The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom releases its annual report, with sixteen countries either carrying out or tolerating “egregious violations” of religious freedom, and a major focus on China. NPR reports:

“[The report] takes the strongest stance against China in the history of the USCIRF,” [commissioner Johnnie] Moore says.

In the midst of trade discussions with the United States, Chinese authorities detained as many as 2 million Uighurs, an ethnic and predominantly Muslim minority, the report says. “We believe it’s partially an intent to solidify China’s hegemony in the world,” Moore says. … The Chinese government also raided or closed hundreds of churches, banned unauthorized religious teachings and continued a practice of surveillance of Tibetan Buddhists, the report says.

This beluga whale is not, as best we can tell, psychic, but it has been militarized by the Russians. Not even kidding. Norwegian fishermen discovered a beluga wearing a camera harness with Russian markings.

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, the man whose life was saved by Lori Gilbert Kaye when she sacrificed herself to protect him from the white supremacist shooter this past weekend, writes in The New York Times:

I do not know why God spared my life. I do not know why I had to witness scenes of a pogrom in San Diego County like the ones my grandparents experienced in Poland. I don’t know why a part of my body was taken away from me. I don’t know why I had to see my good friend, a woman who embodied the Jewish value of hesed (kindness), hunted in her house of worship. … I do not know God’s plan. All I can do is try to find meaning in what has happened. And to use this borrowed time to make my life matter more.

A different (very different) rabbi, one Benjamin Sendrow, went on Fox News to blame the shooting on the decline in religiosity, but it’s cool, he says not all atheists are killers:

I believe that at least a piece of it is the decline in adherence to religious values and an adoption of secular values. Now I’m not at all saying every secularist is a potential mass murderer. But I think there is a sickness in the soul of our society, and I believe that a symptom of that is our decline in religiosity as a society.

In Skeptical Inquirer, Craig Foster argues for a respectful approach to skeptics’ communication, not just because it’s nicer, but because it’s more effective:

Behaving more respectfully should make skeptics appear more likable and credible, both of which are crucial when attempting to influence others. Humans are motivated toward cognitive consistency, so it is easy for people to listen to likable skeptics and disregard unlikable ones. Furthermore, it is understandably difficult for people to come around to agreeing with a community that has already chided them.

Here’s Craig at CSICon 2018, delivering his presentation on what makes us susceptible to nonsense.

Reynold Spector looks into the science behind mega- and multivitamins, and finds, well, very little.

In Free Inquiry, Ophelia Benson pours some cold water on “Oprah-style” notion of an “authentic self”:

…it’s a distinction between the social self and the private one, between the self that others perceive and the one that we alone know from the inside. … This idea of course rests on the assumption that self-knowledge is reliable, truthful, and immune to dispute by others.

Also in Free Inquiry, Russell Blackford worries over “slippery slopes” for free expression with the charges of “willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group” against Canada’s Your Ward News.

A whole confirmation class of Methodist kids in Omaha, 13 and 14 years old, declines to formally join the church. Publicly:

We want to be clear that, while we love our congregation, we believe that the United Methodist policies on LGBTQ+ clergy and same sex marriage are immoral.

Illinois State Rep. Darren Bailey is already known to hate LGBTQ folks and to be on board with Project Blitz-type religious-right claptrap. Shock of shocks, he’s also an anti-vaxxer.

Harriet Hall favorably reviews what she calls an “invaluable” new book, Pseudoscience in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: a Skeptical Field Guide.

Rachael Petersen at The Outline experiments with psychedelics and is “cured” of her atheism. Or something like that:

When, during a follow-up session in the clinical trial, a researcher asked if i still identified as an atheist, the question didn’t surprise me as much as my inability to answer. Suddenly, the label felt like a shirt that had shrunk in the dryer: something that served me for a time, but no longer fit. What do you call someone who believes that things are likely better than they appear, and thinks that in light of this fact we should just be kinder to one another? Someone who suspects things are more mysterious than they seem, and more connected than we’ll ever know? Someone with an abiding conviction, grown out of a direct encounter, that there are things of ultimate importance that transcend ordinary waking consciousness?

Quote of the Day

While Petersen’s being cured of her atheism, Valerie Tarico at AlterNet shows how far-right evangelicals and Catholics are replenishing the atheist supply:

…the more they resort to strict authoritarianism, insularity and strict interpretation of Iron Age texts, the more people are wounded in the name of God and the more people are outraged. By making Christian belief an all-or-nothing proposition – they force at least some would-be believers to choose “nothing.”

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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.