ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 331

Leave the Johnson Amendment Alone

By Ellen P. Aprill

As the House and the Senate seek agreement on tax reform, they will have to decide the fate of the so-called Johnson amendment. This provision of the Internal Revenue Code prohibits tax-exempt charities from electioneering — that is, from becoming involved in any way in a candidate’s campaign for elected office. The tax reform bill passed by the House last month loosened this prohibition to the point where it would no longer prohibit much. The Senate’s tax reform bill made no change to current law.

Evangelical churches have long objected to the strictures of the Johnson amendment. From the beginning of his candidacy, President Trump promised them that he would repeal it. In fact, as originally proposed, the House tax reform bill would have altered the Johnson amendment only for houses of worship. The House, however, quickly revised its proposal. As finally passed by the House, the provision would permit any tax-exempt charity to support or oppose a candidate as long as “the preparation and presentation of such content” occurs “in the ordinary course of the organization’s regular and customary activities” and does not result in “more than de minimis incremental expenses.”

The breadth of the House proposal is far from clear. When are activities “regular and customary”? When is an expense “de minimis” (meaning insignificant) or “incremental”? If this uncertain standard becomes law, the I.R.S. will need to give charities and potential donors guidance about the meaning of those terms. Whatever rules the I.R.S. announces, they are sure to be fraught with complication.

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Roy Moore: The eyes of the world are on Alabama election

By Katty Kay

Question: Just how interested is the world in the Alabama election tomorrow?

Answer: A reporter from Moldova is down there. It’s pretty much all you need to know.

News organisations from foreign countries love stories about America that expose its weaknesses. They always have done.

It can sometimes be explained as schadenfreude, an almost indecent glee when things are perceived to have gone wrong in the world’s superpower.

The riots in Ferguson, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crash, and now the Alabama race.

Those reporters would not normally fly to the Deep South to cover a mere US Senate race, especially one that should have been a straightforward Republican win in this conservative state.

Then again, you don’t often get a candidate who believes homosexuality should be illegal, Muslims should be banned from serving in Congress and the last time America was great was when there was slavery.

That’s the Republican, Roy Moore.

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Acupuncture in cancer study reignites debate about controversial technique

By Jo Marchant

One of the largest-ever clinical trials into whether acupuncture can relieve pain in cancer patients has reignited a debate over the role of this contested technique in cancer care.

Oncologists who conducted a trial of real and sham acupuncture in 226 women at 11 different cancer centres across the United States say their results — presented on 7 December at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas — conclude that the treatment significantly reduces pain in women receiving hormone therapy for breast cancer. They suggest it could help patients stick to life-saving cancer treatments, potentially improving survival rates. But sceptics say it is almost impossible to conduct completely rigorous double-blinded trials of acupuncture.

Interest in acupuncture has grown because of concerns over the use of opioid-based pain-relief drugs, which can have nasty side effects and are extremely addictive. Many cancer centres in the United States therefore offer complementary therapies for pain relief. Almost 90% of US National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centres suggest that patients try acupuncture, and just over 70% offer it as a treatment for side effects1. That horrifies sceptics such as Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine and founder of the blog Science-Based Medicine. Acupuncture has no scientific basis, he says; recommending it is “telling patients that magic works”. 

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Freedom From Religion group calls for IRS investigation over church’s pro-Roy Moore sign

By Leada Gore

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is requesting an IRS investigation into an Alabama church that promoted Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore on its marquee.

Living Way Ministries in Opelika drew national attention for its sign that said “They falsely accused Jesus! Vote Roy Moore.” Church officials said the message was posted by a church member and the pastor later requested it be removed.

Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in the Dec. 12 election. The former Alabama Chief Justice has been accused of having improper sexual contact with teenage girls in the 1970s. He denies the charges.

FFRF said the sign is a violation of the Johnson Amendment that prohibits non-profit organizations, including churches and other religious groups, from participating in political campaigns on behalf of a particular candidate.

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Oldest Supermassive Black Hole Found from Universe’s Infancy

By Charles Q. Choi

Astronomers have discovered the oldest supermassive black hole ever found—a behemoth that grew to 800 million times the mass of the sun when the universe was just 5 percent of its current age, a new study finds.

This newfound giant black hole, which formed just 690 million years after the Big Bang, could one day help shed light on a number of cosmic mysteries, such as how black holes could have reached gargantuan sizes quickly after the Big Bang and how the universe got cleared of the murky fog that once filled the entire cosmos, the researchers said in the new study.

Supermassive black holes with masses millions to billions of times that of the sun are thought to lurk at the hearts of most, if not all, galaxies. Previous research suggested these giants release extraordinarily large amounts of light when they rip apart stars and devour matter, and likely are the driving force behind quasars, which are among the brightest objects in the universe. 

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How Religious Fear is Shaping the Culture War

By Brandon Withrow

On Monday, the Supreme Court allowed President Trump’s travel ban to take effect. That he doesn’t hide his anti-Muslim sentiments well is not a secret—a firestorm erupted over his unapologetic sharing of anti-Muslim videos from Britain First in November, and six of the eight countries in the newly approved ban are still predominantly Muslim.

The president’s use of a culture war exploits far right religious motives and fears. But there are good reasons to believe that this strategy, while effective for an election last year, is ultimately short-sighted.

First, why did his culture war strategy work?

A recent Penn State study led by Michael H. Pasek and Jonathan E. Cook may have that answer. Looking at religious threats in the United States, their research shows that feelings of religious threats can have spiraling impacts and consequences (full study). Threats, according to the study are psychological responses “experienced by individuals who feel stereotyped, discriminated against, or devalued because of a social group membership.” Individuals who “feel targeted because of their religious identity” also may “experience that as a psychological threat.” This becomes a vicious cycle, according to the researchers. Those who feel threatened frequently feel isolated, tend to hide their religious identities, and in turn increase their own prejudice against others.

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Flu Season Is Already Off to a Bad Start

By Rachael Rettner

Flu season is underway in the United States, and a new report shows that flu activity is already higher than typical for this time of year.

During the week that ended Nov. 25 (the most recent period for which data is available), three Southern states — Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — reported high levels of flu activity; one state (Georgia) reported moderate flu activity, and the rest reported either low or minimal flu activity, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At this same time last year, no states were reporting high levels of flu activity.

The new CDC report, published Dec. 7, also said that during the week of Thanksgiving, the percentage of people visiting the doctor for flu-like illness was 2.3 percent, which is slightly above the “national baseline” for flu visits — the threshold for what’s typically seen in the off-season — which is 2.2 percent. At this time last year, the percentage of people visiting the doctor for flu-like illness was only 1.9 percent.

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The labs that forge distant planets here on Earth

By Shannon Hall

Yingwei Fei and his colleagues had spent a month carefully crafting the three slivers of dense silicate — shiny and round, each sample was less than a millimetre thick. But in early November, it was time to say goodbye. Fei carefully packed the samples, plus a few back-ups, in foam and shipped them from Washington DC to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, the Z Pulsed Power Facility at Sandia National Laboratories will soon send 26 million amps surging towards the slivers, zapping them, one by one, into dust.

The Z machine can replicate the extreme conditions inside detonating nuclear weapons. But Fei, a high-pressure experimental geologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Geophysical Laboratory in Washington DC, has a more otherworldly goal in mind: he hopes to explore how bridgmanite, a mineral found deep beneath Earth’s surface, would behave at the higher temperatures and pressures found inside larger rocky planets beyond the Solar System.

The experiment is one small contribution to exogeology: a research area that is bringing astronomers, planetary scientists and geologists together to explore what exoplanets might look like, geologically speaking. For many scientists, exogeology is a natural extension of the quest to identify worlds that could support life. Already, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets and collected some of their vital statistics, including their masses and radii. Those that orbit in the habitable, or ‘Goldilocks’, zone — a region around the host star that is temperate enough for water to exist in liquid form — are thought to be particularly life-friendly.

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Voucher Schools Championed By Betsy DeVos Can Teach Whatever They Want. Turns Out They Teach Lies.

By Rebecca Klein

PORTLAND, Ore. ― It was late morning in an artsy cafe, the smell of coffee and baked goods sweetening the air, and Ashley Bishop sat at a table, recalling a time when she was taught that most of secular American society was worthy of contempt.

Growing up in private evangelical Christian schools, Bishop saw the world in extremes, good and evil, heaven and hell. She was taught that to dance was to sin, that gay people were child molesters and that mental illness was a function of satanic influence. Teachers at her schools talked about slavery as black immigration, and instructors called environmentalists “hippie witches.”

Bishop’s family moved around a lot when she was a child, but her family always enrolled her in evangelical schools.

So when Bishop left school in 2003 and entered the real world at 17, she felt like she was an alien landing on Planet Earth for the first time. Having been cut off from mainstream society, she felt unequipped to handle the job market and develop secular friendships. Lacking shared cultural and historical references, she spent most of her 20s holed up in her bedroom, suffering from crippling social anxiety.

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Australian Parliament allows same-sex marriages

By Rod McGuirk

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Parliament voted Thursday to allow same-sex marriage across the nation, following a bitter debate settled by a much-criticized government survey of voters that strongly endorsed change.

The public gallery in the House of Representatives erupted with applause when the bill passed. It changes the definition of marriage from solely between a man and a woman to “a union of two people” excluding all others. The legislation passed with a majority that wasn’t challenged, although four lawmakers registered their opposition.

“What a day. What a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Parliament.

The Senate passed the same legislation last week 43 votes to 12. The government later announced that same-sex couples will be able to apply to marry starting Saturday, with the first weddings potentially from Jan. 6.

Champagne and tears flowed in the halls of Parliament House as gay celebrities including Olympic champion swimmer Ian Thorpe and actress Magda Szubanski hugged lawmakers and ordinary folk in a party atmosphere.

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