Yesterday, a joint hearing by two House subcommittees tackled issues surrounding religious persecution around the world, and Rep. Jamie Raskin added a statement from CFI into the Congressional Record on our support for resolutions against blasphemy laws. Read all about it right here.
The UN Human Rights Committee declares that climate refugees, people who are forced to flee their home countries because of life-threatening dangers brought on by climate change, cannot be sent back. CNN reports:
Droughts, crop failure and rising seas are expected to force tens of millions to move to other areas in the coming years. A 2018 study by the World Bank found that 143 million people across South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are at risk of becoming climate migrants.
In its ruling, the committee cited articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which ensure an individual’s inherent right to life.
“Given that the risk of an entire country becoming submerged under water is such an extreme risk, the conditions of life in such a country may become incompatible with the right to life with dignity before the risk is realized,” its decision added.
Speaking of human rights violations: China has 1 million Muslims packed away in internment camps. China also has an out-of-control viral epidemic that has turned the country upside-down. Yeah, this is a very bad combination. Vox reports:
For now, there’s no evidence that the virus has hit any of the camps. But experts warn that if it does, it could drastically compound the suffering there, potentially leading to thousands of deaths.
Former inmates — most of whom are Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority — have reported that the camps are overcrowded and unsanitary. If the virus gains a toehold there, it could spread from person to person all too easily.
ProPublica has taken all the publicly available information on priests credibly accused of sexual abuse and put it all into one searchable online database. There are more than 5,800 names, about half of which are dead. It’s like Google, except for conscience-shocking horrors.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is totally excited about “Vexit,” an absurd concept about how Virginia counties who don’t like the fact that the state is now run by Democrats will secede and join West Virginia. RNS reports:
He accused Democrats of “using their power to strip away the God-given rights” of citizens, describing them as “anti-life, anti-Second Amendment, anti-liberty and even anti-business with their oppressive environmental regulations.”
Sarah Ngu at Religion & Politics profiles the movement of young Christian democratic socialists:
“Socialism gave me a politics that finally provided clarity around faith and a Christian vocation. It wasn’t about my individualistic faith or spiritual gifts,” [Rev. Lindsey Joyce] said. “The Christian vocation is a communal vocation of solidarity. Jesus was always on the side of the oppressed, and so we should be also.”
Joe Biden loves nuns and the nuns love him and they all love ice cream. The Post, I guess, reports:
In his 2007 memoir “Promises to Keep,” he wrote about bringing gallons of ice cream to the Sisters of St. Francis, a convent on the north side of Dubuque, “because Jean Finnegan Biden’s son does not visit nuns empty-handed.”
Joe, I’m telling you, start bringing gallons of ice cream to the Nones instead, and we will FALL IN LINE.
Simran Jeet Singh looks at how Trump’s Muslim ban, which the administration is hoping to expand, has opened the floodgates for other ostensibly liberal democracies to target Muslims; India’s anti-Muslim citizenship law being the most blatant example.
Theology professor Matthew Robert Anderson at The Conversation explains why Terry Jones’s Life of Brian is one of the best “Jesus movies,” which largely centers on how the Monty Python film embraced the doubt and ambiguity of both historical accounts and of the attitudes of people of the time.
Mike Pence and Betsy DeVos went to Wisconsin to evangelize the state funding of religious schools. AP reports:
Pence, and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were both briefly drowned out by chants of “shame” from dozens of protesters who gathered one floor down in the Capitol building. The protesters, some carrying signs calling for the separation of church and state, also booed throughout their comments.
Heh. I mean that’s terrible.
Jamie Lynn Crofts at Wonkette has a good run-down of the stakes in the Supreme Court Espinoza case:
[I]f a majority of the justices decide Ms. Espinoza has standing and the case isn’t moot, it looks like something pretty fucked up is going to happen. Kegs and Alito made it clear during oral argument that they would happily get rid of all laws and constitutional amendments prohibiting public funding of religious schools. That would both destroy the principle of separation of church and state and completely upend the entire school system in the United States, requiring states to fund private, religious schools along with public schools. …
… This case is incredibly dangerous, as are the far-right extremists on this Court.
Edzard Ernst points out a new study on how law enforcement and the justice system can determine the difference between science and pseudoscience. The authors write:
Organisations within the justice system do use empirically and theoretically supported approaches. However, some implemented approaches lack empirical evidence. In more perturbing cases, police officers, lawyers and judges may resort to pseudoscience – that is, bodies of information that may appear to be scientific but, in reality, lack the characteristics of scientific knowledge. … if members of the justice community are not advised about the publishing process then pseudoscientists can be fairly proficient at providing counterarguments. In addition, pseudoscientists can use several other fallacious arguments to achieve maximum support for their approaches.
It’s so easy to just believe something you see in a headline and pass it on. It’s only slightly less easy to just do a quick check to see if it’s legit. Ben Radford shows us an example of a “quick debunking”:
Those who share bogus stories […] are both victims of manipulation, and promoters of misinformation. It’s a good reminder to think before you share. You don’t need to invest hours fact-checking information; as this case shows in some cases you can do it in just seconds.
The Royal Air Force is about to change everything for humanity as it prepares to make public its five decades of records on UFOs!!! The Telegraph reports:
In response to the FOI request, the RAF described the files it held as “comprising entirely of correspondence with members of the public”.
It added: “The MoD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra terrestrial life and does not investigate UFO reports.”
Oh. Um. Never mind.
Tara Isebella Burton wrote this, which says so much about the world we live in now:
Mr. Peanut is the hanged god we deserve in 2020.
I dunno. Peanut sacrificed himself for two other people who were not only different from him, but a different species. He was too good for us.
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.