Early Humans Used Fire and Made Grass Beds 200,000 Years Ago

Border Cave, South Africa

2020-08 - 200 000 years ago, humans preferred to kip cozy - Wits University

Here's the sort of problem for Young Earth Creationists that they have to dismiss every day in order to avoid changing their minds.

Despite their belief in the recent origins of humans and their belief in the childish tale of Noah's Ark and a global flood, there is evidence from South Africa that humans lived in a cave and used grass as bedding, and this evidence was not washed away in a catastrophic flood which, if it was anything like the one YECs believe in, would have scoured the cave clean of this evidence.

Jesus Army Cult of Sexual, Physical and Psychological Abuse.

Left to right, Mike Farrant, Huw Lewis, Ian Callard, John Campbell and Mick Haines.
The 'Apostolic Five'.

Jesus Army abuse 'covered-up by church leaders', report claims - BBC News

The Northampton-based, child-abusing Jesus Army that I wrote about in May, 2019, is back in the news again.

According to this BBC report, the five surviving members of the now-disbanded Jesus Army cult were found to have colluded with sexual offenders by the way they handled complaints. This was the finding of an inquiry commissioned by the cult itself in 2017 when it decided to disband after a haemorrhage of members due to a deluge of complaints of sexual, physical and psychological abuse by the cult's leaders.

Ten people from the cult have since been convicted of sex offences.

Beneficial Mutations - Another Creationist Howler

Male brown howler, Alouatta guariba clamitans

Photo credit: Ilaria Agostini

Mutations may have saved brown howlers from yellow fever virus | @theU

Until 2007 El Parque El Piñalito in the Misiones province in northeastern Argentina, had low density, but healthy populations of two howler monkeys - the brown, Alouatta guariba clamitans, and the black and gold, A. caraya. Then they both started to die and by 2009 they were almost extinct.

The cause was the yellow fever virus, transmitted by mosquitoes. Yellow fever was introduced by slave traders from Africa to South and Central America. Increased logging and habitat destruction has also brought the howler monkeys into closer proximity to humans, increasing the risk of howler monkeys catching the virus from humans.

Ilaria Agostini, who has been studying the monkeys since 2005 also noticed that a few brown howlers had survived, seemingly resistant to the virus. In 2014 Nicole Torosi, postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University and then a doctoral student at the University of Utah joined Ilaria Agostini to search for surviving Howlers. They found nine brown howlers and two black and gold howlers.

Black and Gold Howlers, A. caraya

Torisini and colleagues then sequenced the DNA from the livers of specimens which died of yellow fever, and from the faeces of the survivors, to look for genetic differences that might have helped the browns survive better than the black and gold howlers.

Good News From Science - An Effective Protection Against SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 is part of the coronavirus family, named for the spikes that stud the surface of the virus and impart a crown-like appearance when viewed through an electron microscope.

Image by NIH

‘AeroNabs’ Promise Powerful, Inhalable Protection Against COVID-19 | UC San Francisco

A team of researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is claiming to have developed the most potent anti-SARS-CoV-2 antivirals yet discovered. The molecule can be delivered as an aerosol, which the team have dubbed 'AeroNabs', or as a dry powder and could be more effective if used daily than the PPEs used by medical staff and carers.

They developed it from molecules called nanobodies - very small antibody-like particles found in llamas, camels and related animals but not humans. The molecules can be produced in bulk by introducing the genes to make it into yeast or a bacterium such as E. coli and growing them in cultures so they become factories to make the molecules, in the same way insulin is produced in commercial quantities.

Malevolent Design News - How SARS-CoV-2 Was Designed to Kill Us

COVID-19 coronavirus spike protein

Credit: Alexandra C. Walls, Young-Jun Park, David Veesler
Source: University of Washington Medicine News

Research exposes new vulnerability in SARS-CoV-2 - Northwestern Now

Followers of Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer must be awestruck by the sheer brilliance of its latest weapon of mass destruction - the modified coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes Covid-19. According to Johns Hopkins University, to date, this virus has infected 20,318,420 people world-wide and killed 742,048. In the USA, it has infected 5,141,879 and killed 164,545. The world-wide pandemic has caused economies to collapsed and major business to be ruined as governments impose lockdowns in a desperate battle to slow its spread.

Now, two research scientists from Northwestern University, Illinois, USA, have shown just how thorough this putative designer would have to have been to make the virus the 'success' it is. They have shown that the virus 'spike' proteins have a positively charged are just a few nanometers away from the actual binding site with which the virus binds to the protein ACE2, on the cell surface, fitting into it like a key into a lock. This forms a strong electrostatic bond with a negative area on the ACE2 protein, so helping the virus bind to the cell and prise open an entrance for it to inject its RNA contents into the cell.

Malevolent Design - Zombie Cicadas and Massospora cicadina

Return of the zombie cicadas: WVU team unearths manipulative qualities of fungal-infected flyers | WVU Today | West Virginia University

Creationism's malevolent designer is never short of ideas for ever-more grotesque and repugnant ideas for making life for its creation just a little more unpleasant. It has now come up with a design for a fungus that takes over cicadas that have spent years underground before emerging briefly to find a mate, lay eggs and die. This example will feature in my forthcoming book, "The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good", the sequel to my popular book, "The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax"

How Birds Speciate - The North American Orioles

Bullock's Oriole, Icterus bullockii (male)

Photo credit: Kevin Cole Source: Wikipedia CC BY 2.0

Study: Oriole Hybridization Is a Dead End

The the Eurasian carrion crow/hooded crow complex, the North American Orioles are examples of allopatric speciation that has reached some sort of equilibrium where interbreeding is still possible, but there are indications that barriers to hybridization are arising within the two populations. As such, they make interesting examples of speciation in progress and an illustrate of one mechanism for speciation.

I have written before about how and why the carrion crow, Corvus corone, and the hooded crow, C. cornix, are regarded as different species even though they can and do interbreed to produce fertile hybrids - normally a sign that the interbreeding populations are at best subspecies. The decision to classify them as different species was based on the evidence that there is a degree of female sex-selection which favours the hooded crow plumage pattern, so the hybrids tend to be reproductively less successful so any zone of interbreeding remains narrow and needs to be replenished. In other words, hybridization is not leading to significant gene flow between the two species. This sex-selection behaviour is a partial barrier to hybridization.

31% of Pastors Have Narcissistic Personality Disorder!

Clergy and Narcissistic Personality Disorder:FREQUENCY OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER IN PASTORS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Almost one in three Christian clergy has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)!

That was the finding of an investigation into personality types presented to the American Association of Christian Counsellors in 2015. This is one explanation for the very high incidence of predatory paedophiles within the clergy. The investigation found that:

Pastors with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are to be found in all areas of the country at rates 400%–500% higher than are found in the general population (1%-6%). Narcissists can be found in every age and experience range, and in both sexes. In the Presbyterian Church of Canada, the incidence of NPD in active clergy is between 500% to 3000% higher than is found in the general population.

Catholic Abuse News - McCarricks' Paedophile Sex Ring

Theodore McCarrick, 1997

Credit: Steve Auchard/NorthJersey.com

Theodore McCarrick: Lawsuit alleges ex-cardinal ran NJ sex ring | USA Today

Former Cardinal, now plain Mr Theodore McCarrick, still, pending Cardinal Pell's defrocking, the most senior Catholic cleric to be defrocked by the Vatican because of his involvement in child sex abuse, is now facing court action in Essex County, New Jersey, USA, accused of running a sex ring at his New Jersey beach home.

He is being sued by one of his victims who alleges in the papers presented to the court that he was abused by McCarrick and three other priests at his home in Sea Girt, in the early 1980s. McCarrick has been accused of bringing adult seminarians to his home and harassing them during overnight stays, as well as abusing children. It was these allegations that led to McCarrick being stripped of his title by the Pope.

The unnamed plaintiff alleges that he was abused by two other clerics, including the former Essex Catholic High School principal, who introduced him to McCarrick on the pretext that McCarrick would help him pay for his school tuition.

The lawsuit alleges that the abuse began when McCarrick was bishop of the Metuchen Archdiocese. He later became Archbishop of Newark and later Archbishop of Washington, when he became a Cardinal and essentially the senior Catholic cleric in the USA. However, it emerged two years ago that allegations about McCarrick's predatory sexual behaviour were known to the the Catholic Church when Newark Archbishop Joseph Tobin admitted that allegations of sexual abuse against him had been settled secretly many years before.

McCarrick is also facing two other lawsuits in New Jersey alleging that he sexually abused boys. These lawsuits have been filed under a new law that took effect last December, suspending the statute of limitations for two years. More than 100 such lawsuits have been filed under this law against all five of the state's diocese. Four of the five priests name in the Newark lawsuits have previously faces allegations of child sexual abuse. They are Gerald Ruane, Michael Walters and John Laferrera, all accused of abusing boys aged between 14 and 16 at McCarrick's beach home. Gerald Ruane has since died as has the fourth accused, the former Principal of Essex Catholic High School, Brother Andrew Thomas Hewitt. The fifth person named is Anthony Nardino, accused of abusing a boy aged 11 years old and a parishioner at St. Francis Xavier in Newark in 1978. Nardino has since left the priesthood.

The lawyer acting for the boys alleges that McCarrick began abusing the boy shortly after they met in 1982. The boy was “taken on overnight and weekend trips” to the beach house in Sea Girt.

“McCarrick assigned sleeping arrangements, choosing his victims from the boys, seminarians and clerics present at the beach house,” the suit said. “Minor boys were assigned to different rooms and paired with adult clerics.”

The lawsuit alleged that the Catholic Church knew of McCarrick's abuses for many years and that Pope Benedict XVI placed restrictions on McCarrick. And this is where the affair begins to close in on Pope Francis. The disgruntled and embittered Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has claimed that both Pope Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, knew of the sexual abuses by McCarrick but allowed him to continue in his role as the senior American Catholic Catholic cleric. Viganò has alleged that Pope Benedict XVI, now in seclusion as self-style Pope Emeritus in the Vatican, the first pope to resign in 600 years and giving Catholicism the unique experience of having two Popes in the Vatican, placed McCarrick under restraint and that that restraint was removed by Pope Francis, even though he too knew of McCarrick's predatory sexual activities.

Pope Francis has remained silent on the Viganò allegations, probably to protect Pope Benedict XVI, because Benedict is in the double bind position that if he did not know anything about McCarrick's activities then he should have known and if he did but did nothing he was culpable. However, if he did know and did do something, then he is in the clear but Francis is dropped in the mire.

It may be remembered how right-wing conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò fell from favour when he effectively ambushed and embarrassed Pope Francis on a visit to the USA by arranging a meeting with right-wing extremist fundamentalist, Kim Davies, in which Francis appeared to give support to her campaign of refusing to register same-sex marriages, despite their legality and despite a court order instructing her to do so. It appeared that the Pope was interfering in the legal process of the USA as a guest in the country, giving him a less than triumphal end to an otherwise successful official visit. The affair effectively ended Viganò's career and put paid to the hope he had to become a cardinal and the Papal legate to the USA. As a former Vatican staffer, Viganò's toadying and naked ambition had already made him several powerful enemies.

It will be interesting to see whether any more information emerges in court, to shed light on the truth or otherwise of Viganò's allegations. No doubt, the Vatican will be taking a close interest in proceedings. One Pope or the other could well end up with egg on his face as the Pope who did nothing while McCarrick ran his cosy beach-side paedophile sex ring.

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Bats - The Malevolent Designer's Laboratory?

Black fruit bats, Pteropus alecto

Source: Wikipedia.
Credit: Welbergen., CC BY-SA 3.0

Genomic Basis of Bat Superpowers Revealed: Like How They Survive Deadly Viruses | | SBU News

There is a sudden surge of interest in biological circles about bats and in particular why they are the source of so many deadly viral diseases, probably as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and sciences attempt to understand it and find better treatments and a cure.

While I've been working on my next book, "The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good", a book also prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic, a couple of papers were published which suggest, if we accept for a moment the Creationist intelligent [sic] design argument, that their putative designer uses bats as laboratories for developing ever more deadly viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus which causes Covid-19, MERS, rabies and ebola.

How Self-Replicating RNA Got Made - Naturally

A hydrothermal vent on the Niua underwater volcano in the Lau Basin, southwest Pacific Ocean. The sort of place abiogenesis could have happened.

Chemical evolution in a tiny Gulf Stream - LMU Munich

I hate to say, "I told you so!", but... I told you so!

Readers of my books and blog-posts may remember how I elaborated on the ten-step process, proposed by Nick Lane and Michael Le Page in New Scientist in 2009, to explain how abiogenesis could have come about, in my blog-post Perfectly Plausible Abiogenesis, and in my popular book What Makes You So Special? From the Big Bang to You, in which I wrote:

Modern Humans, Not Climate Change, Exterminated the Neanderthals

A reconstruction of a Neanderthal man.

Credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthals of the western Mediterranean did not become extinct because of changes in climate — University of Bologna

Scientists from the University of Bologna believe they have shown that the climate was relatively stable for the three thousand years that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis coexisted.

This means that climate change alone would not have caused Neanderthals to become extinct, pointing the finger at moderns as the culprit - probably by having better hunting technology.

They reached this conclusion by examining stalagmites in a cave in the Murge karst plateau Apulia, Italy where Moderns and Neanderthals are known to have coexisted between 45,000 and 42,000 years ago.

What's The Point of Vine Weevils?

Vine weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus.

Photo: Opuntia
Source: Wikipedia

The Vine weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus, is an annoying garden pest that, as I know to my cost having lost a spectacular cascading orange begonia last year, can destroy a plant growing in a container almost overnight. It appears to have no other purpose but to produce more vine weevils.

The damage is done mostly by the larvae which live in the soil or container compost and eat the roots of plants. When they have finished the roots, they move into the corms and stems. Meanwhile the entire plant above ground wilts and dies.

The Vine weevil is actually a flightless beetle of the Curculionidae family. The elytra, the characteristic modified forewings that act as protective covers of most beetles, have become fused to form a protective, grooved black or dark grey shell. A population of vine weevils is always entirely female and reproduction is parthenogenic, so a single female can quickly establish a new population. No males have ever been found.

Covidiots - Mask-Burners of Boise, Idaho

Idaho Leads Way in Positivity, Boiseans Burn Masks

As health authorities in Boise, Idaho, struggle to cope with a resurgent Covid-19 epidemic, following a too-soon-too-far reopening of the economy, fruitloop Trumpanzee covidiots are doing their bit by organising face-mask burning parties and urging people to defy the order mandating their wearing in all public places, including sidewalks.

According to this report by Karen Bosstick:

Covidiots - Californian Pastor For God and Covid-19

Greg Fairrington, Destiny Christian Church. "Mandated by God to disobey lockdown"

California Pastor Vows Church Will Defy Lockdown Order

Is it really too much to expect Christians to start behaving like caring and compassionate people, willing to give a little self-sacrifice to the welfare of others or is there something deeply ingrained in their faith that tells them to be selfish at all times and never to put the needs of others above their own personal needs?

It really looks that way when you look at the reaction of Christian fundamentalist to the measure introduced to try to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and reduce the number of people killed or made sick by the virus.

Covidiots - Louisiana Christians to Cast Spells to Cure Covid-19

John Bel Edwards, Governor of Louisiana
Three days of prayer and fasting to cure Covid-19!

Louisiana Catholic governor calls for prayer and fasting to end coronavirus

While scientists are working to find a vaccine against Covid-19 - two research programmes are already producing promising results - and better treatments for its victim, Christians in Louisiana are to do their bit - they are going to fast and cast magic spells, if Catholic governor, John Bel Edwards, gets his way.

Covidiots - Christian Fruitloops Against Altruism

DeAnna Lorraine, Fruitloop Trumpanzee Fundamentalist Christian
"Face-masks are a Marxist globalist Satanic conspiracy"

Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorist: “God Does Not Want Us Wearing Masks” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

American Right-wing Christian fruitloop covidiots are continuing their campaign to Make America Sick Again with Covid-19, as though having the highest infection rate in the world (above 77,000 new cases per day and rising at the time of writing) was not good enough.

Not only did they promulgate the covidiot notion that the whole thing was some sort of hoax - either man-made or Satanic - to stop Christians from going to church (and paying their tithes), they then campaigned against all lockdown measures and are now campaigning against wearing a face-mask.

Tsunamis Leave Noah's Ark Myth Devastated

The North Sea, Storegga underwater landslide event run-out, associated deposit locations and core ELF001A. Location of deposits associated with Storegga slip follow data in summarized [8].

Doggerland tsunami - 2020 - News - University of Bradford.

With some 40% of Americans still believing in Noah's Ark, it's necessary, even though astonishing for the 21st Century, in an age in which information is so readily and freely available, to debunk it yet again. Fortunately, two articles published recently help to do just that.

The first concerns a paper published by a team of scientists led by Professor Vincent Gaffney of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, England, which presents evidence that about 8,150 years ago, three successive giant waves tore across ancient land bridge between UK and Europe, in the area now submerged beneath the North Sea - some 4,000 years before the Biblical flood is supposed to have happened.

Malevolent Design News - Toxoplasmosis Triumph

Tachyzoites of Toxoplasma gondii

Credit: Bobbi Pritt, M.D.
Source: PathologyOutlines.com

Toxoplasma at the wheel: Study reveals how a dangerous parasite controls its host cell to spread around the body | Indian University News.

Another example of the length the intelligent [sic] designer is prepared to go to to make people sick (if you believe in the intelligent design hoax).

First, a little bit about Toxoplasma gondii. According to the CDC:

Causal Agent:

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that infects most species of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and causes the disease toxoplasmosis.

29,000 Years of Australian Aboriginal History

Mussel shells collected and dated from along the River Murray downstream of Renmark in SA’s Riverland.

29,000 years of Aboriginal history on the Murray – News

Does anyone still take the story of Noah's Ark seriously, apart from simple-minded creationists and Bible literalists?

If so, they have some explaining to do now we have yet more evidence of human activity from way before the alleged global flood which is central to the biblical story of a vengeful, genocidal god drowning nearly everything and everyone just a few thousand years ago.

A team of archaeologists from Flinders University has discovered evidence of human occupation of South Australia’s Riverland region 29,000 years ago. Their results are published in Australian Archaeology: