ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 277

Vice President Mike Pence Defends Cruel Anti-Immigration Policy With Scripture

By Sarahbeth Caplin

This shouldn’t come as a shock, but Vice President Mike Pence wants to make clear that he wholeheartedly supports the United States’ “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to illegal immigrants — even those who are fleeing certain death from their countries of origin.

Even worse, he’s using Scripture to do it. (I guess he learned nothing after the Jeff Sessions debacle…)

In a speech in Guatemala, [Pence] said the U.S. was working to reunite families “from your nations who’ve been caught trying to illegally enter the United States — because we believe that we can — as the old book says — “do justice and love kindness.”

But Pence also cautioned: “If you want to come to the United States, come legally, or don’t come at all.”

How about that? Love thy neighbor… but if you’re in danger of being murdered back in your homeland and seek asylum in the U.S., then we may have to love you from afar. Oh well. #ChristianLove

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In Leaked Sermon, GOP Candidate Mark Harris Said a Woman Has One Title: “Helper”

By Hemant Mehta

Mark Harris, a Republican running for Congress from North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, said in a 2013 sermon that a woman only had one title according to the Bible: “Helper.” He also suggested it may not be the “healthiest pursuit” for women to ever prioritize their careers.

The sermon, which Harris gave as pastor of First Baptist Charlotte, was unearthed by a Democratic PAC called American Bridge, and it shows the sort of complementarian conservative Christian mindset that voters should immediately reject in 2018:

“In our culture today, girls are taught from grade school that we tell them that what is most honorable in life is a career, and their ultimate goal in life is simply to be able to grow up and be independent of anyone or anything,” said Harris, then the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, adding, “But nobody has seemed to ask the question that I think is critically important to ask: Is that a healthy pursuit for society? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our homes? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our children? Is that the healthiest pursuit for the sexes in our generation?”

…

In an earlier portion of Harris’ sermon, Harris tells parishioners that “only one title is given to a woman in all of scripture… the title given to a woman is ‘helper.’”

Even many Christians would cringe at hearing all that…

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The Rise of Iraq’s Young Secularists

By Alice Su

Rayyan Hadidi was 18 years old when he lost his faith. It was July 2006, and he was on his way to school when he stumbled upon a cheering crowd that had gathered near a local mosque. The group, made up mostly of mosque leaders and worshippers, had encircled two men accused of volunteering with the Iraqi police force, which many saw as a puppet of the American occupiers. Al-Qaeda gunmen brandished their arms, preparing to execute the men, as the crowd shouted, “Allahu akbar.” Hadidi stared at the two men, flinching when he made eye contact with one of them just before they were both shot.

“I couldn’t forget this, ever. The way they were looking, the ones who were dying,” Hadidi told me when we met this spring in a café across the street from the University of Mosul. Like many Arabs in Mosul, he grew up as a conservative Sunni who fasted and prayed regularly. Islam was as much an inherited cultural identity as it was a blueprint for dreamed-of justice and a better life under God’s laws, an escape from the authoritarianism of Saddam Hussein and the chaos of post-invasion Iraq. His family, like most others in Mosul, accepted the word of the Quran without question.

But the execution haunted Hadidi. He began reading philosophy, history, and writing that was critical of Islam—dangerous stuff that he shared with his conservative family, who eventually cut off communication with him. Repelled by the extremism he’d witnessed, Hadidi told me that he began working with the American forces, which led to threats on his life from militants. He fled to Turkey in 2011, where he took to social media to write about the shortcomings of political Islam.

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E.P.A. Chief Scott Pruitt Resigns Under a Cloud of Ethics Scandals

By Coral Davenport, Lisa Friedman and Maggie Haberman

WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and architect of President Trump’s aggressive effort to rewrite the government’s rule book on environmental regulations, resigned on Thursday in the face of numerous ethics investigations that doomed his tenure.

Despite Mr. Pruitt’s efforts to nurture a close relationship with the president, Mr. Trump himself announced the resignation in a tweet sent from Air Force One. He thanked Mr. Pruitt for an “outstanding job” and said the agency’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, would take over as the acting administrator on Monday.

Mr. Pruitt in his resignation letter cited “unrelenting attacks on me personally” as one of the reasons for his departure. Mr. Pruitt had been hailed by conservatives for his zealous deregulation, but he could not overcome a spate of questions about his alleged spending abuses, first-class travel and cozy relationships with lobbyists.

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Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Passes Toughest Test to Date

By Mike Wall

Einstein’s theory of general relativity has passed its toughest-ever test with flying colors, a new study reports.

General relativity, which the great physicist proposed in 1916, holds that gravity is a consequence of space-time’s inherent flexibility: Massive objects distort the cosmic fabric, creating a sort of well around which other bodies orbit.

Like all scientific theories, general relativity makes testable predictions. One of the most important is the “equivalence principle” — the notion that all objects fall in the same way, no matter how big they are or what they’re made of.

Researchers have confirmed the equivalence principle many times on Earth — and, famously, on the moon. In 1971, Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott dropped a feather and a hammer simultaneously; the two hit the gray lunar dirt at the same time. (On Earth, of course, the feather would flutter to the ground much later than the hammer, having been held up by our atmosphere.)

But it’s tough to know if the equivalence principle applies in all situations — when the objects involved are incredibly dense or massive, for example. This wiggle room has given hope to adherents of alternative gravity theories, though such folks remain in the minority.

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Traces of ‘Sonic Boom’ Meteorites Found in the Ocean

By Charles Q. Choi

The first mission designed to hunt a meteorite that crashed into the ocean has now discovered what may be tiny fragments of the meteorite’s crust, researchers say.

On March 7, three National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather stations detected the fall of a meteorite about 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) off the coast of Washington state. “The fall was widely seen around local areas and widely heard around local areas — it came with some loud sonic booms,” Marc Fries, the cosmic dust curator for NASA, told Live Science.

Fries estimated this fall might yield about 4,400 lbs. (2,000 kilograms) of meteorites. He also calculated the largest meteorite might weigh about 9.7 lbs. (4.4 kg) and have a diameter of about 5 inches (12 centimeters).

“This is the largest meteorite fall I’ve seen in 20-plus years of radar data,” Fries said.

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Ex-Muslims: A community in protest

By Maryam Namazie

When the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) started 11 years ago, in June 2007, we were hard pressed to find 25 people who would come out publicly to break the apostasy taboo. Today, we are witnessing an international ex-Muslim ‘community’ – a tsunami of atheism.

But for me, this has never been about building a community as it is understood within identity politics, which implies people being boxed into homogenised, segregated communities with culturally-relative rights managed by ‘community leaders’. Rather, I see ex-Muslims as a community in protest: insisting on freedom from religion, and freedom of conscience. For the right to apostasy and blasphemy, without fear.

Like the LGBT, anti-slavery, anti-colonialist, anti-apartheid, suffragette or civil rights movements, it’s a movement which insists upon our common humanity and equality – not upon difference or superiority. It’s a movement of people who refuse to live in fear and in the shadows, and who are speaking out for social change in unprecedented ways.

This movement matters because thirteen states punish atheism with the death penalty and all of them are Islamic. Because a series of laws in Saudi Arabia define atheism as terrorism, where Ahmad Al-Shamri has been sentenced to death for atheism. Because Sina Dehghan has been sentenced to death in Iran for ‘insulting Islam’. Because a Pakistani High Court Judge has said that blasphemers are terrorists and Ayaz Nizami and Rana Noman face the death penalty there. Because even in countries without the death penalty, such as Bangladesh, Islamists kill atheists whilst the government turns a blind eye. Because in Bangladesh, the atheist poet and publisher Shahzahan Bachchu was dragged out of a shop and shot dead mid-June this year. Because the Egyptian government is producing a national plan to ‘confront and eliminate’ atheism. Because in Egypt, the atheist blogger Sherif Gaber has not been seen in public since his arrest at Cairo airport on 2 May. Because a Malaysian government minister has said that atheists should be ‘hunted down’ and ‘re-educated’. Because even in secular societies, ex-Muslims can be shunned, ostracised, and face ‘honour’ related violence.

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Inside the Christian legal powerhouse that keeps winning at the Supreme Court

By Jessica Contrera

Two days before the announcement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement, a woman who stood to gain from it was on the steps of the Supreme Court once again. Kristen Waggoner’s blond bob was perfectly styled with humidity-fighting paste she’d slicked onto it that morning at the Trump hotel. Her 5-foot frame was heightened by a pair of nude pumps, despite a months-old ankle fracture in need of surgery. On her wrist was a silver bracelet she’d worn nonstop since Dec. 5, 2017, the day she marched up these iconic steps, stood before the justices and argued that a Christian baker could legally refuse to create a cake for a gay couple’s wedding.

Her job was to be the legal mind and public face of Alliance Defending Freedom., an Arizona-based Christian conservative legal nonprofit better known as ADF. Though far from a household name, the results of ADF’s work are well known. Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was just one of ADF’s cases at the Supreme Court this term. The organization has had nine successful cases before the court in the past seven years, including Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which allowed corporations to opt out of covering contraceptives based on religious beliefs. And it was ADF that created model legislation for “bathroom bills,” which bar students from using restrooms that don’t correlate to their sex at birth.

Opponents say ADF is seeking to enshrine discrimination into law. But to its supporters, ADF is fighting for the right of Christians to openly express their faith — and winning.

Or as ADF’s CEO, Michael Farris, put it: “We would say the combination of hard work and God’s blessing appears to be paying off.”

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WARNING: Reading the bible may cause atheism.

I did something that destroyed my faith and makes it impossible for me to go back to it. What did I do? I read the Bible. You may laugh, but I’m serious. If it weren’t for that book I might still be calling myself a Christian. I’ve read the books of Richard Dawkins, Bart Ehrman, Jerry Coyn, Christopher Hitchens and many others. But all those wonderful thinkers put together couldn’t do more then the Bible to convince me that Christianity is a load of crap.

It started in my teen years when I fell under the influence of a well known word of Faith ministry. They were all so excited because they knew they’d witness a great work of divine healing. But as time went on and my hearing and visual disabilities continued, the people started to wonder. Even my parents jumped on me. “Why are you not healed yet? You must be doing something wrong.” After all, the Bible says whatever I desire when I pray, believe that I receive it, and I will have it. Either that’s true or it’s not true. It’s in the Bible, so it must be true. Which means I must be doing something to block my faith.

For my undergraduate studies, I entered a Christian liberal arts university that leaned heavily toward Calvinism. Trying to reconcile Calvinist doctrine with word of Faith teachings drove me to panic attacks. I began to fear death. Not my death, but the death of those around me. God is a jealous god and he will kill anyone that I loved too much. I had to pray. I didn’t trust God to keep people alive unless I was praying for them. But I’m not omniscient. I didn’t know what to pray for. I prayed for one uncle, and another uncle died. After a few years, I got tired of putting myself through so many emotional changes and relinquished control of what God did in other people’s lives. But that’s not what destroyed my faith.

I held on to my “personal relationship with Jesus.” Yet, even while I thought I was holding on, brushing aside any doubts that tried to creep in, my mind never forgot those doubts. When I read in the Bible how God told Cain that if he did what was right, he would be accepted, I wondered how God could have so little understanding of the psychology of his own creation. When a preacher said we had to believe Jesus was God, the question of why Jesus never actually said he was God tried to enter my mind, but I quickly swept it under the carpet. I had an emotional need to believe in Jesus and not until that need shifted did I see how lumpy the carpet was getting.

After 25 years of slowly increasing cognitive dissonance, it all came to a head.

A man who called himself a prophet came to my church and told me that since the Bible says faith comes by hearing, and I can’t hear, faith can’t come to me. Then he reminded us that the Bible says without faith it’s impossible to please God. I was in tears for days. I needed to hear to have faith, but I needed faith to please God to restore my hearing. I thought God had played a terrible catch 22 trick on me. Then I dried my eyes and said fuck him. I can’t see or hear. Every time I step off a curb, it’s a step of faith. So fuck him.

The plot thickened when I went to visit my family in New York. My uncle Richard was trying to preach Islam to me, but there were so many people in the house thkat I couldn’t hear him. He took me down to the laundry area, jacked me up against the washing machine, and preached Islam directly into my ear for what seemed like three or four hours. When he finished, I literally couldn’t walk straight.

What bothered me was not so much what he said, but the fact that I didn’t know enough about Christianity and church history to know if what he was saying was true or not. I was supposed to be the light of the world, but the people I called myself enlightening knew more than I did.

I went back to Texas and read the scriptures he told me about. I told myself Jesus said no one can pluck me out of his hand. If that’s true, I didn’t have to be afraid to read this. If it’s not true, then I needed to know that. How can I have the answers if I’m scared to ask the questions? So I read about all the terrible things God did to people in the Old Testament. I read how Kind David hated the disabled so much that he put a price on the head of the blind. I slammed the book shut and prayed, “God, I can’t read this.”

For several months, I tried to hold onto my faith without the Bible. After all, the Bible is only 1700 years old. God’s word doesn’t need the approval of the Nicean Council.

After a few months of this, it dawned on me that it wasn’t working. Without the Bible, I had no real foundation for belief in Jesus. Faith is just the capacity to believe in things I know aren’t true, and I couldn’t do that. Nor could I love and worship the bloodthirsty, schizophrenic, draconian psychopath I read about in the Bible. I walked away.

 

-Rhonda J.

Ingredients for life discovered gushing out of Saturn’s moon

By Sarah Kaplan

Last fall, as NASA’s celebrated Cassini spacecraft spiraled toward its final, fatal descent into Saturn’s clouds, astrochemist Morgan Cable couldn’t help but shed a tear for the school-bus-size orbiter, which became a victim of its own success.

Early in its mission, while flying past Saturn’s ice-covered moon Enceladus, Cassini discovered jets of ice and saltwater gushing from cracks in the south pole — a sign that the body contained a subsurface ocean that could harbor life. When the orbiter began to run low on fuel, it smashed itself into Saturn rather than risk a wayward plunge that would contaminate the potentially habitable world.

Now, from beyond the grave, the spacecraft has offered yet another prize for scientists. New analysis of Cassini data suggests those icy plumes shooting into space contain complex organic compounds — the essential building blocks of living beings.

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