ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 303

Kansas lawmaker says school prayer will fix education

By Jonathan Shorman

Prayer in schools is the solution to problems in public education, a Kansas Republican lawmaker said Saturday.

“I say the way to fix our schools is to put prayer and the Bible back in and give it a chance,” said Rep. Randy Garber of Sabetha.

His comments came during a House debate over a plan to increase school funding by $500 million over five years. Lawmakers are seeking to respond to a Kansas Supreme Court decision that found schools are inadequately funded under the state constitution.

Students may pray in schools now. U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s stopped school-led prayers, however.

Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the Kansas National Education Association, said there is prayer in schools each day — there just isn’t organized, directed prayer for one faith.

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Inside the White House Bible Study group

By Owen Amos

Every Wednesday, some of the world’s most powerful people meet in a conference room in Washington DC to learn about God.

The location can’t be revealed – the Secret Service won’t allow it – but the members can.

Vice-President Mike Pence. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The list goes on.

In total, 10 cabinet members are “sponsors” of the group. Not everyone attends every meeting – they are busy people – but they go if they can.

Meetings last between 60 and 90 minutes, and members are free to contact the teacher after-hours. So who is the man leading the United States’ most-influential bible study?

Step forward Ralph Drollinger, a seven-foot tall basketball pro turned pastor. Or, as the 63-year-old describes himself: “Just a jock with some bad knees.”

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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Schools in NYC Keep Failing… and Things Just Got Worse

By Terry Firma

If a religious education is consistently and measurably inferior to one offered by public schools, it would make sense for parents to make a change. Who doesn’t want their child’s knowledge and academic skills to be at least on par with those of the average student?

You’d be surprised:

Roughly 57,000 students attend ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshivas in New York City, and according to activists from a group called Young Advocates for Fair Education, many of the students, particularly the boys, will finish school with poor to nonexistent English and math skills, and little knowledge of history or science.

That’s because English, math, and science are widely considered “profane” among the Hasidic population.

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N.J. bill would limit religious vaccine exemptions

By Nicole Leonard

It would be more difficult for New Jersey parents to get their children exempted from mandatory vaccines based on religious grounds if a new bill introduced Thursday becomes law.

Bill sponsor Assemblyman Herb Conaway, D-Burlington, who is also a licensed physician, brought forth the legislation at an Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee hearing packed with families and people opposing proposed tighter restrictions on religious exemption.

After several hours of testimony from those who supported and opposed the bill, the committee approved the measure that would require parents to provide several forms of proof as to why their children should qualify for a religious exemption to vaccines.

Conaway, who also chairs the health committee, said in a statement that exemptions must be limited to do what is best for the overall public health.

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Maryland lawmakers vote to ban ‘gay conversion therapy’

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers voted Wednesday to prohibit health professionals from practicing “gay conversion therapy” on minors, after a legislator spoke of the pain she experienced when her parents sought it for her. Just days earlier, the woman’s father, a state senator, voted against the bill.

The House passed the bill 95-27, sending the measure to Gov. Larry Hogan. A spokeswoman for Hogan said the governor supports the bill.

“This issue is not about Republicans or Democrats nor conservatives or liberals,” Del. Meagan Simonaire said before the House vote. “It’s not about religious values. It’s about basic human decency. It’s about the fact that it’s impossible to fix something that was never broken in the first place.”

Simonaire, a Republican, spoke about how, as a teenager, she kept the fact that she was attracted to both boys and girls from her parents. She said when she finally confided to them about being attracted to a female teen, they sought conversion therapy providers for her. While she never had the therapy, she says the thought that her parents believed they could “fix her” was enough to “cause significant pain, self-loathing and deep depression.”

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‘Concerned’ Evangelicals Plan To Meet With Trump As Sex Scandals Swirl

By Sarah McCammon

As allegations continue to swirl about the president and a payout to a porn star to cover up a sexual encounter, evangelical leaders are organizing a sit-down with President Trump in June, four sources with knowledge of the planned meeting tell NPR.

“We’re very concerned” about the allegations, said a leader of a faith-based ministry. The leader is involved in hosting the gathering, which organizers are aiming to take place June 19 at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The source said the combination of the Stormy Daniels sex-scandal allegations and Trump’s continued reputation for divisive rhetoric could suppress evangelical turnout in the November midterm elections.

“It is a concern of ours that 2018 could be very detrimental to some of the other issues that we hold dear,” like preserving religious liberty and restricting abortion rights, the source noted. The source, like the others with knowledge of the event, spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity so as to not jeopardize the meeting.

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Antarctica ‘gives ground to the ocean’

By Jonathan Amos

Scientists now have their best view yet of where Antarctica is giving up ground to the ocean as some of its biggest glaciers are eaten away from below by warm water.

Researchers using Europe’s Cryosat radar spacecraft have traced the movement of grounding lines around the continent.

These are the places where the fronts of glaciers that flow from the land into the ocean start to lift and float.

The new study reveals an area of seafloor the size of Greater London that was previously in contact with ice is now free of it.

The report, which covers the period from 2010 to 2016, is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“What we’re able to do now with Cryosat is put the behaviour of retreating glaciers in a much wider context,” said Dr Hannes Konrad from the University of Leeds, UK.

“Our method for monitoring grounding lines requires a lot of data but it means you could now basically build a permanent service to monitor the state of the edges of the continent,” he told BBC News.

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Are Water Worlds Habitable?

By Shannon Hall

Roughly 39 light-years away toward the constellation Aquarius is a planet that hosts a global ocean so deep it drowns the land. Set sail anywhere on that water world and you will never spot mountains, hills or even beaches on the horizon, just deep blue tides. And this planet is not alone. A new analysis of the exoplanets circling TRAPPIST-1—which a 2017 study estimated were all roughly the size, mass and composition of Earth—suggests that four of the seven worlds are actually soaked in water. Two of them are more than 50 percent water, by mass, and the other two are less than 15 percent (that is still far wetter than Earth, which is less than 0.1 percent water). What is more: Multiple lines of evidence suggest that water worlds might be abundant throughout the cosmos.

That might sound like good news. After all, wherever we find water on Earth—be it the acidic pools of Yellowstone or the cracks within frozen glaciers—we find life. The correlation is so strong that NASA has adopted the mantra “follow the water” when searching for life beyond our pale blue dot. But these wet worlds have sparked a lively debate about how much water is too much.

Take the fifth planet within the TRAPPIST-1 system as an example. Cayman Unterborn, an exogeologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, and his colleagues think that the liquid water here extends down about 200 kilometers—roughly 20 times deeper than Earth’s Mariana Trench. That much water would create a large ice layer at the bottom of the ocean which would seal the ocean from the land and effectively shut down a geochemical cycle that plays a crucial role in Earth’s habitability.

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AZ House Debates Bill Letting Teachers Put “God Enriches” Signs in Classrooms

By Hemant Mehta

Back in February, the Arizona Senate voted along party lines, 17-13, to pass a bill amending the law so that teachers could post the state motto, “Ditat Deus” in their classrooms.

Why would Republicans want to do that?

Because passing the bill would presumably allow them to post the English translation of that motto — “God Enriches” — in schools everywhere.

Keep in mind the law already allows teachers to put the following up in their rooms: The national motto (“In God We Trust”), the National Anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Constitution’s preamble, the Declaration of Independence, the Mayflower Compact, any speeches or proclamations by the Founding Fathers or our presidents, “Published decisions of the United States Supreme Court,” and any acts passed by Congress.

Did they really need more God in that mix? (Hahahaha. As if we even have to ask.)

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Researchers Discover Common Thread Among Christians Who Voted For Trump

By Carol Kuruvilla

Social scientists have a number of theories on why President Donald Trump captured the votes of 80 percent of white evangelical Protestants in the 2016 election, much more than his support from any other religious group. And the president still enjoys the approval of 78 percent of white evangelicals, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

Some researchers have theorized that the economic anxiety of the working class may explain the Trump support, while others cite white Americans’ fears about “cultural displacement.”

In a recently published study, a team of sociologists claims there’s another common thread that could explain why some evangelicals are willing to overlook behavior they would typically condemn as immoral, including multiple allegations of sexual impropriety.

Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Clemson University, told HuffPost the key is Christian nationalism.

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