by Richard Dawkins Donald Trump was surely right when he said, in 2012, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy . . . A total sham and a travesty”. And he confirmed his sensible view on November 13th, 2016 (after winning the election by the Electoral College system, but losing the popular vote) …

Richard Dawkins 24 Oct 2017   I had tweeted an invitation to attend lectures in various parts of Britain by Saba Douglas-Hamilton, who grew up among wild African elephants while her father, Iain Douglas-Hamilton was conducting his pioneering studies of their ecology and behaviour, and he and his wife Oria were fighting the poachers. Saba’s …

By Mike Wall A rare trio of supermassive black holes has been caught in the act of coming together. Three of the light-gobbling monsters nuzzle shoulder to shoulder in SDSS J084905.51+111447.2, a system of three merging galaxies about 1 billion light-years from Earth, a new study reports. “We were only looking for pairs of black holes at the time, …

By Graham Lawton Few scientists have acquired such a high public profile as Richard Dawkins – and maintained it amid such controversy. His first book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, launched him to fame as a populariser of evolutionary biology. Eight books and 30 years later, he wrote The God Delusion, which reinvented him as …

By Yonat Shimron Nineteen academic organizations, including the American Academy of Religion, have signed a letter to the U.S. Department of Education objecting to its investigation into a Middle East studies program run jointly by the University of North Carolina and Duke University. Last month, the department ordered the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies …

By Hemant Mehta In an article for The Atlantic, writer Derek Thompson recognizes the rise of the non-religious. In 1990, we were roughly 8% of the U.S. population. By 2000, we were 14%. By 2010, 18%. It’s about 23% now. It keeps going up and there’s no sign of the trend slowing down. What Thompson wants to know is …

By Rafi Letzter Are we running out of time to stop climate change? Nearly a year has passed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that limiting global warming to the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) mark by the end of the century — a goal set to stave off the worst impacts of climate …

By Alex Bollinger Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are trying to ban marriage equality, and one of them got so upset at a constituent complaint that he told the constituent to “tell it to Satan.” State assembly Republicans in North Carolina are trying to pass HB 65, also known as the Marriage Reaffirmation Amendment Act. …