ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 297

Ten Commandments rise again at Capitol, but Satanic Temple says Arkansas law is on its side

By Benjamin Hardy

On Thursday morning, after a replacement monument to the Ten Commandments was installed at the state Capitol grounds, state Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) told a crowd of media, supporters, detractors and onlookers that the monument was not intended to send a religious message, but simply one about history.

“The sole reason that we donated this monument to the state of Arkansas is because the Ten Commandments are an important component to the foundation of the laws and the legal system of the United States of America and of the state of Arkansas,” Rapert said. The senator, who sponsored legislation in 2015 that paved the way for the monument’s creation, also heads the American History and Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit created for the purpose of raising private funds to build the display.

The first version of the monument was installed last June but was destroyed within 24 hours when a man, apparently mentally ill, rammed it with a car. This second version is protected from vehicular assault by concrete bollards; Rapert’s words are intended to help shield it from the inevitable court challenges over religious freedom and discrimination. The ACLU of Arkansas has stated its intent to file suit, and the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers will sue as well. The Satanic Temple, the group that successfully battled a similar monument in Oklahoma in 2015, said it will file as an intervenor to any such lawsuit. As in Oklahoma, the Temple seeks to install a 10-foot bronze representation of a goat-headed deity called Baphomet on the Capitol grounds, which they describe as a symbol of religious pluralism. 

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It’s About To Get A Lot Harder For Transgender People To Access Health Care

By Jeff Taylor

The Trump administration is planning to repeal Obama-era regulations that prevent doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies from discriminating against transgender people.

Guidelines implemented in 2016 as part of the Affordable Care Act prohibit discrimination based on race, age, color, national origin, sex, or disability for health programs that received federal funds. Under Obama, the Department of Health and Human Services defined Section 1557 of the ACA, which covers sex discrimination, as also including bias based on gender identity. That determination affected nearly every physician and hospital in the U.S., since most accept some form of federal money, be it Medicare, Medicaid, or participation in health insurance marketplaces.

Groups like the Christian Medical and Dental Associations say Section 1557 pressures doctors to violates their religious freedom and independent medical judgment. But overturning those guidelines could leave transgender Americans unable to access hormone replacement therapy, counseling and gender-confirmation surgery, if a healthcare provider decided to turn them away.

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TN School District Can’t Decide If It Needs to Rescind “Billy Graham Day”

By Hemant Mehta

The Claiborne Board of Education in northeastern Tennessee must be itching for a lawsuit because they announced last month that November 7 would now be known as “Billy Graham Day” in the district. Each school “would be free to celebrate the life of the famous evangelist, in any way it so chooses.” (November 7 is his birthday.)

But why would a public school district declare a special day for a man known primarily for spreading Christianity? Unlike, say, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., you can’t seriously make a case that Graham was a widely revered and respected man who just happened to be a preacher. He was, first and foremost, an evangelist. (And one who dabbled in anti-Semitism, no less.)

The board’s lawyer James Estep III must have had the same reaction because he informed the board weeks later about how they would have to rescind the honor. Estep explained how the district had already lost a major church/state battle in 1988 and this latest offense could result in an even steeper fine down the road.

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New Jersey Ruling Could Reignite Battle Over Church-State Separation

By Nick Corasanti

MORRISTOWN, N.J. — The apex of the slate roof of the historic chapel of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown peeks over the trees lining the central green here, its chips and cracks visible from the ground. In need of repair, the church did what many other houses of worship in the area have done — turned for help to the county, which gave it more than $260,000 in 2013.

Since 2012, Morris County has provided more than $4.6 million to 12 churches in the form of historic preservation grants, a readily available source of money to fix facades, stained glass windows and aging roofs.

But a unanimous decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court found that public money could no longer be used by churches, citing a clause in the State Constitution expressly forbidding it, a decision that could reverberate beyond New Jersey and reignite a national debate over the separation of church and state.

The New Jersey decision last week came less than a year after the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in a case from Missouri that states must sometimes provide aid to religious groups even when their state constitutions prohibit the use of public funds for the benefit of houses of worship.

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Hey, Congress: Scientists Are Coming for Your Seats

By Michael Dhar

From commanding eight nuclear reactors to building a telecom infrastructure in Central America, the experiences of U.S. political candidates have gotten more interesting of late. A wave of political hopefuls with science-y backgrounds may soon bring fascinating experiences and vital knowledge to the country’s governing bodies.

Famed astrophysicist and science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson once lamented that most members of the U.S. Congress are lawyers, with few STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) representatives. “Where are the engineers? Where’s the rest of … life?” he asked in 2011 on the HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

The last year has seen hundreds of new candidates try to answer Tyson’s question. More than 450 candidates with STEM backgrounds are running at all levels (local, state and federal), including 60 at the federal level, according to estimates from 314 Action, a group that supports such candidates. The organization has helped train 1,400 STEM professionals in campaigning, with another 35 to 40 completing trainings this past weekend in Chicago. 

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The Milky Way, Revealed as Never Before

By Lee Billings

From before dawn until sunset on April 25, fueled by coffee and pastries (followed by steak and champagne), dozens of astrophysicists took over the third floor of the Flatiron Institute in downtown New York City, poring over gigabytes of fresh data from a once-in-a-lifetime space probe destined to forever change our understanding of the cosmos. Most of the scientists gathered in a cramped conference room, communing over laptops displaying arcane astroglyphs, but others migrated to breakout sessions scattered throughout the floor—sprawling belly-down on carpets or scrawling equations on whiteboards, occasionally muttering curses at server time-outs or compiler crashes that stymied their efforts to be among the world’s first to make dazzling new discoveries.

The probe is the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, a $1 billion mission that launched in 2013 to map our galaxy with remarkable precision; the fresh data came as Gaia released its second dataset. Based on 22 months of observations, the new release catalogues the positions, motions, brightnesses and colors of an astonishing 1.3 billion stars—roughly 1 percent of the estimated 100 billion stars that make up the Milky Way. At their best, the spacecraft’s measurements are akin to Earthbound observers discerning the position of a penny on the surface of the moon.

“A curtain has opened, and the Milky Way is now revealed,” says Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History who arrived at the Flatiron shortly after 5am for the start of a 3-day gathering at the Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) to delve deep into Gaia’s enormous data dump. “Today felt like the start of a gigantic race that’s going to last the rest of my career—or, really, until I’m dead.” What’s happening here is unprecedented, she says. “Any scientific question you could have about the galaxy will be linked to this dataset.”

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Can the world kick its fossil-fuel addiction fast enough?

By Jeff Tollefson

Making sense of recent energy trends can seem like a high-stakes Rorschach test. Some experts see the boom in renewable energy and the shift away from coal in many countries as evidence that the world is beginning to turn a corner on global warming. Others see simply a continuing reliance on low-cost fossil fuels, slow governmental action and a rising risk of planetary meltdown.

The fact is that both sides are right. Renewable energy is indeed undergoing a revolution, as prices for things such as solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries continue to plummet. And yet it is also true that the world remains dependent on fossil fuels — so much so that even small economic shifts can quickly overwhelm the gains made with clean energy.

So it was in 2017, when, after staying relatively flat from 2014 to 2016, carbon emissions grew by about 1.5% (see ‘A brief lull’). All it took to create that spike was a small rise in economic growth across the developing world, according to a final estimate released in March by the Global Carbon Project, an international research consortium that monitors carbon emissions and climate trends.

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9 essential lessons from psychology to understand the Trump era

By Brian Resnick

In January 2017, when then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to claim that President Donald Trump’s inauguration was the most-watched in history, it felt like the beginning of a new, dark era of politics and public life.

As it has matured, the Trump era of conservative politics is increasingly defined by its tribalism and fear and the fracturing of our sense of a shared reality.

And it’s pretty disorienting.

I’ve spent much of the past several years reporting on political psychology, asking the country’s foremost experts on human behavior some variation of, “What the hell is going on in the United States?”

Thankfully, at a time when we really need answers, they often deliver.

Here are the social science lessons I keep coming back to, to help me explain what’s happening in America in the Trump era. Perhaps you’ll find them helpful too.

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Waffle House Shooter’s Mom Claims Lack Of School Prayer Causes Mass Shootings

By Michael Stone

The mother of Waffle House shooter Travis Reinking is a Christian homeschool advocate who claims mass shootings are caused by a lack of prayer in school.

Earlier this week Reinking was taken into custody after killing four people of color and wounding two others at a Waffle House in Antioch, Tennessee, early Sunday morning.

According to reports, Reinking, 29, of Morton, Illinois, began shooting patrons and employees with an AR-15 rifle about 3:25 a.m. at the 24-hour restaurant on Murfreesboro Pike in Antioch, near Nashville.

The Chicago Tribune reports Reinking came from a Christian family and was home-schooled:

He came from a Christian family and was home-schooled.

In addition, Reinking collected guns, struggled with mental health issues, and identified as a sovereign citizen.

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There Will Soon Be a “Congressional Freethought Caucus” on Capitol Hill

By Hemant Mehta

***Update***: The Chair and Co-Chairs of the Congressional Freethought Caucus include Rep. Huffman, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA).

…

The U.S. Congress will soon have a caucus — a group of legislators that gets together to promote common interests — dedicated to reason and science, the secular government our founders envisioned, and issues concerning non-religious Americans.

You would think, given how there are caucuses for everything, we’d already have one of these. After all, there are caucuses for cement, chickens, and rugby. But until now, there’s been nothing for members of Congress without organized religion.

The newly named “Congressional Freethought Caucus” was announced last night during the Secular Coalition for America’s annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the sole non-theistic member of Congress, broke the news while accepting the SCA’s 2018 Visibility Award.

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