ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 310

Pruitt tapes revealed: Evolution’s a ‘theory,’ ‘majority’ religions under attack

By Emily Holden and Alex Guillén

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt dismissed evolution as an unproven theory, lamented that “minority religions” were pushing Christianity out of “the public square” and advocated amending the Constitution to ban abortion, prohibit same-sex marriage and protect the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments, according to a newly unearthed series of Oklahoma talk radio shows from 2005.

Pruitt, who at the time was a state senator, also described the Second Amendment as divinely granted and condemned federal judges as a “judicial monarchy” that is “the most grievous threat that we have today.” And he did not object when the program’s host described Islam as “not so much a religion as it is a terrorist organization in many instances.”

The six hours of civics class-style conversations on Tulsa-based KFAQ-AM were recently rediscovered by a firm researching Pruitt’s past remarks, which provided them to POLITICO on condition of anonymity so as not to identify its client. They reveal Pruitt’s unfiltered views on a variety of political and social issues, more than a decade before the ambitious Oklahoman would lead President Donald Trump’s EPA.

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I’m a scholar of the “prosperity gospel.” It took cancer to show me I was in its grip.

By Kate Bowler

There’s a branch of Christianity that promises a direct path to the good life. It is called by many names, but most often it is nicknamed the “prosperity gospel” for its bold central claim that God will give you your heart’s desires: money in the bank, a healthy body, a thriving family, and boundless happiness.

This was not the faith I grew up with on the prairies of Manitoba, Canada, surrounded by communities of Mennonites. I learned at my Anabaptist Bible camp about a poor carpenter from Galilee who taught that a good life was a simple one.

But when I was 18 or so, I started hearing stories about a different kind of faith with a formula for success. At first, I followed my interest in the prosperity gospel like a storm chaser, finding any megachurch within driving distance of a family vacation. I started at Yale Divinity School for my master’s ready to devote myself to analyzing this unusual theology.

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What This Optical Illusion Reveals About the Human Brain

By Jasmin Malik Chua

You may be familiar with a 19th-century optical illusion — or, more precisely, “ambiguous image” — of a rabbit that looks like a duck that looks like a rabbit. First published in 1892 by a German humor magazine, the figure was made popular after the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used it to illustrate two different ways of seeing. You can interpret the image as either a duck or a rabbit, but not both animals at the same time.

It gets trickier if you place two copies of the illusion side by side. You’re likely to see two ducks. Or perhaps two rabbits. In fact, about half of people can’t see a rabbit and a duck at first glance, according to Kyle Mathewson, a neuroscientist at the University of Alberta, in Canada. To picture one of each species simultaneously, you have to give your brain more information to work with — for example, telling yourself to imagine a duck eating a rabbit.

See it now? Turns out, when it comes to distinguishing between two ways of seeing identical images, context is vital, according to Mathewson’s new study. 

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AI researchers embrace Bitcoin technology to share medical data

By Amy Maxmen

Dexter Hadley thinks that artificial intelligence (AI) could do a far better job at detecting breast cancer than doctors do — if screening algorithms could be trained on millions of mammograms. The problem is getting access to such massive quantities of data. Because of privacy laws in many countries, sensitive medical information remains largely off-limits to researchers and technology companies.

So Hadley, a physician and computational biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is trying a radical solution. He and his colleagues are building a system that allows people to share their medical data with researchers easily and securely — and retain control over it. Their method, which is based on the blockchain technology that underlies the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, will soon be put to the test. By May, Hadley and his colleagues will launch a study to train their AI algorithm to detect cancer using mammograms that they hope to obtain from between three million and five million US women.

The team joins a growing number of academic scientists and start-ups who are using blockchain to make sharing medical scans, hospital records and genetic data more attractive — and more efficient. Some projects will even pay people to use their information. The ultimate goal of many teams is to train AI algorithms on the data they solicit using the blockchain systems.

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Evangelical Christianity Had Plenty of Problems Before Donald Trump Came Along

By Hemant Mehta

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and graduate of evangelical haven Wheaton College, is a card-carrying conservative Christian. That’s why his new cover story for The Atlantic, all about how evangelicals have screwed themselves over by latching onto Donald Trump, can’t be dismissed as another liberal screed.

His thesis is correct, and it’s something critics of the Religious Right have been saying for years: the Trump-loving Christians are hypocrites who routinely ignore his litany of problems in exchange for lip service and right-wing judicial nominees. In doing so, they’ve turned their once proud brand into something toxic.

… there appears to be no limit to what some evangelical leaders will endure. Figures such as [Jerry] Falwell [Jr.] and Franklin Graham followed Trump’s lead in supporting Judge Roy Moore in the December Senate election in Alabama. These are religious leaders who have spent their entire adult lives bemoaning cultural and moral decay. Yet they publicly backed a candidate who was repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct, including with a 14-year-old girl.

…

The moral convictions of many evangelical leaders have become a function of their partisan identification. This is not mere gullibility; it is utter corruption. Blinded by political tribalism and hatred for their political opponents, these leaders can’t see how they are undermining the causes to which they once dedicated their lives. Little remains of a distinctly Christian public witness.

Gerson also notes that white evangelicals today — and that’s an important distinction since black evangelicals know better than to follow Prophet Trump — are more influenced by Fox News than, say, Rick Warren.

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GOP reintroduces bill pitting ‘religious freedom’ against gay marriage

By Julie Moreau

The First Amendment Defense Act, commonly known as FADA, has been reintroduced in Congress by Senator Mike Lee of Utah and 21 other Republicans — despite being called “harmful,” “discriminatory” and the “vilest anti-LGBT religious freedom bill of our time” by gay rights advocates.

The bill, Lee said, is “designed to prevent the federal government from discriminating against individuals or institutions based on their beliefs about marriage.”

“What an individual or organization believes about the traditional definition of marriage is not — and should never be — a part of the government’s decision-making process when distributing licenses, accreditations or grants,” Lee said in a statement. “The First Amendment Defense Act simply ensures that this will always be true in America — that federal bureaucrats will never have the authority to require those who believe in the traditional definition of marriage to choose between their living in accordance with those beliefs and maintaining their occupation or their tax status.”

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Florida Scientists Are Running Around at Night Bashing in Iguanas’ Skulls

By Rafi Letzter

A team of scientists in Florida are on a three-month, $63,000 iguana-bashing spree.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission contracted the 15-member crew from the University of Florida to develop a set of best practices for killing the big lizards, according to a March 9 report in the Sun-Sentinel. So far, bashing their heads in seems to be a winning method.

Well-equipped team members sometimes use a captive bolt gun to destroy the critters’ brains. (Picture a mobile version of the device often used to kill cows in slaughterhouses.) But, the Sun-Sentinel reported, bashing their heads against the sides of solid objects, like trucks or boats, works just as well.

Given that the team is hoping their results will offer practical advice to homeowners, cracking some lizard skull against whatever hard object is handy might be a bit more practical than methods requiring bolt guns.

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Lobbyist for Archdiocese tries to gut childhood sexual abuse bill

By Ty Tagami

A Georgia legislative proposal to give adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue pedophiles and organizations has encountered opposition from the Catholic Church.

A lobbyist for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta proposes gutting a bill that would extend the statute of limitations for lawsuits and make it easier to sue entities that harbored pedophiles.

The Archdiocese is led by a clergyman who was in charge of the U.S. Catholic church’s response in the early 2000s to the priest pedophilia scandal and who has publicly spoken out for justice for the victims.

Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory issued a statement Friday after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sought comment about the church’s lobbying effort, saying the bill was “extraordinarily unfair” to the church and would hinder its mission by allowing lawsuits for actions that occurred years ago.

The legislation, dubbed the “Hidden Predator Act,” extends the statute of limitations for victims from age 23 to 38, and creates other avenues for adults to sue long after that age. It passed 170-0 on the floor of the House of Representatives, despite what those close to the process say was quiet lobbying by the church, the Boy Scouts and other entities that would face increased exposure to liability.

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When Will Non-Religious Americans Finally Become an Effective Voting Bloc?

By Rick Snedeker

Even though Americans unaffiliated with any religion now make up nearly a quarter of the United States’ population, our political influence is disproportionately slight and likely could remain underpowered for a good while.

The problem is that “Nones,” as demographers call us, are a surprisingly disparate group whose fragmented nature undermines developing the unity and interconnectivity necessary for an effective national political base. And we apparently aren’t big voters, either.

In 2016, even though Nones represented 21% of registered voters, we comprised only 15% of those actually casting a ballot, according to thr Pew Research Center and nationwide exit poll data.

Nonetheless, secular activists are intent on turning around that voter apathy starting with this fall’s midterm elections, a first step in hopefully making non-religious people a prominent, powerful voting bloc.

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A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches

By Campbell Robertson

FORT WORTH — Charmaine Pruitt wrote the names of 12 churches on a sheet of paper, tore the paper into 12 strips, and dropped them into a Ziploc bag. It was Sunday morning and time to pick which church to attend.

This time of the week two years earlier, there would have been no question. Ms. Pruitt, 46, would have been getting ready for her regular Saturday afternoon worship service, at a former grocery store overhauled into a state-of-the-art, 760-seat sanctuary. In the darkened hall, where it would have been hard to tell she was one of the few black people in the room, she would have listened to the soaring anthems of the praise bands. She would have watched, on three giant screens, a sermon that over the course of a weekend would reach one of the largest congregations in the country.

But Ms. Pruitt has not been to that church since the fall of 2016. That was when she concluded that it was not, ultimately, meant for people like her. She has not been to any church regularly since.

Ms. Pruitt pulled one of the slips out of the Ziploc bag. Mount Olive Fort Worth. O.K. That was where she would go that day.

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