Why the QAnon Conspiracy Failed Trump

5 facts about the QAnon conspiracy theories | Pew Research Center

As conspiracy theories go, the theory the QAnon is a Trump-supporting conspiracy intended to win him a second term by polarising and dividing America, and one in which Donald Trump is actively involved either directly or indirectly through his staff, is one of the few with any merit.

However, as this Pew Research survey from last November, prior to Trump's defeat in the presidential election, shows, it failed to achieve this to the extent needed to ensure a Trump second term. In fact, because Democrats by and large saw through it and saw QAnon for what it was - a right-wing attempt to fool people into supporting Trump - it could well have hardened their determination to remove Trump from office and replace him with someone with more personal integrity and basic honesty.

Global Acceptance of Human Evolution Now Far Outstripping Creationism

Biotechnology Research Viewed With Caution Globally, but Most Support Gene Editing for Babies To Treat Disease | Pew Research Center

The results of the latest Pew Research international survey reported recently explore the public perception of science, how it conflicts with religion if at all, and how much this influences people's perception of the appropriateness or otherwise of gene editing techniques on human babies.

The results vary considerably by nation and especially by the predominant religion in that nation. Significantly though, almost all religious groups in almost all countries register 50% or more who accept evolution. It thus measures to what extent the scientific account has replaced the creationist view of the origin of species and particularly of humans, which predominated until Darwin and Wallace published the idea of a natural force - evolution by natural selection - as being responsible for the origin of species and of biological diversification.

Malevolent Designer News - Hiding SARS-CoV-2 Ready for Another Attack

The binding affinity for the ACE2 receptors with the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 across eight different species compared to humans (the blue baseline). Species above the threshold are vulnerable to letting the coronavirus enter the cell while those below have significantly lower or no risk for infection.

Ferrets, cats and civets most susceptible to coronavirus infection after humans - Centre for Genomic Regulation

As human medical science releases the first of several vaccines intended to regain control of our lives and bring the coronavirus under control, we have news of the pre-emptive plans Creationism's putative designer has already made to enable it to launch another attack on humans.

This, of course, assumes anyone has been fooled into believing in this magic designer in the first place, as so many Creationist dupes have been.

What scientists working at the Barcelona-based Centre For Genomic Regulation (CGR) have discovered is which other species, the intelligent [sic] designer has designed the SARS-CoV-2 virus to infect, so they can act as repositories for the virus pending the day when human herd immunity falls below the level required for a new pandemic to occur. This repository can also act as a test-bed for new mutations until one which can overcome the artificially-acquired immunity in uhmans is chanced upon.

Anti-Covid-19 Vaccines - A Triumph for Science.

Margaret Keenan, 90, becomes first in world to receive Pfizer Covid vaccine outside a clinical trial.

Covid vaccine: UK woman becomes first in world to receive Pfizer jab | World news | The Guardian

Remember the name Margaret Keenan, for she has just made history and will be the answer to trivia quiz questions for years to come. She is the first person outside a clinical trial, to be injected with the first dose of the new SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

In a slight departure from my usual posts, I publish this one to mark this historic first. It marks a significant milestone in mankind's battle against one of the most deadly and destructive pandemic viruses since the 'Spanish' flu of 1919 and possibly since the black death of the early Middle Ages.

It is also a significant advance in the science of immunology, being the first vaccine produced from the messenger RNA (mRNA) of a virus itself. The section of mRNA is that from the virus' genome that codes for the 'spike' proteins on the virus surface that play a major role in gaining access to the inside of the cell, where it parasitises the cells replicative machinery to make thousands of copies of itself and destroy the cell in doing so.

Evolution News - Another 'Non-Existent' Observed Instance of Evolution in Progress

E. coli are common in the gut – and in scientific experiments.

Credit: Maurizio de Angelis/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

UZH - Natural Selection also Increases the Adaptability of Organism
Not that it will bother them because truth is the least of their concerns, but from today, Creationists who claim there are no observed instances of evolution in progress, are either knowingly lying or repeating lies they have been fooled with, because here we have another instance of as clear and unambiguous an example of it as you could wish for.

Amusingly, Creationists have already tried hard to dismiss it with typically childish responses such as:

Aha! But can you prove it will become a horse? Didn't think so.

Covidiot News - The Orthodox Church's Super-Spreader Events

Funeral of Bishop Ioannis of Lagadas, who died from Covid-19 at age 62.

Credit: Sakis Mitrolidis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Greek Orthodox Church Faces Criticism as Virus Hits Its Ranks - The New York Times

Readers of this blog will be familiar with how Eastern Orthodox priests have been instrumental in spreading the coronavirus amongst their followers in much the same way that Catholic Priests and, especially, American fundamentalist Christian pastors have been.

Only a couple of weeks ago I reported how the death from Covid-19 of 82-year-old Metropolitan Bishop Amfilohije Radovic, one of the leading Orthodox Patriarchs campaigning against the measures to contain the virus on the grounds that piety would protect church-goers, was treated as an opportunity for a super-spreader event.

Evolution News - Arms Races and the Evolution of Vision

An artist’s reconstruction of ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi swimming within the twilight zone.

Image: Katrina Kenny

Incredible vision in ancient marine creatures drove an evolutionary arms race | Newsroom | University of Adelaide

One of the abilities that gave the Cambrian biota such a big advantage over the earlier sedentary Ediacaran organisms that they probably exterminated them, was the ability to move.

The next major development was the ability to detect movement with vision. This in turn led to an evolutionary arms race that hugely added to the biodiversity in the biota of the early Earth. The evolutionary advantage in being able to detect prey species, and the evolutionary pressure this placed on their prey to see and avoid predators, led to an evolutionary arms race and a period of very rapid diversification, accounting, in part, for the rapid appearance over some 60 million years of the so-called Cambrian Explosion.

Malevolent Designer News - Brilliantly Evil 'Design' of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus

Pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2 systemic infection. Infection initiates in the upper respiratory tract and progresses to lower regions of the lung in severe cases. Respiratory droplets carrying SARS-CoV-2 infect epithelial and endothelial cells, neurons, microglia, and lung macrophages containing angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2). Viral replication and release of damage-associated molecular patterns induce pyroptosis, causing a dysfunctional innate immune response. Release of pro-inflammatory agents can induce a cytokine storm, increasing vasodilation, capillary permeability, and hypoxemia that can often lead to multiple organ failure

Source

How the SARS-CoV-2 Virus Hijacks and Rapidly Causes Damage to Human Lung Cells | School of Medicine

If you've fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax, you must be thrilled by the almost daily revelation of the sheer, malevolent genius behind the SARS-CoV-2 virus currently responsible for 65 million cases of Covid-19, 1.5 million deaths and financial ruin and economic collapse world-wide on a scale not even seen in wartime (as of today).

The latest finding to impress creationists is the mechanism the virus uses to enter and destroy the cells of the lungs of its victims and the ruthless efficiency with which it does it.

Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine, Massachusetts, USA, in a multi-group collaboration involving scientists from the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL), the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM), and the Center for Network Systems Biology (CNSB), have reported the first map of the molecular responses of human lung cells to infection by SARS-CoV-2.

According to a Boston University School of Medicine press release:

Malevolent Designer News - God Doesn't Hate Frogs; He Just Loves Mosquitos and Malaria More

New research finds the global collapse of frogs and other amphibians exacerbated malaria outbreaks in Costa Rica and Panama during the 1990s and 2000s.

Credit: David Mark from Pixabay.

Amphibian die-offs worsened malaria outbreaks in Central America - AGU Newsroom

Readers of this blog may recall that I wrote about the fungus that is devastating amphibian populations around the world several years ago. I then asked the question, "Does God Hate Frogs?"

I also wrote about it in my latest book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good., in which I said:

Exterminating Frogs with a Fungus.

Most of the examples I’ve talked about so far have been organisms and viruses that affect humans, but we are far from being the only species that Creationism’s putative intelligent designer seems to have taken an intense dislike to. For example, the world’s frogs and other amphibians are currently being decimated by chytridiomycosis, caused by a couple of related Chytrid fungi, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and B. salamandrivorans. It has been estimated that over 500 different species have been severely reduced in number by this fungal plague, with over 90 extinctions.

Malevolent Designer News - The Widow's Bite

The Noble False Widow Spider, Steatoda nobilis

Study Finds Noble False Widow Spiders Bite Can Transmit Harmful Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria to Humans - NUI Galway

Readers of my latest book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, will be familiar with very many examples of the malevolence on the part of any designer who could come up with so much pure evil in nature, so they will hardly be surprised at this latest example of its evil genius.

Researchers at NUI Galway, Ireland have discovered that the otherwise harmless bite of the Noble False Widow spider, Steatoda nobilis, now spreading as an invasive species in Britain and Ireland, can inject antibiotic resistant bacteria, causing a serious and intractable infection at the site of the bite.

Malevolent Designer News - How Covid-19 Destroys Your Brain

An electron microscope image (ultrathin section, artificially colored) shows a section of a ciliated cell in the olfactory mucosa. Large numbers of intact SARS-CoV-2 particles (red) are found both inside the cell and on cellular processes. Yellow: kinocilia.

Photo: Michael Laue/RKI & Carsten Dittmayer/Charité

How SARS-CoV-2 reaches the brain: Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

As though intelligent [sic] design Creationists hadn't got enough to worry about trying to explain why their putative designer designed the coronavirus currently killing people by the hundreds of thousands and making millions more sick, they now have to contend with the virus attacking their brain when they stupidly expose themselves to it in one of their super-spreader events when they gather together to shout down their doubts and sing the praises of this malevolent, misanthropic monster.

A team of scientists at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, has now explained how the virus looks for all the world as though it was tailor-made for attacking and destroying the human brain, gaining access to it through the nasal mucosa - if you subscribe to the half-baked intelligent [sic] design notion, that is.

Coronavirus Question for Intelligent [sic] Design Creationists

SARS-CoV-2 virus particles

SARS-CoV-2 mutations do not appear to increase transmissibility | UCL News - UCL – University College London

Findings published, open access, a few days ago in Nature Communications, raises a worrying question for intelligent [sic] design Creationists.

Creationist dogma states that there are no such thing as random, purposeless mutations because all changes to a genome are made by their putative sentient designer for a purpose. The question then is why do the mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus not appear to do anything in terms of the virus' ability to infect people or to replicate more quickly or successfully? All of them appear to be neutral and apparently random and purposeless - exactly what Creationist dogma states never happens.

This was the conclusion of a team of researchers, led by Professor Francois Balloux, of University College of London (UCL) Genetics Institute, from their analysis of the genome of viruses recovered from more than 46,000 patients who had been infected with the virus during 2020. The team includes scientists from the Université de la Réunion and the University of Oxford.

Covidiot News - SCOTUS Backs Unrestricted Church Super-Spreader Events

Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Fundamentalist Catholic and Trump stooge on SCOTUS.

Splitting 5 to 4, Supreme Court Backs Religious Challenge to Cuomo’s Virus Shutdown Order - The New York Times

In an astonishing but predictable ruling, and one which reverses similar rulings concerning coronavirus restrictions on church services in Nevada and California, the US Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for New York's Mayor Cuomo to impose restrictions on places of worship in New York in an attempt to bring the raging coronavirus pandemic under control.

President-Reject Trump's Dangerous Legacy

U.S. voters are fearful, angry but hopeful about country post-election | Pew Research Center

President-reject Trump's legacy is to leave almost two-thirds of Americans feeling fearful about the future of the country, as the coronavirus pandemic grips the country like no other, and the narcissistic fool is too proud to admit defeat and allow the handover to President-elect Biden to proceed as smoothly as it should if continuity is to be maintained and Biden is to get to grips with the major problems as quickly as he needs to.

This is the finding of a Pew Research survey published a few days ago.

But the survey also showed how a majority of people now feel more hopeful following Biden's election than felt hopeful during Trump's disastrous stint in office but not in charge, rising to 56% from 42% under Trump.

So we now have the paradox of a majority of Americans still feeling fearful, but more hopeful about the future of the nation.

Covidiot News - Why President-Reject Trump is Encouraging National Suicide

Daily new coronavirus cases, USA (27 Nov 2020)
(A new spike is predicted by experts following widespread travel and flouting of the guidelines during the Thanksgiving holiday)

Source: Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center - New Cases

An Extraordinarily Dangerous Moment for Rural America | Psychology Today

An extraordinarily powerful article in Psychology Today explains why people in rural America are being led like lambs to the slaughter by a failing President Trump as his powers decline in the last few weeks of his disastrous presidency.

Professor Floyd "Ski" Chilton, of the University of Arizona, hails from the rural American south and identifies with this 'tribe'. He explains the phenomenon as an expression of the dual thinking process - the slow, deliberate, analytical thought process versus a fast, effortless, unconscious, associative processes:

The early works of Sloman, Stanovich, Evans, and Kahneman proposed a dual process theory of thought. A psychological distinction is made between slow, deliberate “thinking” versus fast, effortless, unconscious, associative processes and emphasizes the dominance of the latter evolutionarily driven, unconscious system in most people and especially in people who feel threatened.

Why Trumpanzees Go along with President-Reject Trump's Delusions

August Landmesser 1936. The lone dissenter from the Nazi cult.

Source: Wikipedia

Compelled to Conform: When Tribal Ties Trump Truth | Psychology Today

An article in Psychology Today, by Noam Shpancer Ph.D., explains very well the current strange phenomenon of dedicated Trumpanzees insisting, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the singular lack of evidence for it, that President-reject Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election.

The answer is that cult-think, i.e. the need to belong and conform to the pressure from a group, rather than have the courage to stand up and tell the truth, is the stronger motive for these weak and intellectually dishonest individuals. Conformity has greater value to them than the truth does. They will be admired more for conforming and not spreading doubt and dissent than they will be for defending the truth.

Catholic Abuse News - Letting The Predatory Priests Off

Roger Sinclair, who was removed by the Diocese of Greensburg in Pennsylvania in 2002 for allegedly abusing a teenage boy decades earlier. Now serving a prison sentence in Oregan for abusing a developmentally disabled man in 2017.

Credit: Deschutes County District Attorney's Office / via AP

Almost 1,700 priests and clergy accused of sex abuse are unsupervised

An investigation by reporters from Associated Press has discovered that almost 1700 American Catholic priests and clergy who had been named as credibly accused of sexual abuses are working unsupervised in the community, often with children.

According to this report by Claudia Lauer and Meghan Hoyer of Associated Press:

Nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy members that the Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child sexual abuse are living under the radar with little to no oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement, decades after the first wave of the church abuse scandal roiled U.S. dioceses, an Associated Press investigation has found. These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and daycare centers. They foster and care for children. And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP’s analysis found.

Evolution News - How a Medicinal Plant Evolved to Hide from Humans

Fritillaria delavayi in populations with high harvest pressure.

Photo credit: Yang Niu

Research news - Plant evolves to become less visible to humans - University of Exeter

Researchers from Exeter University and the Chinese Academy of Science Kunming Institute of Botany, have discovered that a plant, Fritillaria delavayi, used in Chinese medicine, has evolved to become harder to find and harvest.

They have shown how this example of cryptic camouflage is more prevalent in areas more heavily harvested than in areas where it is less likely to be picked.

The plant has leaves that naturally vary from grey through brown to green and only flowers when at least five years old, after which it produces a single flower each year. The bulbs are used in Chinese medicine and are harvested in the wild. Their price has escalated in recent years, increasing the selection pressure on them from human collectors.

Covidiot News - The Orthodox Patriarch, Prayer and Covid-19

Mourners kissed the glass cover on Patriarch Irinej's coffin, despite the risk of Covid-19.

Serbia: Thousands mourn Patriarch Irinej amid Covid concerns - BBC News

Mourners at the funeral of Patriarch Irinej, the head of the Serbian Orthodox church, today, mostly wore face-masks and observed sensible social distancing - apart that is from the priests who conducted the service. They declined to wear face-masks, despite the fact that Patriarch Irinej died of Covid-19, probably contracted when he conducted the service at the funeral of the Orthodox Church's most senior cleric in Montenegro, 82-year-old Metropolitan Bishop Amfilohije Radovic, who also died of Covid-19 earlier this month.

In line with tradition, many mourners kissed the glass covering over the dead patriarch's face, placed there to prevent them kissing his face and hands. Some even drank from the same communion spoon, believing their prayers and piety would keep them safe!

Patriarch Irinej, aged 90, was a conservative and was politically highly influential. He tested positive for Covid-19 three weeks ago, a few days after kissing the face and hands of the dead Metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic, at his funeral at the end of October. Those attending the funeral of Radovic had agreed to ignore the dangers from the coronavirus and abide by the tradition of walking up to the open coffin and kissing the hands and forehead of the dead priest.

Initially, Irinej's office issued a statement which said "His Holiness is hospitalised in a Covid-19 hospital in Belgrade. [He remains] without symptoms and is in excellent health." On 14^th November his condition was described as "stable and under control during hospitalization". On 19^th November the Serbian Orthodox Church officially refuted press reports of his death, despite press claims of 'reliable sources', but announced he was dead on 20^th.

Coronavirus daily new cases, Serbia

Source: Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center

Metropolitan Amfilohije was a notable coronavirus sceptic who foreswore wearing face-masks and recommended pilgrimages instead, describing them as "God's Vaccine". In addition to Patriarch Irinej, several other attendees at Amfilohije funeral were also reported to have contracted the virus and Amfilohije's successor was said to be suffering from "mild pneumonia".

Although ostensibly favouring inter-religious dialogue, Patriarch Irinej was a Serbian nationalist and advocate of 'Greater Serbia' who described the independence of Kosovo as a 'sin' and referred to Republika Srpska as a Serbian state - repeating the Serbian territorial claim to it that had precipitated the Serbia/Bosnia war following the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Republika Srpska is an ethnically Serbian-dominated autonomous part of the Federation of Bosnia and Hertzegovinia, which emerged as a compromise from the war.

During that conflict, a Serbian Nationalist and Greek Orthodox Volunteer militia occupied the town of Srebrenica and murdered 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in what a war-crimes trial later established was an act of genocide. The Serbian and Greek Orthodox churches had strongly supported the Serbians in the war against the mainly Moslem Bosniaks.
Having initially downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, Serbia's Orthodox leaders are now appealing for people to take it seriously. Patriarch Irinej and Metropolitan Amfilohije are just two of a large and growing number of religious clerics who have told their followers that prayer and pious deeds will save them, or even that the virus only infects the ungodly, only to have themselves then died of Covid-19.

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Covidiot News - More Lying Christian Pastors Against Covid-19 Vaccines

Pastor Rodney Howard-Brown of The River church, Tampa, Florida and Revival Ministries International. Lying for money and to keep his death-cult paying for his quackery while endangering their health and welfare.

Lying Pastor: A COVID Vaccine Will Alter Your DNA and “Remove the God Factor” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

As I remarked in my previous post, there is something weird about fundamentalist Christians who seem to want to help their malevolent designer's special creation, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, kill people or at least make them sick.

This one, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, of The River church in Tampa, Florida, and Florida-based Revival Ministries International, who, along with his good friend, Pastor Jonathan Shuttlesworth, has been doing his best to ensure as many people as possible get Covid-19, is now lying in a desperate attempt to fool people into not having the vaccine medical science has developed to combat it.