ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 265

New Trump administration memo on Obama order alarms LGBT advocates

By Chris Johnson

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Trump administration has issued new guidance that seeks to uphold “religious freedom” in the implementation of former President Obama’s executive order against anti-LGBT workplace discrimination among federal contractors — a move troubling to LGBT rights supporters.

The Aug. 10 guidance from the Labor Department purports to “incorporate recent developments in the law regarding religion-exercising organizations and individuals” with the enforcement of the executive order, taking note of the narrow ruling in decision of Colorado baker Jack Phillips as well as other recent rulings in favor of religious freedom, such as the Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case.

The guidance also takes into account recent executive orders signed by President Trump in favor of “religious freedom,” saying they “have similarly reminded the federal government of its duty to protect religious exercise — and not to impede it.” Trump signed a directive last year with the stated purposed of bolstering religious freedom under federal law and his order ensuring faith-based organizations have access to federal grants.

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Kavanaugh Could Unlock Funding for Religious Education, School Voucher Advocates Say

By Erica L. Green

WASHINGTON — Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a speech last year, gave a strong hint at his views on taxpayer support for religious schools when he praised his “first judicial hero,” Justice William Rehnquist, for determining that the strict wall between church and state “was wrong as a matter of law and history.”

Mr. Rehnquist’s legacy on religious issues was most profound in “ensuring that religious schools and religious institutions could participate as equals in society and in state benefits programs,” Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to succeed Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court, declared at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.

Words like that from a Supreme Court nominee are breathing new life into the debate over public funding for sectarian education. Educators see him as crucial to answering a question left by Justice Kennedy after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for the state of Missouri to exclude a church-based preschool from competing for public funding to upgrade its playground: Can a church-school playground pave the way for taxpayer funding to flow to private and parochial schools for almost any purpose?

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More than 300 accused priests listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse

By Michelle Boorstein

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday released a sweeping grand jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church, listing more than 300 accused clergy and detailing a “systematic” coverup effort by church leaders over 70 years.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a news conference Tuesday that more than 1,000 child victims were identified in the report, but the grand jury believes there are more.

The investigation is the most comprehensive yet on Catholic Church sex abuse in the United States. The 18-month probe covered the state’s eight dioceses — Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg — and follows other state grand jury reports that revealed abuse and coverups in two other dioceses.

Shapiro said that the report details a “systematic coverup by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican.”

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The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain

By Ben Yagoda

I am staring at a photograph of myself that shows me 20 years older than I am now. I have not stepped into the twilight zone. Rather, I am trying to rid myself of some measure of my present bias, which is the tendency people have, when considering a trade-off between two future moments, to more heavily weight the one closer to the present. A great many academic studies have shown this bias—also known as hyperbolic discounting—to be robust and persistent.

Most of them have focused on money. When asked whether they would prefer to have, say, $150 today or $180 in one month, people tend to choose the $150. Giving up a 20 percent return on investment is a bad move—which is easy to recognize when the question is thrust away from the present. Asked whether they would take $150 a year from now or $180 in 13 months, people are overwhelmingly willing to wait an extra month for the extra $30.

Present bias shows up not just in experiments, of course, but in the real world. Especially in the United States, people egregiously undersave for retirement—even when they make enough money to not spend their whole paycheck on expenses, and even when they work for a company that will kick in additional funds to retirement plans when they contribute.

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Saudi Arabia expels Canadian envoy for urging activists’ release

By Ashifa Kassam

Saudi Arabia has expelled the Canadian ambassador and suspended new trade and investment with Ottawa after Canada’s foreign ministry urged Riyadh to release arrested civil rights activists.

The Saudi foreign ministry has given Dennis Horak 24 hours to leave the country and recalled its own ambassador to Canada, saying that it retained “its rights to take further action”.

“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia … will not accept interference in its internal affairs or imposed diktats from any country,” the ministry tweeted. “The Canadian position is an overt and blatant interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of #SaudiArabia and is in contravention of the most basic international norms and all the charters governing relations between states.”

Saudi state television later reported that the education ministry was coming up with an “urgent plan” to move thousands of Saudi scholarship students out of Canadian schools to take classes in other countries. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates publicly backed Saudi Arabia in the dispute.

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Increased Wellbeing from Social Interaction in a Secular Congregation

By Michael E. Price and Jacques Launay

Abstract

Religiosity appears to benefit wellbeing, potentially due to social support offered by religious communities. However, rising secularism implies that fewer people have access to these benefits. To address this problem, we investigated whether these benefits could also be obtained from membership in a secular, quasi-religious community. We conducted a longitudinal study among 92 members of the Sunday Assembly (SA), an international organization of secular congregations. SA members assemble in large services and in smaller interest groups that offer more face-to-face interaction. Once a month for six months, participants completed a questionnaire measuring wellbeing and participation in both SA and non-SA social activities. Panel analysis of longitudinal data revealed that participation in SA small-group activities positively influenced wellbeing over the six-month period, particularly among males. Participation in non-SA social activities, in contrast, had no effect on wellbeing. Aspects of the Sunday service that members perceived as most important, both for creating a sense of community and for friendship formation, were the informal socialising and cooperating that occurs before and after the service itself. Secular congregations may be a viable alternative for non-religious people (and perhaps especially men) who seek the health benefits that religious communities have traditionally offered.

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Why America’s ‘nones’ don’t identify with a religion

By Becka A. Alper

A growing share of Americans are religiously unaffiliated. We recently asked a representative sample of more than 1,300 of these “nones” why they choose not to identify with a religion. Out of several options included in the survey, the most common reason they give is that they question a lot of religious teachings.

Six-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Americans – adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – say the questioning of religious teachings is a very important reason for their lack of affiliation. The second-most-common reason is opposition to the positions taken by churches on social and political issues, cited by 49% of respondents (the survey asked about each of the six options separately). Smaller, but still substantial, shares say they dislike religious organizations (41%), don’t believe in God (37%), consider religion irrelevant to them (36%) or dislike religious leaders (34%).

Those who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” tend to give different reasons for their lack of affiliation, showing that “nones” are far from a monolithic group. For example, about nine-in-ten self-described atheists (89%) say their lack of belief in God is a very important reason for their religious identity, compared with 37% of agnostics and 21% of those in the “nothing in particular” category. Atheists also are more likely than other “nones” to say religion is simply “irrelevant” to them (63% of atheists vs. 40% of agnostics and 26% of adults with no particular religion).

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TIES Webinar: Jonathan Tweet, author of Grandmother Fish

Grandmother Fish is the first book to teach evolution to preschoolers, and School Library Journal calls it “groundbreaking.” The book engages young people by getting them to mimic the actions and sounds of our ancestors. They wiggle like Grandmother Fish and hoot like Grandmother Ape. The book is for ages 3–6, but teachers have also had luck with older students. The book works well for reading to a classroom, and it includes science notes in the back to help guide conversations with young learners. Jonathan will also share exercises that build on Grandmother Fish, helping children understand deep time and our evolutionary history. Clades and its sister game, Clades Prehistoric, are animal-matching games for ages 6 to adult. Players match animals according to what clades they’re in: mammals, arthropods, or sauropsids. Within each clade are three smaller clades, each defined by descent from a common ancestor that swam, walked, or flew. For example, winged insects represent the arthropod clade descended from fliers. Clades features extant animals, including humans. Clades Prehistoric features extinct animals, including dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and mammoths. Both games include science notes about the animals depicted on the cards.

US Congress leaves science agencies hanging — again

By Jeremy Rehm

Lawmakers in the US Congress are running out of time to pass a budget for the 2019 fiscal year, and have yet to resolve major disagreements over climate-change and environment programmes.

Although the federal government is funded through 30 September, politicians in the Senate and the House of Representatives have just 11 working days before then to reach agreement on the funding for key science agencies. The budgets of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are among those still being negotiated.

The Senate has approved two 2019 spending bills, and is expected to vote on more later this month. The House, which has adjourned for the month of August, has passed three. But the two chambers need to iron out the differences in their proposals before sending them to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

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Tennessee parents push back on law requiring ‘In God We Trust’ motto be displayed in public schools

By Aris Folley

As Tennessee students prepare for the new school year, parents across the state are pushing back against a new law that requires the national motto, “In God We Trust,” be displayed prominently in public schools.

Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the legislation in March, but parents are now sharing concerns about the law as kids head back to school.

“I think it excludes people that don’t believe in the Christian God,” Mike Durham, a Knoxville parent, told local NBC affiliate, 10 News.

“I think if you put one religious statement up, you should have to put up a religious statement for everyone that goes to that school, or none at all,” he continued.

But some parents have expressed support for the new law.

“I think we should all trust in God. It should be everywhere,” a mother told WMC Action News 5.

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