The weekly report on worldwide public policy and secularism
by Edwina Rogers

Climate Summit

Climate Change information and briefings are the top request from Congressional offices received by the Secular Policy Institute. ┬áAnd no wonder since the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris is featuring the largest gathering ever of world leaders for talks aimed at producing the most far-reaching pact yet to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. And, as the┬áWashington PostÔÇÖs Steve Mufson┬áreports, President Obama delivered an ominous warning that ÔÇ£no nation large or small, wealthy or poor, is immuneÔÇØ to ravages of global warming.

And, as the AP reports, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the House of Representatives will not go along if President Obama tries to commit taxpayer money to support a climate accord reached in Paris.  The House has already voted to halt reductions in emissions for power plants as sought by the EPA.

Plus, NPR today published an article:┬áÔÇ£10 Things To Know About The U.N. Climate Talks In Paris.ÔÇØ

Join SPI’s Coalition Letter To Save Poet Sentenced To Beheading In Saudi Arabia

The Secular Policy Institute has a letter out for groups to sign on.  It calls on President Obama and Secretary Kerry to demand clemency for artist Ashraf Fayadh. Through a hearsay allegation and a crooked interpretation of one of his poems, Fayadh faces beheading come mid-December. After initially determining capital punishment unwarranted, upon prosecutorial appeal Saudi Arabia condemned Fayadh to death for the crime of blasphemy.

There is a one month window to save his life. According to sources close to him, Fayadh lacks legal council and visitation rights. As global human rights conventions were established to protect people like Ashraf and as the USCIRF mandates action to protect ÔÇ£prisoners of belief,ÔÇØ we call upon the Offices of the President of the United States and the U.S. Department of State to intervene on behalf of Ashraf Fayadh. ┬áThe deadline for your group to be listed is December 14, 2015. ┬áJust email edwina@secularpolicyinstitute.net to get included. ┬áThe full announcement and text of the letter can be found here.

Rest of the Best

This week hosted the 27th annual World AIDS Day, but how have attitudes on the disease changed over the last two decades? In a new analysis, we find that the belief that AIDS might be a punishment from God for immoral sexual behavior dropped more than 20 percentage points in 20 years, from 36 percent to 14 percent.

Many religious organizations advocate the importance of family,┬ábut very few provide paid family leave, reports the Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey. More than eight in ten (82 percent) Americans support requiring companies to provide all full-time employees with paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, including majorities of Catholics (86 percent), black Protestants (85 percent), while mainline Protestants (78 percent), and white evangelical Protestants (73 percent).

In that Number

More than 900 women are running for office in the┬áDecember 12┬ámunicipal election in Saudi Arabia, a first in the kingdomÔÇÖs history.
Source: CNN.

Planned Parenthood Attacks

The Secular Policy Institute and several dozen other organizations has signed an open letter to the US Department of Justice asking them to take the big picture when investigating violence against abortion clinics, using all appropriate federal statues, including those against domestic terrorism. The attack on Planned Parenthood last month and all such attacks are ideologically driven, meaning that groups like the Center for Medical Progress, which released a video falsely representing Planned Parenthood, play a role in triggering fanaticism and violence.

At the grassroots level, whatÔÇÖs the best way to get the attention and respect of community leaders for nontheists? By joining their initiatives!

With the power of reason and science, nontheists have great problem solving skills. By joining city leaders on urban planning, safety, festivals, and other neighborhood initiatives, local nontheist volunteers can show others that nonbelievers are regular people, and contribute valuably to the public discourse.

ThatÔÇÖs the purpose behind a new nationwide group, Community Action Network (CAN) and its associated parent-teacher group, PTCAN. They harness the fact that any parent with children in the public school system deserves a seat at the table at school events. They cannot ban nontheists from taking part. ThatÔÇÖs your subtle inroad to changing stereotypes and making your own personal connections to local leaders and big decision-makers in the school system and beyond.

Would you like to be catapulted to being a leader at the center of your local community? The CAN national organization will help you find creative ways to contribute to supporting and strengthening the projects of your own local high school or grade school.

CAN and PTCAN offer donations, advice, and support to get new local groups going. Find out how they can help your group and you personally at www.communityactionnetwork.org.

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced poet Ashraf Fayadh to death for atheism and renouncing Islam–despite Fayadh’s claims that he is a faithful Muslim. Fayadh thinks he is being targeted due to his longer hair and because he shared a video showing the country’s religious police beating a man in public.

Fayadh is a Palestinian refugee who has lived in Saudi Arabia for years. He was first accused of blasphemy in 2013, and he was sentenced to public lashings and four years in prison in May 2014. He appealed this sentence, was retried, and was then sentenced to death. He was not permitted to have legal representation during his appeal.

Read the entire article in The Guardian

The weekly report on the SPI Fellows

by Johnny Monsarrat

Last week we announced the SPI World Future Guide 2016, our big annual roundup of the best public policy thinking from the secular movement. Our Fellows contributed some eye-opening content.

For example, SPI Fellow A C Grayling┬áwrote about education. What’s the best way not just to teach facts but to inspire students to learn critical thinking?

Last month,┬áat the Hong Kong Literary Festival, A C Grayling said that philosophy should be a┬árequired part of every student’s education, and demonstrated how religion is a reason why conflicts arise.

Grayling is a┬áFellow of St. AnneÔÇÖs College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

SPI Fellow Elizabeth Loftus┬áwas the focus of an article in the Washington Post describing US Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that Arab-American┬ácheered for the 9/11 attacks. She said that that as humans, we are more likely to invent or fill in false details to memories that align with our political beliefs – in others words, what we wish were true. Her article in the World Future Guide also spoke to the fallibility of memory, specifically witness testimony in courtrooms. Is it useful, somewhat useful, or useless?

Read the article on Loftus in The Washington Post

In the United States, SPI Fellow Marty Klein spent his Thanksgiving holiday giving thanks for sexual freedom. In most area of the country, men and women can dress as they please, day after abortion medical is available, and the US Supreme Court ruled that morality, which┬áis hard to pin down in the context of consensual interactions, can’t be the primary reason for sexual acts to be legal or illegal. Also, he gives some criticisms of freedoms yet to be won.

Read the article,┬áGiving Thanks for Sex; HoweverÔǪ

And finally, let us introduce a topic that will get under your skin. SPI Fellow John Joseph Kisakye, a Lecturer at Makerere University in Kampala is an expert in parasitology and an expert in dragonflies, who explores many aspects of human ecology, and he approaches all of his work as an avid humanist.

The SPI weekly policy report

by Edwina Rogers

The SPI World Future Guide 2016

As the world’s largest and most prestigious secular think tank, the Secular Policy Institute produces reports several times a year, bringing you top academic thought, scientific evidence, and public policy analysis.

Perhaps you’ve read our Secular Resource Guide, proving that secular people are an important voting bloc in the US and worldwide, our Model Policy Guide, which gives comprehensive public policy advice on leading issues, or our shocking expose,┬áAbuse in AmericaÔÇÖs Faith-Based Initiative System.

Now we are pleased to announce the Secular Policy Institute World Future Guide 2016, our most┬áheavyweight guide to secularism yet. It connects our┬áprominent thinkers, including Taslima Nasrin, Elizabeth Loftus, A.C. Grayling, and John McWhorter┬áto┬áthe worldÔÇÖs leading decision-makers, and will be sent to politicians in the US Congress and government Parliaments around the world and used in our lobbying efforts to promote the secular view.

Its ten articles are written by SPI Fellows from seven countries, each committed to separation of church and state.┬áYou’ll learn┬áhow to spot a dictatorship before it forms, and to see how faith can encourage gender discrimination. You’ll learn about law, health, education, and how to adapt laws and policies for a more effective and happy society. You’ll even learn about defense technology and what to do in Syria.

ÔÇ£The worldÔÇÖs future is coming, whether you like it or not,ÔÇØ wrote Greg Neimeyer of SPIÔÇÖs Advisory Board.┬á ÔÇ£Here are the keys.ÔÇØ

See the press release and get the guide.

This Week’s Round Up On Religion

Expressing outrage at ISIS’ perversion of his religion, Dalil Boubakeur,┬áthe chairman of the Grand Mosque of Paris, said, “It is absolutely necessary” to send troops┬áagainst the group’s stronghold in Syria.

Republican hopeful Ted Cruz announced┬áthe formation of a “national prayer team”┬álast week.

The Church of England finds this lack of faith disturbing. Ahem.

This week NPR spoke with Pastor Russell Moore and Rabbi David Wolpe about how religious Americans are navigating the Syrian refugee crisis.

RNS’ Cathy Lynn Grossman reviews the film “Spotlight,” which chronicles┬áthe journalists who exposed Boston’s Catholic sex abuse scandal.

The weekly report on the SPI Coalition

by Johnny Monsarrat

Do you crave even more secular news? Of the Secular Policy Institute’s 300 coalition members, many have newsletters or even a print magazine that you can subscribe to. There are far too many to list in a short article, but here are a few of the gems!

Coalition member Atheist Alliance of America prints Secular Nation four times a year. In their winter issue, read the secular viewpoint on race relations, Secular Judaism, an analysis of Christian Rock music, book reviews, and even a recipe.

The Skeptics Society, whose focus is conspiracy theories and superstition in medicine and other areas of life, publishes Skeptic Magazine. This month’s issue features a report on┬áAlfred Russel Wallace, the man who would have discovered evolution if not for Charles Darwin. You’ll also find book reviews and an overview of the abuses of Scientology.

Coalition member The Freethinker is┬áa monthly British┬ásecular humanist magazine, published online only. Founded in 1881, it is┬áthe world’s oldest secular publication. This month’s issue features a Church of England request for more public money, surely a violation of separation of church and state. In Australia, their version of the Boy/Girl Scouts may drop the need to believe in God.

Many other coalition members, such as The Freethought Society, have newsletters with articles similar in high quality to members with magazines. Freethought Society leader Margaret Downey asked us to mention that November 25-30 you can get discounted travel by bus to the 2016 Reason Rally through this website.

Also see Technoprog, the French transhumanist blog, and so many others on the Secular Policy Institute’s coalition members page.

The weekly report on secular research and demographics

by Johnny Monsarrat

An update to this year’s Pew Study on the demographics of religion gives a breakdown by racial category of Americans and their religiousness. Only 68% of those with no religious affiliate are white, with Latinos being the second largest nonbelief race, with 18%.

Of course, most Hindus are South Asian, and most Jewish people are white, but did you know that Jehovah’s Witnesses are only 36% white? Even the Mormons, whose church had┬áa policy against ordaining black men to the priesthood, and forbidding black men and women from taking part in ceremonies┬áup to 1978, is now 15% non-white.

See the entire study at pewforum.org.

The weekly report on the SPI Fellows

by Johnny Monsarrat

SPI Fellow Thure Cerling, a professor at geology, geophysics, and biology at the University of Utah, has found that African mammals diets have switched over time. Some mammals switched between grazing on grass to grazing on trees and shrubs, or went extinct in the attempt to switch diets. Learn more at Phys.org.

Did you know that one of our fellows is a major science fiction author? SPI Fellow Gregory Benford is not only a two-time winner of the Nebula Award and winner of the John W. Campbell Award, he also won the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature.

Dr. Benford is faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.  He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine.

Taslima Nasreen

And see the video posted this week of SPI Fellow Taslima Nasrin’s speech,┬áWhy Secularism is Necessary for Women’s Freedom, at the┬áWomen in Secularism III conference┬áin Alexandria, Virginia, USA. She┬áis a Bengali author and former physician who has lived in exile since 1994, due to threats coming from her criticism of religion.

 

Religious leaders and believers are debating whether or not the United States should welcome Syrian refugees. It is not surprising that the Muslim community in this country would be supportive of the influx of new Muslim refugees, but the two other Abrahamic faith traditions seem to be beside themselves on this issue. There are Christian leaders and believers who quote the Bible both for and against allowing Muslim refugees into America. Jewish leaders are similarly conflicted especially because Jews and Muslims have a pretty violent conflict going on in the Middle East, and yet American Jews are also sympathetic because of their history from the last century of being the refugees after the Second World War.

I’m sure there are atheists on both sides of this debate as well. I can’t speak for the entire atheist community because atheism isn’t a shared belief system with a shared holy book or shared doctrine. It is merely the lack of belief in an idea that has absolutely no evidence and seems to fly in the face of logic and reason.

Read more >

Weekly Numbers and Demographics Report

by Deanna Cantrell

My mother always said, ÔÇ£little pictures have big earsÔÇØ when referring to children and how one should behave around them.┬á ItÔÇÖs quite true, children are like sponges, they soak up their environments and observe the world around them.┬á This is the primary way they learn.┬á Theists often say that morality comes from religion, implying that nontheists are amoral.

A new study set out to measure altruism in children.┬á The sample size was 1,170 children aged between 5 and 12 years in six countries (Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, USA, and South Africa), the religiousness of their household, and parent-reported child empathy and sensitivity to justice. Across all countries, parents in religious households reported that their children expressed more empathy and sensitivity for justice in everyday life than non-religious parents. Is this wishful thinking, or do they see what they want to see?┬á This is because religiousness was found to be inversely predictive of childrenÔÇÖs altruism and positively correlated with their punitive tendencies.┬á Together these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences childrenÔÇÖs altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior.

The data

In the sample, 23.9% of households identified as Christian, 43% as Muslim, 27.6% as not religious, 2.5% as Jewish, 1.6% as Buddhist, 0.4% as Hindu, 0.2% as agnostic, and 0.5% as other. Results from an independent samples t test, comparing altruism in children from religiously identifying (Msharing = 3.25, SD = 2.46) and non-religiously identifying (Msharing = 4.11, SD = 2.48) households indicated significantly less sharing in the former than the latter (p < 0.001). To further investigate these effects within specific religions, three large groupings were religious identification on meanness rating (F(2, 767) = 6.521, p = 0.002, h2 = 0.017; Figure 3). Post hoc Bonferroni-corrected paired comparisons showed that children in Muslim households judged interpersonal harm as more mean than children from Christian (p < 0.005) and non-religious (p < 0.001) households, and children from Christian households judged interpersonal harm as more mean than children from non-religious households (p < 0.01).

Moreover, children from religious households also differ in their ratings of deserved punishment for interpersonal harm (F (2, 847) = 5.80, p < 0.01, h2 = 0.014); this was qualified by significantly harsher ratings of punishment by children from Muslim households than children from non-religious households (p < 0.01). There were no significant differences between children from Christian households and non-religious households.  Religiousness positively predicted parent-reported child sensitivity to injustice and child empathy, even after accounting for age, SES, and country of origin (bstandardized = 0.194, p < 0.001; bstandardized = 0.89, p < 0.01, respectively).

Results from a univariate analysis of variance, with parent-reported justice sensitivity as the dependent variable and religious identification as the independent variable and age, SES, and country of origin as the covariates, revealed a significant main effect of religious identification on childrenÔÇÖs justice sensitivity (F(2,795) = 15.44, p < 0.001, h2 = 0.04; Figure 4). Children from Christian households were significantly higher in parent-rated justice sensitivity than children from Muslim households (p < 0.001) and non-religious households (p < 0.001).

What does this mean?

The study found that children who come from religious households are not only less altruistic, they also call for harsher penalties when they have been harmed.┬á Imagine that:┬á that old biblical eye for an eye message may be causing some harm.┬á Further study is required on this subject with larger sample sizes, however, this does bode well for nontheists.┬á Altruism is costly to self, there is no inherent reward.┬á It could be argued that theism is based around a model that emphasizes reward.┬á So, when no reward is offered the propensity for do-gooding decreases.┬á Dan Barker recently said during a speech, ÔÇ£Believers are outspired whereas nonbelievers are inspired.ÔÇØ┬á What he meant was theists find their inspiration and instruction from a book, nonbelievers find our inspiration and direction from within.