Creatinism in Crisis - When Were Humans Given an Immune System?

Viruses in circulation

What happens in our body when we encounter and fight off a virus like the flu, SARS-CoV-2 or RSV?

Having tested positive for COVID-19, I thought I would spend a little time finding out more about what's going on inside my body right now.

But the research has collided with the work I normally do in exposing the absurdity of creationism in all its guises and the futility of trying to force-fit real world evidence into origin myths made up by people from the fearful infancy of our species who thought Earth was just a small flat disc with a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out, centered on the Canaanite Hills where they hearded their goats, told their camp-fire tales of magic sky-gods and imagined it was all made just for them.

What occurred to me is the problem creationists would have if they knew enough about the subject and weren't too afraid to question their cult dogmas. For example: The standard creationist excuse for all the nasty little parasites such as viruses, bacteria, etc., is that they are the result of 'sin' which entered the world because of 'The Fall' (so betraying the fact that creationism isn't the science their cult leaders pretend, but religious superstition after all).

It always amuses me how cult leaders like Michael J. Behe make a big issue of the 'irreducible complexity' of bacteria such as E coli as evidence that creationism putative designer must have designed them, only to have them dismissed on another day in a different argument, as the creation of another 'evil' entity - 'sin'.

But with creationism, the tactic is to use whichever argument will work on the current audience, regardless of if consistence of intellectual integrity.

Incidentally, blaming 'sin' flatly contradicts the claim in the Bible that God told Isaiah that He created evil because he created everything.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)

So, either God lied to Isaiah or Isaiah lied in the Bible - or creationist cult leaders are lying to their cult.

But let's forget that bit of Bible awkwardness and think things through a little more:

Humans were allegedly created before 'The Fall' so would have had no need for an immune system, which is our defense, imperfect though it is, against the parasites 'sin' created after 'The Fall'.

So, were we given an immune system after 'The Fall'? There is no mention of a major redesign in the Bible, but wouldn't it have been simpler for the creator to have forgiven Adam and Eve and stopped 'sin' creating these things in the first place? And of course, most multicellular species also have an immune system which wasn't needed before 'The Fall'.

Or, if he was really going to need to have himself sacrificed later in a blood offering first why did he wait several thousand years? Why couldn't he impregnate Eve, have Adam do the dirty deed and solve the problem there and then?

Or did he omnisciently anticipate what would happen and design immune systems for the (future) parasites right from the start? If so, he must have anticipated 'The Fall' and the creative powers of 'sin', including details of what it would create, and being omnipotent, could have stopped it.

Anyway, those are just a few of the many problems that creationism causes for itself by trying to fit reality into such an absurd myth, like trying to ram a large square peg into a small round hole, without changing its shape in any way.

Here then is the account of how our immune system tries, often unsuccessfully because it isn't very efficient, to cope when an infection enters our body. It is an article from The Conversation by Lara Herrero, Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, and Wesley Freppel, Research Fellow, Institute for Glycomics, both of Griffith University, Australia. It is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Crucifiction News - What Took Christians So Long to Depict The Crucifixion?

Crucifiction News

What Took Christians So Long to Depict The Crucifixion?

The Crucifixion by Andrea Mantegna, painted between 457 and 1459
The central panel of an altarpiece for church of San Zeno, Verona, Italy

The Louvre, Paris

The Crucifixion by Giotto di Bondone (c 1303-1305)
Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy

The crucifixion gap: why it took hundreds of years for art to depict Jesus dying on the cross

As it is Easter, when Christians traditionally celebrate the repugnant notion of vicarious redemption through the blood sacrifice of a supposedly innocent person, I thought it would be good to examine the whole notion of the crucifixion of the legendary founder of the Christian religion, Jesus.

What I'm not going to do is point out the glaring and irreconcilable inconsistences in the accounts of the crucifixion and the alleged resurrection, which betray the fact that any pretense to be eye-witness accounts are just that - pretense.

If you want more information on that you're more than welcome to try the Easter Challenge to see if you can resolve the accounts into a coherent narrative incorporating all the alleged events.

The Easter Challenge

The origins of Easter have nothing to do with the alleged crucifixion of course, being based, at least in part on the Roman festival of Hilaria:

For example, the timing of Easter is determined by the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which was also an important time in the Roman calendar. The Roman festival of Hilaria, which was held in honor of the goddess Cybele, was celebrated around the same time as the vernal equinox and involved parades, feasting, and gift-giving.

Reference:

• "The Origins of Easter" by Mark Cartwright, Ancient History Encyclopedia: https://www.ancient.eu/article/1294/the-origins-of-easter/
• "Easter" by Christine M. Tomassini, Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday
• "The Pagan Roots of Easter" by Jennifer Billock, History: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/history-of-easter-origins-of-easter-traditions

ChatGPT. (2023, April 9). What are the Roman origins of Easter?
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat

The name 'Easter' comes from the Old English 'Ēastre', the name of an Anglo-Saxon festival celebrating the spring equinox which was used by the Christian Church as the arbitrary date of the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, which has as much basis in fact as the supposed date of his birth, i.e., none at all.

Perhaps the first thing to point out about the story is its unlikelihood.

Jews and Arabs Descended from Canaanites - Biblical Archaeology Society

Canaanite relief in basalt depicting a lion and a lioness at play, 14th century BC, from Beit She’an, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Credit: Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany,
CC BY-SA 2.0
via Wikimedia Commons

Jews and Arabs Descended from Canaanites - Biblical Archaeology Society

In their book, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts, Tel Aviv University archaeologists, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman conclude from the archaeological evidence that the history of the Jews in the Old Testament, including that in Exodus, is almost entirely invented; the Jews arose in situ from indigenous Canaanites, carving out the states of Israel and Judah on land peripheral to the Bronze Age Canaanite city states as these faded during the Early Iron Age.

The invented history simply reflects the rivalry between these closely related populations and, as with all invented histories, shows those writing them to be the superior group, having stunning victory after stunning victory over their rivals, whom they always totally vanquished and annihilated and enslaved, and having the superior tribal god(s). The stories were invented to give retrospective justification for genocide and land-theft and invariably exaggerated them, as we can see from the fact that there are descendants today of these supposedly totally annihilated tribes.

Another Bible Bloomer - God's Law is Unjust!

Stone 'em, I say! It's the only language these women understand!

The author of the Gospel of Matthew is a bit like a fireship launched into the wind, the way he blunders about stupidly off message and making the Bible stories about Jesus look even more absurd. I think of it as Matthew's Silly Bible. It's a wonder his effort got included in the Bible at all when it was being compiled. It had obviously been read with about as much thought as it was written with.

Here's another of his blunders - he tells us that God's Laws are not just laws, as in laws designed to give justice.

First, God's Law as it relates to pre-marital sex and adultery, especially if a husband finds his wife has played the field a little.

The Christmas Challenge

Have a great Yule!

Here's a nice little game for Christmas for Christian families. You can play it with your children, with the grandparents and maiden aunts who come for dinner, with friends and other relatives who might pop by with season's greetings. It involves really studying the two gospels in the Bible which mention anything to do with the birth of Jesus and on which the modern Christmas tradition is based.

All you have to do is take all the facts mentioned in the two versions and weave them together into a single narrative describing all the events and facts mentioned.

Remember, as a Christian, you believe Jesus was the son of God born of a virgin, and that the Bible is God's inspired word, so all the facts mentioned must have happened as described.

What could be simpler?

To help, I'll summarise the stories. You can use the Bible if you prefer and aren't familiar with the stories as they appear in the Bible rather than the traditional Nativity plays. I'm using the King James 'authorised' version. If you don't have one I've provided handy links.

Oops! Another Bible Blunder

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.

Jeremiah 7: 21-23

---

And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD: and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces. And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire: And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar: But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.

Leviticus 1:1-9

So which of these is the truth? Is the account in Leviticus 1 of God talking to Moses concerning burnt offerings, correct, or is Jeremiah right to say that God did NOT give any such command?

Or are we expected to just believe two mutually contradictory things simultaneously in order to believe that the Bible is the word of a god, and not a poorly edited and inconsistent collection of various writings of different people following different agenda at different times?

---

Jesus Is Risen - And Pigs Can Fly!

As though the idea of Jesus being born specially to saved us from his father's anger with a blood sacrifice isn't bizarre enough, Christians would have us believe that his death was only for a few days and that he rose again, ascended into Heaven and is still alive to this day. One wonders what the point of dying in the first place was, but enough has probably been said on that already.

Let's now look at the rose again and ascended into Heaven part.

The evidence for this is to be found where? You've guessed it; in the Bible which was written by people who wanted you to believe Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and is still alive. No other evidence exists outside the Bible and no contemporaneous written accounts of it appear anywhere in any records or any non-biblical sources whatsoever.

Will The Real Jesus Please Stand Up.

Which is the real Jesus?

Is he the one who:

• was born when Quirinius was Governor of Syria (6-12 AD) (Luke 2:2)
• or the one born when Herod the Great was King (37-4 BC) (Matthew 2:1)?

Is he the one whose adopted father Joseph was:

• the son of Heli (Luke 3:23)
• or the son of Jacob (Matthew 1:16)?

I Can't Believe It! The Bible Is Made Up!

Death of Moses (James Tissot)

Just look at what we find in Deuteronomy 34:1-7!

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho.  And the LORD shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the South, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.

And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.  And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.  And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

Hmm...

So, if we're to believe all the Christians and Jews who tell us Moses wrote the Pentateuch, including Deuteronomy, we have to believe Moses wrote about his own death.  Even the great Jewish historian, Josephus, tells us that Moses wrote it.  Josephus is the historian Christians quote as the earliest existing 'evidence' for Jesus.  They tell us his authority is beyond dispute.

Hmm...

Thomas Paine

Rather than go into the obvious problem here myself, I'll quote Thomas Paine who says it far more eloquently than I could:

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, (for it is not an anonymous work), is obscure, and also in contradiction with himself, in the account he has given of Moses.

After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not appear from any account that he ever cam down again), he tell us that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab; but there is no antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was that did bury him.  If the writer meant that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it?  or why should we (the reader) believe him? since we know not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself tell us where he was buried.

The writer also tells us that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which the writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, as is evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day... "

"... The writer has nowhere told us how he came by the speeches which he has put in the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have the right to conclude, that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from oral tradition.  One or the other of these is the more probable, since he has given in the fifth chapter a table of commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is different  from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter in Exodus....

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason. 1795

So, as Thomas Paine has clearly shown, Moses could not have written Deuteronomy at least, and the laws Christians and Jews believe were given directly by their god to Moses, and which he wrote down, are nothing more than oral traditions at best and just made up by the Bible's real authors at worst.

And so the entire body of Old Testament biblical law, including all the food taboos, dress codes, marriage laws, proscribed punishment for transgression, etc, has no divine authority at all. It is nothing more than an oral tradition later written down or even the invention of one or more writers writing long after the events they were describing.

And all the genocides, child abuse, misogyny, sanctimonious homosexual condemnation, racism and war crimes supposedly ordered by this god are nothing more than retrospective self-justifications for antisocial acts and attitudes and attempts to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own actions.

And the entire foundation of both the Jewish and Christian religions has collapsed. All because of a few careless words in the Bible and poor editorial control.

You really would have expected an omniscient god to make a better job of it than that, wouldn't you?

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.

Holy Moses! Another Bible Blunder!

Holy Moses, Meek and Mild

Everyone knows that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, don't they? You know, the first five books of the Bible which includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Ask any Christian and they'll tell you Moses wrote those. Even the laws in them are called the Laws of Moses or the Mosaic Laws. That great Jewish historian, Josephus even confirmed it and all Christians will tell you what a reliable historian he was. He even 'proved' Jesus was real, so they claim...

But what's this we find?

(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)

Numbers 12:3

Blimey! If Moses wrote that about himself, that wasn't very meek of him. In fact, the terms 'vain' and 'arrogant' are more apposite. There'll be no inheriting the earth for him!

So what's going on here? Is Moses lying or is that someone else writing about him?

If it's someone else, who is it? There's no mention anywhere of Moses having a personal scribe who wrote everything down, including all the laws the Bible says Moses heard God speak unto him.

So, was it all made up later and the story about Moses writing it is just a lie, or is Moses lying about being 'very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth' when really he was vain and arrogant?

And if it WAS all made up later, so were the laws which supposedly God gave directly to Moses. They are just the work of the author and have no divine authority whatsoever... Oops! Crikey!

What a Bible Blunder! You'd have thought an omniscient god would be a little more convincing than that wouldn't you. (Tweet this)

I expect Bible literalists have a sensible explanation and can clear it all up for us.

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.

Jesus the Sinner

Baptism of Jesus - looks like there was some difficulty pushing him under.

Listening to his supports you'd think Jesus was pure and free from the sin we are all supposed to have inherited along with our humanity. Mary was free from sin, having been 'immaculately conceived', and was still a virgin when he was born, and Jesus' father was God, so he wasn't contaminated by any inherited paternal or maternal sins, so Jesus was free from sin, so we are told.

But was he?

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins

---

And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in Jordan.

Mark 1:4-9

So, if John was "preaching baptism of repentance for remission of sins" and part of that baptism was confession of sins, why did John need to baptize Jesus?

Obviously, the author of Mark thought Jesus was a sinner who needed to confess those sins and repent, and who are we to disagree... (Tweet this)

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.

Set a Trap to Catch a Fool

In Psalms 14:1 credulous believers are handed a useful slogan to use in lieu of rational thought: The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

They're handed another in Proverbs 26:11: As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

You'll see Christian fundamentalists especially, still using these today, presumably assuming their targets are equally credulous.

And yet in Matthew 5:22 we see: ...but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire

Blimey!

I wonder what possessed God to set this trap to catch the foolish bigots who haven't read the Bible but like to pretend they have.

And not so much as a hint of an escape clause... Nasty! Lucky it's just a story, eh?

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.

The Ancestor's Likely Tale.

LUKE 2.3-4. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

So, Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem because Joseph was descended from David, who lived about 1000 years earlier.

Obviously it was different for Joseph but I have a father, two grandfathers, four great grandfathers, eight great great grandfathers, 16 great great great grandfathers, etc.

With some four generations a century, forty in a thousand years, that gives me 1,099,511,627,776 (i.e. over 1 trillion) male ancestors who lived about 1000 years ago.

But, isn't that more than the population of the earth now, let alone then?

Okay, allow for a few marriages between cousins, second cousins, etc and say only a billion or so. Still more a than the population of the earth 1000 years ago. Well, let's be generous and say marriage between cousins, second cousins, third cousins, cousins once removed, etc, was common place and say I probably only had about a million, or maybe just a few hundred thousand male ancestors.

And I don't know anything about a single one of them with any certainty. Some of them could have been people we know about. It would be surprising if a few weren't. Apparently, most of us Europeans are descended from Charlemagne I, and a lot of us from Genghis Khan but most of them would have been complete nonentities who left no mark on history other than the genes they passed on and which eventually found themselves in me. (Thank you very much).

With that many ancestors, I could probably pick practically any town or village in England and probably most of Europe and a good deal of Central Asia, and claim it as my ancestral home.

But not so for Joseph, if we're to believe the Bible. Joseph only has ONE male ancestor from 1000 years ago, and he knew who that was and where he lived. He was King David from Bethlehem.

So too did the Roman authorities, it seems. How else would they check that no one had cheated and just popped down to the nearest town? And they knew it for everyone else in Judea, who also knew their (only) remote ancestor's home town. This is record-keeping far above what any modern, bureaucratic state can accomplish.

Blimey!

Can YOU name all the towns all your ancestors from 1000 years ago lived in? Do you know any of those ancestors' names?

A mystery, eh? No doubt Christians can explain this curious puzzle...

Twinkle, Twinkle.

Now here's a conundrum.

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Matthew 2:9-10

So, this star stood over where the child was!

Don't take my word for it. Go outside tonight, go some distance from your house and find a star that's over your house but not over any other.

In fact, make it easier... find a star that's over your town and not over any other...

I wonder how the 'wise men' managed it.

Still. I can't see anyone getting away with a silly tale like this nowadays.

---

I Know It In My Heart

How did the authors of the Bible understand the function of the heart?

... and thou the mightiest know the thoughts of thy heart

Daniel 2:30

---

... thou didst set thine heart to understand...

Daniel 10:12

---

The pride of thine heart has deceived thee...

Obadiah 1:3

---

Why reason ye these things in your hearts?

Mark 2:8

---

... and shall not doubt in his heart...

Mark 11:23

---

And Jesus perceiving the thoughts of their hearts...

Luke 9:47

---

Why are ye troubled and why do thoughts arise in your heart?

Luke 24:38

Quite clearly, they believed the heart is where thoughts occur and emotions are felt.

We now know that the heart is a muscular pump and its function is to pump blood round the body to supply it with nutrients and oxygen and to remove waste via the lungs, kidneys and liver. We now know that thinking is done in the brain. Curiously, the word 'brain' is nowhere to be found in the KJV Bible! You would have thought the Creator of Life would have known how its creation worked, yet even Jesus would have failed basic Anatomy and Physiology it seem.

I wonder how the Creator got things so hopelessly wrong... (Tweet this)

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.