Walmart is trying to quash CFI’s lawsuit over the mega-retailer’s deceptive marketing of homeopathic fake medicine, telling the judge that we don’t have standing because CFI is, apparently, only a secular humanism group, and nothing else. Is that right? Their motion to dismiss is full of falsehoods, and we have responded:

“Let’s not ignore the sinister undertone of Walmart’s claims,” said Nicholas Little, CFI’s Vice President and Legal Counsel. “Walmart is hoping to tar CFI with negative stereotypes about atheism. If we were a group of Christians or Muslims who felt driven by our faith to oppose fraudulent pseudoscience and fake medicine, dismissing us for our beliefs would be unconscionable. But Walmart has no qualms about fomenting anti-atheist bias.”

Also in its motion to dismiss, Walmart bizarrely claims that it bears no responsibility for how its products are displayed to consumers, and that the placement and layout of products has no impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions. In its response, CFI says this claim “beggars belief.”

At Skeptical Inquirer, Annika Harrison talks to German skeptic activist Udo Endruscheit on his work on homeopathy and other “skeptical mischief.”

The right-wing conference CPAC was stuffed to the gills with people who are fully in the tank with Trump and anything he says about the coronavirus. Also at CPAC was a guy with the coronavirus. The Post reports:

A growing sense of concern and uncertainty about the reach of the novel coronavirus has begun to take hold in the White House, after an attendee at a recent political conference where President Trump spoke tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. …

… Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said in a statement Sunday that he “briefly interacted” with the infected person while at CPAC and would self-quarantine at his Texas home “out of an abundance of caution.” He said he does not have any symptoms associated with the virus.

New CSICon videos have Snopes and Stardust. Check out the presentations from young author and activist Bailey Harris and Snopes founder David Mikkelson.

A coalition of human rights groups is suing the State Department over Mike Pompeo’s pet piety project, the Commission on Unalienable Rights. CNN reports:

In a joint press release, the organizations allege that the commission, which was created by Pompeo in July 2019, is “stacked with members who have staked out positions hostile to LGBTQ and reproductive rights,” is “holding closed door meetings to conduct significant Commission business outside of the public’s view and scrutiny, including efforts to redefine human rights terminology and commitments” and is “failing to provide adequate notice of meetings and to release key documents to the public.” …

… “Secretary Pompeo often argues that the modern proliferation of human rights claims cheapens the currency of human rights but it is this illegal Commission, with its warped use of religious freedom and natural law to deny rights, that cheapens the very notion of religious freedom and our country’s proud tradition of standing up for the rights of those who are most vulnerable,” Mark Bromley, the chair of the Council for Global Equality, said in a statement.

This is just…well, I would say shocking, but nothing really surprises me anymore. ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle report how the Catholic Church gathered up more than 50 of its sexual-predator priests and dumped them on Mexico. To repurpose the words of our nation’s leader, “They’re not sending their best people.”

It seems like this should go without saying, but nonetheless: Don’t look to Reddit for coronavirus information. Business Insider reports:

Without links to official coronavirus information, a Reddit search about it brings up a slew of posts citing sketchy sources, linking to unverified social-media posts, and making bold — and fearmongering — claims. One coronavirus-related post shared in r/unpopularopinion with nearly 40,000 upvotes blatantly forwards a racist belief related to the disease.

Katherine Stewart, who has a new book about Christian nationalism, has another op-ed, this time in the New York Times, eloquently explaining why everything is terrible:

In the future, if the Trump administration has its way, the current flow of taxpayer money to religious organizations may well look like the trickle before the flood. Religious nationalists dream of a time when most or all social welfare services pass through the hands of religious entities. They imagine a future in which a young woman seeking advice on reproductive health care will have nowhere to turn but a state-funded, church-operated network of “counseling” centers that will tell her she will go to hell if she doesn’t have the baby.

Okay, so what do we do? Stewart tells Religion News Service:

The right invests in data, media and messaging. There’s no reason why political progressives can’t make their own investments in data, media and messaging to reach voters and help them make smart decisions at the ballot box. We can all support organizations that are fighting voter suppression, race-based gerrymandering and who support church-state separation. Religious nationalists are using the tools of democratic political culture to end democracy. I continue to believe those same resources can be used to restore it.

A Republican group in Florida is sending out robocalls to voters in Clearwater in which they pose as Scientologists backing a Democratic city council candidate.

Meanwhile, Facebook pulls down a Trump campaign ad that poses as an “official” message from the U.S. Census. But it took a complaint from Nancy Pelosi for Facebook to do anything about it.

Historian Katie Kelaidis, at Religion Dispatches, explains how the Russian Orthodox Church is “renewing its ancient role as the handmaiden of Russian state power.” Great.

Also at Religion Dispatches, Daniel Schultz wonders if Joe Biden can gin up enthusiasm among the Democratic Party’s largest “religious” bloc, the nonreligious:

Moderate-to-conservative religious voters will be a necessary component of the winning team against Trump, and most non-religious voters will likely be okay with the kind of faith-talk that it will take to keep them on board. But in a nation that’s increasingly diverse, not least along religious lines, it’s unclear for how much longer young and secular voters, especially women and the LGBTQ community, will be willing to put up with having their issues pushed to the back burner.

State Rep. Jeremy Gray of Alabama correctly says the state’s ban on yoga in public schools (because it’s Hindu religious training, you see) is stupid. He’s proposing to overturn the ban, but being careful to make sure there’s no conflict with, you know, Jesus. NBC News reports:

Gray’s bill would allow school districts to offer yoga as an elective class. It specifies that “all instruction in yoga shall be limited exclusively to poses, exercises and stretching techniques” and that all techniques “shall have exclusively English descriptive names.”

“Chanting, mantras, mudras, use of mandalas and 11 namaste greetings shall be expressly prohibited,” according to the proposed legislation.

Rolls-Royce cancels its offer for a private audience with the pope. Party-poopers.

The Satanic Temple holds an “infernal ritual” outside the Washington state capitol after being denied an invocation slot.

Ann Druyan talks to Salon about the optimistic stance of Cosmos:

What gives me hope, and what makes science so powerful, is that it’s an error-correcting mechanism for finding out what’s true — not absolute truth. Look at our achievements. In 1957, we left this world, then 20 years later we launched the Voyager, a mission to the stars. In 20 years, that’s a rate of change and development that was astonishing. We are capable of greatness.

I have a lot of hope because all of us have descended from people who were able to endure and adapt. And adaptation is the entry-level qualification for one failed organism for any species, and our greatest talent has been our ability to adapt. And that’s what we have to do rapidly — adapt to the danger that scientists predicted 70 years ago. The dinosaurs never saw it coming. We have no excuse.

At Fast Company, her daughter, Sasha Sagan, talks about how her parents cultivated curiosity and inquiry at home:

The discussions that fueled my parents’ workdays flowed over into dinnertime, and that enriched me enormously. They managed to explain even the most complicated concepts clearly and without ever talking down to me, with a kind of gentle intellectual respect, as though I was some kind of tiny professor trapped in a little girl’s body. I think it’s this same skill that made their work accessible to so many non-scientists around the world.

During those dinnertime discussions the greatest thing I could do, in the eyes of my parents, was to ask a question to which they did not know the answer. To them it was the sign of a curious intellect scanning the horizon for new mysteries, which might lead to new understanding. I never once got a “That’s just how it is,” or a “Because I said so.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is 42. Interestingly, so am I.

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.