How the Malevolent Designer Beats Medical Science

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

Credit: CDC / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

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

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

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

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

Southern Baptist Paedophile Convention

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

Source: Houston Cronicle

Bellevue Baptist sued after volunteer coordinator sexually abuses teenager

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

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

According to this report in Memphis Commercial Appeal:

Evolution News - Fish Teeth Refute Creationism

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

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

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

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

The ESRF press release explains:

Covidiots - Rishi Sunak Waives the Rules

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

Photograph: Simon Walker/HM Treasury

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

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

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

Rats! Penis Enlargement Homeopathy Fraud!

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

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

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

The Paranoia that Causes Americans to Hate Atheists

Why Americans Hate Atheists | Psychology Today

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

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

Covidiots - Kenneth Copeland Keeps On Scamming

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

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

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

Covidiots - Israel "Has Lost It"

Israeli Covid-19 Daily Cases

Source: Johns Hopkins University

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

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

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

Covidiots - Texas Turnips

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

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

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

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

Trumpanzee Christian Fruitloop Saves the Day

Kat Kerr, Christian "Prophetess"

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

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

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

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

Covidiots - California's 'Persecuted' Christians

California Covid-19 timeline

Data Sources: Cases and deaths data from JHU CSSE. Policy actions from the National Governor’s Association, D.C. Policy Center, and Washington, DC’s Coronavirus website.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Evangelicals Are Furious That California Temporarily Banned Singing in Churches | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In addition to the resurgence of Covid-19 cases in California, there has been an resurgence of persecution mania amongst California's evangelical Christian community.

This time, their indignation is over not being allowed the privilege of spreading Covid-19 in the manner of their choosing - by gathering together in an enclosed space and bellowing at the top of their voices.

The cause of their self-righteous outrage?

The attempt by the governor, Gavin Newsom, to introduce measures intended to bring under control the serious and accelerating second wave of Covid-19 cases in the state. The new guidelines include discontinuing singing in church services:

Malevolent Designer News - More Malevolent Designs

Black-legged or deer tick, Ixodes scapularis.

Photo:Scott Bauer.
This image was released by the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the US Department of Agriculture, with the ID k8002-3 (next).,
Public Domain, Source: Wikipedia

Repression of tick microRNA-133 induces organic anion transporting polypeptide expression critical for Anaplasma phagocytophilum survival in the vector and transmission to the vertebrate host

Here's a real treat for the followers of the intelligent [sic] designer and those who appreciate the length this malevolence is going to to make humans and other creatures sick.

The first is an account of how the Anaplasma phagocytophilum, tick-borne parasite that causes anaplasmosis, manages to live in the tick which the intelligent [sic] designer has chosen as the means of injecting it into its target hosts.

Scientists at the Department of Biological Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA and Department of Entomology, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven, Connecticut, USA have discovered that A. Phagocytophilum interferes with a tick gene. This gene normally produces a chemical which inhibits the production of OATP on which organisms such as A. Phagocytophilum depend. This results in more OATP and so more A. Phagocytophilum to infect a host with.

The team published their findings, open access in PLOS Genetics:

Evolution News - Beginnings of Snake Venom

Ringed caecilian, Siphonops annulatus

Dias, I - Dias I, Medeiros T, Vila Nova M, Solé M (2014) Amphibians of Serra Bonita, southern Bahia: a new hotpoint within Brazil’s Atlantic Forest hotspot. ZooKeys 449: 105-130.
doi: 10.3897/zookeys.449.7494, CC BY 4.0, Link

First evidence of snake-like venom glands found in amphibians -- ScienceDaily

Scientists believe they have found evidence that some amphibian ancestors of snakes could have evolved venom. What look suspiciously like venom glands have been found in the ringed caecilian, Siphonops annulatus. Caecilians are a group of legless amphibians that looks superficially like snakes and live mostly underground.

The discovery was made by Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, of the Structural Biology Lab, Butantan Institute, São Paulo, Brazil while examining the mucous glands of the ringed caecilian. The Cell Press press release, quoted in Science Daily, explains:

Deeply Religious, Exemplary Christian, Hungarian Paedophile

Gábor Kaleta, former Hungarian ambassador to Peru and member of a paedophile ring.
"A deeply religious man who has led an exemplary life"

Photo: Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI

Hungarian Ambassador Charged with Child Pornography Pleads Guilty in Court - Hungary Today

If you're 'a deeply religious man who regularly exercises his faith', possession of 19,000 images of child pornography on your laptop will only get you a small fine of €1,535 and a 1 year prison sentence, suspended for 2 years and 6 months, in Catholic Hungary.

So Hungary's former ambassador to Peru, Gábor Kaleta, found when he pleaded guilty to the charge of possessing child pornography last Wednesday.

According to his lawyer, Kaleta had:

Covidiots - Republicans Abandon Common Sense.

"Wear a face mask to show you're smarter, more rational and morally superior to a Trumpanzee" Alex Castellanos

GOP Strategist Dismisses COVID Masks as a “Secular Religious Symbol” | Val Wilde | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

According to Covidiot Trumpanzee Alex Castellanos, one of the Republican Party's key strategists, wearing a face mask shows you're better than him. But then so would tying your own shoelaces if his pronouncements concerning facemasks is anything to go by.

Despite the unambiguous evidence that wearing a facemask in public places is the best way to reduce the person-to-person transmission of Covid-19, he has declared it to be both a political and a secular symbol. In other words, if you're a Christian and/or a Republican, you're a traitor if you take steps to avoid spreading any Covid-19 viruses you may be incubating unknowingly.

Malevolent Design News - The Covid-19 Designer Fights Back

Newer variant of COVID-19–causing virus dominates global infections | Los Alamos National Laboratory

If you're a believer in intelligent [sic] design, you'll no doubt be full of admiration for the way your designer created the deadly Covid-19 virus out of a harmless (to humans) virus which normally infects bats.

So you'll probably be delighted to know that he then added a small refinement that made Covid-19 more infective, so it eventually replaced the less infective form.

More Loopy Trumpanzees for Racism

Sheila Zilinsky. Went full Trumpanzee.

Christian Host Posts Video Showing “Demons” Around Fallen Confederate Statue | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The Black Lives Matter campaign is exposing the sort of deranged fruitloops white Christian racist conspiracy theorists who support Donald Trump and who are against extending equal rights to black people.

One such is Conservative Christian radio host Sheila Zilinsky. Zalinsky is on record as claiming the NFL was brainwashing people with "alpha, gamma, theta waves, the delta waves lulling people into trances."

Catholic Priest Calls BLM Activists, "Maggots and Parasites"

Rev. Theodore Rothrock, "They are maggots and parasites"

Catholic priest suspended for comparing BLM activists to 'maggots’

Were you under the impression that Christianity is about caring and compassion and regarding everyone as equally deserving of life and respect as children of God, and that Christians are people who would burn with indignation at the idea of a fellow human being treated as an inferior, lesser being?

Well, it seems it's not just the fundamentalist white evangelicals who disagree with you when it comes to black people, but an ordained Catholic Priest, the Rev. Theodore Rothrock, of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, disagrees with you too.

He has now been suspended by his bishop, Bishop Timothy Doherty, of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana, for writing in his weekly bulletin:

Christian Racist Gun-Nuts for Jesus

Church Faces Backlash for Giving Out Free AR-15 During Sunday Service

Preacher of hate, John Koletas of Grace Baptist Church, Troy, Albany, NY has hit on a new idea for spreading the teachings of Jesus. He gives away guns to people who come to listen to his sermons in which he explains why killing things is good, why Greeks [sic], blacks and Jews are cursed, and why gun controls are "Socialist" and anti-Christian.

But then, when you live in a society where at least three minority groups are 'cursed' you can't take any chances. What you need is the means to kill thine enemies, and the smug certainty that you're doing God's work when you pull the trigger.

Episcopalians For Bigotry and Race-Hate

Scott and Debra Volland

Mississippi Church Ousts Pastor For Taking a Stand Against Racism | Val Wilde | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The Black Lives Matter campaign, following the casual public murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, while his colleagues stood and watch the crime being committed, has polarized America like few other issues could have done, and has force people to show their true colours and take sides. This is, after all, what polarization does.

Evolution News - How The Mammalian Jaw Evolved

When mammalian middle ear bones develop, they begin as part of the arch of cartilage that makes up the embryonic jaw. In reptiles, these structures remain connected to the jaw as developmental processes gradually convert the cartilage to bone.

Carl R. Woese Intitute for Genomic Biology | News

Hints at jaw evolution found in marsupials and monotremes | For the press | eLife

It's not a good day for creationists.

Back in 2017, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, King’s College London, and the University of Chicago showed how the mammalian ear evolved from the reptilian jaw, so, incidentally, showing how the mammalian jaw evolved.

Now researchers at King’s College London, UK, have found more evidence for this in the developing young of marsupials and monotremes.

Infant marsupials and monotremes use a connection between their ear and jaw bones shortly after birth to enable them to drink their mothers’ milk, new findings in eLife reveal.

This discovery by researchers at King’s College London, UK, provides new insights about early development in mammals, and may help scientists better understand how the bones of the middle ear and jaw evolved in mammals and their predecessors.

Common Ancestry - Monkeys and Humans Think Alike

Macaque monkeys. Think like humans.

Native Amazonians, Americans and monkeys show similar thinking patterns | Berkeley News

Humans and monkeys have similar thinking patterns, according to research from UC Berkeley, Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University.

Recursive thinking - a cognitive process of arranging words, phrases or symbols in a way that helps convey complex commands, sentiments and ideas - was thought to be unique to humans - has now been shown to exist in macaque monkeys. This thinking enables us to arrange ideas into nested hierarchies, rather like a linguistic expression of a venn diagram or the nested hierarchies found in cladistics, for example. This ability is crucial to syntax and semantics in human language.

Talibangelical News - SCOTUS Strikes Down Louisiana Restriction on Abortion

Chief Justice John Roberts. Voted with the liberals.

US top court strikes down law limiting abortions - BBC News

Conservative Christian hopes of using the Trump-given conservative majority on SCOTUS to force their religious bigotry into law took another blow today when, by a majority of 5-4, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voting with the liberals, SCOTUS struck down a restriction on abortion services in Louisiana.

Only a few days ago, SCUTUS enraged fundamentalist Christians by confirming that all Americans, of whatever sexuality, are entitled to the full protection of the law, so cannot be sacked on the grounds of their sexuality.

Making Excuses for God's Psychopathy

The Battle, Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665)
Sporting contest, biblical style.

Christian Apologist: God’s Calls for Genocide Were Just “Figures of Speech” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

It's a mark of just how far decent Humanist values have penetrated into Christianity that Christian apologists are now having to make excuses for the things God supposedly ordered in the Bible that nowadays would be thought of as barbaric and unacceptable - the actions of a tyrannical war-criminal.

When it was written in the Bronze Age, no doubt the terrible things they wrote about God ordering were the sort of things you would expect a powerful despotic tribal leader to order his people to do, so, naturally, any self-respecting god would be expected to behave the same way. A brutal, merciless tyrant who rewards his loyal followers with plenty of land, war-booty and women captives and in return sanctions and glorifies their savage and brutal behaviour.

Talibangelical Christian Subversion in Mississippi

Mississippi State flag, adopted 1894, 29 years after the South lost the covil war.

Look away, Dixie: Mississippi to lose rebel emblem from flag

The extremist Christian campaign to subvert the US Constitution and impose a fundamentalist theocracy on the people, moved a small step towards its goal in Mississippi last Sunday.

The Mississippi legislature passed a bill to set up a commission to redesign the state flag to remove the racist Confederate Battle Flag and replace it with one which must incorporate the words "In God we trust". In other words, the Mississippi state government has at last accepted that the South lost the civil war and has jumped at the chance the "Black Lives Matter" campaign has created to establish Christianity, or at least theism into the state flag and to endorse a religion that 14% (and growing) of the population don't believe in.

Catholic Abuse News - A Massive Increase in Complaints

The U.S. Catholic Church Spent $281,611,817 on Child Sex Abuse Cases in 2019 | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In the year ending June 2019, the number of allegations of sex abuse by US Catholic clergy quadrupled to an astonishing 4,434 cases - up from 1451 cases the previous year, according to an annual audit of more than 200 diocese and Catholic Church entities produced by CARA.

The report also highlights the fact that child abuse is continuing in Church establishments and that there is complacency with continued failure to publish reporting procedures, poor recordkeeping of background checks, dysfunctional Diocesan Review Boards and a lack of formal monitoring priests who have been removed from ministry.

Far-Right Raging at 'Non-White' Jesus

GraphicaArtis/Getty Images

White people are furious that the archbishop of Canterbury said Jesus shouldn't always be white | indy100

The raving right in Britain are incensed at Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby's statement of the obvious on BBC Radio 4's Today Program that Jesus was not a white man.

Welby made this statement in response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement's campaign to have statuary and representations of racists and removed and the general review and reassessment of institutionalised racism in society, following another casual killing of a black man by white police in America.

Talibangelical Christian Pastors Throw a Tantrum

Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

American Pastors Network Says Supreme Court's LGBTQ Ruling Undermines Biblical Order and Invites God's Judgment | Right Wing Watch

Stung by the SCOTUS ruling that the law applies to all Americans, a group of fundamentalist Christian pastors have thrown a collective tantrum and are now threatening people with their imaginary friend.

They had expected SCOTUS, with it's Trump-given right-wing majority, to join with them in victimising and persecuting people from the LGBTQ community by agreeing that they could be freely discriminated against when it comes to employment rights. Instead SCOTUS ruled by a clear 6-3 majority, that federal sex discrimination protections extend to gay and transgender workers, making clear that employees cannot be fired under federal law simply because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Covidiots - Getting Even More Loopy As the Second Wave Hits

More than 20m Americans could have contracted Covid-19, experts say | US news | The Guardian

Due at least in part to the campaign by covidiot evangelical Christians, more than 20 million Americans could now have contracted Covid-19, according to CDC.

This new information is based on serology tests for the presence of antibodies that have shown, for every person with symptoms who tested positive for antibodies, a further 10 also tested positive. With the number of known cases nearing 2.4 million, multiplying those together gives the 20 million + estimate.

Covidiots - Christians For Covid-19

Caption

FL Christians Condemn Face Masks for Blocking “God’s Wonderful Breathing System” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

It's easy, and accurate, to place the blame for the deepening Covid-19 crisis in the USA on the inept and incompetent Donald Trump, but we also have to place some of the blame on those credulous idiots who elected him and who continue to support him - the right-wing Trumpanzee evangelical Christians who, as a requirement of their faith, have forsworn the use of reason to embrace infantile conspiracy theories.

Covidiot News - White Evangelicals Least Bothered About Others

White Evangelicals’ Coronavirus Concerns Are Fading Faster...... | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

You would expect evangelical (i.e fundamentalist) Christians to be the most compassionate, most caring and most concerned for the welfare of their fellow humans, given their fundamental belief that we are all created by the same god who holds each of us in the same high regard, and give the alleged teaching of Jesus that loving your neighbour is second in importance only to loving God.

The reality is something very different, as their response to the Covid-19 pandemic is showing. There is something in the mindset of evangelicals that make them the least concerned, the most cavalier and the most selfish in their attitude toward collective responsibility for reducing the spread of the virus, as a recent poll showed.

Ireland - Where Religion Poisoned Everything

The Great Famine

“[The famine is an] effective mechanism for reducing surplus population [as well as] the judgement of God… The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

Charles Trevelyan, letter to Lord Monteagle of Brandon

Trevelyan's repugnant words, typical of English upper-class thinking of the time, illustrates just how much religion played in the response to the Irish Potato Famine, just as it had played a major part in setting the conditions for it to happen in the first place. Although the anti-Catholic Penal Laws begun by Cromwell and later extended, had been repealed, the repeal was too recent to have altered the distribution of land which was still heavily tilted in favour of Protestants, who were the main landlords, especially in the south and west of the island, and Catholics owned little or none of it.

I explain this in detail in my popular book A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything:

Holy Bodgers! Hilarious Art Restorations in Spain

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s original work (left) and two attempts at restoring a copy of it.

Photograph: Cedida por Coleccionista/Europa Press 2020
Source: The Guardian

Another botched artwork restoration leaves Spain in stitches | Barry Duke

And now a little bit of light relief from the accounts of covidiot religiots helping to spread the Covid-19 virus and turn places of worship into major Covid-19 hotspots.

Another Spanish restorer has managed to create mirth amongst the increasingly irreligious Spanish.

Following the 'success' of the hilarious restoration by octogenarian Cecilia Gimenez, of the Ecce Homo fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza, which turned Jesus into what looked like a monkey, an art collector employed a furniture restorer to restore his copy of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s, 1687 painting of the Virgin Mary, entitled The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerable. The result left Mary looking more like Jezebel. Mercifully, Murillo made a number of copies of this major work.

Evolution News - How Long-Tailed Tits Avoid Incest

Long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus

Source: ebird.org

Long-tailed tits avoid incest by recognising the calls of relatives | EurekAlert! Science News

The long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus is one of my all-time favourite birds. And now they illustrate a fascinating aspect of evolution - how something evolved for one purpose can be co-opted and used for another. In this case, the constant twittering they make to maintain flock cohesion and to identify members of their extended family groups, is used to avoid incestuous breeding.

You can come across these lovely little birds in woods, especially in autumn and winter, when suddenly you realise the trees are alive with little twittering black, buff-orange and white birds, constantly on the go as they move through the trees foraging for small insects in groups of maybe a couple of dozen, constantly twittering and calling. Then, just as suddenly as they arrived, they're gone.

Bad News for Creationists - Filling the Abiogenesis Gap

The characteristic (HhH)2 fold and its binding to the minor groove of a modern DNA molecule. How did the first ones form?

Which Came First?

It's another day when scientists incidentally and without conscious effort, refute creationism with science.

One of creationism favourite god-filled gaps is the question of abiogenesis with constant questions about where the first proteins came from and how they self-assembled from non-living raw materials. This paper answers them. It details the findings of a team of scientists led by Prof. Dan Tawfik of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Prof. Norman Metanis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and including scientists from Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

Sadly, once again a scientific paper of wide general interest is behind a firewall, however we have a news article from the Weizmann Institute of Science to explain the research:

Stickleback Setback for Creationism

Three-spined sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus

Photo credit: Ron Offermans, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Parallel evolution in three-spined sticklebacks – what happens in the Eastern Pacific, stays in the Eastern Pacific | University of Helsinki

Three-spined sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus, are common in streams and lakes all over the Northern Hemisphere but what is not generally known is that they are a marine species inhabiting inshore waters, which, since the retreat of the ice sheets since the last ice age has repeatedly migrated into fresh-water environments as these became available for exploitation. Lake Windermere in England's Lake District, for example, has two different populations of three-spined stickleback which occupy different regions of the lake and which are probably derived from two different colonisations.

As we would expect, given that there is generally not that much variation in the environments in different river systems in the same part of the world, there is considerable parallel evolution between different, isolated populations. However, this degree of parallelism is much more marked in populations originating in the Eastern Pacific coastal waters and less so in the Western Pacific and in the Atlantic where much more genetic and morphological variation is found.

More Powerful Old Dead Gods of Wiltshire

Distribution of features over a composite Lidar and OS profile data derived digital surface model (shaded) with OS 10k overlay © Environment Agency copyright and database right 2019. All rights reserved. Lidar Composite DTM 2m resolution, Scale 1:8000 and 1m resolution, Scale 1:4000; © Crown copyright and database rights 2013 OS 1:10000 Scale and Profile DTM Raster, Scale 1:10K; EDINA Digimap Ordnance Survey Service (100025252)

Source:http://digimap.edina.ac.uk

A Massive, Late Neolithic Pit Structure associated with Durrington Walls Henge. Internet Archaeology 55.

A major new discovery in the landscape of Wiltshire, England, associated with Durrington Walls, shows the immense power that must have been wielded in the name of some long-forgotten god or gods some 4,500 years ago. The labour-force needed to construct structures like Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and and Durrington Walls indicates an economy and political organization able to provide and command this labour-force as well as to supply it with food - which would need some form of tax on those who were producing it.

This in turn suggests a ruling class that would have needed more than simple force of arms. It suggests an elite ruling with divine sanction, probably in the form of priest-kings and a fearful population who believed the priests and gods were necessary to ensure continuity of the seasons and the success of the crops. It's likely that these structures played an important part in the religious rituals, so there was a strong motive for constructing them.

Covidiots - Covid-19 is Killing Fewer Non-Believers

Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by religious group, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

Despite all the promises that God will protect the righteous from Covid-19, and the forlorn hope that somehow it was going to kill off people with whom the self-righteous fundamentalists disagree, the facts are turning out to be something very different. Covid-19 is killing more religious people than non-believers, according to figures provided by the UK Office of National statistics.

The reasons for this are many and complex and probably more related ethnicity than to religion (and incidentally a reflection of how religion tends to be inherited with ethnicity rather than something arrived at after objective analysis of the evidence) but one thing is certain: there is no evidence that a deity is using the virus to punish non-believers or to reward believers in any one religion. Jews, Muslims and Christians are no safer for their piety whereas non-believers for a number of reasons are being statistically less affected by the virus.

Covidiot News - Christians for Greed and Selfishness

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'Churches don't make health policy,' Pallister says in face of petition for full-capacity service | CBC News

Wouldn't it be nice to hear religious leaders just once telling their followers that Covid-19 is a serious and present danger to us all and, as good, caring people they are going to be doing everything they can to reduce its spread and so reduce the number of people dying or made sick buy it. That they'll willingly close their doors and forego the usual income from passing the plate around during services, because no sacrifice is too good much for the people they love.

I'm not saying there aren't Christian leaders who think and say those things, but they are silenced by the loud whining and clamour for the right to ignore the lockdowns and social distancing orders and put anyone and everyone at risk just to maintain their income and their grip in the local community.

This is no less true in Manitoba, Canada than it is in the US Bible Belt where defiant churches are becoming Covid-19 hotspots.

Christians For Genocide

Pastor Tupirani da Hora Lores of the Geracao Jesus Cristo church, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Brazilian pastor prays for second Holocaust to 'destroy the Jews like vermin' | The Times of Israel

In a chilling reminder of how inter-religious rivalry can result in hatred so intense that one side advocates (and often practices) genocide against the other, a pastor in the Geracao Jesus Cristo church sect in Brazil is advocating another Jewish Holocaust! The Geracao Jesus Cristo Church is a radical, Christian evangelical sect in Rio de Janeiro.

In a service in which the congregation joined in by echoing his words, Pastor Tupirani da Hora Lores called upon God to: