Friends point us to this handy science-friendly summary of what is known about COVID-19

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 5, 2020

General interest, Genomics, Intelligent Design}

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SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) as a virus. Updated on an ongoing basis.

Further reading from Jonathan Bartlett:</a

Was the COVID-10 virus designed? The computer doesn’t know. Some researchers confuse not finding a particular type of design with ruling out design. The authors of the paper saying that the virus could not have been designed base their findings on the fact that current software would not have predicted this result. I am not claiming that the virus was designed, only that a researcher need not have relied on this software to design a virus. The paper makes a faulty assumption.

and

We will never go back to the pre-COVID-19 workplace The virus forced us to realize: Staying together apart has never been so easy

Note: Also watch for Jonathan Bartlett’s series coming up on how to set up online meetings (without the nerd who doesn’t want to come to your place just now anyway).

Comments

News, my thought is, go ZOOM. If you can, green screen the backdrop so a wallpaper can be put in. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2020
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The actions taken by governments in response to a virus less lethal than influenza has socialists salivating. They are not fond of individual rights and refer to anything limiting government as negative. People are being arrested for exercising their rights to worship as they see fit. Prohibiting the free exercise of religion is a fundamental right. People are being forbidden from exercising their right to peacefully assemble.BobRyan_{April 5, 2020
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Stalin was responsible for close to 100,000,000 non-combat related human lives lost. People leave out the numbers of those who simply disappeared or sent to the gulags. Gulags were a death sentence without being a death sentence. Simply put, most didn't survive the conditions. Mao comes in a close second at about 80,000,000. Che Guevarra was a mass murderer before he ever met Castro, who had no shortage of blood on his hands. The pursuit of Communism leads to blood and misery. The only ones who are not miserable are the privileged, who never miss a meal. Venezuela is suffering the same results played out time and time again. For Communism to work, evolution must exist. This means people are nothing more than animals and no different slaughtering man than beast. Socialists do not care about human suffering anymore than they care about the suffering of any other animal. The believe people must be controlled through government force.BobRyan_{April 5, 2020
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Ah, and do not forget the prevalence of depression and suicide among the Western population, including children. They are indoctrinad since birth to 'know' their lives are purposeless and meaningless.Truthfreedom_{April 5, 2020
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The trail of blood that atheism has left is unending.Truthfreedom_{April 5, 2020
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@2 Bornagain77:
Just how violent and repressive can atheism be?,,, In the past century, a number of nations have been governed by explicitly atheist governments. Atheist governments murdered more than 100 million people during the 20th century.,,,
Outside of utero. Let's add hundreds of millions of inside the utero killings.Truthfreedom_{April 5, 2020
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Jim Thibodeau, and it is good thing that 'wackadoodle' and 'dumbass' Darwinian biologists are not in charge of finding a cure for the Corona virus. We would never find a cure. Darwinian explanations, for all intents and purposes, are completely useless in developing medical cures and/or therapeutics. Jerry Coyne himself admitted, “Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably.”
“Truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.” (Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin: Does it matter whether evolution has any commercial applications?,” reviewing The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life by David P. Mindell, in Nature, 442:983-984 (August 31, 2006).)
And as the late Philip Skell pointed out.
“Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming’s discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.” Philip S. Skell – (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. – Why Do We Invoke Darwin? – 2005 http://www.discovery.org/a/2816
Well if, as Coyne himself pointed out, Darwinian evolution is not helping us to develop new vaccines, then exactly what is helping us? Well that, obviously, would be humans intelligently designing new vaccines, via empirical evidence and various ‘rational design’ strategies:
Vaccines: From Empirical Development to Rational Design – 2012 Excerpt: most currently available vaccines were empirically designed. In this review, we discuss why rational design of vaccines is not only desirable but also necessary. We introduce recent developments towards specifically tailored antigens, adjuvants, and delivery systems, and discuss the methodological gaps and lack of knowledge still hampering true rational vaccine design. Finally, we address the potential and limitations of different strategies and technologies for advancing vaccine development. https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003001
And as Michael Egnor pointed out, “Evolutionary explanations by themselves are worthless to medicine. All medical treatments are based on detailed proximate explanations.”
Darwinian Medicine and Proximate and Evolutionary Explanations – Michael Egnor – neurosurgeon – June 2011 Excerpt: 4) Evolutionary explanations by themselves are worthless to medicine. All medical treatments are based on detailed proximate explanations. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/darwinian_medicine_and_proxima047701.html
And as Dr. Egnor also recently pointed out, "Medical science is remarkably successful.,,, all without Darwin."
The Myth of “Darwinian Medicine” - Michael Egnor - April 3, 2020 Excerpt: Medical science is remarkably successful. Antibiotics, cybernetics, cancer chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, hip replacements, heart transplants, and a host of near-miraculous advances have greatly extended our lifespan and improved the quality of our lives — all without Darwin. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/04/the-myth-of-darwinian-medicine/
As well I note that modern hospitals themselves owe their origin to the Christian ethic of taking care of those who were sick. (Hospitals certainly do not owe their origin to atheists such as yourself JT!)
The Christian Origins of Hospitals - February 6, 2012 Excerpt: Albert Jonsen, University of Washington historian of medicine, maintains: “the second great sweep of medical history begins at the end of the fourth century, with the founding of the first Christian hospital at Caesarea in Cappadocia, and concludes at the end of the fourteenth century, with medicine well ensconced in the universities and in the public life of the emerging nations of Europe.”,,, “During these centuries the Christian faith . . . permeated all aspects of life in the West. The very conception of medicine, as well as its practice, was deeply touched by the doctrine and discipline of the Church. This theological and ecclesiastical influence manifestly shaped the ethics of medicine, but it even indirectly affected its science since, as its missionaries evangelized the peoples of Western and Northern Europe, the Church found itself in a constant battle against the use of magic and superstition in the work of healing. It championed rational medicine, along with prayer, to counter superstition.” https://biblemesh.com/blog/the-christian-origins-of-hospitals/
Moreover, “almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all.”
“In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all.” Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005 “While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one.” Adam S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, Introduction to “Evolutionary Processes” – (2000).
In short, there simply is no such thing as ‘Darwinian science’. If it is Darwinian it ain't real empirical science. If it is real empirical science, it ain't Darwinian. All 'real' science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism., (i.e. ‘materialistic science’). From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science itself, (namely that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality), to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results themselves, from top to bottom, science itself is certainly not to be considered a ‘natural’ endeavor of man. Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever found just laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analyzed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial logic and immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place. Again, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism. Moreover, in so far as Darwinian speculations have influenced science and medicine at large, those speculations have always been detrimental to science and medicine, i.e. for instance the false predictions of junk DNA and vestigial organs,, etc.. etc… As well, the consequences for societies at large, from ‘Darwinian speculations’, have been even worse yet,
A Dehumanizing Ideology Unsurprisingly Catalyzes Violence – Michael Egnor – August 7, 2016 Excerpt: And it is precisely the metaphysical commitments Coyne has championed that have catalyzed atheist violence — the denial of an objective moral law, the denial of eternal accountability for transgressions, the reduction of human beings to animals or even to meat robots, deprived of free will or of any claim to human exceptionalism. These are all tenets of atheist belief, and Coyne himself is one of the loudest salesman for the dehumanizing ideology inherent to atheism. Just how violent and repressive can atheism be?,,, In the past century, a number of nations have been governed by explicitly atheist governments. Atheist governments murdered more than 100 million people during the 20th century.,,, Looking at modern history, we see: Christian culture creates reasonable and tolerant democracies. Islamic regimes create repressive theocracies. Atheist regimes create totalitarian hellholes. The denial of free will and the other anti-human inferences inherent to atheism are not merely theoretical affronts to humanity. The fact is that atheism is the most violent ideology in the 20th century, and given its short run and unprecedented rate of state-sanctioned murder, it is also the most violent and repressive ideology in human history. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/08/a_dehumanizing103055.html Darwin on Marx – by Richard William Nelson | Apr 18, 2010 Excerpt: Marx and Engels immediately recognized the significance of Darwin’s theory. Within weeks of the publication of The Origin of Species in November 1859, Engels wrote to Marx – “Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done…. One does, of course, have to put up with the crude English method.” Marx wrote back to Engels on December 19, 1860 – “This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.” The Origin of Species became the natural cause basis for Marx’s emerging class struggle movement. In a letter to comrade Ferdinand Lassalle, on January 16, 1861, Marx wrote – “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.” Marx inscribed “sincere admirer” in Darwin’s copy of Marx’s first volume of Das Kapital in 1867. The importance of the theory of evolution for Communism was critical. In Das Kapital, Marx wrote – “Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature’s Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention?” To acknowledge Darwin’s influence, Marx asked to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. https://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2010/04/darwin-on-marx/
Thus Jim Thibodeau you may call your very own uncle and other Christians "wackadoodles" and "dumbass" when and if they forsake the benefits of modern medicine, but their beliefs, whatever harm they may have caused to themselves and family members, pales in comparison to the horror that has been brought about by Darwinian ideology. That you would, day in and day out, defend such an insane ideology. which has caused so much harm to humanity. is what is truly "wackadoodle" and "dumbass" Jim Thibodeau. The pot calling the kettle black is not even a good metaphor in this instance since the comparison between Christianity and Darwinian evolution is not even in the same ballpark in terms of the harm caused by each.bornagain77_{April 5, 2020
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A year from now we’ll have a vaccine and there will be wackadoodles insisting on not taking it. Good thing they’ve told my dumbass Seventh Day Adventist uncle that vaccines are OK. He tried to deny his kid insulin back in the day when it came from pigs.Jim Thibodeau_{April 5, 2020
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