Dawkin’s Foundation December 23, 2015

Hi ,
In the United States a ridiculously large percentage of people don’t believe in evolution (more than 4 in 10 adults). We have an interesting study that shows the “evolution” of strategies employed by those opposed to the teaching of evolution and other scientific truths. When the courts stand with settled science — as they routinely do — creationists adapt new ways to keep American students scientifically illiterate.
America’s Religious Right isn’t just trying to misrepresent science in the name of pushing Christianity. NPR explains how it tries to marginalize secularists and our unbending support for church-state separation by arguing that we are simply followers of a competing religion trying to foist our beliefs on others. Sigh.
Foreign Affairs magazine takes a long look at legal and political efforts to return Turkey to its modern secular roots and halt the practice of compulsory religious education of many of the country’s children.
Captive parrots in a United Kingdom wildlife park have startled and intrigued researchers by using pebbles to grind at seashells. Read the leading theory on what they are up to.
Finally, don’t miss our video of the week, a special Openly Secular tale told by a former nun, our Question of the Week asks you for your secular New Year’s resolution, and Richard’s Paragraph of the Week asks for your scientific knowledge, intelligence and wit.
Robyn Blumner
President & CEO
Richard Dawkins Foundation

Evolution Helps Track Pernicious Legislation

A researcher used the principles of evolution and his training in scientific sleuthing to trace the origin and spread of destructive legislation seeking to make it easier to question the validity of evolution, climate change and other principles of science.
Is Secularism a Religion?

As part of their continuing campaign to portray themselves as under attack for their beliefs, conservative Christians are using the argument that those trying to enforce the principle of separation of church and state are followers of a competing religion trying to stomp on their rights. NPR took a long look at this spreading bit of propaganda.
Openly Secular Video of the Week: Mary Johnson

As a nun, Mary Johnson had a long career that included serving beside Mother Theresa. However, she eventually realized that her life wasn’t based on fact or reason. Don’t miss her story of becoming Openly Secular.

News
Fighting Back Against Turkey’s Religious Public Schools

There’s a growing movement in Turkey to force the end of the practice of sending students who don’t make it into high-level schools to ones that put a heavy stress on Islamic education — even Jewish students. European Union courts and Turkey’s own high court have ruled that the practice is violating the rights of Turkish children. But the president is vowing not to stop it.

Science
Parrots Use Tool to Improve Nutrition?

A researcher observing captive greater vasa parrots at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom noticed the males doing something odd: They would rub pebbles against seashells. Clearly they were using a tool to grind the shells, but to what end? The leading theory is the birds need the added calcium to strengthen their eggshells. But then why the males?
Question of the Week — Special Holiday Edition

New Year’s resolutions are a time-honored tradition. This year, Openly Secular wants to hear about your secular New Year’s resolutions! What will you do to make the world a better place from a secular perspective? Our favorite answer will win a copy of Richard Dawkins’ “An Appetite for Wonder.” The best answers also will be featured on Openly Secular’s website and over social media.

Last week we asked: When, if ever, is heckling a legitimate form of free speech? Are there speakers who are too inflammatory or controversial to speak at universities? Where do you draw the line?

The Winner is Phil.
Runners-up: Miriam, Dan.
Debate Richard’s Paragraph of the Week

Welcome to our new feature, Richard’s Paragraph! This is a chance to read, consider and discuss an idea that Richard has plucked straight from one of his books or from the book of a colleague, to spur exploration and debate. This week ‘s paragraph is from the second edition of “The Selfish Gene.”

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RICHARD DAWKINS FOUNDATION November 4, 2015

 

Hi ,
Young people in America are losing their religion. An encouraging new Pew research study says young adults are increasingly moving away from religiosity and belief in God. America is still a religious country, especially compared with European nations, but its youth are breaking free from their upbringing and thinking for themselves.
Republican presidential primary candidate and medical doctor Ben Carson, currently near the top of the pack in polls, has made so many jaw-dropping assertions during the campaign that it is hard to pick the most outlandish. But foundation friend Herb Silverman takes a stab at it.
After you read his piece, watch Herb talk to Richard about Richard’s latest book “Brief Candle in the Dark”.
Things are getting worse in Bangladesh, where four atheist bloggers have been killed. A publisher of one of those was hacked to death over the weekend just hours after three other outspoken secularists were attacked. A human rights researcher fears this presages further attacks: “Given the horrific pattern of violence, we have reason to believe many other lives are now at risk.”
Awards for speaking out are generally bittersweet. Bravery can come at considerable risk and great cost. That’s true of Saudi atheist blogger Raif Badawi, who was given the European Union’s top human rights prize last week. Sentenced to prison for a decade and 1,000 strokes for the crime of promoting freedom of thought, his body was devastated after receiving the first 50 strokes. Raif’s wife fears another round will kill him.

Robyn Blumner

Jailed, Whipped Saudi Atheist Given Sakharov Rights Award

An atheist blogger who was flogged and imprisoned for criticizing Islam in Saudi Arabia has been awarded the European Union’s top human rights award, the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought. Raif Badawi is serving a 10-year sentence and has been given 50 of a promised 1,000 lashes despite an international outcry. His wife says she fears the beatings are likely to resume soon — and could kill Raif.

Close your eyes and pick almost any position taken by GOP presidential primary candidate Ben Carson and odds are you’ll find something jaw-dropping. But he recently topped himself by asking the Secret Service for protection. Not because of the very real risks run by those seeking major office these days, but because “I challenge the secular progressive movement to the very core.”
Video of the Week: Dawkins and Silverman Discuss ‘Brief Candle’

Richard Dawkins and atheist writer and mathematician Herb Silverman discuss Richard’s second volume of memoirs, “Brief Candle in the Dark,” and their mutual admiration for Carl Sagan as a tireless promoter of the wonders of science.

Exciting news for the secular community. A new Pew research poll of 35,000 adults shows that America’s religiosity is waning, especially among young adults. According to the survey, only 27% of Millennials — people between 18 and 34 years old — say they attend religious services weekly, while 51% of people born before 1945 say they do. And only about four out of ten Millennials say they hold religion as something very important in their lives, compared with more than half of those in older generations.

 

Brief Candle in the Dark October 28, 2015

Cherish books. Be determined never to  live without them. They’re difficult to keep in the tropics, but try. I have books I’ve carted around the world for fifty years.  They’ve seen the world. Many are worn, many are torn, many are frayed–held together with scotch tape, Elmer’s glue and duct tape–but all sit on my shelves and are dearest friends. I’m holding a hard bound–once upon a time–Thesaurus, with pages so messed up, so strung out, so dangling,  I wonder through words like a kid lost in a fairy tale  forest.

Words. Twenty-seven letters in the English alphabet strung together into meaning. Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs. The primary colors writers use to paint pictures with black ink on white  paper.

A recent book that found my desk is a New York bestseller, Sense of Style,  the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, by Steven Pinker. He claims, rightly, writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and intellectual  fascination.  Delightful. Explosive. I recommend it to all  writers.

His incredible wife’s –Rebecca Newberger Goldstein–new book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, is beyond a must read. If  you love to laugh, enjoy wit, brilliance  and entertainment  find this ‘literary miracle’. It’s sad we don’t have a bookstore on Kauai. We’re so backwoodsy. Order it from Barnes and Noble or our very own used bookstore  in Hanapepe.

But my most priceless new possession is Richard Dawkins’ Brief  Candle in the Dark. It’s signed. I carry it with me wherever I go. There’s always a park bench, a chair at a table,  some shade beneath a tree. Started reading it on the plane flying home.  Can’t put it down. I’m trying to read all three at the same time.

Richard is ‘one of the best nonfiction writers alive today’, says Steven Pinker and he should know.

What I loved is the earthiness of it. Richard’s incredible life, his  mind, his charm.  His story telling ability. Soon you feel you know his family, his wife–the beautiful actress and artist Lala– to whom the book is dedicated and who paints all his ties.  (Queen Elizabeth complained about one of them he wore to lunch.) You fall in love with his daughter, Juliet, who became ‘a fourteen- year- old hero’  when her mother died of cancer. All his friends become your friends. All his adventures become your adventures. He writes about people we all love, John Cleese, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan. I think he knows everybody. He sounds a trumpet blast for truth. He cares.

“Richard always writes like he’s telling a story, which is why so many of us non-science people understand science better than we used to. But when the story’ s his own life, it’s doubly compelling.” BILL MAHER.

Someone  cautioned me, quoting 1 Corinthian 1:25-18 , “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

….blessed are the dense for they will inherit the earth?

Let us hope not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open letter to Richard Dawkins October 27, 2015

Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015

Dear Richard,

I’m a columnist not a journalist. Columnists have more fun. We break rules.

Quick aside: Ann Druyan and I started a religious war on Kauai. In the November/December 2003 Skeptical Inquirer ‘Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe…and Carl Sagan’ and I responded. My letter appeared in the Letters to the Editor section in the March/April 2004 issue. It then appeared as a column in The Garden Island Forum.

Eleven years later and I still don’t understand what it was in that letter that set ‘them’ off. The war’s still waging.

The current column –better known in this back neck of the woods as a bettejo– was a hoot to write. Have already had one response. Before the letter was published–I think there’s a leak–someone named Jerry Terui from Lihue cautioned me, quoting 1 Corinthian 1:18-25, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

….blessed are the dense for they will inherit the earth?

My Editor wants more Richard Dawkins. Will try to work something up about A Candle in the Dark and see if I can include the densers. Don’t want to leave them out.

By the way, I found, on my desk when I returned home, two books: Sense of Style and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. I’m trying to read Candle, Sense, and 36 Arguments all at the same time.

If gawd had a hand in this, I think he’s got his fingers crossed.

Aloha,

Bettejo

PS: New comment: ‘I’m a Dawkish adolescent.’  In a way I’m kind’a flattered. Adolescent? Don’t I wish.

RICHARD DAWKINS and me October 18, 2015

 

Many of us, I’m, sure, hold someone so completely in awe that the very idea of meeting him, dining with him, takes our breath away.How could it happen? If it did, wouldn’t we be struck dumb? Turn  loose a tsunami brain wave that washes all our cognitive thinking out the window? We’d mutter. We’d stutter. We’d falter. We’d faint.

Well, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. Richard Dawkins, my  companion at the table, was, as David Silverman, president of the American Atheist, Inc., said, “…. sometimes funny, sometimes fascinating, and always interesting…” But, more than that, a delightful host. He made me feel welcome, comfortable, at home. All of them did.

It was a small group at the table. Several brilliant women, three Turks, one who plays polo, a guy from Australia, a lawyer from Texas–hope I’ve not left anyone out–I didn’t count, I listened and talked and had a great time.

The experience, I suppose, was something like it might be for you Christian guys having supper with Jesus. We didn’t drink blood or eat flesh, but we did wine and dine.  Richard didn’t wash anybody’s feet. Good thing. I was wearing a pair of Haines Barely There panty hose which would have turned my foot  washing into an awkward feat under the circumstances.

The introduction by the others was impressive. Lot of letters ‘fore and aft, degrees in fields of science I didn’t know existed. But there was a human quality there.  No chest pounding or me me meing. They were almost humble. Richard’s introduction was,    “I’m Richard Dawkins.”

When my turn came, I said,”I’m Bettejo Dux. The lady from the provinces.  I’m an atheist. No buts about it.” It was an ‘inside’ joke and Richard grinned. That made me happy and set the stage.

Sometimes the banter became a little hefty but all of it fascinated me. Held my interest. I could have sat at that table for hours listening in.

I think the women were a bit more interested in the awful ways in which atheists were  treated. I told my story about guys on Kauai who  say, “I agree with Bettejo but I can’t say it.” “I’d lose my job.” “I couldn’t be elected.”  “Neighbors wouldn’t talk to my wife.” “What would I tell my flock?” We all agreed  speaking the truth was a dangerous step but one which all of us had to take. Someone said, “Like our gay friends, we have to come out of the closet. Too many are sadly locked in there alone.”

I make it easy on myself. As an atheist, I prefer to pal  with astronomers rather than  astrologers. Reason my way through life  rather than indulge in make believe. Browse The God Delusion rather than the Bible.  Watch  Cosmos, narrated by Carl Sagan, rather than any sermon from any televised house of worship.

Lets teach kids the marvelous magic of math, not the  mythical magic of religion.

What do you think?