ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 329

In small win for Democrats, the final tax bill will not include a provision allowing churches to endorse political candidates

By Heather Long

In a minor win for Democrats, the final GOP tax bill will not include a repeal of the Johnson Amendment, a change that would have allowed religious institutions and all nonprofit entities organized as 501(c)3s to endorse political candidates.

President Trump had strongly advocated the repeal.

Trump promised to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment at the National Prayer Breakfast in February. Getting rid of it has been a priority of some spiritual leaders, especially in evangelical circles that have typically leaned Republican. The tax bill that passed the House in November scrapped the Johnson Amendment entirely for all non-profits, but the Senate bill did not, setting up a difference that had to be ironed out in this final week of negotiations.

“I’m pleased to announced that Democrats successfully prevented the repeal of the Johnson Amendment from being jammed into any final Republican tax deal,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. He added that he would “continue to fight all attempts to eliminate this critical provision.”

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Growing Up Without the ‘Christ’ in Christmas: What It’s Like Being Raised by a Christmas-Loving Atheist

By Kyla Jenee Lacey

Ever since I can remember, two constants have been in my life:

My mother was never religious.
She went all out for Christmas.

Each year she attacked the holidays with an ever increasing fervor. She has lived in the same mostly white neighborhood for 23 years, where all the homes are as homogeneous and drab as their inhabitants, so it is pretty obvious around Christmastime which one is the “black house” in the neighborhood.

Instead of a Martha Stewart-like wreath, there’s a big, black-ass Santa face displayed on the door that looks as if the Notorious B.I.G. came down from the North Pole where the Junior M.A.F.I.A. makes presents to alert the white people in the subdivision: “The only St. Nick we acknowledge is St. Nicky Barnes.”

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When do children develop their gender identity?

By Vanessa LoBue

Gender is generally thought of as a stable trait: we are born male or female and we stay that way as we grow from small children to adults.

It turns out that for young children, initial concepts about gender are quite flexible. In my own research, I’ve found that children don’t begin to notice and adopt gender-stereotyped behaviors (e.g., preferring colors like pink or blue) until the age of two or three. A few years later, their concept of gender becomes quite rigid, and although it becomes more relaxed by middle childhood, even adults have trouble going back to thinking about gender as something that’s flexible.

So, how do children come to understand gender? When do they begin to think about gender as a stable trait?

What is gender?

We often tend to think about gender as the biological differences between men and women.

It is true that the path to gender development begins at conception. Each cell in our body has 46 chromosomes. A father’s sperm and a mother’s egg each has only half – 23 each. At conception, the chromosomes of the sperm and the egg match up into 22 identical pairs, with the 23rd pair being the sex chromosome. In most cases, XX chromosomes will become female and XY chromosomes will become male.

But this isn’t always the case. Gender is what actually gets expressed – how we look, how we act and how we feel. While sex is determined by what is written into the chromosomes or what is dictated by our biology, known as genotype, it is the interaction between the genes (genotype) and the environment that determines gender.

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‘Insult to the process.’ Judge who wouldn’t hear gay adoptions skips disciplinary hearing.

By Greg Kocher

A judge did not attend a Friday hearing to answer charges that he violated ethics rules when he objected to handling adoption cases involving gay parents.

Neither W. Mitchell Nance, family court judge for Barren and Metcalfe counties, nor his attorneys attended a hearing of the Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission in Lexington.

Nance had announced in October that he would resign effective Saturday night. Nance’s attorneys asked the commission to dismiss the case given his decision to resign.

But Steve Woltnizek, chairman of the commission, said “Whether Judge Nance appears or not, we are required to conduct a hearing.”

Commission attorney Jeff Mando said afterward that it is “not totally unusual” for a judge to be absent, “especially in light of the fact he resigned.”

Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign, which advocates for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, said he thought Nance’s absence was “an insult to the process.”

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2017 in news: The science events that shaped the year

By Ewen Callaway, Davide Castelvecchi, David Cyranoski, Elizabeth Gibney, Heidi Ledford, Jane J. Lee, Lauren Morello, Nicky Phillips, Quirin Schiermeier, Jeff Tollefson & Alexandra Witze

From political chaos to cases of sexual harassment, scientists have had a tough year. But there were also bright spots, including approval of a new type of cancer treatment and the detection of gravitational waves from a neutron-star collision.

When stars collide

This year marked the start of a new era in astronomy: one in which scientists can study celestial phenomena through the radiation they emit and the ripples they create in space-time. On 16 October, researchers revealed the first observations of the collision of two neutron stars. This confirmed detailed predictions of how such clashes created some mysterious γ-ray bursts and also most of the Universe’s heavier elements, including gold and uranium.

Physicists detected the collision’s ripples in the form of gravitational waves. And more than 70 teams of astronomers watched the aftermath using telescopes to monitor everything from γ-rays to the radio-frequency spectrum.

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CDC gets list of forbidden words: Fetus, transgender, diversity

By Lena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden terms at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden terms are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, “will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans,” HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd told The Washington Post. “HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.”

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Coming Out Atheist, pg 186

“Discuss!

Saturn’s Rings Are Younger Than Previously Thought

By Steven Novella

The gorgeous rings of Saturn are one of the most dramatic features of our solar system, and certainly a favorite of any backyard astronomer. Are they, however, a fixture that have been present for the majority of the life of our solar system, or are they a recent addition?

Of course we have no observations from millions or billions of years ago, so we can only infer their probable age. Up until recently astronomers believed they were probably ancient because the large collisions that likely produced them would have been far more likely in the early crowded solar system. However – recent evidence from Cassini has changed that conclusion.

The Cassini probe made detailed observations of Saturn and its rings for years, until it plummeted into the planet this September. Scientists are still analyzing all the data it sent back home. Two lines of evidence suggest that the rings of Saturn are far younger than previously suspected

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Against Trump’s Promises, GOP Won’t Include Johnson Amendment Repeal in Tax Bill

By Hemant Mehta

While the Republican Party’s tax scam continues being “worked” on, there’s always hope that a couple of GOP senators will come to their senses (like the entire Democratic delegation) and stop this monstrosity that benefits the wealthy at the expense of millions of Americans. But thanks to their incompetence, two wrongs might make a right.

One of the perks of this bill for the Religious Right was going to be the ability for pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit without fearing the loss of their churches’ tax exemptions. This was better known as the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, and it was something Donald Trump had been promising them for years. He even said at a prayer breakfast in February that he would “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment.” Then, months later, he signed an executive order purporting to do just that… even though it did no such thing.

To be sure, you could count on a single hand the number of churches whose tax exemptions have been revoked by the IRS over the past decade — and that’s after a horrible accident. The IRS just never acted on these violations even when baited by the Religious Right. But Congress was determined to make sure the IRS couldn’t take action even if they wanted to.

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This visitor from beyond our solar system will be probed for signs of life

By Ben Guarino

Our solar system has a visitor. It’s cylindrical, dark and reddish, a quarter-mile long. The object won’t be staying. This fall, astronomers announced that the thing came blazing into our neck of the galaxy at speeds of up to 196,000 mph. It is now headed away as quickly as it came.

The object’s trajectory is so strange and its speeds are so blistering that it probably did not originate from within our solar system. Its discoverers concluded that the object is a rare interstellar traveler from beyond our solar system, the first object of its kind observed by humans.

Astronomers at the University of Hawaii, who discovered the object with the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, said the visitor was an asteroid. In October, they named the asteroid ‘Oumuamua — Hawaiian for “messenger.” ‘Oumuamua, which appears rocky or metallic, lacks the characteristics of a comet.

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