ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 158

Bangladesh: Court removes ‘virgin’ word from marriage form

By the BBC Women in Bangladesh are no longer required to declare if they are virgins on marriage registration forms, the country’s top court has ruled. The high court ordered that “virgin” be replaced with “unmarried”. The other two options on the form – “widow” and “divorced” – remain unchanged. Women’s rights groups – who …

Despite Religious Opposition, Edmonton Moves to Ban Conversion Therapy

By Val Wilde Following the example of their northwestern neighbor, St. Albert, the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, is taking steps to ban the practice of conversion therapy. Predictably, some Edmonton faith groups are claiming that the ban will infringe upon their freedom to practice their religion. The Edmonton City Council listened to testimony on Tuesday both for and against …

How the female body became the scapegoat for white evangelicals

By Andrea Lucado Children have died at the border, the mass shooting count since Sandy Hook is up to 2,197, white nationalism is terrorizing the country, and crowds are breaking into disturbing chants at Trump rallies. Still, one subset of Protestant, conservative Christianity is pleased with President Trump’s first term: white evangelicals. At the center of their support? …

Possible Detection of a Black Hole So Big It ‘Should Not Exist’

By Natalie Wolchover Black hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible. “The prediction is no black holes, not even a few” in this mass range, wrote Stan Woosley, an …

The False Promise of Fish Oil Supplements

By R. Preston Mason Every 38 seconds, someone in the U.S. dies from cardiovascular disease. Even more worrisome: deaths from cardiovascular disease have been rising dramatically since 2011 following years of decline. Strokes, heart attacks and other cardiovascular events cause great suffering and are an enormous health care burden. These statistics are particularly troubling because each month, approximately 19 …

Rare 3.8-million-year-old skull recasts origins of iconic ‘Lucy’ fossil

By Colin Barras An ancient face is shedding new light on our earliest ancestors. Archaeologists have discovered a 3.8-million-year-old hominin skull in Ethiopia — a rare and remarkably complete specimen that could change what we know about the origins of one of humanity’s most famous ancestors, Lucy. The researchers who discovered the skull say it …

The Religious Motto That Isn’t Religious: How ‘In God We Trust’ Remains Constitutional [Part 2]

By Andrew L. Seidel Under Donald Trump, Christian hypocrisy has been making headlines. White evangelicals, who have proclaimed their moral superiority for decades, now support an unethical, corrupt, twice-divorced, thrice-married, adulterer. (Here on RD the Reverend Daniel Schultz recently suggested that it isn’t hypocrisy, but sadism that’s to blame for white evangelical enthusiasm for the president, …

One nation under God, even if you don’t want to be

By Katelyn Burns Earlier this summer, a string of libraries across the country were forced to cancel an event called Drag Queen Story Hour, a program in which drag queens are dispatched to schools, libraries, and bookstores to read to children. Obsessive coverage from conservative news outlets throughout this year have sparked vehement religious protests …

Shock and thaw? Earth’s oldest asteroid impact may have helped lift the planet out of a deep freeze

By Eric Hand Barlangi Rock, an ancient hill in the outback of Western Australia, is dimpled by the quarries of Aboriginal people who chiseled its fine-grained rocks into sharp tools. Now, geologists have added a much deeper layer of history to those rocks by showing they were forged 2.229 billion years ago, when an asteroid …

The Story of ‘In God We Trust,’ Our Christian Nationalist Motto [Part 1]

By Andrew L. Seidel How did “In God We Trust” get stamped on the currency of a country with a godless Constitution? How did a secular nation get a religious national motto? The story is not one of national unity, but of exploitation. It does not begin, as so many claim, with the American founding, …