ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 179

Small, furry and powerful: are mouse lemurs the next big thing in genetics?

By Leslie Roberts Onja is struggling tonight — her hands keep slipping off a miniature grip bar used to measure her strength. “Come on, you can do better,” coos Zeph Pendleton, who is gently supporting the mouse lemur as she tries to get a firm hold. Finally, the animal gets her fingers around the bar …

Secularism is on the rise, but Americans are still finding community and purpose in spirituality

By Karen Turner American secularism is on the rise. Twenty-four percent of Americans don’t affiliate with any religion, according to a 2016 Public Religion Research Institute survey, which is up 8 percentage points in the past five years. Nowhere is the trend away from religion greater than in younger generations, where more than a third of …

New York, epicenter of measles outbreak, bans religious exemptions for vaccines

By Eli Rosenberg New York officially ended religious exemptions for school vaccines Thursday as the state grapples with its largest measles outbreak in years. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) signed the legislation into law Thursday evening after it passed in the state’s Senate and Assembly, ending years of gridlock over the issue. “We’re putting science …

Jessica Biel Comes Out as Anti-Vaxx Activist, Joins Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Lobby Against CA Vaccination Bill

By Tarpley Hitt On Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental activist whose recent work has focused increasingly on baseless allegations that vaccines are unsafe and can injure a statistically minuscule population of “medically fragile” children, appeared at the California State Assembly beside an unlikely scene partner: actress Jessica Biel. In a series of Instagram posts, first reported in Jezebel by …

Southern Baptists face sex abuse crisis with litany of lament

By Adelle M. Banks BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) — The last session of the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention opened with thousands of Baptists lamenting for what their president, J.D. Greear, labeled a crisis of sexual abuse. Following along on large screens around the Legacy Arena, women, men, pastors, lay people and survivors took …

These lawmakers supported abortion rights. A bishop barred them from Communion.

By Reis Thebault John Cullerton grew up in the church. Long before the Illinois Democrat became one of the most powerful politicians in the state, before his party picked him to be president of the Senate, he attended Catholic school. A lot of it. Grammar school, high school, college, law school. Then he sent his …

The Nuns Are Back Before the Supreme Court, and They’re Trying to Kill the Birth Control Benefit for Good

By Jessica Mason Pieklo Conservatives have spent the better part of a decade arguing the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit, which provides insurance coverage for a host of contraception without additional cost or co-pay, violates religious freedom principles. Those efforts have had mixed results. Despite two turns before the U.S. Supreme Court, dozens of …

Out of Their Eggs, Into the Sky: How Baby Pterosaurs May Have Taken Flight

By Cara Giaimo Modern nature teaches us that flying isn’t child’s play. Newborn birds spend their early days in the nest, and bat pups don’t take off for weeks on end, often requiring prodding from their mothers. But what about baby pterosaurs? Some researchers think the young of these flying reptiles that lived in the time of the …

Weird ‘Anomaly’ at the Moon’s South Pole May Be a Metal Asteroid’s Grave

By Meghan Bartels There’s something very weird, and very dense, under the surface of the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, new research suggests. That unexpectedly massive patch may represent the buried remains of an asteroid that crashed into the moon’s surface and formed that basin in the first place. That new hypothesis is based on data from …

U.S. bishops will consider several actions for combating sex abuse. But will Pope Francis get in the way again?

By Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein On the first day of a high-pressure meeting for the Catholic Church in the United States, the bishops who lead the church debated questions about whether the church’s approach to combating sexual abuse will be adequate. “We find ourselves at a turning point, a critical moment in our history which …