YouTube Finally Took Down the Channels of Christian Hate-Pastor Steven Anderson | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos
Preacher of Hate, Pastor Steven Anderson, has had his YouTube channels taken down. Readers may remember Pastor Steven Anderson, whom I wrote about a little over a year ago when he was banned from entering the Republic of Ireland following a petition to the then Irish Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan.
This ban came shortly after the ROI had voted massively to legalise same-sex marriages and then to decriminalise abortions. Anderson is now banned from some 34 countries, including New Zealand, South Africa, Republic of Ireland, UK, all the Schengen group of European Union countries, Botswana, Canada and Jamaica.
Shortly after my post, Anderson's Twitter account, which he had denied had any connection with him and his church, was taken down when he started posting hate messages and incitements to violence, calling for the killing of homosexuals. Now, following a campaign by Hemant Mehta, all of Anderson's YouTube channels have also been shut down.
Religion, Creationism, evolution, science and politics from a centre-left atheist humanist. The blog religious frauds tell lies about.
Friday 11 September 2020
Covidiots - Trumpanzees Don't Want Covid-19 Vaccination
Caption |
A survey by researchers, Paul L.Reiter, Michael L.Pennell and Mira L.Katz, from Ohio State University has shown that 69% of Americans "probably" or "definitely" would get the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine when one becomes available, but 17% are "not sure" and 14% are "probably" or "definitely" unwilling to.
The astonishing thing is how this opinion is influenced by politics, or political affiliation. As the Ohio State press release put it:
One of the more unexpected findings in this study – and something that isn’t typical of public health research – is the correlation between political affiliation and willingness to adopt a public health intervention, Reiter said. Respondents who identified as liberal or moderate were significantly more likely to accept a vaccine. “COVID-19 has turned into a political issue in many cases, and I think that some people just pick their side based on that, without much research,” he said. “We’ve seen that with mask wearing. It’s a promising public health intervention, but it’s turned into a political powder keg.”
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Covid-19
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Democracy
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Health
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Politics
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Secularism
Covidiots - Visiting a Place of Worship Gives 16 Times Higher Risk of Covid-19 Infection!
Covid-19 Study Links Strict Social Distancing to Much Lower Chance of Infection – 2020 – News Releases – News – Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
A survey by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has shown that those who visited a place of worship two or three times in the previous month were 16 times more likely to have had a history of Covid-19 infection than those who had not visited a place of worship over the same period.
The researchers surveyed a random sample of 1030 people in the state of Maryland in late June, asking about their social distancing practices, use of public transport, SARS-CoV-2 infection history and other Covid-19-relevent behaviours. The state of Maryland has logged more than 113,000 SARS-CoV-2 confirmed cases and nearly 3,700 confirmed deaths, according to the Maryland Department of Health. The results reinforce the importance of strict social distancing in reducing infection rates.
A survey by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has shown that those who visited a place of worship two or three times in the previous month were 16 times more likely to have had a history of Covid-19 infection than those who had not visited a place of worship over the same period.
The researchers surveyed a random sample of 1030 people in the state of Maryland in late June, asking about their social distancing practices, use of public transport, SARS-CoV-2 infection history and other Covid-19-relevent behaviours. The state of Maryland has logged more than 113,000 SARS-CoV-2 confirmed cases and nearly 3,700 confirmed deaths, according to the Maryland Department of Health. The results reinforce the importance of strict social distancing in reducing infection rates.
Thursday 10 September 2020
Religion in USA - The Decline Accelerates
In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace | Pew Research Center
This Pew Research survey passed under my radar last December, but it shows just how far the growing rejection of religion in the USA has progressed as the USA catches up with Europe in its rejection of organised religious superstition in favour of secularism and rational thought.
As usual with these surveys, the news is relentlessly dreadful for organised religions, with few if any crumbs of comfort, other than that the religiously affiliated are still an absolute majority, albeit a majority which will inevitably disappear within a generation.
This Pew Research survey passed under my radar last December, but it shows just how far the growing rejection of religion in the USA has progressed as the USA catches up with Europe in its rejection of organised religious superstition in favour of secularism and rational thought.
As usual with these surveys, the news is relentlessly dreadful for organised religions, with few if any crumbs of comfort, other than that the religiously affiliated are still an absolute majority, albeit a majority which will inevitably disappear within a generation.
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
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Atheism
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Christianity
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Secularism
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USA
Wednesday 9 September 2020
Catholic Child Abuse News - Duluth Bishop-Elect Resigns
Father Michel J. Mulloy |
The person chosen by Pope Francis to become Bishop of Duluth, Minnesota, Father Michel J. Mulloy, has resigned before taking up the post, amid allegations that he sexually abused a minor in Rapid City, in the early 1980s.
Father Mulloy, a South Dakota native, was ordained in 1979, according to a post on the website of the Diocese of Sioux Falls announcing his appointment as a bishop. His first assignment was at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Rapid City from 1979 to 1981. He was then assigned to Christ the King Parish in Sioux Falls and held positions at several other parishes in South Dakota during the 1980s.
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Catholics
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Child Abuse
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Christians
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Religious abuse
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Secularism
Tuesday 8 September 2020
How the Frontier Mentality Evolved
Man in a cowboy hat atop Humphreys Peak in Arizona, US |
The American 'Frontier' mentality, closely associated with fundamentalist religiosity and Creationism, evolved by a classic Darwinian 'advancing wave' process, according to research by a team from Cambridge University and published yesterday in Nature Human Behaviour.
The team were looking specifically at a possible correlation between a personality type that fits with 'frontier settlement theory' and topography (elevation in relation to the surrounding region).
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Anthropology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
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Sociology
Catholic Abuse News - Pope Ratzinger's German Connection
Msg Christoph Kühn, Sexual predator and friend of Pope Benedict XVI |
Another scandal of sexual predation amongst senior Catholic priests is breaking - this time centered around a German priest and favourite of Pope Benedict XVI and involving forced sex with junior priests, inside the Vatican itself!
According to this report in LifeSite News, Monsignor Florian Kolfhaus and a second man – a former priest - both allege that then-senior official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, Monsignor Christoph Kühn, violently compelled them into sexual masochistic acts.
According to LifeSite:
Kolfhaus first lodged a complaint against Kühn at the Vatican in 2006. He testifies that his abuse took place inside the offices of the Secretariat of State, as well as inside the Casa Santa Marta, a residence for Vatican prelates.
But it appears no formal investigation was launched until 2019, in spite of the fact that the Report of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Delegate for the Pontifical Representations, was presented to the Superiors of the Secretariat of State on July 3, 2006.
The other priest has since become laicized and is now a practicing homosexual and LGBT activist. He has given his testimony for the Kolfhaus complaint that is currently underway in Germany.
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Catholics
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Christians
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Human Rights
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Morality
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Religious abuse
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Secularism
Monday 7 September 2020
Christian Fruitloops for Racism
Bishop Aubrey Shines |
A small bunch of extreme right clergy, calling themselves the Conservative Clergy of Color, which would probably be more accurate if spelled with capital 'K's, has intervened in the Black Lives Matter campaign, on the side of those who argue that black lives don't matter.
It started when, in a rare display of unity of cause in the highly competative trainer and sportswear industry, Nike and Adidas put their differences aside and came out in suport of the BLM campaign. Adidas then followed up with a heart emoji and by posting Nike's video on their Instagram story.
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Christians
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Human Rights
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Insanity
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Politics
Tuesday 1 September 2020
Malevolent Designer News - How Dodder Eavesdrops on its Host
Dodder uses the flowering signal of its host plant to flower | Max Planck Institute
for Chemical Ecology.
Not content with designing a parasitic plant that steals nutrients and water from its host, Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer has designed dodder to steal their hormones too!
To the embarrassment of creationists this redesign appears to have involved a loss of genetic information too - something they say can't result in an increase in information or be beneficial to the organism. The latest dictat from the Discovery Institute, following the abysmal failure of the Intelligent Design hoax, is that all genetic change must be presented as 'genetic entropy' and 'devolution' from an initial perfect creation, so it can be presented as consistent with the Bible and Michael J. Behe's latest book.
for Chemical Ecology.
Not content with designing a parasitic plant that steals nutrients and water from its host, Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer has designed dodder to steal their hormones too!
To the embarrassment of creationists this redesign appears to have involved a loss of genetic information too - something they say can't result in an increase in information or be beneficial to the organism. The latest dictat from the Discovery Institute, following the abysmal failure of the Intelligent Design hoax, is that all genetic change must be presented as 'genetic entropy' and 'devolution' from an initial perfect creation, so it can be presented as consistent with the Bible and Michael J. Behe's latest book.
Labels:
Biology
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Botany
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Another Missing Link is Good News and Bad News for Creationists
Study Finds Missing Link in the Evolutionary History of Carbon-Fixing Protein Rubisco | UC Davis.
Scientists at University of California, Davis have discovered another of these 'missing link' things that keep turning out to be not missing at all, but just not found until now. And it's good news and bad news for Creationists.
The good news is that it lets their putative creator god off the hook for designing what must be one of the worst examples of inept design in all of nature - the ubiquitous enzyme, found in all photosynthetic organisms, form I RuBisCo. The bad news is that it shows how form I RubisCo is the result of an evolutionary process and of course, it's another one of those pesky 'missing links' that are not supposed to be there if creationist dogma is correct.
Scientists at University of California, Davis have discovered another of these 'missing link' things that keep turning out to be not missing at all, but just not found until now. And it's good news and bad news for Creationists.
The good news is that it lets their putative creator god off the hook for designing what must be one of the worst examples of inept design in all of nature - the ubiquitous enzyme, found in all photosynthetic organisms, form I RuBisCo. The bad news is that it shows how form I RubisCo is the result of an evolutionary process and of course, it's another one of those pesky 'missing links' that are not supposed to be there if creationist dogma is correct.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Sunday 30 August 2020
Malevolent Designer News - Making Zika Even Worse
Prior Zika virus infection increases risk of severe dengue disease | Berkeley News
Exciting news today for advocates of Intelligent [sic] design, from the University of California, Berkeley! Researchers there, led by Leah C. Katzelnick have discovered that people who have had the Zika Virus (ZIKV) and developed immunity to it, are more vulnerable to developing dengue disease later on. Dengue is caused by a viruses which are closely related to ZIKV.
This finding came from examining two cohorts of Nicaraguan children who lived through the Zikavirus epidemic of 2016 and a dengue epidemic of 2019. It conformed what had long been suspected - that some antibodies to ZIKV interact with the dengue virus to make the infection worse. The team's findings were published a couple of days ago in Science, regrettably behind a paywall. However, the Berkeley News article by Kara Manke has the details:
Exciting news today for advocates of Intelligent [sic] design, from the University of California, Berkeley! Researchers there, led by Leah C. Katzelnick have discovered that people who have had the Zika Virus (ZIKV) and developed immunity to it, are more vulnerable to developing dengue disease later on. Dengue is caused by a viruses which are closely related to ZIKV.
This finding came from examining two cohorts of Nicaraguan children who lived through the Zikavirus epidemic of 2016 and a dengue epidemic of 2019. It conformed what had long been suspected - that some antibodies to ZIKV interact with the dengue virus to make the infection worse. The team's findings were published a couple of days ago in Science, regrettably behind a paywall. However, the Berkeley News article by Kara Manke has the details:
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Health
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Science
Saturday 29 August 2020
Covidiots - We've Got'em Too
Pastor David Hathaway. Self-proclaimed evangelist, faith-healer and fantatical Europhobe. |
Just to show that America is not the only country to have Covidiot Christian fruitloops, self-proclaimed evangelist, faith-healer and fanatical Brexiteer, David Hathaway of the UK, has announced that it's not medical science that will finally defeat the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, but magic spells!
Appropriately, this piece of covidiocy comes soon after news that the term 'covidiot' has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
He has launched a petition to instruct PM Boris Johnson to hold a national day of prayer to cure Covid-19. In his petition he claims it was prayer, not the flotilla of little ships, that rescued 300,000 stranded soldiers off the Dunkirk beach, and it was prayer, not the British, Commonwealth and Polish airmen who beat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain and it was prayer, not the sacrifice of millions of young men in the killing fields of Europe that defeated Germany in WWI.
After that repugnant dismissal of the sacrifice of so many innocent young lives, is it any wonder that Hathaway has no qualms about minimising the efforts of medical science and the health services? It goes without saying, that it is not the medical staff of the NHS who are treating victims of the virus, but God who is saving them because of his prayers.
And it won't be the efforts of millions of scientists which eventually defeats Covid-19 but Hathaway's prayers!
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Brexit
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Christianity
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Covid-19
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EU
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Human Rights
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Insanity
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Secularism
Bad News for Creationism - Another 'Missing' Fossil Found
Left: Artist's impression of Gyaltsenglossus senis. Right: The fossil as it appears in the Burgess shale. Illustration: Emily S. Damstra Both images © Royal Ontario Museum |
You know all those 'missing links' that much of creationism is based on but which turn up regularly in the fossil record?
Well, science has only gone and found yet another one!
This one, which the scientists have named Gyaltsenglossus senis (pronounced Gen-zay-gloss-us senis), turned up in the Burgess shales in the Canadian Rockies, famous for containing the soft-bodied 'Cambrian Explosion' fossils. It closes a gap in the record between two main branches of a group known as the hemichordates, exactly as predicted by the TOE. It was discovered by scientists from at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the University of Montreal. The team published their work recently in Current Biology, sadly behind an expensive paywall. However the Royal Ontario Museum press release gives the details and explains the significance of this find:
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Palaeontology
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Science
Thursday 27 August 2020
Talibangelical News: "Vote Trump or Else..."
Jim Bakker, dog-whistle signals |
A note of desperation is creeping into Talibangelical Christian extreme right circles as the polls are increasingly predicting a Biden win in November, reversing all the progress they have made towards their dream of a Christian Taliban-style fundamentalist theocracy in America.
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Christians
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Fraud
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Insanity
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Politics
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Secularism
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Talibangelicals
Wednesday 26 August 2020
Talibangelical News - God's GOP Nut Jobs
Jo Rae Perkins, God's GOP Candidate |
Few people illustrate the penetration of the extreme, Talibangelical Christian takeover of the once respectable Republican Party than Jo Rae Perkins, the no-hope GOP candidate for rock-solid Democrat Oregon - Merkley.
Perkins is a fully signed-up "QAnon" conspiracy theorist nutter - as are a growing number of GOP politicians, and apparently, hears voices in her head. She claims God came into her hotel room one evening, after a business dinner (some dinner!), and told her he wanted her to become a Senator. Apart from her own conceit and self-proclaimed special, personal relationship with God, there appears to be no reason in her record for God to want her in the Senate particularly.
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Christians
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Insanity
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Politics
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Secularism
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USA
Tuesday 25 August 2020
Consternation and Shock as Detroit Priest Casts the Wrong Magic Spell
Rev. Matthew Hood. The wrong magic spells! |
LOL! You couldn't make this up!
30 years ago Matthew Hood was baptised into the Catholic Church and, having graduated from the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 2017, subsequently became an ordained Catholic priest, empowered to carry out the rituals of baptism and marriage. Since July he has been serving as an associate pastor of St. Lawrence Parish in Utica and at Divine Child in Dearborn since 2017.
But there was a hitch!
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Christianity
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Humanism
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Insanity
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Secularism
Monday 24 August 2020
Christian Hypocrisy News - The Falwells and Sex With a Pool Boy
Jerry Falwell Jr. |
According to Reuters, 29 year-old Giancarlo Granda is claiming he had a sexual relationship with Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki. Jerry Jr., is the son of the late prominent, influential evangelical Christian, Jerry Falwell and was formerly president of Liberty University, an evangelical Bible college highly influential in conservative Christian circles. He is also a close ally of Donald Trump.
The scandal reveals the stinking hypocrisy festering at the heart of American evangelical Christianity in it's cosy alliance with the extreme Republican right in American politics, where any pretense of sexual morality or financial probity has been abandoned.
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Christianity
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Hypocrisy
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Secularism
Grand Canyon Footprints Refute YEC Claim
Manakacha Trackway Photo credit: Stephen Rowland |
Another terrible day for creationists as another dogma collapses like a house built by fools on sand.
Their problem is that new evidence, revealed by chance by the collapse of a cliff in the Grand Canyon, proves beyond doubt that their notion of the Grand Canyon being built by rushing flood-waters during Noah's Flood, is wrong and geologists are right. The strata revealed by the canyon are not the result of sediment deposited by this supposed flood and nor was the canyon formed by a raging torrent as ther flood water 'ran off' (presumably over the edge of the flat Earth!).
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Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Geology
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Palaeontology
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Science
Friday 21 August 2020
Dead Bishop Refutes The Fall!
Bishop Peder Jensen Winstrup of Lund (30 April 1605 – 28 December 1679) |
Ask a creationist to explain parasitic organisms such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis that causes tuberculosis and they almost invariably blame the Bronze Age myth of 'The Fall' when, so they claim, 'sin' entered the world and everything began to go down-hill from then on.
Apparently, they can live with the idea that there is some other creator creating nasty things that their 'omnipotent', omnibenevolent god is powerless to control . But contradictory and mutually-exclusive beliefs rarely cause creationists a problem that a wave of the hand and a blind eye can't solve.
This however, is a little more of a problem for them. Scientists examining the long-dead body of the former Bishop Peder Jensen Winstrup of Lund, Sweden, have found evidence of tuberculosis and (more importantly) shown that the organism was around in the Neolithic - way before the supposed 'Fall'!
The Bible, for instance, clearly refers to Adam toiling in fields, which places the myth firmly in a society which had invented agriculture - unknown in the Neolithic. There is certainly no suggestion that Adam & Eve used stone tools.
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Health
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Malevolent Design
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Science
Science Refutes Creationism Without Even Trying - Again!
Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri |
Once again, science has managed to comprehensively refute creationism and confirm evolution without even trying!
This time, they showed how the tetrapod limb evolved out of the fin of an ancestor of the Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri.
We know from fossils such as Tiktaalik that tetrapods first emerged from water as air-breathing, lobe-finned fish, but the evidence that the archetypal terrestrial vertebrate limb, with five digits, evolved from the fin of a lobe-finned fish was difficult to find. Now, an international team of researchers from the University of Konstanz (Germany), Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia) and the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples (Italy) have shown that the embryo of the Australian lungfish, a descendant of the Sarcopterygian group of lobe-finned fish that closely resembles the fish that were around when the transition from aquatic to terrestrial vertebrates occurred, already has a 'hand' that goes on to develop into a fin.
The team published their findings in Science Advances a couple of days ago:
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
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