ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 805
November 7, 2014
Chicago archdiocese releases documents showing it covered up 36 child-raping priests.
After a lawsuit forced the archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul to reveal documents confirming 17 new child-raping priests the diocese tried to cover up (on top of the 37 already revealed), a similar case is happening in Chicago where, as part of a settlement, documents were released that revealed the cover up of 36 child-raping priests:
The Archdiocese of Chicago on Thursday released thousands of internal documents showing how it hid the sexual abuse of children by 36 priests, adding to similar disclosures made earlier this year and fulfilling a pledge by an ailing Cardinal Francis George to release the files before he retires later this month.
“We cannot change the past but we hope we can rebuild trust through honest and open dialogue,” George said in a statement released overnight. “Child abuse is a crime and a sin.”
Atheist Experience #551: Circumcision
The Atheist Experience #551 for May 4, 2008, with Matt Dillahunty and Jen Peeples. Circumcision. Jen talks about the religious basis of circumcision.
We welcome your comments on the open blog thread for this show.
► http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/
YouTube comments are at present disabled in our channel, to the displeasure of some. However, each video has a prominent link to the associated open thread that appears on our blog. In the past we’ve tried opening up the channel to comments, but we found that a very high number of episodes wound up being flooded with a combination of spam, long winded apologists, and various obscene or misogynistic comments directed at various hosts by people with an axe to grind. This seems to be the nature of YouTube comment sections, in our experience.
We do moderate the blog, the same way that we moderate chat during the show, as well as comments on our Facebook group. For comment sections that are “officially” associated with our show (and, to a much lesser extent, channels that may give the unintended appearance of being official), we prefer not to play host to straight up ad hominem attacks and bigotry. As a general policy we do not block commenters simply on the basis of disagreement with our point of view. However, we do prefer discussion environments that don’t actively chase off more reasonable contributors.
——-
The most up to date Atheist Experience videos can be found by visiting http://atheist-experience.com/archive/
You can read more about this show on the Atheist Experience blog:
► http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/
WHAT IS THE ATHEIST EXPERIENCE?
The Atheist Experience is a weekly cable access television show in Austin, Texas geared at a non-atheist audience. The Atheist Experience is produced by the Atheist Community of Austin.
The Atheist Community of Austin is organized as a nonprofit educational corporation to develop and support the atheist community, to provide opportunities for socializing and friendship, to promote secular viewpoints, to encourage positive atheist culture, to defend the first amendment principle of state-church separation, to oppose discrimination against atheists and to work with other organizations in pursuit of common goals.
We define atheism as the lack of belief in gods. This definition also encompasses what most people call agnosticism.
VISIT THE ACA’S OFFICIAL WEB SITES
► http://www.atheist-community.org (The Atheist Community of Austin)
► http://www.atheist-experience.com (The Atheist Experience TV Show)
More shows and video clips can be found in the archive:
► http://www.atheist-experience.com/archive
DVDs of the Atheist Experience can be purchased via:
► http://www.atheist-community.org/products
MUSIC CREDITS
Theme song: “Listen to Reason,” written and performed by Bryan Steeksma.
► http://www.youtube.com/bryansteeksma
► http://www.myspace.com/bryansteeksma
NOTES
TheAtheistExperience is the official channel of The Atheist Experience. “The Atheist Experience” is a trademark of the ACA.
Copyright © 2014 Atheist Community of Austin. All rights reserved.
November 6, 2014
Gulf Oil Spill Left Rhode Island-Sized Oily ‘Bathtub Ring’ On Seafloor, Study Finds
Photo: AP
By Seth Borenstein
The BP oil spill left an oily “bathub ring” on the sea floor that’s about the size of Rhode Island, new research shows.
The study by David Valentine, the chief scientist on the federal damage assessment research ships, estimates that about 10 million gallons of oil coagulated on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico around the damaged Deepwater Horizons oil rig.
Valentine, a geochemistry professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, said the spill from the Macondo well left other splotches containing even more oil. He said it is obvious where the oil is from, even though there were no chemical signature tests because over time the oil has degraded.
“There’s this sort of ring where you see around the Macondo well where the concentrations are elevated,” Valentine said. The study, published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls it a “bathtub ring.”
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
The Election Aftermath and Science Education
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, NCSE can’t try to change the outcome of elections, which means we keep mum about candidates who attack climate science and evolution from the hustings. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep watch: candidates become policymakers, and it’s valuable to know what our future leaders are saying.
Most of the election coverage and analysis I’ve seen so far has been focused on Congress and attempts to divine What It All Means for the Obama presidency and the 2016 presidential campaign. Fortunately, politics extends beyond presidential elections, and for the issues we track at NCSE, the important decisions are more likely to be made in state legislatures, state boards of education, and local school boards than at either end of Constitution Avenue in DC.
It appears that none of the state boards of education in battleground states saw substantial shifts. The Kansas board is unchanged; the changes to the Texas state board are unlikely to shift the balance of power. In South Carolina, one candidate in the Republican primary for state Superintendent of Public Instruction suggested “There is plenty of science and research behind the theory of intelligent design,” adding, “There is no reason why the scientific theory of intelligent design should not be taught in the classroom alongside the theory of evolution, and that way children would receive an objective education and they could also—for Christian children—could point to their God though the theory of intelligent design.” Luckily, that candidate didn’t survive the primary, and the victor yesterday, Molly Spearman, demonstrated that she understands how to separate science from religious instruction, having told The State: “As far as the state science standards, I believe that we have to teach accurate information to our students, and that involves factual texts, factual information…As a Christian, I have taken the responsibility to teach my own children at home about our special beliefs and the creation of the world, and I think that is the responsibility of parents to do that in their own home on religious beliefs.”
There was a larger shift in state legislatures. As the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures observes, this election expanded Republican control of state governments, leaving fewer Democrats in state legislatures than at any time in nearly a century. Party affiliation isn’t decisive in how states are likely to handle science education in general, or evolution and climate change in particular (and again, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, NCSE doesn’t favor either party). But that wave of new legislators may result in more attacks on science education. We saw that after the 2010 wave, which (amid the tea party outpouring) brought more Republicans into state legislatures than had been there since FDR’s election in 1932 realigned American politics. The new legislators didn’t always know what policies were constitutional, or which had been tried and failed. They hadn’t had as much time to work with teachers and education experts, and many had campaigned on the basis of their unwillingness to compromise or rely on accumulated experience and expertise. As a result, we saw some truly wacky legislation filed (including a bill reviving the “creation science” policies that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1987), and faced attacks on science education in states where such battles hadn’t been waged in decades.
In many ways, yesterday’s state legislative elections seem like an expansion of that same trend. I’m certainly hopeful that this new class of legislators will be more willing to listen to the voices of reason and experience, and will shy away from harmful and unconstitutional attacks on science education, evolution, and climate change. But I think that my colleagues and I will have to be especially vigilant, as will concerned citizens everywhere.
The most disappointing trend in the election, though, was the rise of “I’m not a scientist” as an answer to questions about climate change. As Stanford’s Jon Krosnick told The New York Times, “To say, ‘I’m not a scientist’ is like saying, ‘I’m not a parakeet.’ Everyone knows that it just means, ‘I’m not going to talk about this.’” And many candidates this election got away with that, including Florida governor Rick Scott (re-elected), Kentucky senator (and soon Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell, and Iowa’s newly-elected senator Joni Ernst. Candidates who were willing to scaremonger about Ebola without any knowledge of epidemiology, medicine, or sometimes geography suddenly fell silent when posed a question about a scientific topic that is well-understood and easy to learn about.
On top of that, unapologetic climate change deniers will now helm the Senate’s key committees on science, technology, energy, and the environment. Senator Inhofe, known for his repeated insistence that climate change is the “greatest hoax,” will chair the Environment and Public Welfare committee, while Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski will chair the committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Meanwhile, the committee on Commerce, Science, and Technology will be run by South Dakota’s Senator John Thune, who waffled when Politico asked his views on climate change in 2010: “I guess the answer to the question is I’m not sure. I think there’s a real mix of data on that. Obviously, I think the question you have to ask yourself, one, is it occurring? And even if you say ‘yes’ to that, two, is human activity contributing to it? And even if you say ‘yes’ to that, then three is what are we going to do about it and at what cost?”
Those sorts of comments don’t just bode ill for climate policy, they also set a dangerous tone for climate education. The implication is that scientists are the only people who need to know, or indeed can be expected to know, whether climate change is happening and caused by humans, that it’s a matter of scientific trivia restricted to a white-coated priesthood. This idea undercuts any science teacher whose students don’t think they’re destined for life in the lab, making it harder to show that everyone needs to understand climate change. And having the political leaders who ought to be best-briefed on the science unable to take a factually correct stance on the issue makes it that much harder for anyone, especially young students, to separate the well-demonstrated science from the legitimate and necessary debate over policy questions.
Luckily, the opportunities to oppose science denial in public policy don’t end with elections. These next few weeks, while a new set of policymakers are preparing to take office, is a perfect time to reach out to them and offer to help them understand topics like evolution and climate change that are scientifically straightforward but sometimes politically sticky, and just let them know that you care about science and science education.
Andrew Brown: If you hate the belief, you hate the believer
I suppose there’s a good case to be made for ignoring the Guardian’s Official Clickbait Troll, Andrew Brown. After all, his views are completely predictable, and his commenters usually give him the good hiding he deserves. But occasionally he goes so far beyond the pale that even Professor Ceiling Cat must give him a few scratches. And so it is with Brown’s latest piece at the Guardian. “Why I don’t believe people who say they loathe Islam but not Muslims.“
Headed by a photograph of Sam Harris, Brown’s thesis is simple: if you hate an ideology or a belief, you must perforce hate the person who holds it. This is, of course, his way of accusing the New Atheists of lying: we’re really all religion- and Muslim-haters. Or, as he says:
Some people who claim that Islam is profoundly evil will also say that they bear Muslims no ill will but I don’t think they are telling the truth. It is really difficult and indeed psychologically unnatural to claim that you hate an ideology without hating the people in whose lives it is expressed. Religions, nations, and even races are all shared imaginative constructs (although nations and races have other characteristics as well) and if you really want to extirpate them, you must extirpate the people who imagine them as well.
This is completely insane. I have several friends who are religious (in fact, some of my closest friends), and they know I am an atheist. I find their religious beliefs insupportable, and I’m sure they know that. But they are lovely people, and I don’t consider a liberal form of belief to be something that should dissolve a friendship that has so many greater benefits. Likewise, not all Muslims embrace the extreme, misogynistic, and hateful forms of the faith and I know at least one Muslim whom I see as a friend, and many others whom I do not hate.
Atheist Experience #579: Live Calls
The Atheist Experience #579 for November 16, 2008, with Matt Dillahunty and Tracie Harris. Live Calls. Tracie takes on live calls.
We welcome your comments on the open blog thread for this show.
► http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/
YouTube comments are at present disabled in our channel, to the displeasure of some. However, each video has a prominent link to the associated open thread that appears on our blog. In the past we’ve tried opening up the channel to comments, but we found that a very high number of episodes wound up being flooded with a combination of spam, long winded apologists, and various obscene or misogynistic comments directed at various hosts by people with an axe to grind. This seems to be the nature of YouTube comment sections, in our experience.
We do moderate the blog, the same way that we moderate chat during the show, as well as comments on our Facebook group. For comment sections that are “officially” associated with our show (and, to a much lesser extent, channels that may give the unintended appearance of being official), we prefer not to play host to straight up ad hominem attacks and bigotry. As a general policy we do not block commenters simply on the basis of disagreement with our point of view. However, we do prefer discussion environments that don’t actively chase off more reasonable contributors.
——-
The most up to date Atheist Experience videos can be found by visiting http://atheist-experience.com/archive/
You can read more about this show on the Atheist Experience blog:
► http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/
WHAT IS THE ATHEIST EXPERIENCE?
The Atheist Experience is a weekly cable access television show in Austin, Texas geared at a non-atheist audience. The Atheist Experience is produced by the Atheist Community of Austin.
The Atheist Community of Austin is organized as a nonprofit educational corporation to develop and support the atheist community, to provide opportunities for socializing and friendship, to promote secular viewpoints, to encourage positive atheist culture, to defend the first amendment principle of state-church separation, to oppose discrimination against atheists and to work with other organizations in pursuit of common goals.
We define atheism as the lack of belief in gods. This definition also encompasses what most people call agnosticism.
VISIT THE ACA’S OFFICIAL WEB SITES
► http://www.atheist-community.org (The Atheist Community of Austin)
► http://www.atheist-experience.com (The Atheist Experience TV Show)
More shows and video clips can be found in the archive:
► http://www.atheist-experience.com/archive
DVDs of the Atheist Experience can be purchased via:
► http://www.atheist-community.org/products
MUSIC CREDITS
Theme song: “Listen to Reason,” written and performed by Bryan Steeksma.
► http://www.youtube.com/bryansteeksma
► http://www.myspace.com/bryansteeksma
NOTES
TheAtheistExperience is the official channel of The Atheist Experience. “The Atheist Experience” is a trademark of the ACA.
Copyright © 2014 Atheist Community of Austin. All rights reserved.
Smartphone Case Furthers Unplug Movement
The current “unplug” movement wants you to put down the smartphone and other devices. And it makes two major points worth considering. First: spend less time sharing pictures and video of what’s going on around you and more time enjoying the events themselves. Second, and more important: spend less time using your gadgets in ways that annoy the people around you.
Concerts are a particular focus here, although this idea could also apply to people texting in an otherwise dark movie theater. Comedian Demetri Martin has a joke about watching his favorite band…through the smartphone screen of the person in front of him.
A company called Yondr offers one way to get people to unplug during live performances. They sell a locking smartphone case that some venues in California use. Put your device in the case when you enter the club, and you can’t snap photos, take video, tweet or check e-mail unless you go to a designated area where the host can unlock it.
Peter Frampton would approve. The musician recently caused a minor stir by tossing a fan’s phone away during a concert. He’d be happy to know that, based on a YouTube search, nobody else at the show appears to have recorded the gadget-throwing incident using their smartphone.
—Larry Greenemeier
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Bats Jam Rivals’ Sonar to Steal a Meal
Many bats hunt at night—and use echolocation, or sonar, to zero in on their prey. [echolocation clip] That's slowed down 20 times, so you can hear it. But some insects, like the tiger moth, have figured out how to evade that echolocation—by jamming it. "It makes these ultrasonic clicks in the last moment before it would normally be captured by a bat. [clicking sound] And this interferes with the bat’s echolocation, causing that bat to miss.”
Aaron Corcoran, a postdoc at Wake Forest University. Corcoran studied that phenomenon, and says he's now discovered that the jamming strategy isn't limited to prey. Bats do it, too—to foil each others' hunting efforts.
Corcoran and his colleagues recorded Mexican free-tailed bats, Tadarida brasiliensis, echolocating in the wild. And they happened to pick up a sound bats made only when other bats were hunting. [jamming clip] It reminded them of the moth jamming call. So they played back that sound to bats hunting tethered moths, in a field experiment. And sure enough—bats who heard the bat jamming call while echolocating, were 70 percent less successful at capturing the tethered moth, than bats who heard a generic tone, [tone clip] or no sound at all. The study is in the journal Science. [Aaron J. Corcoran and William E. Conner: Bats jamming bats: Food competition through sonar interference]
Of course, if you have a porch light you may be wondering: aren't there more than enough moths to go around? But here's the thing. "The Mexican free-tailed bat has the largest colonies of any mammal on the planet except for humans—with up to a million individuals. So yeah, there's a lot of insects out there but there's a lot of bats to compete with, so they have to find ways to one-up each other basically." Tricky. A real fly-by-night operation.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Can the wave function of an electron be divided and trapped?
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University
By Science Daily
Electrons are elementary particles — indivisible, unbreakable. But new research suggests the electron’s quantum state — the electron wave function — can be separated into many parts. That has some strange implications for the theory of quantum mechanics.
New research by physicists from Brown University puts the profound strangeness of quantum mechanics in a nutshell — or, more accurately, in a helium bubble.
Experiments led by Humphrey Maris, professor of physics at Brown, suggest that the quantum state of an electron — the electron’s wave function — can be shattered into pieces and those pieces can be trapped in tiny bubbles of liquid helium. To be clear, the researchers are not saying that the electron can be broken apart. Electrons are elementary particles, indivisible and unbreakable. But what the researchers are saying is in some ways more bizarre.
In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a distinct position in space. Instead, they exist as a wave function, a probability distribution that includes all the possible locations where a particle might be found. Maris and his colleagues are suggesting that parts of that distribution can be separated and cordoned off from each other.
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
Mississippi Group Wants to Establish Christianity as the State Religion
A Mississippi group know as the Magnolia State Heritage Campaign is working to get an amendment on the 2016 ballots that would, among other things, establish Christianity as the state religion:
The State of Mississippi hereby acknowledges the fact of her identity as a principally Christian and quintessentially Southern state, in terms of the majority of her population, character, culture, history, and heritage, from 1817 to the present; accordingly, the Holy Bible is acknowledged as a foremost source of her founding principles, inspiration, and virtues; and, accordingly, prayer is acknowledged as a respected, meaningful, and valuable custom of her citizens. The acknowledgments hereby secured shall not be construed to transgress either the national or the state Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
As if the middle finger Mississippi was sending religious minorities wasn’t already large enough…
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