The jingle bells are getting louder, but we are still hard at work here in the offices of ILYBYGTH International, scouring the interwebs for stories of interest. Here are a few:

Are our brains really hard-wired to deny the facts if they disprove our biases? A review of the literature at The Economist.

• What do these studies have to do with the durability and popularity of young-earth creationism? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Among white voters, only the evangelicals are still solid for Trump, at CNN.

Red Votes

• Where did all the white evangelical voters go? Trump tower. Here at ILYBYGTH.
• And Trump 2016 didn’t have the support of 80% of white evangelicals anyway, says Justin Taylor at TGC.

When a prophet came to office hours, at Righting America.

From the “do-we-really-care-about-this” department: A defense of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” at TS.

The dangers of authority in fundamentalist institutions…

The saddest part of all might be the fact that it comes as no surprise: Rampant sexual abuse and assault at independent fundamental Baptist churches, at ST.

For decades, women and children have faced rampant sexual abuse while worshiping at independent fundamental Baptist churches around the country. The network of churches and schools has often covered up the crimes and helped relocate the offenders, an eight-month Star-Telegram investigation has found. More than 200 people — current or former church members, across generations — shared their stories of rape, assault, humiliation and fear in churches where male leadership cannot be questioned.

• The long, ugly history of sex abuse at “Fundamentalist U,” here at ILYBYGTH.

James Fallows on the shouting match in the Oval Office, at The Atlantic.

Secretary Zinke presides over a “monumental disaster” as leader of the Department of the Interior, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. At LAT.

Among the up-is-down, night-is-day practices of the Trump administration, one of the most dangerous and disturbing is its habit of turning America’s leading science agencies into hives of anti-science policymaking.

The Southern Baptist Seminary acknowledges its slave-owning history, at NYT.

“The moral burden of history requires a more direct and far more candid acknowledgment of the legacy of this school in the horrifying realities of American slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racism, and even the avowal of white racial supremacy,” wrote R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of the seminary, which is now in Louisville, Ky.

Steve Bannon: “I’m still a thing!” at USAT.

Why not spend more on vocational ed? At NYT.

• Because voke ed is too often code for unequal opportunity, here at ILYBYGTH.