ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 296
May 1, 2018
Idaho Congressman Labrador Defends Faith Healing Parents
By Michael Stone
Idaho congressman and candidate for governor Raul Labrador insists that faith healing parents have the right to deny their children medical care.
Speaking at a televised debate held earlier this week between the major GOP candidates for governor, Rep. Labrador defended faith healing parents, and said if elected governor he would not try to change the state’s faith-healing exemption that allows parents to deny children medical treatment without fear of criminal prosecution.
When asked about the state’s faith healing exemption Labrador said:
I would not change it. I believe in religious liberty. We believe in freedom. I would not interfere with a parent’s right to make a decision like that. I believe that they get to decide.
In other words, according to Labrador and people who think like him, children are the property of parents, and can be denied such basic rights as medical care if it serves the religious superstition of their parents.
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Candidate For Governor Promises To “Fight To Protect Our Christian Values”
By David Badash
Former Georgia Republican lawmaker Hunter Hill is running for governor promising to “fight to protect our Christian values.” The 40-year old makes no attempt to hide his disdain for separation of church and state, doesn’t even try to hide his religious extremism in a more-encompassing “Judeo-Christian values” claim.
“As governor, I’ll fight to protect our Christian values, defend the 2nd Amendment, and eliminate the state income tax,” he says in a new ad.
“Army Ranger training made Hunter Hill a leader,” the video begins. “But during three combat tours of duty it was Christ who strengthened him.”
“As governor, Hunter will protect Christian values. Defend our Second Amendment. And eliminate the income tax,” the voiceover promises.
“Leader. Fighter. Christian. Hunter Hill: The true conservative for governor,” the ad, below, ends.
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Saudi Arabia will execute ‘atheist for insulting the prophet’
By Romil Patel
A Saudi Arabian man who renounced Islam and made disparaging remarks about the prophet Muhammad has been sentenced to death.
Authorities became aware of Ahmad Al-Shamri in 2014 after he uploaded a series of videos reflecting his views on social media. He was subsequently arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy, faced trial and was sentenced to death in February 2015.
Al-Shamri is reportedly in his early 20s and comes from the city of Hafar Al-Batin, located in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.
The defendant initially pleaded insanity, saying that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol when he made the comments, Hala Dosari, an advisory board member of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told the Washington Post.
She added that “his trial focused heavily on Quranic law and little on any mitigating mental illness. As a result, Al-Shamri has been sentenced to death for being an atheist.”
After a lengthy appeals process, Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court ruled against Al-Shamri on Tuesday (25 April).
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OPEN DISCUSSION – MAY 2018
This thread has been created for open discussion on themes relevant to Reason and Science for which there are not currently any dedicated threads.
Please note it is NOT for general chat, and that all Terms of Use apply as usual.
If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the three most recent ones can be accessed via the links below (but please continue any discussions from them here rather than on the original threads):
April 30, 2018
Is ‘friendly fire’ in the brain provoking Alzheimer’s disease?
By Alison Abbott
Neuroscientist Michael Heneka knows that radical ideas require convincing data. In 2010, very few colleagues shared his belief that the brain’s immune system has a crucial role in dementia. So in May of that year, when a batch of new results provided the strongest evidence he had yet seen for his theory, he wanted to be excited, but instead felt nervous.
He and his team had eliminated a key inflammation gene from a strain of mouse that usually develops symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. The modified mice seemed perfectly healthy. They sailed through memory tests and showed barely a sign of the sticky protein plaques that are a hallmark of the disease. Yet Heneka knew that his colleagues would consider the results too good to be true.
Even he was surprised how well the mice fared; he had expected that removal of the gene, known as Nlpr3, would protect their brains a little, but not that it would come close to preventing dementia symptoms. “I thought something must have gone wrong with the experiments,” says Heneka, from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn.
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All You Need to Know for Round 2 of the CRISPR Patent Fight
By Sharon Begley
It’s baaaaack, that reputation-shredding, stock-moving fight to the death over key CRISPR patents. On Monday morning in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hear oral arguments in University of California v. Broad Institute. Questions?
How did we get here? The patent office ruled in February 2017 that the Broad’s 2014 CRISPR patent on using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit genomes, based on discoveries by Feng Zhang, did not “interfere” with a patent application by UC based on the work of UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna. In plain English, that meant the Broad’s patent, on using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit genomes in eukaryotic cells (all animals and plants, but not bacteria), was different from UC’s, which described Doudna’s experiments using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit DNA in a test tube—and it was therefore valid. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board concluded that when Zhang got CRISPR-Cas9 to work in human and mouse cells in 2012, it was not an obvious extension of Doudna’s earlier research, and that he had no “reasonable expectation of success.” UC appealed, and here we are.
What’s the morning line? UC has its back to the wall. As in an appeal of a criminal case, this appeal is all about the law and whether the patent office interpreted and applied it correctly; there won’t be any dramatic new evidence. UC’s lawyers “won’t whip out a document and say aha!” said biotech patent attorney Kevin Noonan of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff. Instead, UC will have to persuade the judges that the patent board ignored evidence, that its decision was not based on what a reasonable person would consider “substantial evidence,” or that it misapplied the law on obviousness or expectation of success.
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Onward, Christian soldiers: Right-wing religious nationalists launch dramatic new power play
By Paul Rosenberg
It’s just beginning to dawn on folks how much Donald Trump’s presidency relies on religious support. All the scandals surrounding Trump have brought intense attention to the 81 percent support he received from evangelical Christians in the 2016 election. New research by Andrew Whitehead, meanwhile, explicates such support in the context of Christian nationalism,and historian John Fea has written an important new book, “Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump,” to be published in June.
But the power of the presidency isn’t the only way Christian nationalism is advancing its agenda in America today. As Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, reported last week at Religion Dispatches, a coalition of Christian right groups — including the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, Wallbuilders, the National Legal Foundation and others — have organized a major legislative initiative called “Project Blitz.” Its goal is to pass an outwardly diverse but internally cohesive package of Christian-right bills at the state level, whose cumulative impact would be immense.
The agenda underlying these bills is not merely about Christian nationalism, a term that describes an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and meant to sharpen the divide between those who belong to those groups and those who are excluded. It’s also ultimately “dominionist,” meaning that it doubles down on the historically false notion of America as a “Christian nation” to insist that a a particular sectarian view of God should control every aspect of life, through all manner of human institutions. Christian nationalists are not in a position to impose their vision now, and to be fair, many involved in the movement would never go that far. But as explained by Julie Ingersoll in “Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction” (Salon interview here), dominionist ideas have had enormous influence on the religious right, even among those who overtly disavow them.
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LA Senate Passes Permission-Slip Prayer Bill So Teachers Can Pray with Students
By Hemant Mehta
The Louisiana Senate has unanimously passed a bill that will allow teachers and coaches to pray with students while on the job. If it becomes law, you can bet it’ll be the subject of a number of lawsuits since federal law prevents staffers from participating in student-led prayers.
State Sen. Ryan Gatti is behind SB 512, a bill that would let staffers pray with kids as long as it doesn’t interfere with their work and as long as every parent or legal guardian of the students in attendance “has submitted a signed request that the employee may participate in the gathering or pray with his child.”
Gatti believes this requirement will allow the bill to succeed where other attempts have failed.
… Sen. Gatti is cautiously optimistic that the measure will pass Constitutional scrutiny.
“Our approach is different and should work,” Sen. Gatti told BossierNow, then added: “No promises.”
“No promises” is right, because the problems are evident.
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April 27, 2018
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) Introduces 2018 “National Day of Reason” Resolution
By Hemant Mehta
Beginning in 2015, Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) introduced a formal resolution in support of the National Day of Reason. His defeat in 2016, despite coming at the hands of another Democrat, put future versions of that legislation in peril. But fellow Californian Rep. Ted Lieu picked up where Honda left off, introducing similar legislation last year.
And now, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the only openly non-theistic legislator and chair of the newly formed Congressional Freethought Caucus, has introduced a resolution designating May 3 as the “National Day of Reason,” with the goal of promoting “public policy that is based on reason and logic instead of politics and ideology.”
May 3, of course, will also be the National Day of Prayer.
That’s not a coincidence.
The text of the resolution isn’t available yet, but I suspect it’ll be similar to last year’s version.
The American Humanist Association deserves the credit for making this happen.
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Quarterback Josh Rosen, Now an Arizona Cardinal, Is the NFL’s Only Open Atheist
By Hemant Mehta
Josh Rosen, a quarterback from UCLA, was selected 10th in the NFL Draft tonight, going to the Arizona Cardinals.
As far as I can tell, with Arian Foster and the “cheerfully agnostic” Chris Kluwe now retired and Pat Tillman no longer with us, this makes Rosen the only open atheist currently in the NFL.
In 2014, when Rosen was still a senior at a Catholic high school, FOX Sports’ Gabe Kapler noted that the UCLA recruit didn’t believe in God — an anomaly in the football world.
He attends a Catholic high school and is the son of a Quaker Christian mother and a Jewish father. Josh also professes to be an atheist. I asked his football coach, Jason Negro, about the impact of Rosen’s beliefs.
“We certainly welcome it. We’re not just a school for Catholic boys,” Negro said. “We are a Catholic school for all boys. Everyone’s common theme here is just be a good person. When you leave here do you represent your school and yourself well?”
Great athletes, independent of their religious leans, can find plenty of common ground. The clubhouses of our major sports remain overwhelmingly Christian, but we can all benefit from another’s traditions.
Kapler also mentioned that Rosen’s atheism could be a liability when it comes to endorsement deals since he might “scare off some companies who wish to align themselves with more vanilla, easily marketable athletes less likely to offend the religious population.”
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