Malevolent Designer News - Covid-19 Designed to Cause Brain Damage

SARS-CoV-2 subunit S1 alters barrier status in a 3D tissue engineered microfluidic model of the human BBB. Confocal microscopy and volumetric rendering were used to visualize the tissue engineered vessel. (A) Shows a longitudinal view of an endothelialized void after perfusion that formed a predictive vessel geometry analogous to those found within the brain. (B) provides a cross sectional perspective indicating a single layer of endothelial cells. In (C) a representative merged image of the engineered vessel constructs fixed and immunestained for the tight junction protein, ZO-1, along with phalloidin to label actin and the nuclear stain, DAPI. (D) shows the typical ZO-1 membranous pattern expected in mature barrier forming brain endothelial cells. (E) after perfusion for 2 h of SARS-CoV-2 subunit S1 (10 nM), constructs were also fixed and immunolabeled for ZO-1. The arrows point to areas in which the ZO-1 cellular pattern is discontinuous, punctate or absent signifying areas of barrier breach. Scalebar = 20 μm. (F) Fluorescence intensity after ten minutes of perfusion with 4 kDa FITC-dextran, indicating the impaired barrier function in vessels perfused after 2 h of the S1 spike protein versus untreated controls. (G) Quantitative measurements for permeability coefficients of vessels exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 subunit S1 compared to untreated controls. Data was analyzed using Kruskal-Willis test, n = 3, *p < 0.05.

Source

SARS-CoV-2 Spike Proteins Disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier, Potentially Raising Risk of Neurological Damage in COVID-19 Patients | Temple Health

The findings of a researchers from The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA should have devotees of the malevolent designer thrilling at its sheer brilliance.

This is the intelligent [sic] designer whom they believe created the SARS-CoV-2 virus to cause the coronavirus pandemic, and this research shows how it was designed to cause neurological damage to its human victims.

While there is no direct evidence yet that the virus invades brain cells, the team at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine have shown that the spike proteins on its coat that SARS-CoV-2 uses to gain entry into a cell promote an inflamatory response in the endothelial cells that form the blood-brain barrier, potentially causing it to become leaky.

SARS-CoV-2 gains entry to a cell by binding to the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on the cell surface and the researchers has show that ACE2 is present on the surface of endothelial cells lining the inner surface of blood vessels. The Temple Health press release explains further:

Malevolent Designer News - Making a Better Coronavirus

Emergence and spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant through Europe in the summer of 2020 | medRxiv

Phylogenetic overview of SARS-CoV-2 in Europe. The tree shows a representative sample of isolates from Europe colored by the amino acid at positions 222, 477, and 614 of the spike protein. A novel rapidly spreading variant (blue; 20A.EU1) with mutation S:A222V on a S:D614G background emerged in early summer and is common in most countries with recent sequences. A separate variant (20A.EU2) with mutation S:S477N is prevalent in France. On the right, the proportion of sequences belonging to each variant (through the duration of the pandemic) is shown per country. Tree and visualization were generated using the Nextstrain platform (Hadfield et al., 2018) as described in methods.

Click image to enlarge

It's one of those days when intelligent [sic] design proponents need to pretend their putative designer is not responsible for designing something and look around for something else to blame.

The one thing they can't blame, of course, is a perfectly natural, amoral, undirected natural process like evolution by natural selection, because that would concede that science is right after all and that apparent design does not require a sentient designer.

What we have today is news that the coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic currently ravaging population and economies world-wide looks as though it was modified last summer to make it spread more widely and more quickly than before. In other words, to make it better at making as many people sick as possible.

Covidiot News - Catholic Wingnuts Claim Facemasks are Against God

Covid-19 daily new cases - Michigan (Saturday, October 31, 2020 at 03:00 AM EDT)

Source: Johns Hopkins University - Corona Virus Resource Center

Religious school, parents argue mask mandates violate rights

Two parents, supported by a Catholic School, are suing the US state of Michigan over the order requiring school students to wear a facemask at all times. They claim the order violates their religious beliefs.

At the time of writing, Michigan is experiencing a high and rising second wave of Covid-19 cases, with a record high of 3555 new cases on Oct. 29.

In their submission the parents, Christopher Mianecki and Stephanie Smith, acting for their respective children, and Resurrection Catholic School from Ingham County, Lancing claim:

In accordance with the teachings of the Catholic faith, Resurrection School believes that every human has dignity and is made in God’s image and likeness. Unfortunately, a mask shields our humanity. And because God created us in His image, we are masking that image.

The Five Faces of Donald Trump - Trump's Mental Makeup

Trump: A Man of 5 Emotions | Psychology Today

Arash Emamzadeh, a psychologist writing in Psychology Today, believes he has observed five emotions that dominate Donald Trump's personality.

He points out firstly that:

Compared with the last US president, Barack Obama, Trump appears less emotionally in control and perhaps less capable of experiencing or expressing a "range of human emotions."

In other words, although Emamzadeh doesn't use the words, Trump appears to have a lack of self-control and the empathy of a psychopath.

Evolution News - Closing Creationism's God-Shaped Gap

Models for potential precursors of cells endure simulated early-Earth conditions | Eberly College of Science

Another shovel-full of science has just been thrown into Creationism's favourite God-shaped gap - abiogenesis - by a bunch of scientists from Penn State University Eberley College of Science.

The abiogenesis question is the increasingly-used last resort of Creationists who can no longer mount a serious challenge to the science of evolution. Never slow to use a dishonest false dichotomy fallacy, they challenge scientists to explain how the first 'life' assembled without the intervention of a magic creator, and to replicate it in a laboratory - as though the ultimate proof of a scientific theory is to replicate it in a laboratory, regardless of the fact that the theory might involve a whole planet or conditions only found near hydrothermal vents in the ocean abyss, and millions of years!

But that God-shaped gap just got smaller, as it has been doing now for several decades, as chemists, physicists and geologists discover more about the conditions on the early Earth when living systems first arose, and about the chemical and physical processes that were possible, even likely under those conditions.

Covidiot News - Welsh Christians Above The Law

Pastor Wade McLennan, New Hope Church, Llanrumney, Cardiff.
"God told me to break the law!"

Watch: Police in riot van interrupt Welsh church during 'illegal' lockdown service

American-style Christian covidiocy is alive and well (unlike many American pastors and their Covid-19 victim dupes) and living in Wales.

Because of the high and rising numbers of coronavirus cases in Wales, the Welsh Government has introduced a partial lock-down which includes a ban on gathering in places of worship. In the USA Churches have proved to quickly become Covid-19 hotspots and church services have become super-spreader events.

Malevolent Designer News - The Evil Genius' Bat Testbed!

David's myotis bat Myotis davidii

Source: Biodiversity Data Journal

Duke-NUS study uncovers why bats excel as viral reservoirs without getting sick

Bats have a unique immune system that enables them to play host to a virus such as SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for the current coronavirus pandemic) while not being harmed by at and, more importantly from the virus' point of view, not killing it either.

In this way, the virus is free to mutate and replicate and, when a mutation which can live in another species arises, can transfer to that other species, the way SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have transferred to humans.

As I said in my latest book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, it is as though Creationism's putative magic invisible designer has set bats up as a pathological virus factory and test bed for developing nasty little viruses to make humans and other animals sick and die, like some bitter and twisted evil genius, full of hate for its creation, who now spends its time devising ways to increase the pain and suffering in the world.

Malevolent Designer News - A Brilliant Way to Kill Plants!

Phytoplasma symptoms in vegetable crops.

(A) Little leaf in brinjal; (B) close up view of brinjal flower showing phyllody; (C) big bud in tomato; (D) witches broom’ in Cucurbita pepo; (E) flat stem in lettuce; (F) witches’ broom in chili; (G) witches’ broom in potato; (H) witches’ broom in cabbage; and (I) flat stem in cowpea.

Source

Phytoplasma effector proteins devastate host plants through molecular mimicry (APS) - Leibniz-Institut für Alternsforschung (FLI)

Here we have yet another example of the malevolence of any creative intelligence that can come up with so much of nature. In this case we have a type of obligate, endoparasitic bacterium that lives in plant cells and prevents the plant from reproducing while the plant supports bacterial reproduction, in what has been termed 'zombification' - where a parasite converts the host to work for it, often against its own interests.

This pathogen is currently imposing a major economic burden on those least able to bear it - third-world farmers.

Two teams of researchers have worked to explain exactly how this bacterium works. The Lipmann Insitute press release explains:

Phytoplasma are a type of bacteria that live within the cells and cause devastating diseases with damaging effects. For example, in many cases plants infected with phytoplasma are no longer able to develop flowers. These plants have actually been described as "zombies," since they allow the reproduction of phytoplasma but are unable to reproduce themselves anymore. A group of biologists based at Friedrich Schiller University and the Fritz Lipmann Institute in Germany are working to help better understand exactly how phytoplasma cells bring about the so-called zombification of plants.

Trump's Disastrous Year Explained - It Was Them Witches What Did It!

America leads the world again in new coronavirus cases as a third, even bigger wave threatens to spin out of control.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Thousands of Witches Plot a 'Binding Spell' Tonight Against President Trump | CBN News

Why has Donald Trump had such a disastrous year - getting impeached and making such a hash of the coronavirus pandemic? It's all the fault of witches, apparently and not because of the spells they cast on him a year ago, but because they signally failed to work!

According to the conservative Christian website, Christian Network Broadcasting (CBN) News a year ago today, thousands of witches were planning to join forces and cast a 'binding spell' on Donald Trump. Being Wiccans, these witches are forbidden from doing harm, so the binding was simply to prevent Trump doing any more harm to America and Americans than he had done already, short of harming him.

Covid-19 - Neanderthal's Revenge?

The ancient Neanderthal hand in severe COVID-19 | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

Who would have thought that some of the Neanderthal DNA we inherited from those of our ancestors who interbred with them, could be causing some of us to suffer much more with Covid-19 than those of us who don't have those particular bits of Neanderthal DNA?

Yet that's the conclusion of a two researches, Hugo Zeberg of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany and the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Onna, Japan.

Their findings were published in Nature on September 30, 2020.

Still Lying to Win. How Desperate Donny is STILL Trying to Fool Americans

Belief in the truth-value of narratives by candidate preference.

QAnon story gains credence with up to 44% of Americans: News: The Media School

The latest report from Indian University's Observatory on Social Media shows a continuing campaign of lies and disinformation emanating from QAnon, designed to win support for Donald Trump by fooling Americans.

It shows how this tactic is having its greatest success amongst republican voters, who appear to be the most gullible and susceptible to conspiracy theories and unlikely narratives. This bears out the recent article in Psychology Today which explained the psychology behind the making of a Trump voter.

Evolution News - Another Way in Which Humans Are Just Like Chimpanzees

Three males groom together in a chain — Likizo (a younger male) grooms Big Brown (an older male), who grooms Lanjo (another younger male).

Photo: John Lower
Source: Havard Gazette

Aging chimps show social selectivity – Harvard Gazette

Despite the denial of Creationists, humans are very like their closest relatives, the chimpanzees in so many way, and not just physical, physiological and genetic. Our psychology is similar too, as this latest finding shows.

A team of psychologists and primatologists from the Harvard Department of Human Evolutionary Biology has shown that chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, like humans, tend to be increasing selective in their friendships as they age. Their findings are published today in Science.

It had been thought that this tendency was unique to humans and stemmed from our sense of our own mortality (itself believed to be a uniquely human trait). However, detailed observation has shown that aging chimpanzees also show the same selectivity in their friendship, tending to favour those they know and trust and with whom there has been little history of animosity.

Malevolent Designer News - Covid-19 Design Even MORE Devious!

Neuropilin-1 (NRP1) is a host factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection. The image shows human cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 and expressing viral proteins (shown in green). Removal of NRP1 from cells or treating cells with a drug or an antibody targeting NRP1 reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection

Credit: University of Bristol

October: Neuropilin-1 study | News and features | University of Bristol

Intelligent design creationist fans of the designer whom they believe created the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is currently causing the coronavirus pandemic, killing people by the hundreds of thousands, making millions more sick and wrecking economies as governments attempt to slow its progress and prevent medical services from being overwhelmed, will be thrilled to learn just what a thorough job it did this time, apparently having practiced first with SARS.

The malevolent brilliance of this designer can scarcely be imagined!

One of the puzzling things about SARS-CoV-2 is that it is so much more virulent than the closely related SARS virus and now two independent research teams have discovered why. Both viruses have a 'spike' protein on their outer coat which helps them bind to their victim's cells as a prelude to gaining entry into the cell, where it releases its RNA which converts the cell's reproductive machinery to making new viruses, killing the cell in the process. And yet, SARS-CoV-2 seems to be so much more successful at doing this.

The Bristol University press release explains:

Evolution News - How Ants Evolved by Losing Complexity

Cataglyphis bombycina workers and (larger) queens.

Credit: Philip Hönle

Losing flight had huge benefits for ants, finds new study | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

How did ants evolve their famous strength and endurance, which far exceeds even the fittest and strongest mammals in comparison to their size?

The answer to this was provided yesterday by a combined team of researchers from Institut d’Écologie et des Sciences de l’Environnement, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France and the Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa, Japan.

And Once again, a science paper refutes another sacred Creationist dogma - that so-called 'macro-evolution' always involves an increase in complexity and is therefore impossible because the new information needed can't arise naturally, so needs a magic man to provide it.

What Makes a Trumpanzee?

5 Psychological Reasons Why the 45th President Remains Popular | Psychology Today

Why would anyone in their right mind even think of voting for Donald Trump again? That question was answered by the psychologist, Vinita Mehta Ph.D., Ed.M., writing in Psychology Today.

There are five things that make a Trumpanzee:

1. Social Dominance Orientation (SDO).

   Readers of my blog-posts may remember we met this term in another Psychology Today article which explained why religious fundamentalists can so easily turn violent and why Creationists feel compelled to over-claim their expertise and insist they know impossible things to be true. Basically, they have a hierarchical view of society and try to elevate themselves up this assumed social hierarchy by pretending to be the superior of educated people, privy to 'secrets' and having a special understanding not available to lesser folk. People who are high in SDO:
   

Malevolent Design News - How Covid-19 was Designed to be Sneaky

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, appears to have evolved silent changes to its RNA code that gave it a biological edge over previous strains.

Credit: Felipe Esquivel Reed

'Silent' Mutations Gave the Coronavirus an Evolutionary Edge | Duke Today

Sadly, this news came just too late to be included in my new book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature’s God is Not Good, because it is a brilliant example of what intelligent [sic] design creationists are obliged to assume was deliberately designed by their putative designer god, and which, if such a god existed, would make it a pestilential, genocidal misanthrope of the highest order.

What researchers at Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA have discovered is the 'silent' mutations that turned a harmless coronavirus, infecting bats and other animals, into a deadly, pandemic virus currently causing mayhem with world economies and deaths in the millions as governments all over the world struggle to contain the virus and avoid local health services being overwhelmed.

New Book - The Malevolent Designer

It hasn't all been boredom and worry during the coronavirus lockdown, when we were confined to our homes for most of the day for several weeks during Spring this year! I spent most of it getting a suntan in my garden and writing a book!

The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, richly illustrated by my good friend and companion in life, the artist Catherine Hounslow-Webber, is a sequel to my popular book, The Unintelligent Designer: Exposing the Intelligent Design Hoax.

This book, with a close look at the realities of nature, shows why any creative entity who designed much of nature could not honestly be regarded as resembling the notional Abrahamic god, whom we are expected to believe, despite the evidence of its resemblance to an irascible Bronze Age Middle-Eastern tribal warlord in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, and the fear, amounting to a psychotic phobia, it evokes in the minds of devotees, is nevertheless an all-loving, maximally good god.

The book takes the reader through a whole range of parasite-host relationships, from the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to parasitic plants, explaining how parasites are often equipped with mechanism to make them more effective at making their hosts sick and finding their way into new victims. The concluding chapter looks at ways in which any such designer has already given some species a much superior system such as the immune system of sharks, the cancer-avoiding system in elephants and the superior eyes and respiratory systems of birds, yet neglected to give other species those same systems, instead handicapping them with inferior 'designs'.

Catholic Corruption News - What a Carry On At The Vatican!

Cecilia Marogna / Cardinal Angelo Becciu

Woman arrested amid Vatican financial scandal claims she worked in ‘parallel diplomacy’ | News | LifeSite

The mystery over the sudden sacking by the Pope of Cardinal Angelo Bacciu, amidst rumours of financial impropriety and misuse of Vatican funds, deepened yesterday with the announcement that a close female associate of his, Cecilia Marogna, 39 had been arrested in Milan and charged with embezzlement.

Until his abrupt sacking, Bacciu had been effectively number two in the Vatican; one of the few members of the Pope's inner cabinet with direct access to him without needing to make an appointment.

Marogana had been employed by Bacciu as a “security advisor”. According to this report in the Catholic-leaning LifeSite:

Christian Loonies for Trump

True to form, Evangelical Christian lunatics are coming out in strength for Donald Trump, that most un-Christian of American presidents.

Here we have a clutch of such fruitloops. The first is one is self-styled "prophetess" Kat Kerr, whom readers of my blog will remember from when she had ordered 100 million angels to guard the GOP National Congress and announced that her personal friend, Jesus, was a Trump supporter.

She has now announced that she can draw God from memory, because she has met him, touched his 'living' hair and has a photographic memory.

Ireland to Reduce Catholic Interference in its Education System

A selection of religious symbols on display at Citywest and Saggart Community National School, an Education and Training Board (ETB) school.

Photograph: Eric Luke

Catholic symbols in State schools to be phased out | Irish Times

The Irish Times is reporting that Catholic influences are to be phased out in State-run schools. This is part of an increasing recent trend towards rejection of religion, especially Catholicism, in Ireland in recent years, and is an important milestone on the road to a fully secular society in the Republic.

Amongst the catholic influences to be removed will be graduation masses, Catholic-only symbols and inspection visits by Catholic diocesan inspectors.