Covidiots - Californian Pastor For God and Covid-19

Greg Fairrington, Destiny Christian Church. "Mandated by God to disobey lockdown"

California Pastor Vows Church Will Defy Lockdown Order

Is it really too much to expect Christians to start behaving like caring and compassionate people, willing to give a little self-sacrifice to the welfare of others or is there something deeply ingrained in their faith that tells them to be selfish at all times and never to put the needs of others above their own personal needs?

It really looks that way when you look at the reaction of Christian fundamentalist to the measure introduced to try to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and reduce the number of people killed or made sick by the virus.

Covidiots - Louisiana Christians to Cast Spells to Cure Covid-19

John Bel Edwards, Governor of Louisiana
Three days of prayer and fasting to cure Covid-19!

Louisiana Catholic governor calls for prayer and fasting to end coronavirus

While scientists are working to find a vaccine against Covid-19 - two research programmes are already producing promising results - and better treatments for its victim, Christians in Louisiana are to do their bit - they are going to fast and cast magic spells, if Catholic governor, John Bel Edwards, gets his way.

Covidiots - Christian Fruitloops Against Altruism

DeAnna Lorraine, Fruitloop Trumpanzee Fundamentalist Christian
"Face-masks are a Marxist globalist Satanic conspiracy"

Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorist: “God Does Not Want Us Wearing Masks” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

American Right-wing Christian fruitloop covidiots are continuing their campaign to Make America Sick Again with Covid-19, as though having the highest infection rate in the world (above 77,000 new cases per day and rising at the time of writing) was not good enough.

Not only did they promulgate the covidiot notion that the whole thing was some sort of hoax - either man-made or Satanic - to stop Christians from going to church (and paying their tithes), they then campaigned against all lockdown measures and are now campaigning against wearing a face-mask.

Tsunamis Leave Noah's Ark Myth Devastated

The North Sea, Storegga underwater landslide event run-out, associated deposit locations and core ELF001A. Location of deposits associated with Storegga slip follow data in summarized [8].

Doggerland tsunami - 2020 - News - University of Bradford.

With some 40% of Americans still believing in Noah's Ark, it's necessary, even though astonishing for the 21st Century, in an age in which information is so readily and freely available, to debunk it yet again. Fortunately, two articles published recently help to do just that.

The first concerns a paper published by a team of scientists led by Professor Vincent Gaffney of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, England, which presents evidence that about 8,150 years ago, three successive giant waves tore across ancient land bridge between UK and Europe, in the area now submerged beneath the North Sea - some 4,000 years before the Biblical flood is supposed to have happened.

Malevolent Design News - Toxoplasmosis Triumph

Tachyzoites of Toxoplasma gondii

Credit: Bobbi Pritt, M.D.
Source: PathologyOutlines.com

Toxoplasma at the wheel: Study reveals how a dangerous parasite controls its host cell to spread around the body | Indian University News.

Another example of the length the intelligent [sic] designer is prepared to go to to make people sick (if you believe in the intelligent design hoax).

First, a little bit about Toxoplasma gondii. According to the CDC:

Causal Agent:

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that infects most species of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and causes the disease toxoplasmosis.

29,000 Years of Australian Aboriginal History

Mussel shells collected and dated from along the River Murray downstream of Renmark in SA’s Riverland.

29,000 years of Aboriginal history on the Murray – News

Does anyone still take the story of Noah's Ark seriously, apart from simple-minded creationists and Bible literalists?

If so, they have some explaining to do now we have yet more evidence of human activity from way before the alleged global flood which is central to the biblical story of a vengeful, genocidal god drowning nearly everything and everyone just a few thousand years ago.

A team of archaeologists from Flinders University has discovered evidence of human occupation of South Australia’s Riverland region 29,000 years ago. Their results are published in Australian Archaeology:

Is This Why Evangelicals Support Trump?

Study links attraction to ‘tyrannical’ leaders to dysfunctional family dynamics | SF State News.

One of the great mysteries of recent years is why apparently devout American evangelical Christians supported the very unChristian Donald Trump in such large numbers.

The answer may be in the finding by San Francisco State University Assistant Professor of Management, Dayna Herbert Walker, that there is a connection between a person's childhood family environment and the types of leaders they are drawn to as grown ups. Walker and his colleagues noticed, from an analysis of data from the Fullerton Longitudinal Study that there was a correlation between those who, as adolescents reported a high level of conflict at home and those who later identified socially undesirable traits as ideal leadership qualities.

Death of an Old Fraud

Morris Cerullo

Christian fraud Morris Cerullo is ‘alive and well’ in the arms of Jesus | Barry Duke

The self-aggrandizing, avaricious old faith-healing fraud, Morris Cerullo has died - unless you believe Christian Post reporter, John Whittle, that is. He has announced that Cerullo is alive and well and living with Jesus.

Apart from a brief mention of 'some controversy' over allegations of tax evasion by filing false income reports on three consecutive years (dismissed by a district judge on a technicality because ther grand jury which indicted him had not been told that a donor’s intent is key to determining whether money given to religious ministers is subject to tax), there is no mention in Christian Post of the unethical and ruthless way way he amassed a fortune by exploiting gullible and desperate sick people.

Civilising the Uncivilised with Humanism

Sudanese women campaigning for reforms

Sudan scraps apostasy law and alcohol ban for non-Muslims - BBC News

Good news that under Sudan's new 'reforming' Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Sudan is abolishing many of the old Islamic fundamentalist laws of the ousted former president, Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by a coup following street protests. Sudan is now governed by a council which includes military officers who staged the coup.

What is striking is how the laws being abolished are being replaced by more humanitarian, even Humanist laws such as one might expect to find in a modernt civilised state.

Catholic Child Abuse News - Fiji's Predatory Priests

Father Peter Loy Chong, Archbishop of Suva, Fiji.
"No allegations and we have procedures..."

Historic child sex abuse in Fiji’s Catholic schools uncovered | 1 NEWS | TVNZ

New Zealand TV has uncovered another major child sex abuse scandal involving Catholic priests, this time at a Catholic boys' school on the pacific island of Fiji.

One victim told TV1 News that Catholic priests would lure boys into their bedrooms with gifts of candy and oranges (a rare luxury on the island) and would then sexually assault them. Shocking though that is, it's come to be expected, where Catholic priests have power over children and unsupervised access to them.

But perhaps the worst aspect of the case is that these predatory paedophiles were sent to Fiji in the time-honoured Catholic Church method for dealing with sex-abuse scandals - move the offenders to a different, unsuspecting location and allow them to carry on with their recreational abuse of minors.

How the Malevolent Designer Beats Medical Science

H3N2 influenza virus particles, coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM). Each virus consists of a nucleocapsid (protein coat) that surrounds a core of RNA (ribonucleic acid) genetic material. Surrounding the nucleocapsid is a lipid envelope that contains the glycoprotein spikes haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). These viruses were part of the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-1969 that killed approximately one million worldwide. H3N2 viruses are able to infect birds and mammals as well as humans. They often cause more severe infections in the young and elderly than other flu strains and can lead to increases in hospitalisations and deaths.

Credit: CDC / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Fast-Spreading Mutation Helps Common Flu Subtype Escape Immune Response - 2020 - News Releases - News - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

News today of how creationism's malevolent designer keeps ahead of medical science by giving the common influenza virus H3N2 strain a mutation that makes it immune to human antibodies by preventing our antibodies from binding to a protein on the viral coat.

Additionally, the mutation makes the virus so good at spreading that it is now present in virtually all strains of H3N2.

The study was conducted by two researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is published open access a few days ago in the online journal PLOS Pathogens:

Southern Baptist Paedophile Convention

This collection of mug shots includes a portion of the 218 people who, since 1998, worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches and were convicted of or pleaded guilty to sex crimes.

Source: Houston Cronicle

Bellevue Baptist sued after volunteer coordinator sexually abuses teenager

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant organisation in the USA and has a record of child sexual abuse resembling that of an average Catholic archdioceses. Since 1998, 218 people who worked for Southern Baptist churches have either been convicted of or pleaded guilty to, paedophile sex crimes.

All too familiar is the case of 43-year-old James Hook, a paid volunteer coordinator with the crown jewel church in the SBC, Bellevue Baptist Church, who was discovered under a blanket in his car with a 15 year-old girl volunteer. He was later convicted of sexual assault and given a six-month sentence followed by 4.5 years probation. Now the girl's parents are suing the church for failure to protect their daughter.

According to this report in Memphis Commercial Appeal:

Evolution News - Fish Teeth Refute Creationism

Radotina, a primitive jawed vertebrates with teeth from 409 million years ago.

Scientists trace the origin of our teeth from the most primitive jawed fish.

Scientists have found what can only be described as the common ancestors of the teeth of both bony vertebrates and cartilaginous fish, bearing characteristics of both types - what creationists would refer to as a 'transitional' fossil, only it's not transitional between two major branches of the vertebrates, but ancestral to them.

The teeth were discovered by scientists from Uppsala University, Charles University (Czech Republic), Natural History Museum in London (UK), National Museum in Prague (Czech Republic) and the ESRF

The ESRF press release explains:

Covidiots - Rishi Sunak Waives the Rules

The chancellor served customers at a Wagamama restaurant in central London on Wednesday.

Photograph: Simon Walker/HM Treasury

About half of health care workers positive for COVID-19 by serology have no symptoms | VUMC Reporter | Vanderbilt University

The discovery by a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, that almost half the healthcare workers tested for Covid-19, tested positive but displayed no symptoms is evidence, if any more were needed, of the importance of wearing a face-mask in all public places.

Among 249 front-line health care workers who cared for COVID-19 patients during the first month of the pandemic in Tennessee, 8% tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies by serology testing, suggesting they had contracted COVID-19 in the first several weeks of taking care of COVID-19 patients. Among these health care workers with positive serology results, 42% reported no symptoms of a respiratory illness in the prior two months. This suggests that front-line health care workers are at high risk for COVID-19 and that many health care workers with the virus may not have typical symptoms of a respiratory infection. These results were published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases on July 6.

Rats! Penis Enlargement Homeopathy Fraud!

Coming up short: Journal retracts penis enlargement paper after realizing it was homeopathy – Retraction Watch.

In a nice example of the self-correcting nature of science, the editor of the International Journal of Impotence Research - a Springer Nature title - has retracted a paper despite the disagreement of all the authors, because he realised it was a homeopathy promotion with no basis in science.

The paper had slipped past the peer-review process but, when examined in detail fell far short of the standard science normally expects of medical research. It had purported to show that a drug, Impanza, manufactured by OOO NPF Materia Medica Holding, of Moscow, gave rats an enlarged penis and might therefore be useful in treating erectile dysfunction in humans. There were also claims that it increased libido and enhanced intercourse satisfaction!

The Paranoia that Causes Americans to Hate Atheists

Why Americans Hate Atheists | Psychology Today

It probably comes as no surprise to most American Atheists that Atheists rank even lower than Muslims in the American Christian demonology. 43% of Americans would not vote for an Atheist for president against 40% for a Muslim, 30% for a homosexual, 18% for a mormon with Latinos, Jews, Catholics, Women and African Americans getting 7%, 6%, 5%, 5% and 4% respectively. Incidentally, that 43% figure is close to the percentage of American adults who believe Noah's Ark was a historical event and that humans were created by magic out of dust and ribs.

Institutionalised 'Secularphobia' is normal in the USA with people giving a lower priority to an Atheist or agnostics waiting for a kidney transplant then for believers and Atheists are much less successful in custody battles after a divorce that religious parents. In addition, despite the First Amendment which guarantees freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion, it is illegal for an Atheist to hold public office in seven states. Atheists are barred from membership of the Boy Scouts, the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Humanist chaplains are barred from serving in the US military.

Covidiots - Kenneth Copeland Keeps On Scamming

Scamvangelist’s Church Tells COVID to “Cease and Desist NOW”… Again | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Should we blame covidiot televangelist frauds like Kenneth Copeland for continuing to scam fundamentalist Christian simpletons, or should we blame the fundamentalist simpletons for allowing him to continue to scam them?

The fact is that these simple-minded fundamentalists have created the environment (the market-place) in which these parasitic frauds operate with the moral scruples of a bed bug and the manipulative tactics of a snake-oil peddler, in their desperation to shore up their fragile beliefs. And they will keep coming back for more the more they are rewarded for their dishonesty.

Covidiots - Israel "Has Lost It"

Israeli Covid-19 Daily Cases

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Israel public health chief quits amid rise in coronavirus cases | World news | The Guardian

Being the 'Chosen Ones' has proved to be no more protection against the Covid-19 virus in Israel, than it's proving to be in Bible Belt USA. As with America's most religious states, Covid-19 cases are rising exponentially again in Israel.

The top Israeli health official, Siegal Sadetzki, has resigned in protest at the government's handling of the affair following a 'broad and swift' opening of the economy. All the gains from the original strict lockdown appear to have been lost.

Covidiots - Texas Turnips

Pastor Ron Arbaugh, Calvary Chapel San Antonio.
"Responsible for 50 Covid-19 cases"

'I accept full responsibility:' Calvary Chapel pastor talks church's COVID-19 outbreak | WOAI

Pastor Ron Arbaugh, of Calvary Chapel San Antonio, Texas, has belatedly accepted that he is responsible for the fact that 50 of his church congregation have Covid-19, including himself, due to inadequate social distancing precautions when he decided to reopen his church.

One person is now on a ventilator. The church has contributed to the high and rising second wave now requiring strict lockdown measures to be reimposed in Texas, due to a bungled lifting of the first lockdown. New cases in Texas were above 8,000 yesterday and the trend is relentlessly upwards.

Trumpanzee Christian Fruitloop Saves the Day

Kat Kerr, Christian "Prophetess"

Christian “Prophetess”: I’m the Reason Satan Didn’t Disrupt Your Holiday Weekend | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

With news of science papers that debunk creationism again, of child-abusing Catholic priests and of Christian covidiots spreading Covid-19, being thin on the ground today, I thought I'd write about the deranged Trumpanzee "Prophetess", Kat Kerr, who featured in this blog a few days ago when she announced her measures for defending the GOP National Convention. She has ordered 100 million angels to station themselves around the town to keep the evil demons out.

Now, Kerr has retrospectively claimed the credit for everyone staying safe on the 4th July National holiday. Kat cast a magic spell that ensured everyone's safety.

It needed her sister Jen to repeat the spell line by line to make sure God got the instructions.