Creationism News - Another Gap Closing!

Amino Acid Chirality chirality with hands from http://www.nai.arc.nasa.gov/ A "chiral" molecule is one that is not superposable with its mirror image. Like left and right hands that have a thumb, fingers in the same order, but are mirror images and not the same, chiral molecules have the same things attached in the same order, but are mirror images and not the same. Although most amino acids can exist in both left and right handed forms, Life on Earth is made of left handed amino acids, almost exclusively.

Source: Wikipedia

Cosmic rays may have left indelible imprint on early life, Stanford physicist says

One of the creationist 'gap' arguments you see pulled out of the toy box and dusted off once in a while is the so-called 'chirality' or handedness problem. The reason it's used so infrequently is probably because so few creationists have the capacity to understand what the term 'chirality' means. The 'problem' is to explain why all amino acids (and so biological proteins) and sugars are composed only of one enantiomere, 'L' in the case of amino acids and 'D' in the case of sugars.

Like so many creationist presuppositional 'gap' arguments, the answer is that the presupposed god did it. No evidence need ever be offered of the existence of this god nor any explanation of how or why it did whatever it is claimed to have done. 'Magic' and 'mystery' satisfy a creationist.

But now this creationist-satisfying gap might have closed according to a paper published in The Astrophysics Journal Letters by two STanford University physicists, Noemie Globus and Roger D. Blandford.

Taylor Kubota of Stanford News Service explains:

Covidiots - Georgia's Christian Slow Learners

Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle Christians ignoring social distancing advice and spreading Covid-19 anmongst themselves.

After Reopening in April, Georgia Church Closes Again Following Virus Outbreak | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

After several weeks of campaigning and complaints that they were being denied their constitutional right not to take part in the nation-wide attempt to limit the spread of Covid-19 by staying at home instead of going to church, Georgia's Christian Covidiots finally got their way when Republican governor Brian Kemp finally caved into demands and lifted the ban on gatherings.

Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle, in Ringgold,promptly opened its doors for personal services and, as this photo shows, ignored the advice on social distancing, even allowing children to be put at risk. However, only about 25% of the normal congregation were foolish enough to attend.

Malevolent Designer News - Dental Caries!

With powerful microscopy, researchers were able to visualize the structure of a tooth decay-causing biofilm growing on toddlers’ teeth. The organism primarily responsible for cavities, Streptococcus mutans, labeled in green, shields itself under layers of other bacteria, enabling it stick stubbornly to the enamel.

Image credit: Dongyeop Kim

Cavity-causing bacteria assemble an army of protective microbes on human teeth | Penn Today

Next time your dentist tells you you need some work done to stop your teeth rotting away, or to prevent painful abscesses forming in your gums, you know who to thank for it.

According to creationists it was the work of a brilliant intelligent [sic] designer who designed the bacterium,Streptococcus mutans to create the caries. Scientists have now worked out how this brilliant design works, according to an open access paper published a couple of days ago in PNAS.

According to Penn Today, the University of Pennsylvania news magazine:

Covidiots - Magic Cure Pastor Dies of Covid-19

Pastor Frankline Ndifor, "Prophet and faith-healer"

Panic Grips Faithful After Cameroon COVID Pastor Dies | Voice of America - English

Sad news from Cameroon that another victim of religion has died of Covid-19. Pastor Frankline Ndifor, a candidate in Cameroon's last presidential election, head of the Kingship International Ministries Church and popular purveyor of magic faith 'healing', died at his home in Douala a week after contracting the Covid-19 virus, probably when laying his magic hands on another victim.

According to this report in Voice of America, by Moki Edwin Kindzeka, his death has provoked panic in his congregation, many of whom had fallen for his bogus claims and regarded him as a prophet.

Malevolent Designer - God Hates Millipedes

The photo of the American centipede shared on Twitter. The fungi can be seen in the small red circles towards the top.

Credit: Derek Hennen.

New bizarre species discovered on… Twitter - University of Copenhagen

Discoveries like this present intelligent [sic] design creationists with two choices.

They can either accept that their putative designer creates things because it hates some of its creation and behaves like a malevolent influence in the World who actively seeks to increase suffering in ever-more inventive ways, or things like this evolve naturally while their god just sits back and allows it to happen.

Neither of these choices leave their designer resembling an omnibenevolent god who wishes to minimise the amount of suffering or who loves its creation.

Malevolent Designer News - Covid-19 Devastating Church Congregations

Raul Luis Lopez’s funeral, at the house in Queens where the delivery worker lived, is the first Reverend Fabian Arias has presided over in a private home.

These Two New York City Churches Lost a Hundred Members to COVID | Terry Firma | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Despite the regular claims by religious fruitloops that they are magically immune to Covid-19, having been protected with magic spells or potions and having been 'washed in the blood of Christ' [sic], and even claims that Covid-19 is God's punishment on specific people like Atheists, pro-choice 'liberals' and other members of the conservative Christian demonology, as this CNN article shows, Christians are being hit at least as badly as others and probably more so. (Cue: the 'no true Scotsmen' fallacy - "well, they're not true Christians!")

It is also clear from this report, that racial/ethnic minorities are being hit disproportionately, just as we are finding in the UK where black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups have been hit twice as hard as the white population.

Covidiots - India's Fools' Gold

'Saint' Sobhan Sarker, aka 1008 Viraktanand Saraswati, aka Suryabhan Tiwari
Looked 'beneath the Earth' and saw a thousand tons of magic gold!

Police Book 4,100 Who Crowded Godman’s Funeral in India Despite COVID Rules | Terry Firma | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Covidiocy appears to be a characteristic of most religions, including Hinduism, if these Hindu Covidiots are anything to go by.

Despite the nationwide lockdown as India battles against Covid-19, thousands of people forced their way past police lines to attend the funeral in Kanpur last Wednesday, of self-styled Godman, Sobhan Saker, aka 1008 Viraktanand Saraswati, aka Suryabhan Tiwari. 4,100 have been charged with lockdown violations. Sakar was regarded by his followers as a sadhu or saint. He claimed he could see "beyond the sky and beneath the Earth".

Mormons for Child Abuse

Fundamentalist Mormons demonstrating in support of polygamy (and the right of their men to abuse women and children).

Utah decriminalises polygamy. Opponents are outraged | Barry Duke

According to this report by CNN, the state of Utah has reduced to penalty for polygamy from being a third degree felony punishable with up to 5 years in prison and a $5,000 fine to that of a misdemeanor on the same scale as a traffic offence.

Polygamy, allowing a man to have several wives, had once been a central tenet of Mormonism and the practice that led to their moving to Utah to found their own colonies, free from the persecution of the mostly Christian states which outlawed the practice. It was the issue that kept Utah out of the Union until, in the nick of time, God revealed to the leaders of the church that marriage was now the union of one man with one woman, for life, just as it was in the other states.

Malevolent Designer News - How Malaria was Designed to Maximise the Harm

The malaria parasites growing inside this infected red blood cell (blue) will eventually burst out in unison with millions of other parasites lurking in red blood cells around them. This feat of timing is coordinated by the parasite’s internal clock.

NIH.

Malaria Parasite Ticks to its Own Internal Clock | Duke Today

A paper published a couple of days ago in Nature explains just how meticulously, creationism's intelligent [sic] designer has designed the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum to maximise its ability to harm and kill people - if you believe that superstition that is.

So successful has its design been that it randomly kills a child every two minutes.

Unkind Monster Problem for Creationists

A reconstruction of the Tully Monster as it would have looked 300 million years ago, swimming in the Carboniferous seas. Notice the jointed proboscis, the multiple rows of teeth, and the dorsal eye bar.

Illustration by Sean McMahon / Yale University

Solving the mystery of the Tully Monster | YaleNews

The natural world can be so unkind to Creationists sometimes.

The case of the so-called Tully Monster, Tullimonstrum gregarium which has puzzled taxonomists for years might have been solved, according to a paper published today on Nature, which seems to end the debate, coming out firmly on the side of it being a vertebrate.

This is based on A combination of new evidence and modern approaches to phylogenetic analysis by a team from Yale led by Victoria E. McCoy of the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Fossils of Tullimonstrum gregarium are found in the Mazon Creek fossil beds which have been dated to 309 million yeas ago. It had been variously classified as a molluscs, an arthropod, a conodont, a worm, and a vertebrate. About the only thing that could be agreed on was that it was a soft-bodied bilaterium.

Human Remains From 40,000 Years Before Creationists Say God Created Earth!

Stone artefacts found at Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria

Longer overlap for modern humans and Neanderthals - BBC News

A couple of papers published a few days ago, here and here, show that modern (Homo sapiens) humans entered Eurasia at least 46,000 years ago. This is some 2,000 years earlier than previous finds suggest and mean that moderns had much longer to interact with their cousin species, the Neanderthals, H. neanderthalensis, before the latter went extinct.

Human remains, found in a the floor of a Bacho Kiro cave in northern Bulgaria, including multiple bone fragments, and a tooth, have been dated to between 46,000 and 43,000 years old. Analysis of the DNA recovered by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, shows that they were the remains of H. sapiens. This places them within the IUP.

Evolution News - Another Beneficial Mutation

Cape honey bee workers laying parasitic eggs on a queen cell.

Photo credit: Benjamin Oldroyd

Virgin birth has scientists buzzing - The University of Sydney

I have often commented in this blog about how science without any effort or intent, casually refutes creationism by falsifying another of it's articles of faith, or sacred dogmas.

This paper on parthenogenic bees is yet another of these, as was the recent one on the transitional plant fossil. It illustrates how a mutation can be highly beneficial in the right environment. Creationist dogma says it can't be, of course, because all mutations are harmful and increase 'genetic entropy' - an argument made popular by Michael J Behe in his failed attempt to show that evolution is consistent with the Christian notion of 'the fall' because all evolution is really 'devolution' [sic].

Yet here we have a mutation in a subspecies of honeybee - the Cape honeybee (Apis mellifera capensis) which is highly advantageous, enabling this subspecies to parasitise other honeybee colonies, to the extent that they present a serious threat to other honeybee populations.

Covidiots - Alveda King - It's All About New York

Dr Alveda King

Alveda King: New York Has COVID Problems Because It’s “The Home of Abortion” | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

To be a dedicated American Covidiot it's essential to forget one thing - that unimportant place called "The Rest of the World".

Dr Alveda King, niece of the late Martin Luther King, has decided that the Covid-19 pandemic is all because abortions are legal in New York. Her god has decided to kill millions of people worldwide in places like China, India, Europe, Africa and South America to teach New Yorker a lesson - not Chinese, Indians, Brits, Italians or Spanish, but New Yorkers!

Covidiots - American Fundies Dying To Be Martyrs.

Sierra County Sheriff Glenn Hamilton

New Mexico Sheriff “Deputizes” 20 Christians, Exempting Them from Lockdown Order | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Two more stories of wackadoodle Christians demanding the right to catch Covid-19 in church today.

The first is from New Mexico where Sierra County Sheriff Glenn Hamilton has sworn in 20 Christians as "deputies", so exempting them from the state-wide ban on gatherings. He was exploiting an exemption from the ban on gatherings for law-enforcement officers.

Catholic Abuse News - Pell Knew About Child Sex Abuse

Cardinal George Pell speaking to the media at the in Rome in 2016 after giving evidence via video-link to Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

George Pell: cardinal was aware of children being sexually abused, royal commission report finds | Australia news | The Guardian

According to this report in today's Guardian, The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has released previously redacted sections of their report which show that Cardinal Pell knew of instances of child abuse.

Pell was recently acquitted by the Australian High Court following his conviction and imprisonment for the sexual abuse of two choir boys, despite his defence lawyer arguing for leniency in the original sentence, on the grounds that the sex was 'vanilla sex' where penetration was brief and didn't result in ejaculation.

Winning With Science

Towards antibodies against COVID-19

What is noticeable more than anything during the current Covid-19 pandemic is the contrast between science and religion in how they see their responsibilities to the world at large.

On the one hand, we have religious leaders treating the whole thing as a get-rich-quick opportunity, selling magic spells and quack snake-oil cures to those gullible enough to fall for the scams and others campaigning to end the social distancing measures so they can continue to fleece their congregations.

On the other hand, we have hundreds of scientific research programs like this one, aimed at producing treatments and, in the long run, cures in the form of vaccines, whilst creationists continue to decry science as 'scientism' in an attempt to reduce it to the status of creationism as though it's also an evidence-free superstition.

This research program for example, has produced what could be a valuable treatment for people who already have the virus. It is an antibody that binds to and neutralises the 'spike' proteins that enable the virus to bind to the surface of a cell before inserting it's contents into it. If this treatment proves effective, it will prevent the virus infecting new cells and so damaging the tissues and producing more copies of itself.

Antibodies like this supplement the body's own defences but are relatively short lived because they don't stimulate the body to produce its own antibodies, unlike a vaccine which does just that. Hence they are useful as treatments but not prophylactics.

This is just one example of the multi-pronged attack on the Covid-19 virus being launched by medical science.

Apart from scamming their credulous dupes, what have religions been doing? In particular, what has the creation industry, which tells anyone who'll listen that it's definitely a science, not religion is disguise, been doing? Where are the creation 'science' laboratories in all this and what results have they produced?

None at all, of course. Although they will undoubtedly rush in to claim the credit for their god when we, as we will, have the cure and tha pandemic recedes into history. Hopefully, history will remember how it was science that produced the goods, whilst religions just used the opportunity to fleece the gullible and stupid and was quite prepared to spread the virus in pursuit of greater profits.

Covidiots - Russian Orthodox Fruitloops

Patriarch Kirill, in the white headdress, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, at a procession in Moscow last month. Experts say his reluctance to enforce orders against church gatherings has led to an explosion of coronavirus cases in monasteries and convents.

Photo credit: Patriarchal Press Service, via Reuters

A ‘Breakdown of Trust’: Pandemic Corrodes Church-State Ties in Russia - The New York Times

It might be some comfort to Americans that they are not the only people whose lives are being put at risk by religious nutjobs and fauds more interested in keeping their income stream flowing than in ensuring the health and safety of their families and society at large. Russian Orthodox Christian nutjobs are at it too.

According to this report in the New York Times:

A physics student at Moscow State University, Dmitri Pelipenko turned away from science in 2018 to devote himself to God, enrolling as a novice monk at Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Malevolent Design - Covid-19 Mutating

A colorized scanning electron micrograph of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Photo credit: NIAID

Mutations in SARS-CoV-2 offer insights into virus evolution

As I've remarked before, if you've fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax, you need to be able to explain why evolution is the only explanation for the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) that doesn't leave your putative creator looking like a malevolent, anthropophobic, genocidal psychopath.

That problem just got worse with publication by the University College, London (UCL) Genetics Institute that they have discovered close to 200 recurrent genetic mutations in the virus. They found these by examining the genomes of the virus recovered from 7,500 patients. Covid-19 looks for all the world like it's evolving, or, in ID hoax believers terms, being intelligent redesigned.

Coviots - Christian Pastors and Their Dupes Are Dying of the 'Phantom Plague'

Services at Life Tabernacle Church in the suburb of Baton Rouge, La., are continuing despite the governor’s order banning large gatherings to fight the spread of the coronavirus. On Sunday, 1,265 congregants attended morning services at the church, the pastor said.

Photo credit: Woody Jenkins / Central City News

'A phantom plague': America's Bible Belt played down the pandemic and even cashed in. Now dozens of pastors are dead | The Independent.

It is tempting to talk about Darwin Awards and score points about these sad deaths, but I need to keep reminding myself of the basic Humanism in John Donne's "No Man Is An Island" - "Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee."

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each person's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Let's not forget that, no matter how stupid they were; no matter how brainwashed they had been to believe superstitious nonsense and carefully cultivated paranoias, these were still people; fooled by frauds and lied to by cheats who took advantage of their credulity, certainly, but still people.

If any good is to come of this tragic pandemic, it is that their sad deaths should remind us of the danger religion poses to humanity when it induces stupidity on this scale, puts money above people, and exploits the stupid and gullible to serve the naked greed and avarice of the frauds who promulgate it.

Evolution News - Yet Another Transitional Species

In this image of one of the new ancient species’ reproductive structures, elliptical impressions of sporangia can be seen in one row, while on the right, another row displays preserved carbonized spore masses.

Image credit: Andrew Leslie

New ancient plant captures snapshot of evolution | Stanford University.

What with their problem explaining why evolution is the only explanation for Covid-19 that doesn't leave their putative designer god looking like a malevolent, genocidal psychopath, the last thing creationists needed was another one of those annoying transitional species that so bedevil their precious dogma.

But here we are, with another one, announced just yesterday. This time an extinct plant showing evidence of transition from spores to seeds - an essential step in the evolution of the flowering plants, or angiosperms.

And once again without any effort or intent, science has again refuted creationism with evidence.

One of the major advances in plant evolution was when the gymnosperms (cone-bearing) and angiosperms (flowering) plants broke free from the constraints of the reproductive methods used by the ferns and club mosses, which required moist conditions to allow their motile male gametes to reach the sedentary female gametes.