ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 39

NASA mission will ‘fist bump’ an asteroid to reveal the Solar System’s secrets

By Alexandra Witze NASA is about to grab its first-ever taste of an asteroid. On 20 October, some 334 million kilometres from Earth, the agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will approach a dark-coloured, diamond-shaped asteroid named Bennu, with the aim of touching its surface for a few seconds — long enough to hoover up a collection of …

Evangelical leaders are a reliable clientele for the Trump hotel in Washington

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey President Trump’s Washington hotel, where the average guest pays about $650 per night, has served as an epicenter of conservative politics during his administration. And among its high-profile visitors are the president’s evangelical advisers, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. They include James Dobson, a co-founder of Focus on …

Nonedecision 2020: Secular Voters Disagree on More than Candidates

By Juhem Navarro-Rivera Most secular Americans are expected to vote for the Democratic Party candidate in November, as secular voters have done for nearly four decades. While nearly seven in ten secular voters plan on voting for Joe Biden, a substantial minority will support President Donald Trump’s reelection bid. The 2020 Secular Voices Survey, a poll of 2,000 …

Both candidates went to church this weekend. Their experiences were very different

By Jack Jenkins Joe Biden and Donald Trump both visited churches over the weekend, a common practice for presidential candidates in the lead up to an election. Yet their experiences showcased not only dramatically different forms of American Christianity, but also contrasting examples of how religion can intersect with politics. According to pool reports, Biden, a …

What it’s really like to do science amid COVID-19

By Quirin Schiermeier, Holly Else, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, T.V. Padma, & Nisha Gaind Autumn heralds the start of a new academic year in much of the world, but in 2020, the term comes with the disruption of the COVID-19 outbreak and a surge in infections in many regions. Many universities have welcomed students and researchers …

Black skeptics uplift their community through social justice

By Alejandra Molina Darrin Johnson would like nothing better than to rid the Black community of organized religion. The way Johnson sees it, Black people “don’t need outside beliefs or higher powers.” “We have power,” Johnson said. “We are powerful entities. We just need to use that power.” As an organizer with his local Black …

The 2020 election’s most crucial faith group is one you’ve never heard of

By Ryan Burge There’s been a lot of discussion about the role of religion in the current presidential election, with pundits prognosticating whether President Donald Trump can still count on 80% of white evangelicals to vote for him as they did in 2016, or whether Joe Biden, an old-school Northeastern white Catholic, can erode his …

What Does Satanism Have To Do With QAnon?

By David Frankfurter Outsiders to the Q-Anon conspiracy system evolving over the past few years may be confused by its references to Satanic rites in which children are supposedly abused. Of course, there’s never been the slightest evidence of murderous, child-abusing Satanic cults, despite extensive forensic investigations (by the FBI, in fact) back in the …

The Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half Its Corals

By Maria Cramer The Great Barrier Reef, one of the earth’s most precious habitats, lost half of its coral populations in the last quarter-century, a decline that researchers in Australia said would continue unless drastic action is taken to mitigate the effects of climate change. Researchers studied coral colonies along the length of the reef …

COVID-Denying Pastor Denies Climate Change: God Gave Us a “Disposable Planet”

By Beth Stoneburner Many of you are familiar with the name John MacArthur because he’s the pastor of California’s Grace Community Church who’s been telling his congregation not to take the virus seriously. He’s openly celebrated the lack of social distancing and face masks in his congregation, once telling a packed house, “the good news is you’re here, you’re …