Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.  

Today’s Morning Heretic is CFI intern, Tony Lakey. Paul is still out spending time with his family. He will return 8/13.

Jim Underdown, Executive Director of CFI-Los Angeles, is featured in Surly Amy’s “Speaking Out Against Hate Directed at Women” series.

Eugenie Scott discusses the National Center for Science Education’s decision to cover climate change as well as evolution in public education:

The similarity we see between the pressures that teachers receive about teaching evolution and pressures that teachers feel about teaching climate change ultimately go back to the fact that people hold strong ideologies that influence their willingness to accept information.

In light of the recent Chick-fil-A craziness, Funny or Die has put together this hilarious, and somewhat creepy, video featuring John Goodman.

Recent Catholic convert, Leah Libresco invites you to participate in her online Sondheim symposium. The plan is to watch Company (available on Netflix) and then go to her website and use the comment section to “fight about what the purpose of marriage is.”   

More on the Chick-fil-A controversy: HuffPo reports on gay Chick-fil-A employees speaking out.

Catholic blogger, Scott P. Richert claims atheists lack reading comprehension and that the Aurora, CO shooter, James Holmes was possessed by the devil. I would say “You read that correctly,” but apparently I have no idea.

In the wake of Jonah Lehrer, science writer and author, being accused of unethical journalistic practices, Sam Harris has released both the full text and Kindle versions of Lying. 

David Niose from the American Humanists Association and author of Nonbeliever Nation did an AMA on reddit. 

Rainforests, Rainforests Everywhere! 

Evidence is getting stronger for the Higgs Boson particle. 

California State University Long Beach reaches out to homeless children with their Mobile Science Museum.

Missouri voters will be voting on a proposed “Right to Pray” amendment on August 7th. However, the legislation includes language much more troubling than the already afforded right to pray. 

Quote of the Day 

From The Daily Show, referencing the Chick-fil-A appreciation day:

“For people who are gay or support gay marriage, I get how seeing thousands of people come out to make this statement is incredibly diheartening. But take solace in this: Gay marriage is happening. Like many drive through window lanes, it ain’t going backwards. And your bonus is this: You get gay marriage…and all your political opponents are going to get is Type 2 Diabetes.” - Jon Stewart

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI . Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is. 

Follow CFI on Twitter: @center4inquiry 

Got a tip for the Heresy? Send it to press(at)centerforinquiry.net! 

Image from Wikimedia Commons. 

The Morning Heresy: “I actually read it.” - Hemant Mehta

Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.

Today’s morning heretic is Tony Lakey, CFI Intern Extraordinaire. Paul is still out building his giant evil robot. I have discovered that it is going to be able to makes pizzas and that it may or may not be fueled by the tears of infants (which is probably the reason for having another child). Paul will be returning on August 13th.

CFI Director of the Office of Public Policy, Michael De Dora urges you to tell your representatives to reject a bill to ban abortion in DC. De Dora has this to say about the bill:

“H.R. 3803, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), would prevent a woman from having an abortion in many important situations: where continuing a pregnancy could put at risk her health or ability to bear children in the future; where she is suffering from mental illness; and where she has learned of a severe or fatal fetal anomaly. It would also impose criminal penalties on any physician found to violate the law, including up to $250,000 in fines and two years in prison.

This bill is wrong for several reasons.

H.R. 3803 is based on the assumption that fetuses can experience pain at 20 weeks. However, this is unsupported by existing scientific research, which suggests fetuses do not experience pain until at least 29 or 30 weeks. Furthermore, only 1.4 percent of all abortions happen after 21 weeks, and those usually occur due to urgent health dangers or difficulty accessing abortion services.”

A Colorado preacher tries to explain where God was during the Aurora shooting; the commenters don’t seem to agree.

The Catholic Church backs out of a property sale to a gay couple, and then inadvertently forwards them the email explaining that it is because they are concerned about gay marriage.

The Food and Drugs Administration of India bans the prescription of ‘allopathy’ meds, so Homeopathy ‘doctors’ go on 3-day strike. Continuing their tradition of providing less and expecting it to do more.

A good piece on the relationship between the Chick-fil-A controversy and free speech. Turns out that people on both sides of the issue need to read their Constitution more closely.

The aptly named Bad Catholic explains his beef with the recent comic from The Oatmeal criticizing religious intolerance

On a more positive note, a Connecticut judge has ruled DOMA unconstitutional.

More good news? Okay! Today marks the start of comprehensive preventative care coverage for women in accordance with the Affordable Care Act.

And now back to the upsetting: A New Mexico private school that received more than $60,000 tax dollars this year has rejected a 3 year old from their program because he has gay parents.

The Texas GOP officially rejects critical thinking in their 2012 platform. (Do I even need a joke here?)

Global Warming denying scientist changes his mind due to … EVIDENCE! (His study was even fund by the Koch Brother. I bet they are pleased.)

Quote of the Day
     
Today’s quote is from Gore Vidal who died last night at the age of 86:

“Once people get hung up on theology, they’ve lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.” -Gore Vidal

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI . Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.
Follow CFI on Twitter: @center4inquiry
Got a tip for the Heresy? Send it to press(at)centerforinquiry.net!

The Morning Heresy: “I actually read it.” - Hemant Mehta

Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities. 

Today’s Morning Heretics are CFI Interns, Tony Lakey and Stef McGraw. Paul is out on family leave due to the birth of his second child (although I have it on good authority that he is actually building a “giant evil robot.” I’ll keep you posted.) Paul will be returning August 13th.  

CFI Campus Organizer Dren Asselmeier informs us of CFI board member Eddie Tabash’s willingness to take on Chuck Norris. Well…not physically. Eddie explains:

As an atheist/secular humanist, I am horrified at the religious fundamentalist and anti-gay ideas expressed by Chuck Norris. Even though I have a black belt in Okinawan karate, I would run for the hills if anyone even suggested that I fight him physically. He is one of the most knowledgeable martial arts masters in the world. However, because I regard the America he envisions as antithetical to the crucial needs of a modern secular society, I hereby challenge him to a verbal—yes only verbal!—debate on the separation of church and state.

Want this smackdown to go down near you? CFI’s Outreach Department would be happy to help make that a reality (that is, if Mr. Norris isn’t too scared to face THE Eddie Tabash).

Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars and recent Catholic convert Leah Libresco both join the league of bloggers urging readers to sign the petition in support of Alexander Aan. 

With the Olympics starting this past weekend, Steven Novella reminds us of how rife the sports world is with pseudoscientific claims. Except for my energy bracelet. That’s for real. 

UC Berkeley Professor of Physics and former climate change denier Richard Muller now concludes climate change to be almost entirely human caused. His reasoning? New research as evidence. Hey, that’s all we can ask. 

Huffington Post blogger Jacques Berlinerblau argues that people should stop equating “secularism” with “atheism,” and vice versa.

Another interesting commentary from HuffPo: blogger Jeff Schweitzer criticizes several responses to the Aurora shooting, including the religious overtones from Obama and Romney. He writes:

  If Romney wants to pray, how about praying that people going to see a movie do not get shot and killed? If prayer is effective, I suggest prayer to prevent tragedy rather than to comfort victims afterward.

Research still shows that doctors meet the end of life differently from the rest of us: planning ahead, ditching CPR, and subsequently dying in peace.

At Lapham’s, Colin Dickey ponders whether we helpless apes can ever overcome the last-resort that is magical thinking.

More spaceporn: the view from ISS at night 

NPR’s Terry Gross picks the brain of novelist Christopher Beha, who like many of us, found “faith became much more interesting to me once I didn’t have it.” 

Deadly dualism: Believing your mind and body are separate could lead to “unhealthy choices.” My meaty shell and I refuse to accept this.  

Quote of the Day      

From the aforementioned article by HuffPo‘s Jeff Schweitzer:

...let’s be realistic and concede that prayer cannot alter the course of events and stop appealing to prayer just because it makes us feel good about ourselves so we can move on and put the tragedy easily behind us. “Offering our prayers” is a coward’s way out: We do not have to think any further, and we’ve done our bit, even though we’ve done nothing at all.

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI . Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is. 

Follow CFI on Twitter: @center4inquiry 

Got a tip for the Heresy? Send it to press(at)centerforinquiry.net! 

The Morning Heresy: “I actually read it.” - Hemant Mehta