ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 335

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Atheists’ Case Against School Board Prayers in TX

By Hemant Mehta

The Supreme Court today rejected a request by the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center to hear a case that would have massive repercussions for church/state separation at public school board meetings.

The case involved the Birdville Independent School District in Texas, which has a long history of promoting Christianity. They’ve punished a student for tearing pages from a Bible (and then carrying around that ripped Bible). They’ve sponsored religious Baccalaureate ceremonies. They’ve hosted religious assemblies. There are religious symbols in classrooms. And their school board meetings include religious invocations from students, some as young as six.

It’s that last bit that the AHA focused on in this lawsuit. The AHA’s Executive Director Roy Speckhardt said last year that, “By opening meetings with prayers, the Birdville school board is sending the message that they favor Christianity over other religions, and that non-Christian community members are unwelcome.” Keep in mind that students were often required to attend these meetings “for school credit, to receive recognition for academic or extracurricular achievement, to perform for the Board, or to resolve disciplinary matters.”

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In Tax Debate, Gift to Religious Right Could Be Bargaining Chip

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Laurie Goodstein

WASHINGTON — For years, a coalition of well-funded groups on the religious right have waged an uphill battle to repeal a 1954 law that bans churches and other nonprofit groups from engaging in political activity.

Now, those groups are edging toward a once-improbable victory as Republican lawmakers, with the enthusiastic backing of President Trump, prepare to rewrite large swaths of the United States tax code as part of the $1.5 trillion tax package moving through Congress.

Among the changes in the tax bill that passed the House this month is a provision to roll back the 1954 ban, a move that is championed by the religious right, but opposed by thousands of religious and nonprofit leaders, who warn that it could blur the line between charity and politics.

The change could turn churches into a well-funded political force, with donors diverting as much as $1.7 billion each year from traditional political committees to churches and other nonprofit groups that could legally engage in partisan politics for the first time, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

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Islam criticism in a hand-to-hand fight

By Kacem El Ghazzali

The failure of most terrorism analyses, especially in the West, which has been stricken by radical Islamic terrorism in recent years, is that they try to read the phenomenon of Islamic violence usually in isolation.

An analytical approach that is often very popular in the political left wing, for example, is to see Islamist terror as the result of social injustice, poverty, and illiteracy. However, a closer look at the level of education and economic status of many people who have joined the Islamic state reveals a different picture:

According to a World Bank report from 2016, many IS terrorists have a good education and a good level of prosperity. 69 percent have at least a secondary school education and a large proportion were even enrolled at universities, while the proportion of illiterate students was only 2 percent.

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Ancient Helmet-Wearing Wormy Creature Was Covered in ‘Cocktail Sticks’

By Laura Geggel

About 515 million years ago, a tiny sea critter that was “strange beyond measure”wasn’t taking any chances about its safety: Armor covered its back and sides, a helmet-like shell protected its head and pointy spikes stuck out from its sides, researchers have found.

“The creature is like a mythical beast,” said study researcher Martin Smith, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Durham University in England.

The newfound beast may change scientists’ understanding of the behavior of some of these early Cambrian period animals, the researchers said.

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The most popular genes in the human genome

By Elie Dolgin

Peter Kerpedjiev needed a crash course in genetics. A software engineer with some training in bioinformatics, he was pursuing a PhD and thought it would really help to know some fundamentals of biology. “If I wanted to have an intelligent conversation with someone, what genes do I need to know about?” he wondered.

Kerpedjiev went straight to the data. For years, the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) has been systematically tagging almost every paper in its popular PubMed database that contains some information about what a gene does. Kerpedjiev extracted all the papers marked as describing the structure, function or location of a gene or the protein it encodes.

Sorting through the records, he compiled a list of the most studied genes of all time — a sort of ‘top hits’ of the human genome, and several other genomes besides.

Heading the list, he found, is a gene called TP53. Three years ago, when Kerpedjiev first did his analysis, researchers had scrutinized the gene or the protein it produces, p53, in some 6,600 papers. Today, that number is at about 8,500 and counting. On average, around two papers are published each day describing new details of the basic biology of TP53.

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L.A.’s Only Atheist Choir Questions Organized Religion Through Song

By Jessica Donath

In a lot of ways, Voices of Reason is a choir like many others. Lay vocalists with various levels of experience meet twice a month in a private home to practice. They sing a cappella and choral sheet music.

But Voices of Reason’s repertoire is different. As an atheist choir that performs regularly for a limited but devoted audience of Atheists United members, it chooses songs that are critical of religion or that address topics of interested to people who frequent atheist groups — often with a humorous twist. Their repertoire includes everything from “Imagine” by John Lennon to “Every Sperm Is Sacred” from Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life.

Choral music has its roots in the Christian church of the Renaissance. Even today many choirs sing religious music, even if they aren’t based at a church.

“The church was so involved in the arts, it was commissioned. Who is paying atheists to sing music?” says Yari Schutzer, a member of Voices of Reason since its inception.

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Congressional Resolution Praises “Nonsectarian” Museum of the Bible

By Hemant Mehta

Of all the ways to describe the new Museum of the Bible that just opened in Washington, D.C. — thanks to $500 million from the family that owns Hobby Lobby — “nonsectarian” is probably the strangest. That’s because the museum very clearly pushes a Protestant view of the Bible, and the family has always made clear their ultimate goal is to bring people to Jesus even if the museum doesn’t always engage in outright proselytizing.

Writing for POLITICO, Candida Moss and Joel S. Baden say that there’s nothing neutral about this place:

After touring the site of the museum, visiting its traveling exhibit, and interviewing [Hobby Lobby CEO Steve] Green and others involved in the project, we have found that despite genuine efforts at nonsectarianism, the museum’s version of the Bible’s history remains beholden to the worldview of the Green family. The broader story it tells about the Bible, and especially the Bible’s place in American culture, is essentially a Protestant one, and it excludes other traditions when they might come into conflict with that basic story.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, especially when this is a privately funded museum. But if you’re looking for an objective look at the Bible, from a variety of perspectives, you’re not going to find it here. It’s the Bible as seen through a bunch of believers, who think the book has shaped the world in positive ways, and who aren’t interested in the views of scholars who take issue with traditional Christian interpretations of the book.

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Question of the Week 11/22/2017

It’s so easy for us all to get stuck in our social media filter bubbles, only hearing from people and sources that agree with us. Do you try to expand your horizons to encompass other perspectives, online or offline? How do you do it?

The person with our favorite answer will receive a copy of Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins.

Want to suggest a Question of the Week? E-mail submissions to us at qotw@richarddawkins.net. (Questions only, please. All answers to bimonthly questions are made only in the comments section of the Question of the Week.)

Coming Out Atheist pg 46

“Chris Hallquist, of the Uncredible Hallq blog, kept his atheism a secret for years so he could finish becoming an Eagle Scout. He now says, “Now having made Eagle rank affects my life for nada, beyond being able to tell this story. I regret even caring about it when I Was in high school. I regret not coming out to everyone earlier.” And Alan, who was raised in a Jewish household in Minneapolis, echoes this sentiment. He came out to his parents somewhat by accident, when he was at college; he’d let go of his religious practice, so he didn’t notice when it was Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar. His advice now: “Come out as early as you are comfortable with, so you can control the circumstances and minimize the risk of being outed by accident.”

–Greta Christina, Coming Out Atheist, pg 46

Discuss!

I Paid $300 For DNA-Based Fitness Advice And All I Got Was Junk Science

by Angela Chen

In January of this year, I decided I would complete a half-marathon. I would push my body to the limit and be reborn as my best self. For months, I woke up at 6 to run before work, motivated by the promise of sweet endorphins and even-sweeter self-righteousness. But then the winter wore on, and I gained some weight, and now I’m back to 5Ks instead.

In my quest to return to former glory, I redownloaded the “couch to half-marathon” app and spent $100 on a pair of New Balance shoes. I became interested in a genetic-testing kit that promised to provide the information I needed to complete 13.1 miles once and for all.

Genetic testing for wellness seems like a natural choice for someone like me. I still wear my Fitbit every day two years after getting it, making me one of the few and the proud that have stuck with their device for longer than six months. I own a smart scale and a running watch; I track calories and read training forums. But the forum advice is general, while the DNA test kit promised insights based on who I, specifically, am. In a society obsessed with optimizing ourselves, it follows that figuring out the “nature” part of the “nature versus nurture” equation can give us that extra competitive edge.

The test in question is available through Helix, a new consumer genomics company. Helix uses a more sophisticated method of genome sequencing than most other commercial DNA tests, and brands itself as a “platform.” It works like this: you send Helix your genetic data and it sequences it. Then, you buy various data analyses from third-party companies that you authorize to access your genetic information. The offerings are varied. You can learn about your risk for various genetic diseases and your sleep type, see what you and your partner’s baby might look like, or be served wine recommendations “scientifically selected based on your DNA.”

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