ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 764
March 27, 2015
Shrinking Of Antarctic Ice Shelves Is Accelerating
Photo credit:
Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf photographed in October 2011 from NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft during an Operation IceBridge flight. Michael Studinger/NASA, Author provided
Ask people what they know about Antarctica and they usually mention cold, snow and ice. In fact, there’s so much ice on Antarctica that if it all melted into the ocean, average sea level around the entire world would rise about 200 feet, roughly the height of a 20-story building.
March 24, 2015
Question of the Week: March 25, 2015
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse describes in the New York Times op-ed piece that we feature how the business community helped create a narrative of the United States as a Christian nation as a way to fight FDR’s New Deal and the expanding powers of the federal government. Part of that effort included adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” to currency. Is it time to remove or replace these phrases? Should different phrases be used?
Our favorite answer wins a copy of Richard Dawkins An Appetite for Wonder.
Myanmar Sentences 3 to Prison for Depicting Buddha Wearing Headphones
Credit: Soe Than Win/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Wai Moe and Austin Ramzy
A bar manager from New Zealand and two Burmese men were sentenced to two years in prison in Myanmar on Tuesday for posting an image online of the Buddha wearing headphones, an effort to promote an event.
The court in Yangon said the image denigrated Buddhism and was a violation of Myanmar’s religion act, which prohibits insulting, damaging or destroying religion. “It is clear the act of the bar offended the majority religion in the country,” said the judge, U Ye Lwin.
The image was posted in December on the Facebook page of the VGastro bar and restaurant in Yangon. After an outcry from hard-line Buddhist groups, the police arrested the restaurant’s general manager, Philip Blackwood, 32, of New Zealand, along with the bar owner, U Tun Thurein, 40, and the manager, U Htut Ko Ko Lwin, 26. The three have been held in Insein prison in Yangon.
In addition to the two-year prison term for violating the religion act, the three were also sentenced to six months for illegally operating a bar after 10 p.m. Mr. Blackwood said after the verdict that the men had expected they would be convicted.
The case has added to growing concerns about religious and ethnic intolerance in majority-Buddhist Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where Muslims have faced increasing discrimination and violence. Hundreds of people were killed in sectarian violence in western and central Myanmar in 2012 and 2013. The country’s Parliament is also considering new laws that critics fear will be used to discriminate against minorities.
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
A Christian Nation? Since When?
Image via Shutterstock
By Kevin M. Kruse
America may be a nation of believers, but when it comes to this country’s identity as a “Christian nation,” our beliefs are all over the map.
Just a few weeks ago, Public Policy Polling reported that 57 percent of Republicans favored officially making the United States a Christian nation. But in 2007, a survey by the First Amendment Center showed that 55 percent of Americans believed it already was one.
The confusion is understandable. For all our talk about separation of church and state, religious language has been written into our political culture in countless ways. It is inscribed in our pledge of patriotism, marked on our money, carved into the walls of our courts and our Capitol. Perhaps because it is everywhere, we assume it has been from the beginning.
But the founding fathers didn’t create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.
Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity.
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
Kimberly Ellington – Openly Secular
Kimberly owns a digital forensics company with her husband and is Openly Secular! She uses the term Atheist in order to try and erase the stigma of secularism.
No religious text should be Tennessee’s official book
Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto
By David Plazas
Tennessee lawmakers have filed unconstitutional, divisive and misguided bills that would make the Holy Bible the official state book.
Both Tennessee and United States’ constitutions expressly respect the rights of individuals to worship freely, but also prohibit the state from favoring one religion over another.
This protects all of us, whether we choose to belong to a religious congregation or not.
We can live peacefully in society without religious tests and choose which religious institutions to attend and which scriptures to honor.
Making a religious text the state’s official tome isn’t like the innocuous act of choosing a state beverage (milk), fruit (tomato) or rock (limestone). This sends a message of exclusion and divisiveness in a state that is becoming more and more diverse.
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
Atheists want law removed that bars them from office
Photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean
By Holly Meyer
Sarah Green remembers feeling like she didn’t belong in her own state after discovering that Tennessee’s constitution bars people who don’t believe in God from holding public office.
“It was one of the things that made me realize how unwelcome it could be for an atheist, especially in the South,” Green said. “It pretty much informed my decision to stay closeted, if you will, for almost 15 years.”
The 30-year-old Hermitage woman came out as an atheist almost a year ago and is adding her voice to a national push to take provisions that discriminate against the nonreligious off the books. The effort is spearheaded by Openly Secular, which issued a report late last year finding that eight states, including Tennessee, had similar language in their constitutions.
While a U.S. Supreme Court decision gives such provisions few teeth, Openly Secular advocates for their removal because they’re demeaning and can be used as political fodder, according to Todd Stiefel, chairman of the organization.
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
Can A Virtual Reality Game Make You Forget You’re In Pain?
Photo credit:
No pain no game. Sergey Galyonkin, CC BY-SA
A couple of weeks from now I will be in hospital undergoing a knee replacement. It will be the most extreme surgery I’ve ever experienced and I’m pretty scared. I’ve been told that I can expect to endure excruciating pain afterwards but I won’t be allowed to lie in bed feeling sorry for myself. In order to ensure a good recovery I have to get up and exercise the new joint numerous times a day. Make no mistake, this is going to hurt.
Ohio Public School District Asks Students to Practice “Christian Values” in Handbook
Check out this page from the student handbook for Edon Northwest Local School District in Ohio:
Which “Christian values” do they want students to uphold? Being willing to kill someone if God tells them to? Stoning people who violate any of the Ten Commandments? Condemning gay and lesbian students in the district who decide to date someone of the same gender?
(And is it weird to anyone else that they separate “honesty” and “Christian values” as if they’re different things?)
In any case, there’s no reason for a public school district to promote “Christian values,” no matter how vague those values are, in the handbook. The ACLU of Ohio sent district officials a letter yesterday asking them to fix the handbook and alter their other Jesus-promoting activities:
In Israel, Will Creationists Reign?
While discussion of Israeli elections has largely (and reasonably) focused on the different parties’ views on the occupation of Palestine and the prospect of war with Iran, the ongoing effort to craft a coalition government may carry risks for science education, too.
Ha’aretz asked the leaders of the eleven parties competing for seats in the election a series of questions, including questions about evolution and climate change. On climate change, all seven who responded spoke in support of action. Unfortunately, the remaining four parties declined to answer, and all four are likely to be part of the governing coalition.
On evolution, only two of the seven enthusiastically endorsed the teaching of evolution; three opposed it, one dodged the matter, and another seemed to suggest that evolution be taught alongside creationism. Again, the four parties likely to be included in the ruling coalition all declined to answer, with a spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party dismissing the questions as “cheeky.”
Of those who answered, two have been part of coalitions with Likud before, and may be included in the new government. Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon responded on evolution: “Israel inscribed on its flag the topics of research, curiosity and human development. That is our strength. We believe that in schools various approaches should be taught, including evolution.” Shas’s Arye Dery declined to go even that far, declaring: “As an ultra-Orthodox party that believes that our forefathers were Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that our holy matriarchs were Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, we refuse to teach our children that they originated from apes.”
Yesh Atid’s leader Jacob Perry, who served as science and technology minister in the past, relegated science to an educational afterthought, saying: “The children of Israel must be raised on the values of the Bible and the Jewish tradition. But I am in favor of the expansion of horizons and teaching the history of humanity from other angles as well, and therefore I am not against also teaching evolution—but not only evolution.”
The left’s parties were largely united in support of evolution. Joint List’s Ayman Odeh, who grew up Muslim but is now an atheist, said, “I support teaching the theory of evolution as the theoretical foundation accepted today by science for the development of the variety of species on Earth.” Zehava Galon explained: “Meretz supports the teaching of the sciences, including the theory of evolution. We see no contradiction between teaching evolution and teaching the Bible or other Jewish studies in a pluralistic and open approach.” Zionist Union, the second-largest votegetter, largely dodged the question, with Isaac Herzog answering: “The state’s withdrawal from responsibility led to a loss of trust in the education system, which is at an unprecedented nadir. Our children are not receiving a sufficiently high level of education and we are forced to pay high sums merely to receive the minimal requirement. We believe that knowledge is power and therefore the Israeli education system under [our government] will be as pluralistic and as varied as possible, and as such it will enrich the students with knowledge and with many tools.”
Those pro-evolution parties took 42 seats, with the creationist parties who answered garnering 28 votes, and an additional 50 votes distributed among the conservative parties that declined to answer.
The prospect of battles over evolution in Israel is likelier than one might expect. It was only last year that Israel mandated the addition of evolution to the nation’s secular middle school curriculum (and it remains out of the curriculum for state religious schools). Five years ago, the education ministry’s chief scientist spoke against evolution, leading to his rapid ouster. While the Israeli public is not as anti-evolution as the US, 43% told the International Social Study Programme in 2000 that it is “definitely” or “probably not true” that humans evolved from earlier species of animals. In the same survey, 46% of the US respondents were similarly anti-evolution, with only the Philippines (48%) showing higher rates of evolution rejection.
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