The biggest news to me, as a fan of Cassini, Cosmos, and The Expanse books, is that researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science have discovered twenty previously unknown moons around Saturn, making Saturn the mooniest planet in the Sol System. There’s a contest to name them, too.
Judge Tammy Kemp, she who Bible’d it up with convicted police officer Amber Guyger after her sentencing, defends herself. Make of it what you will:
“She asked me if I thought that God could forgive her and I said, ‘Yes, God can forgive you and has,’” Kemp told The Associated Press.
“If she wanted to start with the Bible, I didn’t want her to go back to the jail and to sink into doubt and self-pity and become bitter,” she said. “Because she still has a lot of life ahead of her following her sentence and I would hope that she could live it purposefully.” …
… Kemp said she doesn’t know “the state of Ms. Guyger’s Christianity, if she’s even a Christian.” But she said she pointed Guyger to a Bible passage about God’s love “so that she could recognize that, even given the fact that she murdered someone, God still loves her.” …
… “I didn’t do that from the bench,” she said. “I came down to extend my condolences to the Jean family and to encourage Ms. Guyger because she has a lot of life to live.”
The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”
Juhem Navarro-Rivera shows that Nones who join up with secular organizations like ours are way more likely to be politically involved generally:
Members of secular organizations are over three times more likely than nonmember nones to say they’ve donated money to a political organization (44 percent vs. 12 percent), to say they have donated money to a candidate (33 percent vs. 10 percent), to volunteer for a voter registration drive (42 percent vs. 12 percent), to report volunteering for a candidate’s campaign (33 percent vs. 10 percent), and to having taken part in a neighborhood march (45 percent vs. 14 percent).
Secular Americans who reported organizational membership were also more than twice as likely to report giving people a ride to the polls (46 percent vs. 17 percent) and to attend a protest or demonstration (45 percent vs. 19 percent). Finally, nones who report membership in the secular movement are nearly twice as likely to report that they have contacted an elected official (37 percent vs. 20 percent).
Why it matters:
… these results paint a more positive view of nonreligious Americans. They are not a passive and content group, but rather an active and passionate one. This cohort has a lot of energy and, when harnessed, secular Americans will become a force to reckon with in American politics.
Ronald Radosh at The Daily Beast says the right’s conspiracy theories are going to go into overdrive with impeachment:
Trump is now reactivating and trafficking a theory that started after his election, but that was left to fringe elements on the right and largely ignored. This is the belief that Trump’s opponents, most coming from the camp of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters, and their holdovers still sitting in major government positions in various agencies, are using their positions to slowly undertake a coup d’état, meant to remove from power the legally elected president and destroy his administration. …
… Where will this all ultimately lead? If Trump is removed from office by either impeachment or losing the 2020 election, will he refuse to accept the outcome, as he and his cadre say it is illegitimate and the result of the coup carried out by the deep state? Will his actions decimate many government agencies, as he carries out a purge of dedicated staffers, all of whom keep our government functioning, but whom he sees as perpetrators of the coup?
Well someone tell Trump there’s one more guy who’s in on the conspiracy: GOD. Pat Robertson says Trump is going to lose his “mandate from Heaven” if he withdraws forces from Syria. You don’t get much more deep-state than the LORD.
The Supreme Court declines to hear a Bible-in-school case because, well, the program in question doesn’t exist anymore, got rid of the teachers who ran it, and the student for whom the case was filed doesn’t go to that school anymore. Sooooo…
The Arizona Republic gives op-ed space to LGBTQ-discriminating Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman to say, in essense, ‘one of my best friends is gay (and that one gay friend sued me!).’ Witness the mean, backstabbing gay guy betray his good Christian friend!
That longtime customer was Robert Ingersoll. As a floral designer and owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, I served Rob for nearly a decade, creating dozens of unique arrangements for Valentine’s Days and other important events. I knew Rob was gay, but that never mattered. I loved working with him.
Over the years, Rob’s only request that I couldn’t accept was to create floral designs celebrating his same-sex wedding. Because my Christian faith teaches that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, I cannot take part in celebrating a different understanding of marriage. For me, a wedding is different from an event like Valentine’s Day, because it is a sacred ceremony for a sacred union, and I am so personally involved in celebrating it.
But I care for Rob deeply, so I took his hand in mine, gently explained my religious conflict, gave him the names of other floral designers, discussed his engagement, hugged him and said goodbye. … At first, it was hard to accept that my friend — who initially said he understood my decision and recognized that I expressed it as kindly as I could — partnered with the ACLU to sue me. But my faith calls me to love people — not hold a grudge.
No to grudges, but yes to self-pitying op-eds.
Speaking of Robert Ingersoll, meaning the OG Robert Ingersoll, CFI’s Freethought Trail announces that is now covers every venue Ingersoll stayed or spoke at in west-central New York State.
George Ongere of CFI Kenya gives us a look into the group’s library programs, promoting critical thinking and humanism in places where books and computers are luxuries.
Free Inquiry has a piece by Jeff T. Haley and Ed Buckner taking on the mischaracterizations of humanism leveled by philosopher John Gray:
Gray finds, correctly, that there is no unifying concept behind various forms of atheism. Expecting that atheists would have much in common is like expecting that people who do not believe in unicorns would have much in common.
At Skeptical Inquirer, Annika Merkelbach reports back from the European Skeptics Congress with an interview with skeptic activist András Pinter.
Apparently the Vatican’s office of the Secretariat of State was raided by Vatican police over crooked financial dealings. Seems like a big deal. When the Oz cops get that close to the Wizard, something’s going down.
Biology professor Nathan H. Lents in USA Today critiques a book purporting to show “scientific evidence” of a historical Adam and Eve, but sees a silver lining to the effort:
This will not tempt someone like me to believe in the creation story laid out in Genesis. But it just might allow those who do believe to be more open to evolution and, god willing, to science more broadly. For those who take the Adam and Eve story literally, the value of this effort is obvious. But there is value for nonbelievers as well. Widespread suspicion of science weakens our social fabric and undermines the common good. From the urgency of climate change and medical research, to the frontiers of artificial intelligence and space exploration, scientific discovery holds tremendous potential for the betterment of human lives. As such, efforts to bring more people into the scientific mainstream serve not one political party or one particular faith — but all of humanity, to the ends of the Earth.
The Washington Post profiles the activist group Extinction Rebellion:
Demonstrators blocked roads and bridges leading to the Palace of Westminster in central London. They staged a “die-in” in Wellington, New Zealand. They obstructed a major roundabout in Berlin, parked a pink sailboat outside the prime minister’s office in Dublin and splattered fake blood on Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” sculpture.
The group’s message is that climate change is an emergency that requires drastic and immediate action.
Andrew Yang has broken my already-busted heart:
Excited to speak to @DrOz on his show tomorrow – he’s made a lot of people smarter about their health. 👍💪😀
But…he…but…WHAT?
You ever hear of the hydrogen water fad? Harriet Hall puts it well in her opening paragraph:
Hydrogen gas is highly combustible: remember the Hindenburg disaster? It is not medicine.
I’m convinced.
Quote of the Day
Former NASA scientist James O’Donoghue animates the relative speeds of Star Trek’s warp technology, showing the Enterprise-D going from the Sun to the edge of the system, and the speeds are, as Business Insider puts it, “achingly slow” (relatively). Here’s the animated GIF.
O’Donoghue explains:
I have genuinely felt a sense of despair at the distances involved in our solar system and beyond. It’s been one of my aims to make everyone else feel as bad as me.
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.