Evolution News - How Fish Fins Became Tetrapod Limbs

Perdepes (reconstruction) showing the forelimb skeleton.

Researchers reconstruct changes in forelimb function as vertebrates moved onto land | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Another bad day for Creationists!

Now an international team of research biologists led by Julia Molnar, Assistant Professor at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and Stephanie Pierce, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University have published details of how fish fins evolved into the tetrapod limb. And they use the dreaded word 'transition'!

To work out how this transition occurred using evidence from the fossil record, the team first spent a long time working out which muscles were present and how and where they were attached to the skeleton. They then fed this information into computer software originally developed to study human locomotion. The Harvard University department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology news article explains:

Covidiot News - The Myths the Fruitloops are Falling For

Not sure about the Pfizer vaccine, now it's been approved in Australia? You can scratch these 4 concerns straight off your list

Writing for an primarily Australian readership, Archa Fox, Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia, exposes the nonsense behind four myths concerning the Pfizer ant-Covid mRNA vaccine about to be rolled out in Australia.

Sadly, Australia has a few pockets of QAnon conspiracists who are promulgating these myths, some of which leave you wondering what it is that could induce these idiots to believe this stuff. But then, Australia also has more than its fair share of fundamentalist Christians, Young Earth Creationists and probably flat-earthers too. Scientific illiteracy and bottomless credulity are not confined to Bible-belt USA.

Firstly, a little bit of information about what the vaccines are and how they work. Bear with me if you already understand this stuff.

Creationist Failure News - Another 'Non-Existent' Missing Link

Artistic reconstruction of Cretophengodes azari

Dinghua Yang

Cretophengodes azari, a fossil light-producing beetle from Cretaceous Burmese amber (~100 million years old).

Credit: Chenyang Cai

January: bioluminescent beetle | News and features | University of Bristol

Yes folks! It's 'non-existent' missing link time, yet again. These come up with such monotonous regularity that I hope I'm not boring you with them!

This time it's the missing link between ancient beetles and the modern bioluminescent species such as fireflies and glow worms. This exceptionally well-preserved, 'non-existent' specimen was found embedded in 100-million-year-old Burmese amber. It was discovered and identified by biologists from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (NIGP) and Peking University in China, led by Dr. Chenyang Cai, research fellow at the University of Bristol and associate professor at NIGPAS.

Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B recently. Sadly, the publishers want money for permission to post even the abstract online but, according to the press release from Bristol University:

A Victory for Human Rights as Biden Plans to Codify Roe v. Wade Into Federal Law

President Joe Biden - Promise to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law if SCOTUS rules against it.

Biden vows to ‘codify’ Roe v. Wade on anniversary of ruling - The Christian Post

The Biden/Harris administration will codify the SCOTUS ruling known as Roe v. Wade into federal law, if SCOTUS, with its new right-wing majority given it by Trump's appointees, ever reverses it.

Last Friday, on the 48th anniversary of the landmark 1973 SCOTUS ruling, President Biden said:

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe. In the past four years, reproductive health, including the right to choose, has been under relentless and extreme attack. We are deeply committed to making sure everyone has access to care — including reproductive health care — regardless of income, race, zip code, health insurance status, or immigration status.

Trumpanzee News - Another One Who Can't Cope With Reality

Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries
Trump is still gonna win! Any day now! Real soon!

'Prophet' Hank Kunneman Refuses to Repent for Repeatedly Prophesying Trump's Reelection | Right Wing Watch

Hank Kunneman, an extremist evangelical fundamentalist Christian preacher and self-appointed 'prophet' of One Voice Ministries, Nebraska, repeatedly bore false witness to his followers, assuring them that Donald J. Trump would win the 2020 presidential election - because God says so, and of course, Kunneman hears voices!

Now he has to try to cope with the reality that not only did Trump lose, not only have the votes been counted, recounted and certified, not only has the result been turned into a 'landslide' EC win for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris but that they have been duly and legally sworn in as POTUS and VPOTUS respectively, and have already stared on a program of repairing much Of the damage Trump did and reversing his more harmful directives like the withdrawl from the Paris agreement on climate change and withdrawing funding from the WHO because it kept telling him things he didn't want to hear.

Another Newly-Discovered Substance Shows Why Biodiversity is Important

Leaf-cutter ants

New antifungal compound from ant farms - American Chemical Society

Following close on my article a few days ago on the antibiotic found in the skin of an Australian toadlet and how this demonstrates the need to maintain a rich biodiversity if only for the resource of natural medicines yet to be discovered in nature, we have another example of an unlikely compound being found - within the nest of leaf-cutter ants.

This time, it's an antifungal compound, produced by bacteria that live on the attine ants (ants of the Atta genus of what are more commonly known as leaf-cutter ants that farm fungi on a substrate of moist chewed-up leaf matter). The ants use this antifungal compound, called attinimicin, to keep their crop and its substrate free from fungal parasites.

Creationist Fraud News - A Turkish Creationist Cult Leader Gets a 1074-Year Jail Sentence

The 64-year-old cult leader Adnan Oktar, who owned a TV channel, was arrested in 2018 along with 200 collaborators.

Credit: Anadolu Agency

Turkey court gives cult head Adnan Oktar over 1,000 years in jail

Anyone who spends much time debating creationism in online groups will be familiar with the followers of Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, a Turkish Moslem fundamentalist Creationist and purveyor of scientific disinformation on a par with Christian fundamentalists such as Kent Hovind, Ken Ham and Ray Comfort, only he is much richer and owns a TV channel.

He, unlike his Cristian counterparts (Hovid excepted), has now been sentenced by a Turkish court to over 1000 years in prison, though not, unfortunately for his crimes of lying to school children who are now taught Creationism in school and not the science of evolutionary biology, due it Oktar's political lobbying and influence.

Evolution News - Rhesus Monkeys Have Human-Like Immune Response to Covid-19

In a promising result for the success of vaccines against COVID-19, rhesus macaque monkeys infected with the human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 developed protective immune responses suggesting long-lasting immunity.

Getty Images

Rhesus Macaques Develop Promising Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2 | UC Davis

To an evolutionary biologist, it makes perfect sense that one of our close relatives in the animal world should react to a virus that is pathological to humans in much the same way that humans do.

To a believer in special creation of all the different species by magic, there is no reason at all to expect this to be so. Indeed, what would be the sense in a supposedly intelligent designer designing lots of variations on a basic theme, even down to the details of things like an immune system as a defence against the viruses it also designed to make them sick, and just arranging it so they looked like they all shared a common ancestor?

Evolution News - Convergent Spitting Cobra Evolution May Have Been Caused by Early Humans

Naja nubiae slow motion spitting

Credit: © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London and Callum Mair

Spitting Cobra venom reveals how evolution will often find the same answer to a common problem | Bangor University

Researchers at Bangor University School of Natural Sciences, Bangor, Wales believe they have shown that the components of the venom ejected by spitting cobras has evolved on three separate occasions due to the same environmental pressures. The fact that there are components in these cobra's venom that exploit the mammalian pain receptors to give instantaneous pain, suggests that this evolved as a defensive, not an aggressive mechanism, aimed at deterring attacks by mammals.

Contrary to the theory that venoms are adapted primarily to enable snakes to kill prey, in spitting cobras, a venom which causes instant pain, and a delivery system which enables the snake to spray the venom to a distance of up to 2.5 metres towards the eyes of anything which comes too close, suggests a defence mechanism, rather than hunting weaponry.

They have also suggested that early hominins may have played a part in this convergent evolution by attacking the snakes.

Gullible Idiot News - QAnon Dupes in a QAndry

For QAnon Believers Facing Reality, What Happens Now? | Psychology Today

The Trumpazee Dupes who got their 'information' from Trump's disinformation sources such as QAnon - the supposed 'deep state' whistle-blower and Trump confidante, responsible for the more outlandish beliefs of the Trumpanzee cult - have a major psychological task facing them - how to rationalise the demonstrable fact that none of the QAnon predictions and claims proved to be true with their belief in the certainty and reliability of their source?

Their problem is the familiar one of how to cope with the cognitive dissonance that results when reality doesn't conform to your requirements and beliefs, forcing you to either change your precious beliefs or ignore reality by explaining it away.

Catholic Abuse News - Irish Church Ratting on Compensation Promise

Site of the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam (now demolished).

Dáil hears call for church assets to be seized if religious orders refuse to pay for abuse - Independent.ie

20 years ago, the then minister Michael Woods, a Fiana Fáil TD, struck a €120 million deal with the Catholic Church in Ireland to pay compensation and reparations to the survivors of the Mother and Baby homes run by Catholic nuns.

Under their draconian, abusive and judgmental regimes, hundreds of babies, stigmatised as the illegitimate products of 'sin', died from diseases, neglect and malnutrition, their bodies then being disposed of like rubbish by being thrown in disused septic tanks or given to the gardener/handyman to dispose of in unmarked graves in the grounds. Some of the bodies were sold to Dublin medical schools to be used for dissection, for as little at 50 pence per body.

The €120 million was to be the Church's contribution to a government-run 'restorative justice' scheme. Most of the commitment has been reneged on.

Malevolent Designer News - What on Earth is Creationism's Magic Designer Up To?

Alarming COVID variants show vital role of genomic surveillance

This is one for those Creationists who subscribe to the Intelligent [sic] Design Hoax but who still believe their putative designer is one and the same as the supposedly all-loving, caring and compassionate deity described in the Christian Bible.

Does the evidence of an increasing number of variant forms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus show us that your god is deliberately trying to find ways to get around the vaccines that human medical science has developed or is it just a result of the operation of the natural process of evolution?

Covidiot News - Muddled Vatican Promulgates a Lie Then Dismisses it Anyway

Pope Francis. Conversion to 'situational ethics'.

Bishops issue updated statement on COVID-19 and vaccination - Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales

The Catholic Church has succeeded in getting itself into a proper muddle over the Covid-19 vaccination.

On the one hand, it is promulgating a lie - that the vaccine is derived from the cells of aborted foetuses - and on the other hand, having raised that thought in the minds of its followers, it now says that 'fact' doesn't prohibit them from receiving the vaccine, even though previous vaccines have been prohibited on just those grounds.

Covidiot News - Loopy Homophobic Rabbi's Paranoid Vaccine Claims

Rabbi Daniel Asor, "Covid-19 vaccine can make you gay"

Popular rabbi warns followers COVID vaccine 'could make you gay' - www.israelhayom.com

A Jewish Rabbi, Daniel Asor, popular in Israel amongst the Orthodox Haredi community, is talking impressionable followers out of having the Covid-19 vaccine, claiming it is part of a plot to turn them gay. He is also promulgating the ludicrously nutty QAnon conspiracy theory that the vaccine is part of a plot to implant microchips in people. A plot that includes the ultra-right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently!

According to this report in Israel Hayom:

In addition to purporting a false link between vaccines and homosexuality, Assur [sic] also advocates various conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, claiming, among other things, that both the virus and the vaccines are the work of a "global malicious government," comprising the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and others, who are "trying to establish a new world order."

Christian Credulity News - Megachurch Pastor Sentenced for Fraud

Megachurch Pastor Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas. Sentenced to 6 years in prison for fraud.

Megachurch pastor sentenced for fraud

To a dishonest evangelical preacher there is little difference between the routine petty fraud of conning thousands of followers out of a tenth of their income on the promise that it'll earn them big rewards later (if they're faithful enough) and the fraud who cons thousands of people by selling them worthless bonds on the promise that their investment will earn them big rewards later.

Both appeal to the naked greed and avarice of the credulous fools they dupe, to whom the only hope for a better life is the expectation of undreamed of wealth for little effort.

According to this report, megachurch senior pastor, Kirbyjon Caldwell of the 14,000-member Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, has been convicted and sentence in Shreveport, Louisiana to 6 years in prison plus a $125,000 fine and ordered to repay $3,588,500 in restitution to the people to whom he sold worthless Chinese bonds, having pleaded guilty to committing wire fraud last March. He had been trading on the trust his victims believed they could place in a 'Man of God'.

Christians Try the 'No True Scotsmen' Fallacy to Cover Their Embarrassment Over the Failed Coup D'etat

Fundamentalist Christians praying outside the Capitol, prior to their failed coup d'etat.

Michael Brown: Just Because Christians Rioted Doesn’t Make it a Christian Riot | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In the finest traditions of evangelical Christianity, evangelist author Michael Brown is lying to his supporters again - and of course bearing false witness against others. He claims those who took part in the riot and failed insurrection on 6th January were not real Christians and, by implication that those who did take part were other than real Christians. Brown evidently takes Matthew 7:20, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them", at face value - ironically, since it is in the context of false prophets, not the actions of self-confessed Christians.

In his rush to distance himself and dissociate himself and his faith from the disgraceful events that should have every decent Christian now questioning what it is about their core beliefs that can provoke people to do such things, Brown delivered what can only be described as one of the best examples of the 'No True Scotsmen' fallacy seen for a long time. Only Michael Brown and his friends are real Christians; all the others, no matter how passionate they are in their beliefs, aren't.

It's Not Just Christian Fundamentalists Who Lie to Children

Bnois Jerusalem Girls School, Amherst Park, London

Government issues notice to Jewish school which taught creationism - National Secular Society

It's not just fundamentalist Christian schools that lie to children whenever they can get away with it; Orthodox Jewish schools do it too. Despite the law forbidding faith schools from teaching creationism as science and/or history, a Jewish faith school in north London, England does just that and has now been issued with a statutory notice by the UK government.

According to the National Secular Society, the Bnois Jerusalem Girls School, Amhurst Park, in North London was found 'inadequate' in all areas in an Ofsted inspection in December 2019 and has failed to meet standards in multiple recent inspections. Ofsted is the Government agency responsible for setting and maintaining standards in education. It's scope includes all schools that receive government funding.

The case of this school flagrantly ignoring the national curriculum it is paid to teach to was brought to the attention of the education minister, Elizabeth Berridge, last June. The school was issued with the notice after inspections resumed. The notice requires the school to sumbit an improveent plan. They are then monitored more closely to ensure compliance.

A Newly-Discovered Antibiotic Shows Why a Rich Biodiversity is Vital

Australian Western toadlet, Uperoleia mjobergii

Toadlet peptide transforms into a deadly weapon against bacteria | EMBL

Researchers at The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany, together with colleagues from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology - have discovered a potential powerful new form of antibiotic - in the skin of an Australian Amphibian, the Western toadlet, Uperoleia mjobergii.

This discovery highlights the vital importance of maintaining a rich biodiversity on Earth because, if nothing else, we could be losing valuable sources of new medicines and antibiotics.

It consists of a polypeptide (a short chain of amino acids) that, when they come into contact with the cell membrane of a bacterium, change to become powerful bactericides. The researchers found that the peptide self-assembles into a unique fibrous structure, which via a sophisticated structural adaptation mechanism can change its form in the presence of bacteria to protect the toadlet from infections.

Malevolent Designer News - Mosquitoes Protected by Bacteria

Mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus

Bacteria carried by mosquitoes may protect them against pesticides

For believers in intelligent [sic] design, it's beginning to look like their putative designer has a special fondness for its chosen vector for infecting humans and other animals with harmful parasites, as it now seems to have come up with a novel way of defending them against human attempts to control their numbers and protect ourselves from them and their parasitic payloads.

These examples of how any designer of these natural horrors would be malevolent in the extreme just keep turning up, as I showed in my illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good.

Now researchers from Reading University, UK and National University of San Juan, Argentina, have found that mosquitoes infected with the common Wolbachia bacteria may be better able to withstand man-made pesticides.

Evangelical Christian Loons Hearing Voices Again - Calling for Trump and Violence

A thin police line confronts pro-Trump insurrectionists outside the Capitol rotunda.
Wednesday 6th January, 2021.

© OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

Texas Pastor Tells Followers to Stock Supplies, Keep Guns Loaded Before Biden Inauguration

Brandon Burden, pastor at KingdomLife in Frisco, Texas, a member of the Frisco Conservative Coalition and a realtor, spoke in 'tongues' (i.e babbled incoherently) in front of his followers on Sunday then told them it was a 'executive order from the CEO in Heaven', telling them to stockpile supplies and keep a loaded gun ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration next Wednesday.

In a clear incitement to attack and occupy Washington, he told them:

Take down the walls of Jericho. The Lord says your Jericho is Washington, D.C. That's your fortified city.

Bad News For Creationists - A Rock Painting Older than Earth and From Before 'The Flood'

Sulawesi warty pig. The world's oldest known painting.
Leang Tedongnge cave, Sulawesi, Indonesia

Source

World’s oldest cave art discovered in Indonesia – Griffith News

A team of archaeologists led by Professor Adam Brumm from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, have discovered what is believed to be the oldest know paining.

Not only has it been dated to way before YECs believe the Universe was magicked into existence, but way before they believe everything was destroyed by a global flood! It must be getting harder and harder to cling to YECism as the evidence against it continues to pile up. It can only be maintained by ignorance of this evidence or by advanced techniques for coping with the cognitive dissonance of holding beliefs that are at complete variance with reality.

The red painting of a Sulawesi warty pig, which is endemic to the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, with two negative images of hands (signatures?) was probably part of a scene with two other pigs, only fragments of which now remain. It has been dated to at least 45,500 years old.

It is believed to have been painted by Homo sapiens, rather than some archaeic hominin species such as Denisovans or Homo erectus.

The team, which included members of Indonesia’s leading archaeological research centre, Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional (ARKENAS), published their finding yesterday in Science Advances.

Catholic Abuse News - Government of Ireland Apologises for Abusive Nuns

Archbishop Eamon Martin, Leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland
"People were frequently stigmatised, judged and rejected"

Irish government to apologise over mother-and-baby homes - BBC News

Taoiseach Mícheál Martin, head of government in the Republic of Ireland, has formally apologised for the state's part in the regimes of terror and casual abuse of mothers and babies in the homes run by Catholic nuns in the 1950s through to the 1990s in Ireland. This abuse led to the premature deaths of some 9000 babies and children and the casual disposal of their bodies in unmarked graves and even in disused septic tanks. Some bodies were even sold to Dublin medical schools for as little as 50 pence!

The Catholic Church's and the Irish states complicity in these systematic and institutionalised abuses of single mothers and their children was acknowledged in the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

These centres of systematic abuse, humiliation and casual neglect for vulnerable women and their children were set up when Ireland, under the malign and all-pervading influence of the Catholic Church, was a deeply conservative, judgemental, misogynistic country in which sex and pregnancy outside wedlock were regarded as amongst the worst of sins, with prgnancy regarded as an ofence and the girls bearing the brunt of the blame. Their babies were regarded as the product of sin and unworthy of love and care, carrying a stigma that would haunt them for life.

A couple of paragraphs from the Report's Executive Summary are particularly telling of the social attitudes and Irish society and of the nuns in particular:

Christian Fruitloop News - Paranoid Nut Job for Paranoid Trump

Fanatical Trumpanzee preacher of hate, Pastor Greg Locke,
Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee

Greg Locke Alleges Mitch McConnell Was Controlled by Illuminati Hand Signals During Election Certification | Right Wing Watch

It's often difficult to tell whether American evangelical Christian fundamentalists like Greg Locke are genuinely as nutty as they seem or whether they are simply tapping into the income stream from people who really are nutty enough to follow them and give them tax-exempt money.

The more charitable view would be that surely, they can't really be so deranged and psychotically paranoid as they seem at first sight to be and still be able to live without constant responsible adult supervision. So that leaves cynicism, greed and fraud as the reasons for their bizarre behaviour and assertions. But, whatever the cause, the basic principles of Christianity seem to have been abandoned somewhere along the line. There is no commitment to truth or personal integrity and greed, avarice and relentless self-aggrandizement seem to have taken control.

Unless they really are bordering on the certifiably insane, that is.

Pope Francis Abandons Faith and Puts His Trust in Science!

Pope Francis meets with Uruguay Ambassador Guzman Miguel Carriquiry Lecour on Saturday at the Vatican. Neither wore a face-mask nor observed sensible social distancing.

Photo: Vatican Media/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Pope Francis to have COVID-19 vaccine as early as next week | Reuters

I know it's unkind but I can't help laughing at the news that Pope Francis is to be vaccinated against Covid-19!

In an interview with the Italian TV station Canale 5, Pope Francis said

I believe that ethically everyone should take the vaccine. It is an ethical choice because you are gambling with your health, with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others. Next week, we will start doing it here, in the Vatican, and I have booked myself in. It must be done.

Christian Fruitloop News - Locke and Kerr Hear Voices Again

A little bit of good news for President-reject Donald Trump and his embittered Trumpanzees. A couple of fruitloop evangelical Christian's have been talking to God and he has reassured them that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Trump is still going to win and will continue in office as the worst president in US history.

Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church.

First off we have Greg Locke, Lead Pastor of Global Vision Bible Church.

Hate-Pastor Who Still Thinks Trump Will Win: God Will Dethrone Democrats in 2021 | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Locke describes himself on his Twitter page as:

Outspoken Pastor that [sic] is unashamed of the Gospel of Jesus and refuses to bow to the politically correct idols of our culture.

Which basically means he's a fully-signed up Trumpanzee and follower of the pro-Trump disinformation source, QAnon. He inhabits a strange world in which evil spirits are trying to take over America and the deranged, dysfunctional and incompetent serial failure, Donald J. Trump, has been sent by God because he needs his help in fighting these evils spirits!

Christian Hypocrisy News - Bearing False Witness for Trump and Violent Insurrection

Evangelist Falsely Claims None of the Capitol Rioters “Were Trump Supporters” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christians, who, despite the tax-exempt (non-political) status of their churches have been politically partisan and acted as cheer-leaders for the increasingly deranged President-reject Trump over the past few weeks, are now desperately trying to distance themselves from the attempted coup they helped foment last Wednesday.

Here we see one such hypocrite, Mario Murillo of Eagle Mountain International Church, ignoring a central tenet of his purported faith and bearing false witness to the world. Obviously, Jesus' instruction to not be a hypocrite wasn't meant to be taken seriously by him either. Murillo seems to have self-licensed exemptions from so many tenets of Christianity and instructions from God and Jesus that it's difficult to find any that he feels he should comply with.

Unintelligent Design News - Science Reveals a Ludicrously Complex System

A human cell is featured during mitosis with its chromosomes (gray areas) aligned. The region known as the kinetochore (colored with yellow, red and cyan markers) is the origin of the checkpoint signal that acts as a safety check against premature cell division and is the focus of UC San Diego researchers’ study.

Wait for Me: Cell Biologists Decipher Signal that Ensures No Chromosome is Left Behind - UC San Diego News Center

News today that scientists have discovered how cells ensure the faithful copying of every last piece of DNA as cells divide to produce the trillions of cells in a multicellular organism.

But why is this highly complex system needed, especially when the process of epigenetics is going to turn most of it off to create cell specialisation on which multicellular organisms depend for the division of labour into functional tissues and specialised organs, and what does this tell us about a hypothetical designer who would come up with something this complex to get around a problem it created earlier?

Firstly, why is this process needed in the first place?