Lying to Win. How Trump is Fooling Americans

Figure 3. Republicans are far more easily fooled than Democrats

Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe): Reports: Research: The Media School: Indiana University Bloomington

The results of an Indiana University poll, published today, show how successful the disinformation and fake news campaigns by the Trump camp have been in fooling Americans into believing falsehoods.

Indiana University have set up a media monitoring team to fact-check narratives widely-circulating in the social media. This report is Wave 1 conducted between 20th Aug- 7th Sep 2020.

Figure 2. A significan number of Americans believe the false stories

Narratives

For the first wave, we selected five narratives through a deliberative process of monitoring issues that were becoming relevant in the weeks leading up to data collection and using tools developed by OSoMe to look at the diffusion of narratives across social media.

We showed respondents a screenshot from social media that represented a trending narrative. We asked: “Have you encountered this, or similar stories about this issue, on social media or the internet?” In addition to asking whether respondents had seen the story, we asked, about each story: “To what extent do you believe the following statement is true?”

The statements were:
Joe Biden is not mentally fit to be President.¹
Kamala Harris is not a natural-born US citizen.²
Dr. Anthony Fauci funded a lab in Wuhan to develop the coronavirus.³
Joe Biden’s family has illegal business ties with China.⁴
Mail-in ballots cause election fraud.⁵

Results

Our results show that large segments of the population have encountered these narratives through media exposure, and find them plausible. For example, 78.9% of participants in our survey were aware of at least one of these five stories, whereas only 21.1% had not heard about any of them. It is also worth noting that a majority (61.1%) believe at least one of the five narratives; 38.9% do not believe any of them

[...]

The five stories were not equally known or believed among the participants. Figure 2 shows that the Kamala Harris birther narrative was one of the two most widely known (54.7% aware), having been frequently covered during the survey period, but also the least believed (27.7%). Mail-in votes causing voter fraud was the most believed narrative (46.4%), and was as widely known as the Harris narrative. In two of the five narratives, the number of participants who believed the stories was more than the number who reported to have encountered them online. For example, 46.1% of participants believed that Joe Biden is cognitively compromised, whereas 43.1% reported that they had seen the story.

The report includes the following links to fact-checking sources which debunked these claims.

1. Joe Biden's mental fitness:
   
   • Fact check: Biden says he hasn't taken a cognitive test. Is he flip-flopping?
   • Biden Video Deceptively Edited to Make Him Appear ‘Lost’.
   • ABC News: DHS withheld intelligence bulletin warning about Russian misinformation attack on Biden's mental health.
2. Kamala Haris' elegibility for VP/POTUS:
   
   • Kamala Harris Is Eligible to Serve as President
   • AP FACT CHECK: Kamala Harris meets constitutional requirements to serve as VP.
   • Fact check: Kamala Harris is a natural-born U.S. citizen and eligible to serve as president.
3. Fouci funded the lab in Wuhan to make the virus:
   
   • Old Photo Shows Obama, Fauci at U.S. Facility — Not ‘Wuhan Lab’
   • President Trump just announced that the ‘biological’ lab in Wuhan where the COVID-19 virus was created was ‘funded’ by President Barak (sp) Hussein Obama in 2015 to the tune of $3,800,000 American dollars!
4. Joe Biden's family and "illegal business ties" with China
   
   • Hunter Biden and China: Sorting through a murky business deal
   • Trump’s Claims About Hunter Biden in China
5. Mail-in ballots and election fraud.
   
   • Trump Campaign Exaggerates Potential for Mail-In Voting Fraud After Election
   • With voting by mail, “you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room, signing ballots all over the place.” - Donald Trump.

Having lied his way to power and lied about almost everything while in office, is it any surprise that this most dishonest of people will try the same again to get re-elected? With a large nunmber of predominantly white, evangelical Christians now unable to admit they backed a failure last time, there is a high probability that they will do all they can to spread Trump's lies and disinformation as widely and forcefully as possible this time.

The question is, will enough Americans be fooled by it this time?

Alliance with Trump Has Made 'Evangelical' a Toxic Brand

Jorge Alfonso waits to get into the El Rey Jesus church in Miami, where President Donald Trump held a rally for evangelical supporters on Jan. 3, 2020. The Trump campaign has been trying to woo Latino and Black Evangelicals to expand his base of support among religious conservatives.

Credit: Lynne Sladky/AP

Evangelicals for Social Action Leaves Behind ‘Evangelical’...... | News & Reporting | Christianity Today.

Their craven whoring of basic principles for the sniff of political influence that support for Donald Trump promised, is beginning to backfire on the Evangelical Christian right.

The 'Evangelical' brand name has become toxic - and deservedly so. Now the 50 year-old Christian organization, "Evangelicals for Social Action' a moderate, apolitical organisation that advocates for social justice, has changed its name to "Christians for Social Action" in order to distance themselves from Donald Trump and those 'Christians' who associate with him.

Covitiots - How the Far Right Fruitloops Think

Selfish anti-mask protesters harangue a counter-protester for advocating compassion

Insane Anti-Mask Protester’s Defense: “Most Child Molesters Love ‘Em!” | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

A far-right bunch of paranoid ftuitloop American conspiracy nuts, calling themselves the “Liberty Action Coalition”, put their ignorant, self-centred covidiocy on display in the town of St. George, Utah for all to see the other day, and I am more than happy to help them in this endeavour.

Amongst the more insane reasons for allowing people to die rather than them be be slightly inconvenience, in true white evangelical Christian style, were:

Terrible News for Creationists - Signs of Life on Another Planet

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images.

Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus | Nature Astronomy

Creationists have been putting all their eggs in one basket and telling their credulous dupes that the possibility of living organisms arising by natural processes on Earth are so low as to be impossible - so they should conclude that it must have been created by the Christian god exactly as the Bible says.

Now it seems their egg basket may have been kicked over by science. Leaving aside the false dichotomy fallacy in their non sequitur of an argument, the discovery that there may be life in the atmosphere of Venus blows their big scary number tactic out of the water. If it could have happened on Venus it could happen on Earth.

And they still face the prospect of signs of life, either now or in the past, in the soil of Mars and maybe in the waters on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn!

Covidiots - Missouri GOP Fruitloop Candidate

Sandra McDowell, Covidiot Christian fundamentalist and GOP candidate for governorship of Missouri.

Missouri GOP Candidate Rejects “Demonic Ritual” of Wearing Masks During Pandemic | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Hemant Mehta (if you're not following his Friendly Atheist blog, you should be!) brings us news of a fundamentalist Christian Covidiot GOP candidate from Missouri who is standing for the State governorship and is now campaigning against the wearing of facemasks as an anti-Covid-19 measure on the grounds that they are part of a "demonic ritual"!

She is Sandra McDowell, who actually posted this on her Facebook page and which Facebook have not yet taken down:

I’m not afraid to take a stand!! Are you?? I walked in Walmart tonight without a mask ... and I refuse to wear a mask anywhere I go from NOW ON unless I choose to! That’s my right... as it is yours!! But really.... this is not about masks... masks are just a symbol of deception and oppression. Its compliance training for what’s to come. It’s about control and instilling fear in America. Fear is not of the Lord, but of the enemy. Despair is the absence of faith! This is all part of a demonic ritual to get rid of our individual God-given rights. BLM just said it... it’s a spiritual battle... they are chanting to dead spirits practicing witchcraft. Our bodies... our faces... are created in the image of God. We shall not veil our faces spiritually or practically. 2 Corinthians 3:13-16 Our country was founded on freedom and liberty for all... and God was the author of our nation and that freedom and liberty. Not people! God! Their faith in God!! Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty!! 2 Corinthians 3:17 #takeastand #spiritualbattle #warriorforchrist #unmaskmo #mogov #bibleverse #missouri #moreformissouri — at Walmart O Fallon - Highway K.

Silly Cults, Trumpanzees and Abdication Syndrome

Donald Trump, Big Daddy cult leader for childish people.

The Abdication Syndrome | Psychology Today

The reason so many people are attracted to cults, and not just wackadoodle religious cults but also political cults like neo-Fascist white supremacist cults and fanatical supporters of Donald Trump, is explained by psychologist Steve Taylor, Ph.D., writing in Psychology Today.

It all comes from a desire to return to the 'safe' authoritarianism of childhood, where decisions were made for you by authority figures who provided you with a safe and secure environment and catered for all your needs. It's for these reasons that we remember our childhood with affection. As Steve Taylor puts it:

Covidiots - Ukrainian Orthodox Church Leader Who Blamed Gays for Coronavirus Pandemic Gets COVID-19

Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kiev's Patriarchy.

Picture: Genya SavilovAFP
Source:AFP

Ukrainian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Filaret gets coronavirus after blaming gay people for COVID-19.

Sometimes, you just can't help wondering if there is something in this karma stuff after all, especially when you hear news like this.

The Ukrainian Orthodox priest, Patriarch Filaret, who blamed the coronavirus pandemic on same-sex marriage, has contracted Covid-19.

According to this report:

The 91-year-old, who is the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kiev Patriarchate, is currently in a stable condition being treated in hospital, with Ukrainian website 11.2 international also reporting he has pneumonia. Filaret’s church, which is said to have more than 15 million followers among Ukraine’s 42 million population, confirmed the COVID-19 diagnosis in a Facebook post.

We inform that during planned testing, His Holiness Patriarch Filaret of Kiev and All Rus-Ukraine tested positive for COVID-19. Now His Holiness Bishop is undergoing treatment at a hospital.

” Filaret caused controversy earlier this year after he made comments about the coronavirus being a result of gay marriage.

Secularism Winning In Iran!

Source

Iran's secular shift: new survey reveals huge changes in religious beliefs

Until the moment of the Iranian revolution, the overthrow of the Shah, the installation of Ayatollah Khomeini and the establishment of a Shia Islamic theocracy in Iran in 1979, largely by young people, who then formed the fanatical backbone of the Revolutionary Guard, it had looked from the West as though post-war history was one of relentless retreat of religion and the inevitable advance of scientific secularism.

The Iranian revolution changed all that. Suddenly, the Islamic world had a new confidence and a new leadership and seemed to be embracing a regression to medieval religious fundamentalism. Something had gone wrong!

Or was this just a temporary reversal? How long would young people tolerate the state micromanaging their lives? How long would women tolerate the prohibition on their independence and their former right to dress in fashionable cloths, to date boys of their choice and the requirement, under pain of punishment by male 'modesty police' to cover themselves in dull, black, unflattering jijabs in public?

Incredibly, this Islamic fundamentalism was spreading and an increasing number of women were allowing themselves to be the possession of their husbands or the 'wards' of their father and brothers! Increasingly, especially in the West, an Islamic cultural identity required wearing the uniform of a Moslem at least in public in an assertive rejection of Western, materialist liberalism. So, how has resurgent fundamentalist Islam fared in its homeland in Iran? To find out, a group known as the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN) conducted an online survey with the collaboration of Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.

The result may be surprising!

Christian Fruitloops For Trump and Fascism

Former GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann,
Trumpanzee Fruitloop conspiracist and pro-Fascist, black lives don't matter advocate.

Michele Bachmann: The Bible warned that ‘transgender Black Marxists’ would try to elect Biden – DeadState

Paranoid conspiracists and pro-Fascist, Christian fundamentalist fruitloop, Michele Bachmann, former GOP Representative for Minnesota, has become even more shrill and hysterical as Trump's re-election campaign falters.

Appearing on mega-rich televangelist fraud, Kenneth Copeland’s television show, Bachmann claimed the Black Lives Matter campaign is a plot to overthrow the USA, install Jo Biden as POTUS and bring about a world-wide Communist dictatorship. Furthermore, so she claims, this plot was prophesied in the Bible. And all this will be brought about by "Transgender, Black Marxists", just like the Bible says!

And Now the Good News - Christian Preacher of Hate is Shut Down by YouTube

Pastor Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Preacher of Hate.

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.

Covidiots - Trumpanzees Don't Want Covid-19 Vaccination

Caption

Seven in 10 Americans willing to get COVID-19 vaccine, survey finds

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Catholic Child Abuse News - Duluth Bishop-Elect Resigns

Father Michel J. Mulloy

Father Michel J. Mulloy Resigns Weeks Before Becoming Bishop of Duluth - The New York Times

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.

How the Frontier Mentality Evolved

Man in a cowboy hat atop Humphreys Peak in Arizona, US

Credit: Todd Diemer

‘Wild West’ mentality lingers in US mountain regions | University of Cambridge

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).

Catholic Abuse News - Pope Ratzinger's German Connection

Msg Christoph Kühn, Sexual predator and friend of Pope Benedict XVI

Homosexual abuse scandal and cover-up during Benedict’s pontificate shakes Vatican  | News | LifeSite

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.

Christian Fruitloops for Racism

Bishop Aubrey Shines

Clergy of Color tell Nike: ‘Stop supporting anti-Christian BLM’ | Barry Duke

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.

Malevolent Designer News - How Dodder Eavesdrops on its Host

Dodder, Cuscuta australis, on a soybean host plant: The parasite is flowering and has already produced seed capsules. It uses its host’s flowering signal for flower formation.

Photo credit: Jingxiong Zhang,
Kunming Institute of Botany,
Chinese Academy of Sciences

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.

Another Missing Link is Good News and Bad News for Creationists

The enzyme rubisco is found in all plants and other photosynthesizing organisms. It plays a key role in fixing carbon from the air and has helped shape life on Earth. Now researchers at UC Davis, UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have identified a new version of rubisco from environmental microorganisms dating back billions of years.

Credit: Getty Images

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.

Malevolent Designer News - Making Zika Even Worse

A child participating in a longitudinal cohort study of mosquito-borne illness in Managua, Nicaragua, submits an annual blood sample. In a new study, the research team reports that children who have antibodies to the Zika virus are more susceptible to getting sick with dengue.

Photo: by Paolo Harris Paz

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:

Covidiots - We've Got'em Too

Pastor David Hathaway. Self-proclaimed evangelist, faith-healer and fantatical Europhobe.

UK evangelist: ‘Only prayer can deliver us from the Covid-19 crisis’ | Barry Duke

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!

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

A Bizarre Half Billion-Year Old Worm with Tentacles Solves Evolutionary Mystery | 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:

Talibangelical News: "Vote Trump or Else..."

Jim Bakker, dog-whistle signals

Televangelist Jim Bakker: If Trump Loses, “We’re Gonna Have a Revolution” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

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.

Talibangelical News - God's GOP Nut Jobs

Jo Rae Perkins, God's GOP Candidate

GOP Senate Candidate: Years Ago, in a Hotel Room, God Told Me to Run for Office | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

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.

Consternation and Shock as Detroit Priest Casts the Wrong Magic Spell

Rev. Matthew Hood. The wrong magic spells!

Invalid baptism of Dearborn priest results in invalid sacraments

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!

Christian Hypocrisy News - The Falwells and Sex With a Pool Boy

Jerry Falwell Jr.

Business partner of Falwells says he had affair with the power couple

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.

Grand Canyon Footprints Refute YEC Claim

Manakacha Trackway

Photo credit: Stephen Rowland

Cliff Collapse Reveals 313-million-year-old Fossil Footprints in Grand Canyon National Park - Grand Canyon National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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!).

Dead Bishop Refutes The Fall!

Bishop Peder Jensen Winstrup of Lund (30 April 1605 – 28 December 1679)

Remains of 17th Century Bishop Support Neolithic Emergence of Tuberculosis | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

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.

Science Refutes Creationism Without Even Trying - Again!

Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri

Photo credit: Mitch Ames - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Source:Wikipedia

Lungfish fins reveal how limbs evolved | News in detail | Current announcements | News and media | University | University of Konstanz.

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:

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: