ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 200

Mormon Church to allow baptisms, blessings for children of LGBT parents, reversing 2015 policy

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey Children of LGBT parents can now be blessed or baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, church officials declared in a new policy on Thursday, dramatically reversing a 2015 decision to exclude those children from the rituals until they were 18. The church will also update its handbook for leaders, …

Religious refusal bill that LGBT community calls ‘license to discriminate’ approved by Texas Senate

By Lauren McGaughy Updated at 2:30 p.m. April 3, 2019, with details of the Texas Senate’s final vote, at 3:55 p.m. with a statement from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and at 4:35 p.m. with a statement from Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo. AUSTIN — The Texas Senate has approved a bill that would give legal cover to counselors, attorneys and other …

ND Lawmaker “Saddened” By Hindu Invocation That Didn’t Honor “The One True God”

By Hemant Mehta Every time Rajan Zed delivers an invocation, it seems there’s drama. For more than a decade the Hindu “statesman” has been giving invocations everywhere he can and conservatives always respond in the worst possible ways. In 2007, when he spoke in front of the U.S. Senate, he had hecklers. A few years ago, in front …

Gravitational-wave hunt restarts — with a quantum boost

By Davide Castelvecchi The hunt for gravitational waves is on again — this time assisted by the quirks of quantum mechanics. Three massive detectors — the two in the United States called LIGO and one in Italy known as Virgo — officially resumed collecting data on 1 April, after a 19-month shutdown for upgrades. Thanks in part to a quantum phenomenon …

‘I cut people,’ a megachurch pastor threatened as she preached. Her target? The local newspaper.

By Michael Brice-Saddler Hope Carpenter was met with resounding applause before her monologue at Relentless Church in Greenville, S.C., on Sunday. The crowd was excited about their guest pastor — after all, she’d led the congregation with her husband for nearly three decades before they moved their show to a church in San Jose last year. In …

Catholic Bishops Fund Anti-Choice ‘Clinics’ Set to Receive Trump Title X Funding

By Patricia Miller You would think that the crisis over clerical abuse roiling the Catholic Church for the past few years would be an “all hands on deck” moment in terms of the resources and attention of the Catholic hierarchy. You would also think that given the revelations about predatory behavior reaching to the very …

Most of the Arctic’s ‘Baby Sea Ice’ Melts Before It Leaves the Nursery. And That’s a Problem.

By Stephanie Pappas Sea ice born in the shallow seas off Russia rarely makes it out of its nursery before succumbing to melt. New research finds that two decades ago, half of the sea ice formed near the Arctic coast of Russia went on a windblown journey through the Arctic Ocean and out via the Fram Strait …

Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

By Simon L. Lewis, Charlotte E. Wheeler, Edward T. A. Mitchard, & Alexander Koch Keeping global warming below 1.5 °C to avoid dangerous climate change1requires the removal of vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as drastic cuts in emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that around 730 billion tonnes …

Civil rights experts question Supreme Court execution rulings

By Aysha Khan Last week, the Supreme Court ruled to block Texas’ planned execution of Patrick Murphy, a Buddhist inmate, because he was not allowed to have his Buddhist chaplain in the execution chamber. While religious freedom advocates applauded the move, some say the decision also left them perplexed. Just a month earlier, the Supreme …

Humanist Delivers Invocation in AZ Senate: “Be the Curators of Inspiration”

By Hemant Mehta Yesterday morning, Robert Peoples of the Affinis Humanity Coalition delivered a secular invocation before the Arizona State Senate as a guest of State Senator Andrea Dalessandro and the Secular Coalition for Arizona. If you want to see how someone can be inspirational without talking about God, you have to check this out. Thank you for the introduction and welcoming …