Malevolent Designer News - Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

Malevolent Designer News

Creationists Hoping to Blame the Chinese For SARS-CoV-2 Have Just Had Their Forlorn Hopes Dashed

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan

Photo credit: Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images

China's only now revealed crucial COVID-19 origins data. Earlier disclosure may have saved us 3 years of political argy-bargy

There has always been little doubt in scientific circles that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is a zoonotic virus that evolved in another mammal and then transferred to humans.

The problem this causes for Creationism is that their dogma insists that evolution doesn't happen, and everything is created by their supposedly omniscient, omnipotent god, making this god look like a pestilential malevolence.

Some have tried to rationalise this belief by invoking a process, (or a substance) called 'sin' which also has the powers of sentient creation which their supposedly omnipotent god is powerless to control, apparently. This usually leaves the apologist for creationism floundering to explain how exactly this 'sin' thing creates living organisms which their dogma says can only be intelligently designed.

So, the brighter ones have been hoping to get away with the claim that the virus was invented by Chinese scientists in a laboratory in Wuhan. The problem with that notion is that it clashes with their assertion that science can't create life.

Ah well! You can't have everything!

And that claim, echoing former president Donald Trump's panicky response, calling it a 'Chinese Virus', as though viruses have nationality, and calling them names makes them go away, was given some credence recently when a review by the US Department of Energy [sic] concluded 'with low confidence' (in other words, with a high probability of being wrong, but we'll say it anyway!) that the virus did leak out of the Wuhan laboratory.

Being fully signed-up members of the Trumpanzee cult, most Creationists would love their idol, the serial adulterer, liar and crook, Donald Trump, America's worst ever president, to have been right.

But that 'conclusion' has now been debunked and we are back to the most probable explanation being zoonosis in a Chinese wet market where wild animals are sold for human consumption.
That is the conclusion of Dominic Dwyer, Director of Public Health Pathology, New South Wales Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, Australia, who was involved in the initial investigation of the origins of the virus early in the pandemic, writing in The Conversation.

His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons Licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original me be read here.

Published: March 23, 2023 5.12am GMT

China’s only now revealed crucial COVID‑19 origins data. Earlier disclosure may have saved us 3 years of political argy‑bargy

Dominic Dwyer, University of Sydney Once more, we’re talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

First the US Department of Energy’s review gave more emphasis to the laboratory leak hypothesis than previously, although the confidence for this conclusion was low.

Second, and more importantly, is the release and analysis this week of viral and animal genetic material collected from the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, the place forever associated with the beginning of the pandemic.

It’s a subject close to me. I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. I went to Wuhan on a fact-finding mission in early 2021. I visited the now-closed market.

Now we have stronger evidence that places raccoon dogs at the market as a possible animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, potentially infecting humans.

The debate about the origin of the COVID-19 virus has been fierce. A report released today gives the strongest evidence so far supporting the animal origin, pointing to a specific animal - a racoon dog and even a specific location in the live animal market. @normanswan #abc730 pic.twitter.com/oiXII4SWTK

— abc730 (@abc730) March 21, 2023

If we’d had this evidence three years ago, we need to ask ourselves how different recent history would have been. We would have reduced the enormous energy, media frenzy and political argy-bargy about less likely hypotheses of the pandemic’s origins. We might have better focused our research attention.

COVID origins debate: what to make of new findings linking the virus to raccoon dogs

The twists, turns and puzzles

Samples were taken from various places in the market, in January 2020, within weeks of the early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan. SARS-CoV-2 RNA and human DNA were identified in these environmental samples, although no animal swabs were positive for the virus.

This was presented to the WHO team investigating the origins of the pandemic in January 2021, of which I was part.

The work was published as a preprint (posted online, before being independently verified) in February 2022.

The underlying “metagenomic” data to support the conclusions in the preprint – that SARS-CoV-2 and human (but not animal) sequences were present – needed to be provided to allow further analyses. This is something that is generally required by journals and regarded as appropriate in the spirit of scientific openness and collaboration.

However, it wasn’t until early March 2023 that the international community had access to the data.

That’s when there was a “drop” of these environmental metagenomic sequences into the GISAID database, the international open access repository of viral sequences.

This allowed an independent team of international experts to analyse them. In a startling revelation, they identified large amounts of raccoon dog and other animal DNA in conjunction with SARS-CoV-2. Raccoon dogs can be readily infected with SARS-CoV-2 and can transmit it. The international team published their observations as a preprint earlier this week.

Raccoon dogs can be readily infected with SARS-CoV-2 and can transmit it.

Credit: Shutterstock

Of note was the physical co-location of these virus and animal sequences in the corner of what is a very large market, the corner associated with early human cases. It is now known (but initially rejected by Chinese authorities) that wild and farmed animals were sold in this area of the market.

After the sequences were analysed by the international team, the Chinese scientists who had performed the market testing were contacted for comment and discussion – especially around the important observation that mixed in among the SARS-CoV-2 sequences were a large proportion of raccoon dog and other animal DNA.

The sequences were then withdrawn from the GISAID database within a few hours of the study authors being approached. This is perhaps unusual for an open database such as GISAID, and clarity could be sought why this occurred.

The COVID lab leak theory is dead. Here's how we know the virus came from a Wuhan market

Why is this work important?

This latest work does not prove raccoon dogs were definitely the source of SARS-CoV-2. Presumably, they are likely to have been an intermediate host between bats and humans. Bats harbour many coronaviruses, including ones related to SARS-CoV-2.

However, the data fits the narrative of the animal/human connections of SARS-CoV-2.

This, along with other examination of animal links to SARS-CoV-2, should be taken in the context of the lack of robust data to support the other SARS-CoV-2 origins hypotheses, such as a laboratory leak, contaminated frozen food, and acquisition outside China. Bit by bit, the evidence supports animal origins of the outbreak, centred on the Huanan market in Wuhan.

The length of time taken for this early work to surface and the difficulty in accessing the raw data are unfortunate, points made recently by the WHO.

Sympathetically, one might say, the wrong analysis of the original data collected in early 2020 was undertaken and the researchers missed the animal links.

Cynically, (and without evidence) one might say that the significance of the data was recognised, but not made readily available. This is a question for the Chinese researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control to answer.

The data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer available on the GISAID database where it was found by scientists. https://t.co/fXT6zt02dm

— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) March 21, 2023

What are the implications of this delay?

If this had been identified in early 2020 then further studies to understand the viral origins in animals could have been undertaken.

Three years on, it is very difficult to do such studies, tracking backwards from the now closed market to the animal sources and the people who handled these animals.

Clearer answers would have taken some of the heat out of the debate around the possible viral origins. Of course, all hypotheses should remain on the table, but some of these could have been much better explored with earlier data.

Would it have changed the course of the pandemic? Probably not. The virus had already spread worldwide and adapted very well to human-to-human transmission by the time this work was available. However, it would have driven research in better directions and improved future pandemic planning.

Disputes over COVID's origins reveal an intelligence community in disarray. Here are 4 fixes we need before the next pandemic

What now?

Lessons for the future are obvious. Open disclosure of sequence data is the best way to undertake scientific investigation, especially for something of such international significance.

Making data unavailable, or not reaching out for assistance in complicated analyses, only slows the process.

The resulting political to and fro by all countries, particularly the US and China, has meant that suspicion has deepened, and progress slowed even further.

Although WHO has been criticised for errors in how it managed the pandemic, and in collating data to understand the origins and progress future research, it remains the best international agency to foster open sharing of data.

Scientists, for the most part, want to do the right thing and find the answers to important questions. Facilitating this is crucial.

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO's COVID-19 mission to China. Here's what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

Dominic Dwyer, Director of Public Health Pathology, NSW Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

That just leaves Creationists with two possibilities: either their putative designer god malevolently designed the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the full, omniscient knowledge of what it would do, or the virus is a zoonotic species which probably evolved out of a bat virus, maybe via another mammal, albeit an evolutionary process facilitated unwittingly by the Chinese cultural practice of consuming a diverse range of wild mammals.

Creationism in Crisis - How Natural Selection Produced Modern Europeans

Creationism in Crisis

How Natural Selection Produced Modern Europeans

Pontus Skoglund

Creationism in Crisis

How Natural Selection Produced Modern Europeans

Tom Davy

Ancient genomes reveal immunity adaptation in early farmers | Crick

Reconstruction of Mesolithic 'Chaddar Man'

Credit: Dr Yoan Diekmann

About 8000 years ago, i.e. around about the time Creationists believe the Universe was created, humans had already diversified in Eurasia into several major cultural groups, each with its distinct genome, having adapted to the local environment including local pathogens like viruses and bacteria.

Evidence from archaeology shows that farmers, complete with their domesticated livestock, were migrating into Western Europe and mixing with the indigenous hunter-gatherers.

Until now, it had been assumed that close proximity to their domestic livestock would have meant that the incoming farmers would have a more developed immune system, having evolved immunity to the pathogens carried by their livestock. The genes associated with this immune system would be expected to be favoured by natural selection so should account for the largest part of the genes of modern Europeans.

However, that view fails to take into account that the farmers were migrating into a new environment with new environmental selectors.

So, the evidence produced by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute's Ancient Genomics Laboratory have shown that in fact, modern Europeans have inherited only about half their immunity genes from the incoming farmers and the other half from the hunter-gatherers, showing that the hunter-gatherers' genes for immunity were selected equally by natural selection. This evidence comes from comparing the genomes of 677 individuals spanning Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe.br>
The conclusion then is that hunter-gatherers had evolved immunity genes in response to local conditions and that those local conditions then influenced which of their genes the incoming farmers retained and which indigenous genes were retained. In fact, it was increased diversity which was favoured by natural selection, not specific immunity to specific pathogens.

By contrast, the genes for (lack of) skin pigmentation that the farmers brought with them from Central Asia were retained differentially to give modern Europeans their pale skin, probably as an adaptation to lower vitamin D in the diet, since vitamin D is produced by the action of sunlight on skin.

Why Europeans have pale skin.

The researchers' findings are published, open access, in Current Biology.

Here is how the Crick Institute news release explains it:

Creationism in Crisis - How Eukaryote Life Evolved 800 Million Years Ago

Creationism in Crisis

How Eukaryote Life Evolved 800 Million Years Ago

Carbonate rock samples collected from the North China Craton.

Photo: Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

Creationism in Crisis

How Eukaryote Life Evolved 800 Million Years Ago

Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences doctoral student Junyao Kang holds a carbonate rock sample from the North China Craton.

Photo: Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

Electron micrograph of part of a eukaryote cell

Virginia Tech geoscientists shed a light on life’s evolution 800 million years ago | VTx | Virginia Tech

A team of researchers at Virginia Tech has produced evidence of something that would, if they understood its implications, spread despondency throughout the Creationist cults. They have shown that there was a sharp increase by about 50% in the level of biologically available nitrogen in Earth's oceans, 800 million years ago, coincident with the rise of the eukaryotes.

So strongly is this increase associated with the rise of the eukaryotes that the clear implication is that this is what either triggered or at least facilitated this major evolutionary step and that it was the limited availability of biological nitrogen that delayed this change.

The eukaryotes went on to evolve into the multicellular organisms which are the dominant life forms on Earth today.
So, not only is this evidence that there were simple living organisms on Earth 799,990,000 years before Creationists believe the Universe was created, but that the evolution of modern life forms was dependent on environmental change.

As the Virginia Tech news release explains:

Unintelligent Design - Finding a Way to Improve on The Designer's Shoddy Design

Unintelligent Design

Finding a Way to Improve on The Designer's Shoddy Design

Credit: Tomi Baikie

Credit: Robin Horton

Photosynthesis ‘hack’ could lead to new ways of generating renewable energy

The thing about an omniscience, omnipotent designer is that everything it designs should be perfect for the purpose for which it was designed. That means it should be maximally efficient, minimally complex and incapable of improvement.

This wouldn’t be true of something 'designed' by a natural, utilitarian process operating without a plan, of course, because even a suboptimal solution could be more successful than its predecessor, and that's the only test applied by the natural selection process.

The upshot is that, if the 'design' can be improved in any way, it can't have been designed by an omniscient, omnipotent designer.

So, if they understand it and can't dismiss it, Creationists should be acutely embarrassed by news that an international team of physicists, chemists and biologists, led by the University of Cambridge, UK, are close to doing just that with one of the fundamental processes necessary for almost all life on Earth - photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis

As explained in the Cambridge University news release:

Creationism in Crisis - How Parasites Alter the Likelihood of Fish Being Caught by Anglers

Creationism in Crisis

How Parasites Alter the Likelihood of Fish Being Caught by Anglers

Creationism in Crisis

How Parasites Alter the Likelihood of Fish Being Caught by Anglers

Creationism in Crisis

How Parasites Alter the Likelihood of Fish Being Caught by Anglers

Parasites alter likelihood of fish being caught by anglers | Hokkaido University

A whitespotted char caught by angling during the survey

In a fascinating experiment in Japan, two scientists from Hokkaido University have shown a complex evolutionary relationship between parasitism and the likelihood of a fish being caught by an angler. And, as always with scientific evidence, it's not good news for Creationists.

No doubt though, they'll resort to their fall-back strategy of using their own definition of 'evolution' (one 'kind' turning into another, unrelated 'kind', in a single event), rather than the one science uses (change in allele frequency in a population over time).

But this is no so much about the sheer malevolence of any designer that could come up with parasites like this parasitic species of copepod which infects the mouth and gills of fish. Instead, it is about how parasitism, prey and predators are in a complex, dynamic evolutionary relationship which can only be understood and explained by reference to the basics of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

Fishing has been practiced by humans for about 40,000 years, usually for food but latterly for sport. The functional difference being that fish caught for food are removed from the population as form of predation, whereas fish caught for sport are quickly released back into the wild.

The scientists conducted an elegant experiment consisting of two surveys:

Creationism in Crisis - A Rare Orchid Hiding in Plain Sight, And Scientists Work Out Its Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

A Rare Orchid Hiding in Plain Sight, And Scientists Work Out Its Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

A Rare Orchid Hiding in Plain Sight, And Scientists Work Out Its Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

A Rare Orchid Hiding in Plain Sight, And Scientists Work Out Its Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

A Rare Orchid Hiding in Plain Sight, And Scientists Work Out Its Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

A Rare Orchid Hiding in Plain Sight, And Scientists Work Out Its Evolution

An elegant new orchid hiding in plain sight | Research at Kobe

Figure 1. A new orchid species Spiranthes hachijoensis with beautiful glasswork-like flowers found in a private garden.
(A) Inflorescence. (B) Close up of inflorescence. (C) Flower. Scale bars: 10 mm (A & B) and 5 mm (C) in the Tokyo Prefecture..

Photographs: Masayuki Ishibashi (A & C) and Kenji Suetsugu (B).

Science is always open to new information but it's not often to be found hiding in plain sight, like this newly-discovered species of orchid. It was discovered by scientists from Kobe University, Japan, growing in private gardens, parks and even lawns and on balconies, on the Japanese island of Hachijo in the Tokyo Prefecture. It has since been named Spiranthes hachijoensis.

The search suggests there may be other undiscovered, related species growing in familiar places but overlooked because of the way they have speciates from a common ancestor. In the case of S. hachijoensis speciation probably occurred due to reproductive isolation because it flowers a month earlier than the related taxon it grows alongside. As the Kobe University news release explains, the genus Spiranthes on the Japanese mainland was once considered to be a single species, S. australis, but closer examination has revealed that there are several distinct species within the genus and there may well be more:

Wacky Woo News - The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Wacky Woo News

The Loopy Things People Can Be Made To Believe

Starseeds: psychologists on why some people think they're aliens living on Earth

P.T. Barnum, the 'Greatest Showman' and half-owner of Barnum & Bailey Circus reputedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute".

Sometimes though, especially reading the comments of Creationists and religious fundamentalist in the social media, that would seem to be on the conservative side, with tens, or even hundreds, of millions apparently believing in magic and evil demons; that evidence is forged; that scientists are all evil, mad and part of a vast conspiracy; that reality is an illusion, but not to them, and that inerrant knowledge just pops itself into their brain if they have an open mind, so the best expertise comes from pristine ignorance. I've even had a Creationist tell me that Jesus tells him what to believe, curiously, it always coincides with what Ken Ham tells him to believe.

So what is the psychology behind these wackadoodle fantasy beliefs, other than the acute manifestations of clinical psychosis?

Old Dead Gods - No-One Mourns for the Old Dead Gods of Arabia

Old Dead Gods

No-One Mourns for the Old Dead Gods of Arabia

Mustatil ('rectangles") in the heart of Al-Nafūd Desert, Northern Saudi Arabia, are the remains of religious buildings from 7,000 years ago

Source

Enigmatic ruins across Arabia hosted ancient ritual sacrifices

Long before a clan of camel herders and traders along the western edge of Arabia were forced by tribal loyalty to follow a new, charismatic 'Prophet of Allah", and long before a tribe of Canaanite hill farmers in the hill of southern Syria adopted the god Yahweh from the local pantheon as their own, and created a mythical history to give them a unique identity and justify their land-theft, genocide and territorial expansion, scattered bands of early pastoralists had banded together to build hundreds of massive monuments for religious rituals in the Al-Nafūd Desert in the north of Arabia, close to the Western end of the 'fertile crescent'.

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Detail of north-west (preserved) interlocking cells of associated feature IDIHA-F-0011149.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

2 of 11

The four I-type platforms located west of IDIHA-F-0011081, photo orientated west.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

3 of 11

The main (central) chamber of mustatil IDIHA-F-0011081 with three up-right stones (A-C). Flat stones in centre of image acted as support for primary up-right stone in the rear. The blocked doorway is visible in the left of the photo.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

4 of 11

Transverse grooved hammer stone found upside down and in situ in Phase 1.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

5 of 11

Bos sp. horn (#0032) recovered from Phase 4A, note the positioning in relation to up-right stone A.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

6 of 11

Horns found on a collapsed “bench” in Phase 4B. Left to right, large cattle horns/sheaths (#0043) and (#0033), goat horn sheath (#0047), goat (#0041), and cattle horn (#0040).

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

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Spatial relationships between the main and secondary chamber.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

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Riverstone surface associated with courtyard, further pebbles were set within the doorway.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

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Two mustatil at site IDIHA-0030862 in Khaybar County orientated (base) towards a body of standing water, photo orientated west.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

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Three mustatil at site IDIHA-0030914, orientated (base) towards a small seasonal wadi in Khaybar County, photo orientated south-west.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

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Mustatil IDIHA-F-0011081 orientated (head) towards a playa located to the east, photo orientated east.

Kennedy, M. et. al (2023)

These structures were only discovered in 2016 by satellite imagery. Now known by the local people as Mustatil ('rectangles")., they were constructed some 7000 years ago, before the Pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge in southern England and are probably the oldest man-made stone structures on Earth. The organisation and manpower required to build these structures suggests some unifying idea across a large area to give a commonality of purpose to scattered tribes, pointing to a single religion with maybe an accepted central religious authority associated with the site in northern Arabia where these structures were created.

They are also associated with elaborate rock-carvings of strange geometric shapes and patters, which were probably originally painted.

As with the Pyramids and the Bronze Age structures of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, UK, they suggest an organised state with an economy strong enough to provide a surplus wealth and food production sufficient to finance these constructions and feed the workers.

And yet, because they left no records, like the religion that inspired the building of Knossos in Minoan Create, we have no idea what that religion was or why it was able to inspire the creation of these structures for the rituals that were performed there, and why the people living there considered it necessary and worth all the effort!

Clearly, the god(s) (and it was probably a pantheon of gods, like the neighbouring Mesopotamians had later) had massive imaginary powers, giving the priesthood enormous powers of command and control, and elaborate rituals were considered necessary to appease or thank them. Yet we have no idea what those imaginary powers were, and whatever they were believed to have done, or not done in response to the rituals continued to be done or not done when the rituals ceased, their last believer died, and the monuments crumbled.

Rosa's Laws of Religion:

The First Law of Theodynamics:
Gods can be created out of nothing and will disappear without trace.

This is a phenomenon that has been repeated time and again throughout human history as religions have come and gone together with their imaginary gods. No one now mourns at the graveside of these old dead gods.

No-one believes in Mars, Ra, Wodan, Thor or Saturn, and no-one says the rituals that were once essential to keep the seasons coming and going, the crops growing or the Nile flooding, and yet the seasons continue to come and go, the crops grow and the Nile still floods at the right time.

The prayers and rituals that once influenced these old gods are no longer needed, and the natural occurrences that were once 'obviously' caused or created by them are now just as 'obviously' caused or created by different gods in response to different prayers and rituals. And they will still occur when the current batch of gods have been consigned to the graveyard of the gods along with all the others.

What started me thinking in that line, was a recent article concerning the Arabian monuments in The Conversation by Melissa Kennedy, and Hugh Thomas, Lecturers in Archaeology at the University of Sydney. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here

Published: March 15, 2023 7.03pm GMT

Enigmatic ruins across Arabia hosted ancient ritual sacrifices

A group of three mustatil and later Bronze Age funerary pendants on a rocky outcrop, southeast of AlUla County.

Source: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

Melissa Kennedy, University of Sydney and Hugh Thomas, University of Sydney

Over the past five years, archaeologists have identified more than 1,600 monumental stone structures dotted across a swathe of Saudi Arabia larger than Italy. The purpose of these ancient stone buildings, dating back more than 7,000 years, has been a puzzle for researchers.

Our excavations and surveys reveal these were ritual structures, constructed by ancient herders and hunters who gathered to sacrifice animals to an unknown deity – perhaps in response to ancient climate change. The study is published in PLOS ONE today.

Desert discoveries

In the 1970s, the first archaeological surveys of northwest Saudi Arabia identified an ancient and mysterious rectangular structure. The sandstone walls of the structure were 95m long, and although it was determined to be unique, no further study of this unusual site was undertaken.

Over the following decades, airline passengers would see similar large “rectangles” dotted across the country. However, it was not until 2018 that one was excavated.

The main architectural features of a mustatil.

Credit: AAKSA /
The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

These structures are now known as mustatils (Arabic for rectangle). We have been studying them for the past five years as part of a larger archaeological study sponsored by the Saudi Royal Commission for AlUla.

The smallest mustatils are around 20m long, while the largest are over 600m. Previous work by our team determined that all mustatils follow a similar architectural plan. Two thick ends were connected by between two to five long walls, creating up to four courtyards.

Access to the mustatil was through a narrow entrance in the base. There would then have been a long walk, perhaps in the form of a procession, to the “head”, where the main ritual activity took place.

Previous studies determined that the mustatils are at least 7,000 years old, dating to the end of the Neolithic period.

Cattle remains

In 2019–2020, we undertook excavations at a mustatil site called IDIHA-0008222. The structure, made from unworked sandstone, measures 140m in length and 20m in width.

Excavations in the head of the mustatil revealed a semi-subterranean chamber. Within this chamber were three large, vertical stones. We have interpreted these as “betyls”, or sacred standing stones which represented unknown ancient deities.

The excavated mustatil at IDIHA-0008222.

Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

Surrounding these stones were well-preserved cattle, goat, and gazelle horns. The horns are so well preserved that much of what we find is the horn sheath, made of keratin – the same substance as hair and nails. We found only the upper cranial elements of these animals: the teeth, skulls, and horns. This suggests a clear and specific choice of offerings.

Further analysis suggests the bulk of these remains belonged to male animals and the cattle were aged between 2 and 12 years. Their slaughter would have formed a significant proportion of a community’s wealth, indicating these were high-value offerings.

Human remains

Current evidence suggests that the mustatils were in use between 5300 and 4900 BCE, a time when Arabia was green and humid. However, within a few generations, the ancient inhabitants of Saudi Arabia began to reuse these structures, this time to bury human body parts.

At IDIHA-0008222, a small structure had been built next to the mustatil. Inside were a partial foot, five vertebrae and several long bones.

Their placement suggests soft tissue was still present when they were buried. Forensic anthropologists were able to determine that the remains likely belonged to an individual aged between 30 and 40 years.

Our work at other mustatils has revealed similar deposits of human remains. Were these remains buried in attempt to claim ownership of the structure or some form of later ritual? These questions remain to be answered.

Pointing to water

The mustatils are changing how we view the Neolithic period not just in Arabia but across the Middle East. The sheer size of these structures and the amount of work involved in their construction suggests that multiple communities came together to create them, most probably as a form of group bonding.

Moreover, their widespread distribution across Saudi Arabia suggests the existence of a shared religious belief, one held over a vast and un-paralleled geographic distance. Currently, fewer than ten mustatils have been excavated, so our understanding of these structures is still in its infancy.

Mustatil locations in Saudi Arabia, with the location of site IDIHA-0008222 marked in red.

Credit: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, the GIS User Community, USGS, NOAA /
AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

The key question to be answered is “why were they built?” A survey trip by our team may have, in part, solved this mystery.

While recording these structures after rain, we noted that almost all mustatils pointed towards areas that held water. Perhaps the mustatils were constructed and the animals offered to the god or gods to ensure the continuation of the rains and the fertility of the land.

The possibility remains that the mustatils were built in response to a changing climate, as the region became increasingly arid like it is today.

Two mustatil in Khaybar County pointing to standing water after rain.

Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

Our study of the mustatils is ongoing. Our new project at the University of Sydney is focused on understanding why these monumental structures and others were built and what brought about their end.

We hope future excavations and analyses will reveal further insights into the life and death of the mustatils and the people who built them.
Melissa Kennedy, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney and Hugh Thomas, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

The paper referred to in the article is published, open access in the online journal PLOS ONE:

Abstract

Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined that these structures fulfilled a ritual purpose, with specifically selected elements of both wild and domestic taxa deposited around a betyl. This paper outlines the results of the University of Western Australia’s work at site IDIHA-0008222, a 140 m long mustatil (IDIHA-F-0011081), located 55 km east of AlUla. Work at this site sheds new and important light on the cult, herding and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia, with the site revealing one of the earliest chronometrically dated betyls in the Arabian Peninsula and some of the earliest evidence for domestic cattle in northern Arabia.

Kennedy M, Strolin L, McMahon J, Franklin D, Flavel A, Noble J, et al. (2023)
Cult, herding, and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia: Excavations at a mustatil east of AlUla.
PLoS ONE 18(3): e0281904. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281904

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

In the words of H.L.Mechen:

Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year—and it is no more than five hundred years ago—fifty thousand youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with ten thousand gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Alien G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of General Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler, and Tom Sharkey…

But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them—temples with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from paying them the slightest and politest homage.

H.L. Menchen "Memorial Service".

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Malevolent Design News - Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Hopelessly Muddled

Malevolent Design News

Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Hopelessly Muddled

Human Coronavirus OC43

Common cold gives children immunity against COVID-19 | Karolinska Institutet Nyheter

Although Creationists can be proud of their divine malevolence's triumph with its SARS-CoV-2 virus and the pandemic it caused, scientists have discovered that it wasn't as clever as Creationists like to imagine.

Apart from having to design the virus to overcome the defences it designed to protect us from the viruses it creates to harm up, if you follow me, it then has to continually modify its design to overcome the defences human medical science devises, such as vaccines (which only work because we have those defences in the first place, no matter how inadequate). It is as though Creationism's supposedly omniscient, omnipotent designer doesn't have a clue about the future and can only respond when it happens.

And, like a true amnesiac, it seems to forget entirely what it designed yesterday, and why it designed it, so it ends up in a pointless and wasteful arms race with itself; continually designing solutions today to the solutions it designed yesterday which it now thinks are new problems to be solved.

And now we learn from a study by researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet that infection by one of its earlier designs, the OC43 corona virus which causes the common cold, produces antibodies that give some protection against its SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus!

Creationism in Crisis - What on Earth was the 'Designer' Thinking?

Creationism in Crisis

What on Earth was the 'Designer' Thinking?

Credit: Lenora Martinez-Nunez

The ‘Rapunzel’ virus: an evolutionary oddity

Figure 2
Intra- and inter-ring interactions. A The primary intra-ring interface between two subunits (green and cyan) within a ring. B Schematic quantifying interactions from a single subunit (α) to illustrate the extensive, cooperative network. Numbers and line widths (not lengths) correspond to quantification of the interactions between α and neighboring subunits as calculated by the PDBePISA server (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4). C Surface representation of two subunits reveals a ball and socket geometry between rings. A single subunit (orange) has two loops (Loop1 and Loop2) that fit into sockets (Socket1 - gray, and Socket2 - white) of a subunit in the ring below it (green). D Surface electrostatics of ring interfaces demonstrate an important role for electrostatics in inter-ring interactions.

Agnello, et. al., (2023), Journal of Biological Chemistry

Creationists would have us believe that there are two forms of life on Earth - that designed by their putative, omnibelevolent, omniscient, omnipotent god and that designed by some magical thing (or is it a process?) called 'sin'. For some mysterious reason, their supposedly omnipotent, omniscient god doesn't have enough power to overcome this 'sin' and is reduced to playing inevitable games with it such as indulging in arms races to defend its creation while 'sin' tries to harm it.

In addition, Creationists believe one of two things:

1. Their god didn't know when he created the mythical founder couple, Adam & Eve, that this would result in this 'sin' thing being created.
2. It did know, but created them anyway, presumably not understanding the consequences.

And of course they believe in the literal truth of the Bible where their god is reported as telling Isaiah that in fact he created evil.:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

Isiah 47:7

And they also believe that their god created everything on Earth for his special creation, them of course, or more generally, all humans

Not for the first time, Creationism requires its dupes to believe two or more mutually exclusive things simultaneously.
g a
So, with that in mind, imagine being a Creationist and trying to understand what on Earth your magic god was trying to achieve when it created bacteria, then created the phage viruses to parasitise them, described in the research by a team from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester MA, USA.

Their research is published open access in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and described in the magazine for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). It describes a phage virus, P74-26, nicknamed the “Rapunzel bacteriophage”, with an extraordinarily long 'tail' which is capable of parasitising even extremophile bacteria that live in hot springs where temperatures can reach 170^oC. Neither these bacteria nor the phage virus appear to have any benefit to mankind.

The study was to determine the construction and function of the very long 'tail'.

The discovery was of something that the Creationist idol, Michael J Behe would undoubtedly proclaim as 'irreducibly complex', therefore proof that the locally popular god did it.

To make matters worse for Creationists, the study casually and unintentionally refutes one of the lies that their cult leaders fool them with - that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is being increasingly rejected by mainstream biologists in favour of their childish, magical and supernatural explanation. The scientists who did the study are in no doubt that the 'tail' is a product of an evolutionary process and that the TOE is a perfect model for explaining and understanding the observed facts.

From the ASBMB magazine:

A recent study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry has revealed the secret behind an evolutionary marvel: a bacteriophage with an extremely long tail. This extraordinary tail is part of a bacteriophage that lives in inhospitable hot springs and preys on some of the toughest bacteria on the planet.

Bacteriophages are a group of viruses that infect and replicate in bacteria and are the most common and diverse things on Earth.

The bacteriophage P74-26 has a tail 10 times longer than most other phage tails and is nearly 1 micrometer long, about the width of some spider’s silk.

Angnello, et al.(2023) Journal of Biological Chemistry

Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are everywhere that bacteria are, including the dirt and water around you and in your own body’s microbial ecosystem as well.

Each phage tail is made up of many small building blocks that come together to form a long tube. Our research finds that these building blocks can change shape, or conformation, as they come together. This shape-changing behavior is important in allowing the building blocks to fit together and form the correct structure of the tail tube.

We used a technique called cryo-electron microscopy, which is a huge microscope that allows us to take thousands of images and short movies at a very high magnification. By taking lots of pictures of the phage’s tail tubes and stacking them together, we were able to figure out exactly how the building blocks fit together.

Bacteriophages are gaining ever-growing interest as an alternative to antibiotics for treating bacterial infections. By studying phage assembly, we can better understand how these viruses interact with bacteria, which could lead to the development of more effective phage-based therapies. … I believe that studying unique, interesting things can lead to findings and applications that we can’t even yet imagine.

Emily Agnello, first author
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Worcester, MA, USA.

Unlike many of the viruses that infect humans and animals that contain only one compartment, phages consist of a tail attached to a spiky, prismlike protein shell that contains their DNA.

Phage tails, like hairstyles, vary in length and style; some are long and bouncy while others are short and stiff. While most phages have short, microscopic tails, the “Rapunzel bacteriophage” P74-26 has a tail 10 times longer than most and is nearly 1 micrometer long, about the width of some spider’s silk. The “Rapunzel” moniker is derived from the fairy tale in which a girl with extremely long hair was locked in a tower by an evil witch.

Brian Kelch, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biotechnology at UMass Chan who supervised the work, described P74-26 as having a “monster of a tail.”

transmission electron micrograph of multiple bacteriophages attached to a bacterial cell wall; the magnification is approximately 200,000.

Professor Graham Beards, (Wikimedia Commons)

Compared with most phages, P74-26 uses half the number of building blocks to form stacking rings that make up the tail.

Phage tails are important for puncturing bacteria, which are coated in a dense, viscous substance. P74-26’s long tail allows it to invade and infect the toughest bacteria. Not only does P74-26 have an extremely long tail, but it is also the most stable phage, allowing it to exist in and infect bacteria that live in hot springs that can reach over 170° F. Researchers have been studying P74-26 to find out why and how it can exist in such extreme environments.

To work with a phage that thrives in such high temperatures, Agnello had to adjust the conditions of her experiments to coax the phage tail to assemble itself in a test tube. Kelch said Agnello created a system with which she could induce rapid tail self-assembly.

I like to think about these phage building blocks as kind of like Legos. The Lego has studs on one side and the holes or sockets on the other. Imagine a Lego where the sockets start off closed. But as you start to build with the Legos, the sockets begin to open up to allow the studs on other Legos to build a larger assembly. This movement is an important way that these phage building blocks self-regulate their assembly.

We think what has happened is that some ancient virus fused its building blocks into one protein. Imagine two small Lego bricks are fused into one large brick with no seams. This long tail is built with larger, sturdier building blocks. We think that could be stabilizing the tail at high temperatures.

Brian A. Kelch, corresponding author
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Worcester, MA, USA

The researchers used high-power imaging techniques as well as computer simulations and found that the building blocks of the tail lean on each other to stabilize themselves.

They found P74-26 uses a “ball and socket” mechanism to sturdy itself. In addition, the tail is formed from vertically stacking rings of molecules that make a hollow canal.

Kelch pointed out that, compared with most phages, P74-26 uses half the number of building blocks to form stacking rings that make up the tail.

The researchers now plan to use genetic manipulation to alter the length of the phage tail and see how that changes its behavior.

Phages occupy almost every corner of the globe and are important to a variety of industries like healthcare, environmental conservation and food safety. In fact, long-tailed phages like P74-26 have been used in preliminary clinical trials to treat certain bacterial infections.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Inc. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

More technical detail is given in the teams open access paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry:

Abstract

Tail tube assembly is an essential step in the lifecycle of long-tailed bacteriophages. Limited structural and biophysical information has impeded an understanding of assembly and stability of their long, flexible tail tubes. The hyperthermophilic phage P74-26 is particularly intriguing as it has the longest tail of any known virus (nearly 1 μm) and is the most thermostable known phage. Here, we use structures of the P74-26 tail tube along with an in vitro system for studying tube assembly kinetics to propose the first molecular model for the tail tube assembly of long-tailed phages. Our high resolution cryo-EM structure provides insight into how the P74-26 phage assembles through flexible loops that fit into neighboring rings through tight “ball-and-socket”-like interactions. Guided by this structure, and in combination with mutational, light scattering, and molecular dynamics simulations data, we propose a model for the assembly of conserved tube-like structures across phage and other entities possessing Tail Tube-like proteins. We propose that formation of a full ring promotes the adoption of a tube elongation-competent conformation among the flexible loops and their corresponding sockets, which is further stabilized by an adjacent ring. Tail assembly is controlled by the cooperative interaction of dynamic intra- and inter-ring contacts. Given the structural conservation among tail tube proteins and tail-like structures, our model can explain the mechanism of high-fidelity assembly of long, stable tubes.

Agnello, Emily; Pajak, Joshua; Liu, Xingchen; Kelch, Brian A.
Conformational dynamics control assembly of an extremely long bacteriophage tail tube
Journal of Biological Chemistry; (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.jbc.2023.103021

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Inc. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, from a Creationist point of view, a massively complex solution to the problem of how to get through the defences of a bacterium that was designed to protect it from viruses in order to kill bacteria that, because they inhabit such extreme conditions, are or complete indifference to humans, being neither harmful nor harmless.

Creationists also argue that bacteria and viruses were created by 'sin' in some unexplained magical process, so this 'sin' thing is designing parasites to attack the parasites it creates!

It takes some special mental gymnastics to believe these organisms and the relationships between them are the result of an intelligent design process and not the result of a mindless, utilitarian natural process in which neither magic nor magicians was involved.