U.S. immigration service accepting green card applications from bi-national same sex couples

U.S. immigration service accepting green card applications from bi-national same sex couples
Married bi-national same sex couples scored a victory Monday when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it would no longer deny their green card applications.
"USCIS has issued guidance to the field asking that related cases be held in abeyance while awaiting final guidance related to distinct legal issues," Christopher Bentley, a USCIS spokesman, told Metro Weekly's Chris Geidner. The new guidance means that LGBT couples with spouses from abroad will be able to apply for citizenship while the courts decide on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
The Obama administration announced last month that it would no longer defend DOMA in court. The law, however, will still be enforced until Congress decides to repeal or modify it. Steve Ralls, director of communications for Immigration Equality, told Raw Story that the USCIS decision was an important step forward.
"The announcement from USCIS means that bi-national lesbian and gay couples who have a recognized marriages will be able to file a green card application for the immigrant spouse and those applications will no longer be denied by the Department of Homeland Security," he explained. "DHS will hold those applications until DOMA's constitutionality is settled. That will allow couples remain together in the United States until DOMA is resolved by the courts."
(hmm, so a Canadian same-sex spouse married to an American....?)

A.C. Grayling's "Humanist Bible" - a review

The Bible 2.0? A Humanist Bible Lays Down The Gauntlet
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then British philosopher A.C. Grayling has just paid the Bible the ultimate compliment. After centuries of being the best-selling work of all time, the Bible will now face a direct competitor: The Good Book: A Humanist Bible by Grayling ($35; Walker & Company) is a distillation of wisdom and insight from some of the world's greatest thinkers explicitly modeled on the approach of the Bible published on the 400th anniversary of the King James Version.
It's cheeky, audacious, almost scandalous in a way. The Bible as we know it today comes in hundreds of different versions (thousands if you count various translations of sections like The Book Of Job and Psalms, which are very popular on their own as literature). It draws upon millennia of oral tradition, written texts, parables, sayings, prayers, psalms, histories and biography, adjudicated at various times by early Catholic Church leaders and other Christian faiths, controversially translated into English (a heresy punishable by death at one point) and then gloriously translated into English for the King James Version in 1611 after some seven years of work. That version was completed by dozens of scholars, surely making it the greatest work of literature ever produced by committee. Some faiths teach that a particular version of the Bible is the literal word of God, but whatever your faith (or lack of it), the Bible in its many forms contains words that can and do inspire and comfort.
Grayling, an atheist, said, hey, that's a clever idea. Why not create a new Bible to instruct and inspire that draws upon many other philosophical sources? ... "a Bible for the rest of us." He's modeled The Good Book on the Bible, with various sections like Genesis, Wisdom, Parables and so on. The text comes from thousands of sources written by hundreds of the world's greatest thinkers: Aristotle, Bacon, Chaucer, Darwin, Euripides, Goethe, Jefferson, Locke, Montaigne, Ovid, Rimbaud, Spinoza, Swift and Voltaire are among the many greats he draws upon.
Even the layout is similar: short chapters, with two columns on each page and lines written in verse but with an eye to poetry. You could of course read it cover to cover, but it's probably best approached by dipping in here and there... If you're grieving, you might turn to Lamentations or Consolations, which ends with "This is the final consolation: that we will sleep at evening, and be free for ever."
If you want to consider friendship, read Concord. If you are looking for pearls of wisdom, meditate on Sage, in which you'll read, "Do not be concerned about others not appreciating you. Be concerned about not appreciating others."
Grayling doesn't just quote these thinkers; this is not a commonplace book where he lists a string of famous quotations. As you can gather from the brief passages I've quoted, Grayling has edited and shaped and woven together ideas and phrases and insights into one voice, delivered in a slightly archaic, formal style. Histories and Acts are two of the longest sections, often drawing on ancient stories from Greece and Rome...
It will be fascinating to see if The Good Book catches on. Maybe agnostics and atheists will embrace it; maybe Christians will embrace it too as a valuable collection of insights. It might begin as a curiosity and then flourish or remain a cult favorite or just a curiosity... You don't have to be a nonbeliever to find solace and wisdom in the distilled ideas presented here. It's a testament to the enduring power of the Bible that Grayling sought to draw upon its very form and structure.
Even if you accept any of the four versions of the Ten Commandments that Moses offered up as law, is there harm in asking, as Grayling does in the final section The Good, "Shall we ask, by what commandments shall we live? Or might we better ask, each of ourselves: What kind of person should I be? The first question assumes that there is one right answer. The second assumes that there are many right answers." And yes, Grayling does come up with his own Ten Commandments, not that he would call them such. Would any person of faith object to them?
"Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous: at least, sincerely try."

Here is an interview with AC Grayling

UK: Humanist education in primary schools in some boroughs

UK Daily Mail (Non-) religious education: Children as young as four will be taught the doctrines of humanism, alongside the six major faiths

School pupils aged just four are to be taught atheism in a move schools hope will equip them to be 'citizens of the world'. Education bosses in Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire, have radically restructured the RE syllabus to accommodate non-religious beliefs.
Youngsters will continue to learn about the six major faiths - Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism - but they will also be taught humanism, the belief that there is no God or Gods, and that moral values are founded on human nature and experience.

The move recognises that more than 10,000 people in the borough do not have any religious beliefs. Both primary and secondary school pupils will be included in the shake-up.

WHAT IS HUMANISM? Humanists reject religious and superstitious beliefs. Instead, they believe we can make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared values. They say we can make the best of life by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, and choosing to take responsibility for our actions.
Humanists do not believe the universe needs a divine power to determine its value. It is important to act morally towards others, not because of a divine imperative, but because people have inherent dignity, they say.
Humanists believe that we have only one life, it is our responsibility to make it a good life, and to live it well.
Fiona Moss, from RE Today, which helped create the new syllabus, said: 'We really must recognise that some people do not believe in God and do not have a religious background'.

 But Salim Mulla, chair of Lancashire Council of Mosques, is concerned about the outcome of these teachings. 'We believe it is important to have faith values whether that is Christian, Islamic or any other religion,' he said'The values are very, very important. I don't think the non God aspect should be introduced into the curriculum. 'I don't think it is right. People are born into faiths and are brought up in that faith and that's how it should stay. The non-faith beliefs send a wrong message to the children and confuse them.'
The new syllabus was drawn up after reviewing the 2001 census results, which revealed that, although the borough has representatives from all of the six major faiths, there were more than 10,000 people who stated they did not follow a religion.
At its launch Dot Thomson, Blackburn with Darwen school improvement officer, said: 'I would not describe the syllabus as radical but it is disassociated from what went before in Blackburn with Darwen.
'This is the first time we have given respect for non-religious life stances. 'It is an important area. We expect this year's census to show the diverse faiths and beliefs in the area and we need to reflect this when teaching RE in schools.' The new syllabus will be taught in all the borough's 28 schools from September.

9 Bills That Would Put Creationism US Classrooms

9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom | Mother Jones
State governments are grappling with massive budget deficits, overburdened social programs, and mountains of deferred spending. But never mind..for some conservative lawmakers, it's the perfect time to legislate the promotion of creationism in the classroom. In the first three months of 2011, nine creationism-related bills have been introduced in seven states—that's more than in any year in recent memory:
example: Texas
Legislation: HB 2454 would ban discrimination against creationists, for instance, biology professors who believe in intelligent design. Defending his bill, Texas state Rep. Bill Zedler told Mother Jones, "When was the last time we’ve seen someone go into a windstorm or a tornado or any other kind of natural disaster, and say, 'Guess what? That windstorm just created a watch'?" ... (???) read more above

US Right Wing wants to rewrite 1st amendment for Christians onlyl

Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the social conservative group the American Family Association, says that when it comes to Islam, the First Amendment is a privilege, not a right.
"The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam. Quite the contrary," Fischer wrote on his Renew America blog.
He continued:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Fischer took it a step further, calling Islam a "treasonous ideology" and adding that "from a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked."
Fischer has previously called for the U.S. to have "no more mosques, period," because "every single mosque is a potential terror training center or recruitment center for jihad." He's also suggested that we should "handle Muslims just like we handle neo-Nazis." And his show is a frequent stomping ground for conservative politicians, including potential 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and actual 2012 candidate Tim Pawlenty.

Ohio bill that would ban most abortions put on hold

Ohio bill that would ban most abortions put on hold | The Raw Story
A bill that would restrict most abortions in Ohio has been put on hold -- at least for now. The House Health Health Committee decided Wednesday to put off voting on the bill that would outlaw abortions after as soon as doctors can detect the first heatbeat of the fetus. Committee chairman Lynn Wachtmann said the bill was "not quite ready," according to The Associated Press.
In a move critics attacked as a "circus" for the media, Faith2Action called fetuses to "testify" before lawmakers, shuttling in two pregnant women to undergo live ultrasounds. Janet Porter, president of Faith2Action, claimed that the fetus was the "youngest ever to testify. When passed, the Heartbeat Bill will insure that once that heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected," she said.
Porter believes a vote on the bill could come as soon as next week. Critics of the bill call it unconstitutional. If enacted, it would be the most restrictive abortion law in the country.

Journalism Professor Who Helped Free 5 Innocent Men from Death Roll Has Been Sacked

Journalism Professor Who Helped Free 5 Innocent Men from Death Roll Has Been Sacked

Days after the death penalty was abolished in Illinois, one of the key people who helped prove the innocence of men on the state’s death row—thus setting into motion the political action that led to abolition—has lost his job.

David Protess, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for 29 years, was dismissed this week, reportedly for no official reason. As the head of Northwestern’s Innocence Project, Protess devoted himself to teaching journalism students investigative skills that, literally, had life-or-death impact. Under his direction, students uncovered evidence that saved five men from death row and at least another six from prison. While he will retain his position at the Innocence Project, his expulsion from the journalism school is a travesty—and a major loss for the countless students inspired by the work he pioneered.

The firing seems to have been rather cold for a professor who attracted so much admiration for his work. According to the Daily Northwestern, “Medill Dean John Lavine told Protess about the decision in an e-mail Monday, Protess said. No reason was given, and there have not yet been any conversations about the future, he added.”

For the past few years, Protess and his students have been in the crosshairs of the Cook County DA’s office, which, forced to grapple with the fallout of Protess’s investigations when it would have preferred to keep its role in sentencing innocent people to die in prison under wraps, finally decided to begin an intimidation campaign against Northwestern.... (more in article)

ACLU to defend student sent home for wearing pro-gay shirt

ACLU to defend student sent home for wearing pro-equality shirt
An eighth-grade Louisiana student who was sent home from school for wearing a pro-equality shirt is receiving support from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). De Soto Middle School student Dawn Henderson was ordered to go home after refusing to remove a shirt with the text "Some Kids are Gay. That's OK." De Soto Middle School Principal Keith Simmons said he sent her home because her shirt was a distraction to other students.
"Students do not give up their free speech rights at the schoolhouse gate," ACLU of Louisiana Executive Director Marjorie R. Esman said in a letter to Simmons. "To allow students to express one kind of opinion but not another is the very definition of censorship, and it violates the Constitutional rights of students like Dawn Henderson, who may have views different from those of her school Principal."
"Schools should encourage discussion of issues of public concern, and especially issues about which there may be conflicting opinions," Esman continued. "Sending Dawn home for wearing a shirt with the word ‘gay’ on it not only trampled her right to freedom of expression, but also sent a destructive message to all students that there is something wrong with being gay or even saying the word 'gay.' A school is the best place to encourage young people to share opinions."
In a similar incident, the ACLU of Illinois defended the free speech rights of Neuqua Valley High School students who wore shirts that said "Be Happy, Not Gay." The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in early March that a "school that permits advocacy of the rights of homosexual students cannot be allowed to stifle criticism of homosexuality."

US Big Ag Wants To Make It a Crime to Expose Animal Abuse at Factory Farms

Big Ag Wants To Make It a Crime to Expose Animal Abuse at Factory Farms
There has been a discussion of Humanism and Veganism in the Humanist Community lately - with some controversy over whether these are simply complementary interests, or integral views. Whatever your view of a vegan lifestyle, Humanists can certainly agree about censorship, and corporate control of information - Mary

"What do Florida and Iowa have in common when it comes to animal agriculture? They've both been hot spots, past and present, for the movement to combat some of the worst abuses in industrial agribusiness. And now the factory farming industry is fighting back in both states—and their latest methods represent their biggest overreach yet.

In Florida, the Humane Society of the United States and other groups pushed for the adoption of the first statewide law in the country to restrict the extreme confinement of animals on factory farms. In 2002, voters there passed Amendment 10, to phase out the caging of breeding sows in gestation crates. In Iowa, HSUS and other animal welfare groups have conducted a series of undercover investigations (see the video) to expose cruelty in the nation's biggest factory farming state.

Now, these two states have something else in common. They are trying to make it a crime to photograph or videotape farm animals. They don't want to criminalize animal cruelty, but they do want to make criminals of people trying to document abuse and to put an end to the cruelty. Lawmakers have introduced bills in both states to establish criminal penalties for going undercover at agricultural facilities and simply taking pictures.

".. if this legislation is enacted, it won't just be a setback for animal welfare. Shabby, squalid, overcrowded conditions for animals on factory farms are also a food-safety threat for Americans, with millions of Americans sickened every year by contaminated food. It was, of course, an Iowa egg factory farm that was forced to recall half a billion eggs last year because of a Salmonella outbreak, creating one of the biggest food product recalls in American history.

Objections to sectarian headcount in Northern Ireland

Objections to sectarian headcount
The BHA campaign over the Census count in the UK has led to people talking about religion as 'cultural identity', and the discussions have been interesting. As much of religious identity, in both industrial, developed countries and in less developed areas, is connected with cultural, tribal, geographical or historical identity (and often political power, land and resource claims), this discussion is welcome, and timely.Mary

Here is a letter form Northern Ireland

The Members of the Belfast Humanist Group (BHG) object to the common practice in Northern Ireland of attributing a religious affiliation to people regardless of their actual beliefs.

People are labelled ‘Protestant’ or ‘Catholic’ merely on the basis of their name, the school they attended or which sports they follow; a practice developed out of the sectarian divisions in NI society. It is a deplorable practice because the label is imposed without consent and without regard to the actual beliefs of those being labelled.

The official practice of recording ‘perceived religious affiliation’ has turned objectionable sectarian labelling into an apparently respectable practice. ‘Perceptions’ are recorded without regard to people’s actual beliefs and often in direct contradiction of them. A humanist who has renounced all belief in gods and the after life should not be labelled ‘perceived Protestant’ or ‘perceived Catholic’.

A humanist is a humanist and has no part in any sectarian head-count. The same applies to all the other forms of non-religious outlook - agnostics, atheists, brights, secularists, rationalists, etc.

Les Reid, chairman, Belfast Humanist Group

Another ‘missing link’ dinosaur discovered in Argentina

New ‘missing link’ dinosaur discovered in Argentina
BUENOS AIRES – Fossils of a recently discovered dinosaur species in Argentina is a "missing link" in the evolution of the long-necked giants that roamed the earth millions of years ago, paleontologists said.
Long-neck, long-tail plant-eaters like Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus and Brontomerus -- the largest land creatures ever to walk on earth -- are dinosaurs known as sauropods. They lived some 170 million years ago.
Paleontologists see the recently discovered Leonerasaurus Taquetransis as the connection between the smaller prosauropods -- also known as near-sauropods -- like Sellosaurus and Plateosaurus from the Triassic period (248-205 million years ago) to their much larger descendants, the sauropods.
Leonerasaurus lived some 10 million years before the sauropods and measured a mere three meters (yards) long, said Diego Pol with the Egidio Feruglio Museum of Paleontology.
"The importance of this find is that it is a new species. It gives us information on the origin of the sauropods," Pol told AFP.  Leonerasaurus is "a very primitive species... that helps us understand the evolutionary tree of the giants that appeared later," Pol said.

Maine Gov. Orders Removal of Labor Mural at Department of Labor

Maine Gov. Orders Removal of Labor Mural at Department of Labor

The mind boggles - or it remembers the destruction of Diego Rivera's murals at Rockefeller Centre...

Maine Gov. Orders Removal of Labor Mural at Department of Labor By: Michael Whitney Wednesday March 23, 2011 12:05 pm

It ain’t John Ashcroft ordering the coverup of Lady Justice’s bare breast, but it’s close. The Tea Party-backed Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has ordered his state’s Department of Labor to remove a mural depicting moments in labor history from its walls. LePage also demanded the state rename the Labor Department’s conference rooms, currently honoring labor icons like Frances Perkins and Cesar Chavez.

What gives? According to LePage’s spokesperson, the labor mural and labor icon-named rooms 'showed ‘one-sided decor’ not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.' I’ll let you parse that one. From the Lewiston, Maine Sun Journal: Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting Maine’s labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor.

Worker advocates described the move as a 'mean-spirited' provocation amid the administration’s high-tension standoff with unions. Acting labor chief Laura Boyett emailed staff Tuesday about the mural’s pending removal, as well as another administration directive to rename several department conference rooms that carry the names of pro-labor icons such as Cesar Chavez.

According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt the mural and the conference room monikers showed 'one-sided decor' not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals. 'The message from state agencies needs to be balanced,' said Demeritt, adding that the mural had sparked complaints from 'some business owners' who complained it was hostile to business. So the mural probably shows people-powered revolutions putting CEOs’ heads on spikes, right? I can see how that’d seem unbalanced.

The 11-panel piece depicts several moments, including the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston, Rosie the Riveter at Bath Iron Works, and the paper mill workers’ strike of 1986 in Jay. 'There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor,' she said. 'It was a pure depiction of the facts.'

Female protesters in Egypt tortured, subjected to ‘virginity test’: Amnesty

Female protesters in Egypt tortured, subjected to 'virginity test': Amnesty
The international human rights group Amnesty International claimed Wednesday that a number of female protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square were rounded up by the Egyptian military and tortured recently. Some women even said they were subjected to a "virginity test" while soldiers looked on and took pictures.
Amnesty said at least 18 different women were subjected to this treatment, first at a military prison, then inside the Cairo Museum. The women claimed they were beaten and tortured with electric shocks, and one woman who allegedly "failed" her virginity test was reportedly singled out for the worst abuse.
"20-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window," the group explained. "During the strip search, Salwa Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women." All of them were taken on March 9, as the military cleared Tahrir Square of demonstrators.
"Women and girls must be able to express their views on the future of Egypt and protest against the government without being detained, tortured, or subjected to profoundly degrading and discriminatory treatment,” Amnesty said in an advisory. "The army officers tried to further humiliate the women by allowing men to watch and photograph what was happening, with the implicit threat that the women could be at further risk of harm if the photographs were made public."

The group also demanded that the women not face trial before a military court due to the system's history of hasty verdicts and allegations of corruption.Led by journalist Rasha Azeb with the al-Fagr newspaper, the women have filed a lawsuit against Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, demanding that the use of military courts end.
Amnesty added that testimony gathered by the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence corroborated Azeb's claims of torture, beatings and sexual abuse.

Reactions to antievolution bill in Florida | NCSE

Reactions to the antievolution bill in Florida | NCSE
Florida organizations concerned about the integrity of science education are expressing their opposition to Senate Bill 1854, which would, if enacted, amend a section of Florida law to require "[a] thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution" in the state's public schools. Introduced in the Florida Senate on March 5, 2011, by Stephen R. Wise (R-District 5), SB 1854 was subsequently referred to the Senate Committee on Education Pre-K-12 — of which Wise is the chair — and to the Senate Budget Committee.

In 2009, before introducing a similar bill, Wise announced his intention to introduce a bill requiring "intelligent design" to be taught in Florida's public schools. Now, discussing SB 1854 with a reporter for the Tampa Tribune (March 13, 2011), he asked, "Why would you not teach both theories at the same time?" According to the Tribune, he was referring to evolution and what he called "non-evolution." Wise further explained, "I think it's a way in which people can have critical thinking ... what we're saying is here's a theory, a theory of evolution, a theory of whatever, and you decide."

"You can have critical analysis of everything, but the idea that you should single out evolution for critical analysis is problematic," NCSE's Joshua Rosenau told the St. Augustine Record (March 17, 2011). "It's recognized by the scientific community as the foundation of modern biology." Rosenau also emphasized that, according to Florida's state science standards, adopted in 2008, "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence."

Howard Simon of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida told the Record, "The mischief that this legislation does is that it tries to entice local county school boards into violating the [C]onstitution," adding, "Wise is trying to entice county school boards and he's putting the liability on them." Simon previously predicted to the Tampa Tribune (March 13, 2011) that his organization would file a lawsuit over the bill "were some county school district to be silly enough to be enticed by the legislation to teach religion instead of science."

Florida Citizens for Science, in a March 13, 2011, press release, expressed its opposition to SB 1854, writing, "it is clearly unnecessary, harmful to science education, and sends a negative message to science-based industries that would otherwise consider setting up shop in our state." Comparing Wise's previous advocacy of "intelligent design" with his present espousal of "non-evolution" or "a theory of whatever," FCFS wondered, "What kind of 'critical analysis' is he really wanting?" and urged Florida's legislators "to send a clear message that sound science education is important to our state."

Similarly, the Florida Academy of Sciences, in a March 11, 2011, statement, expressed its opposition to SB 1854, writing (PDF), "SB 1854, in effect, leaves the door open for the introduction in the public school curriculum of nonscientific and covertly religious doctrines. The proposed bill would be damaging to the quality of science education of Florida’s children and the scientific literacy of our citizens. It would further undermine the reputation of our state and adversely affect our economic future as we try to attract new high tech and biomedical jobs to Florida."

Florida's newspapers have taken heed. Most recently, the Orlando Sentinel (March 18, 2011) editorially observed, "Among scientists, the idea of teaching "nonevolution" in public schools would be dismissed as nonsense. But in Tallahassee, just such a bill sponsored by ... Stephen Wise has its supporters. This is, after all, a state that only three years ago started officially referring to 'evolution' instead of 'biological change over time,'" adding, "Florida has enough challenges getting its kids educated. It doesn't need another one — this one — from Wise."

BBC News - Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says

BBC - Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says
A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers. The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries. The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

"In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%." The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category. They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction

US: Same sex marriage prevents Argentinian woman’s deportation

US: Same sex marriage prevents Argentinian woman’s deportation
A New York woman who immigrated from Argentina scored a court victory Tuesday with her wife in their efforts to halt deportation proceedings against her. Government lawyers have agreed not to deport Monica Alcota, a citizen of Argentina, while her wife, Cristina Ojeda, proceeds with a green card petition on her behalf.

The two have been together since 2008, and were married in Connecticut in 2010. Ojeda filed a marriage-based alien relative petition on behalf of her wife in September 2010, according to Towleroad. It's the first time a married same sex couple has successfully argued that a pending deportation should be halted based on the Obama administration's decision to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Rachel Tiven, the Executive Director of Immigration Equality, said earlier this month that the DOMA decision created "a new opportunity for families facing separation or who are separated." Her group represents LGBT individuals and their international partners who, because of DOMA, are not entitled to the same benefits (like a green card) under federal immigration law as straight couples.

"Today's decision in the Alcota case is exactly the right one," Steve Ralls, Immigration Equality's communications director, told Raw Story Tuesday. "It is a logical conclusion that, if DOJ believes DOMA to be unconstitutional, spousal petitions for LGBT partners should no longer be denied."

The Second Coming of Science Bashing

The Second Coming of Science Bashing - Miller-McCune.
An Anti-Science Mania Takes Over GOP -- an intentional ignorance that recalls the Scopes Monkey Trial, argues law professor Robert Benson.

You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. [Clarence Darrow, left, and William Jennings Bryan, defense lawyer and prosecutor, respectively, pictured during the Scopes Trial]. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses of ordinary folks, the ones H. L. Mencken and the liberal press were calling 'yokels' and 'morons'.

Turns out the yokels and morons won, at least for a generation. Scopes was found guilty of violating the Tennessee law that prohibited teaching evolution, and his conviction (though later overturned on a technicality) galvanized the anti-evolution movement for years. Politicians came pouring in. Scores of resolutions were introduced in state legislatures and school boards all over the country, setting back the teaching of evolution for decades until logic and reason and the scientific method gradually reasserted themselves in the culture.

Today, Republicans are falling over themselves in a rush to ridicule the science that shows our use of fossil fuels is producing greenhouse gases that are warming the planet to disastrous levels. These findings were confirmed even by the Bush administration before it left office, as well as by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific academy around the world, not to mention the unpaid global work of hundreds of volunteer scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But anti-scientists are undaunted by facts. More than half of the incoming Republican caucus denies the validity of climate change science. Some 74 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Senate now take that stance, as do 53 percent of GOP in the House. Here’s a sampler of what some of their leading illuminati have to say about it:

“I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do" . Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin
"Nobody really knows the cause. It could be caused by carbon dioxide or methane. Maybe we should kill the cows to stop the methane, or stop breathing to stop the CO2 Thousands of people die every year of cold, so if we had global warming it would save lives The earth can take care of itself". Rep. Duncan Hunter, California
"The greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people" .Sen. James Inhofe, Oklahoma
Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois says we need not worry about the planet being destroyed because, citing chapter 8, verse 22 of the Book of Genesis, God promised Noah it wouldn’t happen again after the great flood.

Why such statements? The Tea Party and its allies (have) made it unacceptable to the GOP base to be anywhere except pandering to the anti-science crowd.

None of this would have surprised historian Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer in 1964 for his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Starting with the colonies, Hofstadter shows how the vast underlying stratum of anti-elite, anti-reason, anti-science Americans has frequently erupted into political and cultural action. These are folks who never heard of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, and do not experience a lot of reason, logic or the empirical method in their daily lives. They live by personal relationships and superstition. They have always been with us, and there are a lot of them. Their outburst into today’s anti-science global warming mania would just be the latest chapter in Hofstadter’s book.

You might think that the revolution of Internet-blogging-networking technology would work to spread sound scientific knowledge more broadly, but you would be wrong. The new technology spreads a cacophony of voices in which the pre-Enlightenment folks are not only equal but more numerous and dominant than the voices of reason.

Journalist Charles Pierce not long ago wrote an essay on “Idiot America,” followed by a book of that name, in which he argued that “the rise of Idiot America today represents — for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power — the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they’re talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.”

Moreover, the new technology is not working alone. You have the likes of oil interests such as Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil funding a phalanx of anti-science spokesmen, think tanks and lobbyists. They put their money into sowing doubt about the scientific consensus, as many of these same people did on tobacco, ozone and acid rain, playing on the fact that the way science works is to set up repeated challenges of the evidence by peers but ignoring that scientific consensuses do indeed exist — otherwise, we would not have made the progress we did on tobacco, ozone and acid rain.

Sheltered by the technological cacophony and the big money available, politicians feel unashamed to stand in front of the National Academy of Sciences and virtually every climate scientist in the world and utter irrational things like “God promised Noah …,” or “solar flares,” or “nobody really knows,” [The deniers’] goal is to create the perception that fundamental aspects of climate science are controversial,” write several scientists connected to the National Academy. “They are not. All their claims, all the studies cited and all the evidence they have presented has been thoroughly reviewed by climate scientists. There is no scientific basis for contesting the academy’s finding.”

We are in Tennessee again, 1925, in the grip of the anti-scientists and their politicians. We will lose a generation in dealing with greenhouse gases. Yet the science says we have only a few years.

South Dakota: Bill requires religious counseling before abortions.

South Dakota Pregnancy Centers Don't Want To Be Forced To Counsel Women Who Want Abortions
Gov. Dennis Daugaard has one week left in which to either sign or veto H.B. 1217, a bill that will institute a mandatory 72 hour waiting period for an abortion while a woman undergoes faith-based counseling from the state's pregnancy centers. Opponents of the bill primarily see this unconstitutional bill as a severe restriction on a woman's right to choose. But it seems there is another group concerned about losing their freedom of choice, too -- the pregnancy centers who would have to provide the counseling.
(interesting divergence - the 'pregnancy centers' have even decided to say that women should 'lie' about receiving counseling...)

God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible -- Almost

God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible -- Almost : Discovery News (This is not news, to anyone aware of the archaelogy and anthropology of religions - and of course we know fertility goddesses sometimes pick up a consort ('yahweh') but it's fun to see it on the Discovery website, and as a new film,, and it's a meme on facebook at the moment).

God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. Information presented in Stavrakopoulou's books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection.

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe. After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess. Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife." Also significant, Stavrakopoulou believes, "is the Bible's admission that the goddess Asherah was worshiped in Yahweh's Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her."

J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News that he agrees several Hebrew inscriptions mention "Yahweh and his Asherah. Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

Asherah -- known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar -- was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing. Many English translations prefer to translate 'Asherah' as 'Sacred Tree,'" Wright said. "This seems to be in part driven by a modern desire, clearly inspired by the Biblical narratives, to hide Asherah behind a veil once again.

Mentions of the goddess Asherah in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are rare and have been heavily edited by the ancient authors who gathered the texts together," Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, said. Asherah as a tree symbol was even said to have been "chopped down and burned outside the Temple in acts of certain rulers who were trying to 'purify' the cult, and focus on the worship of a single male god, Yahweh," he added.

....and so it goes, as Kurt would say....

Awra Abma - the Utopian Non-religious Ethiopian village, where sexes are equal

Sent by Kevin S. Fascinating short 6 minute except from a documentary on a small ethiopian utopian village started by an illiterate farmer who felt that men and women should share equal work. The village has no religions, but educates all its children.They are both an object of curiosity and a threat to some fundamentalist neighbours. Constrained by available land, they have turned to weaving to support themselves, and do not accept monetary donations, just books. More info here

The Tree of Life: The Fourth Domain?

Discover Magazine: The Loom
fascinating article on whether life actually emerged as Viruses - the fourth domain. Thanks to Kevin for posting.
Charles Darwin pictured evolution as a grand tree, with the world’s living species as its twigs. Scientists identify 10,000 new species a year, but they’ve got a long, long way to go before finding all of Earth’s biodiversity. So far, they have identified 1.5 million species of animals, but there may be 7 million or more in total. Beyond the animal kingdom, our ignorance balloons. Scoop up some sea water or a cup of soil, and there will likely be thousands of new species of microbes lurking there. Fortunately, a lot of the species that scientists discover each year are fairly close relatives to species we already know about. There may be plenty of beetle species left to be discovered, for example, but they will all end up as tufts sprouting from the same beetle branch (of the 'tree of life').
Making matters more complicated is that the tree is, in some ways, more like a web. Genes sometimes slip from one species to another, especially among microbes. There are lots of ways this can happen. Viruses can ferry these genes from species to species; in other cases, microbes may just slurp up naked DNA. In the process, they blur genealogy.

....It’s not just individual genes that can slip from one species to another, either. On rare occasions, entire cells have merged together, creating entirely new kinds of life (like us). Cell fusions and horizontal gene transfer are probably best portrait by interconnected branches, rather than diverging ones. The base of the tree seems especially tangled, more like a mangrove rather than an oak.
Norman Pace of the University of Colorado published a scientific review in 2009 that shows life divided up into three domains: eukaryotes (that’s us), bacteria, and archaea. But It’s possible–but just possible at this point– that we have missed a big part of it.
One clue came to light in December. A team of French scientists have been studying weird bunch of viruses officially called Nucleocytoplasmic Large DNA Viruses (NCLDV). I’m just going to call them giant viruses, because they are quite huge. As I write in my upcoming book, A Planet of Viruses, they were mistaken for years as bacteria. They were a hundred times bigger than any virus known at the time.. Giant viruses are indeed viruses, however. They hijack host cells the way all viruses do, for example...

But giant viruses also explode a lot of conventional ideas of what viruses are supposed to be. Not only are giant viruses monstrously big, but they are overloaded with genes. A flu virus has just ten genes, for example, but a number of giant viruses have well over a thousand. Giant viruses even get infected by viruses of their own... The genes are so different, the scientists argue, that giant viruses represent a fourth domain of life. Here’s an impressionistic figure they created to show how the four domains emerged from the web of gene-trading early on in the history of life (from left to right, archaea, bacteria, eukaryotes, and giant viruses)...

In this case, the first order of business will be to find more of these exotic genes to see if they continue to fall into a distinct domain of their own. If they do, scientists will need to track down the actual organisms that carry them. Are they viruses, or are they true cells? That discovery might show how this possible fourth domain got its start. Did it start out as ordinary cellular life, and then some of its genes ended up in viruses? Or is the fourth domain another sign that life as we know it actually originated as viruses?  (whole article is much better - M)

US POLL: Slim majority back gay marriage

Slim majority back gay marriage, Post-ABC poll says - The Washington Post
A slim majority of Americans now support gay marriage, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The results underscore the nation’s increasingly tolerant views about homosexuals, and parallel a string of recent legal and legislative victories for gay rights advocates. Five years ago, at 36 percent, support for gay marriage barely topped a third of all Americans. Now, 53 percent say gay marriage should be legal, marking the first time in Post-ABC polling that a majority has said so.
'This is very consistent with a lot of other polling data we’ve seen and the general momentum we’ve seen over the past year and a half,' said Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, a leading pro-gay-marriage group. 'As people have come to understand this is about loving, committed families dealing, like everyone, with tough times, they understand how unfair it is to treat them differently.'

Juan Cole on UN resolution re Libya

The United Nations Security Council has just authorized a no-fly zone over Libya and implicitly allowed the United States, France and Britain to bomb military forces and facilities loyal to Muammar Qadddafi.
Aljazeera live is covering the session and is showing enormous, delirious crowds celebrating in downtown Benghazi, which Qaddafi had threatened to occupy earlier on Thursday. They are deploying celebratory fire, which I’d advise them against, since Qaddafi’s forces are near and the more activist elements of NATO likely to intervene on their behalf rather farther away. They may yet need the bullets.
The resolution demands an immediate ceasefire, an end of violence, and refers the Qaddafi regime to the World Court for war crimes, as well as creating a new sanctions regime against arms dealers and mercenaries helping Qaddafi.
Aljazeera Arabic is reporting that the Qaddafi regime dismissed the resolution as ‘not worth the paper it is printed on’ and is defiant. Unfortunately, Qaddafi has a lot of troops and tanks at Ajdabiya not far from Benghazi.
Not since fall of 1990, when the UNSC authorized military action to push Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait, has it acted so decisively and exactly in the way its founders had aspired for it in 1945.
A note: The resolution was co-sponsored by the Lebanese government, in which the Shiite party Hizbullah (Hezbollah) is a leading element. In part, Lebanon was representing the Arab League, which in some ways was the major political force (along with Britain and France) pushing for world action. But in other ways something more personal was going on.
When I was working for a newspaper in Beirut in 1978, I translated wire service reports on the disappearance of the great Shiite leader Mousa al-Sadr while on a trip to Libya. He was likely murdered by Qaddafi and put in a grave somewhere there. I once attended a lecture by Sadr in Beirut. He was a great man, charismatic and a force for uplift in his community and for outreach to other communities. He probably went to Libya in an attempt to convince Qaddafi not to send any more weapons to the factions there (such arms shipments and factionalization contributed to the long Lebanese Civil War). Lebanese Shiites, including Hizbullah, still lionize Mousa al-Sadr and despise Qaddafi.

U.N. council approves no-fly zone over Libya

U.N. council approves no-fly zone over Libya
TRIPOLI/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations authorized military strikes to curb Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, hours after he threatened to storm the rebel bastion of Benghazi overnight, showing "no mercy, no pity. "We will come. House by house, room by room," Gaddafi said in a radio address to the eastern city late on Thursday.
Al Jazeera television showed thousands of people listening to the speech in a central Benghazi square, then erupting in celebration after the U.N. vote, waving anti-Gaddafi tricolors and chanting defiance of the man who has ruled for four decades.
The U.N. Security Council, meeting in emergency session, passed a resolution endorsing a no-fly zone to halt government troops now around 100 km (60 miles) from Benghazi. It also authorized "all necessary measures" -- code for military action -- to protect civilians against Gaddafi's forces. But time was clearly running short for the city that has been the heart of Libya's month-old revolution.
French diplomatic sources said military action could follow within hours, and could include France, Britain and possibly the United States and one or more Arab states; but a U.S. military official said no immediate U.S. action was expected.
While other countries or NATO may play roles in military action, U.S. officials expect the United States with its extensive air and sea forces would do the heavy lifting in a campaign that may include airstrikes on tanks and artillery. Gaddafi warned Benghazi that only those who lay down their arms before his advancing troops would be spared the vengeance awaiting 'rats and dogs'.
"It's over. The issue has been decided," Gaddafi said. "We are coming tonight...We will find you in your closets. We will have no mercy and no pity."

HRW: Enforcment of Islamic Dress Code in Chechnya

Human rights watch report on Chechnya
This report documents acts of violence, harassment, and threats against women in Chechnya to intimidate them into wearing a headscarf or dressing more 'modestly,' in long skirts and sleeves to cover their limbs. The documented attacks by unidentified men believed to be law enforcement officials took place from June through September 2010 in the center of Grozny, the Chechen capital.

Stephen Fry receives humanist lifetime achievement award from Harvard

Stephen Fry receives humanist lifetime achievement award from Harvard
“I will be shown, I will be inspired, I will be led, but I won’t be told!” Stephen Fry accepts the 2011 lifetime achievement award from the Humanists at Harvard University, on what it means to be educated and distinguishing between “revealed” knowledge (whether religious or even secular) and discovered knowledge. (clip of the speech)

AHA: 6 Humanist TV shows you should watch

Six Humanist TV Shows You Should Watch
Here's a fun essay from the AHA (and about US tv shows), but they do a good job analysing the 6 shows they think offer a humanist point of view.  Also, some useful clips -  no points for guessing House and Star Trek, but see if you choose the other 4.   Mary

US Republicans Unanimously Reject Measures Reaffirming Science Behind Global Warming

Huffpost In a vote split cleanly along party lines, the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday rejected measures reaffirming climate change as a scientific reality, with every Republican on the panel voting "nay."
Committee Republicans rejected three amendments acknowledging the science of climate change, with every Republican on the committee voting against an amendment introduced by California Democrat Henry Waxman calling on Congress to affirm “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.’’
The committee also voted 31-20 along party lines to turn down an amendment introduced by Washington Democrat Jay Inslee asking Congress to accept that ‘‘the public health of current generations is endangered and that the threat to public health for both current and future generations will likely mount over time as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and result in ever greater rates of climate change.’’ The three amendments were introduced in the course of debate over a Republican bill to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Committee Chairman Fred Upton in his opening remarks claimed the bill would help spur job growth and accused the EPA of destroying jobs in an already faltering economy. "There are a host of reasons to support H.R. 910, but let me put it simply," he said. "This bill says 'stop' to an EPA attempting to impose policies we cannot afford that will destroy jobs we cannot afford to lose. By passing this bill, we can put Congress back in charge of setting the energy and environmental policies that will allow our nation to create jobs, bring down prices at the pump, and make America more secure and energy independent."
Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called the bill "dangerous" in his opening remarks and implored lawmakers not to "put our head in the sand like an ostrich."

US Record Number of Stealth Creationism Bills Introduced in 2011

Record Number of Stealth Creationism Bills Introduced in 2011
The US National Center for Science Education has tracked a record-setting number of nine anti-evolution bills introduced in state legislatures since Jan. 1. The latest is Texas’ HB 2454, which would prohibit an institution of higher learning from "discrimination . related to research related into intelligent design."
“PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RESEARCH RELATED TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN. An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.”
What makes this bill such a precious gem is that it relies on creationists’ persecution complex and oft-repeated talking point that the science community discriminates against ID research. But as we all know, there is no such thing as ID research, which has not yet produced one single legitimate peer reviewed paper. But that doesn’t keep its proponents and gullible lawmakers from whining that science is mean to them. As NCSE points out, an example of this supposed persecution was exemplified in Ben Stein’s cynical piece of schlock Expelled. (My review of the movie is here.)
In addition to Texas, another anti-evolution bill was also introduced this month in Florida. HB 1854 would require "a critical analysis" of the teaching of evolution in public schools. The bill is little different from legislation currently in committee in Tennessee, which says that educators may not be prohibited from "helping students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught."
As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as "teaching the controversy," "academic freedom," or "critical analysis." However, in the case of Florida, the bill’s sponsoring lawmaker Rep. Stephen Wise had proposed similar legislation in 2009. The bill died in committee, but not before he spoke publicly about wanting to see intelligent design taught alongside evolution to promote "critical thinking."

Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus, and Jesus Hates Taxes, unions, and minimum wage

Phil Zuckerman: Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus
[Nothing new here, but this is one of many current articles discussing the split between 'prosperity gospel' conservatives and liberal churches. It's given me a new vision of Jesus as the Bouncer at the gated dude ranch at Heaven Estates, I guess.... M]
The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life ( reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.

Jesus unambiguously preached mercy and forgiveness. These are supposed to be cardinal virtues of the Christian faith. And yet Evangelicals are the most supportive of the death penalty, draconian sentencing, punitive punishment over rehabilitation, and the governmental use of torture. Jesus exhorted humans to be loving, peaceful, and non-violent. And yet Evangelicals are the group of Americans most supportive of easy-access weaponry, little-to-no regulation of handgun and semi-automatic gun ownership, not to mention the violent military invasion of various countries around the world. Jesus was very clear that the pursuit of wealth was inimical to the Kingdom of God, that the rich are to be condemned, and that to be a follower of Him means to give one's money to the poor. And yet Evangelicals are the most supportive of corporate greed and capitalistic excess, and they are the most opposed to institutional help for the nation's poor -- especially poor children. They hate anything that smacks of "socialism," even though that is essentially what their Savior preached. They despise food stamp programs, subsidies for schools, hospitals, job training -- anything that might dare to help out those in need. Even though helping out those in need was exactly what Jesus urged humans to do. In short, Evangelicals are that segment of America which is the most pro-militaristic, pro-gun, and pro-corporate, while simultaneously claiming to be most ardent lovers of the Prince of Peace.

[Of course...] Evangelicals don't exactly hate Jesus...They do love him dearly. But not because of what he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what he does for them. Through his magical grace, and by shedding his precious blood, Jesus saves Evangelicals from everlasting torture in hell, and guarantees them a premium, luxury villa in heaven. For this, and this only, they love him. They can't stop thanking him. And yet, as for Jesus himself -- his core values of peace, his core teachings of social justice, his core commandments of goodwill -- most Evangelicals seem to have nothing but disdain.
This is nothing new. At the end of World War I, the more rabid, and often less educated Evangelicals decried the influence of the Social Gospel amongst liberal churches. According to these self-proclaimed torch-bearers of a religion born in the Middle East, progressive church-goers had been infected by foreign ideas such as German Rationalism, Soviet-style Communism, and, of course, atheistic Darwinism. In the 1950s, the anti-Social Gospel message piggybacked the rhetoric of anti-communism, which slashed and burned its way through the Old South and onward through the Sunbelt, turning liberal churches into vacant lots along the way. It was here that the spirit and the body collided, leaving us with a prototypical Christian nationalist, hell-bent on prosperity. Charity was thus re-branded as collectivism and self-denial gave way to the gospel of accumulation. Church-to-church, sermon-to-sermon, evangelical preachers grew less comfortable with the fish and loaves Jesus who lived on earth, and more committed to the angry Jesus of the future. By the 1990s, this divine Terminator gained "most-favored Jesus status" among America's mega churches; and with that, even the mention of the former "social justice" Messiah drove the socially conscious from their larger, meaner flock..
Of course, conservative Americans have every right to support corporate greed, militarism, gun possession, and the death penalty, and to oppose welfare, food stamps, health care for those in need, etc. -- it is just strange and contradictory when they claim these positions as somehow "Christian." They aren't."
~~~~~~
and for more on "Biblical Capitalism" see  Jesus Hates Taxes

"..While the assault on unions by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other GOP governors and legislators seems driven mostly by the billionaire Koch brothers and corporate-funded groups, religious right leaders and activists have spent decades creating fertile soil for anti-union campaigns through the promotion of “biblical capitalism,” which researcher Rachel Tabachnick describes as “the belief that unregulated capitalism is biblically mandated.” 

Pseudo-historian David Barton, a frequent guest of broadcaster Glenn Beck, is using his newly enlarged audience to promote American exceptionalism (America was created by its divinely-inspired founders as a country of, by, and for Christians) and Tea Party-on-steroids economics (Jesus and the Bible oppose progressive taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and minimum wage laws). The Religious Right has a long practice of claiming divine mandate for its policy agenda as it makes for an exceptionally potent political argument: if God supports radically limited government, then progressive policies are not only wrong but evil, and supporters of liberal policies are not only political opponents but enemies of God..."
....Barton also enlists Jesus in the war against unions and collective bargaining. Two years ago Barton devoted his Wallbuilders Live radio show to celebrating a Supreme Court decision that upheld an Idaho law ending state withholding of public employee union political funds. Barton’s co-host Rick Green called for activists to “spark a fire” and encourage other states to take up the effort to disrupt unions’ political activities. Barton called the Supreme Court’s decision “the right historical position and the right biblical position,” and went on to explain why the Bible is anti-union.
According to Barton, a parable from the 20th chapter of the book of Matthew about the owner of a vineyard making different arrangements with workers was about “the right of private contract”—in other words, the right of employers to come to individual agreements with each employee. Jesus’ parable, he said, is “anti-minimum wage” and “anti-socialist-union kind of stuff.” (This is just one of the parables of Jesus cited by Barton and others in support of laissez-faire economic policies.)

"...One of the most striking examples of this theory reaching into the political realm is found in an early Christian Coalition Leadership Manual, co-authored by Coalition founder Ralph Reed in 1990. A section titled “God’s Delegated Authority in the World,” which argues that “God established His pattern for work as well as in the family and in the church,” cites four Bible passages instructing slaves to be obedient to their masters, including 1 Peter 2:18-19:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.  For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 

And then, the astonishing lesson drawn by Christian Coalition leaders from these slaves-obey-your-masters passages:

Of course, slavery was abolished in this country many years ago, so we must apply these principles to the way Americans work today, to employees and employers: Christians have a responsibility to submit to the authority of their employers, since they are designated as part of God’s plan for the exercise of authority on the earth by man.

 ..in April, religious right and Republican leaders will gather for the second year in a row at Liberty University at the invitation of the Freedom Federation, a collection of religious right groups launched in 2009 with a Declaration of American Values, which added opposition to progressive taxation to the religious right’s usual issue agenda. While the Freedom Federation refers to itself as a federation of faith-based organizations, its founding members also include Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded group that has funded attacks on Democratic lawmakers and mobilized Tea Party activists on behalf of right-wing candidates.

It’s clear that the attempt to once again “break the spine of labor” is meant to cripple any opposition to the vision of a country in which corporations are given free rein to maximize profits without concern for workers’ safety, community well-being, and environmental protection. The seeds of that vision were first planted by Christian Reconstructionists and The Family and today’s conservative Christian leaders are only too eager to take advantage of the fruits of those labors to make the case that Jesus opposes efforts to ensure a living wage to workers, and that workers should accept as good slaves whatever treatment their employers dish out. 

{So - accept corporate slavery, no minimum wage, Koch brothers, religious guides to breaking unions, - all pretty familiar actors, again...)

New books re-examine Biblical history

The new, New Testament - NYPOST.com
By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
[I don't know what is more interesting, these books, or the fact that this article is in the NYPOST. amazing - Mary]
Whether your knowledge of the New Testament is passing or  deep, the overarching narrative is most likely familiar: Born to the  Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, son of God and man, is sent to save humanity  through his crucifixion, death and resurrection.
Such is the foundation of all Christianity. Yet suddenly, a slew  of true believers are arguing for a reconsideration of the Gospels — and  the Old Testament — based on the predicate forever cited by atheists: The Bible doesn’t make any sense.
Jesus Wars: How Four  Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would  Believe for the Next 1,500 Years,” by Philip Jenkins, is just out in  paperback, as is Kristin Swenson’s “Bible Babel: Making Sense of the  Most Talked About Book of All Time,” and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s  award-winning “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.”
In  January, Pastor Jennifer Wright Knust published “Unprotected Texts: The  Bible’s Surprising Contradictions on Sex and Desire,” in which she  attempts to explain why the Bible advocates both polygamy and celibacy,  and both condones and condemns adultery and homosexuality. Last month,  religion professor Timothy Beal published “The Rise and Fall of the  Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book.” His  counterintuitive thesis: The Bible is not a book of answers, but a book  of questions. God wants it to be confusing, he says, on purpose.
“It’s  not that the hundreds of people writing and editing the Bible were  stupid and just ignored the contradictions,” Beal says. “If you think  religion is about answers, it’s likely that when you face this material,  you’ll reject it. So much of life is really about ambiguity — if you  think it’s about the question, as I do, then it’s a richer place to  explore.”
In many of these new books, the Bible has been re-framed  in just this way, as a deliberately perplexing text meant to provoke  self-examination. To many atheists — the fastest-growing minority in  America and, according a recent Pew poll, the most Biblically literate  segment of the population — this argument merely moves the goalposts,  attempting to redefine an all-knowing, judgmental deity (“a celestial  North Korea,” to quote Christopher Hitchens) into either a whimsical  Socratic teacher or a schizophrenic.
“How do [believers] determine  which passages are mistakes?” says Roy Speckhardt, executive director  of the American Humanists Association. “And if they’re using a filter,  does that filter look a lot like humanism?”
This recent spate of  books, Speckhardt thinks, is mainly “an effort to hold on to a flock  that’s leaving rather quickly.” He’s not wrong: The largest religious  denomination in the United States is the Roman Catholic Church. The  second largest group by religious identity? Former members of the Roman  Catholic Church.  “I think the more we learn about the history of the Bible,” Beal says, “the more we learn about how human-made it is... (read more above)

Naomi Klein: Why Climate Change Is So Threatening to Right-Wing Ideologues

Naomi Klein: Why Climate Change Is So Threatening to Right-Wing Ideologues
Great interview with Amy Goodman..
"....we’ve seen this remarkable drop, where, in 2007, 71—this is a Harris poll—71 percent of Americans believed climate change was real, and two years later, 51 percent of Americans believed it. So, a 20 percent drop. And we’ve seen a similar dramatic just the floor falling out in the same period in Australia, in the U.K. It’s not happening everywhere. It’s happening in countries that have very polarized political debates, where they have very strong culture wars....people have been doing some really interesting analysis of these numbers, a political scientist named Clive Hamilton in Australia .. shows is that climate change didn’t used to be a partisan political issue. That’s completely changed. Democrats overwhelmingly believe in climate change. Their position hasn’t changed. Republicans now overwhelmingly do not believe in climate change. So that drop has been split along partisan lines.

...what it means is that it no longer really has anything to do with the science. And the environmental movement has just been shocked by how it would be possible to lose so much ground so quickly when there is so much more scientific evidence, so there’s all kinds of attempts to respond to this, to get climate scientists out there explaining things better.. and none of it seems to be working.
And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue on the right. People are defining themselves, like they’re against abortion, they don’t believe in climate change.... they don’t believe that humans have anything to do with climate change.

    And it isn’t about the science, because when you delve deeper into it and ask why people don’t believe in it, they say that it’s because they think it’s a socialist plot to redistribute wealth. It’s easy to make fun of, you know, and there’s all this language, like "watermelons," that they say the green groups are watermelons: they’re green on the outside, but they’re red on the inside...in fact, most of the big green groups are loath to talk about economics and often don’t want to see themselves as being part of a left at all, see climate change as an issue that transcends politics entirely.
.. but, actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.

It would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.
You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, "you broke it, you bought it," polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.
You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.
You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.
So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they’re choosing to disbelieve it, because it’s easier to deny the science than to say, "OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart," that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It’s a lot easier to deny it....

Family planning saves lives: Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates on Wednesday urged US lawmakers not to cut funding for family planning programs in developing countries, saying access to contraception can "save a huge number of lives. There is a lot of controversy in this country about reproductive health because of the issue of abortion, and it's appropriate to continue that dialogue because there are strong feelings on both sides," Gates said in a speech at the annual conference of CARE, a global anti-poverty group.

"But we must remember that there has long been a broad, bipartisan consensus on the need to give all women access to the contraceptives that women in rich countries use every day. It is vital to maintain that consensus," she added.

The CARE conference was held a few miles from Capitol Hill, where US Senators voted Wednesday on budget proposals from rival Republicans and Democrats on how to cut government spending and slash the huge US deficit.  The Republicans' budget proposal, which would completely remove funding for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) as just one measure to slash government outlays by some $61 billion, was rejected by the Senate Wednesday.

PPFA has had an international operation since 1971 and co-founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation. A Democratic Party spending plan, which would trim a far more modest amount from the budget, also failed to win Senate approval.

"Right now, more than 200 million women in the world who don't want to have a child, are not using contraceptives," Melinda Gates said. "This is a problem we should be able to solve if we work together to give women the lifesaving tools they deserve."

To refute or promote? The Atheist/Humanist Debate

To refute or promote? | Machines Like Us   Michael De Dora

There is an ongoing debate in the secular community about whether secularists ought to concentrate more energy on criticizing bad religious and moral ideas, or promoting positive values.


This debate has frustratingly continued since at least early 2009, when I joined the Center for Inquiry, and has no apparent end in sight. While I do not propose to have a solution, I do feel the need to offer a few observations that could help clarify this dispute.

Broadly speaking, the debate features two camps. The first camp believes a robust public discourse includes a good deal of critical discussion on religious belief, considering that faith and dogma so negatively shape social and political life. The second camp thinks that the first focuses too much on disparaging religious belief, and presses for more attention to the advancement of positive values. But, for several reasons, there is no real conflict between the two, even if one is perceived

It seems to me that a person cannot be against an idea without being for something. When arguing against an idea, one is surely tearing something down. But one is also doing so because he or she values things like science, reason, and secular thinking. Moreover, one can only critique an idea if he or she has a methodology by which to judge that idea. And a critical methodology is meant precisely to help people discard old, untrue ideas and keep building upon the better ones.

It is often difficult, or even impossible, to present an absolutely comprehensive case against someone's position and in favor of your own method and position in the same forum. Billboards, books, blog posts and public events only allow so many words. One does not always get the chance or have the time to fully outline their reasons for critique. But this does not imply that one does not hold good reasons, or thinks that reasons are unimportant. It only suggests a different approach.

For example, Christopher Hitchens is a proud secular humanist. But he spends more time writing and speaking about religious belief than he does clarifying his moral worldview. Is there any reason to doubt his secular humanist credentials because of this? Is his critique of religious belief not helping foster a secular humanist society? Is he really doing harm by increasing the amount of public discourse on religion?
In fact, refuting and promoting are sometimes two different but complementary discussions. This is because refuting religious belief might be about evaluating truth claims while promoting values might be about moral claims. This was the topic of another recent debate in the secular blogosphere, over the claims made by Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. I do not claim to be a philosopher, but my position is that discussions about facts (truth and untruth) are different in nature than those about moral values (right and wrong). This means that concerns about the veracity of religious beliefs are different from concerns about constructing a positive moral framework.* Both are important, but they are distinct.

In the end, I believe this is a mistaken debate between people with slightly differing interests. Slightly is the operative word here, for both groups would certainly be considered members of the same team. Many of them even work together at the same secular organization. The critic of religious faith and dogma is on the same side as the promoter of secular moral values. To squabble about whose interests are more important is to lose sight of the underlying problem: the staggering amount of uncritical thinking that is putting society to ruin.
* However, conversations about fact and value can be approached in a similar manner, and are sometimes inextricably tied.

 [Mary:  Humanism is an ethical values system.  You have to DO something to solve human problems, especially social justice and environmental problems.  Atheism is a lack of belief.  You can sit around all day and talk about reason, but are not expected to DO anything for humanity.]

AGNOSTICISM  the view that absolute truth or ultimate certainty is unattainable, especially regarding knowledge not based on experience or perceivable phenomena. Doubt, uncertainty, or scepticism regarding the existence of a God or of all deities.

ATHEIST   From French athéiste (athée + -iste) < Latin atheos < Ancient Greek ἄθεος (atheos, “godless, with  out god”) θεός (theos, “god”). One who lacks belief in the existence of God, god, Gods or gods.

HUMANISM  ethical system that centers on humans and their values, needs, interests, abilities, dignity and freedom; especially used for a secular one, as an alternative to religious values.Humanism is a naturalistic, scientific, secular philosophy of life that precludes any belief or reliance upon supposedly supernatural powers.