ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 209

WI Supreme Court Candidate Suddenly Reverses Church/State Separation Position

By Hemant Mehta Brian Hagedorn, a candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, once wrote on a blog that legalizing homosexual acts would lead to legal bestiality. The evangelical Christian also called Planned Parenthood a “wicked organization” that cared more about “killing babies” than “helping women.” (The title of that post? “Another reason why I hate Planned …

Israeli Moon Lander Snaps Epic Space Selfie with a Full Earth

By Mike Wall Israel’s first lunar lander has notched another important milestone — its first in-space selfie. The newly released photo shows the robotic lander, known as Beresheet, looking back at Earth from a distance of 23,363.5 miles (37,600 kilometers). “In the photo of Earth, taken during a slow spin of the spacecraft, Australia is clearly …

Senate panel warns of dangers of anti-vaccine movement

By Lena H. Sun A Senate panel warned lawmakers Tuesday about the dangers of false information about vaccines and called for a national campaign, similar to the one against smoking, to counter the public health threat posed by anti-vaccine groups. Virtually all the witnesses and members of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, …

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case on Church Repairs Using Tax Money

By Adam Liptak WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would not hear a case about whether a New Jersey county could allow churches to participate in grant programs for historic preservation even though the State Constitution forbids using tax money “for building or repairing any church.” From 2012 to 2015, Morris County, N.J., gave …

GOP Confirms Anti-LGBTQ, Church/State Separation Opponent to Appellate Court

By Hemant Mehta In news that’s shocking to nobody, Senate Republicans have successfully put an unqualified, ideological, conservative Christian on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, making sure she can bend the law to their will for decades to come. 37-year-old Allison Jones Rushing once interned with the Christian Right group Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that opposes civil …

Ocean heat waves remake Pacific and Caribbean habitats

By John Timmer Climate change tends to deal in averages. We measure its progress using the global mean temperature, and we use climate models to project what that value will be in the future. But those average changes don’t always capture what future climate change will be like. While you can raise an average by …

Betsy DeVos Demands $5 Billion In Federal Tax Credits For Religious Schools

By Michael Stone Destroying public education: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is demanding $5 billion in taxpayer money go to fund private, religious schools. The New York Times reports: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday pitched a $5 billion federal tax credit that would fund scholarships to private schools and other educational programs… And Common Dreams reports: The …

Major Study of 650,000 Patients Finds No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism

By Hemant Mehta Two decades ago, a later-retracted paper published in The Lancet by the now-disgraced Andrew Wakefield led to a conspiracy theory about how vaccines were linked to autism. Wakefield had falsified the data, used a small sample set, and his results were never duplicated. Yet the lie took on a life of its own, promoted by celebrities …

Church elders let confessed abuser attend services; now judge has banned him

By Bobby Ross Jr. UNIONTOWN, Pa. (RNS) — After a longtime youth minister’s recent conviction on corruption of minors and indecent exposure charges, a judge in this western Pennsylvania community did what the Uniontown Church of Christ’s elders refused to do. The judge told Clyde E. Brothers Jr. to stay away from church services. Brothers, …

SpaceX and NASA Launch Is First Step to Renewed Human Spaceflight

By Kenneth Chang The first American spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts since the retirement of the space shuttles launched early Saturday. A successful mission could put NASA and the United States on the cusp of a renewed era of human spaceflight. There were no people on this demonstration flight, a SpaceX vehicle called Crew Dragon. …