Malevolent Designer News - Leaving Nothing To Chance With Alzheimer's Disease

Plasma and brain concentrations of apo B and Aβ.
(A) In vivo PET detection of amyloid binding was used to confirm cerebral amyloid deposition in HSHA mice and their age-matched WT controls. Representative PET and MRI fusion images (coregistered with MRI templates using conventional Fast Spin Echo Sequence T2-weighted sequence) show scan data at 20 to 40 minutes’ post-intravenous administration of [11C] PiB. Each panel (from left to right) illustrates maximum binding potential for [11C] PiB represented by coronal images at −2, 0, 4, and 6 mm from the bregma; indicated by the vertical bar. Plasma (B) and brain (C) levels of apo B, a surrogate marker of TRLs in HSHA and WT control mice, were determined with ELISA. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Human and mouse isoforms of Aβ in plasma (D) and brain (E, F) were measured separately with ELISA kits using antibodies specific to each isoform. The data underlying Fig 2B–2F can be found in S1 Data. Aβ, amyloid beta; apo B, apolipoprotein B; HSHA, hepatocyte-specific human amyloid; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; PET, positron emission tomography; PiB, Pittsburgh compound; TRL, triglyceride-rich lipoprotein; WT, wild-type.

Source: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001358.g002

Synthesis of human amyloid restricted to liver results in an Alzheimer disease–like neurodegenerative phenotype

According to Creationists, everything about biology and human anatomy and physiology especially, is definitely not the result of natural, evolutionary forces and the operation of random chance. Instead, it is all designed by their reputedly omnipotent, omniscient god who knew exactly what it was designing and designed if for the particular purpose which it serves - which means it is responsible for both the good and the bad in its 'designs', of course.

So, playing at Intelligent [sic] Design advocates for a moment, we have in this scientific paper an example of the sheer mendacious nastiness of Creationism's divine malevolence. It shows how, just to make sure it's victims get Alzheimer's disease in later life, it has designed a mechanism in the liver that manufactures one of the proteins which has been implicated in the progress of this ghastly disease which robs the sufferer of their dignity, their memory, their personality and eventually their life.

The study, published open access in PLOS Biology, was carried out by John Mamo of Curtin University in Bentley, Australia, and colleagues.

According to the press release from PLOS:

Deposits of amyloid-beta (A-beta) in the brain are one of the pathological hallmarks of AD and are implicated in neurodegeneration in both human patients and animal models of the disease. But A-beta is also present in periphereral organs, and blood levels of A-beta correlate with cerebral amyloid burden and cognitive decline, raising the possibility that peripherally produced a-beta may contribute to the disease. Testing that hypothesis has been difficult, since the brain also produces A-beta, and distinguishing protein from the two sources is challenging.

In the current study, the authors surmounted that challenge by developing a mouse that produces human a-beta only in liver cells. They showed that the protein was carried in the blood by triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, just as it is in humans, and passed from the periphery into the brain. They found that mice developed neurodegeneration and brain atrophy, which was accompanied by neurovascular inflammation and dysfunction of cerebral capillaries, both commonly observed with Alzheimer's disease. Affected mice performed poorly on a learning test that depends on function of the hippocampus, the brain structure that is essential for the formation of new memories.

The findings from this study indicate that peripherally derived A-beta has the ability to cause neurodegeneration and suggest that A-beta made in the liver is a potential contributor to human disease. If that contribution is significant, the findings may have major implications for understanding Alzheimer's disease. To date, most models of the disease have focused on brain overproduction of A-beta, which mimics the rare genetic cases of human Alzheimer's. But for the vast majority of AD cases, overproduction of A-beta in the brain is not thought to be central to the disease etiology. Instead, lifestyle factors may play a more important role, including a high-fat diet, which might accelerate liver production of A-beta.

Covidiot News - Loony Talibangelical Nut Job "Destroys" COVID-19 - Again!

Kenneth Copeland, destroyed COVID, again!

Kenneth Copeland, Who Said COVID Was “Destroyed” a Year Ago, Is Saying It Again | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The ridiculous grifter, Kenneth Copeland, darling of the Talibangelical extreme right, has demonstrated the credulity of his followers yet again, by claiming to have totally destroyed the coronavirus for at least the third time. The virus doesn't seem to have noticed this time either.

Readers may remember how, to the whoops and cheers of the fools in his audience, he 'destroyed' it in March 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, just by blowing 'the wind of God' on it, spitting at it and pronouncing it gone for ever.

You Don't Have to be Insane to Support Donald Trump, But it Helps!

Right Wing Bonus Tracks: A Mass Death Scale Injection | Right Wing Watch

Three stark staring bonkers Trumpanzee fruitloops show just how far round the twist you need to be to think Donald Trump was a good president who actually won a second term. Needless to say, these same bonkers fruitloops are also Talibangelical Christians.

First we have Shane Vaughn, co-founder of First Harvest Ministries in Waveland, Mississippi and convicted criminal who has been making increasingly bizarre 'prophesies' ever since he predicted that Donald Trump would never be impeached (he was impeached a record two time), that he would win a second term (he lost) and that he would serve

12 years as POTUS. After his false prophesy of a second term he declared that the prophesy was actually right because Trump was now 'inside their heads in the White House'.

Vaughn is now insisting that Trump will soon return to the White House to "destroy the work that Satan has done through Joe Biden and Kamala Harris".

Not to be out done, Talibangelical covidiot antivaxxer and former TV show host with links to QAnon but with no medical or scientific credentials, Lauren Witzke, has declared that the anti-Covid-19 injections are a "mass death scale injection" (whatever that means) and a "precursor to the Mark of the Beast" [sic].

Unintelligent Designer News - The Batty Designer Having an Arms Race with Itself!

The Atlas moth (Attacus atlas) has a strong anti-bat acoustic decoy at the tip of its forewings. Composite image with photograph on right half and acoustic tomography on the left. Colour indicates echo strength on a dB scale and red indicates highest echo amplitude. Note the red highly reflecting stripe created by the rippled part of the wingtip.

Credit: Dr Thomas Neil and Professor Marc Holderied

September: Moth wingtips | News and features | University of Bristol

One of the several aspects of biology you can never get an intelligent [sic] design advocate (that's intelligent design, not an intelligent advocate as these are practically unknown) to address is that of what biologists call, 'evolutionary arms races' where two organisms, usually predator and prey, or parasite and host are in competition with one another, each seeking to gain an advantage over the others.

Classic examples of this are the giraffe and acacia trees, with the former evolving a long neck to reach the leaves acacia trees have grown a long trunk to put out of the reach of giraffes and cheetahs and gazelles where each has to run faster than the other, the cheetah to eat and the gazelles to live, so they both run very fast and yet cheetahs still catch end eat gazelles.

Photograph of the Atlas moth (Attacus atlas). This large silkmoth has the strongest known wingtip decoy with ripples and folds.

Credit: Dr Thomas Neil

Another more recent example currently affecting us all, is that of the SARS-CoV-2 parasitic virus where new variants such as the δ variant currently causing a new, more severe, pandemic, have evolved to better overcome the immune systems in its human hosts - an immune system intelligent [sic] design advocates believe their beloved malevolence designed to protect us from the viruses and bacteria it designs to make us sick.

And now, courtesy of a team of scientists from Bristol University, we have the example of moths having a mechanism for diverting the attack of bats which have been given (allegedly) echolocation so they can detect moths.

More of that research in a moment; first a little about the bat/moth arms races, which I wrote about in my popular book, The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax. Briefly, if you accept for

Photograph of the Chinese tussar moth (Antheraea pernyi). This silkmoth has a strong wingtip decoy based on ripples.

Credit: Dr Thomas Neil

the sake of argument, the Creationist insistence that all things are designed by their putative designer god, you have to accept that moths became nocturnal to escape from diurnal predators that hunted them with vision, then it designed the echo-location systems of bats so they could 'see' moths in the dark, then it gave moths the ability to hear the ultrasonic echolocation signals of bats and so avoid them, then it gave bats echolocation frequencies that moths couldn't detect, etc, etc, (See Jacobs, David; Explainer: the evolutionary arms race between bats and moths; 2014).

Now the Bristol team has revealed a new twist in this arms race by some saturniid moth (the group that includes silkworm moths). They have shown that the forewings of these moths have special folds and ripples near the tips which act as super-reflectors of bat echolocation sounds, which either confuse the bat or deflect its attack to the tips of the forewings where it does relatively little harm compared to an attach directed at the head or body.

We have demonstrated that the folded and rippled wingtips on the forewings of some silkmoths act as acoustic decoys.

Structurally, the wingtips act as acoustic retroreflectors, reflecting sound back to its source from numerous angles, meaning a bat would be more likely to strike the wingtip over the more vulnerable body of the moth …

The results of this study introduce another exciting aspect to the story of the bat-moths acoustic arms race. We have identified a novel form of acoustic defense amongst silkmoths which may give them an advantage over hunting bats. Wider implications might include improved man-made anti radar and sonar decoy architectures.

Professor Marc Holderied, corresponding author,
School of Biological Sciences
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

To quote from the Bristol University press release:

They also discovered that the ripples and folds of the forewing tips have evolved to act as hemispheric and corner retroreflectors respectively, meaning that they reflect sound strongly back to its point of origin. Coupled together, the folds and ripples of these wingtips cover a huge range of incident sounds angles, meaning that over the entire wingbeat cycle of a flying moth and most possible positions of an attacking bat, the wingtip would consistently produce the strongest echoes. The acoustic protection of wingtips is even stronger than that of common hindwing decoys.

It has previously been shown that some moths have long 'streamers' on their hind wings that have a similar purpose in that a bat's attack is directed to where it does least harm to the moth.

Towed acoustic decoys are a well-established defense amongst some silkmoths. These species have evolved elongated hindwings which terminate in a coiled and twisted end. The morphology of these elongated hindwings means that they generate very strong echoes, so much so that they will often divert a bat’s acoustic gaze towards them, away from the exposed body of the moth, causing the bat to strike the expendable tail of the moth or miss the moth all together.

Conclusive support for the idea that the forewing reflector is an acoustic decoy comes from our finding that acoustic forewing decoys always evolved as an alternative to acoustic hindwing decoys, with there being no species known to possess both.

Dr Thomas Neil, lead author
School of Biological Sciences
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

It takes a special form of gullible credulity to believe that a single designer would design these many examples of arms races to be found in nature, and then to conclude that that single designer is supremely intelligent. It would make more sense, if there were indeed any evidence that magic can make species evolve in a special direction or can make chemistry and physics do things they couldn't do without it, that there was more than one intelligence involved here. However, Creationists are forbidden by religious dogma from believing in more than a single creator so their interpretation - what they laughably call 'scientific creationism' - must be shoe-horned into that religious superstition so it conforms with fundamentalist Christianity.

This is how we can tell that the notion of intelligent design is not an alternative science, like politically-motivated Creationist frauds pretend, but Bible literalism dressed up in a lab coat to try to impress people who neither understand science nor biology and whose parochial ignorance and cultural chauvinism preconditions them to fall for the false dichotomy fallacy that, if there is something science can't explain, the locally popular god must have done it. In this case, though, science not only can but does explain it very well, without resort to magical mysteries.

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Racist News - Christian White Supremacists are Losing the Race Debate in the USA.

U.S. Approval of Interracial Marriage at New High of 94%

Despite the apparent rise in white supremacist racism in Donald Trump's America, the reality is that Americans of all races and ages are far less racist in their attitude to interracial marriage than they used to be, according to a recent Gallup poll.

In 1958, with segregation and Jim Crow laws operating in many southern states, only 4% of Americans of all races approved of interracial marriages; in 2012 that figure has reached 94%. Moreover, the gap between the races on the issue has closed to just 3% (96%, black and 93%, white). It was 56% and 17% respectively in 1969!

Unintelligent Designer News - Two Different Solutions to the Same Problem!

Blue-tongued skinks, Tiliqua sp.

Blue-tongue vs red-bellied black: An Australian evolutionary arms race - UQ News - The University of Queensland, Australia

From Queensland University we have findings which should embarrass any advocate of the childish intelligent [sic] design notion. It's yet another example of the utter stupidity of any putative designer behind living organisms. In this case, an example of 'designing' two entirely different solutions to the same problem, as though it had forgotten a design it did earlier and started again, like a motor car manufacturer designing an entirely new engine from the bottom up, for every new model of car, or an aircraft manufacturer inventing an entirely new method of flight.

Trumpanzee Lunatic News - Pastor Greg Locke "Building a Violent Church" for Jesus

Pastor Greg Locke
Building a violent church for Jesus

'Apostle' Michael Petro Says God Is Raising Up a 'Violent Church' Because Democrats Don't Tolerate Christianity | Right Wing Watch

Extremist Trumpanzee loon and self-style Prophet of God (PoG), Greg Lock, has never gotten over committing the cardinal sin for PoGs - prophesying a specific event on a specific date and so running the risk of being proved wrong and a false prophet. Lock, of course, is famous for prophesying a Trump win by a landslide last November, claiming God had revealed this to him and promised he would ensure it happened. Trump lost!

Now, as Locke dives deeper down the specially-constructed QAnon conspiracy rabbit hole, desperately trying to prove he isn't a false prophet because Trump won really (it's just that God was powerless to stop the massive, Satanic conspiracy to steal the election, apparently), he is becoming more and more extreme and revealing a tendency towards violence that many Christians find shocking for a supposed man of god and professed follower of Jesus. With every passing deadline by which the military were prophesied to have overthrown the Biden presidency, revealed the scale of the 'election fraud', named the 'child-trafficking paedophiles' responsible, executed the perpetrators, including the entire leadership of the Democratic Party, and reinstated Donald Trump in the White House (the last deadline being the end of August), Lock becomes ever more insane and increasingly violent.

Catholic Abuse News - Ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in Court.

Former Cardinal McCarrick
Facing criminal charges for child sexual abuses in 1974

Defrocked prelate Theodore McCarrick arraigned for child sex abuse charges

Former Cardinal McCarrick, the most senior Catholic cleric in the USA and the most senior to be defrocked for child abuse to date, finally appeared in court in Dedham, Massachusetts, last Friday, charged with sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy in 1974. McCarrick, now aged 91 is charged with repeatedly sexually abusing the child of a family friend, including during the sacrament of confession at a wedding in Wellesley College. The alleged victim also claims that McCarrick abused him on family trips and at various hotels in the state.

He pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and was ordered to stay away from the alleged victim and away from anyone under the age of 18. He has also been accused of similar offences in New York and New Jersey, where the statutes of limitation mean he cannot face prosecution for those offences in those states. These offences were investigated by the Vatican in addition to claims that he had sexually harassed and performed homosexual acts with adult seminarians under his authority. A two-year investigation by the Vatican also revealed that Pope John-Paul II had been aware of the allegations concerning his sexual relations with seminarians and allegations of paedophile abuse, when he appointed McCarrick to the post of Archbishop of Washington and made him a cardinal.

Given that Pope John-Paul II knew of these allegations, it is almost inconceivable that his then right-hand man and enforcer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, effectively acting Pope in John-Paul II's prolonged dotage, later to become Pope Benedict XVI, knew nothing of them. This revelation then deepens the mystery surrounding why McCarrick was allowed to continue for so long in his post before anyone moved to stop him.

Here is how I covered it at the time:

The report bends over backwards to try to leave Pope Francis looking whiter than white but still leaves a number of questions unanswered. Particularly how much he was told about McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI following his sudden abdication, and if nothing, why not? According to Archbishop Viganò, Pope Francis was fully aware not only of the allegations against McCarrick, but also that his activities had been 'restricted' by Benedict XVI, but Pope Francis removed these restrictions anyway and was thus complicit in his further predatory behaviour.

During John-Paul II's reign, his 'enforcer' was none other than Cardinal Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI. It was widely reported when the sexual abuse scandals began to emerge that Ratzinger, acting on John-Paul II's orders, has instructed senior figure in the church to supress allegations of sexual abuse in order to protect the Church's reputation. It was assumed that Benedict XVI's hasty elevation of the dead John-Paul II to the sainthood, was intended to quell these rumours, on the assumption that this was not what a future saint would do. Therefore he could not have ordered Ratzinger to pervert the course of justice, deny redress and compensation to the victims of abuse, and to facilitate the paedophile activities of the Catholic priesthood by being instrumental in covering it up and keeping it from the child-protection agencies.

Pope Francis denies this (in effect, calling Viganò a liar), which begs the question, why did Benedict XVI not tell him? Or did he? By claiming he knew nothing, Pope Francis is shifting the blame onto Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

The executive summary reveals a litany of bumbling incompetence, an over-eager willingness by both John-Paul II and Benedict XVI to believe people who were close to them, and a credulous receptiveness to lies and false assurances that was naive in the extreme. Neither man appeared to be capable of believing a senior Catholic cleric could behave in such a way and then lie about it when challenged. McCarrick's 'oath as a bishop' was regarded as sufficient evidence of his veracity, when he lied about his sexual predation.

The executive summary of that Vatican reports, in the embedded PDF, bears further reading, revealing as it does, scapegoating and a laisses-faire attitude to child abuse and other inappropriate behaviour by senior clerics by Pope John-Paul II and his close advisers.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, who has shed crocodile tears over the abuse allegations and even blamed Satan, not for the abuses but for encouraging people to speak out against them, is still under a strict code of Omertà regarding the truth of Viganò's allegation that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, placed McCarrick on restricted duties but that Francis rescinded those restrictions, and Francis' claim that McCarrick was never restricted in the first place and he knew mothing of the allegations. Either Francis is lying, or Benedict XVI knew about McCarrick and did nothing he deemed worthy of informing Francis about on his sudden resignation. Either way, McCarrick's predation continued unchecked and it was only when the scandal became public that Francis decided to act, throwing his hands up in horror when the full scale of McCarrick's predatory behaviour and arrogant betrayal of his clerical vows became public knowledge.

Kim Davis, Christian extremist
Ambush meeting with Pope Francis arranged by Cardinal Viganò.

Mind you, it should be said that Viganò bears a grudge. As Papal Legate to Washington, he was in charge of Pope Francis' 2015 official visit, which had been something of a PR coup, until Viganò arrange an ambush meeting between the odious Kim Davis, and Pope Francis. Davis was a Christian extreme fundamentalist and serial adulterer, with multiple extra-marital pregnancies, then disobeying a court order to register same-sex marriage in her job as a registrar. Viganò then issued a press statement announcing triumphantly that Pope Francis had given Davis encouragement in her resistance to authority (and to the rule of law) in the name of Jesus and the sanctity of heterosexual-only marriage.

For a visiting head of state to be seen to encourage law-breaking in his host state and take sides with someone disobeying a court order, turned the triumph into a diplomatic disaster, all so Viganò could sequester the visit and turn it into a victory for right-wing Christian conservatism. He was promptly transferred back to the Vatican, and stripped of his diplomat status, and Francis was left looking like a patsy, casting round for a scapegoat and claiming he knew nothing of Davis' criminal behaviour in the name of Jesus and would not have met her if he had - although, of course, his church still agreed with her about same-sex marriage being a sin.

Maybe the truth about what Pope Francis knew of his predatory behavior will emerge during the coming court case, if McCarrick's lawyers don't manage to get it halted on the grounds that McCarrick is now too old and frail to stand trial, and anyway it was all a long time ago and McCarrick is very sorry. In which case, all the old predator will have suffered is a loss of status and his pension. None of his victims will have received justice.

Covidiot News - Signs That US Covidiots Might be Accepting Reality

Two-Thirds in U.S. Now Say COVID-19 Situation Worsening

In my post yesterday I said the signs were not encouraging that the truth might be getting through to the addled brains of Trump supporters that the anti-COVID vaccines save lives. However, figures from Gallop today suggest I could be wrong and that the recent surge in cases, especially in red states, might just be concentrating their minds enough to make them face up to reality.

The poll conducted between August 16 and August 22, 2021 shows a marked change in Americans' assessment of the seriousness of the pandemic, flipping from highly positive to highly negative since June 2021.

The percentage of those interviewed who though the coronavirus siruation ws getting worse has gone from 3% in June to 89% in August. In July, the split was about 50:50.

The figure for those who think the situation is getting better has slumped from 89% in June to 15% in August.

However, the evidence is that a large number of Republican voters are still struggling to accept reality with only 51% believing the situation is worsening - a rise from 2% in June but still nowhere near the 89% of Democrats who accept that a tripling of cases and deaths in the previous month is a sign that things are getting worse.

67% of Americans now accept that the economic and social disruption due to the pandemic will continue into 2022 - up from 17% in June.

Having fallen to its lowest level in June 2021 of 17%, the percentage of Americans who are concerned about catching the virus has risen to 39%, although this figure, at 46% (up 13% on the June figure) for those who have been vaccinated is higher than the 25% (up just 5%) for unvaccinated people, suggesting that those with a better grasp on the seriousness of the situation are those sensible enough to get vaccinated whilst those who continue to regard the risk of infection as low, are not. This is despite the evidence of the recent δ variant surge in which people from Republican areas where the vaccine uptake is low, are four times more likely to catch the virus and five times more likely to die from it.

This greater awareness of the risk and assessment that the situation is worsening has produced only a modest increase in those taking active measures to reduce the risk, probably due in part to the greater feeing of security the vaccine has given to those who have been vaccinated.

Only 24% of Americans are now 'completely' or 'mostly' isolating themselves from people outside their own household (up 6% from June). Last April, before a significant number had been vaccinated, this figure stood at about 33%. Early in the pandemic, in April, 2020, it was 75%.

Despite this increased appreciation of the seriousness of the current δ variant surge, there has been only a small positive change in avoidance behaviour since June 2021. There has been a nine percentage point increase in people wearing a face-mask outside the home and in avoiding large crowds, a five percentage point increase in avoiding going to public places such as stores and restaurants and in avoiding small gatherings with family or friends, and only a four percentage point increase in avoiding travel on public transport.

Bottom Line

Just a couple of months after it looked like the coronavirus pandemic might be coming to an end, infections have come roaring back in the U.S., fueled by the virus' delta variant, particularly in states with lower vaccination rates. Americans are more likely now than at almost any other point in the pandemic to say the situation is getting worse. And while concern about getting the virus has been growing and coronavirus avoidance behaviors are starting to rise, they remain well below where they were before much of the population was vaccinated.

Jeffrey M. Jones Gallop Senior editor

What seems to be happening here is that, after 18 months of relentless politicization of every aspect of the pandemic as the right-wing tried to accommodate and normalize former President Trump's inept handling of the crisis by trying to minimise it, people are reluctant to be seen to be 'un-American' in taking avoidance measures, even when they accept that the situation is getting worse and will probably continue to worsen for some time.

Some of the change in behaviour can be attributed to the greater feeling of safety that vaccination has given to those sensible enough to have got themselves vaccinated, but much of it has to be laid at the door of the political right. By their reckless attempt to make political capital out of a Trump-induced disaster, the US right is continuing to put their own narrow political self-interest above the health and welfare of the American people. But this itself is the direct consequence of a political philosophy that extols the 'virtues' of greed and selfishness; that places individual liberty above collective responsibility and which promotes the notion that greed and selfishness should be rewarded as 'The American Way'. This has been the relentless message of the American libertarian right for the last few decades, going back to that arch-conservative, Ronald Reagan.

It's a measure of how far to the right the Repugnican Party has moved that, when Barry Goldwater stood against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Goldwater was regarded as a right-wing extremist. By his death in 1998 he was regarded as a left-leaning liberal, and the Republicans have move further to the right since then, now including neo-Nazi, white supremacists in their ranks.

Consequently, Americans are now dying and will continue to die in their tens of thousands whilst Trumpanzee Repugnicans and their allies in the white supremacist Christian evangelical churches continue to jeer at measures to reduce the severity of the pandemic and right-wing politicians can't afford the political costs of a change of mind and an admission that they got it catastrophically wrong, both in the support for antisocial political philospophies and in their support for Donald Trump.

Religious Hypocrisy News - Child Abuse Widespread in Most UK Religions

Inquiry report finds child sexual abuse in most major UK religions | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

As though to prove my point that religions provide excuses for people who need excuses, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has concluded that child sexual abuse was fequent in most major uK religions, and that the normal response to allegations was to defend the organization at the expense of their victims.

In a report released yesterday, they say:

Child sexual abuse has been found in most major UK religions… with some found to have no child protection policies in place at all.

The ‘Child protection in religious organisations and settings’ report examined evidence received from 38 religious organisations with a presence in England and Wales, with the figures provided to the Inquiry about known prevalence of child sexual abuse unlikely to reflect the full picture.

Religious organisations play a central and even dominant role in the lives of millions of children in England and Wales. The report highlights the blatant hypocrisy and moral failing of religions purporting to teach right from wrong and yet failing to prevent or respond to child sexual abuse.

The Covidiot Self-Genocide Gathers Pace

Covid-19 confirmed daily cases, USA (31 Aug 2021)

Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

‘Hoax’ kills COVID-denying anti-vaxxer who worked for the CIA: report

"In red states, where vaccination rates are low, people are four times more likely to catch COVID-19 and five times more likely to die of it, than people living in blue areas where vaccine rates are higher."

The SARS-CoV-2 δ variant is continuing to take out those covidiots who listened to extremist liars like Robert David Steele, a fully signed up subscriber to the QAnon deep state conspiracy theories and a regular guest on the far right-wing program "Infowars", who has just died of... er... COVID-19.

The death from COVID-19 of the former CIA operative and ex-marine who claimed to be one of the first to 'reveal' that the coronavirus pandemic was a hoax, was confirmed by friends yesterday. He was admitted to hospital in Florida, one of the worst-hit states in the current wave due to low vaccine take-up and opposition to social distancing and mask-wearing by the governor. Even then, he was firmly opposed to the vaccine, although he did appear to reluctantly acknowledge the virus was real. In his last post on his blog on 17 August, he said:

Robert David Steel, receiving treatment for what he claimed was a hoax in a Florida Hospital, currently overwhelmed by similar patients who believed him

With love to all of you, I survived! I went in at 77 oxygenation. I’m up to 94. I will not take the vaccination, though I did test positive for whatever they’re calling “COVID” today, but the bottom line is that my lungs are not functioning.

The good news is that I will survive with a few days off. I should be back up and at least functional soon. This is been a near death experience, very much like a new death experience the whole country is going through right now. We will never be the same because now we know that we’ve all been lied to about everything. But, now we also know that we can trust each other. I’m alive today because I had a network that put me into a good hospital in Florida.

His sadly misplaced optimism was accompanied by a photograph of him being treated for what he had been assuring his followers was all a hoax. Even now his friends in the right wing social media, unable to admit they were wrong, are perpetuating his lies and claiming it was being placed on a ventilator that killed him and that his family had been 'shamed' into agreeing to him being treated.

Christian False Prophet, Kat Kerr, Makes a Fool of Herself (and Her Followers) Again

Kat Kerr
Talibangelical Christian False Prophetess

Christian “Prophetess” Tries (and Fails) to Take “Authority” Over Hurricane Ida | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

As frauds go, they don't get more fraudulent than Christian Talibangelist, false prophetess, Kat Kerr.

Kerr earns her living telling her credulous followers implausible tales about her supposed multiple visits to Heaven to chat with her personal friends Jesus and his dad. She also claims to have the power to command vast armies of angels to guarantee the security of, for example, her beloved former president, Donald Trump's rallies, and to ensure he wins the presidential election in which he was booted out of office by the American electorate.

She also claims to be able to control the weather and take control of hurricanes and tropical storms; claims which her simpleton followers appear to believe despite her appalling record in that respect. Mind you, those who can believe a hurricane is sentient and has the ability to obey the words and magic spells of Kerr and her ilk can probably be persuaded to believe that which is manifestly untrue.

A Lying Loony Speaks - "Nonsense, twisted, and false view of God and Intelligent Design".

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Nonsense, twisted, and false view of God and Intelligent Design.

Someone calling himself (I assume it's a 'he' but I could be wrong) 'Ether Technology'[sic], who hasn't read my illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, and who doesn't want you to either, has decided to pretend he has and to be able to refute its contents without addressing anything in it. Instead, he has claimed to be posting what God said about the book, and simply posted a list of irrelevant Bible verses followed by the traditional threat, betraying his own psychotic state of mind.

Had he read the book, he would have found it contains description of some of the very many examples to be found in nature where, if they were designed, the designer could only be described as a malevolent, sadistic monster who hates its creation and designs ever-more nasty ways to make it suffer.

Bizarrely, the understandably anonymous 'Ether Technology' thinks this can all be explained by 'sin' but neglects to explain how, for example, an isopod amputating and replacing the tongue of a fish with its own body, a nematode turning a cricket into a zombie and making it commit suicide, a fungus that indiscriminately kills frogs or a bacterium that selectively kills the males of a species of butterfly on a Pacific island, could possibly be directed at mankind as a punishment for some mythical misdeed of a founding couple that science shows could not possibly have existed.

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Almighty Malevolence is Not Giving Up on SARS-CoV-2

New laboratory findings from OHSU confirm that two variants of concern reduce protection against COVID-19 in blood serum drawn from people previously vaccinated or infected. The findings underscore the importance of vaccinations combined with public health measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Getty Images

COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Dips, But Remains Potent Disease Deterrent | University of Utah Health

Study confirms virus variants reduce protection against COVID-19 | OHSU News

A clutch of reports in the last few days have shown just how much effort Creationism's beloved malevolence is putting into keeping ahead of medical science in its battle to kill and make sick as many people as possible whilst medical scientists have the audacity to try to limit its success - if we subscribe for the moment to the childish notion of intelligent [sic] design, that is.

The first, conducted by researchers from the University of Utah, reports that the protection given against the virus by the vaccines has fallen to about 80% from about 91% in a large group of frontline healthcare workers between December 2020 and August 2021. This was measured using COVID-19 RT-PCR testing rather than measuring the effectiveness at preventing serious illness, including hospitalisations and deaths.

The suggestion is that this may be due to one or both of:

• Waning immunity, a decrease in the strength of the body’s vaccine-activated defences against the virus.
• Greater virulence of the δ variant, which has become the predominant form of the virus since June 2021.

Evolution News - Another Ancient Hominin Species Identified by DNA.

The Leang Panninge (‘Bat Cave’) on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

© Leang Panninge Research Project

The Leang Panninge (‘Bat Cave’) on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

© Leang Panninge Research Project

Oldest genome from Wallacea shows previously unknown ancient human relations | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

More evidence is emerging that for much of our recent history, Homo sapiens existed alongside and interbred with several related species or subspecies or humans, behaving very much like a 'ring species' where a geographically widespread species is speciating into several related species and barriers to hybridization have not been fully established, allowing genes to flow between the species - something entirely predictable from the Theory of Evolution.

The fact that H. sapiens interbreed with H. neanderthalensis, the Denisovans (who have yet to be given a formal scientific name) and a third species known only from DNA fragments in our genome, is now very well established, as it the fact that H. neanderthalensis and the Denisovans also interbred. We also know of several other contemporaneous species with H. sapiens in the vicinity of this find, although there is no evidence of interbreeding with them - H. floresensis (the 'Hobbit') on the nearby Flores Island and H. luzonensis on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines. Palaeontologists have also discovered a so-far unnamed probable new species in Israel, the Ramala Homo, and from China, Homo longi sp. nov. ('Dragon Man'), both of which were contemporaneous with early H. sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

This confirmation of the TOE as it applies to H. sapiens is a constant irritant to Creationists, not simply because it confirms their most hated scientific theory, but also because it destroys their most cherished creation myth - the childish Bronze Age tale of a founding couple and 'original sin' and so the need for Jesus to 'save' us from the consequences of it. Not only does this interbreeding wreck the notion of a founding couple, but it wrecks the notion of even a founding species and of course totally destroys any notion of original sin and the need for salvation and a saviour! And without that superstitious fear with which to threaten their victims, where would the Abrahamic religions and their priests be?

Evolution News - Rapid Evolution of Early Tetrapods. Crisis? What Crisis?

Late Devonia early tetrapods

Artwork: Davide Bonadonna

Sustained fast rates of evolution explain how tetrapods evolved from fish | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Creationist frauds flatter their willing marks by telling them the scientific Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis, so scientists are coming to see their superstition as correct after all. This makes them feel they know more than the millions of biomedical scientists who spend their working lives applying the TOE to interpret and explain the biological data, all without having to bother with learning very much. It also enables the frauds to get away with a false dichotomy fallacy rather than show evidence for their god claim.

The extent to which this falsehood has penetrated public opinion in the USA can be gauged by two polls. One of members of the American Academy of Science on the statement, "Humans and other living things have evolved over time" (95% agreed, rising to 99% of biomedical members) and a 2015 Pew Research Poll on the question, "Do scientists generally agree about evolution?" where only 66% thought they did (29% thought they disagreed!). Public perception of the degree of scientific support for evolution is thus very different in the USA to the actual support.

In this paper we can see how biologists take the TOE as fundamental to any explanation of the data and how the data only makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Never, at any point, is a mystery settled for as unknowable or is data taken as evidence of an unproven, supernatural entity, plucked from one or other of Earth's many cultural origin myths.

Covidiot News - Cardinal Burke off a Ventilator but Unrepentant for Misleading Catholics Over Covid-19 Vaccines.

Cardinal Raymod Burke
Recovering from COVID-19 having lied about the vaccine.

Cardinal Burke off ventilator, still hospitalized with COVID

Cardinal Burke, one of Catholicism's most influential Covidiots, who has been deliberately spreading false anti-vaccine information to deter those gullible enough to listen to him from being vaccinated, is now recovering from COVID-19 and off the ventilator that medical science used to save him when prayers failed. A ventilator, incidentally, that could have been used to save one of his victims or one of the few people who ignored his lies and had the vaccine, but fell sick from the δ variant anyway.

Needless to say, rather than thanking the medical staff and the scientists behind the medical science that was used to save him, he and his supporters are thanking the same god they believe created the virus and in particular the magic spells chanted to that god by his followers. Rather than credit their skill to their dedication and hard work, he even attributed the skills of the hospital staff to his god.

Creationist Failure News - Gaps in the Geological Record Refute YEC Bible Literalists

The Grand Canyon. More bad news for Creationists

Geologists dig into Grand Canyon’s mysterious gap in time | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

Normally, Creationists love gaps in science as somewhere to sit their ever-diminishing little god, and actively look for them and even try to invent them where none exist.

However, this is a gap they will most probably ignore in the hope it'll go away.

The reason? It is a gap (known as the "Great Unconformity") of almost 1 billion years in a geological record of some 2 billion years. Moreover, the gap is not everywhere - which is how we know about it - but just occurs in a few locations. And having a gap as wide as almost 1 billion years anywhere, utterly refutes any notion that Earth could be just a few thousand years old, and puts it beyond doubt that Earth is much older than Creationists claim from their literalist reading of the Bible. And, to disconcert Creationists even more, this gap is most noticeable in the Grand Canyon, that Creationist frauds lie so much about, ludicrously claiming it as evidence of a global flood "where the water ran off! [sic]"

The gap is missing rock - lots of it - but the mystery remains - where did all that rock go to?

And this is what the researchers from University of Colorado Boulder believe they have solved. They published their findings in the journal of the Geological Society of America, Geology. Sadly, the paper appears to be behind a paywall, however the UC Boulder news release contains the details:

The research comes closer to solving a puzzle, called the “Great Unconformity,” that has perplexed geologists since it was first described nearly 150 years ago.

Barra Peak rests her hand on the line where old rocks and new rocks meet in the Grand Canyon.

Credit: Barra Peak

Think of the red bluffs and cliffs of the Grand Canyon as Earth’s history textbook, explained Barra Peak, lead author of the new study and a graduate student in geological sciences at CU Boulder. If you scale down the canyon’s rock faces, you can jump back almost 2 billion years into the planet’s past. But that textbook is also missing pages: In some areas, more than 1 billion years’ worth of rocks have disappeared from the Grand Canyon without a trace.

Geologists want to know why…

Now, [Barra Peak] and her colleagues think they may be narrowing in on an answer in a paper published this month in the journal Geology. The team reports that a series of small yet violent faulting events may have rocked the region during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent called Rodinia. The resulting havoc likely tore up the earth around the canyon, causing rocks and sediment to wash away and into the ocean.

The team’s findings could help scientists fill in missing pieces of what happened during this critical period for the Grand Canyon—today one of North America’s foremost natural wonders…

The Great Unconformity is one of the first well-documented geologic features in North America,” Peak said. “But until recently, we didn’t have a lot of constraints on when or how it occurred…

There are beautiful lines. At the bottom, you can see very clearly that there are rocks that have been pushed together. Their layers are vertical. Then there there’s a cutoff, and above that you have these beautiful horizontal layers that form the buttes and peaks that you associate with the Grand Canyon…

There’s more than a billion years that’s gone. It’s also a billion years during an interesting part of Earth’s history where the planet is transitioning from an older setting to the modern Earth we know today.

Barra Peak, lead author
Graduate student in geological sciences
Colorado University Boulder, CO, USA

It’s a mystery that goes back a long way. John Wesley Powell, the namesake of today’s Lake Powell, first saw the Great Unconformity during his famed 1869 expedition by boat down the rapids of the Colorado River.

Peak, who completed a similar research rafting trip through the Grand Canyon in spring 2021, said that the feature is stark enough that you can see it from the river…

The difference between those two types of rocks is significant. In the western part of the canyon toward Lake Mead, the basement stone is 1.4 to 1.8 billion years old. The rocks sitting on top, however, are just 520 million years old. Since Powell’s voyage, scientists have seen evidence of similar periods of lost time at sites around North America…

To explore the transition, Peak and her colleagues employed a method called “thermochronology,” which tracks the history of heat in stone. Peak explained that, when geologic formations are buried deep underground, the pressure building on top of them can cause them to get toasty. That heat, in turn, leaves a trace in the chemistry of minerals in those formations.

We have new analytical methods in our lab that allow us to decipher the history in the missing window of time across the Great Unconformity. We are doing this in the Grand Canyon and at other Great Unconformity localities across North America.

Rebecca Flowers, co-author
Professor of geological sciences
Colorado University Boulder, CO, USA

Using this approach, the researchers conducted a survey of samples of rock collected from throughout the Grand Canyon. They discovered that the history of this feature may be more convoluted than scientists have assumed. In particular, the western half of the canyon and its eastern portion (the part that tourists are most familiar with) may have undergone different geologic contortions throughout time.

Roughly 700 million years ago, basement rock in the west seems to have risen to the surface. In the eastern half, however, that same stone was under kilometers of sediment.

The difference likely came down to the breakup of Rodinia, a gigantic land mass that began to pull apart at about the same time, Peak said. The researchers’ results suggest that this major upheaval may have torn at the eastern and western halves of the Grand Canyon in different ways and at slightly different times—producing the Great Unconformity in the process.

An explanation of the observable evidence then that only makes any sense as a process occurring over many millions of years - unlike the Creationist myths that try to compress everything into a few weeks or even a few days. And how does the childish belief that the strata through which the Colorado River cuts were deposited over the course of a year as the result of a single geological process, account for these unconformities and folds? It can't of course. That can only be explained by the sorts of long, slow geological processes associated with major tectonic plate activity such as the splitting of continents that resulted in a dome rising up under the bed of an existing river at a rate slow enough for the flow of the river to erode it.

Scientists these days no longer set out to discredit Creationism like this. In fact, it's not they who do so, but the facts that they reveal using scientific methods and analysis. A superstition which can be refuted with facts has something wrong with it. Any decent hypothesis worth considering should not need to ignore inconvenient evidence such as this.

Reference:
Peak, B.A.; Flowers, R.M.; Macdonald, F.A.; Cottle, J.M.
Zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronology reveals pre-Great Unconformity paleotopography in the Grand Canyon region, USA
Geology 2021. DOI: 10.1130/G49116.1

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Creationist Failure News - How White Clover is Unlucky for Creationists

White Clover, Trifolium repens

White clover’s toxic tricks traced to its hybridization | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis

If there is one thing that Creationists are good at, it is ignoring the facts that show their dogma to be wrong, so here is yet another research finding for them to ignore.

This time, the research concerns the ubiquitous white clover, Trifolium repens, which is abundant throughout temperate zones of the world to the extent that there can scarcely be a patch of grass anywhere that doesn't have its population of white clover, unless specifically treated with a herbicide.

Evolution News - Science is Winning the Argument in USA

Stylised representation of the evolution of Homo sapiens from a common ancestor with the other African apes.

Study: Evolution now accepted by majority of Americans | University of Michigan News

According to a meta-analysis of several surveys carried out over the past 35 years by researchers from Michigan University's Institute for Social Research, American public opinion has now shifted firmly to a majority acceptance that humans evolved from ancestral pre-hominid ancestors, with a surge in support for evolution in the last decade, even amongst fundamentalist Christians.

However, there is now a marked difference between Republicans and Democrats and between fundamentalist Christians and moderate Christians/non-affiliated on the issue.

According to the Michigan University news release:

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS-CoV-2 Sneaks Past The Defences The Idiot Designer Designed to Protect You

The glycan gate opens: Supercomputing-driven simulations depict the glycan N343 (magenta) acting as a molecular crowbar to pry open the SARS-CoV-2 spike’s receptor binding domain, or RBD (cyan), from a “down” to an "up" position.

Credit: Terra Sztain, Surl-Hee Ahn, Lorenzo Casalino (Amaro Lab, UC San Diego).

Researchers Discover Hidden SARS-CoV-2 ‘Gate’ That Opens to Allow COVID Infection

Creationist mode:

Scientist from UC San Diego, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have discovered how Creationism's beloved malevolence designed the nasty little SARS-CoV-2 virus to sneak past our defences, enter the cells lining our respiratory tract and either kill us, or make us very sick while producing lots of new virus particles with which to infect others.

In this way, it brilliantly produced the coronavirus pandemic currently wrecking economies and killing people by the tens of thousands a day and leaving very many more with long-term health problems. This same malevolence also allegedly designed our inadequate defences to protect us from the parasites, such as this virus, it creates to harm us! <sarcasm>Obviously, such a designer is worthy of our admiration and adoration and provides the role model for our social ethics.</sarcasm>.

Covidiot News - Another Antivax Lie Busted By Science

Comparison of 1st day post-vaccination symptoms between groups

Study: Pregnant women do well with COVID vaccine | Newsroom

According to a large study of over 17,000 women, conducted by University of Washington medical School (UV Medicine), pregnant and lactating women who received the COVID-19 vaccinations, did not experience symptoms any more severe than their non-pregnant counterparts. And what symptoms they had were minor and predictable, such as slight pain at the injection site.

The study was limited largely to healthcare workers because at the time the study was conducted, they were the only women of the right age to have been vaccinated, as healthcare workers were vaccinated early as a high-risk group. The study now needs to be conducted on a more generalised sample to ensure there is not something in this group that is skewing the result. However, this is the second such study to produce these reassuring figures and it's difficult to imagine what about being a healthcare worker could be skewing the results. Nevertheless, that small possibility needs to be eliminated.

The finding was published open access in JAMA Network Open. In their conclusions the team report:

Covidiot News - Why Vaccinated People are Doing Better Against the Delta Variant

Daily New Cases, (USA) [18-08-2021]

Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

Antibodies elicited by COVID-19 vaccination effective against delta variant – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

A paper published in the journal Immunity a couple of days ago shows what we've pretty much known for several weeks now - that the surge in the δ variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus now being seen in America, Europe and elsewhere, is being facilitated by having a large population of, as yet, unvaccinated people to exploit, and not because it can evade the antibodies in those who are fully vaccinated.

This is why the current surge in the USA looks like a deliberate, self-induced genocide of supporters of the GOP and it's covidiot allies in the evangelical Christian churches, the Trumpanzee cult and the victims of the shadowy, pro-Trump QAnon organization behind much of the disinformation and lies in the antivaxxer movement.

Just as we would expect, and as this paper confirms, the δ variant is not able to make much headway in the vaccinated population because it can't evade their antibodies, hence the proportion of new cases coming from the red states and counties in the USA vastly outnumbers those coming from the blue states and counties. At the start of this recent surge, 40% of all new cases were coming from just three red states, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, all of which have had a low take-up of the vaccines.

Covidiot News - No Time to Gloat, But We DID Say This Would Happen

Two Covidiots
Left: Jimmy DeYoung Sr. Antivaxxer. Died last Sunday
Right: Cardinal Burke. Antivaxxer. On a ventilator

Christian Radio Host Who Discouraged Getting the Vaccine Dies of COVID | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

It's difficult to feel sorry for people like antivaxxer, evangelical Christian radio host and covidiot, Dr Jimmy DeYoung Sr, who devoted his last year of life to spreading disinformation to discourage his followers from getting the anti-COVID vaccine and who has now died of COVID-19, and Catholic Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, the homophobic right-winger who downplayed the coronavirus and similarly rubbished and lied about the vaccine, who is now fighting for his life on a ventilator, suffering from... you've guessed it!.. COVID-19.

QAnon Nut Job News - A Man "Enlightened by QAnon" Killed His Children "Because They Had Serpent DNA"

Matthew Taylor Coleman
Killed his two children "because they had serpent DNA".

Surf School Owner Kills His Children After Being "Enlightened" by QAnon | Daily Beast

A surf school owner who had been suckered in by the pro-Trump, neo-Nazi QAnon conspiracy theories ended up so paranoid that he killed his children, believing that was the only way to save the world from evil.

According to this report in the Daily Beast, he told FBI agents:

... that he was enlightened by the QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife...possessed serpent DNA and had passed it onto his children [so he was] saving the world from monsters.

Coleman Complaint by J Rohrlich

Coleman was arrested when he attempted to re-enter the USA from Mexico, the day after the bodies of his two children, a 3 year-old boy and a 1 year-old girl, were found at a ranch near Rosarito, Baha California, Mexico, to where Coleman had taken them a day earlier without telling his wife where he was taking them. The girl had 17 stab wounds and the boy, 12.

Coleman and his wife, Abby, ran the Lovewater Surfing School at Santa Barbara, California, offering 'surfing therapy' to child victims of sex trafficking.

In a (now deleted) Facebook post last November, Coleman told his followers about his Christian faith, speculating that:

...there is a type of Great American Renaissance following the years of Covid, censorship, and political divisiveness... that will empower each person’s heart to come alive and explode with innovative ideas, new business models, new music sounds and never seen ways to build an amazing community?

Last October, celebrating his daughter's birthday, in a post suffused with the 'coming battle' imagery of QAnon conspiracists, he posted about his 'visions' on Instagram:

While waiting for her to come, I kept feeling this sense that she was going to be born at a very pivotal time in history and that she would represent a dawn, or even awakening, to years of great blessing for our family and nation. Another picture that came to me was of God reaching down into a river bed and picking up a small stone (rock), examining it intently. Just as David had done before slaying Goliath, God examined the stone and was confident that it was just the perfect one for the battle. Although it was small, smooth and somewhat harmless looking, he knew that it would become great when placed into the palm of a skilled hand. My declaration over Roxy Rain is that she has been hand picked by God to slay the giants in the land.

Clearly, Coleman, who appears to have been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, began imagining visions and messages telling him something far more sinister, and more in line with the sort of paranoia being deliberately inculcated into their followers' minds by whoever is behind the QAnon conspiracy theories.

As Karim Zidan of Right Wing Watch pointed out:

QAnon adherents believe in a myriad of far-right conspiracy theories, including the false belief that a cabal of Satanic pedophiles comprised of global elites, Hollywood actors, and Democratic politicians operate a global child sex-trafficking ring, and that former president Donald Trump was working to bring down the cabal. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which led to the election of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, QAnon adherents began spreading disproven election fraud narratives while also contributing to the spread of COVID-19 disinformation and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. The QAnon conspiracy theories have consumed relationships and marriages across the United States, with thousands of people sharing their stories on support groups such as Reddit’s r/QAnonCasualties subreddit. Countless spouses and family members shared stories about their “losing” their loved ones to QAnon. Recently, a student who survived the Parkland shooting in 2018 revealed in the subreddit that QAnon convinced his own father that the tragic shooting was nothing more than a hoax.

Clearly there is nothign the Trumpanzee cult and their allies in white supremacist evangelical Christianity, won't stoop to. No price is too high for them to pay in terms of damage to the mental health of individuals and destruction of families, to try to get the former head of the White House crime syndicate, Donald J Trump, back into the White House in 2024.

Christian Loopy Liar News - Spreading False Information for Jesus

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel
Lies include claim that the vaccine is designed to prevent people from procreating!

Mat Staver Claims COVID-19 Vaccines Are Designed to 'Prevent People From Procreating' | Right Wing Watch

Two well-known Talibangelist Christian nut-jobs who have been doing their best to encourage the self-genocide of Trumpanzee evangelical Christians and GOP voters, through false witnessing about COVID-19, were in the news last week.

First off is the habitual liar, Mat Staver, of Liberty Counsel, an extremist conservative Christian, homophobic hate group, who, despite having no medical or other science qualifications and who manifestly knows nothing about how vaccines work, has been feeding his equally ignorant supporters with blatantly made-up disinformation about them. Back in 2019, Staver's Liberty Counsel was campaigning against lynching being made a federal offence because it extended that protection to LGBTQ people. Apparently, this would contravene the civil liberty of extremist Christians to lynch LGBTQ people whenever they felt like doing so.

Now, sounding more like a sex-obsessed paranoid psychotic, he told viewers of his "World Prayer Network" on Facebook, that the vaccines are part of Bill Gates' plan to reduce the world population by up to a billion people. He claimed, without offering the slightest evidence or saying where he got the information from, that this is being achieved by making people sterile and/or sexually dysfunctional. He said:

Unintelligent Designer News - Compensating for the Designer's RuBisCo Blunder

So much greenery as RuBisCo makes up in quantity what it lacks in quality - but it's still not enough to feed 9 billion people (by 2050).

Scientists take step to improve crops’ photosynthesis, yields | Cornell Chronicle

The world is heading for a severe food shortage as we approach a projected 9 billion people by 2050 (assuming global warming doesn't get us first!). To feed that number of people, farmers need to increase crop yields by some 50%. But there is a major road-block to achieving anything like that productivity from plants, because the entire system, indeed the entire cycle of life on Earth (save for a few chemosynthetic bacteria) is dependent on what must rate as the worst pieces of 'design' in all biology - RuBisCo.

RuBisCo, or to give it its full chemical name, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, would be a major embarrassment to intelligent [sic] design advocates if they had the knowledge and intellect to understand it. It is responsible for taking 6 molecules of inorganic carbon dioxide (CO₂) and 6 molecules of water (H₂O) and, using just the energy in sunlight, making a molecule of glucose (C₆H₁₂O₆) which is then used as the energy source and as the basic building block for many structural and storage carbohydrates such as cellulose, lignin (wood) starch, glycogen, etc. This forms the very basis of almost all food chains. It also, in the process, makes 6 molecules of oxygen (O₂) as a waste product.

Incidentally, note that 'living' (organic) glucose molecules are made out of non-living (inorganic) molecules, and all without the involvement of god magic!

The problem is, RuBisCo is notoriously bad at what it does. Not only is it highly inefficient as catalysing enzymes go, catalysing only about four reactions a second as opposed to the hundreds or thousands of reactions a second for most enzymes, but it finds it hard to tell CO₂ from molecular oxygen (O₂) which, when RuBisCo tries to 'fix' it, produces a toxic product that stops RuBisCo working and wastes energy.