ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 302

After Allegations of “Inappropriate Behavior,” an Influential Pastor Resigns

By Hemant Mehta

It was just a couple of weeks ago when we learned that the founder of the influential Willow Creek Community Church, Bill Hybels, was accused by multiple women of “inappropriate behavior” over the course of several decades.

The allegations were made by women he worked with, and they included a history of “suggestive comments, extended hugs, an unwanted kiss, and invitations to hotel rooms.” In addition, one woman claimed to have an affair with him… but when a church leader told her to share that story with people investigating these claims, she retracted everything.

Hybels has denied everything, even claiming former colleagues of his were conspiring against him (for some reason). A day after the Chicago Tribune story broke, he answered questions at the church in a moderated setting, vowed to fight back against the charges, and received a standing ovation from the congregation.

It’s not exactly the visual you want when your pastor is accused of harassment. (It’s also not the first time a congregation has stood up in defense of a pastor whose alleged actions were disturbing.)

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Question of the Week – 04/10/2018

What’s one of the most egregious examples of the false equivalency of science and misinformation in the media that you’ve seen? It might be about climate change or evolution or something else entirely. Have you seen meaningful examples of pushback against this phenomenon?

Our favorite answer will win a copy of Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins.

Want to suggest a Question of the Week? E-mail submissions to us at qotw@richarddawkins.net. (Questions only, please. All answers to bimonthly questions are made only in the comments section of the Question of the Week.)

Hubble space telescope captures image of most distant star ever seen

By Nicola Davis

It might look like a tiny speck amid a bejewelled vista of the universe, but scientists say a pinprick of light in an image captured by the Hubble space telescope is the most distant individual star ever seen that is not a supernova.

The team behind the find say the light was emitted from the star – dubbed Icarus but officially named MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1 – when it was more than 9bn light years from Earth. Icarus is now much further away but will have died, forming either a black hole or a neutron star.

“We are looking back three-quarters of the way almost to the big bang,” said Dr Patrick Kelly, first author of the research from the University of Minnesota.

Stars at such distance are normally too faint to be identified individually, unless they explode in a supernova. But it seems a chance alignment of the heavens made Icarus visible.

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In His Haste to Roll Back Rules, Scott Pruitt, E.P.A. Chief, Risks His Agenda

By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman

WASHINGTON — As ethical questions threaten the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, President Trump has defended him with a persuasive conservative argument: Mr. Pruitt is doing a great job at what he was hired to do, roll back regulations.

But legal experts and White House officials say that in Mr. Pruitt’s haste to undo government rules and in his eagerness to hold high-profile political events promoting his agenda, he has often been less than rigorous in following important procedures, leading to poorly crafted legal efforts that risk being struck down in court.

The result, they say, is that the rollbacks, intended to fulfill one of the president’s central campaign pledges, may ultimately be undercut or reversed.

“In their rush to get things done, they’re failing to dot their i’s and cross their t’s. And they’re starting to stumble over a lot of trip wires,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “They’re producing a lot of short, poorly crafted rulemakings that are not likely to hold up in court.”

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Iraqi courts seeking out atheists for prosecution

By Omar al-Jaffal

Arrest warrants have been issued for four Iraqis on atheism charges, according to Dhi Qar province’s Garraf district judiciary. The announcement garnered quite a reaction on media and social networks, as some say these hunts infringe on the rights of the Iraqi people, whose constitution guarantees them freedom of belief and expression. Other observers say the campaign has political aspects.

Dhidan al-Ekili, the chief Garraf judge, told local Iraqi newspapers March 11 that security forces had been able to arrest one of the four indicted, as the search for the remaining three continued. Ekili said they are being pursued for “holding seminars during social gatherings to promote the idea of the nonexistence of God and to spread and popularize atheism.”

According to Ekili, the local court administration has tasked intelligence agencies with cracking down on the “atheism phenomenon.” Ekili said the crackdown is in accordance with the Iraqi Penal Code.

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Donald Trump, defender of Christian America? It’s not as ludicrous as it sounds

By Paul Rosenberg

Consternation over evangelical support for Donald Trump got another jolt with Stormy Daniels’ interview on “60 Minutes” last Sunday, but new research from Clemson sociologist Andrew Whitehead and two colleagues provides strong evidence that Trump is actually an ideal candidate for the Christian right. It sounds crazy, I know — but not to those in his evangelical base, a demographic that supported him by a ratio of roughly four to one, and others who share their particular worldview.

The key, Whitehead’s research shows, is Trump’s role as a champion of “Christian nationalism” — an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and sharpening the divide with those who are excluded from it. That stands in contrast to the tradition of “civil religion,” which “often refers to America’s covenantal relationship with a divine Creator who promises blessings for the nation for fulfilling its responsibility to defend liberty and justice.”

America is certainly understood as special, in this latter tradition — but that’s rooted in a special obligation. “Christian nationalism, however, draws its roots from ‘Old Testament’ parallels between America and Israel, who was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest, and separatism,” Whitehead’s paper explains. “Unlike civil religion, contemporary manifestations of Christian nationalism can be unmoored from traditional moral import, emphasizing only its notions of exclusion and apocalyptic war and conquest.”

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Ken Ham Hits Back at Christian Geologist Who Lists 21 Reasons Why Noah’s Flood Never Happened

By Stoyan Zaimov

Young Earth Creationist and Answers in Genesis President Ken Ham has slammed an article by a Christian geologist who has listed 21 reasons why he thinks Noah’s worldwide flood account in the Bible never happened.

Ham said Monday on Facebook that the article, “Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened,” is “sad,” because it’s not only wrong, but also because the author, Lorence G. Collins, is a professing Christian.

Ham, who’s also the president of the Ark Encounter attraction in Kentucky, takes aim at the claims made in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry article, published in the March/April issue, which suggests that Creationists are “less imbued with scientific thinking.”

“Many Creationists love science, of course, and are quite knowledgeable,” Ham insisted, before listing the credentials of several scientists working at AiG.

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Science shows us the wonder of reality.

Dear Richard,

I have just finished reading ‘The God Delusion’ and felt compelled to write to you to let you know how much of an impact it has had on my thinking.

I am a gay man, brought up to Irish Catholic parents. My mother was a wonderful, kind-hearted woman from the country, and my father was a very well-intentioned, but highly religious man(iac). Having practically abandoned any kind of actual religious belief long ago, I still felt a distant affection for the rituals of the church, along with residual guilt-resonance whenever I did anything un-catholic (sex, usually).

I now feel quite happy to say categorically that I am an atheist. I will still happily sing church music (I was a choral scholar and lay clerk at Oxford at around the time you wrote the book) but will appreciate it for its artistic value, without attaching any mystical meaning to it.

I’m currently sat in a cafe in Nepal, having just finished the final chapter. I am very taken by your passion for science and your explanations of the alternative ways of perceiving quantum theory. This jogged a long-forgotten memory of applying to be a choral scholar, as one of the stages of the process, I was required to have an interview with the then Chaplain. We were required to write a short statement explaining how we would uphold the Christian values associated with being a choral scholar. As an enthusiastic teenager fresh from a Physics A Level I waxed lyrical about the wonder of the natural world and included something about how quantum physics might better help us to understand the nature of God. I remember vividly the chaplain taking me to task on this, taking me down a peg or three, suggesting that I had no idea what I was talking about and that I shouldn’t even make such stupidly ill-informed suggestions. I was thoroughly deflated by the encounter, but I now realise that perhaps I had hit a raw nerve. It is also possible that he was just an arsehole.

In any case, I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you. I have never written to an author after reading one of their books, but felt the need to do so today. It’s always nice for us to hear that our work has a positive impact on people, so I just wanted to let you know that I’ll buy you lots of drinks if our paths ever cross.

All best

Study Casts Doubt on Existence of a Potential “Earth 2.0”

By John Wenz

Some astronomers are questioning the existence of what might be the most Earth-like planet yet found outside the solar system, based on a reexamination of archival data.

Kepler 452 b was discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and announced in 2015. At the time it seemed like everything astronomers had hoped for in an Earth analogue: slightly larger and more massive than our planet, and in a habitable 385-day orbit around a star remarkably similar to our sun.

But at about 1,000 light-years away, Kepler 452 b is far too faint for easy follow-up studies. Its apparent existence is based solely on data gathered during Kepler’s primary mission, which ran from 2009 to 2013 before being cut short by equipment malfunctions. During this period the spacecraft stared continuously at a single patch of sky, waiting for any of the stars there to almost imperceptibly dim from the shadows of planets passing across their faces. Such “transits” are how Kepler found the vast majority of its planets; but many things besides planets can cause stars to slightly dim, leading to far more false alarms than discoveries of new worlds. For any candidate planet to be confirmed as genuine, it would have to be observed transiting at least three times. Due to its long orbital period, Kepler 452 b barely met that minimal criterion before the telescope’s primary mission ended—but a host of other, more technical tests convinced the Kepler team the planet had a 99 percent chance of being real.

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California considering a bill to declare conversion therapy a “fraudulent practice”

By John Riley

A bill that would designate conversion therapy a “fraudulent practice” is moving through the California state legislature, clearing the first of several hurdles earlier this week.

Assembly Bill 2943, sponsored by Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Cupertino), passed the Assembly Committee On Privacy and Consumer Protection on a bipartisan vote of 8-2.

If conversion therapy is considered a form of consumer fraud, then anyone who practices it is promising a product (change in sexual orientation or gender identity) that they cannot deliver.

That means that state regulatory bodies can then step in to effectively shut down the therapy by lodging complaints, fines, or taking other actions to prevent licensed therapists or counselors from carrying out the practices utilized in conversion therapy.

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