The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the "meaning" of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet—the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what "he" demands of us—from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction—itself composed of mutually warring factions—has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude "belief" from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.

Boris Yeltsin was always good for a laugh, which is probably why on the occasion of his death people outside of Russia are not calling him words like scum and monster, but instead recalling him fondly, with a smile, as one would a retarded nephew who could always be counted on to pull his pants down at Thanksgiving dinner.

For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for ''life in the universe.''

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a ''red dwarf,'' is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

Keith Richards recently revealed that after his father passed away he even snorted his ashes.

NME reports that in a recent interview with The Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards, the wacky rocker admitted that he once snorted a line of his own father's ashes. In the exclusive interview, which will be in this week's edition of NME magazine, Keith Richards, who is famous for his superhuman ability to consume massive amounts of drugs over the years and still be alive, revealed that he wanted to give his old man a unique send off after his cremation. Richards elabroated, "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow." If you are wondering what his father would have thought of Keith's behavior if he was still alive, Richards reveals, "My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."