Amazing Science - James Webb Space Telescope Images

10 times this year the Webb telescope blew us away with new images of our stunning universe

The James Webb Space Telescope

The more we look at the Universe and the more detail we see, the more majestic it becomes. In the words of the late, great carl Sagan:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

And another quote from Carl Sagan, referring to the famous photo of Earth seen as a tiny pale blue dot from beyond Pluto, because one is never enough:

Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

What would Carl Sagan have made of the images now coming from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)? The final one in the following article is of a segment of sky a fraction the size of a full moon. Tens of thousands of points of light in it each represent a single galaxy. Each of those will contain upwards of half a trillion stars, around each of which there is a good chance of a planetary system and possibly an Earth-like planet orbiting.

Are we so arrogant as to assume this was all made just for us and that a mind-reading creator god scrutinises this one small pixel, watching to see if anyone touches their genitalia, loves the wrong person, works on a Sunday, gets pleasure from sex or has the temerity to question what the priests tell us and to think for ourselves?

The article is by Colin Jacobs, Postdoctoral Researcher in Astrophysics, and Karl Glazebrook, ARC Laureate Fellow & Distinguished Professor, Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, both of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, lookt at how the JWST images have blown us away over the past year, revealing a Universe never before seen in this stunning detail. It is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be seen here.

How Religion Muddles Along Because it Doesn't Have Any Evidence to Go By

Are Christian souls gendered?

In a fascinating analysis of how the Christian notion of the 'soul' evolved to suit local political needs and to pander to popular demand, Professor Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland, explains how Christian ideas about the soul have changed since the notion was adopted from the Greek Platonists in the late second century CE, the idea of an immortal soul being absent from both the Old and New Testaments. Until then, Christians had used the Hebrew notion of a human being a single entity composed of both spiritual and physical parts.

For 'spiritual' parts read 'magic ingredient' making it alive. In fact we can see remnants of the lack of belief in immortality in verses such as this The following bible verses that seem to have escaped the editors' notice and been included in the modern editions.

From the Old Testament from a time when ideas of God's omniscience hadn't formed and death was seen as the end:

Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.

Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.

But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.

Job 14:1-12:

---

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them.

All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. Anyone who is among the living has hope — even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-5:

Clearly, the idea that it didn't matter how you lived your life as it made no different in the long run, was not what the church authorities needed the masses to believe. What they needed was the ability to promise a reward for good behaviour, unquestioning obedience and compliance with dogma, which the dead couldn't complain about and couldn't report back to the living and reveal that it was a false promise and what they'd been sold was a pig in a poke.

So, the idea of an immortal soul was pinched from the Greek Platonists and inserted into Christianity, complete with the idea that the soul doesn't have a gender.

The following article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence and reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original may be read here:

Catholic Priest Sex Abuse - And Still They Come

Archdiocese of Chicago list of alleged sex abusers who are priests, clergy expands by 72 names - ABC7 Chicago

Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago.
"Regretted our failure to qddress the scourge of clerical sexual abuse"

AP

You might think a 28-page list of Catholic priests from the Chicago Catholic archdiocese alone, against whom substantiated allegations of the sexual abuse of minors have been made, would more or less cover the scale of the danger the church and its priests represent to the children of Chicago.

3 retired Chicago priests being investigated for decades-old sex abuse allegations, Archdiocese says

Lake Zurich pastor faces sexual assault allegations again, Archdiocese says

But not a bit of it!

A further 72 names are to be added to the list. These are of deceased priests who have been posthumously accused of sexual abuse.

So does that total of 150 names cover it?

Not according to SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) who point out that the attorney’s office has said there at at least another 500 [sic] names that have not yet been made public!

And this is just one American Catholic diocese.

Nor is that likely to be an end to the matter, since each release of names normally results in even more people finding the courage to come forward with yet more allegations against yet more priests. The Catholic Church is paying the price for decades of acting as a de facto paedophile ring with coverup and facilitation the norm. The question isn't so much whether there had been abuse in any Catholic diocese or institution but by who and how many victims there were?

Religion - Providing Excuses for People Who Need Excuses

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Creationism in Crisis - Belief in Creationism Falls to a New Low in Australian University Students

"Adam and Eve,” detail by Giulio Clovio from the Book of Hours of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, 1546

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City, USA

Fewer Australian university students than ever before believe in creationism

In a stunning refutation of the Creationist claim that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is being increasingly rejected in favour of the Bronze Age superstion related in the ancient origin myths in the Bible, a 2017 survey of Australian University students, shows exactly the oposit to be true. The survey revealed an accelerating decline in Creationism and a rapidly growing acceptance that the TOE is the best explanation for human existence.

The researchers have surveyed the opinions of first year students at the University of New South Wales concerning their views about evolution and creationism. The results are alost a mirror image of the increasing rejection of religion amognst Australian adults, with a relentless increase in 'nones' over the same period.

The findings were published in the open access journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach and reported in The Conversation by lead author, Professor Mike Archer of the Pangea Research Centre, UNSW, Sydney, Australia. His report is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here:

Religious Superstition News - Continuing Widespread Belief in Witchcraft

Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis | PLOS ONE

A map showing country-level prevalence of witchcraft beliefs around the world.

Boris Gershman, 2022, PLOS ONE, (CC-BY 4.0)

The belief that certain individuals, often as the result of possession by demons, have the power to suspend the laws of nature at will and make unnatural events occur, sometimes with the casting of magic spells but often with a look, still persists even in some technologically advanced economies.

This is revealed in a database, newly-compiled by Boris Gershman, associate professor of economics, American University in Washington DC, USA, and published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

Belief in witchcraft, demons and the power of magic words and/or thoughts to control natural objects and forces is just another manifestation of the teleological thinking of childhood which causes Creationism, and to some extent, religion when retained in an adult. It is based on the assumption that everything, including atoms, molecules and forces such as gravity have a personality and are sentient, so can be controlled by words and telepathically by thoughts ,and that there is a magical entity 'somewhere out there' who is controlling everything telepathically, or making laws which force them to comply.

A History of Bizarre Beliefs.

There is, of course, no evidence to support that notion which has been part of human culture since the fearful infancy of our species, when a belief in evil magic seems a rational explanation for diseases that are now known to be caused by poisons, parasitic organisms, genetics, physiological disorders, dietary deficiencies or surfeits, etc - explanations which don't require magic and supernatural forces.

Religion Provides Excuses for People Who Need Excuses - Iranian Women's Protest

Iranian parliament

Photo: AP

Iran: protesters call for move to a non-religious state. What changes would that bring?

The closest things we have to the fundamentalist Christian dream of a fundamentalist theocracy, can be found in the Islamic world in states like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, where Sharia Law is little different to the Levitican Laws a Christian theocracy would impose on the rest of us. In fact, they have the same cultural roots in the tribal cultures of the Middle East, where religious superstition and the support of the priesthood was used to control and subjugate the population and, for the ruling men, the women.

Misogyny and a desire to control the females of the tribe probably originated in pre-human ancestors where biologically, there was an advantage in the males ensuring the children they supported were their own and not those of other males. Males would have been insecure in their ability to ensure fidelity, reinforced by their own tendency to 'spread their seed' as widely as possible, which required the women in the tribe to be unfaithful to their partners. The biological dynamics resulted in males being physically stronger than females and able to impose their control by force, if necessary.

Androcentric religions, such as the Abrahamic religions, evolved partly to codify this gender relationship and give it divine authority, to provide males with the excuses they needed to control and coerce females.

The Evolution of God

The insecure little men who control the Islamic Republic of Iran are continuing to use religion as their excuse for denying the women of Iran the right to choose what clothes to wear in public!

Imagine if this was reversed and women were telling men what to wear! The regime wouldn't last 5 minutes, and nor would any religion that supported it.

And yet, because their holy book, like the Bible before it, was written in a time when inadequate, insecure little men held the political and economic power, women were regarded as goods to be bought and sold, little different to slaves, the same holy book can be used as an excuse to treat women the same way today.

Just like the Catholic and most fundamentalist Protestant Christian churches, Islam is obsessed with sex. It assumes that if women are not rigidly controlled, they will go and seek out other men to have sex with, and if a women reveals more than just her eyes to any man other than her husband, it will provoke sinful sexual urges in the man which will condemn his 'soul' to an eternity of pain because the religion's god hates nothing more than a man lusting after a women to whom he isn't married.

But of course, that will be the woman's fault for tempting the man. The man can't be expected to see a woman's face, hair or legs and not want to have sex with her, and since it's her doing the tempting, anything that follows will be her fault too, consensual or not.

A couple of recent articles in The Conversation explain the importance of the women's demonstration against the compulsory wearing of the hijab in public and how fundamentalist Islam is merely the excuse for repression. They are reprinted under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Bigotry News - Religions Fighting For the Right to Discriminate and Victimise

Magaly Valentin (left), and Rosalba Gomez (right) Arlington Food Services prepare fresh salads and vegetable cups for the National School Lunch Program in the kitchen at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, Wednesday, October 19, 2011.

USDA Photo by Bob Nichols.

USDA exempts religious schools from nondiscrimination rules to keep kids fed

Religions in the USA are continuing their campaign to be allowed to continue to victimise and bully minorities and women, using religion as their excuse.

The latest move is to persuade the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to drop its insistence that to participate in the free school lunch program, schools must not discriminate on the basis of sexuality or gender identity.

The National Schools Lunch Program is a federal initiative that provides meals for tens of millions of children in public and non-profit private schools. Schools had complained that participation in the program would oblige them to comply with the non-discrimination provisions of "Title IX" - a 1972 measure aimed at ensuring equal opportunities at educational establishment across the USA.

Last July, Grant Park Christian Academy of Tampa Florida, launched a lawsuit, supported by the unashamedly Christian nationalist hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom, claiming exemption from the non-discrimination provisions of Title IX on the grounds that the school taught a “biblical worldview about marriage, sexuality, and the human person.” In other words, it intended to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and teach the students to do the same, based on ancient texts written in the Bronze Age.

And recently, the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri, withdrew from the lunch program, claiming that:

Accepting any federal subsidy would subject archdiocesan schools to federal mandates that could impede a school’s ability to faithfully carry out the teachings of the Catholic Church

In other words, the catholic schools would no longer be allowed to discriminate against the LGBTQ community, continue to condemn same-sex marriages and victimise and demonise homosexuals, and teach their students to do likewise. Obviously the Catholic Church would rather have children go hungry than to grant everyone full human rights.

Why Religious Fundamentalists Won't Change Their Minds

Everyone, even scientists are prone to trying to cling to cherished beliefs, but this is especially noticeable with people who are wedded to extremist cult beliefs such as Creationism, Fundamentalist religions, and/or wackadoodle conspiracy theories such as the belief that the 2020 US presidential election was 'stollen', COVID-19 is a hoax or that 9/11 was a 'inside job', as anyone who tries to engage these deluded fools in the social media will quickly discover.

Reinforce that natural resistance to change with the paranoid idea that there is a mind-reading, invisible sky man who will punish you with unimaginable horrors for eternity for even thinking of doing so, and you have the explanation for this intellectual cowardice and scientific bankruptcy.

In this article reproduced from The Conversation, reprinted under a Creative Commons license and reformatted for stylistic consistency, Professor Keith M. Bellizzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Connecticut, USA, explains this basic aspect of human psychology. The original article can be read here.

Cult News - Religious Lies, Conmen and Coercive Control

With fundamentalist religions operating as cults, especially, but not exclusively, in the USA and parts of Africa, they represent a danger to democratic society by handing control over to the cult leaders. Cults are invariably highly autocratic and usually male-dominated, with female members often having an inferior, subordinate and submissive role.

A single leader, such as a charismatic head of a megachurch or shadowy leaders of cults such as QAnon, can manipulate and control their followers to behave in wildly antisocial ways and advocate extreme fringe policies, such as we are seeing in the USA today with white supremacism and Christian Nationalism emerging from under the rocks to influence mainstream politicians, the judiciary and the Republican Party.

Cults are parasitic on democratic society where it is difficult to strike a balance between freedom of religion and measures to protect the young and vulnerable from the predation of extremist cults. Ironically, they thrive in liberal democracies which, if they ever had the power they crave, they would immediately abolish. It is a basic law of religion that fundamentalists support freedom of religion until they acquire the power to abolish it.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Reformatted for stylistic consistency. Read the original article. It was written from an Australian perspective but has wider applications.

Covidiot News - Antivaxxer Covidiots Losing the Argument

a COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and acceptance. b COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and acceptance if recommended by employer or one’s doctor. a, b COVID-19 acceptance in June 2020 was defined as willingness to take vaccine if proven safe and effective. COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in June 2021 was defined as having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and if not, willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to them. Vaccine hesitancy was defined as having reported “no” to the question on whether they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and also either unsure/no opinion, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree to the question on whether they would take a COVID-19 vaccine when available to them. Four countries (Ghana, Kenya, Peru, and Turkey) were not included in the 2020 global survey. c Potential COVID-19 vaccine acceptance if recommended by employer or one’s doctor among those willing to take vaccine when available and those hesitant to vaccinate. c Potential COVID-19 vaccination was defined as willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available if recommended by employer or by doctor.

Study shows increase in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance around the world - CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy

A new study by scientists from the City University of New York School of Public Health (CUNY SPH), USA, the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the School of Health Administration, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, has show a growing acceptance of the anti-Covid vaccines on a global scale between 2020 and 2021.

The team conducted a survey of 23,000 individuals from 23 countries in June 2021 and found that 75.2% reported acceptance of the vaccine, compared to 71.5% in 2020. The results of the survey were published open access in Nature Communications.
According to the CUNY SPH press release:

The study … was carried out within the context of a year of substantial but very unequal global COVID-19 vaccine availability and acceptance, which necessitated new assessments of the drivers of vaccine hesitancy and the characteristics of people not vaccinated.

Concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy and mistrust in the science behind vaccine development were the most consistent correlates of hesitancy. Other factors associated with vaccine hesitancy varied by country and included personal experience with COVID-19 (e.g., sickness or loss of a family member) and demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, education, and income).

The authors found that vaccine hesitancy did not significantly correlate with a country’s current COVID-19 case burden and mortality. In June 2021, vaccine hesitancy was reported most frequently in Russia (48.4%), Nigeria (43%), and Poland (40.7%), and least often in China (2.4%), the United Kingdom (UK) (18.8%), and Canada (20.8%).

In order to improve global vaccination rates, some countries may at present require people to present proof of vaccination to attend work, school, or indoor activities and events. Our results found strong support among participants for requirements targeting international travellers, while support was weakest among participants for requirements for schoolchildren.

Jeffrey Lazarus, lead author.
Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Hospital Clínic
University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
And the Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, US

Support for vaccine mandates was substantially lower among those who were hesitant to get vaccinated themselves.

Importantly, however, recommendations by a doctor, or to a lesser extent by an employer, might have an impact on a respondent’s views on vaccination in some countries.

Dean Ayman El-Mohandes, co-author Graduate School of Public Health ∓ Health Policy
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA

Although some countries are currently disengaging from evidence-based COVID-19 control measures, the disease has by no means been controlled or ended as a public health threat. The authors note that for ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns to succeed in improving coverage going forward, substantial challenges remain. These include targeting those reporting lower vaccine confidence with evidence-based information campaigns and greatly expanding vaccine access in low- and middle-income countries.

More Evidence of Declining Religion in USA

Fewer in U.S. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God

More evidence of the decline in religion in the USA was published today in the form of a Gallop survey into the view of American adults on the origins of the Bible, which shows that the belief that the Bible is the literal word of God has declined to the minority view. Nevertheless, this view is still held by 1 in 5 American adults!

Although this view has never been held by more than 50% of Americans, is has almost halved from 38 to 20 percentage points since August 1976. Over the same period, the view that the Bible is just a collection of myths and fables has more than doubled from 13 to 29 percentage points. The 'middle’ view, that the Bible is the inspired word of God but not all of it should be taken literally, has always hovered around 45%-50% and now stands at 49%, up just 4 percentage point from 45% in August 1976.

Atheism - Winning in Australia

Census 2021 results: Christianity plummets as ‘non-religious’ surges

Figures released today show that, like elsewhere in the civilised, advanced world, Australians are abandoning religion in droves. The percentage of Australians who described themselves as 'Christian' in the 2021 census fell below 50% to 44% for the first time in Australia's history.

This figure has fallen from 52% in just 5 years. In 2011 it stood at 61%. When a census was first conducted in Australia in 1911, 96% of Australians identified themselves as Christian.

These figures are revealed in the first tranche of data to be released from last years census. The percentage who ticked the 'no religion' box stood at 39%, up from 30% just 5 years ago, and almost double what it was in 2011. Those who identified as Catholic fell 3 percentage points to 20% and Anglican fell 3 percentage points to 10%. Falls in other minor Christian denominations brought the total figure for Christians as a whole down to 44% from the 52% recorded just 5 years ago.

The percentage of Australians self-identifying as 'non-religious' is highly significant because it shows the extent to which 'non-religious' has become acceptable in Australia. In the mid-1960s only 1% of Australians so self-identified. What we are seeing in Australia is what we saw in the UK, where the social stigma of having no religion, so being perceived wrongly as immoral and untrustworthy, has gone, to be replaced by a more realistic perception of intelligence, compassion and integrity, so more and more people are coming out of the closet.

Superstition News - Abandonment of Religion Accelerating in USA

Belief in God in U.S. Dips to 81%, a New Low

A new Gallop survey shows an accelerating fall in belief in God amongst American adults, and this trend hold true across all demographic grouping, whether age, race, geography of political leaning.

Belief in God is now at it's lowest (81%) since Gallop started polling on the issue. During the years 1944 to 2011 it had averaged just over 93% (range 92%-98%) but since then it has fallen by 12 percentage points, with half that fall occurring over the last year. To put that another way, the number of people admitting to not believing doubledlast year and now stands at 19% of American adults. An astonishingly high level of belief for an advanced economy, compared to that in most of Europe, but a very encouraging recent trend.

Evolution News - New Study Shows that Human Morality is Innate, Not Learned.

Are we born with a moral compass? - ResOU

To the great discomfort of Creationists and religious apologists, who claim human morality is God-given, researchers at Osaka University, Japan, in collaboration with Otsuma Women’s University, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, and the University of Tokyo, have shown that human morality is almost certainly an evolved trait because preverbal infants can make moral judgements on behalf of others.

Christian fundamentalists often tie themselves in knots trying to prove that they are the moral superior of others by claiming their faith gives them objective morals, without seeming to realise that trying to put yourself above others and exercise judgement over them without knowing them, is itself a deeply immoral act.

That well-known Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, even went so far as to assert that because he didn't understand how he knew right from wrong, it must have been determined by God and inserted into his psychology in some unexplained way.

Paradoxically though, Christians (and Moslems) also claim the 'Ten Commandments' are the basis of their morality, yet the 'Ten Commandments' contains the invocation to do unto others that which you would they do unto you - the 'Golden Rule' common to just about all human groups. And Jesus reputedly told his followers to 'Love one another' (John 13: 34) (although it's not at all clear that this applies to all his followers or just to the small group he was addressing).

Whatever, these invocations presuppose that we have the necessary instinctive empathy to understand the needs of another person - which we do, of course, hence it is also central to Humanist thinking. And this view seems to have been well founded judging by what the research team found.

According to the Osaka University press release:

Catholic Abuse News - California's Catholic Bishops go Whining to SCOTUS to Avoid Compensating Their Victims

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles
Seat of Archbishop Jose H. Gomez

Credit: David Castor/public domain.

California Catholic dioceses ask Supreme Court to hear statute of limitations extension case | Catholic News Agency

In a desperate attempt to avoid paying out even more in compensation to the victims of predatory paedophile Catholic priest, nine of California's Catholic diocese and archdiocese have got together to petition SCOTUS to overrule the State of California's suspension of the statute of limitation (SOL) which bars victims from claiming for lapsed abuses. The state recently passed an order giving former victims a 3-year window of opportunity to register claims which would otherwise fall foul of the SOL.

Catholic priests often hide behind a SOL which serves them well, since many of their victims were young children at the time and at a time when sex was a taboo subject and society was more deferential to religious clerics than now, so children felt uncomfortable talking about their abuses. Indeed, that very culture was why so many priests felt confident they could get away with it. By the time their victims reached adulthood and the psychological effects of their abuse manifested themselves, it was too late to bring the case to court.

The bishops and archbishops behind the collective whinge are:

• Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles
• Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Orange
• Bishop Joseph V. Brennen of Fresno
• Bishop Daniel E. Garcia of Monterey
• Bishop Michael C. Barber of Oakland
• Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento
• Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco
• Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose
• Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Rosa

In their petition, the bishops state:

Twenty years ago, California revived decades-old sexual-abuse claims, offering claimants a one-year window to sue even though the statute of limitations had expired long before. When that window closed at the end of 2003, the Catholic Church in California reached a series of settlements that paid out over a billion dollars without regard to the validity of any individual claim. The State tried to revive the same category of lapsed claims three more times between 2004 [*6] and 2018, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the bills each time. In 2019, however, the Legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation reviving the claims for a second time, expressly seeking to impose "additional punishment" on the Catholic Church and other institutions for their past acts. This time, defendants' past conduct is subject not only to claims for compensatory and punitive damages that were previously time-barred twice over, but also to additional penalties (in the form of "treble" damages) based on a newly defined category of "cover up" activity.

The final sentence shows that the real concern of these bishops and archbishops: as well as the new claims for compensation they could face, they could face additional claims for compensation for "cover up" activity. A theme running through many of these abuse cases is that the church systematically covered up and thereby facilitated the abuses. Known abusers were allowed to continue to work in positions which gave them access to more victims and those who knew of their predations failed to notify the law enforcement and child protection agencies.

Indeed, some of them were even party to the abuses themselves, having come through the same highly sexualised culture in Catholic seminaries. The objective was to defend the church at all costs and ignore any obligation they had for safeguarding against potential abuses. The sexual predilections of priests was ‘understandable’ given their ‘celibate’ lifestyle, so could be forgiven.

In the introduction to their 21-page petition, the petitioners make several statements of dubious validity. For example, in reference to the original one-year suspension of the the SOL three years ago:

After this one-year revival period ended, Petitioners reached a series of settlements that paid out more than a billion dollars to bring these matters [*9] to a close. To finance these settlements, they expended significant resources, sold vast swaths of Church property, and in some cases exhausted or relinquished insurance coverage for past and future abuse claims. In reaching these settlements, Petitioners relied on the explicit cutoff date in the California statute, which assured them that unasserted lapsed claims would be extinguished at the end of the one- year revival period.

That assurance proved to be false. In 2013, 2014, and 2018, the State attempted to enact additional revival statutes that would have allowed the same category of abuse claims to be asserted yet again.

In other words, we knew there were very many victims who had not come forward and we thought we had got away with those, so, it's not fair that these victims should also be given an opportunity to claim compensation. It is not true that the same victims would have been able to claim for the same abuses again although this statement clearly implies they would have. What this 3-year window offers victims is an opportunity to claim again against those who covered up their abusers’ crimes.

They go on to say:

After Governor Gavin Newsom took office, however, California enacted a new double-revival statute, now with a three-year revival window. This time, the new law not only revives old claims (including claims for punitive damages), but also adds [*10] new punishment in the form of treble damages for a novel category of "cover up" activity. As various legislators proclaimed, this "draconian" measure was designed to "drastically expand[] the actionable conduct" and to make defendants "hurt" by creating " another revival period" and by subjecting them to "additional punishment" for decades-old claims. Pet.App.166a, 170a, 177a, 179a.

California's double-revival statute violates the Constitution in two ways. First, it violates the Ex Post Facto Clause by imposing new punishments on past conduct and reviving claims for punitive damages. In Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607, 632-33 (2003), this Court identified punitive revivals as ex post facto violations. But California's courts, despite recognizing that the statute "has changed the legal consequences of past conduct," including by "imposing new or different liabilities," Pet.App.110a-11a, 123a-24a, have allowed these claims to proceed because they purportedly seek to impose only "civil" liability, Pet.App. 30a, 123a-24a. That holding conflicts with both this Court's precedents and the original understanding of the Ex Post Facto Clause, which prohibit retroactive punishment regardless of the label [*11] "civil" or "criminal," see E. Enters. v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 538-39 (1998) (Thomas, J., concurring).

Second, the California statute also violates the Due Process Clause, which prohibits "retroactively . . . creat[ing] liability" by reviving certain time-barred claims. William Danzer & Co. v. Gulf & S.I.R. Co., 268 U.S. 633, 637 (1925). As an original matter, the Clause prohibited States from depriving defendants of ripened limitations defenses, which was understood to be a deprivation of property without due process of law. And while modern precedent has watered down that original rule, this Court's precedents still recognize that States cannot revive certain time-barred claims, particularly when it would impose a "special hardship[]." Chase Sec. Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 316 (1945). The paradigmatic example is when a State induces reliance on a statutory time bar but then pulls out the rug by reviving the expired claim, id.--exactly what happened here. Having made significant outlays in reliance on the cutoff date at the end of the last revival period, Petitioners now face potentially ruinous liability as a result of California's virtually unprecedented double-revival law.

[It's not obvious what the numbered asterisks in square brackets relate to in these quotations.]

Of course, the petitioners face 'potentially ruinous liability' not as a result of California's suspension of the SOL for 3 years, but because of the sexual predations of their paedophile priests, and in particular, for theirs and their predecessors’ criminal activity in covering up these abuses and failure to safeguard children in their care. And, again, they do not face renewed claims for abuses that have already been settled, but for new cases that can now come forward and especially for the 'new' offence of covering up.

An organisation which faces bankruptcy and an inability to continue because of its criminal activities does not deserve to continue, let alone have the highest court in the land guarantee their immunity from further claims for compensation on the grounds that they thought they had got away with it. The Catholic Church is massively wealthy but wants its victims to be denied adequate compensation in order to protect that wealth. Once again, the Catholic Church is putting the church and its finances above the needs of its victims.

What will be interesting is whether SCOTUS with its new right wing fundamentalist Christian majority, will come down on the side of abusers because they are Christians or on the side of their victims whom the law should be designed to protect.

US Religious Affiliation News - Accelerating Decline in Church Membership to Below 50%.

U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time.

According to the latest Gallop survey, religious affiliation and church membership is declining at an accelerating rate in the USA and the religiously unaffiliated are now in the majority, with affiliates to the various religions falling below 50% for the first time since Gallup began polling in 1937!

In the 60 years between 1940 and 2000, this figure declined only 3% from 73 to 70%, a figure that, given the distribution of values over the period from about 66% to 76% probably represents a steady figure of about 70%, subject to random sampling error.

The significant decline began at the turn of the millennium, falling 9%age points from 70 to 61% in the first 10 years, 6%age points in the next 5 years and a full 8%age points in the last 5 years, an annual rate of decline of 0.9, 1.2 and 1.6 percentage points, respectively. In Gallop's survey, religious affiliation means self-identifying as belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque. In Gallop's words:

Gallup asks Americans a battery of questions on their religious attitudes and practices twice each year. The following analysis of declines in church membership relies on three-year aggregates from 1998-2000 (when church membership averaged 69%), 2008-2010 (62%), and 2018-2020 (49%). The aggregates allow for reliable estimates by subgroup, with each three-year period consisting of data from more than 6,000 U.S. adults.

Although not the same thing, there is a close correlation between not having a religious preference and having no religion. The decline in church membership is probably a function of the decline in religious preference. Since the turn of the millennium, the percentage of Americans who do not self-identify with any religion has grown from 8% to 21%; a 162.5% increase in absolute numbers.

Americans are quickly losing faith in faith!

Not only that, but opinions appear to be firming up with the, perhaps surprising, figure for those who, while having no religious preference are nevertheless members of a church, synagogue or mosque, falling from 10% in 1998-2000 to just 4% in 2018-2020.

Given the nearly perfect alignment between not having a religious preference and not belonging to a church, the 13-percentage-point increase in no religious affiliation since 1998-2000 appears to account for more than half of the 20-point decline in church membership over the same time. Most of the rest of the drop can be attributed to a decline in formal church membership among Americans who do have a religious preference. Between 1998 and 2000, an average of 73% of religious Americans belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque. Over the past three years, the average has fallen to 60%.

As has been noted before, there is a marked difference between generations in the degree of affiliation to and membership of, a religion, with the youngest group being the least religious and the most inclined to reject religion, with 'Millennials' (born between 1981 and 1996) only about half as likely to be members of a church, synagogue or mosque as 'Traditionalists' (born before 1946) at 36% and 66% respectively. 'Baby boomers' (born between 1946 and 1964) and 'Generation X' (born between 1965 and 1980) are 58% and 50% respectively.

The two major trends driving the drop in church membership -- more adults with no religious preference and falling rates of church membership among people who do have a religion -- are apparent in each of the generations over time. Since the turn of the century, there has been a near doubling in the percentage of traditionalists (from 4% to 7%), baby boomers (from 7% to 13%) and Gen Xers (11% to 20%) with no religious affiliation.

Religions are suffering the double-whammy of declining religious beliefs per se, and declining church membership amongst those who do admit to holding religious beliefs.

Currently, 31% of millennials have no religious affiliation, which is up from 22% a decade ago. Similarly, 33% of the portion of Generation Z that has reached adulthood have no religious preference. Also, each generation has seen a decline in church membership among those who do affiliate with a specific religion. These declines have ranged between six and eight points over the past two decades for traditionalists, baby boomers and Generation X who identify with a religious faith. In just the past 10 years, the share of religious millennials who are church members has declined from 63% to 50%.

As the final two charts show, the result is always the same, differing only in magnitude and then not by a great deal. No matter how the data is sliced up, every demographic has shown a marked and accelerating decline in church membership, even amongst the conservatives and republicans amongst whom are to be found the Evangelical Christian fundamentalists, who on the US political stage, have tended to be the loudest and most vociferous, so much so that to us from outside the USA, America sometimes seems to be a nation of loopy religious extremists.

Over this period too, the Catholics have had sexual abuse scandal after sexual abuse scandal with even the most senior US Catholic cleric being sacked and defrocked and diocese after diocese declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying the very large compensation and reparation bills. Scandals of sexual and financial impropriety have even engulfed the Vatican with the former pope standing accused of complicity in child abuse scandals and their coverup, in his former German archdiocese of Munich, and making deliberately misleading and inaccurate statements to the enquiry into the abuses.

Nevertheless, the decline in membership of the Catholic church (-18%), while being double that of the Protestant churches (9%), it is within the normal range of decline for other demographics. The highest rates of decline (25%) are to be found in Democrat-leaning voters and residents in the Eastern United States (presumably East Coast, New England). The protestant churches show the smallest decline at 9%. This possibly reflects the fact that evangelical, Republican-voting, Americans tend also to be white Protestant.

Perhaps surprisingly, given that earlier polls tended to show that religiosity was declining faster in American men than women, this polls show a reversal of that trend, with a steeper decline for women (20%) than for men (18%). American women are making up for their earlier tardiness in abandoning religious institutions.

Just as a bit of fun, if the rate of decline over the last 5 years is maintained and projected into the future, let alone continues to accelerate at the rate its's been accelerating since 2000, membership of religious establishments in the USA should be in single percentage points within the next 15-20 years and should be a mere footnote in history by the middle of the 21st century.

What seems to be happening is what Europe and the rest of the industrial world experience since 1945 - the decline in religiosity proceedes exponentially as first a few, then more and finally very many people abandoned religion as Atheism and non-affiliation first became thinkable, then acceptable, and now the norm as we realised that we did not need the church involved in our daily lives and as the church reacted by becoming even more reactionary and condemning of an increasingly Humanist society, freed from the straight-jacket imposed by dubious religious 'morality' with its support for intolerance, division, hate and bigotry.

Hopefully, in the USA, the support given to the odious and deplorable Donald Trump by the Christian churches has opened the eyes of many Americans to the hypocritical, misogynistic, racist, self-serving and socially divisive nature of fundamentalist Christianity in the USA where, more than perhaps anywhere else in the developed world:

Religion provides excuses for people who need excuses.

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Talibangelical Christian Theocracy News - Pastor Tony Spell Spills the Beans

Pastor Tony Spell, Life Tabernacle Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
"Government of USA should be by prophets (himself) at the top, then priests, then princes, then the people, God sez!"

Christian Nationalist Tony Spell Says Prophets Should Reign Over Government and the People | Right Wing Watch

It is unusual for a Talibangelical Christian pastor to be so honest (and lacking in nouse) as to admit their political ambitions in public, knowing full well that they need to pretend to be good democrats and supportive of US democracy if they are to keep fleecing their dupes, but extreme right-winger, Pastor Tony Spell, of the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has no such qualms. He wants to run the government, or at least have the right to veto government policies he doesn't like and command others instead.

Not to put too fine a point on it, he has ambitions to be the American equivalent of the Iranian Supreme Leader or the equivalent of a Taliban Caliph. Unelected, accountable to no-one but himself and having the power to meddle in every aspect of public and private life in the USA.

How Science Works - Questioning the Existence of Time Itself

In contrast to religion, which depends on a closed mind and fixed, unchangeable dogmas and axioms which cannot be questioned without effectively leaving the 'faith', science is an open-minded process of constant reassessment and revision.

In science, dogma is anathema and the only certainty is that there are no certainties. There is always the possibility that what we think we know is merely an illusion or the product of our limited perception, and not reality itself.

This is perhaps perfectly illustrated by the curent debate in theoretical physics about the nature of space-time, and time in paticular.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anti-Vaxxer, Covidiot News - Why Vaccination Is a Good Thing

COVID-19: Vaccination greatly reduces infectious viral load - Press Release - UNIGE

Yet more evidence, if any were needed, of the efficacy and desirability of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was provided today in a paper published by a Swiss team from the Université de Genève (UNIGE) and the Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève (HUG). The results of their study were published in Nature Medicine a few days ago.

The team have shown that vaccinations reduce the viral load and thus the infectivity of vaccinated people who are unfortunate to become infected.

The press release from the Université de Genève explains:

Religious War Crimes News - How the Russian Orthodox Church Backs Putin's War on Women & Children

Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin.

War on Ukraine is "an active manifestation of evangelical love for neighbours" - Patriarch Kirill

How Putin's invasion became a holy war for Russia

Fulfilling the Christian Churchs' historic roll of supporting right-wing totalitarian nationalism, the Russian Orthodox Christian Church is backing Putin's murderous and unprovoked attack on Ukraine and the territorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin.

For Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, the war against Ukrainian democracy is wrapped in the Russian flag and shrouded in religious zeal, since Kiev is the home of Prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev, the legendary founder of the Russian Church who , in about 978 AD, was responsible for making Byzantine Christian Orthodoxy the official religion of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

The Hagia Sophia, Istanbul
Legend has it that Prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev was so impressed he adopted the Orthodox Christianity of Byzantium as the state religion for Russia, Ukraine and Belorus.

The legend is that he invited missionaries from Eastern (now Orthodox) Christianity, Western (now Catholic) Christianity, Judaism and Islam to persuade him to adopt their religion. He rejected Islam because of the prohibition on alcohol and pork, saying that the Rus couldn't do without alcohol and Judaism because 'God had allowed the Jews to lose Jerusalem'. He eventually settled on Eastern Christianity when his emissaries reported the magnificence of the Hagia Sophia Church in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

On Russian National Unity Day, 4th November 2016, with Patriarch Kirill, the oleaginous head of the Russian Orthodox Church, at his side, smiling and applauding enthusiastically, Putin unveiled a huge statue of Vladimir the Great outside the Kremlin. On the day that Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill published a grovelling and nauseatingly obsequious statement which read: