Creationism in Crisis - Witnessing Events Even Further Back In Time

JADES-GS-z14-0

JWST (NASA)

The distant galaxy (circled) sits next to, but far behind, another galaxy

Earliest, most distant galaxy discovered with James Webb Space Telescope | University of Cambridge

Hot on the heels of the news that scientists had witnessed the birth of a galaxy some 13.4 billion years ago, or shortly after the Big Bang, comes news of the discovery of an even earlier galaxy being witnessed through the medium of the James Webb Space Telescope looking deeper into space and so further back in time.

Readers may remember how I described witnessing an event billions of years ago, information about which took 13.4 billion years to reach us, is no less witnessing an event than is witnessing an event a few picoseconds ago in the same room; the only difference being the time that information of the event took to reached our eyes, or in the case of a space telescope, the on-board detectors.

Creationism in Crisis - A Rainbow On Another Planet! Did God Flood That One Too?

WASP-76b showing its 'glory'

© ESA, work performed by ATG under contract for ESA.
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Each glory is unique, depending on the composition of the planet’s atmosphere and the colours of the light from the star that illuminates it. WASP-76 (the «Sun» of WASP-76b) is a yellow and white main sequence star like our Sun, but different stars create glories with different colours and patterns.

© ESA, work performed by ATG under contract for ESA. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

CHEOPS detects a "rainbow" on an exoplanet - Medias - UNIGE

Scientists working at the CHEOPS space telescope control centre in the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the University of Bern (UNIBE), have discovered something which should ring alarm bells in the minds of Bible literalists.

It is the discovery of a rainbow in the atmosphere of an exoplanet known to science as WASP-76b.

WASP-76b is an exoplanet discovered in 2013 and confirmed in 2016 by a team of astronomers led by Neale P. Gibson using data from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project. It belongs to the class of exoplanets known as "hot Jupiters," which are gas giants similar in size to Jupiter but with much higher temperatures due to their close proximity to their parent stars. Here are some key characteristics of WASP-76b:

1. Discovery: WASP-76b was discovered using the transit method, which involves observing the slight dimming of a star's light as an orbiting planet passes in front of it. This dimming effect is periodic and can be used to infer the presence and characteristics of the planet.
2. Physical Characteristics: WASP-76b is approximately 1.8 times the size of Jupiter but significantly more massive. It has a high surface temperature, estimated to be around 2,400 degrees Celsius (4,350 degrees Fahrenheit). This extreme heat is due to the planet's close orbit around its host star, WASP-76, which is located about 640 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces.
3. Atmospheric Composition: One of the most intriguing features of WASP-76b is its atmospheric composition. Observations using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile revealed the presence of iron and titanium vapor in the planet's atmosphere. This finding is significant because it provides insights into the atmospheric chemistry and physical processes occurring on hot Jupiter exoplanets.
4. Extreme Conditions: The extreme temperature and atmospheric conditions on WASP-76b make it an inhospitable world, unlikely to support life as we know it. Its atmosphere is thought to be dominated by high-speed winds and extreme atmospheric dynamics, which may lead to unusual weather patterns and atmospheric phenomena.
5. Importance for Exoplanet Research: WASP-76b is one of many exoplanets discovered in recent years that are helping astronomers better understand the diversity of planetary systems beyond our solar system. Its unique atmospheric composition and extreme conditions make it a valuable target for further study, particularly in the field of exoplanet atmospheres and planetary formation theories.

Overall, WASP-76b represents a fascinating example of the diverse range of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy and provides valuable insights into the atmospheric characteristics and physical processes occurring on these distant worlds.

The reason this should set alarm bells ringing in the minds of Bible literalists, is because they believe that 'the' rainbow was sent by the god of the Bible to show believers that he wouldn't ever inflict another genocide on the planet because, although being omniscient and perfect, he regretted the time he did it in a fit of temper and flooded the planet to a depth that covered the highest mountains.

Or so the tale goes.

Before about 4,000 years ago, obviously, sunlight wouldn't have been diffracted into its component colours by passing through raindrops, or so those who didn't understand how rainbows are formed wrote.

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

Genesis 9: 8-17

Apparently, God is so forgetful that he needs the rainbow to remind him not to lose self-control and commit genocide again.

But the question for creationists is, did God commit genocide on another planet too and put a rainbow there to remind him not to do it again? If not, how do rainbows form on another planet if they only appear on Earth because God puts them there?

If he did commit genocide on another planet, this means there must have been life there too, yet WASP-76b is far too hot to sustain life as we know it, being a 'hot' Jupiter-like gas giant which orbits its sun (WASP-76) closer than mercury orbits ours.

How this discovery was made is the subject of a news release by the University of Geneva:

Superstition News - How Belief in God(s) Evolved in Human Culture

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

Christian church service

Why Do People Believe in God? | Psychology Today

From the point of view of an Atheist like me who realised religion was nonsense at the age of 9 and have been an atheist ever since, the fact that grown adults believe in a magic man in the sky who magically makes things happen does seem incredible.

It gets even more incredible that grown adults believe that, although omniscience and having a perfect plan for our individual lives, he needs to be told of bad things that need to be changed because he either doesn't know they're happening or doesn't know they are wrong.

And yet, for most people in the world, the answer seems obvious: Because it’s self-evident that God exists. From the point of view of the believer, the really puzzling question is how anyone could not believe.

Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan

So why do so many grown adults believe in at least one god, or if they're Hindu or Shintoist, or one of the other polytheist religions, several gods?

According to a 2018 article in Psychology Today by David Ludden, PhD, professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College, religion is an evolved feature of human culture and there was a time when people didn't believe in gods.

In his article he makes the following key points:

• Early in the history of humans, nobody believed in a god of any sort.
• Religious belief is considerably lower in developed countries compared with the underdeveloped world.
• Believing that God has a plan helps people regain some sense of control, or at least acceptance.

Old Dead Gods - What Does The Cerne Abbas Giant Depict And When Was It Created?

Aerial view showing the field below the giant and the “herepath” curving up onto Giant Hill from the bottom right,
Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England.

Photo: Pete Harlow, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Cerne Abbas Giant, Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England.

Photo: Ray Gaffney. © National Trust.

Uncovering the mystery of Dorset’s Cerne Giant

The thing about most of the ancient monuments and hill markings like the Uffington White Horse after whom the district of Oxfordshire I live in was named, is that no-one knows what religion the people who made them believed in or how, if indeed it did, their religion inspired (or required) them to create these monuments. I have written extensively about monuments such as Stonehenge, Durrington Walls, Silbury Hill, Avebury Stone Circle and West Kennet Long Barrow as example of how little we know about these ancient people and their religion(s) because these ancient monuments stand as testament to the transient and ephemeral nature of gods and religions on the scale of human history.

Unlike science, which, if some disaster befell humankind and all memory of a major science were expunged from memory, could be reconstructed from basic principles because it describes reality, religions, once lost and forgotten are lost forever because there is nothing substantial upon which to found a rediscovery. The entire edifice of religion is unsupported and insubstantial, being nothing more than collective imaginings and handed-down stories and myths, dependent entirely on faith to sustain them in the absence of evidence.

Religion News - People Who Believe Absurdities Will Commit Atrocities!

The blood sacrifice on which the Christian religion is founded

Why Religions Seem to Involve Outlandish Beliefs | Psychology Today

It's axiomatic that people who can believe absurdities can be persuaded to commit atrocities.

One only need look at the history of just about every world religion to know that is especially true of people who hold to religious beliefs, yet most religious people will look at other religions and wonder how on Earth they can believe that nonsense, while having no understanding why others who look at their beliefs have the same thoughts.

How many devout Christians, for example, would find nothing strange in the belief that the sun was swallowed each evening by the goddess Isis, who then gave birth to it every morning or that ancient Celtic chiefs physically mated with the Earth goddess at Tara to unite the Irish people with the land they lived on?

Yet those same Christians have no difficulty believing that the blood sacrifice of an innocent person can atone for collective 'sins' inherited from ancient ancestors or that the dismembered bodies of ancient holy men can somehow persuade a god to change his perfect plans for their better one, or an omniscient, omnibenevolent god needs to be told about a wrong and why if should be righted, or a mind-reading god needs to be told their thoughts.

And a Moslem who believes the founder of their religion split the moon in half and flew to Heaven on a magic flying creature finds it incomprehensible that saying prayers to a painting of an ancient holy man or priest can change the direction of the universe, or that the prohibition on 'graven images' doesn't apply to gold-covered icons or depictions of a god nailed to a stick, worn by people who believe tiny images of a blood sacrifice or miniature instrument of torture worn around their neck protects them from evil spirits?

There are even people who believe the sun can be made to perform strange maneuvers in the sky while no-one else on Earth noticed it and without Earth itself needing to suddenly change its speed and direction of rotation or orbital path round the sun. Even the leaders of a major branch of Christianity, with a whole panel of expert scientific advisors, believe that really happened and continue to send people to Fatima where it is alleged to have happened - just one of the many equally implausible and evidence-free beliefs orthodox Catholics needs to hold.

Even coeliac suffering Catholics can believe a piece of wafer, when the right spells are cast over it, miraculously becomes the body of a dead god to be consumed in a cannibalistic ritual, while knowing they need to avoid eating it to avoid the consequences of gluten intolerance! That's a condition of belonging to a cultural group called 'Catholics'.

Abiogenesis News - Going! Going! Gone! - How Creationism Favourite Gap Just Got Smaller

Geothermal hot spring in Haukadalur Valley, Iceland

ancient hot springs - Press Office - Newcastle University

Hardly any debate about evolution with a creationist will go more than a few exchanges before the creationist gives up trying the traditional fallacies and avoidance tactics and falls back onto ground he or she feels safer on - abiogenesis - with the demand that you explain how the first cell arose fully developed, with the parrot squawk assertion that 'you can't get life from non-life'.

But ask them to define 'life' and they'll break off the debate because it's a term creationists think involves something that science can't explain, but they've no idea what it is or why it should present science with a problem. Ask them to explain how dead food becomes living tissue through the process of digestion and metabolism, if it's impossible, and you probably won't hear from them again.

The gap creationists are trying to shoehorn their favourite creator god into is what they've been programmed to believe is unclosable by science, so it must have been done by the locally popular god. They will of course be unaware of the fallacy of the false dichotomy because it's probably what someone fooled them with, so they just assume it'll work on everyone else.

Cult News - Constantine I - The Not-So-Christian Self-Idolatrous Roman Polytheist

Constantine I, or Constantine the Great.
Roman emperor from 306 to 337 AD.

Cult Mentality: SLU Professor Makes Monumental Discovery in Italy : SLU

Tell me all about Constantine I of Rome. Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman Emperor who ruled from 306 to 337 AD. He is often credited with being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity and played a crucial role in the history of the Roman Empire, particularly in the transition from paganism to Christianity. Here are some key points about Constantine I:

1. Early Life: Constantine was born on February 27, around 272 AD, in Naissus (present-day Niš, Serbia). He was the son of Constantius Chlorus, who was a Roman army officer, and Helena, who is believed to be of humble origin.
2. Military Career: Constantine began his military career under the rule of Emperor Diocletian. He rose through the ranks and eventually became a military tribune.
3. Tetrarchy: The Roman Empire was divided into four parts (the Tetrarchy) by Emperor Diocletian to make governance more manageable. Constantine's father, Constantius Chlorus, was one of the Tetrarchs.
4. Rise to Power: After the death of his father in 306 AD, Constantine's troops proclaimed him emperor. This led to a series of civil wars as various claimants vied for power.
5. Battle of Milvian Bridge (312 AD): Constantine's most famous victory was at the Battle of Milvian Bridge against Maxentius. According to tradition, Constantine had a vision of a cross in the sky with the words "In hoc signo vinces" ("In this sign, you will conquer"). Constantine adopted the Christian symbol, the Chi-Rho, and won the battle.
6. Edict of Milan (313 AD): Constantine issued the Edict of Milan along with his co-emperor Licinius, granting religious tolerance to all religions in the Roman Empire, effectively ending the persecution of Christians.
7. Foundation of Constantinople: In 330 AD, Constantine inaugurated a new capital for the Roman Empire, which he called Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). This city played a significant role in the history of the Byzantine Empire.
8. Council of Nicaea (325 AD): Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea, which aimed to address theological disputes within Christianity. The council produced the Nicene Creed, a statement of Christian faith.
9. Christian Conversion: While Constantine is often considered the first Christian Roman Emperor, the exact nature and timing of his conversion remain debated among historians. Some suggest that he only converted on his deathbed, while others argue for an earlier and more gradual conversion.
10. Death: Constantine I died on May 22, 337 AD. He was baptized shortly before his death.

Constantine's reign marked a turning point in the history of the Roman Empire. His support for Christianity had a profound impact on the development of the religion and its eventual establishment as the dominant faith within the empire.

If he convened the Council of Nicea in 325 AD doesn't this suggest he had already converted to Christianity? Also, what is the connection with York, England?

The relationship between Constantine's conversion to Christianity and the convening of the Council of Nicaea is a matter of historical debate. While some sources suggest that Constantine may have converted to Christianity before the Council, the exact timing and nature of his conversion remain unclear. Some historians argue that his conversion was a gradual process, and he may have fully embraced Christianity closer to the end of his life.

Regarding the connection with York, England, Constantine the Great is associated with the city in the context of his proclaimed father, Constantius Chlorus. Constantius Chlorus, who was a co-emperor and the father of Constantine, died in York (then known as Eboracum) in 306 AD. After his death, Constantine was proclaimed emperor by his troops in York, marking an important point in the series of events that would eventually lead to his rise to power.

The historical records are not entirely clear about whether Constantine was present in York when he was proclaimed emperor. The primary sources that describe his elevation to emperor, such as the "Origo Constantini Imperatoris" and the "Panegyrici Latini," do not explicitly mention Constantine's physical presence in York at the time of his proclamation.

The general narrative is that Constantine was with his father, Constantius Chlorus, in Eboracum (modern-day York) when Constantius died in 306 AD. Following Constantius's death, the troops in York proclaimed Constantine as emperor. However, it's not explicitly stated whether Constantine was physically present in York during this proclamation or if he was elsewhere.

It's worth noting that Constantine's connection to York is more related to his father's activities and death in the region rather than significant events in Constantine's own life. Nevertheless, York acknowledges this historical connection, and there are some sites and monuments in the city that commemorate Constantine and his father.

The Roman emperor Constantine I, or Constantine the Great, is hailed by Christians as the first Christian emperor and the man who single-handedly converted the Roman Empire to Christianity. But the facts were as usual, different to the narrative promulgated by the Christian Churches.

Certainly, he was instrumental in turning what had been a minority cult into the official religion of the empire but it was Diocletian, some 70 years later who made it official and launched a vicious campaign of repression designed to eradicate all religions and all sects of Christianity which didn't conform to the State Dogma.

Constantine was, however, not so much a devout Christian as a man who liked to hedge his bets. He supported any and all religions of the empire, including the worship of himself as God-Emperor, and only accepted Christian baptism on his death bed. Evidently, he thought he had found favour with all the other gods of the Empire, but just wanted to make sure in case the Christians were right. A form of Pascale's Gambit that includes all the gods, just to be on the safe-side, because, as we all know, gods can easily be fooled by pretending to believe in them, even ones that claim to be the only god.

Now a team of archaeologists led by Professor Douglas Boin, Ph.D, of Saint Louis University, Missouri, USA have unearthed evidence that shows Constantine was as keen to promote non-Christian sects as to promote Christianity. The evidence is in the form of a temple to Constantine and his ancestors, the Flavian family in the hill town of Spello, about 20 miles from Assisi and about two and a half hours from Rome. The inhabitants had applied to be allowed to celebrate a pagan religious fezrival in Spello rather than travel all the way to another festival site. Building the temple was Constantine's condition for granting them their wish.

A St Louis University News release explains the find and its significance:

Superstition News - Why Religions Are Mass Superstitions

Top: Buddhism
Bottom: Hinduism

Center: Catholic Christianity

Top: Islam (Sufism)
Bottom: Orthodox Judaism

Aztec human sacrifice ritual
(cf. the Christian blood sacrifice, or crucifixion)

3 Reasons Why Superstitions Work | Psychology Today

In an article in Psychology Today, as part of a series on magical thinking, American psychologist, Dr Mark Travers, PhD, explains why people are superstitious. It's clear from his explanations that religions perfectly fit the definition of superstition and the reasons people are superstitious also explains why people are religious.

I've précised his article below and added my own commentary to show how his definition and explanation of superstition fits the definition of religion and explains religious rituals.

Key points:

• There are deep psychological reasons why many people engage in superstitions.
• Superstitions can give people a sense of control or comfort.
• They can also serve as personalized coping mechanisms.

First, his definition of superstition:

Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality, where certain actions, objects, or rituals are believed to bring about specific outcomes, whether good or bad. While some may dismiss superstitions as irrational, there are deep psychological reasons why many engage in such beliefs. The enduring allure of superstitions transcends time and culture, offering insights into our desire for control and order in a chaotic world.

Creationism in Crisis - How We Can Tell The Bible Is Not The Work Of The God Described in It

A creator god would not have got so much wrong when it tried to describe the world it had created and described is as though it knew no more than a parochial Bronze Age pastoralist who knew almost nothing and had to rely on guess-work and folkloric superstitions from the fearful infancy of our species.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

The universe from descriptions of it in the Bible.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1: 6-10.

How the Universe really is, as revealed by science:

Creationism in Crisis - No-One Mourns For The Old Dead Gods of Arabia - Part 2

The landscape of the mustatil; at the time the mustatil was built, the area was likely wetter than it is today.

Image credit: Wael Abu-Azizeh et al. 2022/RCU

Mirrored building at the ancient al Ula Maraya archaeological site, Saudi Arabia

7,000-year-old animal bones, human remains found in enigmatic stone structure in Arabia | Live Science

Archaeologists are uncovering evidence of religious rituals in Norther Arabia, 3000 years before creationists believe Earth and humans were created!

Creationists love to point to the fact that all cultures, ancient and modern, tend to have religion as a central element to the culture, as though that fact somehow proves the locally popular god is real.

Of course, it also points to the fact that we have evolved to 'fail safe' and assume agency where there is none, to naively believe what our parents believe, to accept simplistic answers to complex questions and find it impossible to imagine total oblivion at death.

But, ask a creationists to explain why we should accept the locally popular god is the only real one and all the ancient gods are false, and they will probably cite much of that list as reasons why they had false beliefs, stopping short of going just one god (or one pantheon) further and applying that logic to their own god(s), citing all sorts of nebulous reasons why they believe in their particular god(s).

The team found animal horns from a variety of animals, including cattle and caprines, or animals in the goat family, at the site.

Image credit: Wael Abu-Azizeh et al. 2022/RCU

So, it must be embarrassing to realise that those nebulous reasons were very probably cited by believers in those ancient gods as 'proof' that they existed.

Did the sun not rise in the morning because they had performed the right rituals? Did the crops not fail when they had failed to chant the right prayers in exactly the right way at the right time, or had broken the rules in some other way?

Did the gods not reward them by helping them prevail in battle or punish them for an assumed transgression when they lost a battle?

And could they too not 'look at the trees' and marvel at the wonders their gods had created? And did their priests not also have the power of prophesy and claim they heard the god(s) speaking to them?

One thing we can be sure about is that belief in their god(s) was a strong motivation for rituals associated with life, death and probably animal husbandry, as it is for believers today. The evidence for that is in the artifacts they left behind as discovered by archaeology, such as that currently going on at al Ula in the Ashar Valley in Northern Arabia, where researchers have now discovered evidence of ritual sacrifice and burials in the remains of stone structures known as mustatils, which are believed to have been used for religious purposes.

To add to the embarrassment for creationists, these structures have been dated to about 7,000 years ago, i.e., some 3,000 years before Earth and humans were created!

Regular readers may recall how the archaeological site in Northern Arabia, close to the Fertile Crescent was the subject of a blog post here last March. Now the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCA), set up to investigate the site, has produced an update. It concerns the remain, both animal and human, found in some of the graves associated with the buildings.

As the RCA news release reports:

Creationism in Crisis - Stuff the Authors of Genesis Never Even Guessed At

Creationism in Crisis

Stuff the Authors of Genesis Never Even Guessed At

A view of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies from the James Webb Telescope.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Creationism in Crisis

Stuff the Authors of Genesis Never Even Guessed At

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope

New map of the universe’s cosmic growth supports Einstein’s theory of gravity

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), Chile

It has been said that, like the Qur'an, if the Bible were discovered for the first time today, we could date it accurately by the scientific ignorance in it.

There is no hint of knowledge about Germ Theory, electricity, atoms, photosynthesis, thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics, gravity, or dark matter and dark energy, anywhere in the Bible, unless you stretch the meanings of words beyond breaking point and add things that are not there.

It's as though the authors knew no more than the little that was already known at the time and didn't realise that much of what they thought they knew was fundamentally wrong. But you would expect a creator god who wanted us to believe it knew everything and most importantly, had a vital message for mankind, would have included something new and even something useful - like electricity or antibiotics, for example, but it couldn't even describe the scientific method, let alone a null hypothesis or the need for controls in an experiment.

So, it took until the early part of the 20th century for a scientist to discover that matter and energy are interchangeable because they are different aspects of the same thing, and so why planets orbit suns and Earth has enough gravity to stop us and the atmosphere floating off into space. Einstein’s discovery of Relativity is now a fundamental of cosmology and theoretical astrophysics.

Superstition News - Why Do People Fall For Wackadoodle Ideas?

Superstition News
Why Do People Fall For Wackadoodle Ideas?

Supernatural beliefs have featured in every society throughout history. New research helps explain why

It seem the 'God of the gaps' explanation carries a great deal of weight, especially as an explanation for natural phenomenon such as disease, drought, floods, earthquakes, etc., in smaller societies. Only as societies get larger are these supernatural explanation used to explain man-made disasters such as war, theft, mass murders, etc.

It's also true that, while developed societies such as the USA tend to look for supernatural explanations for man-made disasters, they also, with better education tend to look to science to explain natural phenomena and less so to imaginary supernatural causes.

The result is that the search for gaps in which to sit their god becomes an obsession of those who benefit from people's superstition, such as fundamentalist televangelists and Creation cult leaders, who continually attack science looking to find gaps, either real or imaginary in which to sit their ever-shrinking god and keep the income stream flowing.

Quite why there should be a difference between larger and smaller societies is discussed in an article by Dr. Joshua Conrad Jackson, postdoctoral fellow, Kellogg School of Management, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and Professor Brock Bastian, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia.

The article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.

Wacky Woo News - The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Starseeds: psychologists on why some people think they're aliens living on Earth

P.T. Barnum, the 'Greatest Showman' and half-owner of Barnum & Bailey Circus reputedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute".

Sometimes though, especially reading the comments of Creationists and religious fundamentalist in the social media, that would seem to be on the conservative side, with tens, or even hundreds, of millions apparently believing in magic and evil demons; that evidence is forged; that scientists are all evil, mad and part of a vast conspiracy; that reality is an illusion, but not to them, and that inerrant knowledge just pops itself into their brain if they have an open mind, so the best expertise comes from pristine ignorance. I've even had a Creationist tell me that Jesus tells him what to believe, curiously, it always coincides with what Ken Ham tells him to believe.

So what is the psychology behind these wackadoodle fantasy beliefs, other than the acute manifestations of clinical psychosis?

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Favourite Sadist is Spreading Antimicrobial Resistance

Genomic analysis of sewage from 101 countries reveals global landscape of antimicrobial resistance | Nature Communications

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists realised the value of analysing the sewerage outflow from major population centres to monitor the prevalence of the virus and its variants in the population. This technique can also be used to monitor microbial prevalence and variants such as antimicrobial resistance.

Now a team of researchers at the Danish Technical University (DTU) has used data from these analyses to produce a map of microbial resistance at the level of resistance genes, rather than of resistant species.

From a Creationist perspective, what this is measuring is how well their pestilential malevolence is doing in its arms race against medical science to ensure its pathogens retain their ability to make us sick.

The results of the meta-analysis were surprising in that it showed the same genes were present in different species and in different places, indicating that exchange of genes between species is more frequent and extensive than was previously thought.

From the DTU News release:

Religious Superstition News - Continuing Widespread Belief in Witchcraft

Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis | PLOS ONE

A map showing country-level prevalence of witchcraft beliefs around the world.

Boris Gershman, 2022, PLOS ONE, (CC-BY 4.0)

The belief that certain individuals, often as the result of possession by demons, have the power to suspend the laws of nature at will and make unnatural events occur, sometimes with the casting of magic spells but often with a look, still persists even in some technologically advanced economies.

This is revealed in a database, newly-compiled by Boris Gershman, associate professor of economics, American University in Washington DC, USA, and published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

Belief in witchcraft, demons and the power of magic words and/or thoughts to control natural objects and forces is just another manifestation of the teleological thinking of childhood which causes Creationism, and to some extent, religion when retained in an adult. It is based on the assumption that everything, including atoms, molecules and forces such as gravity have a personality and are sentient, so can be controlled by words and telepathically by thoughts ,and that there is a magical entity 'somewhere out there' who is controlling everything telepathically, or making laws which force them to comply.

A History of Bizarre Beliefs.

There is, of course, no evidence to support that notion which has been part of human culture since the fearful infancy of our species, when a belief in evil magic seems a rational explanation for diseases that are now known to be caused by poisons, parasitic organisms, genetics, physiological disorders, dietary deficiencies or surfeits, etc - explanations which don't require magic and supernatural forces.

Unintelligent Design - One Hand Doesn't Know What The Other Is Doing

The FISH image - FISH stands for a visualisation method called fluorescence in situ hybridisation - shows amoebae infected simultaneously with the Viennavirus (for the first time isolated in this study and therefore named by the research team) and the bacterial symbiont. In the image, the amoebae are shown in magenta, their symbionts in cyan and DNA in yellow. The larger yellow structures are the virus factories, which are still in the initial phase here and cannot produce infectious viruses.

Credit: Patrick Arthofer

Bacteria provide immunity against giant viruses

Here we have a very nice example of the reality of biology that devotees of the childish intelligent [sic] design notion, must either ignore or explain away as an unexplained mystery if they are to retain their childish superstition.

Similar example abound in nature, when one looks beneath the superficial of course, as I showed in my popular book, The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting The Intelligent Design Hoax, but this is an especially nice one.

It involved an amoeba, a bacterium - chlamydia - 'designed' to infect the amoeba, and a giant virus, also designed to infect the amoeba. The problem is, when the amoeba is infected with chlamydia, it gains protection against the giant virus. This was discovered by scientists from the University of Vienna, Austria, and the Université de Poitiers in France, led by microbiologist Matthias Horn from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science at the University of Vienna.

Giant viruses are unique in that they are several times larger than normal viruses and contain genes normally only found in cellular organisms such as bacteria, animals, plants and fungi. Fortunately, they are harmless to all but Protista such as amoebae which they infect then takeover to turn them into virus factories. Their only purpose seems to be to kill amoebae and produce more giant viruses. Biologists believe the reason for such a large, relatively complex virus is due to an evolutionary arms race between the virus and chlamydia, each vying for control of the host amoeba. The exact evolutionary pathway remains to be worked out, but it looks like another example of horizontal gene transfer.

Chlamydia are infectious bacteria which infect many species, including humans where they are a serious, sexually transmitted pathogen. The species that infects amoebae is closely related to the human pathogen and normally takes up residence in the amoeba where is slows down growth. In that respect it behaves like a parasite, but it also behaves like a symbiont when it protects the amoeba against infection by the giant virus.

So, let's just summarise what intelligent [sic] design advocates have to believe. This is based on the assumption that a designer such as the one believed in by Creationists, i.e. an omniscience, omnipotent creator god, would have known exactly what its creations would do, so designed them for that very purpose and no other:

Stunning Success for Science as First Webb Telescope Images Released.

President Biden Reveals First Image from NASA’s Webb Telescope | NASA

Webb’s first deep field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

While fundamentalist religions based on Bronze Age superstitious ignorance still struggle to reconcile their beliefs with scientific realities, science has progressed to the point where we now can take photographs of deep space, revealing details of which the superstitious founders of religions would never have even dreamed.

The first images from NASA's newly commissioned Webb telescope were released yesterday by President Joe Biden. They show the teeming thousands of galaxies in the galaxy cluster, SMACS 0723. Each of these thousands of galaxies in this one cluster, like the Milky Way galaxy, will contain trillions of suns, many of which will have orbital planets similar to those in the Solar System. This image is even more astounding when you realise that the area of the sky it shows, as seen from Earth, would be covered by a single grain of sand, held at arm’s length!

Evolution News - How the Cephalopods Evolved

The Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) is a model system for studying animal-bacterial symbiosis.

Credit: Tom Kleindinst

Squid and Octopus Genome Studies Reveal How Cephalopods’ Unique Traits Evolved | Marine Biological Laboratory

The cephalopods - octopuses, squids and their relatives - are often cited by creationists as something that can't be explained by mainstream evolutionary theory because they, allegedly, have a unique genome. I have even known creationists claim they prove special creation because their favourite creator god created them as a different lifeform. Mind you, I have also known people committed to other wackadoodle notions, claim that they are 'alien' species that arrived on Earth in alien spaceships.

Of course, they are, like all other classes of organisms on Earth, the result of an evolutionary process and there is nothing about their genome that can't be explained in other than standard biogenetic terms. They have exactly the same genetic 'code' as all other life on Earth.

However, that's not to say they don't have some unique characteristics, as these latest papers in Nature Communication show.

As the University of Chicago, Marine Biological Laboratory news release accompanying the two papers explains:

Crisis? What Crisis? Scientists Work Out How Mitochondria Evolved

A white blood cell ingests rod-shaped bacteria (pink) in this micrograph. Legionella bacteria probably evolved to exploit this system about 2 billion years ago.

Ancestors of legionella bacteria infected cells two billion years ago | Press release - Uppsala University, Sweden

One of the mysteries of evolutionary biology was how and when complex (eukaryote) cells acquired mitochondria. Now scientists at Upsala University, Sweden, believe they have solved that problem.

They have discovered that, soon after eukaryotes began to feed on bacteria by phagocytosis (swallowing them whole and digesting them internally) the ancestors of legionella bacteria evolved the ability to exploit this system and live as parasites inside the cells, as early as two billion years ago.

They also believe they have solved one of the chicken-and-egg conundrums in evolutionary biology - which came first, phagocytosis, which requires energy to digest the phagocytosed organisms, or mitochondria, which supply the cell with energy. Some scientists believe that the cell would need mitochondria to supply enough energy for phagocytosis. However, this finding appears to show that phagocytosis was the process by which mitochondria were acquired. This of course, explains why eukaryotes soon evolved a symbiotic relationship from what almost certainly began as a host-parasite relationship. The benefits were so great.

The Upsala team published their findings, open access, in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution last February.

Evolution News - How Evolution Transformed a Common Ancestor's Genes to Make Snake Venom and Human Saliva

Venoms in snakes and salivary protein in mammals share a common origin | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

Here is an interesting paper for at least two reasons:

Firstly, for people who understand evolutionary biology, there is the evidence of common origins in that the genes for producing venom in snakes are also present and produce related proteins in mammals, albeit non-venomous proteins.

Secondly, for Creationist victims of the Intelligent [sic] Design Hoax, there is the complete reliance by the biologists who wrote it on the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection for the explanation, with no hint whatsoever that the imminent collapse of the TOE and its abandonment by science in favour of intelligent [sic] design, or whatever the latest product Creationist frauds are trying to sell their target marks as an alternative to genuine science is, as has been predicted (any day now real soon!) by Creationist frauds, since about 1940. In fact, what would be a historic first where an established scientific theory is replaced by a guess with no supporting evidence, looks about as likely (and as nonsensical) as that of the QAnon 'coming storm' or the return from the grave of John F. Kennedy, Jnr. to overthrow the Biden presidency and reinstall Trump in the Oval Office.