ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 81

T. rex was a deadly ‘power-walker’

By Mindy Weisberger Tyrannosaurus rex may have been the world’s first power-walker, using its lengthy legs to relentlessly pursue fleeing prey, new research has found. Walking, the scientists discovered, would have been an energy-efficient hunting strategy for big dinosaurs like tyrannosaurs. To better understand walking and running in T. rex and other theropods, or meat-eating dinosaurs, scientists measured metrics such …

Pakistani Girls Are Murdered By Relatives for Appearing in Video With a Boy

By Terry Firma Honor killings are committed an estimated thousand times a year in Pakistan. The exact number is elusive; most of these murders never come to light, because the victims’ bodies are disposed of and the community hides behind a wall of silence. This one, however, didn’t stay secret for long. Two teenage girls have been …

More young adults are leaving religion, but that’s not the whole story, say researchers

By Jana Riess It’s become almost a foregone conclusion that young adults are leaving organized religion in high numbers. Newly published findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) don’t challenge that conclusion — not exactly. But they do offer a fuller picture of what’s happening, including some possible good news for mainline Protestants. The …

The Supreme Court Could Make Contraception Access Even Worse on Catholic Campuses

By Lexi McMenamin While most media coverage of the almost decade-long legal battle against the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) birth control benefit focuses on the impact it might have on workers, I know from personal experience the impact it might have on college campuses, especially Catholic schools. Last week, the Little Sisters of the Poor …

No Benefit from Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19

By Steven Novella In March Trump tweeted: “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You!” He has continued to support this untested drug since, turning what should have been a minor footnote in …

YouTube Takes Down Audiobook Claiming God Is Using Coronavirus to Punish Gay Sex

By Beth Stoneburner It took only a few weeks for preacher John Piper to write a book called Coronavirus and Christ, in which he claims “some people will be infected with the coronavirus as a specific judgment from God because of their sinful attitudes and actions.” It was a not-so-thinly veiled attack against LGBTQ people because Piper, as …

Al Mohler, Southern Baptist leader, says he was ‘stupid’ to defend slavery in 1998 CNN interview

By Jonathan Merritt In December of 2018, Albert Mohler, longtime president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, released a report detailing and denouncing the school’s legacy “in the horrifying realities of American slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racism, and even the avowal of white racial supremacy.” The report was a historical reckoning for one of the nation’s largest evangelical …

Vatican, Italy resume public church services as lockdown eases

By Philip Pullella Pope Francis inaugurated the full reopening of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Monday and Catholic churches across Italy held public Masses for the first time in two months, in the latest easing of coronavirus restrictions. Francis said a private Mass in a side chapel where St. John Paul II is …

For The First Time, Astronomers Detect Regular Pulses Coming From Chaotic Stars

By Michelle Starr A class of stars that jangled out discordant frequencies across the galaxy have just been untangled. Using data collected by NASA’s TESS space telescope, astronomers have finally found a rhythm in the pulsations of strange, young stars. They’re called delta Scuti variable stars, and they rotate so rapidly that the stars flatten slightly, …

A Majority of White Evangelicals Trust Donald Trump for Coronavirus News

By Hemant Mehta More than half of white evangelicals (51.7%) say they rely on Donald Trump for news about the coronavirus… in case you need more reason to never trust their judgment about anything. Writing for Christianity Today, Ryan P. Burge highlights how white evangelicals are far less likely to trust public health officials — doctors and scientists and epidemiologists — than …