ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 300

School vouchers will not help military family children

By Jason Lemieux

As a military veteran, I’m honored to have served a country that provides an education for every child. When I was an enlisted Marine, I served with lots of young parents. I saw how deeply they wanted a bright future for their kids. That’s why I’m so disturbed that some members of Congress want to raid Impact Aid to pay for a private school voucher scheme that won’t benefit most military families.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has signaled support for a voucher scheme that would take money from the very schools that serve the children of active-duty military personnel and divert it to private, largely religiously affiliated schools. It’s part of the Trump administration’s plan to “voucherize” education, and it would lead to a serious loss of resources for a special subset of public schools that operate near military bases.

The Education Savings Accounts for Military Families Act, the proponents of which are hoping to tack onto the next defense budget, would give military families funds to send their children to private schools, which tend to be religious in nature, or for other education-related expenses. Whatever you feel about tax money going to underwrite a religious education — and to my mind it’s a violation of church-state separation and bad public policy — you should be concerned that the money for the program would come out of something called Impact Aid.

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The Spice of Death: The Science behind Tainted “Synthetic Marijuana”

By Devin Powell

Three people died and more than 100 have been sickened in the past few weeks after taking synthetic cannabinoids, human-made compounds that target the same brain receptors as marijuana. Symptoms documented by poison centers—first mostly in the Midwest, and now in Maryland—include unexplained bruising, coughing up blood, bleeding from the nose and gums, blood in urine and feces, and excessively heavy menstruation.

An ongoing investigation has identified a likely culprit in the blood of those affected: rat poison, specifically brodifacoum. Commonly sold in hardware stores, it is a dangerous anticoagulant that can also cause brain damage.

These are the first known instances of rat poison being found in synthetic cannabinoids—and how the toxin got there is unknown. Douglas Feinstein, a neuroscientist and brodifacoum expert developing new antidotes to this substance at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the symptoms in these cases indicate high levels of exposure. That makes accidental contamination unlikely, he says, and suggests the poison may have been introduced deliberately. “We don’t know the exact doses these people are getting, but it’s a lot,” says Feinstein, who is currently analyzing blood samples from those affected. “It could have been added intentionally to prolong the high.”

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Oregon Man Doesn’t Pay Taxes Because He’s a Christian Who Opposes Abortion

By Hemant Mehta

With taxes due by Tuesday, one Oregon man is trying to get out of paying his by claiming he shouldn’t have to… because he’s a Christian.

Michael Bowman hasn’t filed a tax return or paid taxes since 1999 on grounds that the money would be used to support abortions, which he opposes.

“A woman has the right to choose, but apparently, the prosecutor feels I do not have a right to choose,” Bowman wrote [in a court filing].

Federal dollars don’t fund abortions, except in rare circumstances like saving a woman’s life. It’s the pro-choice side that should be upset about that, not the other side. Furthermore, courts have already ruled that religious objections aren’t an acceptable excuse for not paying taxes. (Otherwise, a lot of people would find religion real fast.) Just because you don’t agree with where your money goes doesn’t mean you can avoid paying taxes.

It’s a form of Christian privilege that Bowman thinks his faith can override those rules.

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When Is a Church Not a Church?

By Katherine Stewart

Now that tax day is upon us, consider that through the miracle of tax breaks some of your tax dollars will effectively be going to support groups that finance campaigns against same-sex marriage and gun safety. A number of these groups are also entitled to raise money from other sources for political purposes, without filing the disclosures that are required of other individuals and entities. Why? They’ve got God on their side.

Last fall, for example, according to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization that promotes socially conservative views on matters of public and family policy, declared itself a church.

Focus on the Family doesn’t have a congregation, doesn’t host weddings or funerals and doesn’t hold services. What it does do, with its nearly $90 million annual budget, is deliver radio and other programming that is often political to an estimated audience of 38 million listeners in the United States and beyond. It has funded ads against state legislators who support bills intended to prevent discrimination against L.G.B.T. people and it leads programs to combat what it calls “gay activism” in public schools.

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We still need to march for science

By Rep. Bill Foster

Today, thousands of people will once again take to the streets to march for science. For many Americans, science makes us think of test tubes in high school chemistry classes or a cool space documentary on Netflix. But science and logic have impacted our lives in ways that we often do not notice. That’s why as the only PhD physicist in Congress, I have spent my time in Washington fighting back against the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the scientific progress we have made due to decades of sustained federal investment in scientific research and education.

Our country has benefitted from lawmakers and political leaders who took their duty to the American public seriously and were willing to listen to technical experts who understood the facts and the importance of scientific research. First, investment in science greatly contributes to economic growth. Since World War II, science and technology were responsible for over half of the economic growth in the United States. Second, regulations based on scientific research have made American lives healthier and protected our water and air from harmful substances. Third, experts in scientific fields allow our government to prepare for potential future crises in national security and public health.

In the past year, we have seen the Trump administration attack science at each of these levels with proposed cuts to federally funded research, the dismantling of important regulations, and unfilled top-level government positions that require an advanced scientific degree. The Trump administration has moved to censure and politicize science to turn scientific research into a field that only exists to confirm their political truths or – worse yet – completely dismantle our scientific infrastructure altogether.

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NASA’s Got a Plan for a ‘Galactic Positioning System’ to Save Astronauts Lost in Space

By Rafi Letzter

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Outer space glows with a bright fog of X-ray light, coming from everywhere at once. But peer carefully into that fog, and faint, regular blips become visible. These are millisecond pulsars, city-sized neutron stars rotating incredibly quickly, and firing X-rays into the universe with more regularity than even the most precise atomic clocks. And NASA wants to use them to navigate probes and crewed ships through deep space.

A telescope mounted on the International Space Station (ISS), the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), has been used to develop a brand new technology with near-term, practical applications: a galactic positioning system, NASA scientist Zaven Arzoumanian told physicists Sunday (April 15) at the April meeting of the American Physical Society.

With this technology, “You could thread a needle to get into orbit around the moon of a disant planet instead of doing a flyby,” Arzoumian told Live Science. A galactic positioning system could also provide “a fallback, so that if a crewed mission loses contact with the Earth, they’d still have navigation systems on board that are autonomous.”

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The Gay Pride Festival in Mike Pence’s Indiana Hometown Was a Huge Success!

By Hemant Mehta

Vice President Mike Pence was born in Columbus, Indiana, and he was notably one of the most anti-LGBTQ governors in the country. Before joining the Trump ticket, he famously signed a bill allowing businesses to discriminate against gay customers before eventually backing down under pressure.

Still, you know where he stands. If he had the choice, LGBTQ people wouldn’t have a number of rights afforded to straight people. That bigotry is such a core component of who he is, a children’s book about it topped bestsellers lists.

That’s why what happened Saturday was such a big deal.

Columbus, Indiana held its first-ever gay pride festival. It drew more than 2,000 spectators and was, by all accounts, a tremendous success.

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Public displays of Ten Commandments divide candidates in Alabama governor’s race

By John Sharp

A Republican candidate’s careful answer to a debate question about the Ten Commandments on Friday shook up the Alabama governor’s race, as Sen. Bill Hightower began to take criticism from the far right.

“Bill Hightower showed a lack of courage, leadership and conviction and should not be our next governor,” Dean Young said in a YouTube video on Friday.

Young is chairman of the Ten Commandments political action committee and served as campaign strategist for former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore. Young blasted Hightower for “a less than enthusiastic” response on a question about a proposed state constitutional amendment allowing the display of the biblical laws on public property.

Alabama voters will decide the matter in November.

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Turkey’s Atheism Association calls on prosecutors to take action against anti-Deists

By Ahval News

Turkey’s Atheism Association has called on public prosecutors to take action following comments by the head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs’ (Diyanet), stating that “perverse” deists don’t belong in Turkish nation.

‘’Could there be a more appropriate crime to draw the sword of Turkish Penal Code (TCK) 216 [on provoking the public to hatred, hostility or degrading], which you don’t hesitate to use in reining in those who exercise free thought?’’ the association asked Turkey’s public prosecutors, in statement it released on its website on Friday.

Deism, the belief in a non-interventionist creator god, has been a topic of debate in Turkey after a local religious affairs administration in the central Anatolian city of Konya published a report in April stating that Turkish youths were turning away from Islam and embracing deism.

Nationalist Action Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli did not hesitate to get into the heated discussion last week, labelling deism as, ‘’one step before atheism” and condemning youths who held the beliefs.

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The March for Evidence

By Rush D. Holt

The March for Science in April 2017 was a unique demonstration of concern about the role of science and engineering in society and government. More than a million people in cities and towns around the world gathered in streets, made placards and banners, and heard speakers extoling the relevance and beauty of science—and also warning of diminished influence of science in policymaking. Some have dismissed the marchers as just another interest group advocating for more government funding for their work.

But the March, as I saw it and took part in it, represented something more: a significant change in how scientists see themselves and their work. This change had been slowly developing over recent decades and is now reaching a crescendo. Plans for another March for Science tomorrow indicate that the change among scientists is real, and that last year’s march was not simply a flash in the pan.

Scientists and friends of science are excited about recent progress in almost every scientific discipline. Whether it be observations of neutron star collisions, new findings on intergenerational epigenetic changes, macroscopic quantum entanglements, or human behavior, unprecedented scientific advances abound that will improve our future. Science marchers point to science as central to improving the human condition. At the same time, they are concerned about weakening public understanding and support of scientific research and the widespread neglect of scientific evidence. These concerns brought marchers to the streets in 2017 as much as pride in scientific accomplishments.

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