New Structure Evolved in Just 36 Years!

Italian Wall Lizard, Podarcis sicula

Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource | PNAS

It's another one of those 'non-existent' things that creationists must dread being shown.

No. This time it's not yet another of those 'missing' transitional fossils or intermediate forms. This time it's yet another example of something else 'impossible' and 'never observed'. It's yet another example of observed rapid evolution, including the evolution of new structures.

Catholic Cardinal Warns Church Victims To Keep Quiet - Or Else!

New Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera, retired archbishop of Xalapa, Mexico, greets cardinals during a consistory at which Pope Francis created 14 new cardinals in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican June 28.

Credit: CNS photo/Paul Haring.

New cardinal: Abuse victims should be ‘ashamed’ to speak due to their own failings | News | LifeSite

You know, sometimes I worry that this blog is turning into a blog devoted to stories about yet another Catholic paedophile sexual abuse scandal and not the blog devoted to science and Atheism that I originally intended.

I sometime wonder if I could should ask the Pope to try to put a hold on these revelations, so we are not getting the several a day in the current torrent.

Then I realise that that's exactly what his cardinals and bishops have been trying to do for years now. In fact, it was Pope Francis' predecessor's job to try to keep the lid on them before he himself became Pope Benedict XIV and was accountable to Pope John Paul II, as his 'enforcer'.

Church of England Hits a New Low

The Anglican Church has been abandonned by the British

Church of England numbers at record low | NatCen Social Research

The latest British Social Attitudes Survey makes grim reading for the Church of England and hold few crumbs of comfort for leaders of other religions.

The most recent British Social Attitudes survey reveals that the number of Brits who identify as Church of England has more than halved since 2002, falling from 31% to 14%.The sharpest decline happened among 45 to 54 year olds (35% in 2002 vs 11% in 2017). The proportion of people who describe themselves as Roman Catholic (8%), belonging to ‘other Christian affiliations’ (10%) and ‘of non-Christian faiths’ (8%) have remained fairly stable. 52% of people now say they have no religion, compared with 41% in 2002. Men are more inclined to say they follow no religion than women (57% compared with 48%).

Source

New York Catholics Under Investigation

Source

NY attorney general subpoenas state's Catholic dioceses in connection with sex abuse investigation - CNN

Following the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report into Catholic clerical sexual abuse of minors, which revealed a horrific catalogue of abuse by some 300 priests of over 1000 children over 70 years, New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood has announced a state-wide investigation and issued subpoenas against all eight Catholic diocese.

The investigation is to be conducted by the Charities Department because churches are registered charities in New York.

DNA Is Showing Ashkenazi Origins

Khazar Khaganate, 650–850

Ashkenazic Jews' mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA

An item of news out today falls into three main categories I normally write about in this blog - anthropology, religion and politics.

It is news that Eran Elhaik, a lecturer in population, medical and evolutionary genomics at the University of Sheffield, UK, has written an article in the The Conversation on the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews. The Conversation describes itself as combining journalistic flair with academic rigour.

Firstly, I have to admit to some trepidation in tackling this subject, not so much because the political question of the State of Israel, it's legitimacy and its policies towards the Palestinian Arabs have been the subject of a summer-long controversy in the UK about where criticism of the Israeli government becomes antisemitic, but because of the vicious campaign of abuse I was subjected to some 25 years ago when I raised the subject of the origins of the Ashkenazim in an old CompuServe debate forum. I was accused of being a racist, a Fascist apologist, a Holocaust denier and worse, and even received veiled threats of violence.

The question I had raised was that raised by Arthur Koestler in his book The Thirteenth Tribe. Koestler had argued that the Ashkenazim were actually Turkic people from Central Asia who had settled near the Black Sea in the Early Middle Ages and had founded a state known as Khazaria, converted to Judaism, adopted Yiddish, a language with very many Low German and Slavonic words (but with few if any Hebrew words) with a Slavonic grammar. When Khazaria was overthrown and absorbed into Russia, the Ashkenazim had migrated into Eastern and Central Europe, especially Poland, Ukraine and Germany. Koestler, of German Jewish origins himself, was subjected to abuse and vilification at the time.

The reason this is a political issue with perceived overtones of antisemitism is because it questions the legitimacy of the claim by European Jews to a 'God-given' historical homeland in Palestine, from which they traditionally believe they were expelled by the Romans in or around 66 CE following the Jewish Revolt. Quite why is is perceived as racist is beyond me. One Rabbi with whom I had previously been on very friendly online terms, could not explain how suggesting that the Ashkenazim could be Turkic, not Hebrew was racist unless one assumes the Turks are inferior people - which is itself racist, and nonsensical.

The strength of feelings and emotions that colour and cloud the debate can be see in the comments to Eran Elhaik's article.

Given that background, it is interesting that this open access article in The Conversation gives considerable support to Koestler's proposition, based on genetic analysis.

...recent DNA analysis of Ashkenazic Jews – a Jewish ethnic group – revealed that their maternal line is European¹. It has also been found that their DNA only has 3% ancient ancestry² which links them with the Eastern Mediterranean (also known as the Middle East) – namely Israel, Lebanon, parts of Syria, and western Jordan. This is the part of the world Jewish people are said to have originally come from – according to the Old Testament. But 3% is a minuscule amount, and similar to what modern Europeans as a whole share with Neanderthals. So given that the genetic ancestry link is so low, Ashkenazic Jews most recent ancestors must be from elsewhere.

To understand why this is the case, we need to go back in time, to look at where these other ancestors came from. It starts in Persia (modern-day Iran) during the sixth century. This is where most of the world’s Jews were living at this time³.

The tolerance of the Persians encouraged the Jews to adopt Persian names, words, traditions, and religious practices, and climb up the social ladder gaining a monopoly on trade⁴. They also converted other people⁵ who were living along the Black Sea, to their Jewish faith. This helped to expand their global network⁶.

Among these converts were the Alans (Iranian nomadic pastoral people), Greeks, and Slavs who resided along the southern shores of the Black Sea. Upon conversion, they translated the Old Testament into Greek, built synagogues, and continued expanding the Jewish trade network.

DNA of Yiddish speakers could have originated from four ancient villages in northwest Turkey.

These Jews adopted the name Ashkenaz, and the DNA of Ashkenazic Jews can be traced to “Ancient Ashkenaz”⁴ – an intersection of trade routes in eastern Turkey.

We now know that at the time these Jews adopted the name Ashkenaz, they also acquired unique Asian mutations⁷ on their Y chromosome. This is where another important group of people in our story come into play – and they are called the Gok-Turks.

During the sixth century⁸, these nomadic people were ruled by a Siberian Turkic tribe called the Ashina. They were forced by the Chinese Tang Empire – who were in power in China at the time – to migrate westwards toward the Black Sea.

Thanks to their organisational and military skills, the Ashina united many tribes in this area – and a new empire called the “Khazar Khaganate” was born. Offering freedom of worship and taxing trade, these people quickly rose to power.

The Asian group of these DNA mutations⁹, found in Ashkenazic Jews, likely originated from the Ashina elite and other Khazar clans, who converted from Shamanism to Judaism. This means that the Ashina and core Khazar clans were absorbed by the Ashkenazic Jews.

It was also around this time that the Jewish elite adopted many Slavic customs. And based on my previous research, I would suggest that Yiddish was developed as a secret language to assist in trade⁴.

What happened next was that the Jewish empire began to collapse. By the tenth century, the Jews on the Black Sea migrated to Ukraine and Italy. Yiddish became the lingua franca of these Ashkenazic Jews and absorbed German words while maintaining the Slavic grammar¹⁰. And as global trade moved to the hands of the Italians, Dutch and English, the Jews were pushed aside.

What this all shows is that by using modern genetic technology – that enables scientists to track the past of modern-day people – a new appreciation for Jewish ancestry can be discovered.

It has meant a greater understanding of the journeys these people took to arrive in Europe. It has also allowed for increased knowledge as to the significant role the Ashina and the Khazar clans – from which some of the real Jewish patriarchs actually came from – played.

Eran Elhaik;
Ashkenazic Jews’ mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA
The Conversation September 5, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 The Author
Published Open Access
Reprinted under the terms of a Creative Commons licence.

Genetic evidence is providing the definitive answer to these questions of origins, not cultural tradition and myths. Many of the facts such as the linguistic mixture of Slavonic and Low German and absence of Hebrew in Yiddish, and the distribution of the Ashkenazim (and the Sephardim) across Europe are meshing with the emerging genetic evidence of a Turkic and Persian component.

That this subject is even controversial when there is objective evidence on which to decide differences of opinion highlights the problems that arise when religion and politics enter the fray and objectivity is waved aside when it conflicts with dogma and vested interests. The argument then becomes not what is right but what is convenient and fits with a desired narrative.

References:

1. Costa, M.D., Pereira, J.B., Pala, M., Fernandes, V., Olivieri, A., Achilli, A., Perego, U.A., Rychkov, S., Naumova, O., Hatina, J., et al. (2013).
   A substantial prehistoric european ancestry amongst ashkenazi maternal lineages.
   Nature Communications 4. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3543
2. Das, R., Wexler, P., Pirooznia, M., & Elhaik, E. (2017).
   The origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish.
   Frontiers in Genetics, 8 (JUN). https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2017.00087
3. Shlomo Sand, The Origin of the Jewish People, Verso, 2010 ISBN 978-1844676231
4. Elhaik, Eran; Uncovering ancient Ashkenaz – the birthplace of Yiddish speakers, The Conversation.
5. Das, R., Wexler, P., Pirooznia, M., & Elhaik, E. (2016).
   Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz.
   Genome Biology and Evolution, 8(4), 1132–1149. https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evw046.
6. Rabinowitz, Louis Isaac; Jewish Merchant Adventures: A Study of the Radanites (1948).
7. Balanovsky, O., Gurianov, V., Zaporozhchenko, V., Balaganskaya, O., Urasin, V., Zhabagin, M., Grugni, V., Canada, R., Al-Zahery, N., Raveane, A., et al. (2017).
   Phylogeography of human Y-chromosome haplogroup Q3-L275 from an academic/citizen science collaboration.
   BMC Evolutionary Biology 17, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0870-2
8. Golden, Peter B.; Turks and Khazars. Ashgate/Variorum, 2010
9. Rootsi, S., Behar, D.M., Järve, M., Lin, A.A., Myres, N.M., Passarelli, B., Poznik, G.D., Tzur, S., Sahakyan, H., Pathak, A.K., et al. (2013).
   Phylogenetic applications of whole y-chromosome sequences and the near eastern origin of ashkenazi levites.
   Nature Communications 4. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3928
10. Wexler, Paul; The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity, Slavica Publishers, 1993 ISBN: 978-0893572419

The Catholic Church Lied to Cheat Its Victims

St Patrick's Church, Sydney.
Lots of money; empty pews.

Catholic Church's massive wealth revealed

While panic and hysteria are the order of the day for the Catholic Church in the USA things are little better in Australia where the trial of Cardinal Pell is eagerly awaited by everyone everyone who isn't a Catholic under holy orders.

It has now been revealed after a detailed investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald that the church lied to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to conceal the true scale of its assets in an attempt to avoid paying adequate compensation to its victims. They had claimed that increasing the payments would put a strain on church finances, necessitating cuts to their social programs.

Pope Francis to Protect the Guilty?

Cardinal Wuerl. About to flee the USA rather than face arrest as a leader of a crime syndicate.

Breaking News Exclusive: Wuerl Bombshell.

The tidal wave set in motion by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report into Catholic clerical sexual abuses and institutional, systematic cover-ups, continues to spread waves through the Catholic world, and, if reports are to be believed, panic and division in the Vatican.

Church Militant, the online Catholic News site which is normally very protective of the Catholic Church, although no lover of the supposedly reformist Pope Francis, is making a sensational claim, citing Vatican sources, which if true will implicate the Pope himself in the ultimate cover-up - effectively giving protection and immunity from prosecution to a Cardinal named in the Grand Jury report - Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

Building Life's Building Blocks

Researchers have designed a synthetic small protein that wraps around a metal core composed of iron and sulfur. This protein can be repeatedly charged and discharged, allowing it to shuttle electrons within a cell. Such peptides may have existed at the dawn of life, moving electrons in early metabolic cycles.

Image: Vikas Nanda
Source: Rutgers Today

Rutgers Scientists Identify Protein that May Have Existed When Life Began | Rutgers Today

Researchers at Rutgers University have found perhaps the only hard evidence that simple protein catalysts may have existed when life began.

It has long been postulated that life may have begun on iron and sulphur-containing rocks in sea water and that these metals, bound to short peptide chains could have acted as catalysts for simple metabolic processes, long before RNA, DNA and bigger, more complex proteins evolved.

The team used computer modelling to design a short, 12-amino acid peptide for testing. This one had just two different amino acid from the 20 of which larger proteins are made. Being short and simple, it could easily have arisen spontaneously and the metal cluster at the heart of the catalyst are similar to those found in in the oceans on early Earth when life arose.

More Transitional Fossil News!

Credit: Eva Hoffman / The University of Texas at Austin.

Mammal Forerunner that Reproduced Like a Reptile Sheds Light on Brain Evolution | UT News | The University of Texas at Austin.

More transitional fossils again this week, creationists. That 'non-existent' pile of 'non-existent' evidence just keeps getting bigger and bigger!

This time it's the discovery of a unique set of a female and her newborn young of a species of very early proto-mammal which still had some of the characteristics of their reptilian ancestor, one of which was the size of the litter. The adult female was found with 38 babies - more than double the average litter size of any living mammal. This is the only known example of fossils of the babies of a mammal precursor.

The discovery was made in Arizona about 18 years ago by Professor Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences, but he didn't realised then what exactly he had discovered, thinking it was a single specimen of the beagle-sized long-extinct herbivore, Kayentatherium wellesi that coexisted with dinosaurs and lived about 165 million years ago. Kayentatherium wellesi had several features in common with modern mammals and probably had hair.

Then in 2009, Sebastian Egberts, a fossil preparator at the Jackson School spotted a tiny molar-like tooth that suggested there may be babies in the rock as well as an adult. But it wasn't until the advent of modern High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography, combined with image-processing technology that lead author, Eva Hoffman, a graduate student at Jackson School was able to examine the fossil-bearing rock to reveal just what Rowe had found.

In addition to the very large litter size, the skulls showed that Kayentatherium wellesi had a very small brain for a mammal and more typical of a reptile. Together with the large litter size, this suggests that part of the evolutionary trade-off for the relatively large mammalian brain was a reduction in litter size. Growing a large brain places a high energy burden on the female, whether the babies develop internally or in an egg. Within a few million years, the early mammals had larger brains and smaller litters.

Because of this large brain, mammal young typically have a bulbous head and a foreshortened (neotenous) face that develops into the adult face as the young grows (the human head and face is an exaggerated version of this neoteny which is retained into adulthood). Kayentatherium wellesi had no sign of this; the babies having a miniature version of the mother's skull.

It is not clear whether the babies were newly hatched or were near to hatching.

Hofmann's, and Rowe's findings are published today in Nature:

Abstract
Transformations in morphology, physiology and behaviour along the mammalian stem lineage were accompanied by profound modifications to reproduction and growth, including the emergence of a reproductive strategy characterized by high maternal investment in a small number of offspring^1,2 and heterochronic changes in early cranial development associated with the enlargement of the brain³. Because direct fossil evidence of these transitions is lacking, the timing and sequence of these modifications are unknown. Here we present what is, to our knowledge, the first fossil record of pre- or near-hatching young of any non-mammalian synapsid. A large clutch of well-preserved perinates of the tritylodontid Kayentatherium wellesi (Cynodontia, Mammaliamorpha) was found with a presumed maternal skeleton in Early Jurassic sediments of the Kayenta Formation. The single clutch comprises at least 38 individuals, well outside the range of litter sizes documented in extant mammals. This discovery confirms that production of high numbers of offspring represents the ancestral condition for amniotes, and also constrains the timing of a reduction in clutch size along the mammalian stem. Although tiny, the perinates have an overall skull shape that is similar to that of adults, with no allometric lengthening of the face during ontogeny. The only positive allometries are associated with the bones that support the masticatory musculature. Kayentatherium diverged just before a hypothesized pulse of brain expansion that reorganized cranial architecture at the base of Mammaliaformes^4,5,6. The association of a high number of offspring and largely isometric cranial growth in Kayentatherium is consistent with a scenario in which encephalization—and attendant shifts in metabolism and development^7,8—drove later changes to mammalian reproduction.

Hoffman, E. A. & Rowe, T. B.
Jurassic stem-mammal perinates and the origin of mammalian reproduction and growth.
Nature (2018). doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0441-3

Copyright © 2018 Springer Nature
Reprinted with kind permission under licence #4418800310084

So, these fossils show clear signs of transition from the reptile ancestors of these mammaliform reptiles to the mammals they would soon become. As good an example of a transitional species between two different orders of amniotes as one could wish for; and so another fossil for creationists to have to perform intellectual somersaults over so they can continue to believe the dogma rather than the evidence.

A Sting in the Tail for Creationism

Illustration of a female Xenomorphia resurrecta ovipositing into a puparium.

Parasitoid biology preserved in mineralized fossils | Nature Communications.

The nasty designer has been at it for years!

It's been at it for tens of millions of years in fact; way before there were humans or anything like humans - which is a bit of a problem for creationists who kneejerk 'The Fall' as the excuse for why their putative intelligent designer designed such nasty little things as parasitic wasps which eat their hosts alive, killing them only when they've finished with them.

We know this because of the the work of a large team of specialists working on a project coordinated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany, led by Thomas van de Kamp. Their findings were published yesterday in Nature Communications, along with some clever animations.

Caca Papa Francis!

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

Photo: Edward Pentin

Ex-Nuncio Accuses Pope Francis of Failing to Act on McCarrick’s Abuse | Catholic Register.

Apparently, following his ignominious dressing down by Leo Varadkar, the Pope is reported to have met some of the abuse victims and described those who facilitated and covered up the abuses what was widely reported in the respectable press as 'filth' or 'excrement'. However, the adjective he actually used was rather more succinct and, shall we say, earthy.

Speaking in his native Argentinian Spanish tongue he called them 'caca' which directly translates into English as 'shits'.

This is a rather unfortunate piece of timing because the whole expanding coverup crisis currently engulfing the Catholic Church just encircled Pope Francis himself! The caca has just hit the fan big time.

The Pope Gets a Lesson in Morality

Taoiseach Leo Varadakar welcomes Pope Francis ahead of his speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin

Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire

In an astonishingly frank yet polite speech to Pope Francis in Dublin Castle, the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, marked a turning point in the history of the Irish Republic and its relationship with the Catholic Church - and he told the Pope why.

He started the speech by acknowledging the good that the Catholic Church did in Ireland - schools, hospitals, welfare - filling the holes in what the State provided to the people after independence, although he politely sidestepped the fact that the Church clung tenaciously to their control of these institutions and resisted any state involvement, which is why those 'holes' existed in the first place.

According to the transcript of his speech in the Indepenent.ie, reproduced in full below, he then reminded the Pope that the State had now taken on those functions because Ireland is a different place and a different society to that at its founding in 1922.

Holy Father, on behalf of the Irish people, I want to greet you using one of the oldest blessings we use to welcome a special guest to Ireland - cead mile failte - one hundred thousand welcomes.

Oleg the Priest Cleans Up

After Pride parade, priest cleanses route with holy water | News | LifeSite

After witnessing a gay pride parade through the streets of Odessa, on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Oleg Mokryak, head of the Missionary Department for the Diocese of Odessa sprang into immediate action to save his beloved city and its people.

Making sure his hair was correctly brided and his beard was in order, he donned his best black dress and white smock with the magic symbols on; put on his special hat, filled a red plastic bucket with some water that he had cast spells over and, with about a hundred followers and guarded by some 800 police just in case the spells, beard, symbols and magic water didn't keep the hostile crowds away, strode along Seaside Boulevarde bravely sprinkling it with the magic water using a washing up mop.

Australia is Abandoning Creationism.

Data source: Archer, M, et al.

Thirty two years of continuous assessment reveal first year university biology students in Australia are rapidly abandoning beliefs in theistic involvement in human origins | Evolution: Education and Outreach.

In 1987, Ken Ham moved from Australia to the USA having realised there was a more lucrative market for creationist anti-science disinformation there than in Australia. America's loss was Australia's gain as this heartwarming survey shows.

Evidence comes from a study by researchers from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia, published a few days ago in Evolution: Education and Outreach.

It shows that in the 32 years since Ham left Australia, belief in Young Earth Creationism (YECism) amongst Australian first-year university biology student has fallen from 10.0% to 3.6% (peaking at a high of 17.3% in 1988). Over the same time, belief in non-theistic evolution has risen from 25.1% to 62.2% and in theistic evolution has halved from 50.0% to 25.2%. In other words there has been a massive move away from the belief that somehow a god was involved in 'creating' humans towards acceptance of the scientific, evolutionary explanation.

The trends themselves are changing unfavourably for religion; increasing for belief in non-theistic evolution and decreasing rapidly for belief in YECism. These trends have been changing more quickly since the early 2000s.

The combined average change in support for theistic evolution of both sorts was -1.0 percentage points per year while the average annual increase for non-theistic evolution was +1.2%. In the last ten years these average annual change became -1.65% and +1.76% respectively. Over the period there was no evidence of a significant change in the proportions of 'Undecided', averaging 8.6%.

And This Week's 'Non-existent' Transitional Fossil Is...

230 million year-old Eorhynchochelys sinensis from Guizhou, China.

Photo Credit: Xiao-Chun Wu

230-million-year-old turtle fossil deepens mystery of reptile's origins | Nature.

This weeks 'non-existent' transitional fossil is... a turtle without a shell!

This 230 million year-old specimen of a stem turtle comes from Guizhou province of south west China was more than 2 metres long. It shows the rib cage expanding but there are no signs of a shell. And it has a beak.

It provides us with an illustration of how science proceeds and how new information can cause us to revise and re-assess what we thought we already knew and how it can even cloud the issue rather than clarify it.

What 'Kind' of Human is a Hybrid Human?

The fragment of bone from Denisova Cave seen from different angles.

Source: Brown, S. et al/CC BY 4.0

The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father | Nature

The ever-developing story of the Homo sapiens who left Africa and migrated eventually to all parts of the world except Antarctica, just took another twist.

Geneticists at the Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany have shown that the greater than 50,000 year-old fragment of bone recovered from Denisova Cave in Siberia is of a female who died aged about 13 whose father was a Denisovan and whose mother was a Neanderthal. This fragment of bone had earlier been shown to be hominin by analysis of the fibrous structural protein, collagen and the mitochondrial DNA. The team who did this analysis had nicknamed her 'Denny'.

Now We Know What Causes Creationism!

Creationism and conspiracism share a common teleological bias: Current Biology

Creationists will probably dismiss it as a conspiracy, but researchers in psychology at Fribourg, France, believe they have shown why creationism and conspiracy theories have so much in common in terms of rejection of science and belief in agency.

The cause is teleological thinking, which is ironic, given that the 'Teleological Argument' from religious apologetics and Intelligent Design, depend entirely on this retained irrational and simplistic psychological response from childhood.

Galling Problem for Creationists

Rice University bioscientists found that love vines attach themselves to galls, extracting energy from the nurseries at the expense of the young wasps inside. Biologists found dead, mummified wasps in almost half of the attacked galls they opened.

Photo: Mattheau Comerford/Rice University

Love vine sucks life from wasps, leaving only mummies.

Today we have more examples of the incompetence and sheer malevolence (if we assume intent) in biological design. This time the examples are from the world of parasites, especially the parasites that produce the many different galls found on oak trees.

The first is from the USA, involving just one of the estimated 13,000 different species of parasitic wasps that cause gall formation in plants, Belonocnema treatae. B. treatea is native to Texas and Florida. But there is a twist. This was discovered by etymologists from Rice University.

Like many other gall-forming wasps it has two generations: one sexually-reproducing with both male and female wasps; the other asexual with just parthenogenetic females, which produce the next sexual generation. The sexually-reproducing females lay eggs in the leaves of oak trees and the developing grub causes a round gall to form on the underside of the leaf.

How the gall is formed is not fully known but is believed to be caused by toxins or proteins (and possibly even a virus) which causes the oak cells to grow into a gall around the developing grub, providing both protection and nutrients. Asexual females emerge from these galls and their generation of grubs develop underground in galls on the oak trees' roots. Incidentally, this is a good example of how exactly the same DNA can produce entirely different structures under different environmental conditions.

Peppered Moth Experiment Confirmed

A target matching a typical moth pinned to a lichen covered tree in woodland in the predation experiments.

Featured news - Study confirms truth behind ‘Darwin’s moth’ - University of Exeter

Just a few days ago, in reply to yet another prediction by a creationist that the Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis and within a few years scientists will be forced to abandon it in favour of Intelligent Design, because the evidence will be too strong to ignore, I pointed out that there is no evidence whatsoever that the TOE is 'in crisis' and that biomedical scientists regard it as anything less than an established fact and the theory underpinning the whole of biology.

I also said that scientists no longer bother to do experiments to confirm it because it is not seriously disputed.

Then, as thought to prove me wrong, along comes a report by two scientists from Exeter University that does just that. They set out to falsify one of the iconic examples of Darwinian evolution in progress - the evolution of 'industrial melanism' in the Peppered moth, Biston betularia.

Pennsylvania Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal - It's The Gays' Fault!

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League. Not paedophiles, just gay!

American Catholic leaders blame the Pennsylvania sex abuse scandal on gays / LGBTQ Nation

As Pope Francis expresses his "shame and sorrow" over the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Interim Report that revealed that 300 Catholic priests had abused over 1000 minors in the last 70 years in the state of Pennsylvania alone, and that bishops and cardinals had been complicit if covering up and even facilitating the abuses, the American Catholic League was quick to assign blame, in the finest Catholic tradition.

It was the gays what done it!

Missionary News - Feel That Christian Love!

Jimmy L. Naylor bringing the love of Jesus to Ugandan hotel staff

American Charged In Uganda After Racist Assault On Hotel Workers

Jimmy L. Naylor, American Christian evangelist, missionary and former marine has an interesting new approach when bringing the good news of Jesus to the Godless heathens of Ugandans.

According to this report by Carla Herriria in Huffington Post, he punched and slapped the hotel staff at Kampala's Grand Imperial Hotel, called then n****rs and threatened to kill them.

In this four-minute video, missionary Jim can be seen physically and verbally abusing the staff and telling them:

How Epigenetics Refutes Intelligent Design

With epigenetics persistently being raised in creationist arguments and disinformation sites as an argument against 'Darwinism', I thought it would be worth giving a chapter of my book on 'Intelligent Design' a wider audience. The following is from The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax.

It comprehensively debunks the notion that epigenetics supports intelligent design creationism and refutes evolution.

Epigenetics is a relatively new branch of biology which is presenting biologists with some new challenges, not the least of which is its complexity. It is also presenting creationism with some exciting new gaps in which to try to insert a creator and attack science on the basis that if science doesn’t know something it has failed and proven itself unreliable. No matter that in a few years, maybe a little longer, science, using the scientific method will one day close those gaps and, like all the other gaps, will fail to find a god in them. By then, creationist apologists will have moved on to some more gaps, still confident that this time science will be forced to admit that ‘God did it!’

Whole books are being written about epigenetics and the challenges it presents to biology, one such being Nessa Carey’s The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance¹.

Briefly, epigenetics is the study of how various genes are turned off in different cells as they become specialised during embryonic development. The actual mechanism, the epigenetic processes itself, are beyond the scope of this book but what interests us here is what this means for our understanding of evolution and, more importantly, why the processes are needed.

Another Bad Week for the Vatican as Sex Abuse Scandal Grows

An investigator leaving the Chilean Episcopate in Santiago after Tuesday's raid.

Photograph: Dragomir Yankovic/AFP/Getty Images

Chile police raid Catholic church HQ in sex abuse investigation | World news | The Guardian

You can almost feel sorry for Pope 'Uncle Frankie' Francis as he contemplates the long, slow self-induced implosion of the institutionally corrupt and debauched Catholic Church he struggles to lead and give moral guidance too. It must be like the sale of indulgences scandals of the Late Middle Ages that nearly destroyed the church, only this time it's worse.

This time, people who leave the church in disgust at the hypocrisy and debauchery of clerics don't just have the alternative of another sect of Christianity - which anyway in its now myriad different manifestations, is suffering almost as badly as the Catholic Church from scandals almost identical to those of the Catholics. This time those turning their back on the church have a clear alternative to religion in the form of a large and growing secular humanism and non-affiliation which are now in a very clear majority in many countries in the developed world. Many are now looking not for an alternative religion but for an alternative to religion.

Pennsylvania Grand Jury - "We need you to hear this."

Archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl. Claims he, "acted with diligence, with concern for the survivors and to prevent future acts of abuse."

Credit: Getty Images

“It happened everywhere”: The unimaginable scale of sexual abuse in Pennsylvania’s Catholic Church. | The New Republic

It might not be typical but there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special and confined to the state that would turn Catholic priests into paedophile sexual predators in the State of Pennsylvania where a Supreme Court Grand Jury investigation has just released a 900-page interim report detailing an astonish 1000 cases of child sexual abuse involving 300 priest over a period of 70 years and revealing systematic coverups.

And that may well be an underestimate. The report states:

New Book: A Goose For Christmas

A Goose For Christmas: Stories From an Oxfordshire Childhood, is a kind of prequel to my book In the Blink of an Eye.

It is again set in the small north Oxfordshire hamlet of Fawler in the post-war austerity of the 1950s. The stories are woven mostly from real-life events, all of which happened but not necessarily in the same order or even in the same year. All the characters are real people.

The aim has been to show life through the eyes of children in a rural Oxfordshire community where poverty and self-sufficiency were a way of life and a way of life which had more in common with the 1850s than with rural life even 20 years later. This was the last generation to grow up without television, central heating, piped hot water and in many cases indoor toilets.

The first story, A Goose for Christmas, tells the story of a family as it prepares for Christmas with a difference and with more than a little trepidation. The Adventures of the Carson Gang is a collection of short stories about the children in the hamlet as they explore their surroundings, live out their fantasies and make their own entertainment with little but their own resources and what the hamlet and surrounding countryside had to offer.

The book is illustrated by Catherine Hounslow.

It Doesn't Even Make the National News Anymore

Canon Terrence Grigg, vicar of Cottingham, senior canon of York Minster, former member of the General Synod and sexual predator.

'Hypocrite' who hid his depraved attacks on vulnerable boys finally unmasked as sick sexual predator - Hull Live

It tells us something when news of yet another child-abusing paedophile priest going to prison doesn't even make the national news any more!

How many people in the UK even heard of Cannon Terrence Grigg and his activities that were described by the judge as 'depraved' and 'perverted' when he was sentenced in Hull Crown Court to 12 years in prison last Thursday? And how many people knew that when one of Grigg's alleged victims went to the then Bishop of Hull, James Jones, in the 1990s to complain, he was threatened and warned that he could go to prison if he didn't drop the allegations?

It was only on the local news that people in Humberside heard about The Reverend Canon Terrence Grigg, 84, former rector of St Mary's Church, Cottingham, senior canon of York Minster, and former member of the General Synod, who showed "not a shred of remorse", according to Judge Rose.

Grigg had been convicted of 12 charges of indecent assault and 2 charges of serious sexual assault. He was acquitted of one charge of indecent assault. He had pleaded not guilty to all fifteen charges and claimed to be celibate. The judge told Griggs:

You were no doubt the beneficiary of the church's treatment of [the complainant], which not only refused to pursue the complaint to the Bishop of Hull, but turned the complaint against him with threats of litigation and imprisonment so that he withdrew the complaint because he was so fearful of the consequences... [Referring to the claim of celibacy] instead [you] sexually abused vulnerable young men of your parish for your own immoral, illegal, perverted gratification... Each of them and each of your congregants, and those in the higher echelons of the church, the bishops and archbishops, were deceived and misled and fooled by your outward appearance. For nearly ten years, you were in truth a sexual predator, choosing for your victims the vulnerable and unhappy. The trust placed in you as a priest was, as the jury has found, entirely misplaced.

The court heard the police found two videos of homsexual prography at Griggs' home showing he had a sexual interest in young men as recently as 2016. They also found condoms at both his homes, giving the lie to his claim of celibacy. Judge Rose described it as a deplorable case and excused the jury from further jury service for ten years because of what they had had to endure.

James Jones, former Bishop of Hull

Photo: Rob Stebbing

The court also heared how a man who alleged he had been assaulted by Griggs was advised by Bob Goodram, music and choir leader at the church, to put his complaint in writing and take it to James Jones, then Bishop of Hull, which he did. He then described the intimidation and threats to which he had been subjected and which he claimed led to a mental breakdown.

Some days after handing Bishop Jones the letter he was contacted by Bob Goodram and told there was a problem with the letter which contained material which should not have been included. He was then driven to Bishop Jones' house where he was told the matter had gone to the Archbishop of York for investigation, and there was now a risk that he could have action taken against him.

He was told that the only recourse was to engage a solicitor to have the complaint withdrawn and to write a letter of apology to Griggs withdrawing the allegation. He duly wrote the letter and was told that might be the end of the matter but he could still have action taken against him.

Former Bishop James Jones in no stranger to allegations of bullying. He was was from the Evangelical wing of the Anglican Church and was promoted to Bishop of Liverpool in 1998, a post he held until his retirement in 2013. He was also Chair of the Council of Wycliffe Hall, and Anglican college in Oxford. He resigned after a member of the Council resigned in protest at Jones' handling of an allegation of bullying against the college's Principle, and won a case for unfair dismissal. The college admitted breaking the law and had to pay damages.

Another Blooper by the Unintelligent Designer?

Evolutionary changes in the human brain may have led to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia | ScienceDaily.

When you get past the superficial resemblance of design in living organisms it become impossible to regard any putative designer as anything other than spectacularly inept or gratuitously malevolent.

In this paper published in the American Journal of Human Genetics a few days ago we are given evidence of bad design similar to the bad designs associated with bipedal locomotion, upright posture and smaller jaws that have given us bad backs, problem knees and impacted wisdom teeth.

This time the problems are associated with our large brains, specifically, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Unkind Problem for Creationists

Dojo loach, Misgurnus anguillicaudatus

Photo: Takafumi Fujimoto

Fish reproduction: Two times a lady | Hokkaido University.

A little female fish blows the creationist notion of 'kind' wide open and shatters the no 'macro-evolution' dogma.

When you can pin a creationists down to something approaching a definition of 'kind', it almost always includes something about not being able to breed with any other 'kind', although, naturally, when the needs of the argument dictate this may be abandoned to move the definition up a taxonomic level or two and widen the goalposts, so non-interbreeding but related species can be the same 'kind'.

They will also tell you that a change of 'kind' would involve a change in genetic 'information' to create new systems and structures (something they call 'macro-evolution') which they declare to be impossible because it requires new information (which they also declare to be impossible).

Child Abuse: More Catholic Monkey Business

Ampleforth Abbey.
"'Appalling' sexual abuse over 40 years."

Child abuse inquiry: School 'reputations put before abuse victims' - BBC News

Shocking, horrific, disgusting, abhorrent, are all adjectives one hears all too often in relation to revelations of another religious institution where child abuse was a routine and accepted part of the culture. None of these adjectives would be too strong to describe the contents of the report published today^{PDF [Warning! Explicit and distressing contents]} of the enquiry into the abuses of boys at two Catholic schools, Ampleforth and Downside School, both run by the semi-autonomous charity, English Benedictine Congregation (EBC).

The executive summary to the report states:

Baptist Minister in 'Gay Cure' Child Abuse

Gary Wiggins
Charged $21,000 to 'beat the demons out' of gay teens

Texas Authorities Shut Down Boys Camp Run By Baptist Minister Accused of ‘Ex-Gay’ Torture - OutSmart Magazine.

Got a teenage son who is showing signs of being gay? Don't worry! For $21,000 a year, Gary Wiggins, a recovering alcoholic and former drug addict, and a born again Baptist minister, will beat and abuse the evil demons out of them - and use them as free labour in his lawn-care and removal companies; the teenage boys that is, not the evil demons.

Last week, authorities in Burnet County, Texas, USA rescued eight boys aged between 10 and 17 from a religious 'gay cure' camp run by Wiggins. The camp, the Joshua Home, Bertram, Texas, was raided following an investigation into allegations of abuse, neglect, labor violations, fraud, licensing violations, and human trafficking. The investigators believe Wiggins may have been using the boys illegally for a lawn care service and moving company.

Origin of Stonehenge Builders

Stonehenge

Source: English Heritage

Strontium isotope analysis on cremated human remains from Stonehenge support links with west Wales | Scientific Reports.

I have previously written about Stonehenge and the other mysterious monuments and earthworks in Wiltshire, especially about what little we know of the builders, their society and culture and particularly about their god(s) of whom we know nothing.

Now, due to the painstaking research carried out by archaeologists from Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, UK, we are perhaps just a little closer to knowing just a little more about who the people who built Stonehenge were.

It's Not Just the Catholics!

Pastor Harry L. Thomas. Conviction Christian.

Largest Christian music festival founder busted with 18-year prison sentence after molesting five children.

As though to prove the Catholic Church doesn't have a monopoly on child sexual abuse by priests, the senior pastor and founder of the Come Alive New Testament Church in Medford, New Jersey, USA has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for molesting five children.

Pastor Harry L. Thomas, now 74, is also the founder of one of the largest Christian festivals in the USA, Creation Festival, and Come Alive International, a missionary organisation. He was arrested in DEcember 2017 and charged with amolesting 4 children over a 16 year period. He pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting young girls in February and admitted to a fifth offence. The plea bargin included a non parole agreement.

In 2003 Thomas served as an advocate for two church members, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, accused of starving and neglecting four foster children in their care, setting up the now-defunct website, savethejacksons.org in their support. Vanessa Jackson received a seven year sentence for her part in the mistreatment of the children.

Zombie Insect Made Mad for Sex - By a Fungus

Cicada infected with Messospora fungus.

Photo credit: SuperStock

Parasite fungus sends insects on sex spree by loading them up on drugs | New Scientist

Here we have a very nice example of a host being controlled by a parasite, exactly as I discussed in my latest book, The Unintelligent Designer.

This time, it is a cicada which is controlled by fungi of the Massospora genus.

When infected by these fungi, the victims appetite is suppressed but their sex drive is heightened to the extent that males will spend all their time trying to mate, even with other males. To make it worse for the cicadas the fungus actually castrate them by making the end of their abdomen fall off when they first try to mate, replacing it with a fungal 'plug'.

Another High-Ranking Catholic Resignation

Philip Wilson. Former Archbishop of Adelaide

Archbishop Philip Wilson resigns after sex abuse cover-up - CNN

A brief update on the article of a month ago concerning (now former) Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, sentenced to 12 months detention (incorectly reported by CNN as 6 months although he will probably serve only 6 months of the 12 month sentence), probably in his sister's house. The court is due to rule in August on the suitability of his sister's house as a detention centre.

At the time of his conviction last May, he continued to protest his innocence and refused to resign his position in the Catholic Church. As recently as last week he was saying he would not resign, pending the outcome of an apeal.

The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the ID Hoax [Update]

$10.75 (£8.45, €9.25) Paperback. $5.95 (£4.55, €5.10) Kindle

How can the malaria parasite, with its hugely complex life cycle and all the internal complexity of its single cell possibly be described as intelligently designed when whatever it was 'designed' for - apparently making people sick, killing children and making more malarial parasites - could have been achieved far more simply?

And how could such a design be explained as the work of a maximally good creator without abandoning science and falling back on a religious superstition including 'The Fall' and 'sin'?

Why do Giant puffballs produce 70 trillion spores just to ensure one or two become new Giant puffballs? Why does every cell in every chicken contain genes for making a dinosaur face and growing a penis only to have them overridden and made redundant? Why do some humans have tails and why do Christmas trees have seven times more DNA than you?

And why is almost all life on Earth dependent on the least efficient enzyme known?

These and many more examples of needless complexity, prolific waste, ultimately futile arms races and sub-optimal efficiency, all refuting the notion of intelligence and design in nature are revealed in my latest book, The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax, which reveals ID to be a hoax, deliberately intended to fool the gullible and scientifically illiterate.

More Holy Kiddie Fiddling

(Former) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington.
"No recollection of abusing boys and men".

Cardinal McCarrick, prominent US Catholic, resigns over abuse claims | BBC News

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, and ordered him to a life of seclusion, spent in prayer and penance following the emergence of more allegations of sexual abuse of boys and adults. He is to face a Church trial.

McCarrick, who is 88, claims no recollection of the incidents which last month, Catholic Church officials investigating the allegations described as 'credible'. His resignation means he will no longer have the titles 'Cardinal' and 'Your Eminence'.

Fraud of Turin Exposed as Fake - Yet Again

A BPA Approach to the Shroud of Turin | Journal of Forensic Sciences - Wiley Online Library

If it wasn't for the Catholic authorities, with the Pope's cooperation and approval, refusing to accept that what they have on display in Turin Cathedral is not the authentic shroud that Jesus was allegedly wrapped in but a Medieval artefact, possibly a deliberate forgery as this recent paper suggests or a prop used in Early Medieval Passion plays as British historian Charles Freeman convincingly argued, it would have been put into a museum drawer labelled Medieval European Religious Artefacts years ago.

And all this despite Catholic Bishop Pierre d’Arcis writing to Pope Pope Clement VII in 1390 to tell him that the 'shroud' was a forgery.

[The Shroud is] a clever sleight of hand [by someone] falsely declaring this was the actual shroud in which Jesus was enfolded in the tomb to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them.

Bishop Pierre d’Arcis,
Letter to Pope Clement VII, 1390

But here we are again with yet another scientific investigation and yet another conclusion that the Shroud of Turin is a forgery.

In fact, this discovery is not itself particularly new, being presented at the 66th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, February 17‐22, 2014, in Seattle, WA, USA and again at the 67th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, February 16‐21, 2015, in Orlando, FL, USA. However, it appeared in print for the first time here. Regretably, all but the abstract is behind a paywall:

Yet Another of Those 'Non-existent' Transitional Fossils!

A. afarensis juvenile foot DIK-1-1f.

DIK-1-1f shown in (clockwise from top left) medial, dorsal, and lateral views. To right, dorsal view of DIK-1-1f and the adult A. afarensis foot A.L. 333-115. Scale bars, 1 cm.

A nearly complete foot from Dikika, Ethiopia and its implications for the ontogeny and function of Australopithecus afarensis | Science Advances

Imagine, you're a creationist and you've spent hundreds of hours on the social media yelling at scientists and people who accept what science demonstrates over an over again as true beyond a shadow of doubt, telling them that there are no transitional fossils and that Charles Darwin said this would destroy his theory, and you keep being shown yet another example of a transitional fossil!

Maybe you've even spent hours indoctrinating your unfortunate home-schooled children that 'evolution' had been proved false because of this absence!

What do you do?

Creationists! Test Your Personality With This Simple Test!

Find out what makes you a creationist with this simple personality analysis.

Just note down the letter of the answer that comes closest to your reaction to everyday online experiences. No scientific knowledge is needed and you don't even need to know your holy book. Just be as honest as you can.

What could be simpler?

1. When you see the word 'evolution' in an online debate do you:
   
   1. Start typing stuff about the Big Bang, Atheism, life from nothing and evolution being a religion?

More Malevolence From the Malevolent Designer

Once it enters the cell, the parasite rotates to close the door it has opened. This movement also seals it into a vacuole, a sac where it stays and develops.

© Isabelle Tardieux

A new twist on how parasites invade host cells - CNRS Web site - CNRS

To get a proper perspective on the sort of creature creationists imagine they're worshipping, consider a man in your neighbourhood who obsessively invents and refines ways of making his neighbours sick and frequently killing them, indiscriminately at any age from babies to old people.

He doesn't just do this once but continually and isn't satisfied with just making them sick but tries to find ingenious ways to overcome any attempts his neighbours make to avoid getting sick or reducing the harm he's doing them. The methods he chooses to harm them are invisible to the naked eye; they get into them via their food, in the air they breathe, by being injected by blood-sucking parasites or in any number of ways that are hard to control or defend themselves against.