ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 237

Understanding Asia Bibi’s Trial And Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws

By Muhammad Huzaifa Elahi Pakistan’s treatment of minorities has long been the subject of international scrutiny. The evolution of the Pakistani constitution has an ingrained precedence of religious discrimination. The name itself, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is an accurate description of who the laws are formulated to protect and favor. A microcosm of this discrimination was …

Atheism is illegal in Malaysia

I have been brought up as a methodist christian since i was young. However, one day, my dad, a non-believer, tell me something about science when I was 9 years-old, I denied religion on that night and convert into a atheist since that. I like to criticsies my christian friends on their faith and even …

NASA’s InSight lander has just six and a half minutes to land on Mars in one piece

By Loren Grush Early next week, NASA will attempt the grueling feat of landing a spacecraft on Mars, hoping to add to its growing collection of tech on the Red Planet’s surface. This time, NASA hopes to place a robotic lander, called InSight, on a flat, boring part of the Martian terrain in order to study …

Cancer drug’s stumbles prompt calls to rethink how immune therapies are tested

By Heidi Ledford The stunning failure of a once-promising cancer drug has got some researchers arguing that the field has moved too fast in its embrace of therapies that unleash the immune system. The drug, epacadostat, blocks a protein called IDO that hobbles immune cells if left unchecked. Early trials suggested that the drug could be a powerful …

Ohio County GOP Chair: Deadly Wildfires Are ‘God’s Punishment To Liberal California’

By Michael Stone Deplorable: Ohio County GOP Chair Dave Johnson claims the deadly wildfires ravaging California are “God’s punishment” for being a liberal state. Johnson, the Chairman of the Columbiana County Republican Party, is in hot water after making despicable social media posts blaming the wildfires in California on liberals. On his facebook page Johnson posted …

Atheist Group Demands Chicago Stop Funding Church Renovations with Taxpayer Cash

By Hemant Mehta The Supreme Court’s 2017 Trinity Lutheran decision allowed for churches to apply for taxpayer-funded grants as long as it was for a secular reason. But a church in Chicago is under fire after receiving more than $220,000 to advance its religious agenda. According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the First Church of Deliverance got the money …

Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

By Boris Suchan Most of us learn how to ride a bike during childhood. But as we grow older, many of us stop riding and put those once-beloved bikes in storage. Years later, when we discover these relics and hop on, it’s as if we never stopped biking. This is surprising because our memories let …

Lawsuit targets Texas law allowing only judges, clergy to do weddings

By Chuck Lindell A federal lawsuit filed by two Texans, including an Austin resident, seeks to overturn a state law that requires weddings to be performed by a member of the clergy or by a judge. Joined by the Center for Inquiry — a national nonprofit that seeks to foster a secular society based on …

Non-Religious Voters Are Turning Into a Powerful Voting Bloc for Democrats

By Hemant Mehta We know evangelical Christians are predominantly conservative and support Republicans. The reason Donald Trump maintains his power is because the Christian Right refuses to waver in its support of him, no matter how obvious his incompetence is to everybody else. We also know roughly 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, helping …

Researchers have created a virtual reality simulation of a supermassive black hole

By BioMed Central The black hole at the centre of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, has been visualised in virtual reality for the first time. The details are described in an article published in the open access journal Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology. Scientists at Radboud University, The Netherlands and Goethe University, Germany used recent astrophysical models of Sagittarius …