ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 198

Texas House Debates Bill Giving the Death Penalty to Women Who Have Abortions

By Hemant Mehta Texas Republican State Rep. Tony Tinderholt is the primary author of a bill, HB 896, that would classify abortion as a homicide. Women who have abortions could theoretically be punished with the death penalty… so the “pro-life” side here wants to kill women to save an unborn fetus. Tinderholt pushed a similar bill in 2017 (that thankfully …

The Supreme Court Considers Giving Conservative Christians a License to Discriminate…Again

By Jessica Mason Pieklo It’s fair to say last summer’s decision inMasterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission turned out to be kind of a dud, and certainly not the win conservative evangelicals had hoped it would be. The case involved a challenge by Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who had challenged the state’s public accommodation …

In Los Angeles, a house for all heretics

By Heather Adams With dozens of hymnals in her home, Bobbie Kirkhart can often be heard singing sacred songs to herself. But listen closely and you’ll likely notice she’s changed a word or two. Kirkhart, 75, sees no reason she should abandon the music she grew up with, even if she has left her faith …

LDS Leaders Owe Repentance and Apology for Cruelty to LGBTQ People and Their Children

By Holly Welker The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught me the concept of stewardship, of being entrusted to nurture, protect, and ensure the well-being of something you don’t own. Stewardship means you’re responsible both to the ones who entrusted you and to the beings or things you oversee. In LDS belief, parents …

Mike Huckabee claims LGBTQ rights are the ‘greatest threat’ to America

By Alex Bollinger Former Arkansas governor, repeat Republican presidential candidate, Fox News host, and Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee said that the biggest threat to “biblical principles” today is LGBTQ equality Moreover, he said that it’s Christianity’s fault that those dastardly LGBTQ people are getting so much acceptance. “The biggest threat to biblical principles today is …

Black Hole Picture Revealed for the First Time

By Dennis Overbye Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had seen the unseeable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it. “We’ve exposed a part of our universe we’ve never seen before,” said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at Harvard University who directed the effort …

Something on Mars Is Producing Gas Usually Made by Living Things on Earth

By Kenneth Chang Methane gas periodically wafts into the atmosphere of Mars; that notion, once considered implausible and perplexing, is now widely accepted by planetary scientists. Why the methane is there is still a bewildering mystery. It may even point to present-day Martian microbes living in the rocks below the surface. In Nature Geoscience on Monday, …

Memphis charter schools respond to legal threat over Catholic Church’s morality clause

By Jennifer Pignolet A national group that advocates for the separation of church and state in schools is threatening legal action over a morality clause in a lease agreement between a group of Memphis charter schools and the Catholic Church. The clause, agreed to by charter schools operating on Catholic Church property, would prohibit any …

Journal Claims Russian Troops Have Psychic Powers

By Kyle Mizokami An article in an official army periodical is being ridiculed for claiming that the Russian military has psychic abilities and has used them in wartime. The article makes big claims but outside Russian critics claim it’s all nonsense and that the article should never have appeared in a Russian military publication. The …

The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy

By Edward Wong When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sat down for an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network in a hotel in Jerusalem earlier this month, he made a remark that was perhaps the most revelatory of any in his nearly one year in office. An evangelical Christian, Mr. Pompeo had just returned from tours of …