ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 250

Sex abuse scandal sends Pope’s approval among US Catholics to new lows

By Eliott C. McLaughlin

Pope Francis, once considered a rock star among American Catholics, appears to be losing some of his shine.

According to a poll from the Pew Research Center, the Pope’s popularity is taking a hit as Catholics — especially those who regularly attend Mass — frown on his handling of the sex abuse scandal plaguing the church.

Overall, 72% of Catholics in the United States view Francis in either a very or mostly favorable light — down from 84% in January — but when asked specifically about how he’s addressed sex abuse in the church, the numbers have been on a precipitous decline.

In February 2014, more than seven in 10 Catholics who attended Mass weekly said they were pleased with Francis’ handling of the scandal, but in the September Pew survey, only 34% approved.

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Surprise! Virginia to begin unannounced inspections of church day-care centers

By Jaclyn Lee

The Virginia Department of Social Services announced the implementation of a new policy it says will better ensure the protection of Virginia’s children. Hundreds of religiously affiliated day cares that are exempt from licensure and don’t receive subsidies from the state now will be subject to surprise inspections.

Betsy Cummings is an advocate for stricter daycare regulations in the state of Virginia, particularly those associated with religious groups.

“If licensing or Department of Social Services is going to give rules but then not follow up on those rules to make sure they’re being done, I don’t really see the point in having a rule to begin with,” said Cummings.

In Virginia, religiously affiliated day cares don’t need a license to operate. Cummings had to learn that the hard way. In 2010, she took her 55-day-old son, Dylan, to Little Eagles Day Care in Norfolk, run by Bethel Temple Church of Deliverance. Hours later, she received a phone call that her son wasn’t breathing.

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Tucker Carlson: Brett Kavanaugh Backlash is Due to a “Theocracy Run By Atheists”

By Hemant Mehta

During an appearance on FOX News’ The Daily Briefing, Tucker Carlson told host Dana Perino that the push to punish Brett Kavanaugh for a sexual assault he allegedly committed in high school amounts to an atheist theocracy. Because when you have no argument, you just make up random phrases to scare gullible viewers.

His argument goes like this: A Christian theocracy would probably involve conservatives punishing people for acts they deem immoral… therefore liberals going after the conservative Kavanaugh for anything he did in high school amounts to a “theocracy run by atheists.”

If that makes no sense to you… well, now you know what it’s like to watch FOX News.

“I’m old enough … to remember when the left sincerely worried, or said they did, about the right turning this into some kind of theocracy and imposing its puritanical values on the rest of the country,” Carlson said…

“The irony, of course, is that they’re doing it right now. It’s a kind of theocracy run by atheists, where the minor, smallest peccadillos from your teen years are now disqualifying. Is this really the standard we want?”

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‘Test-tube’ evolution wins Chemistry Nobel Prize

By Elizabeth Gibney, Richard Van Noorden, Heidi Ledford, Davide Castelvecchi, & Matthew Warren

Ways to speed up and control the evolution of proteins to produce greener technologies and new medicines have won three scientists the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Chemical engineer Frances Arnold, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is just the second woman to win the prize in the past 50 years. She was awarded half of the 9-million-Swedish-krona (US$1 million) pot. The remaining half was shared between Gregory Winter at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and George Smith at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Arnold carried out pioneering work in the 1990s on ‘directed evolution’ of enzymes. She devised a method for inducing mutations in enzyme-producing bacteria and then screening and selecting the bacteria to speed up and direct enzyme evolution. These enzymes, proteins that catalyse chemical reactions, are now used in applications from making biofuels to synthesizing medical drugs.

“Biology has this one process that’s responsible for all this glorious complexity we see in nature,” she told Nature shortly after the prize announcement on 3 October. But although nature operates blindly, scientists know what chemical properties they want to get from an enzyme, and her techniques accelerate natural selection towards those goals. “It’s like breeding a racehorse.”

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The removal of Darwin and evolution from schools is a backwards step

By Michael Dixon

In recent weeks there have been alarming reports from both Israel and Turkey of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution being erased from school curriculums. In Turkey, this has been blamed on the concept of evolution – which is taught in British primary schools – being beyond the understanding of high school students. In Israel, teachers are claiming that most students do not learn about evolution; they say their education ministry is quietly encouraging teachers to focus on other topics in biology.

This news follows the astonishing statements made by India’s minister for higher education earlier this year. Satyapal Singh claimed Darwin was “scientifically wrong”, and is demanding that the theory of evolution be removed from school curriculums because no one “ever saw an ape turning into a human being”.

It is tempting to shrug off these latest attacks on Darwin’s greatest contribution to natural science. After all, no other scientific theory has attracted the same level of impassioned opposition and detraction – certainly not for more than 150 years. But that would be to miss the particular urgency of improving our scientific understanding of the natural world and how best to protect it for the future.

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All of California’s 12 Bishops Sued for Alleged Clergy Abuse Cover-Up

By Pilar Melendez

A clergy-abuse survivor is putting his state on notice, suing all of California’s 12 Catholic bishops and naming more than two dozen accused sexual-predator priests in an effort to compel church officials to be more transparent.

In a complaint filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Thomas Emens alleged a “civil conspiracy” among clergy officials to cover up sexual assault within the church, claiming they avoided conflict by simply moving accused priests to other parishes across the country.

“This lawsuit is really the only opportunity I have at this time to find justice not just for myself to bring all the victims that are in the shadows out and to help them moving forward,” Emens said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “This lawsuit is also to get the clerics at the top to come clean and tell the truth.”

Emens alleged both at the news conference and lawsuit—that he was sexually abused for two years starting in 1978, when he was 10 years old, at the hands of Monsignor Thomas Joseph Mohan.

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National Council of Churches calls for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be withdrawn

by Avery Anapol

The nation’s largest coalition of Christian churches on Wednesday called for the withdrawal of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court.

The National Council of Churches, which has membership from more than 40 denominations including most major Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations in the U.S., wrote in a statement on their website that they believe Kavanaugh has “disqualified himself from this lifetime appointment and must step aside immediately.”

The statement cited a number of reasons for the demand, including Kavanaugh’s behavior during his recent testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on sexual assault allegations against him.

“Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect towards certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation,” the statement read.

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Japanese spacecraft drops box-shaped robot on asteroid’s surface

By Loren Grush

Overnight, Japan’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft Hayabusa2 deployed its third robot onto the surface of an asteroid named Ryugu more than 186 million miles from Earth. This time, the robotic explorer is a tiny, box-shaped lander crafted by Germany and France’s space agencies, dubbed MASCOT. While on the asteroid, the robot will hop around slowly and study the surface in detail, measuring things like temperature and the composition of nearby rocks.

The landing comes less than two weeks after Hayabusa2 also dropped a pair of tiny cylindrical rovers on Ryugu’s surface. That marked the first time that any kind of mobile robot had landed on an asteroid. The two rovers, named Rover-1A and 1B, don’t have wheels; instead, they “hop” around the surface, thanks to internal motors that shift their momentum. These hops are slow, though, taking 15 minutes to complete. That’s because Ryugu is just a little more than half a mile across, and it doesn’t have a very strong gravitational pull. Since their landing, the rovers have been hopping around gathering stunning images of the asteroid’s surface.

MASCOT is also able to move around in a similar way to Rover-1A and Rover-1B. In fact, engineers already opted to move the lander once it had reached the surface last night because they found that it was sitting at a bad angle. The mission team switched on MASCOT’s mobility system, shifting the robot’s position and placing it in a much more favorable orientation. The German space agency DLR says that now all of MASCOT’s instruments are working just fine and are continuing to collect data.

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Atheist group files lawsuit against Sen. Jason Rapert on social media blocking

by KATV

LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — A lawsuit has been filed against an Arkansas state senator for allegedly violating the U.S. Constitution and state law when blocking people from his official social media accounts.

American Atheists filed a federal lawsuit claiming State Senator Jason Rapert violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments when blocking individuals, including four of the plaintiffs, from his official Twitter and Facebook accounts when they expressed differing viewpoints. The complaint also accuses Rapert of blocking plaintiffs due to their atheism.

American Atheists’ Legal and Policy Director Alison Gill says government officials can’t limit participation in public forums due to differing beliefs.

The complaint states plaintiffs were blocked when voicing criticism of his attacks on members of the LGBTQ community, the senator’s support of a bill to require the display of “In God We Trust” in all Arkansas public school classrooms and libraries, his support for a Ten Commandments monument on Capitol grounds and more.

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Trump prophecy and other Christian movements: 3 essential reads

By Kalpana Jain

A new film, “Trump Prophecy,” will be shown in some limited theaters on Oct. 2 and 4. The film is an adaptation of a book, co-authored by Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter, who claimed he received a message from God in 2011 that the Trump presidency is divinely ordained.

Liberty University film students are reported to have participated in the making of the film. At the same time, however, thousands of Liberty University students are also reported to have signed a petition saying they did not support the film.

Media outlets, such as the Religion News Service, commented that the “film is part of a small but influential Trump prophecy movement” that believes Trump’s election was part of God’s plans, and those who condemn him are servants of Satan.

Here are three stories from The Conversation’s archives that further explain a fast-growing Christian movement, and some others from the past, that have left a lasting impact.

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