ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 430

Women Could Pay More Than Men For Health Care Under Trump

By Michelle Andrews

Some women have been worried that they will lose insurance coverage for contraception under the Trump administration, but coverage for other women’s health benefits could also be at risk.

At or near the top of the list is guaranteed coverage of maternity services on the individual insurance market. Before the health law, it was unusual for plans purchased by individuals to cover prenatal care and childbirth. But the Affordable Care Act requires that maternity care be included as one of 10 essential health benefits.

In 2009, the year before the health law passed, just 13 percent of individual plans available to a 30-year-old woman living in a state capital offered maternity benefits, according to an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center.

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Traces of Times Lost

By Erika Hayasaki

The slippery baby in the plastic blue tub cringes when her daddy, holding a drippy orange washcloth, leaks a bit of water in her face. He is bathing her for the first time. “Make sure you get the folds in her neck, where milk hides,” I say, video recording the scene on my iPhone. We are new parents delighting in and stumbling through this moment.

The three-year-old girl with pink paint-chipped toenails watches my iPhone video of that day when Daddy bathed her for the first time. She cringes as she sees her smaller self  cringe. My daughter requested this clip out of more than 400, all starring her, most of which she has watched before. We are snuggled up on the sofa. Her eyes fixate on the feet of the squirming infant on screen. She knows she was once that newborn. “Babies don’t get nail polish,” she says, looking down to admire her toddler feet. “I’m a big girl now.”

“Do you remember being a baby?” I ask, knowing it may be a trick question.

“Yes.” She is confident.

I want to peer inside her mind and see for myself what she thinks she remembers.

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Religious thoughts trigger reward systems like love, drugs

By Jacqueline Howard

Most Americans, about 89%, say they believe in God, and some have felt God’s presence while listening to a sermon or sensed time stand still while they were in deep prayer or meditation.

Now, a new study shows through functional MRI scans that such religious and spiritual experiences can be rewarding to your brain.

They activate the same reward systems between your ears as do feelings of love, being moved by music and even doing drugs, according to the study, which was published in the journal Social Neuroscience on Tuesday.

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Flossing and the Art of Scientific Investigation

By Jamie Holmes

It’s bad enough that expertise is under attack these days from populist political movements that dismiss specialist opinion as just another establishment ruse. But lately expertise is being criticized from another direction, too — from would-be defenders of science.

Consider the recent controversy over flossing. In August, a widely read Associated Press report suggested that, contrary to the advice of dentists everywhere, flossing didn’t necessarily foster good oral health. The report looked at 25 studies that had generally compared toothbrushing and flossing with toothbrushing alone and concluded that the evidence for the benefits of flossing was weak.

In response, the Department of Health and Human services, the American Dental Association and the Academy of General Dentistry reaffirmed the importance of interdental cleaning. But confusion persists: A lot of people now mistakenly think that “science” doesn’t support flossing.

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The Normalization of Hate: David Neiwert on Trump and the Rise of the Alt-Right

November 21, 2016

Host: Lindsay Beyerstein

There’s no getting around the fact that the alt-right has come out of the shadows to fully embrace Trump as their candidate. From Steve Bannon to David Duke, controversial support did not wait long to rush to Trump’s side. It’s clear that for many “make America great again” may just mean to make America white again. To help us get to the root of this unprecedented following Trump has produced, we welcome author and award-winning journalist and blogger, David Neiwert.

Neiwert is an expert on the radical right and a correspondent for the anti-hate group the Southern Poverty Law Center. He most recently coauthored an award-winning piece in Mother Jones titled, “How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream.” Neiwert and coauthor Sarah Posner have thoroughly tracked Trump’s social media engagement with the white nationalist movement from the start of his campaign. Neiwert suggests that while we can’t know for certain how many of these alt-right ideals are ones Trump personally adheres to, he undoubtedly shares alt-right rhetoric that has enticed a strength in the white nationalism movement we haven’t seen in decades.

Sarah Posner also appeared on Point of Inquiry last year in Sarah Posner: Trump, Carson and the Religious Right in 2016.

Click here to listen to this episode of Point of Inquiry.

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The 11-year-old that gives Richard Dawkins hope

Richard Dawkins and Sidney Johnson, age 11, together recently in Indianapolis. Sidney has read The Greatest Show on Earth and is halfway through The Ancestor’s Tale (2nd Edition).

Richard says, “This young American reader, who also asked one of the most intelligent questions after my talk, gives me hope for the future.

Question of the Week – 11/30/16

Did you ever believe in things like ghosts, alien abductions, and psychic powers? What paranormal beliefs have you had, and how did you come to change your mind?

Our favorite answer wins a copy of A Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins (no repeat winners).

And please don’t forget to send in your submissions for Question of the Week! You can suggest a question by emailing us at QotW@richarddawkins.net. Please remember this is for “Question of the Week” suggestions only, and answers to the Question of the Week should be submitted through the comments section on the Question of the Week page  Thank you!

African elephants are being born without tusks due to poaching, researchers say

By Charlotte England

An increasing number of African elephants are now born tuskless because poachers have consistently targetted animals with the best ivory over decades, fundamentally altering the gene pool.

In some areas 98 per cent of female elephants now have no tusks, researchers have said, compared to between two and six per cent born tuskless on average in the past.

Almost a third of Africa’s elephants have been illegally slaughtered by poachers in the past ten years to meet demand for ivory in Asia, where there is still a booming trade in the material, particularly in China.

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Trump could open door to expanding D.C. school voucher program, advocates say

By Emma Brown and Perry Stein

The District is home to the nation’s only federally funded school voucher program, and for the past eight years, advocates for the program have been on defense, fighting to keep it alive under a president who opposes the notion of using taxpayer dollars to pay tuition at private and religious schools.

But then Donald Trump, voucher supporter, was elected president. Now advocates see an opportunity to go on offense, not just to maintain but to expand the D.C. program, which pays for about 1,500 low-income children to attend private and parochial schools.

Trump’s pick for education secretary, announced Wednesday, cemented the notion that he intends to make good on his campaign-trail promise of using federal dollars to expand voucher programs, including the one in the District. Trump’s nominee, Michigan billionaire and conservative activist Betsy DeVos, has quietly helped introduce vouchers in many states nationwide, spending millions of dollars to support candidates who agree with her and to unseat those who do not.

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I Had to Take My Dirty Panties to a Rabbi, and So Has Every Orthodox Jewish Woman

By Katia Aryeh

Religion brainwashed me into doing irrational and emotionally self-damaging things that I would have easily recognized as primitive and harmful were it not for my indoctrination.  Of all the practices I look back on with horror, this was the worst.  By removing the veil of secrecy that keeps these practices from public knowledge, my hope is that women suffering within these communities will feel empowered to leave.

There are three key tenets of Orthodox Judaism, each associated with an array of laws that must be strictly adhered to. Of the three, people are generally familiar with two: the special dietary laws referred to as Kosher; and the rabbinical laws of the Sabbath, or Shabbat, that govern the do’s and don’ts during the day of rest between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.

The third pillar of Orthodox Judaism, family purity or niddah, is one very few people outside of that insular world are aware of.  However, if broken, the laws accompanying it carry a far greater penalty in the next world than those related to the Sabbath or keeping Kosher. The laws of family purity apply to all spectrums of orthodoxy, including the modern ones that allow women to wear trousers and uncover their hair, like the sect Ivanka Trump belongs to, for example. Even the slightest deviation from these laws would compromise a couple’s standing as practicing Orthodox Jews in the eyes of a rabbinical court.

What are these laws, you ask?

The laws of family purity revolve around the color of a woman’s vaginal discharge.

You see, beginning on the days when she anticipates her period, a husband and wife are forbidden from having any sexual relations until seven days following the end of her period. Considering orthodox law states that a period’s duration is a minimum of five days, this typically spans about two weeks or longer, depending on whether her post-menstrual discharge cooperates. In short, this means that for about half of every month, all aspects of an orthodox woman’s life, relationship, sexuality, and emotional health, are dictated by her vaginal discharge.

Except for the far left minority, most orthodox sects go even further with their adherence to the ancient laws by completely prohibiting any physical contact. Couples may not sleep in the same bed, or even hand objects to each other directly (even a baby), all to prevent the increase of temptation to have sexual contact. These laws apply even after a miscarriage, during childbirth, months following childbirth, and even if a spouse loses a family member and needs a hug from their partner. 



While the woman is required to count seven clean days before she may immerse herself in a ritual bath (mikvah) prior to reuniting with her husband, it’s not only a matter of days or time waiting. The woman must take an active role to ensure she is “clean” by wearing only white underwear and conducting self-examinations of her vaginal canal with special white cloths twice a day, every day, before sundown. The white cloth is inserted into the vagina so that any fluid or discharge is absorbed. The first examination of the seven days requires the cloth to be left in for about an hour, even if the woman is out of the house, and it is usually quite painful. Here is an excerpt from a website detailing very specific examination instructions (http://www.yoatzot.org/taharat-hamishpacha/?id=603):

 “Insert the finger deeply but GENTLY into the vaginal canal as far as the length of your finger will allow. If this is difficult for you, try to go deeply at least for the hefsek taharah [first] examination and for one of the examinations during the seven blood-free days – preferably the first.”

If during the seven days any of the examination cloths contain even a tiny spot darker than tan, or a spot on her underwear bigger than a penny and darker than tan, she must take the underwear or cloth to a special rabbi for further evaluation. This Rabbi will then examine the color to determine if it is light enough for her to keep counting, or if it’s too dark or too red tinted such that she must begin counting the seven clean days over, even if it is day 7. Seeing a spot obviously induces massive anxiety for housewives longing for any affection from their husbands, many of whom also worry that their deprived husbands will start looking elsewhere. 



Q: How do boys and girls raised in a culture obsessed with modesty accept this practice when they are made aware of what they must adhere to? 



A:



1) They are told that these special rabbis are like male OBGYNs; that there is nothing sexual about them examining the discharge, and that if someone still thinks it is inappropriate, it’s because THEY have a dirty mind and do not understand the holiness that motivates these rabbis. 



2) Engaged couples are told that if husbands sleep with their wives too much, they will grow tired of them the way a person’s love of chocolate cake would dwindle if eaten for every meal. The girls are also told that without a forced physical separation, their husbands will only see them as sexual toys and will have no incentive to talk to them and connect on a deeper emotional and intellectual level. 



3) To paraphrase what Sam Harris has said, one guy cutting off a girl’s clitoris is called a monster; hundreds of men doing the same is called culture. 



Q: Why can’t women check the colors themselves? 



A: According to Jewish law, women can’t be judges and can’t make legal rulings. Once vaginal discharge is darker than tan, a legal judgment is required. However, the minority left-leaning sect has, in recent years, certified some women to make these judgments. The center and right-leaning majority, however, does not recognize their certification because they are female judges, for all intents and purposes. 

That’s right. Women encouraging other women and their daughters to painfully violate themselves for God, instead of listening to their bodies and protecting themselves. Further, these are the least extreme of the bunch! More here: http://www.yoatzot.org/taharat-hamishpacha/?id=603

Q: Is this in the Bible? 



A: Yes, sort of. The prohibition for a man to not approach a menstruating woman is one of the 613 commandments in the Old Testament. Like kosher and the Sabbath, the specific laws governing the execution of the commandment are recorded various rabbinical writings considered as binding as the Bible itself.



The scope of this article does not include the vast laws that govern what the woman must do to her body on the night of her ritual bath, the emotional stresses put on the marriage and on the spouses by these laws, and how men who are prohibited from spilling their seed deal with so much celibacy (Hint: In Jewish law, a married man sleeping with a single woman who is not his wife is NOT considered adulterous. Adultery is defined by the marital status of the woman).