ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 34

Pakistani accused of forcibly marrying 13-year-old girl arrested

By Asad Hashim A Pakistani court has ordered the police to take into custody a man accused of kidnapping, forcibly converting and marrying a 13-year-old Christian child until the next hearing in the case later this week. Azhar Ali, 44, will be presented before the Sindh High Court in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi …

At Supreme Court, Justices Consider Religion, LGBTQ Rights

By Nina Totenberg The U.S. Supreme Court may be poised to side with Catholic Social Services in a battle that pits religious freedom against anti-discrimination laws in Philadelphia. At issue is a Catholic charity’s refusal to screen same-sex couples as foster care parents. While new Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not indicate which way she …

How Trump’s strong play for Hispanic evangelicals helped him stun Biden in Florida

By Jack Jenkins Democrats agonizing over Joe Biden’s dramatic underperformance in Florida, a state that many wrongly projected would end up in the former vice president’s column, have begun looking at why Hispanic voters, a majority of the population of Miami-Dade County, went soft on Biden in the Sunshine State and elsewhere. One answer, said the Rev. …

Escaping a Cult’s Grasp

Mr. Richard Dawkins, Let me begin by acknowledging that although this correspondence is addressed to Richard Dawkins, I have no delusions that he will ever read this, nor would I expect him to do so. Clearly, there are much more pressing matters to attend to rather than to hear another one of these stodgy tales, …

What 50 gravitational-wave events reveal about the Universe

By Davide Castelvecchi Astronomers observed 39 cosmic events that released gravitational waves over a 6-month period in 2019 — a rate of more than one per week. The bounty, described in a series of papers published on 28 October, demonstrates how observatories that detect these ripples — usually created by the merging of two black …

7 religious voter trends to look for on Election Day

By Jack Jenkins After more than a year of campaigning, the 2020 election is finally upon us, pitting Democrat Joe Biden against President Donald Trump. It has been an unusually faith-focused campaign season, with both candidates repeatedly appealing to religion and religious voters over the past few months — albeit often in very different ways. But as the …

Some Christians say Trump has pushed young people away from their churches — and his impact on Christianity could last well beyond his presidency

By Kelsey Vlamis Maria Felix was on a mission trip, working alongside other Christians, when she first heard Donald Trump’s name. It was 2015, and she said the group of teens was joking about him, baffled at the idea that he was casting himself as a Christian in his campaign for the US presidency. Five …

Vienna shooting attack suspect was Islamic State sympathizer, Austrian authorities say

By Denise Hruby and Loveday Morris Peering out a window at Vienna’s main synagogue compound on Monday evening, Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister watched as a gunman opened fire on customers in the bars and restaurants of the city’s main nightlife district. The shots rang out — dozens of volleys, perhaps hundreds, he isn’t sure — sending …

Drones Are Being Sent Straight Into Volcanoes, For Life-Saving Science

By Clare Watson With an estimated 300 active volcanoes on Earth, the challenge is how to monitor them all to send out early warnings before they erupt. Measuring volcanic gas emissions is also no easy task. Now researchers have designed specially-adapted drones to help gather data from an active volcano in Papua New Guinea (PNG). …

Two prominent evangelical Trump advisers square off over alleged Holocaust survivor scam

By Michelle Boorstein Two members of President Trump’s evangelical advisory group are locked in a nasty legal dispute involving allegations of a multimillion-dollar Holocaust fundraising scam. Mike Evans, a Texas author and Christian Zionist activist, this summer filed a federal lawsuit against Jentezen Franklin, a Georgia megachurch pastor who has been featured at Trump campaign events. The two men …