ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 315

Sebastian Gorka: Trump’s Election Is Proof That God Exists

By Kyle Mantyla

Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference this morning, where he declared that Donald Trump’s election is proof that God exists.

Declaring that conservatives and Republicans must mobilize to vote in the 2018 midterm elections in order to prevent Democrats from gaining control of Congress, Gorka said that if Hillary Clinton had become become president in 2016, “we would have lost our republic.”

“If you ever had a doubt that God exists, guess what?” Gorka said, “November the 8th all the proof you need. Why? Because [Clinton] had it all, she had the media, she spent $1.4 billion on a seat, on a position, she thought was owed to her because of her gender and her last name, but she lost!”

Gorka said that Trump “brought us back from the brink. We didn’t have two wheels over the edge of the cliff, we had three wheels over the edge of the cliff. If she had won, that was it—from the Supreme Court on down, that was it. We would have lost our republic.”

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A Baptist Group Will Now Hire Gay People, and Some Christians Are Furious

By Sarahbeth Caplin

A so-called “moderate” Baptist organization called Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has decided to loosen its stance on hiring — they’re finally going to lift their self-imposed ban on employing LGBT people — but this significant step forward is marred by the fact that the non-discrimination only goes so far.

LGBTQ employees still wouldn’t be allowed to serve as missionaries, at least in a leadership role, and those who serve as missionaries at all will have to be celibate.

The committee emphasized in its report that CBF is a mission-sending organization relying on more than 100 partners around the world, which have “decisively rejected movement toward hiring or supporting LGBT field personnel or the inclusion of LGBT persons in ordained leadership.” To reflect and respect the practices of the overwhelming number of its global partners, CBF “will send field personnel who have the gifts and life experiences required for the most faithful ministry in the particular setting, who exhibit the qualities set forth in our hiring policy and who practice a traditional Christian sexual ethic of celibacy in singleness or faithfulness in marriage between a woman and a man,” according to the procedure. The same commitments will be followed with regard to supervisors of field personnel.

Bill Bumpas at One News Now reports that even this moderately inclusive policy is a step too far for some Christian leaders.

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Evolution May Make it Harder for Humans to Hold Their Liquor

By Laura Geggel

Humans are still evolving… but before toasting to that, know this: Some of the genetic changes may make hangovers worse, a new study finds.

So far, only certain populations have genetic adaptations that make it hard for them to process alcohol, but there’s no telling how fast it will spread to other populations, the researchers found.

As for people who already have the adaptation, they may have “reduced tolerance to alcohol in today’s environment,” study senior investigator Benjamin Voight, an associate professor of genetics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told Live Science in an email.

The researchers did the study so they could learn which regions of the human genome have adapted — that is, evolved — over the past tens of thousands of years, Voight said. To investigate, they looked at publicly available data from the 1,000 Genomes Project, a large sequencing venture that’s collected the genomes of more than 2,500 individuals of diverse ancestries — representing 26 different populations from four continents, Voight said.

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Neanderthal artists made oldest-known cave paintings

By Emma Marris

Neanderthals painted caves in what is now Spain before their cousins, Homo sapiens, even arrived in Europe, according to research published today in Science1. The finding suggests that the extinct hominids, once assumed to be intellectually inferior to humans, may have been artists with complex beliefs.

Ladder-like shapes, dots and handprints were painted and stenciled deep in caves at three sites in Spain. Their precise meaning may forever be unknowable, says Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK, who co-authored the study, but they were almost certainly meaningful to our lost kin. “It wasn’t simply decorating your living space,” Pike says. “People were making journeys into the darkness.”

Humans are thought to have arrived in Europe from Africa around 40,000–45,000 years ago. The three caves in different parts of Spain yielded artworks that are at least 65,000 years old, according to uranium-thorium dating of calcium carbonate that had formed on top of the art.

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Pruitt: Bible says ‘harvest the natural resources’

By Timothy Cama

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt said his desire to use the Earth’s resources like oil and coal is grounded in the Bible.

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network published Thursday, Pruitt spoke about how his Christian views inform his views on the environment and environmental policy.

“The biblical world view with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we’ve been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind,” he told CBN’s David Brody.

Trump’s top environmental regulator, who has overseen aggressive rollbacks of rules on greenhouse gases, air pollution, water pollution, chemicals and more, also tied religion into his ongoing criticisms of left-wing environmentalists. He accuses them of wanting to shut down drilling and other resource development.

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AZ Senate Passes Bill Letting Teachers Put “God Enriches” Signs in Classrooms

By Hemant Mehta

In Arizona, the law already allows public school teachers and administrators to post any of the following in their classrooms: 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.

I know what you’re thinking: That’s it?

Unsatisfied with those limited options, Republican State Sen. Gail Griffin sponsored SB 1289, which amends the law so that teachers can also post the state motto, “Ditat Deus,” which means “God Enriches.” (The law also explicitly states that the national motto is indeed “In God We Trust.”)

This is nothing more than a bill allowing teachers to push God into the classroom in another ostensibly secular way. And it just passed through the Senate on a 17-13 vote. (Every Republican voted for it. Every Democrat voted against it.)

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Why Elon Musk Is Stepping Down from AI Safety Group He Co-Founded

By Jeanna Bryner

Entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk may have a little more time on his hands (maybe), as he’s departing his spot on the board of the artificial-intelligence safety group OpenAI, according to a blog post.

The departure is likely the result of Tesla’s move into the realm of A.I., which he said in 2017 would be the “best in the world” and would even be able to “predict your destination.”

Musk will continue to “donate and advise the organization,” OpenAI said in a blog post Feb. 20, adding that “As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon.”

Musk and Y Combinator CEO Sam Altman co-founded the nonprofit venture in December 2015, with backing from the likes of Peter Thiel (an early backer of Facebook), Reid Hoffman (who co-founded LinkedIn), Jessica Livingston (founding partner of Y Combinator), Greg Brockman and computer scientist Ilya Sutskever, according to the OpenAI website.

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Amateur astronomer catches first glimpses of birth of a supernova

By Davide Castelvecchi

Victor Buso was eager to use the new camera on his telescope. But the amateur astronomer didn’t want to disturb his neighbours with the loud noise of opening his rooftop observatory, so he pointed his telescope through a gap in the enclosure on the night of 20 September 2016.

He trained it on a spiral galaxy called NGC 613, which is around 26 million parsecs (85 million light years) away in the southern sky, and spotted a rapidly brightening blotch of light in the series of images he was taking. Buso and a team of professional astronomers now report in Nature what seems to be the first observation of the very early stages of a supernova1.

The detection was “amazing”, says Norbert Langer, an astrophysicist at the University of Bonn in Germany. The chance of catching this event is smaller than that of hitting the jackpot in a lottery, he says.

The type of supernova the team observed occurs when a massive star runs out of nuclear-fusion fuel in its core. The star then begins to collapse, which compresses protons and electrons together and converts them into neutrons. Astrophysicists theorize that this collapse triggers a shockwave that can take up to a day to reach the star’s surface.

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Why Are These Christian Non-Profits Telling the IRS They’re Churches?

By Hemant Mehta

Every non-profit organization in the country has to file a 990 report with the IRS explaining (among other things) how much money they took in, how it was spent, and how much their top staffers made in salaries. It’s a public document, too, a way to keep tabs on whether a non-profit really is living up to its mission.

There’s an exception to the Form 990, though. Religious institutions, despite being non-profits and not having to pay taxes, do not have to fill out the form or make it public. That means we don’t always know how much money big-name megachurch pastors make — or how much of the congregation’s money goes right into his pocket. We don’t know who’s donating to those churches, either. Without being forced to release the information, many churches choose to avoid transparency. Easier to fool the sheep that way.

That shouldn’t matter when we’re talking about Christian non-profits like Focus on the Family or the legal defense group Liberty Counsel. They’re not churches. They’re regular non-profits. In the view of the IRS, they’re no different from Planned Parenthood. All of them have to file the 990s each year.

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Florida Responds To Shooting By Forcing Schools To Post ‘In God We Trust’ Signs

By Michael Stone

In response to the recent school shooting every Florida school will now be forced to post “In God We Trust” signs.

The Associated Press reports:

Every Florida school and school administrative building will have to prominently display “In God we trust” under a bill passed by the Florida House.

The House on Wednesday approved the bill on a 97-10 vote.

According to the report, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kimberly Daniels, cited the recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, during her closing speech on the bill:

Daniels said that God is the “light” and “our schools need light in them like never before.”

She added that gun issues need to be addressed, but the “real thing that needs to be addressed are issues of the heart.”

Seventeen people were killed last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. No imaginary God stopped the shooter, and any trust placed in that imaginary God is trust misplaced.

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