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Burma’s Spirit Festival, and More in This Week’s Global LGBT Roundup

By Peter Montgomery

…lerant society once people have jobs, better paid jobs, don’t have to care about their own livelihood, or the future of their own children, and do not have to worry about two or three generations living in the same flat,” she said. “I don’t think Serbia is that homophobic. I know that is one of the perceptions, and I understand attitudes are different in parts of Serbia. But some journalists were in a village in central Serbia where part of my fam…

Creationist Master’s Degree… Denied

By Lauri Lebo

…st the state, essentially saying on one hand it’s not right for a bunch of science educators to tell them what’s science. And on the other hand, the denial amounts to religious discrimination and a violation of the First Amendment. I love it how these folks are always trying to have it both ways. By the way, to quote York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento, I intend to start a course that “teaches that cows think in Spanish.” On Friday, the U.S….

Creationism: Don’t Use the “C-Word”

By Lauri Lebo

…ion their cause. Because the DI’s first rule about creationism? Don’t talk about creationism. In this case, the Livingston Parish School District, in a discussion regarding the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), which Discovery Institute helped write, wanted to know when they could start teaching kids creationism in science class. Board members asked a staff committee to research the possibility for the 2011-2012 school year. The discuss…

The Devil in Dover

By Lauri Lebo

…being poisoned by this notion. This book teaches children to be whimsical about science, to play with it and have fun. To be joyful. What’s your next book? I am working on a book now about another case I covered while a reporter in York. In 1969, two people were killed during York’s race riots; a black preacher’s daughter and a white rookie cop. For 30 years, no one was ever arrested, even though there were estimated to be 100 witnesses in both s…

Science, Syphilis, and the Evolution of Ethics

By Arri Eisen

…as the Nuremburg trials investigating Nazi abuse of people in the name of science were going on in post-WWII Germany, the United States Public Health Service was intentionally exposing Guatemalans to the bacterium that causes syphilis, so that different therapies for the disease could then be tested on them. First, infected prostitutes were identified and made freely accessible to ‘volunteer’ prisoners for sex. When this didn’t work so well, atte…

Nobel Laureates Tell Gov. Jindal to Repeal Anti-Evolution Law

By Lauri Lebo

…ers have denied the law has anything to do with inserting creationism into science class, I’ve written about how members of Louisiana school boards interpret the law here. Whether lawmakers will heed a bunch of bona fide experts in their fields remains to be seen, but their statement certainly adds a lot of weight to Kopplin’s argument that LSEA is a “job-killing law.” Kopplin’s web site repealcreationism.com provides more information about the…

Perry’s Galileo Moment

By Sarah Posner

…—fostering a vibrant industry promoting ‘intelligent design’ and ‘creation science.’” Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education says that the same strategies are now being directed at attacking the science of climate change. For his research, Sherkat analyzed responses to 13 questions on scientific fact and reasoning from the 2006 General Social Survey, collected at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago….

Believing in Johnny Cash: An Open Letter to Atheists

By Paul Wallace

…THE truth, whatever it is. This biggest truth is reality. It’s what’s true about us, about God if there is a God, about death, about life. Whatever this bottom-level truth is, I like to think that all lesser truths hold our interest only insofar as they are related to it. Sue and His Old Man: One Small Truth? In 1969 Cash recorded a song called “A Boy Named Sue.” In it, he tells the story of a three-year old child whose father abandons the family,…

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…say, the origin of the universe. I think that the transparency is not just about belief; it’s about facts, too. There’s a long tradition of how to get around prohibitions in the Qur’an so that you can live in the modern world. I think all of that will accelerate, and so the ways of being a Muslim twenty years from now is going to expand dramatically from what they are today. And I think largely in good directions. I think that there will be more a…

Why Science and Social Distancing Can’t Replace Healing Supplements and Prayer

By Alan Levinovitz

…to sort truth from falsehood more generally. But now I am less certain—not about the pseudoscience, or even the dangers it poses, but about the place these “irrational” beliefs and practices occupy in people’s lives. Illness and death exceed scientific explanations. The threat they pose is existential, not physiological. When confronted with cancer or COVID-19, we are forced to acknowledge the fragility of our bodies, our systems, our world. Cance…