science, ethics, philosophy and the arts.”

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(Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (R) and his wife Jane wave to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip after a Diamond Jubilee multi-faith reception at Lambeth Palace in central London February 15, 2012. REUTERS/Toby Melville)

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the global Anglican communion, has stepped into a row which is flaring at the U.N. Human Rights Council over the persecution of gays and lesbians.

Williams, who has faced strong opposition from parts of his own church especially in Africa for his stance on gays, did not directly refer to the current controversy at the Council, according to the text of a speech prepared for delivery at the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC).

However, he said on Tuesday that laws against sexual minorities were equivalent to racism, and warned that legal regulation of consensual sexual conduct “can be both unworkable and open to appalling abuse – intimidation and blackmail.”

A panel of the U.N. rights body will consider action in Geneva on Wednesday aimed at halting persecution of gays and lesbians around the world, despite fierce condemnation from Muslim and some African countries.

A report prepared for the gathering by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says homosexuals and bisexuals face execution in at least five countries and 76 nations had laws criminalizing gay sex.

They also accounted disproportionately for torture cases in jails around the globe, said the report which was mandated by a council resolution backed by Western and a range of developing states that was passed narrowly last June.

But in a statement in advance of the panel, Pakistan said the 57-nation Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) opposed the convening of the panel and would not accept any recommendations that it might issue.

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Archbishop of Canterbury steps into U.N. gays row | Reuters.

(A scientist gestures in front of pictures of the first successful collisions at full power at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experience control room of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, near Geneva March 30, 2010. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse )

“We don’t call it the ‘God particle’, it’s just the media that do that,” a senior U.S. scientist politely told an interviewer on a major European radio station on Tuesday.

“Well, I am the from the media and I’m going to continue calling it that,” said the journalist – and continued to do so.

The exchange, as physicists at the CERN research centre near Geneva were preparing to announce the latest news from their long and frustrating search for the Higgs boson, illustrated sharply how science and the popular media are not always a good mix.

“I hate that ‘God particle’ term,” said Pauline Gagnon, a Canadian member of CERN’s ATLAS team of so-called “Higgs hunters” – an epithet they do not reject.

“The Higgs is not endowed with any religious meaning. It is ridiculous to call it that,” she told Reuters at a news conference after her colleagues revealed growing evidence, albeit not yet proof, of the particle’s existence.

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(A graphic showing a collision at full power is pictured at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experience control room of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, near Geneva March 30, 2010. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)

International scientists said on Tuesday they had found signs of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle dubbed the “God particle” that is believed to have played a vital role in the creation of the universe after the Big Bang. Scientists at the CERN physics research centre near Geneva said, however, they had found no conclusive proof of the existence of the particle which, according to prevailing theories of physics, gives everything in the universe its mass.

“If the Higgs observation is confirmed…this really will be one of the discoveries of the century,” said Themis Bowcock, a professor of particle physics at Britain’s Liverpool University. “Physicists will have uncovered a keystone in the makeup of the Universe…whose influence we see and feel every day of our lives.”

Physicists think this subatomic speck of matter, if it is ever found, could explain the mysterious code at the origin of the physical world. To know this would be to “know the mind of God,” as Einstein wanted to do.  The physicist who launched the hunt for this elusive particle doesn’t like its nickname. “It embarrasses me,” Peter Higgs has said. “Although I am not a believer myself, it’s a misuse of terminology that might offend some people.”

The leaders of two experiments, ALTAS and CMS, revealed their findings to a packed seminar at CERN, where they have tried to find traces of the elusive boson by smashing particles together in the Large Hadron Collider at high speed. “Both experiments have the signals pointing in essentially the same direction,” said Oliver Buchmueller, senior physicist on CMS. “It seems that both Atlas and us have found the signals are at the same mass level. That is obviously very important.”

Fabiola Gianotti, the scientist in charge of the ATLAS experiment, said ATLAS had narrowed the search to a signal centered at around 126 GeV (Giga electron volts), which would be compatible with the expected strength of a Standard Model Higgs. “It is too early” for final conclusions, she said. “More studies and more data are needed. The next few months will be very exciting…I don’t know what the conclusions will be.”

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(Swiss Freethinkers party candidate Andreas Kyriacou holds a campaign flyer downtown Zurich, October 10, 2011/Christian Hartmann)

When Switzerland goes to the polls to elect a new parliament later this month, voters in Zurich will for the first time in the country’s history have the chance to cast their ballot for a slate of Freethinkers.

“We decided we had to stand up and tell our politicians that it’s time they recognised that there are a lot of non-religious people in their electorate,” says 42-year-old Andreas Kyriacou, who heads the list. “We, and probably a lot of Swiss people who have never thought about humanism or atheism, are tired of the influence the churches and religion still exert in this country,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

Kyriacou, a management consultant, was speaking at a “Denkfest”, or “Think Festival,” that the Swiss Freethinkers Association held in Zurich last month, attracting scientists, philosophers and even comedians from around the world.

The Swiss Freethinkers — a term that covers atheists, agnostics, secularists, rationalists, sceptics and just plain critics of religion — argue that the country’s political parties and leaders run scared of religious voters. “There is a group for Bible study in our parliament, but no cross-party humanist group, though we know many of the deputies are non-believers,” he says. “On right and left, they prefer to keep their heads down.”

And Kyriacou points to the failure of politicians to take a stand on social issues like assisted suicide and abortion, where the Catholic Church in particular has strong views, and on the powerful place of religion in education in parts of the country.

His stance — as measured by comments at other conferences around Europe over the summer — reflects growing determination among humanists and atheists on all five continents to make themselves more visible and their influence felt.

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(A technician walks under the core magnet of part of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva where scientists are searching for the Higgs boson/Denis Balibouse)

Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe have indicated they were coming to accept it might not exist after all. But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed “new physics” to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The CERN research centre, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been the focus of the search, said on Monday it had reported to a conference in Mumbai that possible signs of the Higgs noted last month were now seen as less significant. A number of scientists from the centre went on to make comments that raised the possibility that the mystery particle might not exist.

The Higgs boson is posited to be the agent that gave mass and energy to matter just after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. It has been dubbed the “God particle” because understanding how mass was created would amount to understanding “the mind of God,” as Albert Einstein put it.

“Whatever the final verdict on Higgs, we are now living in very exciting times for all involved in the quest for new physics,” Guido Tonelli, from one of the two LHC detectors chasing the Higgs, said as the new observations were announced.

CERN’s statement said new results, which updated findings that caused excitement at another scientific gathering in Grenoble last month, “show that the elusive Higgs particle, if it exists, is running out of places to hide.”

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(Evangelical pastor Marcos Pereira da Silva embraces a prisoner as his missionaries stand by at the 52nd Police Station jail in Nova Iguacu, near Rio de Janeiro, which they visited on October 29, 2009 to evangelize prisoners/Ricardo Moraes )

A coalition representing most Christian churches around the world launched a rule book on Tuesday for spreading their faith that aims to reduce tensions among themselves and with followers of other faiths. The pioneering code of conduct, under negotiation for five years, was unveiled by the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Vatican and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), which together claim to represent over 90 percent of Christianity.

It reaffirms their right to seek converts but also urges them to abandon “inappropriate methods of exercising mission by resorting to deception and coercive means”, saying that such behaviour “betrays the Gospel and may cause suffering to others”. Click here for the PDF text of the guidelines.

Christian missionaries have long been accused of offering money, food, or other goods to win converts in poor countries, either from other faiths or from rival churches. Tensions have also risen in recent decades as evangelical Protestants have stepped up efforts to convert Muslims, which is a capital offence in some Islamic countries. This also prompts retaliation against local Christians who do not seek converts.

“In spite of our divisions, we Christians have the duty to proclaim our faith without any compromise,” said Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican’s department for interfaith dialogue. “Christian witness is facing new challenges which are putting accepted practices in question and are weakening our well-established ways of doing things. In a word, the situation is requiring Christian communities to consider, in a new way, how best to proclaim the Christian faith.”

“As our shared history has taught us, a lack of prudence and respect for others, leading to inappropriate means of proclamation of Good News, unavaoidably brings religious tensions, even violence, and the loss of human life,” he added.

WEA Secretary General Geoff Tunnicliffe said the code, entitled “Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World,” would be “a great resource” for Christians lobbying against anti-conversion laws passed in countries such as India. “Missionary zeal, as a sign of obedience to the gospel of Jesus, has always been a cornerstone of belief for evangelicals and so it is a special privilege to have the opportunity to work with these colleagues on such a document,” he said. “It is our hope that with this text we will learn together to practice our obedience better – to witness more and to be more faithful to Christ in our witnessing.”

In recent years, there have been increasing attacks on local Christian churches seen as the focus for conversion activity — in Pakistan, Egypt, India, Indonesia and other countries — in which many Christian believers have died.

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