Declining Faith - The Fall Continues

Catholic Research Forum Reports 3 - The 'no religion' population of Britain | The Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society

Yet more confirmation, if any were needed, that Christianity in particular and religion in general are still declining rapidly in the UK. This report by The Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, launched by St Mary's University, Twickenham, has shown that for every one person moving from no religious affiliation ('None') to affiliation with a Christian church, twenty-six leave the Christian faith and identify themselves as 'Nones'.

How Creationists Lie To Us - Zuul crurivastator

Life restoration of Zuul crurivastator.

Credit: Danielle Dufault © Royal Ontario Museum

New ankylosaurine from Montana | Open Science

The discovery by palaeontologists of one of the most complete fossils of an ankylosaurine dinosaur which they have named Zuul crurivastator is interesting to creationists only in that it can be misrepresented as evidence of a very young Earth and of the idiotic notion that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. The problem of dinosaurs for creationists is that they are evidence of a very old Earth with life having gone through lots of stages with diversification and extinctions commonplace tens of millions of years before humans evolved. They thus refute the myths and invalidate the Bible's account of creation. So, creationists are desperate to mislead their followers about this evidence.

Stupid Designer - Oak Joke

It always amuses me how creationists often resort to "It's all around you! You only have to open your eyes and look!", when asked for evidence of design in nature.

The simple truth is that if you really open your eyes and look, you find abundant evidence of stupidity in 'design' in nature. Even leaving aside the obvious evidence of callous indifference to suffering which if it were evidence of intent, would also be evidence of grotesque malevolence, there is abundant evidence 'all around you' that there is only dumb, unthinking and unplanned... I was going to say stupidity, but even that implies some sort of inept intent and culpability. It's just unthinking; literally mindless!

Walking our grandson to school this morning we came across this tree in the photographs. From the leaves and bark it looks to me like a species of oak. It's not the usual English oak, so I don't know what species it is, but the species isn't important. What is important is the fantastically wasteful method is uses to reproduce. Who in their right mind would regard this as an intelligent design?

Over it's lifetime, a tree needs to produce just one tree for the population to remain stable. Just a single tree over a lifetime of maybe a couple of hundred years!

You would expect good design to be efficient design. Who in their right mind would buy bread from a baker who is so bad at baking bread that you need to buy two, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of loaves, just to get a slice that's fit to eat?

Moral Compass - Ohio Televangelist Used Slaves

Televangelist and Slave Owner, Ernest Angley

Televangelist Ernest Angley ordered to pay $388,000 for using unpaid labor at Cuyahoga Falls buffet | cleveland.com

The finest old Christian traditions are being maintained in Cuyahoga Falls, Akron, Ohio, USA!

Unfortunately, a federal judge, Benita Pearson, didn't agree that he had a right to own slaves and ordered televangelist preacher, 95 year-old Ernest Angley, to pay $388,000 to his victims. Judge Pearson ruled that Angley and his managers at the Grace Cathedral Buffet had put undue pressure on members of his church to work as volunteers in his for-profit restaurant to save money, so they were entitled to be paid for their labour.

The Same Old Appeal For Special Priviledges

Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, and Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby
Co-signatories of the letter

Church of England Election Letter

In an astonishing letter to "The Parishes and Chaplaincies of the Church of England", the Archbishops of Canterbury and York came as close as they dared to urging Christians to vote Conservative.

This is not because Conservatives under Theresa May or any other leader have shown any compassion for the poor and sick or subscribe to any notions of the essential equality of Man, quite the opposite in fact, but because they see this as the best way to maintain and extend their 'entitled' special privileges and assumed right to discriminate against the minorities of their choice.

How Xenophobia Evolved

Overt xenophibia, used during the United Kingdom EU referendum.

Subconscious fear of infection may explain skepticism towards immigrants - ScienceDaily:

Xenophobia, one of the most irrational and destructive of human emotions, may have an evolutionary basis as a defence against infection, so argue scientists from Aarhus University, Upsala, Sweden in a published in American Political Science Review yesterday.

It is readily understandable how an aversion to excrement and putrefaction evolved, even evolving olfactory mechanisms which interpret the scents given off as repulsive. It is maybe not quite so easy to understand why some people at least overreact and are repelled by such signs of difference as physical deformity, birthmarks, skin colour and dress and yet these reactions are strong enough and commonplace enough to prevent successful integration of immigrant and refugee populations. The internal immune system, which attempts to cope with potential pathogens once they have gained access to our bodies, is supplemented by a behavioural immune system which helps prevent infection in the first place. The authors argue that this is an overreaction of a hypersensitive behavioural immune system.

Bonobos Refute Creationism!

Bonobo, Pan paniscus.

Credit: iStock

Bonobo anatomy reveals stasis and mosaicism in chimpanzee evolution, and supports bonobos as the most appropriate extant model for the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans | Scientific Reports

A paper published a few days ago is bound to cause a frenzy of denialism amongst creationists of all varieties and not just because of the length of its title. It appears to confirm what many people have suspected for a very long time - that the closest living relative of Homo sapiens is the bonobo, Pan paniscus.

In fact, in some respects the difference between humans and bonobos is less than the difference between different varieties of creationist. Creationism has been evolving and diversifying at warp speed since its invention in the 19th century in response to the discovery by science of biological evolution.

Now the differences are so wide it's difficult to find two creationists who agree on anything very much. They can't agree on such basic as whether evolution occurs at all, whether it occurs at a fantastic speed or slowly, how intelligent an intelligent (sic) designer would need to be, how well or badly the evidence fits old religious myths, whether there is any value in scientific evidence. They can't even agree on what shape Earth is, how old it is and whether it orbits the sun or the sun orbits Earth.