Look What Christianity Is Used For!

Pastor Idowu Olupinla, founder of Cherubim and Seraphim Church

Pastor arrested for operating underage prostitution cartel inside church - Premium Times Nigeria.

Satan used children against me – Pastor found with 13 girls in sex harem.

Following on from the canonization yesterday of the sadistic Albanian nun and friend of poverty, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (aka Mother Teresa) showing how Catholic Church leaders exploit the gullible credulity of their followers for their own nefarious purposes, come two news items from Nigeria showing how the same tendency to abuse power for personal gain is not restricted to the bigger and more organised churches.

Mother Teresa's Second Miraculous Miracle.

Falsehoods & Fairy Tales: Whatever It Takes To Make A Saint Out Of Mother Teresa

As 'Honest' Pope Frankie prepares to elevate the sadistic nun, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (aka Mother Teresa) to the Catholic sainthood it is worth looking at the second 'miracle' that is being attributed to her and used as the pretext for this bizarre Medieval ceremony.

The details of the alleged 'miracle' have been kept under wraps for reasons which will become understandable and have only recently been made public. Even the identity of the alleged subject was kept secret until he came forward recently to claim the fame and fortune which will undoubtedly accrue to him in the superstitious parts of the world.

How We Know Science Works

Babylonian cuneiform containing the trapezoid formula

Credit: M. Ossendrjver/British Museum

Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiter’s position from the area under a time-velocity graph | Science

The great thing about science is that it works.

It works because it is firmly rooted in reality and so is reproducible and repeatable. This means that no matter who is doing it or when, or what the cultural setting is, done properly, the result should be the same.

The same can be said of mathematics, of course. It doesn't matter how many times you do the maths, who does it or when, the answer will be the same providing the maths is done correctly.

Abiogenesis May Have Been Easier Than We Thought

The stromatolites in figure a are from Greenland; those in c and d are younger stromatolites from Western Australia. Figure b shows the layers created by microbes as they formed the Greenland stromatolites (blue lines). ‘Stroms’ are several overlapping stromatolites.

Source: Guardian
Photograph: Nature

Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures | Nature | Letters.

How quickly did life 'take off' on Earth?

The answer to this question is probably relevant to the likelihood that life will be found on other suitable planets too because it it happened quickly on Earth this suggests the process was not the vastly unlikely event that creationists try to present it as but a process (or processes) that can happen in just a few hundred million years if not even more quickly.

Yes, I know that a few hundred million years is not a short time but, compared to the 4.5 billion years or so that Earth has been around, it is during Earth's early childhood. It also suggests that Earth was not the hot, inhospitable, volcano-strewn and desiccated ball of rock that it was once thought to be but that it settled down quite quickly to be closer to what we have today (sans life, initially, of course). It also brings the early Mars within the timescale over which life could have arisen there at a time when Mars was thought to have been suitable, complete with liquid water, atmosphere, etc.

The discover of these stromatolites in Greenland rock pushes the earliest age at which cellular life was known to exist on Earth with a fair degree of certainty back to 3.7 billion years ago from the previous earliest known evidence dated at 3.48 billion years old found in Australian rocks.

Devilishly Rapid Evolution!

Rapid evolutionary response to a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils : Nature Communications : Nature Research

Readers may remember a post from last December about the sad decline of Tasmanian devils due to a highly contagious and almost invariaby fatal facial cancer that was devastating their already low numbers. Now, however there is some slightly better news - the devils are rapidly evolving under this intense selection pressure to become resistant to this cancer.

Evolution Planting Life on Land

A 410-million-year-old soil shows extensive rhizome traces of Drepanophycus

Photo credit: Jinzhuang Xue, Peking University

A 410-million-year-old soil shows extensive rhizome traces of Drepanophycus, an early vascular plant related to modern club mosses.

Photo credit: Jinzhuang Xue, Peking University

Belowground rhizomes in paleosols: The hidden half of an Early Devonian vascular plant

Evolution and ecology are one and the same really because ecology is all about how species adapt and interrelate to form a complete system of interdependent organisms. Without evolution none of the interdependent organism could fit into their particular niche and compete with other organisms for resources. So, evolution created ecosystems and ecosystems drive evolution.

But in the early days of life on Earth, before life emerged from the oceans where it had first evolved and diversified, there was no ecosystem as such on land, so how did the first emerging life manage to eke out an existence and what reason did it have to go there in the first place?

Now scientists believe they may have found how an early plant, related to the club mosses, may have created its own ecosystem by interaction between its rhizomes and silt-laden floods. Rhizomes are

A Transitional Pterodactyl!

Cranial endocast and comparison of brain anatomy in pterosaurs.
(A, B), Volume-rendered CT-based reconstruction of the braincase of the holotype of Allkaruen koi, in dorsal (A) and left lateral (B) views (the bone is rendered semitransparent to show the cranial endocast and the inner ear). (C–H), schematic drawings of brain anatomy in Rhamphorhynchus (C, F), Allkaruen (D, G), and Anhanguera (E, H) in dorsal (C–E) and lateral (F–H) views. Colors (C–H) indicate equivalent brain regions (blue, cerebrum; green, optic lobe; yellow, cerebellum; red, floccular process of cerebellum; pink, semicircular canals). The horizontal black line shows the relationship between the dorsal expansion of the anterior semicircular canal and the forebrain. Abbreviations: asc, anterior semicircular canal; cer, cerebral hemisphere; de, dorsal expansion; f, frontal; floc, floccular process of cerebellum; lab, labyrinth of inner ear; lsc, lateral semicircular canal; lag, lagena; ob, olfactory bulb; oc, occipital condyle; ol, optic lobe; pbt, basipterygoid process; pit, pituitary body; psc, posterior semicircular canal; sc, sagittal crest. Roman numerals indicate cranial nerves. Brain anatomy of Rhamphorhynchus and Anhanguera modified from Witmer et al. (2003). Scale bars are 10 mm.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2311/fig-6

A Jurassic pterosaur from Patagonia and the origin of the pterodactyloid neurocranium [PeerJ]

It's always rewarding to watch creationists try to cope with something they claim shouldn't be there when it quite clearly is there and can be seen to be there. One thing they can't do however is admit reality because reality is the one thing that undermines their evidence-free and reality-denying dogma.

There shouldn't be any transitional fossils because transitional fossils show evolution so, so the 'reasoning' seems to go, all those transitional fossils can't be there because evolution doesn't happen. So, this latest discovery of a transitional fossil between two different orders of aerial reptile will need to be explained away somehow.

News of the discovery was published in a press release by the online journal PeerJ:

Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation and belonged to a new species of pterosaur from the Early Jurassic. The researchers have named this new species ‘ Allkauren koi’ from the native Tehuelche word ‘all’ for ‘brain’, and ‘karuen’ for ‘ancient’.

"Lucy's" Fall Reconstructed

Lucy's fall reconstructed

Lucy's fall

Perimortem fractures in Lucy suggest mortality from fall out of tall tree | Nature.

About 3 million years ago a creature midway between a chimpanzee-like ape and a human being fell out of a tree and died of her injuries.

This creature was the best known of some 300 specimens of a species now known to science as Australopithecus afarensis, a species which is one of the candidates for being the direct ancestor of the Homo genus. She is known to the worlds as 'Lucy'.

Americans Leaving Religion Because of Science

Why some Americans left religion behind | Pew Research Center

New figures released by the Pew Research Center have revealed something interesting going on in the American religious profile and they make dismal reading for those trying to cling to the belief that religion shows little real sign of a major decline in the USA comparable to that in Europe and elsewhere.

They suggest the traditional American attachment to religion, which has made America such an outlier in the general distribution of religious belief and how it has changed over time, may be waning and even on the point of a major shift. It appears to be heading in the same direction that has seen a massive rejection of religion in the rest of the developed world.

Kamikaze Confirmation

Kamikaze (divine wind), Issho Yada

How a typhoon sank Kublai Khan | Science | The Guardian:

Why do so many Americans believe in the Judeo-Christian god compared to most Western European countries?

Although religious affiliation and belief in any god are both falling in the USA according to recent research, America still lags about a generation behind Western Europe in its rejection of religion. Percentage figures of 80% plus for belief in god and in the upper 60s for the importance of religion in their lives are typically returned for US surveys while the equivalent in UK, France, Holland and even formerly staunchly Catholic Ireland and Spain are typically under 50% and 30% respectively.

God Hates Pastor Tony Perkins!

Pastor Tony Perkins. Christian hatemonger.

US pastor, who believes floods are God's punishment, flees flooded home - BBC Newsbeat

Now, I don't believe in all that karma nonsense and I know it's unkind to laugh at a fellow human being's misfortune, but there is a certain delicious poetry about this story.

Pastor Tony Perkins is well known for trying to make gays and women who have had abortions feel uncomfortable with his hate speeches using his religion as an excuse. In 2015 he agreed with extreme Messianic Jewish pastor Jonathan Cahn who told him that Hurricane Joaquin, which devastated Hawaii last year, was a "sign of God's wrath". He is President of the controversial Christian group 'Family Research Council'. Never one to be deterred by mere facts when in need of a good smear, he also preaches that paedophiles are homosexuals (or is it that homesexuals are paedophiles?)

The Pattern-Recognising Ape

Mt Susitna. Looking west across Cook Inlet from Anchorage, Alaska, USA.

Photo: Bob Jones

If humans are good at anything we are good at recognising things.

In fact we are so good at it that we see lots of things that aren't really there. Take a good look at this picture. What do you see, other than a very beautiful vista of a low mountain range seen over water. It is a view of Mt Susitna seen from Anchorage, Alaska, USA but it is supposed to look like a familiar object from which it gets it's popular name.

Can you see it? Don't cheat but have a good go. What do you see when you look at that scene - other than the obvious?

Anti-Atheists Tend To Have Low IQ!

Psychologists find correlation between low IQ and anti-Atheist prejudice.

Answering Unresolved Questions About the Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Prejudice.

Americans who are prejudiced against Atheists tend to have a lower than average IQ, according to research published in the Journal of Social Psychology and Personal Science a couple of weeks ago.

The research was conducted on a representative sample of 5,914 Americans by Mark J. Brandt, Department of Social Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherland and Jarret T. Crawford of The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ, USA. The paper sits behind a paywall but according to a press release by the Society for Personal and Social Psychology:

Blame The Victim - Girl Killed By (Lack Of) Faith!

Woman Dies after Prophet Puts Heavy Speaker on Her Body to Demonstrate a Miracle

In a neat demonstration of a fundamental Christian principle, allegedly taught personally by Jesus to his followers, a South African Christian 'prophet' killed one of his congregation - a young girl - because she didn't have enough faith.

Or that was his excuse anyway - an excuse provided by Jesus no less. The principle being demonstrated was the one Christians often cite, claiming that with enough faith you can move mountains, even though a mountain has never been seen to be moved by faith alone.

Rotten Tomatoes For Creationists

Virus Infection of Plants Alters Pollinator Preference: A Payback for Susceptible Hosts? | PLOS Pathogens

If you're a virus using and inevitably damaging your host in order to get yourself replicated you have a few problems to overcome.

First, there is the problem that damaging your host makes it less likely that it'll breed as successfully as non-infected hosts. Secondly, your host's genome will be at an advantage if it develops genes which make it resistant to you. So, you'll inevitably find yourself in a wasteful evolutionary arms race unless you can find a way round these two problems.

The Silly Miracle of Santiago de Compostela

The real miracle of miracles is that anyone ever believes them. By definition a miracle is something which allegedly happened but for which there can be no scientific explanation. The problem with that definition is that it is self-defeating. If there can be no scientific explanation there can be no scientific evidence for it.

An almost identical problem exists for very many Christian saints, all of whom are claimed to have performed miracles either before or after death. Most of them also contrived to die in miraculous ways, often in ways which provided a plentiful supply of body parts with which to consecrate future cathedrals and to channel the prayers of the faith to God, Jesus or Mary via the saint's Heavenly remains.

In many cases however, the miracle of saints is that people believe such unlikely tales in the first place, but this was never a problem for the Medieval Christian church because truth could be determined by fiat and what the church said had the sanction of God so became unquestionable truth. The legend behind Santiago (early Spanish form of the Latin Sanctus Iacobus (James)) and the pilgrim routes to his shrine at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, simply beggars belief. There is not a single shred of evidence that any of it is true; not a single document, eyewitness testimony, inscription or written reference or even allusion to it in any contemporaneous record. The legend only appears to have emerged in about 800 CE.

Environment, Elms and Evolution

Dead or dying English elm sapling.

Go into the English countryside right now and you could see a major ecological change occurring. I saw this example on a walk earlier today with my grandson. This change started in about 1976 or 1977 and is continuing still.

What you will see in most hedgerows at least in Southern England will be the sad sight of English elm saplings succumbing to Dutch elm disease and quickly turning their leaves brown and dying. Around them you will very likely see what look like perfectly healthy smaller elm sapling.

When Dutch elm disease first struck in the mid 1970 it altered the English landscape as massive elms that had stood for a century or more along the side of our country lanes and whole woods of elms quickly turned brown and died in August. It looked in places like Autumn had come a full two months early. Many feared that the elm was doomed and frantic efforts were made to conserve a few trees by annual 'injections' of fungicide to kill off the culprits (there are three related ascomycete microfungi which cause the disease).

But the English elm didn't die out completely. Instead it became a hedgerow plant as young saplings sprang up from the roots of the old dead trees. Spreading by root suckers rather than seed is a characteristic of the English Elm. But to understand why they didn't also die off it's necessary to understand the way Dutch elm disease is spread. It doesn't spread by wind-blown spores like many other fungi but depends entirely on being spread by the elm bark beetle. This beetle lays its eggs underneath the bark of the elm by depositing them via an ovipositor into the layer immediately beneath the bark, transferring the fungal spores beneath the bark as it does so.

Religion Poisons Even Love!

Lakshmana Temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Artist unknown

Lakshmana Temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Sex is good.

Sex feels good. Sex is fun and makes us feel happy.

Sex is a primary instinct and good sex is fulfilling and rewarding. Sex is two people enjoying one another in the closest and most intimate way possible.

Good sex is euphoric! There is nothing wrong with consensual sex between willing adults!

And yet the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach that sex is sinful unless in very precisely detailed and controlled conditions, otherwise it is a source of guilt and shame and feelings of self-loathing and hate.

As I say in my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It:

Piltdown Revisited

Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax | Robin McKie | Science | The Guardian

The Piltdown Hoax, contrary to creationist claims, is not an embarrassment for science but a vindication of the scientific method. It shows us how even if human weakness and vanity intrude into science, or even if the evidence is viewed through the distorting lens of cultural assumptions, the scientific method eventually weeds them out.

The process of reexamination - of allowing doubt and uncertainty to drive reassessment - and above all to be prepared to admit it when previous beliefs and accepted wisdom begin to look out of kilter with more recent discoveries, it what makes this weeding-out process an integral par of the scientific method. And of course the original perpetrators of hoaxes and falsification of data eventually die, so future generations have no vested interest in maintaining the deception and everything to gain from exposing it.

Theory In Crisis? What Crisis?

Evolutionary Ecology of Organs: A Missing Link in Cancer Development? | Trends in Cancer.

Creationists frauds continually feed their dupes with the absurd notion that somehow the Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis and is about to be abandoned by science and replaced by the absurd notion that it was all magicked by a magic man in the sky.

What is even more astonishing than their flagrant disregard for the self-evident fact that the TOE remains the fundamental theory underpinning all biological science is that their dupes readily convince themselves that for the first time in history an established scientific theory is going to be abandoned and replaced by a Bronze Age myth with not a single shred of evidence. No other scientific theory has ever been abandoned and replaced by 'Goddidit'.