BAM!
Author: Papa Giorgio
Was Archaeopteryx Devolving? Thus Losing It’s Ability to Fly?
The below is a response to a conversation elsewhere on the WWW.
ARCHAEOPTERYX
I have a digital edition of Science Magazine and they allow me to read all the past articles (like this one, Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms). In the article a wild eyed creationist… er… I mean, a respected evolutionist discusses how Archaeopteryx is more bird like, not the missing link between dino and bird.
In the article we find this:
- feathers are 100% bird feathers;
- hollow bones like birds;
- It’s claws were perching claws (similar to the Bowerbird)…
- doubts connected with dico/bird progression
…even the father of the modern “bird/dino” theory, John Ostrom, says this of recent revelations about Archaeopteryx:
- “I’m just having a ball,” he said with a chuckle. “It sounds to me as if Alan [Feduccia] has presented a very good argument; I’m not sure he’s absolutely right, but I’m sure he’s on solid ground.”
Since the writing of the linked article at Science, more evidence (I will repeat, e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e) has come to light supporting the articles authored (Alan Feduccia) and curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institute, Storrs Olson:
- bumps in the bone where feathers were connected (just like birds);
- the avian lung was present in Archaeopteryx [pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis];
- Cat Scans of the skull shows that the brain was birdlike, not dino-like (“Axial and appendicular pneumaticity in Archaeopteryx,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B. 267:2501–2505, 2000);
- similar inner ear findings (“The avian nature of the brain and inner ear of Archaeopteryx,” Nature 430(7000):666–669, 5 August 2004; Witmer, L.M, “Inside the oldest bird brain, perspective,” same issue, pp. 619–620);
- In 2011, “the Royal Society’s Biology Letters, the researchers wrote that Archaeopteryx’s assignment to a dinosaur group earlier this year ‘was acknowledged to be weakly supported’, They constructed new cladograms that pictured Archaeopteryx with birds, and not with any dinosaurs, with a caption that reads, ‘Archaeopteryx robustly reinstated as the most basal bird’.” (“Likelihood reinstates Archaeopteryx as a primitive bird,” Biology Letters. Published online before print October 26, 2011).
Some more resources for the above bullet points:
- Archaeopteryx (unlike Archaeoraptor) is NOT a hoax—it is a true bird, not a “missing link”
- Archaeopteryx Is a Bird… Again
- Dinosaurs vs. Birds: The Fossils Don’t Lie
AND FINALLY
Since other feathered “birds” have been found around the same time or earlier than Archaeopteryx, causing Alan Feduccia to quip, “You can’t be older than your grandfather” (Creation.com)… Nature has published an article pointing out that Archaeopteryx is JUST LIKE modern flightless birds.
And so it could have been losing its ability for flight (like modern birds have).
“We know Archaeopteryx was living on an archipelago during the Jurassic. And with its feathers and bones looking so much like modern flightless island birds, it just makes me wonder,” says…. Michael Habib, a biologist at the University of Southern California….
[….]
“Just because Archaeopteryx was the first feathered dinosaur found, doesn’t mean it has to play a central role in the actual history of the origins of birds,” says palaeontologist Thomas Holtz of the University of Maryland in College Park. “We have to remember it appears 10 million years or so after the oldest known bird-like dinosaurs and so our famous ‘first bird’ may really be a secondarily flightless one.”…
Recent events cast even further doubt on Archaeopteryx as a transitional form. If the claims of Sankar Chatterjee prove to be valid, then certainly Archaeopteryx could not be the ancestral bird, and dinosaurs could not be ancestral to birds. Chatterjee and his co-workers at Texas Tech University claim to have found two crow-sized fossils of a bird near Post, Texas, in rocks supposedly 225 million years old—thus allegedly 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx and as old as the first dinosaurs. Totally contrary to what evolutionists would expect for such a fossil bird, however, Chatterjee claims that his bird is even more bird-like than Archaeopteryx! In contrast to Archaeopteryx, this bird had a keel-like breastbone and hollow bones. In most other respects, it was similar to Archaeopteryx.14 If evolutionary assumptions are correct, this bird should have been much more reptile-like than Archaeopteryx. In fact, he shouldn’t even exist!
14. S. Weisburd, Science News, August 16, 1986, p. 103; Tim Beardsley, Nature 322:677 (1986).
(ICR)
But even if its classification waffles again, it is disqualified as an evolutionary ancestor for birds by the fact that scientists found a crow-size bird and extinct four-winged birds in rock layers designated to be below those containing Archaeopteryx.3,4
3. Thomas, B. Early Bird Gets the Boot: Researchers Reclassify Archaeopteryx. ICR News. Posted on icr.org August 5, 2011, accessed October 27, 2011.
4. Beardsley, T. 1986. Fossil bird shakes evolutionary hypotheses. Nature. 322 (6081): 677. (pictured at beginning of post)
There is just as much [at best] evidence for this proposition as the next. “Devolution” — a loss of specificity, may be a more reasonable position to take via observed evidence. We see this all the time (directly below is an example from Lee Spetner’s new book), and EVOLUTION NEWS says that “looks like Archaeopteryx may have to be reclassified as a different sort of icon — symbolizing evolution by loss of function.” Oops.
Antibiotic Resistance
The evolution of antibiotic resistance has been for some time the Darwinists’ favorite example for “demonstrating” evolution (Common Descent). Superficially their case looks good. Antibiotics date only from about 1930 with the discovery of penicillin (Fleming 1929), followed by the development of a method to produce it with high yield (Chain et al. 1940). Antibiotics were first introduced to the public in 1942 to cure bacterial infection (Levy 1992, 4), and by the mid 1940s the first strains appeared of Staphylococcus resistant to penicillin (Fisher 1994, 15). Just a few years after antibiotics were introduced, resistant strains of the pathogens were found to have already evolved. As each new antibiotic was discovered and put into use against pathogenic bacteria, resistant strains soon followed. The argument then goes, with a wave of the hand, like this: If a small but significant evolutionary change like antibiotic resistance can evolve in only a few years, then surely in a million years huge evolutionary changes must occur. Darwinists expect this argument to support Common Descent.
An examination of the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance, however, shows it lends no support at all to Common Descent (Spetner 1997, 138143). Antibiotics are natural molecules produced by some microorganisms for the purpose of killing other hostile microorganisms. A microorganism that makes an antibiotic must, itself, be resistant to the antibiotic it makes. For this purpose it is typically endowed with a battery of genes that code for a resistance mechanism. Most useful antibiotics have come from soil bacteria (D’Costa et al. 2006). How bacteria have acquired this resistance initially is not known, nor can neo-Darwinian theory shed any light on it. Antibiotic resistance genes have been found to predate the use of antibiotics by at least many thousands of years (D’Costa et al. 2011). Moreover, bacteria are known to be able to transfer genetic material to other bacteria through HGT (see above). On occasion, copies of the genes for resistance can find their way from a type of bacterium that is normally resistant to a type that is not normally resistant. When that happens, the recipient bacterium becomes resistant. This is indeed evolution, but it is a limited evolution of the population-change type. It is not the Common-Descent type of evolution.
The resistance genes already exist in the biosphere. No new information has appeared in the biosphere through this type of evolution of antibiotic resistance. Common-Descent evolution cannot be achieved by this procedure even if it were repeated innumerable times in succession, because no new information would be built up. This method of evolving antibiotic resistance therefore lends no support for Common Descent.
Sometimes, however, antibiotic resistance can indeed appear through a random mutation — a DNA copying error, which would bring something new to the biosphere. This kind of change looks like it might satisfy the requirements for Common Descent, so I shall give a brief description of it here, although I have already dealt with it in my previous book.
As an example, let us look at how a bacterium acquires resistance to streptomycin through a random mutation. All cells, whether of bacteria or of plants or animals, contain organelles called ribosomes, whose function it is to make protein according to instructions from the DNA of a gene. Proteins are large molecules, consisting of long chains of small molecules called amino acids, and are essential to all living things. They function as enzymes, which catalyze all the chemical reactions in a cell — each chemical reaction catalyzed by a specific enzyme. Proteins can also serve as structural elements. Often, and maybe even always, a structural protein functions also as an enzyme. For an enzyme to perform its function, it must have a specific sequence of amino acids.
A ribosome is an organelle within a cell that manufactures protein. It makes a protein by putting together a chain of amino acids according to the instructions in the DNA. A segment of the DNA is transcribed into an RNA molecule that matches the DNA nucleotide by nucleotide. This RNA is called messenger RNA because it carries the DNA message to the ribosome. The ribosome translates the message in the DNA into amino acids according to the genetic code. Three nucleotides translate into one amino acid. Accordingly, the ribosome constructs a chain of amino acids to form a protein.
The antibiotic streptomycin, for example, acts on a bacterial cell by attaching to a ribosome at a site to which it matches, the way a key fits into a lock. When the streptomycin molecule attaches to this site, it interferes with the ribosome function and causes it to make mistakes leading to incorrect, dysfunctional or nonfunctional, protein. The errors it causes prevent the cell from growing, reproducing, and eventually from living. The important feature of streptomycin, and indeed of all other antibiotics, is that it kills bacteria but does not harm the mammalian host. Streptomycin kills the bacterial cells that are infecting you without killing your own cells. It discriminates between the cells of the bacteria and the cells of the host by its specific attachment to a matching site on the bacterial ribosome, a site not found on the host’s ribosomes.
A bacterium will gain resistance to streptomycin if a point mutation occurs in the gene coding for the protein in the ribosome, ruining the matching site, destroying the specificity of the protein, and preventing a streptomycin molecule from attaching. If the streptomycin cannot attach to the matching site, the bacterium is resistant. Just one mutation in the portion of the DNA coding for the matching site can mess up the site so the streptomycin cannot attach. It turns out that any one of several mutations in that portion of the DNA will grant the bacterium resistance (Gartner and Orias 1966). Note that this type of resistance is caused by a single random point mutation, but it cannot serve as an example of mutations that can support Common Descent. One cannot expect mutations destroying specificity, no matter how many of them there are, to build information and lead to Common Descent. Destruction of specificity does not add information — it destroys it. One cannot add information by destroying it, no matter how many times one repeats the process. I have previously (Spetner 1997) compared trying to build up information in this manner to the merchant who was losing a little money on each sale but thought he could make it up on volume. The acquisition of antibiotic resistance is indeed evolution, but only a limited form of it. It cannot lead to Common Descent.
No example of antibiotic resistance in bacteria adds information to the biosphere. To become resistant, the bacteria either pick up ready-made resistance genes from other bacteria or they undergo a mutation that destroys information. Antibiotic resistance cannot therefore be an evolutionary example that could support Common Descent because a chain of such mutations, no matter how long, does not add information and thus cannot lead to Common Descent. The Darwinists’ favorite example of evolution fails to pass muster.
End Notes
Chain, E. et al. (1940) Penicillin as a Chemotherapeutic Agent. Lancet 239: 226-228.
D’Costa, Vanessa M., Katherine M. McGrann, Donald W. Hughes, and Gerard D. Wright. (2006) Sampling the antibiotic resistome. Science 311: 374-377.
D’Costa, Vanessa M. et. al. (2011) Antibiotic Resistance is Ancient. Nature 477:457-461.
Fisher, Jeffrey A. (1994) The Plague Makers: How we are creating catastrophic new epidemics — and what we must do to avert them. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Fleming, A. (1929) On the antibacterial action of cultures of a Penicillium, with special reference to their use in the isolation of B. influenzae. British Journal of Experimental Pathology 10: 226-238.
Gartner, T. K. and E. Orias, (1966) Effects of mutations to streptomycin resistance on the rate of translation of mutant genetic information. Journal of Bacteriology 91: 1021-1028.
Levy, Stuart B. (1992) The Antibiotic paradox: How Miracle Drugs are Destroying the Miracle. New York: Plenum Press.
Spetner. L. M. (1997) Not by chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution. Brooklyn: Judaica Press.
Lee Spetner, The Evolution Revolution: Why Thinking People Are Rethinking the Theory of Evolution (Brooklyn, NY: Judaica Press, 2014), 119-120.
A friend comments about the newer position on his Creation/Evolution Headlines saying one “paleontologist remarked, ‘We really need an improved understanding of how anatomy relates to these diverse behaviours, so we can better interpret the fossil record’.” Continuing he adds his thinking to the matter:
No one called Archaeopteryx a “feathered dinosaur” back then, because the phrase only came into vogue with the Chinese fossil discoveries. From Darwin’s day till recently, it was argued to be a transitional form between reptiles and birds. Evolutionists emphasized the reptilian traits (teeth, claws on the wings), and creationists emphasized the flight feathers and anatomy that seemed to show it capable of powered flight. They also pointed out that some living birds, like the hoatzin, have claws on their wings as juveniles. People saw what their biases wanted to see. Astronomer Fred Hoyle tried to prove it was a forgery. Today’s evolutionists use the “feathered dinosaur” label, but there is no guarantee that today’s consensus will not shift again. The new proposal it was secondarily flightless implies a win for creationists – it devolved from a fully-functional flying bird, just like some living birds with stunted wings have on the Galapagos Islands. Loss of function is not what Darwin needs!
Let’s think about Nature’s comment that the suggestion Archaeopteryx was losing the ability to fly “might have been considered madness” back in 1861 (actually, all the way from 1861 to just a few years ago). This tells us that if evolutionists consider something madness now, it might be considered sanity later. It further means that the sane ones could be the skeptics of the consensus, and the mad ones in the majority. Don’t be deterred, therefore, if you feel you have good evidence and arguments for your position when it runs counter to the consensus. It’s entirely possible for the intellectual majority to be suffering from delusions. “We really need an improved understanding … so we can better interpret the fossil record” – good advice, but it implies that understanding is lacking and interpretation is flawed. If they haven’t gotten it down after 152 years, don’t expect major improvements any time soon. They might just be secondarily clueless.
“Pipers Pit” No More ~ RIP “Rowdy” Roddy Piper
TMZ Sports has this:
Wrestling legend “Rowdy” Roddy Piper has died at the age of 61 … TMZ Sports has learned.
Piper — born Roderick George Toombs — died from cardiac arrest in his sleep at his home in Hollywood on Thursday night. He was discovered on Friday.
Piper was a wrestling icon — one of the biggest stars in the WWE back in the ’80s, and even wrestled in “Wrestlemania I” back in 1985 … squaring off against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T….
Ronda Rousey asked “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who’s real name is Roderick Toombs, if she could use his part of his wrestling name, here is the lowdown on this from MMA Fighting:
Ronda Rousey had a chance to meet with Roddy Piper in the weeks leading up to UFC 190.
The UFC women’s bantamweight champion told Ariel Helwani on the FOX Sports 1 post-fight show she sat down and spoke to Piper “for hours” at his home during her training camp preparing for Bethe Correia. Piper died Friday at the age of 61 from cardiac arrest.
“I actually got a chance to sit down and talk to him for a couple hours before this fight,” Rousey said. “I didn’t have time for anything, but I was like, ‘No, I have to go see Roddy. I have to go to Piper’s Pit.’ We talked for hours. I even told him, I promised I’m gonna do the name proud, ‘I’m gonna do you proud, I’m gonna go beat this chick.’ I told him that.”
Rousey (12-0) backed up her words, retaining her title by knocking out Correia in just 34 seconds Saturday night in Rio de Janeiro.
Piper is the one who bestowed upon Rousey her nickname of “Rousey.” The pro wrestling legend, who helped shape WWE as we know it, was the protégé of “Judo” Gene Lebell, one of Rousey’s mentors. Lebell wanted Rousey to use the nickname years ago and he had Rousey call Piper to make sure it was OK. Piper, of course, agreed….
Distant Star Light and the Young Earth View of Creation (Dr Hartnett)
This is a quote found in Jonathan Sarfati’s commentary, The Genesis Account, I will post the link to the article Dr. Sarfati quoted from:
An experimentally verified prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory is a phenomenon called gravitational time dilation. It has long been established that gravity affects the rate at which time flows in any particular location in the universe. A graphic example of this phenomenon is the GPS satellite navigation system which is becoming a standard feature in many motor vehicles today.
One’s position is determined by comparing the time taken for signals from a number of the satellites, which are visible at any one time, to reach the receiver so very high precision timing is needed. The constellation of satellites orbits the earth at an altitude of about 20,000km. At this height, the atomic clocks on board the satellites run faster than the same clocks on earth by 42 microseconds per day. The satellites are travelling at around 12,000 km per hour which produces an opposing relativistic effect of slowing the clocks down by about 5 microseconds per day. The combined effect is that the clocks on the GPS satellites run 38 microseconds per day faster than equivalent earth-bound clocks. Why does this matter? If this time difference was ignored and no compensation made, the position errors would build up at a rate of about 400m per hour which would render the system completely useless!
Another mechanism for time dilation is rapid acceleration of the fabric of space in an expanding universe. This is explained more fully in Hartnett’s book referenced above.
A friend responded somewhat skeptically,
- Sean, I find myself in agreement with you on the vast majority of issues both religious and political. But on the age of the earth question, I strongly disagree….
To which another friend noted skeptically:
You’re right, of course, Jim. Russell Humphreys’ model, which is at the core of this discussion, is deeply flawed. It hypothesizes that Earth was created in a gravity well produced by a massive black hole so relavitivistic time dilation accounts for the slow passage of time on Earth, allowing distant starlight to reach us even though our planet’s age is claimed to be measured in thousands rather than billions of years. While there are technical problems with the model that have been ably discussed by Don Page and Samuel Conner, among others, there are three simpler observations that empirically confute it: (1) if we were in a gravity well, distant starlight should be blue-shifted, it’s not, it’s stretched to the red end of the spectrum by the universal expansion providing evidence for the Big Bang; (2) if we were in a gravity well, the periods of distant Cepheid variable stars and other periodic astronomical phenomena would appear vastly different from what we measure them to be; and (3) we observe stars forming when we look out into space we understand well the astrophysics of stellar formation, which informs us that the Sun is at least a second generation star due to the heavier elements in its composition (and that of our Solar System). In short, we are not in a gravity well and the model being proposed here is yet another YEC fabrication predicated on an unnecessary and flawed interpretation of Scripture, but offered with a patina of scientific sophistication sufficient to obscure the truth from the non-scientist.
I then respond:
Here you will note a part of this “evolving” model that is incorporated by Dr. Harwood in the OP that makes Dr. Humphreys say this:
…Through the years, theorists have offered other explanations for the cosmological redshift trend. For several decades, I explored such theories, trying without success to find one that satisfied me. But I lost interest in alternative redshift models after I noticed verses in the Bible that appear to support the idea that space has been expanded. Isaiah 40:22 is one example:
✦ “It is he … that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.”
There are seventeen such verses in the Old Testament, and they use four different Hebrew verbs to convey the idea of ‘stretching out’ or ‘spreading out’. As I clarify in Starlight and Time, in Scripture ‘the heavens’ appear to refer to space itself, not necessarily to the bodies occupying that space, namely the Sun, Moon and stars. So if we take these verses straightforwardly, then God is saying that He has stretched out or spread out the ‘fabric’ of space itself. That corresponds very closely to the general relativistic idea of expanding space. With a few small steps of logic, textbooks show that such an expansion produces redshifts. That is why I think expansion is the main cause. … (Creation.com)
If you look at the OP you will see this part:
“The satellites are travelling at around 12,000 km per hour which produces an opposing relativistic effect of slowing the clocks down by about 5 microseconds per day. The combined effect is that the clocks on the GPS satellites run 38 microseconds per day faster than equivalent earth-bound clocks. … time dilation is rapid acceleration of the fabric of space in an expanding universe…“
In other words, movement has shown to affect this time variable… and extremely fast movement is theorized to do so on a much larger scale. And the Bible clearly notes this type of creative action was under way.
The above article responds in part to the red-shift/blue-shift aspect a bit. But if Jonathan Sarfati wishes to message me another article dealing with this, I will post it.
Dr. Paul McHugh Comments On Transgenderism & Psychology
A great article by the Witherspoon Institute via Paul McHugh, MD, who is University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.
A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.
Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.
The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.
At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s. Our efforts, though, had little influence on the emergence of this new idea about sex, or upon the expansion of the number of “transgendered” among young and old.
[….]
But the meme—that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time—marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.
I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla—enhanced now by Bruce Jenner’s celebrity and Annie Leibovitz’s photography—stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one—not doctors, schools, nor even churches—will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.
First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.
When “the tumult and shouting dies,” it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.
Everything Is Sexist, Everything Is Racist, Everything Is Homophobic
FALLOUT vs Anita Sarkeesian – Everything is Sexist
Climate Consensus? No Sir-eee (New Study Shows a Split)
An old Aussie video:
Breitbart adds to the idea of the “Cooked” Cook paper with a real survey:
Nearly six in ten climate scientists don’t adhere to the so-called “consensus” on man-made climate change, a new study by the Dutch government has found. The results contradict the oft-cited claim that there is a 97 percent consensus amongst climate scientists that humans are responsible for global warming.
The study, by the PBL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, a government body, invited 6550 scientists working in climate related fields, including climate physics, climate impact, and mitigation, to take part in a survey on their views of climate science.
Of the 1868 who responded, just 43 percent agreed with the IPCC that “It is extremely likely {95%+ certainty} that more than half of [global warming] from 1951 to 2010 was caused by [human activity]”. Even with the “don’t knows” removed that figure increases only to 47 percent, still leaving a majority of climate scientists who do not subscribe to the IPCC’s statement.
The findings directly contradict the claim that 97 percent of climate scientists endorse the view that humans are responsible for global warming, as first made by Cook et al in a paper published in Environment Research Letters.
Cook’s paper has since been extremely widely debunked, yet so ingrained has the 97 percent consensus claim become that The Guardian has an entire section named after it, and President Obama has cited it on Twitter.
Commenting on the new study, Australian climate blogger Joanne Nova said: “Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “97%” certainty.”…
Why I Left Greenpeace ~ Patrick Moore (PragerU)
Patrick Moore explains why he helped to create Greenpeace, and why he decided to leave it. What began as a mission to improve the environment for the sake of humanity became a political movement in which humanity became the villain and hard science a non-issue.
Communism, Creating Equality Since 1848 (Venezuela & USSR)
This first video is of a Soviet grocery store filmed in 1986:
This second video is of a grocery store from Venezuela from this year (2015):
And as Libertarian Republican notes they are running out of beer:
First, it was shortage of toilet paper. Then, a shortage of food. Now, Venezuela is facing a beer shortage.
The official excuse is that the country isn’t able to import enough ingredients, and that the evil farmers are holding out. As Lenin said of those evil farmers, they are nothing but petite bourgeoisie. Why, they are the dung of the devil!….
 |
 |
 |
In a move that will no doubt help further the Venezuelan government’s aim of establishing a socialist utopian republic, President Nicolas Maduro announced this week that grocery stores will soon begin the mandatory fingerprinting of customers. The peculiar initiative, which could be implemented by the end of the year, is meant to help combat the hoarding and smuggling of government-subsidized goods.
Venezuela exerts stringent currency and price controls on many products in an attempt to keep them affordable for its poorest citizens. Unfortunately, a staggering quantity of this merchandise ends up being secreted out of the country and re-sold at a profit in neighboring Colombia.
The oil-rich nation has been experiencing a chronic shortage of food supplies for a long while. Maduro, who succeeded the late Hugo Chavez, accused the political opposition last year of engineering the country’s shortages with the help of the CIA in order to undermine his government.
[…]
Faced with empty store shelves due to the combination of price controls, currency restrictions, and smuggling, Venezuelans are having a hard time finding the basics they need to live. The crisis has spurred the development of an app called Abasteceme (“Supply Me”), which allows shoppers to document and share where they have managed to find products.
The fingerprinting proposal, which critics decried as an invasion of privacy
Privacy? PRIVACY??!!?? What an out-dated, bourgeoisie, imperialistic, patriarchal notion! Honest people have no need for privacy!
Harruuummmmph.
and an attempt to institute a Cuban-style rationing program, would be similar to an anti-fraud system Venezuela currently employs during elections,
Voter id is only valid in Progressive socialist nations to keep enemies-of-the-people from reactionary crimes. Those of you in countries that have not repented of your oppressive capitalistic crimes must never, ever use ID of any kind when it comes to voting.
– See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/#sthash.Idans5Q7.dpuf
You see… down deep all these “freedom of speech” guys who say they are libertarian or for freedom of thought — are really small tyrant down deep. The Left always falls into what is in their nature.
Venezuelans fighting over powdered milk:
Here is a line at a grocery store via Economic Policy Journal:
Ahh, the joys of socialism.
Religious Tolerance: Made in America by Protestants
Religious tolerance is a given in the West. But it’s a historical aberration — an ideological revolution created by the Puritans and pre-1776 Americans. What was it that led to the religious tolerance revolution? Was there something unique in Protestantism and Americanism? Or would tolerance have eventually arisen elsewhere, perhaps in Europe? Larry Schweikart, best-selling author and professor of history at the University of Dayton, explains.
The Piecemeal Dismemberment On Religious Liberties Continues
Legal Insurrection notes the following melee churches find themselves in since the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling:
Less than 48 hours after the decision was handed down, New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer called for the end of tax exemptions for religious institutions.
And the piecemeal dismemberment on religious liberties continues.
Now infamous for their intolerance of Christianity, Oregon continues to be ground zero for theBiblical Principles vs. Ideological Fascism showdown.
National Review’s David French explains an emerging problem for Oregonian pastors seeking liability insurance.
Churches, like virtually every functioning corporation, protect against liability risks and the potentially ruinous costs of litigation through liability insurance. With same-sex marriage now recognized as a constitutional right — and with news of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries awarding a lesbian couple $135,000 in damages for “emotional, mental and physical suffering” after a Christian bakery refused to bake their wedding cake — pastors are reaching out to insurance companies to make sure they’re covered. And at least one insurer has responded with a preemptory denial: no coverage if a church is sued for refusing to perform a same-sex wedding.
While denying insurance coverage is not itself an encroachment of religious liberty, lack of protection is as much a problem; one that could easily sink any independent church that winds up the defendant of a complaint….
Here is more from the National Review article (h/t to Jim G.), For Churches That Won’t Perform Same-Sex Weddings, Insurance Begins to Look Iffy
In the aftermath of Obergefell v. Hodges, pastors and church members are experiencing a wave of anxiety over what many of them deem the “nightmare scenario”: lawsuits or government action designed to force them to perform or recognize same-sex marriages. While there are — so far — no meaningful judicial precedents that would permit such dramatic interference with churches’ core First Amendment rights, lawsuits challenging church liberties are inevitable.
Indeed, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission has declared that prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity “sometimes” apply to churches and has stated that a “church service open to the public” is not a “bona fide religious purpose” that would limit application of the law. In 2012 a New Jersey administrative-law judge ruled that a religious organization “closely associated with the United Methodist Church” wrongly denied access to its facilities for a same-sex wedding.
Churches, like virtually every functioning corporation, protect against liability risks and the potentially ruinous costs of litigation through liability insurance. With same-sex marriage now recognized as a constitutional right — and with news of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries awarding a lesbian couple $135,000 in damages for “emotional, mental and physical suffering” after a Christian bakery refused to bake their wedding cake — pastors are reaching out to insurance companies to make sure they’re covered. And at least one insurer has responded with a preemptory denial: no coverage if a church is sued for refusing to perform a same-sex wedding.
On July 1, David Karns, vice president of underwriting at Southern Mutual Church Insurance Company (which “serve[s] more than 8,400 churches”), wrote an “all states” agents’ bulletin addressing same-sex marriage. It begins: “We have received numerous calls and emails regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriages. The main concern is whether or not liability coverage applies in the event a church gets sued for declining to perform a same-sex marriage.” Karns continues:
The general liability form does not provide any coverage for this type of situation, since there is no bodily injury, property damage, personal injury, or advertising injury. If a church is concerned about the possibility of a suit, we do offer Miscellaneous Legal Defense Coverage. This is not liability coverage, but rather expense reimbursement for defense costs. There is no coverage for any judgments against an insured.
In other words: Churches, you’re on your own. (National Review has tried to reach Mr. Karns and Southern Mutual’s corporate office, and they have not yet returned our calls.)
[…..]
Yet, as of July 1, it appears that thousands of American churches are more exposed than they imagined….
Tony Perkins comments on the Democrat Party, in a similar (although not in the same context and depth) fashion to Democrat Candidate Jim Webb when he said: “The party has moved way far to the left, and that’s not my Democratic Party.”
…On one hand, the Left is trying to cripple churches’ ability to fight back, and on the other, they’re trying to strip away protections for the everyday believer. Like most liberals, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz isn’t hiding the fact that religious liberty is next on her kill list, especially for individual Americans. “I think [our country] made the distinction between protecting the First Amendment rights for religious organizations or religiously-affiliated organizations and being able to discriminate, broadly, simply because of one individual who owns a business and their own values and their being able to impose those values on either their employers or their customers,” she told CBN’s David Brody.
Once again, liberals are setting up the faulty argument that religious exercise must be confined to institutions — not individuals. As any constitutional scholar would tell you, that’s a deliberate distortion of the First Amendment! It’s like saying the Second Amendment only applies in gun clubs. The reality is, and the Founders understood, religious liberty is a fundamental human freedom. In fact, it was Eleanor Roosevelt — from Wasserman-Schultz’s own party — who chaired the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. And it could not be more clear: “[E]veryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
What’s happened to the Democratic Party? After 70 years, there’s nothing “democratic” about it!
A Definition of “So-So” Stories of Evolution Defined ~ Spetner
Here is a quote, and really, a definition of the general theory of evolution (GTE) that G.A. Kerkut defines in his older text, Implication of Evolution (second quote). Here Spetner calls it the neo-Darwinian theory (NDT), it more common name today. Here is Spetner’s relevant quote:
Neo-Darwinian Theory (NDT) is counterintuitive, and is acknowledged as such even by its supporters. All present-day life is assumed to have evolved from some primitive cell, and that cell was supposed to have formed itself from simple chemicals. Nobody seems to know how that cell came to be, but almost all biologists think they understand fairly well how evolution proceeded from that cell to all the life we see today.
There appears to be a vast amount of information contained in trees, fish, elephants, and people. Where did this information come from? It is said to have come from random mutations and natural selection. How can that work? Natural selection is supposed to be the magic that makes evolution happen, but all natural selection does is eliminate the less adaptive organisms and allow the more adaptive ones to survive and proliferate. Where do those more adaptive ones come from? Apparently, that’s what random mutations are supposed to accomplish.
So the information buildup required by Common Descent can come only from random mutations. That means that the buildup of information is a matter of chance. At each step of the evolutionary process, a mutation has to have occurred that grants the organism an advantage. The big question is: Is that reasonable? To see if it is, some people (including me) have made calculations of the probability of mutations building information.
We really don’t have all the data we need to make this calculation. But even if we make some conservative assumptions and give the benefit of all doubts to the Darwinian side, such calculations demonstrate that Common Descent is not reasonable. The Darwinists, however, do not accept these calculations as conclusive — they suggest alternative scenarios that might make the probabilities larger.
In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe addressed the unreasonableness of Darwinian evolution. He described some biological systems as what he called “irreducibly complex.” By that he meant that these systems are composed of several critical components in such a way that the system cannot work unless all those components are in place. He then argued that the system could not evolve one small part at a time, because natural selection could not work on less than the whole system. Here, too, the Darwinians countered by suggesting scenarios in which natural selection might work, but again, the Darwinian scenarios are purely hypothetical.
Because the Darwinians can invent scenarios to address any challenge to their theory, they are not convinced by attempts to show that neo-Darwinian evolution cannot work. Therefore, I have concluded that it would be more productive to challenge them to show that it could work — challenge them to do more than just offer vague scenarios of how their theory might work, but to show by calculation that the probability of it working is reasonably high. This is a challenge they must meet to establish their theory on a scientific basis. They have never met this challenge and they cannot. They cannot show that the events they claim to have produced Common Descent have a high enough probability to justify their claim. Their inability to establish the theory of Common Descent means that Common Descent is not an established theory. This is one of the main points of this book.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of probability calculations. NDT is not like Newton’s theory of mechanics, whose equations describe the motion of a physical body under a force. Nor is it like Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, whose equations describe the effects of electric and magnetic fields on electric charges. These theories are checked against experiment by solving those equations. NDT describes evolution as the result of random mutations that may or may not yield an adaptive phenotype. These are chance events. The theory can be checked only by calculating the probabilities of the required events to see if they are reasonably large. The theory has not been shown to have passed this test and is therefore not a valid theory. Whatever evidence is given for Common Descent is circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence cannot stand alone. It needs to have a theory tying the evidence to the conclusion. But instead of a theory, imaginary scenarios are offered to suggest how evolution might work. No calculations of probabilities are made.
[….]
Common Descent is a key component of an agenda advocating a natural origin of life. The effort to demonstrate the possibility of such a natural origin is usually divided into two parts: (1) abiogenesis, the origin of a simple life form from naturally occurring chemicals, and (2) the evolution of all life from that single simple beginning. It turns out, however, there is no good evidence for either of these two parts.
Lee Spetner, The Evolution Revolution: Why Thinking People Are Rethinking the Theory of Evolution (Brooklyn, NY: Judaica Press, 2014), 7-9, 15.