Yesterday, we heralded two bits of good news: the defeat of the anti-vax ballot measure in Maine, and the passage of a House Resolution in the Foreign Affairs Committee calling for the worldwide repeal of blasphemy laws.

Richard Dawkins was just on CNN where he had a really great conversation about a wide range of topics with Bianco Nobilo. The headline they chose for the video is “Richard Dawkins would ask Trump to resign,” but that’s not at all really what the discussion is about.

Ada McVean, taking a break from “making anti-CRISPR oligonucleotides,” like you do, has a great primer at Skeptical Inquirer on “old wives’ tales,” parsing the nonsense from the truth. For example: “Never wake a sleepwalker”? TRUE!

In Texas’s 26th District, GOP incumbent Rep. Michael C. Burgess will face off against the Democratic nominee, Carol Iannuzzi, a self-described humanist.

How might religion color people’s responses to the coronavirus pandemic? Jamie Aten, executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, shows the difference in reaction from those who are extrinsically religious—”those who tend to engage religion for its personal and social benefits”—and intrinsically religious—”those motivated by a religious framework who attempt to live out their faith accordingly.” Looking at previous studies on responses to Ebola and the Syrian refugee crisis, you can see which one handles these things better:

[I]ndividuals who primarily adhere to religion for personal gains demonstrated higher levels of prejudicial attitudes …

… in both studies intrinsically religious participants, for whom religion was more central to their daily lives and who sought to live by their religious beliefs, reported less fearful responses and had lower levels of concern over national security issues.

Julie Moreau at NBC News looks at what’s at stake with the Supreme Court’s upcoming case of Fulton v. Philadelphia, where religious adoption providers who take taxpayer funding want to be able to discriminate against, well, whoever they want:

If the high court sides with Catholic Social Services, discrimination against LGBTQ people could “become part of the public child welfare system,” according to Leslie Cooper, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT and HIV Project.

“LGBT people would face discrimination in every state in the country, because many states partner with private agencies,” she explained. …

… LGBTQ advocates say these laws and policies exacerbate the already critical problem of a lack of available foster families. In 2017, there were about 443,000 children in foster care across the United States, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Each year, some 50,000 children are adopted through the child welfare system, but about 20,000 others “age out” before being placed with an adoptive family, the department reports.

Yes, but at least those kids will have aged out knowing that they were denied a loving home because it was so important to kick the gays.

Good news: Virginia’s governor has signed into law the state’s ban on “gay conversion therapy” for minors. Gov. Ralph Northam said:

No one should be made to feel wrong for who they are — especially not a child. Conversion therapy is not only based in discriminatory junk-science, it is dangerous and causes lasting harm to our youth.

The Oklahoma House, which as we have seen has literally nothing better to do than pass laws for Jesus, just passed a bill requiring public buildings to display “In God We Trust” signs, in a 76-20 vote. AP reports:

Critics say the bill is an affront to the separation of church and state that could alienate nonreligious people. Rep. Collin Walke, D-Oklahoma City, suggested that the bill is an election year stunt.

Yeah, I’d say we’re feeling pretty alienated by Oklahoma. Similarly, West Virginia is sending to its governor’s desk a bill to put Bible classes in public schools. That bill passed the state senate 30 to 3. West Virginia Metro News reports that at least one effort was made to make it better, which of course was immediately obliterated:

The vote came one day after the Senate rejected 15-19 an amendment by Senator Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, to include other sacred texts. “The point is to be broad and inclusive and not name specific texts,” said Baldwin, who is a pastor.

The proposed construction of a mosque in Hartford County, Maryland has brought out the bigots, which is bemoaned by the Baltimore Sun‘s editorial board:

Someone has threatened on social media to “burn it the [expletive] down” if it is built. Another bigoted post declared “Death to Allah,” the Arabic word for God, and encouraged people to bring their weapons to protest, playing into tired Islamic terrorist tropes. …

… They join a chorus of reinvigorated groups of people across the country who, likely emboldened by President Donald Trump, have engaged in hate and discrimination against certain religious groups. …

… We hope that the Harford Islamic Center doesn’t back down on its push for a new mosque. We can’t let intimidation scare people from pursuing their basic rights. If anything, maybe the eventual existence of the worship center could help dispel Islamic myths that some people hold and instead build understanding.

So, Brazil seems like a fun place these days. Super-right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro has just chosen a soap opera star, Regina Duarte, as the new culture secretary, the AFP reports. Straight away, she fired this guy:

Dante Mantovani, head of the state-run National Foundation of the Arts [,] an orchestra conductor and self-declared believer in a flat Earth, had gained notoriety over a YouTube video in which he said, “Rock music leads to drugs, which leads to sex, which leads to the abortion industry, which leads to something much worse, which is Satanism.”

Meanwhile, Brazilian church Catedral Global Do Espírito Santo is pushing a “consecrated oil” to inoculate people from the coronavirus, though the poster makes it look like they just trap the virus in what I think is the Tesseract. Anyone have a flerken?

Don’t worry. Trump has a “hunch” that the fatality rate is “a fraction of 1 percent.” Not even worth it.

Greta Thunberg isn’t here to make you feel better about yourself. Politico reports:

The European Commission got a firsthand taste of the Swedish climate campaigner’s propensity for icy blasts Wednesday when she poured scorn on Brussels’ much-touted Climate Law, calling it a “surrender.” …

… “We need action today, not by 2030 or by 2050. This is an existential threat to humanity and not enough is being done,” she said.

“We will not allow you to surrender on our future,” she told the packed meeting of MEPs, adding that the EU is just “pretending that a law that no one has to follow is a law.”

Reddit is not always a dumpster fire! Alejandra Molina at RNS reports on how a subreddit group helped folks trying to leave the Mexican Pentecostal sect La Luz del Mundo.

Greenwich Time reports that Connecticut fake-psychic, Janet Lee, has been convicted and sentenced for bilking clients out of tens of thousands of dollars. “Lee would tell her clients she had spiritual energy from ancient Egypt and took their money for ‘spiritual work’ to remove ‘the dark force.'” Sounds expensive.

Meet Michael Brown, a preacher who kills kangaroos by saying “Jesus” to them. He’s the new Knight-who-says-“Ni.”

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.