For admirers of Creationism's malevolent designer, the sheer inventiveness of their beloved malevolence must be breath-taking as science discovers more and more of the lengths it has gone to in order to increase the suffering of its creations.
Here, for example, is a parasitic plant, the cowpea witchweed, Striga gesnerioides, which seems carefully designed to maintain the poverty and malnutrition endemic to parts of Africa, as though malaria, sleeping sickness and other exotic diseases, and regular droughts weren't enough. The lengths it has gone to in this endeavour is revealed by a paper from scientists working for the Université de Montpellier, France, the Université Dan Dicko Dankoulodo de Maradi, Maradi, Niger and the Université Paris Diderot, France.
The importance of the cowpea as a crop is explained in the introduction to that open access paper:
The Young Earth Creationist fraud and Christian televangelist, Kent Hovind, or to give him his correct academic title, Mr. Kent Hovind, has been arrested on domestic violence charges, brought by his wife, Cindi Lincoln, who alleges that he 'body-slammed her' causing injuries for which she needed to go to an emergency room. The alleged assault took place in late 2020. She is now seeking a protection order against him to prevent him repeating the attacks.
She also alleges that he sent his 'right hand man' to her apartment to threaten her and had her apartment trashed the next day. She now says she fears he may try to kill her to shut her up because his following depends on his public persona, not on his private behaviour.
Hovind, who styles himself 'Dr Dino', is the owner of a Creationist scam park, Dinosaur Adventure Land, in Conecuh, Alabama, which he opened soon after being released from an nine-year jail term for tax fraud. He makes a living by fooling scientifically illiterate simpletons by pretending to have a legitimate academic doctorate and to have been a high-school science teacher. This works on his target marks who believe anyone called 'doctor' must be an expert scientist.
If ever there was a time for the Catholic Church, under the leadership of Pope Francis, to do some good for the future of mankind and life on Earth it is now, with two major crises currently playing havoc: the coronavirus pandemic and global warming. The latter being perhaps the most serious in the longer term.
And yet we have had very little in the way of encouraging Catholics, let alone the rest of us, to do something constructive about either!
In an article by Thomas Reese in Religion News Service, he simultaneously points out this failure by the Pope and identifies some of the reason for it. The main problem is that the Pope can no longer command the support and mandate the actions of Catholics, under the threat of hellfire and damnation, or even death for heresy for non-compliance, so all he can do is smile and mutter warm words and platitudes in the hope that someone will listen to him.
The problem is not just the lack of any moral authority from the leader of a church whose clerics systematically and routinely abused their positions of trust to sexually predate on children and vulnerable adults, but the fact that when Popes did have those autocratic powers, they almost invariably abused them. Far from supporting scientists like Galileo and Darwin on the basis that the truth is worth defending, they were condemned as heretics because they reported evidence that went against the established doctrines. The test was not "What does the evidence show?" or "What is the truth?", but "What do we need people to believe?".
Reese points out the contrast between when Popes could order Crusades against Muslims and how today the Pope is powerless to order a 'crusade' to save the planet, or to get the world's people vaccinated against the coronavirus:
And rather than organizing crusades against Muslims, as it did in the past, the church could mobilize its people to protect the health of the Earth and humanity. But today, the children’s crusade is led, not by the church, but by Greta Thunberg. Hopefully she will be more successful than the Children’s Crusade of 1212, which ended in disaster.
But of course, by the murderous Medieval crusades, and the Inquisition, the Pope showed how to abuse dictatorial powers, so those powers, post-enlightenment, have been removed.
Again, Reese points out:
There was a time when Christianity had the ability to do great things (some good, some bad).
We marvel at those Christians in the past who dug the foundations of great cathedrals, the completion of which they and their children would never see. The idea of taking on a project, like building a cathedral, that might take centuries to complete is incomprehensible to us.
Indeed, although it is quite difficult to think of many 'great things' that Christianity did. Reese cites the laying of foundations for Cathedrals for their grandchildren by people who would never see the full fruits of their labours, but those were invariably on the instructions of powerful bishops and monarchs, intent on consolidating their grip on the people with an ostentatious display of wealth and power.
It is doubtful that the labourers, or those who paid them, were motivated by a vision of the great architecture, impressive vaulting and stained glass that would follow. Skilled though they may have been, they were likely more motivated by the need to earn their daily bread and feed a family, in the case of the diggers, and their own self-aggrandizement in the case of the financiers, than thoughts of what their grandchildren might eventually see.
In stark contrast, there are the very many bad things that Christianity did, from witch burning, holy wars like the Albigensian Crusade (read, genocide of the Cathars), antisemitic pogroms, the Inquisition, marginalisation of women and minorities, the literal demonization of people suffering with mental health and neurological problems, imperialism and permitting slavery in the nameunder the guise of 'civilising' other peoples and teaching them the 'good news' of the need for salvation and how to achieve it by adopting Christianity, obeying the priests, accepting the autocratic rule of Christian kings and emperors, and knowing their place and staying in it.
Yes, Thomas Reese is right: the Pope could and should use what authority he still has to urge Catholics to do their utmost to save the planet and get on top of the coronavirus pandemic. But he cannot, for the simple reason that he has little or no moral authority left after centuries of abuse of their power by his predecessors, the accumulation of vast treasures of incalculable worth for nothing more important than self-glorification, decades of abuse of children and vulnerable adults by his priests and a long, sorry history of marginalisation, demonization and damnation of minorities, degradation of women, and the promotion of poverty and suffering as a blessing.
He now leads a church visibly struggling to keep up with the advances in humanist ethics now replacing the primitive, Bronze Age superstitions and brutal, misogynistic tribal moral codes that his church still holds sacred, in civilised countries. To paraphrase Stephen Fry's words in the Intelligence Squared debate, the Pope could take that vast wealth stored in the Vatican and use it to send his nuns and priest and monks out into the world with instructions to use it to vaccinate the poor and invest in green technologies and renewable energy.
If he did so, the Catholic Church could be a force for good in the world; but he does not, and it is not.
Despite warnings from the CDC, the self-genocide campaign in the Repugnican-controlled US states is continuing, as they encourage their gullible victims not to get vaccinated and not to wear face-masks, aided in this endeavour by their wack-a-doodle allies in the Evangelical Christian churches and QAnon conspiracy nut jobs.
Having early-on bought into the panicky, knee-jerk response from the acutely narcissistic Donald Trump when, lacking the intellect to grasp the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, and the prtsonal integrity to admit he was out of his depth, he responded by minimising it, blaming it on 'liberals', pretending to be more expert than the experts, and claiming his do-nothing policy was the best one, resistance to any measures to mitigate the pandemic became, for the extreme right, a token of disloyalty to Trump and the right-wing cause in general.
As the news broke that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has been formally charged with sexual offences against minors, a survey revealed that 62% of American Catholics (52% of men and 69% of women) said they had never heard of him.
Given his former high profile as the senior Catholic cleric in America and the high-profile nature of both his crimes and his public laicisation, this shows an astonishing degree of indifference to the scandal of clerical sexual abuse that has engulfed the Catholic Church in recent decades. It suggests that many American Catholics are Catholic in name only, and have no particular affiliation to the Church or identification with what priests, Catholic school teachers, etc, have been doing under its protective and facilitative cover for decades now.
One of the evidence-free claims Creationism is forced into by virtue of dogma, is that modern humans are unique in several ways that sets them apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, as some sort of special creation; namely, sentience and self-awareness, aesthetic appreciation, and a sense of moral obligation.
However, the notion that we alone have self-awareness and are thus the only sentient species has long been discounted by animal behaviourists by demonstrating self-awareness and even complex puzzle-solving behaviour in many other, even non-mammalian, species such as octopuses, bees and several birds. But there has been an on-going debate in anthropology about exactly when aesthetic appreciation (or in lay terms, artistic appreciation and symbolism) first arose in the hominins. Until now, there were precious little evidence that anyone other than modern humans ever used symbolism and colour in any deliberate, representational way.
Now, however, a team of international scientists, including researchers from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have shown that red ochre pigments on stalactites in a cave in Andalucia, Spain, were taken there and applied deliberately on multiple occasions, at a time when only Neanderthals were present in Europe. As though, over a period of several thousand years, the site had special significance and needed regular restoration, indicating a long oral tradition lasting for a very long time.
Right: hyper-parasitoid wasp Mesochorus stigmaticus parasitising the larvae of a parasitoid wasp Hyposoter horticola within the caterpillar of Glanville fritillary butterfly. Left: adult Glanville fritillary.
The paper is by scientists from Helsinki University, Finland, and Cornell University, USA, and is an account of the consequences of the introduction of a species of butterfly to a small Finish island of Sottunga (full name Storsottunga) in the Åland Islands, at the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia, at the North-Eastern end of the Baltic Sea.
What was also inadvertently introduced with the larvae of the Glanville fritillary that were taken to the island, were a couple of parasitic insects and a symbiotic bacteria, so what was created was an experiment on the founder effect and how a species and its symbionts/parasites evolve over time, and how this environmental change affects the evolution of other species in an ecosystem.
Back in 2014 I wrote an article about malignant melanoma, inspired by a holiday on the Côte d'Azur, explaining why people with pale skin are at risk because of poor 'design' creating the need for a balance between getting melanoma and producing enough Vitamin D in the skin to avoid rickets due to Vitamin D deficiency. In Eurasia, where the sun is lower in the sky, meaning it has more atmosphere to travel through, and the weather is more cloudy, than in our ancestral homelands in Africa, pushed this balance towards pale skin and therefore an increased risk of melanomas.
Now, however, judging by the way creationists seem to admire the many examples of malevolence in their beloved, putative intelligent [sic] designer, there may be another reason - mendacity and delight in watching us suffer, if we buy into this childish explanation for a moment...
So, if you've been taken in by the Intelligent Design Hoax and believe that nothing of this sort ever happens without the positive intervention of a magic designer to make it happen, and that this magic designer is an omniscient god, then you must accept that the recent findings of a research group at the Van Andel Institute (VAI), Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, point to deliberation and not accident - which is excluded by the dogma of omniscience.
Fake miracles are the common currency of several Christian sects; used to fool the gullible into thinking there is a magic man in the sky who can suspend the natural laws at will and who sometimes grants this power to his preachers.
Here, for example is one such fraud, Pastor Nik Walker of Nik Walker Ministries, claiming to have healed a man's 'withered and useless' hand by simply baptising him. He even produces the 'evidence' in the form of x-rays, with a convincing (to anyone who doesn't know how hospitals work) backstory about how the x-rays were obtained.
Get a load of this. The ending is wild.
On his show yesterday, Pastor Perry Stone invited a guest who could PROVE miracles were real (with documentation!)...
Watch the clip. Pay attention to the last 30 seconds.
What we aren't shown however, is the before x-rays, so we have nothing to compare them to. We also don't have the name of the hospital, nor the doctor, so there is no danger of the story being checked out. We just have Pastor Stone's word for it. A word which, as we shall see, is not worth the paper it's written on. In fact, it's a blatant lie.
Also, what we aren't told is that these x-rays are not of the hand of an adult man (as any decent radiographer would have noticed) taken in an American hospital, they are in fact of the hands of four different (Chinese) children, ranging from that of a 7-year-old boy to that of an 11-year-old girl, all suffering from a condition known as Kashin-Beck Disease (KBD). They were collected from various centres in China where the disease is endemic, as part of an effort by Chinese scientists working at the Institute for Kaschin-Beck Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, in order to get a better understanding of the disease. They have been plagiarised from a 2018, open access paper in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports in which these scientists published their findings.
In other words, the whole story is a blatant lie, concocted to deceive. There never was a man whose 'withered and useless' hand was miraculously cured by God when he was baptised. Nor was there a doctor in a hospital who was amazed at the change when he x-rayed the man's hand.
(A) Is a radiological image of the right hand with KBD-positive X-ray signs in an 8-year-old boy: some metaphyseal hardening signs, waviness or serration changes and small depressions (red arrows) are found in the zones of provisional metaphyseal calcification in the fingers (including index finger, middle finger and ring finger). (B) Is a radiological image of the right hand of a 7-year-old healthy boy: all metaphyses, epiphyses and diaphyses were glabrate, uniform, sinuous and non-destructive. The carpals were not completely formed. (C) Is a radiological image of the right hand of an 11-year-old girl with CRME in the equal-diameter period: the diameter of metaphysis and epiphysis are almost equal. Although it belongs to the normal development periods before complete closure of metaphysis-epiphysis (CCME), its imaging signs are similar to KBD-positive X-ray signs. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger show metaphyses serrated, wavy (green arrows). (D) Is a radiological image of the right hand of a 10-year-old girl with CRME in the ultra-diameter period: The diameter of epiphysis is longer than that of metaphysis. It occurs after the equal-diameter period normally and the features are similar to KBD-positive X-ray signs. Some metaphyseal waviness, serration and irregularly depressions are found in many fingers (white arrows).
Walker has chosen to be interviewed by a credulous dupe known for the readiness with which he accepts any old tosh told to him so long as it confirms his bias, or better still, confirms the bias of the credulous audience who donate money to have their biases confirmed in this way. Because he holds the same contempt for his target marks as a con-artist has for his, this is exactly the way Pastor Perry Stone of Perry Stone Ministries expects his target dupes to behave. You can almost hear him laughing all the way to the bank.
In 2020 it was announced that Stone had agreed to 'step aside' from his 'ministry' for an indefinite period because of his 'inappropriate actions' with female employees, although he wasn't required to 'step away' from his lucrative social media activities, such as interviewing blatant frauds like Nik Walker and helping him fleece his target marks.
Last April Stone, apparently unaware, in common with other parochial American fundamentalists, that there is a world outside the USA that is also suffering from the same pandemic (the clue in in the word 'pandemic'), revealed his theocratic ambitions and contempt for the US Constitution, when he announced that the God had told him the coronavirus was sent as 'a moment of reckoning' [for America]:
Because we have by law forced God out of our country and basically told him, ‘In public places, you’re not welcome.’ You’re not welcomed in our schools, so our schools are now shut down. No prayer in public school, no Bible reading in public school. Now, are you with me? They’re telling kids to stay home for who knows how long, so our schools are shut down.
He also told his dupes, gullible audience:
I know what I heard, I did not make that up. I audibly heard the phrase, a male voice speaking, and I believe it was the Holy Spirit.
And his guest, Nick Walker, did not make that up just like he didn't make up the miraculously cured 'withered and useless' hand, no doubt. Between 1999 and 2012 (the last time accounts were filed) Perry Stone Ministries had an income of $17 million.
Yet another sanctimonious evangelical con-artist who feels his piety allows him to self-license a few exemptions from the morals he expects others to live by.
When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that needs people to believe falsehoods.
It is clear from the testimony of serving Metropolitan Police officers to the Committee of enquiry into the violent insurrection in support of Donald Trump at the Capitol, Washington DC, on 6 January, 2021, that the people attempting the violent coup d’état were not, as the GOP and Trumpanzee cult maintain, assorted BLM/Socialists, but full-blooded Christian Jihadi terrorists. The terrorists were intent on creating a Christian evangelical theocracy in the USA.
Bizarrely, this was to be under the leadership of their idol, Donald Trump, possibly the least competent, most corrupt and most un-Christian US politician ever to hold public high office.
One of the police officer who gave evidence was Daniel Hodges, one of the on-duty officers who were violently attacked by the mob as they forced their way into the Capitol building, seeking to prevent the House from ratifying the EC vote confirming that Joe Biden had won the presidency and Trump had lost. Some were even calling for the seizure and summary execution of leading lawmakers.
During his harrowing testimony, he described being crushed by the mob against the Capital door and a Christian terrorist trying to gouge his eye out with his thumb.
He told the committee:
The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags. Mostly variations of American flags and Trump flags. There was Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front, and another had 'Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.' Another, 'Jesus is king.
To my perpetual confusion, I saw the Thin Blue Line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us.
[The] rioters identifying as veterans said they had "fought for this country and were fighting for it again."
Others demanded that law enforcement refrain from attacking them because "'we're not Black Lives Matter,' as if political affiliation is how we determine when to use force."
From that last remark, it is clear that the Talibangelicals were entitled white supremacists who see themselves as privileged; entitled to exemptions from the law not available to non-whites; a law which they see as designed to maintain the social strata with blacks and Hispanics below the whites.
Other officers, such as Harry Dunn, a black officer and Sgt. Aquilino Gonnell (Hispanic), testified how they were subjected to racist abuse. When Dunn revealed that he had voted for Biden, a woman in pink shouted:
Did you hear that, guys? That [N-word] voted for Joe Biden!
And the mob began chanting "Boo! F**ing [N-word]".
Gonnell, who served in Iraq, was told he wasn't an American because of his race.
A screenshot from surveillance footage provided by the FBI shows Casey Cusick (red hat) inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6. along with his father Pastor Jim Cusick (white hat).
FBI Handout Photo
Amongst the 591 people so far charged in connection to the attempted coup d’état are an evangelical Christian pastor from Florida and his son. James Cusick is a pastor in the Global Outreach Church, Melbourne, Florida, of which his son, Casey is vice president. They have both been charged with disorderly and violent conduct at the Capitol. The FBI became aware of their involvement when they were named during questioning by a congregant who was also present. This was later confirmed by bodycam footage from the cameras worn by the police and surveillance camera footage.
Pastor James “Jim” Cusick Jr. of the Global Outreach Church of Melbourne, and his minister son, Casey Cusick, face charges of entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and violent entry, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. A third man, Global Outreach church member David Lesperance, also faces charges.
Investigators say they first received a tip via telephone in January, followed by an anonymous letter on March 26, alleging that Lesperance and the Cusicks had traveled from Florida to D.C. and participated in the insurrection after listening to former President Trump speak.
The FBI found surveillance footage of the three men among the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol during the riots that left five people dead and roughly 140 law enforcement officers injured.
Investigators secured a warrant to search Lesperance’s cellphone and found both historical location data placing him at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as well as photos from his iCloud account that show James and Casey Cusick inside the building, the affidavit states.
It is becoming very clear that the attempted coup d’état was a Christian insurrection in alliance with the neo-fascist, white supremacist right; an attempt by Taliban-style Christian jihadis to take over the US Government. The subsequent lies by the GOP and their white Christian extremist allies, intended to blame the whole thing on BLM activists and Socialist Democrats, and their attempts to obstruct any attempt to reveal the truth of who was behind it, is indicative that they already know the truth but don't want the American people to know, or to know what they were trying to achieve - a Christo-fascist takeover by a white supremacist minority and an abolition of democracy.
Expect even more obstructionism from GOP representatives as the party abandons any pretence of being a democratic party determined to uphold American democracy and preserve the spirit of 1776. The party of the entitled white right is not going to take defeat at the polls with good grace. They feel, like Donald Trump, that they have been unfairly cheated of the power that is theirs by right. Democracy was only ever going to be tolerated so long as it delivered them that power.
For devotees of a supposed intelligent [sic] designer, the COVID-19 pandemic must look like their idol is simply obeying natural laws like an automaton.
For the supposed creator of the Universe, this is an embarrassing comedown - bound by statistical laws and compelled to act as though it has no free will but is just obeying the rules of Darwinian evolution; unable to prevent its design killing its supporters and detractors alike or prevent its supporters dying after attending one of their super-spreader events to gather together to shout and bellow songs of praise to it. And apparently, compelled to come up with modifications which are both predicable and predicted by scientists using scientific laws.
This is perhaps best illustrated by a communication from the University of East Anglia which explains how and why the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates predictably according to clearly-understood Darwinian mechanisms such as random mutations and non-random natural selection, in a very large population, where highly unlikely mutations can quickly accumulate in the population to become the predominant form, driven by the prevailing environment in which it finds itself:
Relaxing Covid-19 restrictions could pave the way for new vaccine-resistant virus mutations – according to researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Earlham Institute.
A new article published today warns against relaxing Covid-19 restrictions prematurely.
It describes how we are in an ‘arms race’ with the virus and how rising cases could provide opportunities for it to evolve into even more transmissible variants.
The researchers fear that any new variants could be more virulent, more vaccine resistant, and more dangerous for children and vulnerable groups such as transplant patients.
Bishop Peter Libasci, centre, arrives at the Cathedral of St. Joseph for his Installation service as the Tenth Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, USA (2011). A lawsuit is accusing him of sexually abusing an unidentified, then 12- or 13-year-old youth, on numerous occasions in 1983 and 1984.
The latest senior Catholic to face allegations of the sexual abuse of a minor is Peter Libasci, bishop of the New Hampshire Catholic Diocese of Manchester.
A Lawsuit filed in Supreme Court in Suffolk County, New York alleges that he sexually abused a male youth aged 12 or 13 on numerous occasions while serving as a pastor in the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius and the Saints Cyril and Methodius School in Deer Park, New York, in 1983 and 1984. The youth was a student at the school at the time. The church and school are run by the Diocese of Rockville Center.
We worry that allowing the Bishop to remain in ministry may further endanger young lives in New Hampshire. We hope that the Bishop’s Metropolitan or the Vatican intervene to correct this troubling situation immediately.
Statement by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
The lawsuit also names the church and the school as well as the Sisters of St Joseph, which is responsible for organizing activities at the school. Rockville centre is one of a number of New York Catholic dices that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because of the large number of abuse allegations which have emerged since New York abolished the statute of limitations, allowing formerly time-lapsed allegations to come to court. This is but one of the more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse that have been filed against this one Catholic diocese since then.
Evidence of the efficacy, and so the good sense of getting vaccinated, of the anti-Covid vaccine is emerging in astonishing statistics from the USA, which is divided on tribal lines on the issue, with 'red' (Republican) states following the disastrous Donald Trump and evangelical Christian lead in minimising the seriousness of the vaccine, eschewing the measures to mitigate the pandemic and now in opposing the vaccines, having much higher infection/hospitalisation/death rates compared to 'blue' (Democrat) states.
According to figures produced by DCD director, Dr Rochelle Walensky during a White House briefing in early July, 99.5% of recent COVID-19 deaths are of people who were unvaccinated!
According to this report, Dr Walensky told journalists:
It's looking as though, annoyed by the success of medical science's vaccines in combatting its latest attempt to kill as many people as possible with its SARS-CoV-2 virus, Creationism's favourite divine malevolence has opted for quantity, now quality has fallen, with its latest modification to its design - the δ-variant.
Scientists led by epidemiologist Jing Lu at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Guangzhou, China, have shown why the δ-variant has spread so far so fast. The have shown that it has a shorter incubation period so people begin shedding viruses and infecting others more quickly, often before contacts can be traced. Infected people also have a 'viral load' up to 1260 times higher than with the original strain.
They reached these conclusions after tracking 62 people who were quarantined after exposure to COVID-19 and who were some of the first people in mainland China to become infected with the δ strain. They measured the viral load every day through the course of the infection and compared their data to that of 63 patients who were infected with the original strain in 2020.
A genetic tweak that targets RNA can grow crops that yield significantly more food and show increased drought tolerance, announced scientists from the University of Chicago, Peking University and Guizhou University.
One of the pieces of evidence that Creationism's putative god is not the god described in the Christian Bible is that there are so many examples of how it could have done more for mankind if it had wanted to, but did not do so, refuting any claims that it is a maximally good god who created everything for the benefit of its favourite creation - human beings.
I devote the final chapter of The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is Not Good, to some of the many examples of this - from the elephants' resistance to cancers, bats' superior immune system, birds' superior respiratory system, to the superior eyes of birds of prey such as the peregrine falcon, compared to the relatively mediocre eyes of humans. To provide humans with sub-optimal systems and then watch them suffer with an inferior version, is almost as mendacious as the malevolent act of creating parasites to make us sick; it's certainly an act of incompetence which refutes any notion of it being a perfect designer, if indeed, as Creationists like to imagine, it ready did all those things.
On the left, rice plants without the RNA modification. On the right, a rice plant with the RNA modification that boosts yield.
Now here is another example, discovered by scientists from Chicago, Peking and Guizhou Universities. This time it shows how a supposed designer god failed to provide us with more productive food crops, even though this should have been well within the capabilities of an omniscient, omnipotent god.
The scientists have discovered that adding a human gene coding for a protein called FTO, increases the yield of rice and potatoes by 50%, and makes them more drought-tolerant. Two of the major staple food crops for humans worldwide have been yielding only two thirds of what they could have been producing, while resisting total crop failures from droughts, if an omni-benevolent, anthropophilic creator god really had designed them.
Cycads, such as this sago palm, have bulbous, egglike roots that harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Since nitrogen can be a limited nutrient in many terrestrial ecosystems, this gives cycads a competitive advantage over the plants that grow around them.
Somehow, creationist frauds have managed to convince their dupes that new genetic information can only arise if created by a magic man in the sky who can suspend the laws of physics and make the impossible happen, because it is impossible for new information to arise. This is supposedly due to some law of physics which is always poorly defined, but somehow has something to do with thermodynamics and a thing called 'information theory'. 'Thermodynamics' and 'Information theory' are nice, sciencey-sounding words that give Creationist dupes a cosy warm feeling when they use them, because they imagine it makes them sound as though they understand science, just like real scientists.
And there are few things a science-denying Creationist likes more than thinking his/her superstitions have a sound scientific basis.
The facts however, refute this notion, as can be seen with this new study, which shows how new genetic information can arise perfectly naturally, without magic. So using 'thermodynamics' and 'information theory' to argue that science can't explain how new genetic information arises, makes Creationist dupes sound exactly like scientifically illiterate, science-denying idiots and the willing dupes of frauds.
This new study shows how frequent gene duplication and the subsequent evolution of these 'spare' genes was responsible for the evolution of the large and diverse group of plants known as gymnosperms that includes pines, cypresses, sequoias, ginkgos and cycads.
Creationism's malevolent designer, having gone to such lengths, catalogued in
this blog, to design the SARS-CoV-2 virus to kill as many people as possible and
make many more sick, was never going to take defeat by human medical science
with its clever vaccines, lightly.
Now scientists from Kumamoto University, Japan, have shown how it has redesigned
the virus' spike protein so it not only makes it more infective but also helps
it evade the immunity produced in response to the vaccines, which specifically
target the spike protein.
This mutation, or as Creationists would call it, the new design, is known to
science as L452R and is already present in both the δ-variant and the
ε-variant. The δ-variant is the one currently responsible for the
massive increase in infections in much of the world, include the UK, where new
cases have rocketed from under 1,700 daily new cases in early May to over 54,000
four days ago, although we have seen a slight falling back from that figure to
44,000 new cases today. Most experts are predicting a large increase over the
next few weeks, possibly reaching 100,000 new cases next month. Unless some of
the restrictions, including obligatory wearing of face coverings in enclosed
public spaces and public transport are reimposed, I think this figure is easily
achievable.
Immunity in response to the vaccines has two components:
Humoral immunity (antibodies circulating in the blood which attack the viral
spike proteins rendering them innactive).
Cellular immunity (pre-programmed helper and killer T-cells, produced in the
bone marrow on demand when cells signal that they have been infected).
The new 'design' appears to lessen the effect of the humoral immunity because
the modification in the spike protein means they don't bind so firmly to the
virus. It makes the virus more infective because it binds more firmly to the
ACE2 proteins on the cell surface, so gains entry to the cell more quickly, and
it reduces the mobilisation of T-cells, especially in people who carry the
HLA-A24 allel, which is common in East and South-Asian people.
So, it seems the intelligent [sic] designer has left no stone unturned in its
search for its next move in the arms race with human medical science.
Creationist mode:
Now the real science:
The L452R mutation is a hallmark of the Delta variant that is currently
spreading worldwide, and in Japan, about 60% of the population have HLA-A24,
which is responsible for cellular immunity. The L452R mutation not only
evades the HLA-A24 cellular immunity but can also enhance the infectivity of
the virus. We have been carefully investigating the immune response against
emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in real time to monitor how the mutations
affect human immunity and viral infectivity.
Dr. Chihiro Motozono, Senior author
Division of Infection and Immunity,
Joint Research Center for Human Retrovirus Infection,
Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
In this study, the research group first used immunological experiments to
demonstrate that an antigen derived from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is
strongly recognized by HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity, which is often
found in Japanese people. They then performed a large-scale (>750,000)
sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 strains and found several important mutations
in the spike protein region typically recognized by HLA-A24. These are the
Y453F spike mutations found in strain B.1.1.298, which was prevalent in
Denmark in 2020, and the L452R mutation in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617 (commonly
known as the Epsilon and Delta variants respectively) that are currently
spreading around the world. Further immunological experiments demonstrated
that these mutations escape HLA-A24 cellular immunity. The researchers believe
that this is the first time a “variant of concern" has been demonstrated to
evade cellular immunity.
The Y453F and L452R mutations were located in the receptor binding domain of
the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which are crucial for gaining entry into host
cells. Researchers thus examined the effects of these mutations on the
infection and replication efficiency of the virus. They found that the L452R
mutation enhances its membrane fusion activity, infectivity, and viral
replication.
The team's findings were published recently, open access, in the journal, Cell
Host & Microbe:
Highlights
L452R and Y453F mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike RBM have emerged
L452R and Y453F mutants escape HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity
L452R increases viral infectivity and fusogenicity and promotes viral
replication
Summary
Many SARS-CoV-2 variants with naturally acquired mutations have emerged. These
mutations can affect viral properties such as infectivity and immune
resistance. Although the sensitivity of naturally occurring SARS-CoV-2
variants to humoral immunity has been investigated, sensitivity to human
leukocyte antigen (HLA)-restricted cellular immunity remains largely
unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that two recently emerging mutations in the
receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, L452R (in B.1.427/429
and B.1.617) and Y453F (in B.1.1.298), confer escape from HLA-A24-restricted
cellular immunity. These mutations reinforce affinity toward the host entry
receptor ACE2. Notably, the L452R mutation increases spike stability, viral
infectivity, viral fusogenicity, and thereby promotes viral replication. These
data suggest that HLA-restricted cellular immunity potentially affects the
evolution of viral phenotypes and that a further threat of the SARS-CoV-2
pandemic is escape from cellular immunity.
The reason this is happening with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is obvious to anyone who
has even a rudimentary understanding of evolution. Occasional variations in the
replication of the viral RNA in infected cells are sifted by the sieve of
natural selection, so that those few that are better at surviving and
reproducing in the environment we are creating with our vaccines will quite
quickly become the dominant form in the viral gene pool. A higher survival rate
is a consequence of becoming more infective, producing more viruses and/or
evading the immunity the vaccines are conferring on us.
The significant factor here is that these mutations don't need to arise in
people who have been vaccinated; they only need to infect vaccinated people to
be selected for. So long as there are billions of people who have not been
vaccinated, there is a high probability that a billion to one chance mutation
will happen daily in the viral population numbered in the trillions. It is only
by massively reducing this breeding ground by vaccinating as many people as
possible that we can reduce the chance of these mutations arising.
The good news is, that, as the figures from the UK show, while new infections
are approaching figures last seen last January and February, the number of
hospitalisations and deaths are only a small fraction of what they were then.
The vaccines are working to prevent serious illnesses and deaths.
Menwhile, we can only wonder at the mindset of those fanatical Creationists who
are so full of admiration for what they believe to be the creator of this
terrible pandemic.
A stunning set of photographs of nearby galaxies and an accompanying video, has
been released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). They were obtained by
ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).
By combining these observations with data from their partner, the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), they are shedding new light on the what
triggers gas clouds to condense to form these galaxies, the details of which
remain a mystery.
In common with many other American Catholic diocese, the diocese of Norwich, Connecticut has declared itself bankrupt and applied for Chapter 11 protection. This is often a devise to protect church funds from claimants and ensure victims are denied the compensation they are entitled to while the diocese hangs on to the funds it needs to pay its expenses such as the wages and pensions of those who oversaw the abuses.
This action was precipitated by dozens of lawsuits of victims of the regime that ran the now closed Academy at Mount Saint John School, a residential treatment centre for 'troubled youth' in Deep River. They are also suing the former Bishop of Norwich, Daniel Reilly.
Just so it leaves no stone unturned in its determination to do maximal harm with its brilliantly-designed virus, Creationism's beloved malevolence has even included a design in SARS-CoV-2 for attacking the brains of children.
At least this should be the conclusion of intelligent [sic] design advocates to whom there is only one permitted explanation for the apparent design of living organisms and their parasites.
A new study has found that, while the risk of children needing hospitalisation when infected by the coronavirus is small, about 1 in 20 children who do need to be admitted, go on to develop neurological complications.
The discovery was made by the CoroNerve Studies Group, led by scientists from the University of Liverpool, UK. The group was formed to investigate reports that:
