ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 188

Mike Pence’s speech to Christian college graduates furthers ‘evangelical persecution complex’

By Eugene Scott Commencement ceremonies are usually opportunities for college graduates to hear a successful person share wisdom and counsel on how to succeed in a world that many young adults find overwhelming. While Vice President Pence may have attempted to do just that during his Saturday speech to graduates of Liberty University, one of …

Apollo rocks showed how the moon was made, and now they’re about to solve more mysteries

By Sarah Kaplan The first person to set foot on the moon had one last task before he came home. Neil Armstrong needed to pick up rocks — as many as he could carry, as interesting as he could find. The material he collected would constitute humanity’s first samples taken from another world. With less …

Global Warming: How Hot, Exactly, Is it Going to Get?

By Kate Marvel Imagine spending your whole career working on a question to which you don’t want to know the answer. We know that greenhouse gas emissions can and do warm the planet, but we don’t know one very basic thing: how hot, exactly, is it going to get? The main reason for this, of …

Catholic scandals prompt some women who had relationships with priests to ponder whether they, too, were abused

By Marisa Iati He was a 24-year-old seminarian from a blue-collar family. She was an idealistic 19-year-old psychology student. He wanted to teach. She wanted to be a missionary. They hung out at the Rathskeller, a now-defunct bar at Mount St. Mary’s College, to drink draft beer and eat soft pretzels. When Theresa Engelhardt became …

Cory Booker: Offering Only Thoughts and Prayers After Shootings is “Bullshit”

By Hemant Mehta During an interview for CNN’s The Axe Files With David Axelrod, Democratic senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker argued that gun reform needed to be taken more seriously because the usual Republican reaction of offering nothing more than thoughts and prayers was — and he said this — “bullshit.” “When I’m President of the United States, I’m …

New water cycle on Mars discovered

by Max Planck Society Approximately every two Earth years, when it is summer on the southern hemisphere of Mars, a window opens: Only in this season can water vapor efficiently rise from the lower into the upper Martian atmosphere. There, winds carry the rare gas to the north pole. While part of the water vapor …

How the US Veered Off the Path to Measles Elimination

By Yasemin Saplakoglu Nearly two decades ago, measles was eliminated from the U.S. But the highly contagious disease is back, due in part to anti-vaccine ideologies. Since January,there have been more than 760 cases of measles in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, the country, once having crossed the “finish line” on …

A Record 60% of Americans Say They Could Vote for an Atheist President

By Hemant Mehta Every few years, Gallup asks Americans a version of this question: “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be _____, would you vote for that person?” Just about every time they’ve asked that question, “atheist” has been at the bottom of the list. (Atheists are unelectable! the …

Asia Bibi happy to be in Canada but ‘very tired’ after blasphemy ordeal, says friend

By John Longhurst When he heard that Asia Bibi — the Pakistani Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy — was on her way to Canada, Nadeem Bhatti could hardly believe it. “We had been told three or four times she was going to be leaving, but it never turned out,” said Bhatti, a friend of the …

A conservative Christian group is pushing Bible classes in public schools nationwide — and it’s working

By Julie Zauzmer GLASGOW, Ky. — Todd Steenbergen leads worship services in church sometimes, but today he was preaching in a different venue: the public-school classroom where he teaches. “A lot of people will look at the Beatitudes and glean some wisdom from them,” he told the roomful of students, pointing toward the famous blessings he …