Theocracy News - Another Defeat For Christian Talibangelicals

Camp Constitution's Christian flag.

Boston Can Reject Religious Flag at City Hall – Courthouse News Service

Another American Talibangelical Christian, fighting to subvert the US Constitution, overthrow the Establishment Clause and build a Taliban-style Christian theocracy in the USA, has suffered defeat in the courts.

This latest attempt - to get Boston City Hall to endorse Christianity - arose because in City Hall Plaza, outside City Hall, are three 83-foot-tall flagpoles. One normally flies the Stars and Stripes, another, the flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, leaving the third for various flags for various occasions. Bostonians can petition City Hall for permission to have a particular commemorative flag flown on this pole.

Three flagpoles outside Boston City Hall

Howard Shurtleff, founder of 'Camp Constitution' [sic], had petitioned Boston City Hall to fly a Christian flag on September 17 'to commemorate the signing of the US Constitution' (the one that bans the promotion or endorsement of any religion by any government or its agencies!) to celebrate the 'Judeo-Christian heritage of the USA'. (Readers might note the lack of any Jewish imagery on the flag). The city refused the petition on the grounds that the Constitution prohibited the city from endorsing or favouring any religion.

Shurtleff's group sued in the U.S. District Court in Boston, claiming they had been discriminated against and denied their First Amendment right to free speech, arguing disingenuously that their purpose was entirely secular, and lost; District Judge Denise Casper ruling:

Shock for Conservative Christians as SCOTUS Strikes Down Texas Ban on Abortions

Abortion rights demonstrators

Supreme Court wipes out lower court rulings in Texas abortion battle

It's been a bad day for conservative Christians trying to sneak through a ban on abortions in the USA, despite the constitutional right to abortion services.

In another reversal for the 'pro-life', misogynistic Christian right, the US Supreme Court has struck down a Texas law, introduced on the pretext of conserving hospital resources during the coronavirus pandemic, which effectively banned all abortions in the state.

On Monday, despite the Trump-inflicted right-wing Christian fundamentalist bias in the Supreme Court, they wiped off the books a lower court ruling that had upheld an order by the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, that banned nearly all abortions during the pandemic.

Abbot's ban on all medical procedures that were deemed non-essential or 'elective' was seized on by Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, who declared that abortions came under this heading and were thus prohibited by it. This order was blocked by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin. His ruling was appealed by the state and, by a 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld enforcement of the Governor's order. This latter ruling has now been struck down by SCOTUS.

Evolution News - How Fish Fins Became Tetrapod Limbs

Perdepes (reconstruction) showing the forelimb skeleton.

Researchers reconstruct changes in forelimb function as vertebrates moved onto land | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Another bad day for Creationists!

Now an international team of research biologists led by Julia Molnar, Assistant Professor at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and Stephanie Pierce, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University have published details of how fish fins evolved into the tetrapod limb. And they use the dreaded word 'transition'!

To work out how this transition occurred using evidence from the fossil record, the team first spent a long time working out which muscles were present and how and where they were attached to the skeleton. They then fed this information into computer software originally developed to study human locomotion. The Harvard University department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology news article explains:

Covidiot News - The Myths the Fruitloops are Falling For

Not sure about the Pfizer vaccine, now it's been approved in Australia? You can scratch these 4 concerns straight off your list

Writing for an primarily Australian readership, Archa Fox, Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia, exposes the nonsense behind four myths concerning the Pfizer ant-Covid mRNA vaccine about to be rolled out in Australia.

Sadly, Australia has a few pockets of QAnon conspiracists who are promulgating these myths, some of which leave you wondering what it is that could induce these idiots to believe this stuff. But then, Australia also has more than its fair share of fundamentalist Christians, Young Earth Creationists and probably flat-earthers too. Scientific illiteracy and bottomless credulity are not confined to Bible-belt USA.

Firstly, a little bit of information about what the vaccines are and how they work. Bear with me if you already understand this stuff.

Creationist Failure News - Another 'Non-Existent' Missing Link

Cretophengodes azari, a fossil light-producing beetle from Cretaceous Burmese amber (~100 million years old).

Credit: Chenyang Cai

January: bioluminescent beetle | News and features | University of Bristol

Yes folks! It's 'non-existent' missing link time, yet again. These come up with such monotonous regularity that I hope I'm not boring you with them!

This time it's the missing link between ancient beetles and the modern bioluminescent species such as fireflies and glow worms. This exceptionally well-preserved, 'non-existent' specimen was found embedded in 100-million-year-old Burmese amber. It was discovered and identified by biologists from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (NIGP) and Peking University in China, led by Dr. Chenyang Cai, research fellow at the University of Bristol and associate professor at NIGPAS.

Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B recently. Sadly, the publishers want money for permission to post even the abstract online but, according to the press release from Bristol University:

A Victory for Human Rights as Biden Plans to Codify Roe v. Wade Into Federal Law

President Joe Biden - Promise to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law if SCOTUS rules against it.

Biden vows to ‘codify’ Roe v. Wade on anniversary of ruling - The Christian Post

The Biden/Harris administration will codify the SCOTUS ruling known as Roe v. Wade into federal law, if SCOTUS, with its new right-wing majority given it by Trump's appointees, ever reverses it.

Last Friday, on the 48th anniversary of the landmark 1973 SCOTUS ruling, President Biden said:

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe. In the past four years, reproductive health, including the right to choose, has been under relentless and extreme attack. We are deeply committed to making sure everyone has access to care — including reproductive health care — regardless of income, race, zip code, health insurance status, or immigration status.

Trumpanzee News - Another One Who Can't Cope With Reality

Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries
Trump is still gonna win! Any day now! Real soon!

'Prophet' Hank Kunneman Refuses to Repent for Repeatedly Prophesying Trump's Reelection | Right Wing Watch

Hank Kunneman, an extremist evangelical fundamentalist Christian preacher and self-appointed 'prophet' of One Voice Ministries, Nebraska, repeatedly bore false witness to his followers, assuring them that Donald J. Trump would win the 2020 presidential election - because God says so, and of course, Kunneman hears voices!

Now he has to try to cope with the reality that not only did Trump lose, not only have the votes been counted, recounted and certified, not only has the result been turned into a 'landslide' EC win for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris but that they have been duly and legally sworn in as POTUS and VPOTUS respectively, and have already stared on a program of repairing much Of the damage Trump did and reversing his more harmful directives like the withdrawl from the Paris agreement on climate change and withdrawing funding from the WHO because it kept telling him things he didn't want to hear.

Another Newly-Discovered Substance Shows Why Biodiversity is Important

Leaf-cutter ants

New antifungal compound from ant farms - American Chemical Society

Following close on my article a few days ago on the antibiotic found in the skin of an Australian toadlet and how this demonstrates the need to maintain a rich biodiversity if only for the resource of natural medicines yet to be discovered in nature, we have another example of an unlikely compound being found - within the nest of leaf-cutter ants.

This time, it's an antifungal compound, produced by bacteria that live on the attine ants (ants of the Atta genus of what are more commonly known as leaf-cutter ants that farm fungi on a substrate of moist chewed-up leaf matter). The ants use this antifungal compound, called attinimicin, to keep their crop and its substrate free from fungal parasites.

Creationist Fraud News - A Turkish Creationist Cult Leader Gets a 1074-Year Jail Sentence

The 64-year-old cult leader Adnan Oktar, who owned a TV channel, was arrested in 2018 along with 200 collaborators.

Credit: Anadolu Agency

Turkey court gives cult head Adnan Oktar over 1,000 years in jail

Anyone who spends much time debating creationism in online groups will be familiar with the followers of Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, a Turkish Moslem fundamentalist Creationist and purveyor of scientific disinformation on a par with Christian fundamentalists such as Kent Hovind, Ken Ham and Ray Comfort, only he is much richer and owns a TV channel.

He, unlike his Cristian counterparts (Hovid excepted), has now been sentenced by a Turkish court to over 1000 years in prison, though not, unfortunately for his crimes of lying to school children who are now taught Creationism in school and not the science of evolutionary biology, due it Oktar's political lobbying and influence.

Evolution News - Rhesus Monkeys Have Human-Like Immune Response to Covid-19

In a promising result for the success of vaccines against COVID-19, rhesus macaque monkeys infected with the human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 developed protective immune responses suggesting long-lasting immunity.

Getty Images

Rhesus Macaques Develop Promising Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2 | UC Davis

To an evolutionary biologist, it makes perfect sense that one of our close relatives in the animal world should react to a virus that is pathological to humans in much the same way that humans do.

To a believer in special creation of all the different species by magic, there is no reason at all to expect this to be so. Indeed, what would be the sense in a supposedly intelligent designer designing lots of variations on a basic theme, even down to the details of things like an immune system as a defence against the viruses it also designed to make them sick, and just arranging it so they looked like they all shared a common ancestor?

Evolution News - Convergent Spitting Cobra Evolution May Have Been Caused by Early Humans

Naja nubiae slow motion spitting

Credit: © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London and Callum Mair

Spitting Cobra venom reveals how evolution will often find the same answer to a common problem | Bangor University

Researchers at Bangor University School of Natural Sciences, Bangor, Wales believe they have shown that the components of the venom ejected by spitting cobras has evolved on three separate occasions due to the same environmental pressures. The fact that there are components in these cobra's venom that exploit the mammalian pain receptors to give instantaneous pain, suggests that this evolved as a defensive, not an aggressive mechanism, aimed at deterring attacks by mammals.

Contrary to the theory that venoms are adapted primarily to enable snakes to kill prey, in spitting cobras, a venom which causes instant pain, and a delivery system which enables the snake to spray the venom to a distance of up to 2.5 metres towards the eyes of anything which comes too close, suggests a defence mechanism, rather than hunting weaponry.

They have also suggested that early hominins may have played a part in this convergent evolution by attacking the snakes.

Gullible Idiot News - QAnon Dupes in a QAndry

For QAnon Believers Facing Reality, What Happens Now? | Psychology Today

The Trumpazee Dupes who got their 'information' from Trump's disinformation sources such as QAnon - the supposed 'deep state' whistle-blower and Trump confidante, responsible for the more outlandish beliefs of the Trumpanzee cult - have a major psychological task facing them - how to rationalise the demonstrable fact that none of the QAnon predictions and claims proved to be true with their belief in the certainty and reliability of their source?

Their problem is the familiar one of how to cope with the cognitive dissonance that results when reality doesn't conform to your requirements and beliefs, forcing you to either change your precious beliefs or ignore reality by explaining it away.

Catholic Abuse News - Irish Church Ratting on Compensation Promise

Site of the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam (now demolished).

Dáil hears call for church assets to be seized if religious orders refuse to pay for abuse - Independent.ie

20 years ago, the then minister Michael Woods, a Fiana Fáil TD, struck a €120 million deal with the Catholic Church in Ireland to pay compensation and reparations to the survivors of the Mother and Baby homes run by Catholic nuns.

Under their draconian, abusive and judgmental regimes, hundreds of babies, stigmatised as the illegitimate products of 'sin', died from diseases, neglect and malnutrition, their bodies then being disposed of like rubbish by being thrown in disused septic tanks or given to the gardener/handyman to dispose of in unmarked graves in the grounds. Some of the bodies were sold to Dublin medical schools to be used for dissection, for as little at 50 pence per body.

The €120 million was to be the Church's contribution to a government-run 'restorative justice' scheme. Most of the commitment has been reneged on.

Malevolent Designer News - What on Earth is Creationism's Magic Designer Up To?

Alarming COVID variants show vital role of genomic surveillance

This is one for those Creationists who subscribe to the Intelligent [sic] Design Hoax but who still believe their putative designer is one and the same as the supposedly all-loving, caring and compassionate deity described in the Christian Bible.

Does the evidence of an increasing number of variant forms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus show us that your god is deliberately trying to find ways to get around the vaccines that human medical science has developed or is it just a result of the operation of the natural process of evolution?

Covidiot News - Muddled Vatican Promulgates a Lie Then Dismisses it Anyway

Pope Francis. Conversion to 'situational ethics'.

Bishops issue updated statement on COVID-19 and vaccination - Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales

The Catholic Church has succeeded in getting itself into a proper muddle over the Covid-19 vaccination.

On the one hand, it is promulgating a lie - that the vaccine is derived from the cells of aborted foetuses - and on the other hand, having raised that thought in the minds of its followers, it now says that 'fact' doesn't prohibit them from receiving the vaccine, even though previous vaccines have been prohibited on just those grounds.

Covidiot News - Loopy Homophobic Rabbi's Paranoid Vaccine Claims

Rabbi Daniel Asor, "Covid-19 vaccine can make you gay"

Popular rabbi warns followers COVID vaccine 'could make you gay' - www.israelhayom.com

A Jewish Rabbi, Daniel Asor, popular in Israel amongst the Orthodox Haredi community, is talking impressionable followers out of having the Covid-19 vaccine, claiming it is part of a plot to turn them gay. He is also promulgating the ludicrously nutty QAnon conspiracy theory that the vaccine is part of a plot to implant microchips in people. A plot that includes the ultra-right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently!

According to this report in Israel Hayom:

In addition to purporting a false link between vaccines and homosexuality, Assur [sic] also advocates various conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, claiming, among other things, that both the virus and the vaccines are the work of a "global malicious government," comprising the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and others, who are "trying to establish a new world order."

Christian Credulity News - Megachurch Pastor Sentenced for Fraud

Megachurch Pastor Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas. Sentenced to 6 years in prison for fraud.

Megachurch pastor sentenced for fraud

To a dishonest evangelical preacher there is little difference between the routine petty fraud of conning thousands of followers out of a tenth of their income on the promise that it'll earn them big rewards later (if they're faithful enough) and the fraud who cons thousands of people by selling them worthless bonds on the promise that their investment will earn them big rewards later.

Both appeal to the naked greed and avarice of the credulous fools they dupe, to whom the only hope for a better life is the expectation of undreamed of wealth for little effort.

According to this report, megachurch senior pastor, Kirbyjon Caldwell of the 14,000-member Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, has been convicted and sentence in Shreveport, Louisiana to 6 years in prison plus a $125,000 fine and ordered to repay $3,588,500 in restitution to the people to whom he sold worthless Chinese bonds, having pleaded guilty to committing wire fraud last March. He had been trading on the trust his victims believed they could place in a 'Man of God'.

Christians Try the 'No True Scotsmen' Fallacy to Cover Their Embarrassment Over the Failed Coup D'etat

Fundamentalist Christians praying outside the Capitol, prior to their failed coup d'etat.

Michael Brown: Just Because Christians Rioted Doesn’t Make it a Christian Riot | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In the finest traditions of evangelical Christianity, evangelist author Michael Brown is lying to his supporters again - and of course bearing false witness against others. He claims those who took part in the riot and failed insurrection on 6th January were not real Christians and, by implication that those who did take part were other than real Christians. Brown evidently takes Matthew 7:20, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them", at face value - ironically, since it is in the context of false prophets, not the actions of self-confessed Christians.

In his rush to distance himself and dissociate himself and his faith from the disgraceful events that should have every decent Christian now questioning what it is about their core beliefs that can provoke people to do such things, Brown delivered what can only be described as one of the best examples of the 'No True Scotsmen' fallacy seen for a long time. Only Michael Brown and his friends are real Christians; all the others, no matter how passionate they are in their beliefs, aren't.

It's Not Just Christian Fundamentalists Who Lie to Children

Bnois Jerusalem Girls School, Amherst Park, London

Government issues notice to Jewish school which taught creationism - National Secular Society

It's not just fundamentalist Christian schools that lie to children whenever they can get away with it; Orthodox Jewish schools do it too. Despite the law forbidding faith schools from teaching creationism as science and/or history, a Jewish faith school in north London, England does just that and has now been issued with a statutory notice by the UK government.

According to the National Secular Society, the Bnois Jerusalem Girls School, Amhurst Park, in North London was found 'inadequate' in all areas in an Ofsted inspection in December 2019 and has failed to meet standards in multiple recent inspections. Ofsted is the Government agency responsible for setting and maintaining standards in education. It's scope includes all schools that receive government funding.

The case of this school flagrantly ignoring the national curriculum it is paid to teach to was brought to the attention of the education minister, Elizabeth Berridge, last June. The school was issued with the notice after inspections resumed. The notice requires the school to sumbit an improveent plan. They are then monitored more closely to ensure compliance.

A Newly-Discovered Antibiotic Shows Why a Rich Biodiversity is Vital

Australian Western toadlet, Uperoleia mjobergii

Toadlet peptide transforms into a deadly weapon against bacteria | EMBL

Researchers at The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany, together with colleagues from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology - have discovered a potential powerful new form of antibiotic - in the skin of an Australian Amphibian, the Western toadlet, Uperoleia mjobergii.

This discovery highlights the vital importance of maintaining a rich biodiversity on Earth because, if nothing else, we could be losing valuable sources of new medicines and antibiotics.

It consists of a polypeptide (a short chain of amino acids) that, when they come into contact with the cell membrane of a bacterium, change to become powerful bactericides. The researchers found that the peptide self-assembles into a unique fibrous structure, which via a sophisticated structural adaptation mechanism can change its form in the presence of bacteria to protect the toadlet from infections.