Bethesda, Md., Thurs., May 6, 2010 - Researchers have produced the first whole genome sequence of the 3 billion letters in the Neanderthal genome, and the initial analysis suggests that up to 2 percent of the DNA in the genome of present-day humans outside of Africa originated in Neanderthals or in Neanderthals' ancestors.
The international research team, which includes researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, reports its findings in the May 7, 2010, issue of Science.
The current fossil record suggests that Neanderthals, or Homo neanderthalensis, diverged from the primate line that led to present-day humans, or Homo sapiens, some 400,000 years ago in Africa. Neanderthals migrated north into Eurasia, where they became a geographically isolated group that evolved independently from the line that became modern humans in Africa. They lived in Europe and western Asia, as far east as southern Siberia and as far south as the Middle East.
Approximately 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared. That makes them the most recent, extinct relative of modern humans, as both Neanderthals and humans share a common ancestor from about 800,000 years ago. Chimpanzees diverged from the same primate line some 5 million to 7 million years ago.
[...]
To understand the genomic differences between present-day humans and Neanderthals, the researchers compared subtle differences in the Neanderthal genome to the genomes found in DNA from the five people, as well as to chimpanzee DNA. An analysis of the genetic variation showed that Neanderthal DNA is 99.7 percent identical to present-day human DNA, and 98.8 percent identical to chimpanzee DNA. Present-day human DNA is also 98.8 percent identical to chimpanzee.
.. as you know percentages vary a bit over multi articles .. even one suggested human today could be down to 94% of chimpanzee, but the one above is the clearest comparison found ..
LOL, it's too bad God cannot clarify anything for those of us who strive, as much as possible, to exist with a reality based consciousness.
Under the Sea, a Missing Link in the Evolution of Complex Cells
A microbe that might help explain evolutionary history was found near Loki's Castle, a hydrothermal vent field along the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge. Credit R.B. Pedersen/Centre for Geobiology/University of Bergen
The researchers are trying to create conditions in which microbes that might help explain evolutionary history will survive and even grow. Credit R.B. Pedersen/Centre for Geobiology/University of Bergen
By Carl Zimmer MAY 6, 2015
Unlike bacteria, humans have big, complex cells, packed with nuclei containing DNA and mitochondria that produce energy. All so-called eukaryotes share our cellular complexity: animals, plants, fungi, even single-celled protozoans like amoebae.
Scientists estimate that the first eukaryotes evolved about 2 billion years ago, in one of the greatest transitions in the history of life. But there is little evidence of this momentous event, no missing link that helps researchers trace the evolution of life from simple microbes to eukaryotes..
“This is a genuine breakthrough,” said Eugene Koonin [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Koonin/ ], an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information who was not involved in the research. “It’s almost too good to be true.”
In the 1970s, scientists got their first major clue about the origins of eukaryotes. Carl Woese, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois, and his colleagues compared genetic material from different species to reconstruct the tree of life. Their analysis indicated that there were three major branches.
One branch included bacteria, among them such familiar species as E. coli. A second branch, which Dr. Woese dubbed archaea, included lesser-known species of microbes that live in extreme environments such as swamp bottoms and hot springs. Eukaryotes, which form the third branch, are more closely related to archaea than bacteria.
Over the past 40 years, as scientists have discovered new species of microbes and developed powerful ways to compare their DNA, the tree of life has come into sharper focus. A number of recent studies have indicated that eukaryotes are not actually a third separate branch. Instead, they evolved from archaea.
Thijs J. G. Ettema, a microbiologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, was struck by the fact that the species of archaea most closely related to eukaryotes lived in the deep seafloor. It was possible that even closer relatives might be waiting to be discovered there.
By a stroke of good fortune, Steffen L. Jorgensen, a microbiologist at the University of Bergen, had been digging up sediment from two miles below the surface of the Arctic Ocean. A preliminary look at the sediment revealed archaea living in some layers. Dr. Jorgensen offered Dr. Ettema some of the sediment to investigate more closely.
Dr. Ettema and his colleagues set out to extract the DNA from the sediment and analyze it. But it was a risky undertaking.
Dr. Jorgensen could provide them with only 10 grams of sediment — an amount that could easily fit in a teaspoon. Dr. Ettema also knew that this spoonful of muck would not have many microbes in it.
In their cold, dark, starved environment, these microbes barely grow. By comparison, a spoonful of ordinary backyard soil may have a million times more microbes.
It was clear that Dr. Ettema and his colleagues would have to use up just about all the sediment to find enough DNA to analyze. If they made a blunder along the way, they would have nothing left to study.
“There was just one shot,” Dr. Ettema said.
Fortunately, Dr. Ettema and his colleagues succeeded. It turned out that the sediment contained DNA from a lineage of archaea unlike any previously found. The scientists dubbed it Lokiarchaeum, named for a hydrothermal vent called Loki’s Castle near the location where the archaea were found.
Analyzing the DNA, the researchers found that Lokiarchaeum is far more closely related to eukaryotes than any other known species of archaea. But even more surprising was that it had genes for many traits only found before in eukaryotes.
Among these genes were many that build special compartments inside eukaryote cells. Inside these compartments, called lysosomes, eukaryote cells can destroy defective proteins.
All eukaryotes also share a cellular skeleton that they constantly build and tear down to change their shape. Dr. Ettema and his colleagues found many genes in Lokiarchaeum that encode the proteins required to build the skeleton.
It’s possible that Lokiarchaeum use their skeleton to crawl over surfaces as protozoans do. Lokiarchaeum’s genes also suggest that it can swallow up molecules or microbes as eukaryotes do.
All in all, Lokiarchaeum was much more complex than other archaea and bacteria, although not as complex as true eukaryotes. The new study indicates that they lacked a nucleus and mitochondria.
But Dr. Ettema’s discovery illuminates how a Lokiarchaeum-like ancestor could have evolved into the first full-blown eukaryotes.
Once the ancestors of eukaryotes evolved a complex skeleton, the next major step may have been the origin of mitochondria.
Scientists have long known that mitochondria evolved from bacteria. They contain their own DNA, which is more like that of free-living bacteria than the genes in the cell’s nucleus.
A number of researchers have proposed that the ancestors of eukaryotes swallowed up free-living bacteria. The bacteria became mitochondria, providing fuel for their host cell.
Lokiarchaeum, with its potential to graze for microbes, is precisely the sort of microbe required in this scenario.
Once early eukaryotes acquired mitochondria, they gained the energy to fuel a much bigger, more complex cell. In 2006, Dr. Koonin and William Martin of the University of Düsseldorf proposed that mitochondria triggered the evolution of a nucleus.
The two sets of genes could wreak havoc if they interfered with each other. Dr. Koonin and Dr. Martin proposed that eukaryotes gradually build a barrier to keep them separated.
As revealing as Lokiarchaeum’s genes are, there are limits to what they can tell scientists. “We don’t even know how big the cells are,” said Dr. Ettema.
Dr. Ettema and his colleagues are trying to study the Lokiarchaeum microbes themselves now. They’ve gotten new sediment samples, and they can detect the microbes inside them. But the microbes die off before the scientists can learn much about them.
So the researchers are trying to create conditions in which the microbes will survive and even grow, mimicking the cold temperatures and high pressure of Lokiarchaeum’s natural environment. But they are still trying to figure out other factors the microbes need to thrive, such as what sort of carbon they feed on.
“It’s definitely not easy,” said Dr. Ettema, “but we’re not giving up. There are so many questions — this is a whole new biology we have to study.”
By Jacqueline Howard Posted: 05/20/2015 9:35 am EDT Updated: 05/20/2015 10:59 am EDT
In northern Chile's Atacama Desert -- known as the driest place on Earth [ http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0308/feature3/ ] -- a region called María Elena South is so incredibly arid that scientists thought life as we know it could never survive there.
Now we know otherwise -- and that could have implications that extend beyond our own planet.
A team of scientists in Chile recently found several bacterial species lurking in the soil at María Elena South and other regions in the desert that were once thought to exceed the so-called "dry limit" for life.
"We were indeed surprised by finding microbial life at María Elena South," Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science [ http://www.astrobiology-in-chile.com/ ] in Santiago, who was involved in the discoveries, told The Huffington Post in an email. "After this work we are not sure whether there is a dry limit for life on Earth."
To determine the microbial content of the desert's extremely dry environments, the researchers analyzed DNA extracted from soil samples that represent various regions in the desert. They conducted a so-called "denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis," which is a common technique used to examine microbial community composition [ http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-540-77587-4_323 ].
An analysis of the data showed a surprising diversity of bacteria, primarily from the groups Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Acido-bacteria.
The researchers also used micro-sensors to measure the temperature and relative humidity [ http://www.astrobio.net/topic/origins/extreme-life/driest-place-on-earth-hosts-life/ ] of the soil samples and atmosphere -- confirming that the desert is indeed the driest and exceeds the previously held dry limit for life, Astrobiology Magazine reported.
The researchers found that the relative humidity of the soil one meter deep at María Elena South is around 14 percent, which matches the lowest humidity measurements taken by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory at the red planet's Gale Crater.
"Since we found several types of microbial life in a site which is as dry as Mars, in principle there should be no environmental constraints to find similar life forms in the Martian soils," Azua-Bustos said in the email. "Since we have discovered a good Mars analog model, future detection instruments and robots to be sent to [the] red planet may be tested here in advance of being launched to Mars."
The researchers are now seeking environments on Earth that are even drier than María Elena South, Azua-Bustos said in the email. They have had no luck yet.
Now, a four-year expedition that sampled microbes from across the world’s oceans is bringing the mechanisms of that change into focus.
These tiny creatures, which may be among the oldest on Earth, together absorb carbon dioxide, make oxygen, break down waste and nourish other creatures. And they are profoundly affected by water temperature, according to a series of five studies published Thursday in Science [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/873.full ] about the voyage of the schooner Tara.
“Temperature is the most important environmental factor determining the composition of these communities,” said Chris Bowler, an author on all five studies and a genomics expert with the Department of Biology of the École Normale Supérieure and the National Center for Scientific Research in France.
“This would imply that climate change, warming of the oceans, is going to have a strong impact on these organisms and the functions these organisms perform for the well-being of our planet,” Dr. Bowler said.
The Tara expedition’s findings, researchers said, have added an order of magnitude to what we know of the Tree of Life, vastly expanding its base. The microbes studied range from viruses and bacteria too small to see under a microscope to the single-celled amoebas or paramecia that children study in biology classes.
Research on the diversity of these creatures was virtually impossible until a few years ago, with the advent of relatively quick and affordable genetic analysis, said Stephen Palumbi, a Stanford University marine biologist who was not involved in the Tara studies but wrote a commentary that accompanied them [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/865.summary ].
Until about 50 years ago, scientists did not even realize that the specks they saw when they examined seawater under a microscope were alive, he said.
The new research showed that these microbes are in a constant dance with one another, collaborating and battling just below the water’s surface. Their interactions keep the ecosystem in balance, preventing any one species from dominating the seas.
“A lot of what we didn’t really ever see before in the ocean are predators and parasites, zombies and vampires that are floating through this incredible set of diversity, battling it out,” Dr. Palumbi said. “All these tiny little critters add up to something that is really a part of the way our planet operates.”
The vast genetic diversity of the oceans impressed many of the scientists involved in the Tara Oceans project, a consortium that involved 18 institutions.
The researchers identified roughly 40 million genes in the upper layers of the world’s oceans. The human gut microbiome, in comparison, is known to have only about 10 million genes, said Shinichi Sunagawa of the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg, Germany, who was a first author on one of the papers.
The raw data produced by the Tara expedition should allow scientists eventually to predict how microbial life will change as a function of changes in water temperature, said Eric Karsenti, a cell biologist and scientific director of the consortium.
One of the new papers tracks the effects warming waters have on bacterial diversity, suggesting that other microbes, like viruses and single-celled organisms, are probably affected as well. Future analysis should allow researchers to build predictive models for what will happen to microbial communities as water temperature changes, Dr. Karsenti said, and how much that will affect oxygen production and carbon dioxide absorption.
Life on Earth started in the oceans, so the Tara data also provides new insights into creatures directly descended from those of a billion years ago, Dr. Bowler said.
“By matching DNA-level information with what these organisms look like, we can learn more about them, more about how they work, and hopefully learn more about our own origins as well,” he said.
The 110-foot research schooner Tara traveled as far north as the Arctic and as far south as Antarctica from 2009 to 2013. It had to evade pirates [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/piracy_at_sea/index.html ] off the coast of Saudi Arabia, path-blocking ice in the Arctic and hurricane-force winds in the Magellan Straits linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
“It was an incredible time,” said the Tara Foundation’s executive director, Romain Troublé. As it journeyed across the oceans, Mr. Troublé and his team negotiated permission from more than 20 countries for the schooner to sample and dock.
Researchers had to follow precise protocols at each of 210 sites, where they remained for two days at a stretch, battling the wind and weather to scoop up samples from the fragile boundary between the sea and the air.
As the Tara docked in ports along the way, expedition scientists turned into cheerleaders for the sea, educating children and adults about the creatures they live near but do not know.
The research team, which totaled more than 200 people, included experts from 35 countries and with more than 20 specialties. Members have begun analyzing their 35,000 samples, with just 579 explored in these five papers. The data will be made public and accessible to scientists across the globe.
The boat, which has continued to sample in the Arctic and the Mediterranean since 2013, will sail up the Seine this year to highlight ocean security at climate change negotiations in Paris.
“Nobody is speaking for the oceans,” Mr. Troublé said.
Some of our genes can work in these yeast cells. Alamy
By Mitch Leslie 21 May 2015 2:00 pm
Yeast and humans have been evolving along separate paths for 1 billion years, but there’s still a strong family resemblance, a new study demonstrates. After inserting more than 400 human genes into yeast cells one at a time, researchers found that almost 50% of the genes functioned and enabled the fungi to survive.
“It’s quite amazing,” says evolutionary biologist Matthew Hahn of Indiana University, Bloomington, who wasn’t connected to the study. “It means that the same genes can carry out the same functions after 1 billion years of divergence.”
Scientists have known for years that humans share molecular similarities with the microorganisms that help make our bread and beer. Our genome contains counterparts to one-third of yeast genes. And on average, the amino acid sequences of comparable yeast and human proteins overlap by 32%.
One example of shared genes piqued the interest of systems biologist Edward Marcotte of the University of Texas, Austin, and colleagues. Yeasts are single-celled and bloodless, yet they carry genes that orchestrate the growth of new blood vessels in vertebrates. In yeast, these genes help cells respond to stress. “That got us questioning the extent to which the yeast and human genes are doing the same thing,” Marcotte says.
To find out, he and his team decided to check systematically whether human genes can operate in yeast. The researchers picked 414 genes that the fungi can’t live without—genes that help control metabolism and dispose of cellular junk, for example. Then they slipped a human version of each gene into yeast cells whose own copy of the gene had been turned down, turned off, or removed. If the cells grew on culture plates, the team inferred that the human gene could fill in for its yeast equivalent.
The researchers determined that 176 of the human genes allowed yeast to survive the loss of a vital gene. “About half of these [genes] can be swapped … between humans and yeast and they still work,” Marcotte says. “It beautifully illustrates the common heritage of living things.”
He and his colleagues next asked what distinguishes the replaceable genes. They evaluated more than 100 possible influences, from the length of the gene to the abundance of its protein. The degree of DNA similarity didn’t necessarily indicate whether a human gene could stand in for a yeast gene, Marcotte and colleagues reveal online today in Science. Instead, they found, when a bunch of genes work closely together, either most of them are replaceable or most of them aren’t [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/921 ]. For example, every gene in a pathway that instigates DNA copying was irreplaceable, but almost all the genes in the molecular pathway that in humans manufactures cholesterol could be swapped.
“I was impressed by the amount of work” the researchers put in, says molecular geneticist Bernard Dujon of the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Although the results of the study weren’t surprising, he says, “I’m glad somebody has done it.”
The team showed only that yeast equipped with human genes could survive, not that they were vigorous and could compete with unaltered strains, cautions Eugene Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Maryland. Nonetheless, he says, the study provides strong support for the idea—which some researchers have challenged—that comparable genes in different organisms have similar functions.
Marcotte says the findings suggest further ways to harness yeast for research. Scientists often study individual human genes by inserting them into yeast cells. But they could also transplant groups of interacting genes, creating more humanlike yeast that would be useful for studying new drugs or molecular circuits that go awry in diseases.
Creationist in public, biologist at home? Above, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks at the Republican Party of Iowa’s Lincoln Dinner on May 16, 2015, in Des Moines. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Louisiana students are suffering for Bobby Jindal’s presidential ambitions.
A few minutes after Husser’s joke, the bill that he had been supporting—the badly misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act—was passed out of committee, and Jindal later signed it. It was the summer before my sophomore year at Baton Rouge High School.
I remember the day that this act became law. I was sitting in the car, pulling off my shin guards after soccer tryouts, when a family friend, the editorial writer for our local paper, the Advocate, walked by. I heard him ask my dad, “Did you hear that Jindal signed the creationism bill?”
I couldn’t believe it. For most of my life, my family has known Bobby Jindal. He and my father had worked together under Gov. Mike Foster, and my parents had been friends with Jindal and his wife, Supriya. The Jindals still send my family a Christmas card every year. When Jindal first ran for governor in 2003, when I was a fifth-grader, I talked up his campaign to my classmates at the University Lab School, the same school that Jindal’s own children now attend.
For the next seven years, the Louisiana Science Education Act, the creationism law, became my crucible. I began a campaign to repeal the law, a campaign that has the support of 78 Nobel laureates and thousands of other scientists and science advocates. It has been such a significant factor in my life that last spring I made it permanent and tattooed it on my ribcage: the bill number as a strand of DNA. (Sorry, Grandparents.)
I can’t forgive Jindal for signing the creationism law—once, in high school, I was on the same plane flight as Jindal, and my father warned me, “If the governor says ‘hi,’ do not be rude to him”—but the law was not his brainchild. Its language was written by the Discovery Institute, a creationist think tank, which drafted a “Model Academic Freedom Act [ http://www.academicfreedompetition.com/freedom.php ]” that became the Louisiana Science Education Act.
“Academic freedom” has been a classic creationist smokescreen for promoting religion. Barbara Forrest, the foremost historian of modern creationism, told me, “ ‘Academic freedom’ is creationist code language for teaching creationism in public school science classes.” She traced it back to 1979, when “creationist attorney Wendell Bird included it in his ‘Resolution for Balanced Presentation of Evolution and Scientific Creationism,’ which became the basis for the ‘balanced treatment’ legislation.”
This older “balanced treatment” legislation (predating the Louisiana Science Education Act) mandated that creationism be taught wherever evolution was taught, and it was passed in a number of states, including Louisiana. The Louisiana law, the Balanced Treatment for Evolution-Science and Creation-Science Act, was thrown out by the Supreme Court in the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling in 1987, which invalidated the teaching of creationism in public schools. Forrest noted that the “Supreme Court explicitly rejected the Louisiana law's academic freedom rationale” in the Edwards ruling.
Jindal has embraced this academic freedom motif when discussing creationism and the Louisiana Science Education Act. I asked Jindal spokeswoman Shannon Bates about why the governor believed it was appropriate to teach creationism in public schools, and she told me, “We think children should learn every notion with regard to the origin of the universe and mankind—evolution, creationism, Big Bang theory, you name it.” In a discussion with NBC’s Education Nation about the Louisiana Science Education Act, Jindal said, “Let’s teach [our kids] about intelligent design … what are we scared of?”
But what are Jindal’s own children actually learning? Bates told me that “the governor hopes his children are exposed to all kinds of different science and theories.” Whatever the governor may hope, his kids are attending one of the best schools in Louisiana, and they are only being taught evolution. I know, because I had their seventh-grade biology teacher, Catherine Cummins, myself, and she makes a point to emphasize real science.
Maybe Jindal does parent the way he practices politics when it comes to his own kids. Last fall, when Stephen Colbert criticized [ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bobby-jindal-snarks-back-at-colbert-over-evolution/ ; video ( http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/h1yge9/highlights-of-the-values-voter-summit ) embedded] Jindal’s creationist “retreat from knowledge,” Jindal shot back. He tweeted, “missed [your] show last night, was too busy pulling out pages on evolution in my kids' biology textbooks." I know Jindal was trying to make a joke, but for years I’ve watched his creationist policies deny students across Louisiana a science education, so it felt like it could be true.
I’m sure Jindal’s kids are intelligent, capable, and hardworking. And they're learning evolution. In fact, in the governor, they probably have an excellent science tutor. They might even go to Brown University and major in biology, just like their father. I just hope that unlike their dad, they never embrace pseudoscience because of their presidential ambition.
How Republican presidential candidates are getting away with denying evolution
Ben Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon, has rejected the theory of evolution. Photograph: Zach Roberts/ZUMA Press/Corbis
Experts voice concerns that science ‘ends up being a proxy for identity politics’ as presidential candidates play to their conservative base
Alan Yuhas in New York Tuesday 5 May 2015 08.00 EDT
A neurosurgeon who believes the human brain is too complex for anyone but God, an ophthalmologist who refuses to talk about the age of the Earth, and a Harvard-trained lawyer beloved by creationists are running for president of the United States, raising the prospect of an election without science.
Retired doctor Ben Carson joined [ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/04/ben-carson-formally-announces-president ] senators Rand Paul (the ophthalmologist) and Ted Cruz (the Harvard alum) on the campaign trail on Monday, vying for the Republican nomination against each other and other confirmed and likely candidates including Senator Marco Rubio, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.
“I think on issues like climate change and evolution it ends up being a proxy for identity politics,” said Michael Halpern, a program manager for the nonprofit and nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “You’re not actually talking about the science, you’re talking about values.”
“Carbon dating, all these things,” he said “really doesn’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.
“Dealing with the complexity of the human brain,” Carson continued, “and somebody says that came from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals? I don’t think so.”
Curiously, Carson did not reject natural selection – the engine that drives evolution – saying he “totally believe[s]” that useful genetic traits are more often passed on than less useful traits. But he could not draw the connection between that process acting over millennia and the human eye: “Give me a break. According to their scheme – boom, it had to occur overnight.”
Instead, he suggested an “intelligent creator” gave organisms the ability to adapt “so he doesn’t have to start over every 50 years creating all over again”.
But Halpern suggested that the inch toward acceptance was progress: “Dodging questions about climate change is no longer an acceptable path forward, so Republicans [ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans ] and Democrats are shifting to talking about what to do about the impacts and away from the science itself.”
The secret science bill would require the EPA to release the data it uses to devise regulations – an aim seemingly inoffensive enough, except that the EPA often relies on confidential medical records whose release could land it in court. Other bills [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/28/the-gops-plan-to-stop-environmental-protections-attack-science/ ] would require congressional approval for all new regulation, or give Congress the power to decide which scientists get to advise agencies.
“Wherever science threatens a vested interest, whether that be on greenhouse gas emissions or ideological issues like emergency contraception, you see an attempt to politicize science,” Halpern said.
The group Science Debate [ http://www.sciencedebate.org/ ], noting that scientists weigh in on “economic, environmental, health, legal and moral implications”, plans to foist questions on the candidates in the coming months, in order to make them clarify their positions.
GOP Works to Defund Studies So They Can Deny Climate Change
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) Tom Williams via Getty Images
By Richard Zombeck Posted: 05/14/2015 10:06 am EDT Updated: 05/18/2015 [c.] 4:25 am EDT
Rather than address or even face the impending issues surrounding climate change, the GOP has chosen instead to stick their fingers in their ears. Not only do they want to simply ignore the problem, but they are trying to make it difficult for the rest of us to even know that it exists.
Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), approved a bill that would slash at least $300 million from NASA's Earth-science budget. As Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) pointed out [ http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/240549-congress-we-have-a-problem ], "Earth science, of course, includes climate science." Rep. Smith claims that the White House's NASA budget request favored the Earth sciences "at the expense of the other science divisions and human and robotic space exploration." That actually makes perfect sense considering that the impending looming disaster might need to be examined a little more closely. You may very well want to increase funding into that area. It's like saying you're not going to put out a fire at a particular house because you want to keep the other ones moist.
Once again, by defunding NASA's Earth-science program, the GOP has taken willful ignorance one giant leap for mankind, into the stratosphere. This bill essentially ensures not only that climate studies be ignored but that potentially useful data won't even be collected.
The NASA authorization bill making its way through the House of Representatives guts our Earth science program and threatens to set back generations worth of progress in better understanding our changing climate, and our ability to prepare for and respond to earthquakes, droughts, and storm events.
NASA leads the world in the exploration of and study of planets, and none is more important than the one on which we live.
In addition, the bill under-funds the critical space technologies that the nation will need to lead in space, including on our journey to Mars.
Training to be a weather forecaster is completely different than studying to be a climate scientist. For years this divergence in knowledge has left weather casters with a bad rap when it comes to incorporating climate change into their coverage.
Marshall goes on to hint not so subtly that the study and understanding of the climate and its changes is a matter of national security -- something the GOP claims to be in support of:
I served on a National Academy of Science panel that examined national security implications of climate change on U.S. Naval Operations. This study was commissioned by the Navy itself. We found that Naval Operations depend on accurate knowledge of ocean-atmospheric processes (e.g., ocean currents, changes in sea ice or level, salinity, and so on). Since most of Earth is ocean or inaccessible terrain, satellite platforms are essential for military and civilian operations. This is even more critical as the United States takes over leadership of the Arctic Council.
In an interview with VICE News founder Shane Smith released March 16, Obama discussed how politics have made climate change one of "the hardest problems to solve [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a01Rg2g2Z8 (next below, as embedded; with {over 5,000} comments)]."
Smith pointed out the idiotic stunt by Inhofe, which was meant to show how unseasonably cold it was in February.
"Throwing a snowball would be funny if it weren't the fact that he's chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment," Smith said.
"That's disturbing," Obama responds.
Obama also suggested that Congress is slow to act because of campaign donations.
"In some cases, you have elected officials who are shills for the oil companies or the fossil fuel industry, and there's a lot of money involved," he said, adding that committees that oversee energy policy are typically "populated by folks from areas that pump a lot of oil and a lot of gas."
In the meantime, places like Florida are seeing rising seas that threaten local homes, businesses and the economy.
The issue presents a public works challenge that could cost billions here and nationwide. [...] Insurance giant Swiss Re has estimated that the economy in southeast Florida could sustain $33 billion in damage from climate-related damage in 2030.
The article also quotes Eric Buermann, a former general counsel to the Republican Party of Florida and a former water district governing board member, as saying, "If I were governor, I'd be out there talking about [sea level rise] every day. Unless you're going to build a sea wall around South Florida, what's the plan?" So what is the plan indeed?
Gov. Rick Scott is doing absolutely nothing. In fact, he's actually made it more difficult to even discuss climate change in the state, barring anyone who works for the state from mentioning it:
For example, an April 28, 2014, email approving a DEP scientist's request to participate in a National Geographic story came with a warning: "Approved. Make no claims as to cause ... stay with the research you are doing, of course," the DEP manager, Pamela Phillips, warned.
And like Congress' attempt to make it financially unfeasible to study or do something about the problem, Scott has applied a similar strategy to his own state:
Republican Gov. Rick Scott is skeptical of man-made climate change and has put aside the task of preparing for sea level rise, an Associated Press review of thousands of emails and documents pertaining to the state's preparations for rising seas found.
Despite warnings from water experts and climate scientists about risks to cities and drinking water, skepticism over sea level projections and climate change science has hampered planning efforts at all levels of government, the records showed. Florida's environmental agencies under Scott have been downsized and retooled, making them less effective at coordinating sea level rise planning in the state, the documents showed.
Members of the GOP continue to deny that the climate is changing or that humans have anything to do with it. There's a pretty extensive list of what some of them have said to defend their denial over at billmoyers.com [ http://billmoyers.com/2015/02/03/congress-climate-deniers/ ]. Here are just a few of the choice ones:
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas): "Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science."
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin): "I think that the science is inconclusive on this."
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama): "I'm approaching the issue with a healthy degree of skepticism. If the evidence is there to prove it, then so be it."
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky): "I would challenge [President Obama] to show us the linkage -- the undeniable linkage -- between droughts and the change of weather, and some kind of human activity."
While it may make sense logically that members of Congress would hold out on forming an opinion while waiting for evidence, it makes absolutely no sense that they would then work fervently to eliminate any means of getting that evidence -- unless of course they have no interest in the truth or evidence. Why else would tossing a snowball on the floor of the Senate represent positive proof that climate change isn't happening?
Science, in its effort to unravel the rules governing the workings of nature, is all about asking the right questions. These questions, whose answers may be forever elusive, nevertheless frame the direction of scientific research, sometimes for decades or longer. In the process, new unexpected discoveries are made that refine or even change what the questions are. The process has continued successfully for over 400 years, and shows no signs of abating.
At the same time, it is important to distinguish between those questions that are answerable in principle and those that are not, and also between those questions whose answers can be practically obtained in the near or medium term. Graduate students in physics, for example, often enter graduate school with grand goals of discovering the Theory of Everything. But, as my friend and Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek likes to say, what we really need is a Theory of Something!
With these issues as a guide, at the invitation of the editors of The Huffington Post, I list below a few of the burning questions that are driving the fields of cosmology and particle physics. The first two are being addressed by ongoing experiments that might shed significant light within the next decade. The last two are foundational questions whose resolution may be around the corner, but only if we are extremely lucky, or may take centuries if at all, depending on the kindness of nature as we probe it experimentally. Good ideas are much harder to come by than good experiments, so if a new good idea is required to resolve these foundational issues, all bets are off. It took a long time between Newton and Einstein to refine the theory of gravity after all.
What is the nature of Dark Matter?
Since the 1970's, when the evidence that the mass of our own galaxy, and indeed essentially all galaxies we can see, was dominated by some material other than stars and hot gas, the question of the nature of this 'dark matter' has played a central role in both cosmology and particle theory. As time progressed it became clear that dark matter dominates not only galaxies, but clusters of galaxies, and is over 10 times more abundant than all visible matter in the Universe.
With this abundance, arguments stemming from our understanding of the origin of light elements in the Big Bang imply that this material cannot be made of normal matter, i.e. matter comprised of protons, neutrons and electrons, the building blocks of all atoms. If instead, it is made from a new type of elementary particle that doesn't interact electromagnetically, dark matter would exist as a diffuse gas or particles permeating throughout galaxies, including our own. As a result, it is not just "out there," it is "in here," going through you and me, the whole earth, and the computer I type this on.
This possibility provides both a challenge and an opportunity. Without knowing the identity of dark matter, attempts to detect it directly on earth require making some educated guesses about what it might be. However, there is at least the possibility of detecting it directly! Such detection could reveal not only the nature of what makes up the dominant matter in the universe, but also could tell us something fundamental about elementary particles and forces.
It is therefore particularly appropriate that there are two different approaches to detecting dark matter: (1) deep underground detectors hoping to detect minuscule signals from the rare dark matter particles that might actually scatter off an atomic nucleus and deposit energy, and (2) The Large Hadron Collider, which has turned on again, and may recreate briefly the conditions in the very early universe in which these new elementary particles were created, producing enough of them to be detected in collisions.
There is thus a race on right now, between direct detection of primordial dark matter underground, and the LHC, to see who might discover it first. Either set could easily announce a discovery this decade... Or, we may be wrong about its nature and need to go back to the drawing board.
Why is the Weak force Weak?
The Large Hadron Collider of course already has done more than search for dark matter. It did, after all, discover the Higgs particle, the last jewel in the crown that is the Standard Model of particle physics. Nevertheless, each new discovery in physics generates more questions. The Higgs endows the particles that convey the weak force with their masses. These in turn determine the nature of that force. But why does the Higgs exist at the scale it does? Why is the weak force so much weaker than, say, the strong force, and why are these forces, including electromagnetism, so much stronger than the force of gravity?
It is these questions that we hope the LHC will shed light on as it probes further, following its recent upgrade in energy and beam intensity. And interestingly, dark matter may play a role here as well. Perhaps the most interesting possible explanation of why the weak scale is what it is posits the existence of a new symmetry in nature, called Supersymmetry, that predicts a whole new set of elementary particles that have not yet been seen. The lightest of these could be absolutely stable, and is a prime candidate for dark matter. So, if the LHC discovers this particle it could not only unravel the mystery of dark matter, but also perhaps shed light on Supersymmetry, and beyond that, on the unification of all forces. Thus, we are waiting with great anticipation to what the LHC will report after its next year or two of operation.
Is Our Universe Unique?
Perhaps one of the most fundamental questions in physics, and indeed the question that Einstein himself mused about when he questioned whether 'God' had any choice in the creation of the universe (where of course he was speaking metaphorically and not literally), is whether our universe is unique, and whether the laws of physics are themselves unique and fixed. Would a small change in even one of the fundamental constants cause the whole edifice to crumble?
This question, while fundamental, may also seem completely inaccessible. After all, we only have access to our universe, so speculating about other universes may seem like pure metaphysics. This of course has not caused such speculation to disappear, and in fact, most extensions of the Standard Model of Particle physics suggest that our universe is not likely to be unique at all, and the perhaps the nature of elementary particles and fields that we observe may be due to pure chance.
What makes this question potentially more interesting is that we might get some indirect experimental hints of the existence of other universes, even if we may never directly observe them. Recently the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole claimed to detect gravitational waves from the very early universe. Unfortunately it appears that the signal was probably due to foreground noise from our own galaxy. Nevertheless, if future experiments definitively detect such a background it would provide evidence of a process in the very early universe called Inflation, which, besides explaining many features of our observed universe at large scales, generically creates many other universes in the process as well. If we could measure these waves precisely, we could probe the possible nature of Inflation precisely, and in so doing explore the physics that led to the generation of our observable universe, and possibly others. In that way, while we might never have direct access to other such possible universes, we might have strong indirect evidence of their existence.
What is the nature of Nothing?
I couldn't resist saving this for last, as it is, after all, the subject of my most recent book. But I don't want to get hung up here with the contentious definitions of nothing. Here I simply refer to empty space, and to the remarkable discovery 15 years or so ago that empty space contains most of the energy in the universe, for reasons we don't understand at all. This energy is causing the observed expansion of the universe to accelerate, and will ultimately determine the future of our universe. There are a host of astrophysical observations now underway to try and shed light on the mystery of this 'dark energy' as it has become known, but at present we are no closer to understanding its origin than we were when it was first discovered. Is it truly the 'quantum energy of the vacuum', or is it associated with some new invisible field permeating all of space, or perhaps to something even more exotic?
I expect that without a full theory of quantum gravity we won't be able to fully resolve this problem, and that may take centuries. But I have been wrong before, and perhaps one of the upcoming probes of the expansion of the universe will reveal a new wrinkle that will point us in the right direction. That is why we simply have to keep trying. You never know in advance.
This post is part of a series commemorating The Huffington Post's 10 Year Anniversary through expert opinions looking forward to the next decade in their respective fields. To see all of the posts in the series, read here [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/the-next-10/ ].
How the brain creates out-of-body experiences and religious epiphanies
Oliver Sacks Dec 12, 2012
There are many carefully documented accounts in the medical literature of intense, life-altering religious experience in epileptic seizures. Hallucinations of overwhelming intensity, sometimes accompanied by a sense of bliss and a strong feeling of the numinous, can occur especially with the so-called "ecstatic" seizures that may occur in temporal lobe epilepsy. Though such seizures may be brief, they can lead to a fundamental reorientation, a metanoia, in one's life. Fyodor Dostoevsky was prone to such seizures and described many of them, including this:
The air was filled with a big noise and I tried to move. I felt the heaven was going down upon the earth and that it engulfed me. I have really touched God. He came into me myself, yes God exists, I cried, and I don't remember anything else. You all, healthy people ... can't imagine the happiness which we epileptics feel during the second before our fit. ... I don't know if this felicity lasts for seconds, hours or months, but believe me, for all the joys that life may bring, I would not exchange this one.
A century later, Kenneth Dewhurst and A. W. Beard published a detailed report in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry of a bus conductor who had a sudden feeling of elation while collecting fares. They wrote:
He was suddenly overcome with a feeling of bliss. He felt he was literally in Heaven. He collected the fares correctly, telling his passengers at the same time how pleased he was to be in Heaven. ... He remained in this state of exaltation, hearing divine and angelic voices, for two days. Afterwards he was able to recall these experiences and he continued to believe in their validity. [Three years later] following three seizures on three successive days, he became elated again. He stated that his mind had "cleared." ... During this episode he lost his faith.
He now no longer believed in heaven and hell, in an afterlife, or in the divinity of Christ. This second conversion -- to atheism -- carried the same excitement and revelatory quality as the original religious conversion.
More recently, Orrin Devinsky and his colleagues have been able to make video EEG recordings in patients who are having such seizures, and have observed an exact synchronization of the epiphany with a spike in epileptic activity in the temporal lobes (more commonly the right temporal lobe).
Ecstatic seizures are rare -- they only occur in something like 1 or 2 percent of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. But the last half century has seen an enormous increase in the prevalence of other states sometimes permeated by religious joy and awe, "heavenly" visions and voices, and, not infrequently, religious conversion or metanoia. Among these are out-of-body experiences (OBEs), which are more common now that more patients can be brought back to life from serious cardiac arrests and the like -- and much more elaborate and numinous experiences called near-death experiences (NDEs).
Both OBEs and NDEs, which occur in waking but often profoundly altered states of consciousness, cause hallucinations so vivid and compelling that those who experience them may deny the term hallucination, and insist on their reality. And the fact that there are marked similarities in individual descriptions is taken by some to indicate their objective "reality."
But the fundamental reason that hallucinations -- whatever their cause or modality -- seem so real is that they deploy the very same systems in the brain that actual perceptions do. When one hallucinates voices, the auditory pathways are activated; when one hallucinates a face, the fusiform face area, normally used to perceive and identify faces in the environment, is stimulated.
In OBEs, subjects feel that they have left their bodies -- they seem to be floating in midair, or in a corner of the room, looking down on their vacated bodies from a distance. The experience may be felt as blissful, terrifying, or neutral. But its extraordinary nature -- the apparent separation of "spirit" from body, imprints it indelibly on the mind and may be taken by some people as evidence of an immaterial soul -- proof that consciousness, personality, and identity can exist independently of the body and even survive bodily death.
Neurologically, OBEs are a form of bodily illusion arising from a temporary dissociation of visual and proprioceptive representations -- normally these are coordinated, so that one views the world, including one's body, from the perspective of one's own eyes, one's head. OBEs, as Henrik Ehrsson and his fellow researchers in Stockholm have elegantly shown, can be produced experimentally, by using simple equipment -- video goggles, mannequins, rubber arms, etc. -- to confuse one's visual input and one's proprioceptive input and create an uncanny sense of disembodiedness.
A number of medical conditions can lead to OBEs -- cardiac arrest or arrhythmias, or a sudden lowering of blood pressure or blood sugar, often combined with anxiety or illness. I know of some patients who have experienced OBEs during difficult childbirths, and others who have had them in association with narcolepsy or sleep paralysis. Fighter pilots subjected to high G-forces in flight (or sometimes in training centrifuges) have reported OBEs as well as much more elaborate states of consciousness that resemble the near-death experience.
The near-death experience usually goes through a sequence of characteristic stages. One seems to be moving effortlessly and blissfully along a dark corridor or tunnel towards a wonderful "living" light -- often interpreted as Heaven or the boundary between life and death. There may be a vision of friends and relatives welcoming one to the other side, and there may be a a rapid yet extremely detailed series of memories of one's life -- a lightning autobiography. The return to one's body may be abrupt, as when, for example, the beat is restored to an arrested heart. Or it may be more gradual, as when one emerges from a coma.
"I was flying forwards. Bewildered. I looked around. I saw my own body on the ground. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, I'm dead.' I saw people converging on the body. I saw a woman -- she had been standing waiting to use the phone right behind me -- position herself over my body, give it CPR. . . . I floated up the stairs -- my consciousness came with me. I saw my kids, had the realization that they would be okay. Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light . . . an enormous feeling of well-being and peace. The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me . . . pure thought, pure ecstasy. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up . . . there was speed and direction. Then, as I was saying to myself, 'This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had' -- SLAM! I was back."
Dr. Cicoria had some memory problems for a month or so after this, but he was able to resume his practice as an orthopedic surgeon. Yet he was, as he put it, "a changed man." Previously he had no particular interest in music, but now he was seized by an overwhelming desire to listen to classical music, especially Chopin. He bought a piano and started to play obsessively and to compose. He was convinced that the entire episode -- being struck by lightning, having a transcendent vision, then being resuscitated and gifted so that he could bring music to the world, was part of a divine plan.
Cicoria has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and he also felt that his sudden accession of spirituality and musicality must have gone with changes in his brain -- changes which we might be able to clarify, perhaps, with neuroimaging. He saw no contradiction between religion and neurology -- if God works on a man, or in a man, Cicoria felt, He would do so via the nervous system, via parts of the brain specialized, or potentially specializable, for spiritual feeling and belief.
Cicoria's reasonable and (one might say) scientific attitude to his own spiritual conversion is in marked contrast to that of another surgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander, who describes, in his recent book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife [ http://www.amazon.com/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/1451695195 ], a detailed and complex NDE which occurred while he spent seven days in a coma caused by meningitis. During his NDE, he writes, he passed through the bright light -- the boundary between life and death -- to find himself in an idyllic and beautiful meadow (which he realized was Heaven) where he met a beautiful but unknown woman who conveyed various messages to him telepathically. Advancing farther into the afterlife, he felt the ever-more-embracing presence of God. Following this experience, Alexander became something of an evangelist, wanting to spread the good news, that heaven really exists.
Alexander makes much of his experience as a neurosurgeon and an expert on the workings of the brain. He provides an appendix to his book detailing "Neuroscientific Hypotheses I considered to explain my experience" -- but all of these he dismisses as inapplicable in his own case because, he insists, his cerebral cortex was completely shut down during the coma, precluding the possibility of any conscious experience.
Yet his NDE was rich in visual and auditory detail, as many such hallucinations are. He is puzzled by this, since such sensory details are normally produced by the cortex. Nonetheless, his consciousness had journeyed into the blissful, ineffable realm of the afterlife--a journey which he felt lasted for most of the time he lay in coma. Thus, he proposes, his essential self, his "soul," did not need a cerebral cortex, or indeed any material basis whatever.
It is not so easy, however, to dismiss neurological processes. Dr. Alexander presents himself as emerging from his coma suddenly: "My eyes opened ... my brain ... had just kicked back to life." But one almost always emerges gradually from coma; there are intermediate stages of consciousness. It is in these transitional stages, where consciousness of a sort has returned, but not yet fully lucid consciousness, that NDEs tend to occur.
Alexander insists that his journey, which subjectively lasted for days, could not have occurred except while he was deep in coma. But we know from the experience of Tony Cicoria and many others, that a hallucinatory journey to the bright light and beyond, a full-blown NDE, can occur in 20 or 30 seconds, even though it seems to last much longer. Subjectively, during such a crisis, the very concept of time may seem variable or meaningless. The one most plausible hypothesis in Dr. Alexander's case, then, is that his NDE occurred not during his coma, but as he was surfacing from the coma and his cortex was returning to full function. It is curious that he does not allow this obvious and natural explanation, but instead insists on a supernatural one.
To deny the possibility of any natural explanation for an NDE, as Dr. Alexander does, is more than unscientific -- it is antiscientific. It precludes the scientific investigation of such states.
Kevin Nelson, a neurologist at the University of Kentucky, has studied the neural basis of NDEs and other forms of "deep" hallucinating for many decades. In 2011, he published a wise and careful book about his research, The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience [ http://www.amazon.com/The-Spiritual-Doorway-Brain-Neurologists/dp/0452297583 ].
Nelson feels that the "dark tunnel" described in most NDEs represents constriction of the visual fields due to compromised blood pressure in the eyes, and the "bright light" represents a flow of visual excitation from the brainstem, through visual relay stations, to the visual cortex (the so-called pons-geniculate-occipital or PGO pathway).
Simpler perceptual hallucinations -- of patterns, animals, people, landscapes, music, etc. -- as one may get in a variety of conditions (blindness, deafness, epilepsy, migraine, sensory deprivation, etc.) do not usually involve profound changes in consciousness, and while very startling, are nearly always recognized as hallucinations. It is different with the very complex hallucinations of ecstatic seizures or NDEs -- which are often taken to be veridical, truth-telling and often life-transforming revelations of a spiritual universe, and perhaps of a spiritual destiny or mission.
The tendency to spiritual feeling and religious belief lies deep in human nature and seems to have its own neurological basis, though it may be very strong in some people and less developed in others. For those who are religiously inclined, an NDE may seem to offer "proof of heaven," as Eben Alexander puts it.
Some religious people come to experience their proof of heaven by another route -- the route of prayer, as the anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann has explored in her book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God [ http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Talks-Back-Understanding/dp/0307277275 ]. The very essence of divinity, of God, is immaterial. God cannot be seen, felt, or heard in the ordinary way. Luhrmann wondered how, in the face of this lack of evidence, God becomes a real, intimate presence in the lives of so many evangelicals and other people of faith.
She joined an evangelical community as a participant-observer, immersing herself in particular in their disciplines of prayer and visualization -- imagining in ever-richer, more concrete detail the figures and events depicted in the Bible. Congregants, she writes:
Practice seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching in the mind's eye. They give these imagined experiences the sensory vividness associated with the memories of real events. What they are able to imagine becomes more real to them.
Sooner or later, with this intensive practice, for some of the congregants, the mind may leap from imagination to hallucination, and the congregant hears God, sees God, feels God walking beside them. These yearned-for voices and visions have the reality of perception, and this is because they activate the perceptual systems of the brain, as all hallucinations do. These visions, voices, and feelings of "presence" are accompanied by intense emotion -- emotions of joy, peace, awe, revelation. Some evangelicals may have many such experiences; others only a single one -- but even a single experience of God, imbued with the overwhelming force of actual perception, can be enough to sustain a lifetime of faith. (For those who are not religiously inclined, such experiences may occur with meditation or intense concentration on an artistic or intellectual or emotional plane, whether this is falling in love or listening to Bach, observing the intricacies of a fern, or cracking a scientific problem.)
In the last decade or two, there has been increasingly active research in the field of "spiritual neurosciences." There are special difficulties in this research, for religious experiences cannot be summoned at will; they come, if at all, in their own time and way -- the religious would say in God's time and way. Nonetheless, researchers have been able to demonstrate physiological changes not only in pathological states like seizures, OBEs, and NDEs, but also in positive states like prayer and meditation. Typically these changes are quite widespread, involving not only primary sensory areas in the brain, but limbic (emotional) systems, hippocampal (memory) systems, and the prefrontal cortex, where intentionality and judgement reside.
Hallucinations, whether revelatory or banal, are not of supernatural origin; they are part of the normal range of human consciousness and experience. This is not to say that they cannot play a part in the spiritual life, or have great meaning for an individual. Yet while it is understandable that one might attribute value, ground beliefs, or construct narratives from them, hallucinations cannot provide evidence for the existence of any metaphysical beings or places. They provide evidence only of the brain's power to create them.
“I remember having this sense of love like I’ve never experienced it before.” – Rev. Craig Darling
“Beyond that time (of my near death experience) that innate fear of death we all seem to be born with just vanished.“ – Rev. Craig Darling
“I was with my friend when he was taking his last breath… and I realized that the feeling I had inside and the aura in the room was indistinguishable from when my sons took their first breath.” - Rev. Craig Darling
“Those who have had near death experiences will tell you that realm is far more real than this world, more crisp, vibrant, alive.” – Dr. Eben Alexander
“I came to realize that the commonalities of experiences far outweigh the differences.” – Dr. Eben Alexander
“Much of what I thought I knew about heaven and hell, and demons and angels comes from Milton’s 'Paradise Lost' -- there was very little in the Bible.” - Prof. Greg Garrett
“A lot of people really believe in ‘fluffy cloud’ heaven.” -- Prof. Greg Garrett
“Our beliefs about life after heaven, hell and purgatory, or that there might not be an afterlife, shape our every day lives and how we live them." – Prof Greg Garrett
Bill Maher: Proof of Heaven and Stupid Smart People
Published on Jul 20, 2013 by TheWeekinDoubt
Maher Trashes GOP ‘Smart/Stupid’ People: Scholarly Outside Around ‘Creamy Layer Of Bachmann’
During his New Rule segment on Friday night [7-19-13], Bill Maher savaged the “the resurgence of the smart/stupid person,” namely, otherwise accomplished members of scientific or intellectual fields who nonetheless have the zaniest ideas when it comes to politics.
Maher’s first example: Eben Alexander, author of the book Proof of Heaven. He wondered “how a neurosurgeon of all people could say that he made a day trip to heaven while in a coma, when his scientific training—not to mention every other scientist in the world—is telling him, ‘No dude, you were just tripping. Those coma drugs are good shit’…Hey doc, come by the show sometime, I’ll give you some bad acid and you can visit hell.”
“He’s half brilliant brain surgeon, half tea party dumbass,” Maher said. “He doesn’t just operate on conjoined twins, he is one.”
“There’s no more attractive figure in the Republican Party these days than an anti-intellectual with an advanced degree,” Maher said, noting other figures like Antonin Scalia, Ted Cruz, and Bobby Jindal, “who are accomplished scholars on the outside, and on the inside a creamy layer of Michelle Bachmann.”
“And what’s with all the know-nothing doctors, and their sub-specialty, OB-GYNs who know nothing about reproduction?” Maher asked. “Like Congressman OB-GYN Ron Paul who says abortion leads to euthanasia, or Congressman OB-GYN Michael Burgess, the guy who just last month said fetuses masturbate in the womb—wearing tiny raincoats!”
“Why are we electing so many gynecologists to Congress?” Maher said. “If having your head between a woman’s legs is a qualification for public office, then why not Congressman Michael Douglas?”
Plaintiffs: I Sylvia Ann Driskell Ambassador for Plaintiffs God, and His, Son, Jesus Christ
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Defendants: Homosexuals Their Given Name Homosexuals Their, Alis Gay
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Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell ambassador for Plaintiffs do set forth on this 30 day of 2015 in writing this Petition to the United State District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska On behalf of the Plintiffs: God, and His, Son, Jesus Christ.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell ambassador for the Plaintiffs: God, and His, Son, Jesus Christ: Petition Your Honor, and Court of the United State District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraka, To be heard in the matter of homosexuality. Is Homosexuality a sin, or not a sin,
Defendant’s Homosexuals: The Homosexuals say that its not a sin to be a homosexual, An they have the right to marry, to be parents, And God doesn’t care that their homosexuals, because He loves them.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell, refer Your Honor to paragraph 3, line 2 of Defendant’s, Homosexuals say that its not a sin, to be a homosexual.
Plaintiff’s: God tells his children in Leviticus Chapter 18 verse 22. Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is ambomination.
Plaintiff’s: God also tells his Children in Romans Chapter 1 verse 26, 27. Romans 1:26. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affection: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: Romans Chapter 1, verse 27. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; Men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell: Your Honor, I’ve heard the boasting of the Defendant: the Homosexuals on the world news; from the young, to the old; to the rich an famous, and to the not so rich an famous; How they were tired of hiding in the closet, and how glad they are to be coming out of the closet.
Plaintiff’s: God, tells his Children in Romans Chapter 1, vere 28, And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell, Contend that homosexuality is a sin, and that they the homosexuals know it is a sin to live a life of homosexuality. Why else would they have been hiding in a closet.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell, refer to Webster Dictionary for the definition of sin: sin the willful breaking of religious or moral law.
Defendant’s Homosexuals: In regards to paragraph 3 line 2 They the homosexuals, say they have the right to marry.
Plaintiff’s God: God’s word tells his children in Jenesis chapter 2 verse 24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleanse unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell refer to the Webster Dictionary for the definitions of the word marry. 1 to join as husband and wife 2 to talk as husband or wife.
Defendant’s Homosexuals: In regards to paragraph 3 line 3 They the homosexuals, say they have the right to be parents.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell refer to Webster Dictionary for the definition for parent. 1. A father or mother. 2. Any organism in relation to its offspring.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell write these words to You, Your Honor: every good Father and Mother knows that its not just being able to give life to a child that makes a parent.
Ambassador: I, Sylvia Ann Driskell contend a good parent is not just a father or a mother that tells their children whats right; it’s the parent that walks the walk, and that talks, the talk, who are the example of what they teach, that’s why their children know right from wrong.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell, write, As well, we also know that if a child is raised in a home of liers, an deceivers, and thieves that it is reasonable to believe that child will grow up to be one of the three, are all three.
Plaintiff’s: God tells the parents in Proverbs chapter 22 verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Defendant’s Homosexuals: I regards to paragraph 3, line 3. They the homosexuals, say that God doesn’t care, that their homosexuals, because he loves them.
Plaintiff’s God: God tells his children in Romans chapter 1, verse 18. For the wrath of God is reveald from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness
Plaintiff’s God: God also tells his children in Romans 1, verse 24. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves.
Plaintiff’s God: God tells his children in Romans chapter 1, verse 25. Who change the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed, for ever. Amen.
Defendant’s Homosexuals: In regards to paragraph 3, line 4. Because God loves them.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell, contend thats the only statement the defendants have rights God loves them so much that He gave his Son, and Jesus gave his life for them.
Plaintiff’s God: God prophecies of His, Son, Jesus Christ, in Isaiah chapter 53, verse 5. But he was wounded for Our transgression, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are heald.
Isaiah chapter 53, verse 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah chapter 55 verse 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Plaintiff’s Jesus Christ: In Luke chapter 23, verse 34. Then said Jesus, Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell, wish to address You, Your Honor, and the United State District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska.
I write not in few words, So I hope you, Your Honor, and The United State District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska; will indulge me, in my writing.
Never before has Our great Nation the United State of America and Our great state of Nebraska; been besiege by sin:
The way to destroy any nation, or state is to destroy its morals; look what happen to Sodom and Gomorrah two city because of the same immoral behavior that represent in our nation, in our states, and our cities; God destroy them.
If God could have found ten righteous people among them he would’ve spared them.
I’m sixty six years old, an I never thought that I would see the day in which our Great Nation or Our Great State of Nebraska would become so compliant to the complicity of some peoples lewd behavior.
Why are judges passing laws, so sinners can break religious and moral laws?
Will all the judges of this Nation, judge God to be a lier?
For God has said; that all unrighteousness is sin, and that homosexuality is abomination
Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell: I have written this Petition to the United State District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, and to you, Your Honor.
Because I feel its is imperative to do so. Life as a nation, as States, and as Cities need to start standing up for the moral principles on which our, Great Nation, Our, Great States, and Our, Great Cities were founded on.
Lamentations 3:22 It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not.
6 Of The Most Ridiculous Stunts Pastors Have Pulled To Get People To Church
By Carol Kuruvilla Posted: 05/24/2015 8:51 pm EDT Updated: 05/24/2015 8:59 pm EDT
Gone are the days when a banner advertising a revival service was enough to get Americans excited about going to church.
Pastor Lawrence Bishop II, of Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio, was willing to be bruised and trampled by a bull named Bonecrusher in order to spread the gospel.
Bishop's daredevil tactic got us thinking about a few other times the spirit moved religious leaders -- maybe a little too far -- to experiment with ways to spread the word.
The Gun Giveaway
In an effort to reach unchurched “rednecks,” the Kentucky Baptist Convention hosted “Second Amendment Celebrations,” during which churches served steak and gave away guns as door prizes. Chuck McAlister, a former pastor and traveling evangelist who presided over the events, called his strategy “affinity evangelism” because it used a common interest to attract potential converts and turn them into a community.
The tactic reportedly brought more than 1,500 men to make “professions of faith” in 2013.
The raffle winners needed to pass a federal background check before they could claim their prizes at local gun shops.
The Fights
There are hundreds of churches across the country that are incorporating MMA fights into their men’s ministries, according to documentary filmmakers Bryan Storkel and Daniel Junge.
Some churches offer fight viewings, while others host bloody MMA battles on church property. Even though Jesus instructed his disciples to “turn the other cheek” rather than use violence, some pastors look to the mythical fighting prowess of biblical leaders like David and Samson as examples.
In 1972, a small-town pastor named Herb Shreve bought his son a motorcycle in an attempt to bridge a growing gap [ http://www.deseretnews.com/article/76739/EX-PASTOR-FINDS-HIS-BEST-PULPIT-IS-A-MOTORCYCLE.html?pg=all ] between father and son. It worked. Two years later, Shreve attended his first motorcycle rally and saw thousands of people he felt needed to hear the gospel. So he formed the Christian Motorcyclists Association, which now as 1,200 chapters around the U.S.
Pastor Ed Young, of North Texas' Fellowship Church, decided in 2012 to get a little creative with his Easter sermon. He used a real lion and lamb as props [ http://www.christianpost.com/news/pastor-ed-young-uses-live-lion-and-lamb-in-wild-sermon-series-video-73042/ ] to demonstrate the message that Jesus is both the lamb of God and the lion of the tribe of Judah. The stunt certainly captured his congregation's attention, but Young was criticized by members of the local humane society.
The Action-Movie Move
During a sermon series on doing what others say is impossible, Pastor Troy Gramling, of Florida's Potential Church, teamed up with stuntman Mike Buse -- who's better known by stage name "Mr. Dizzy" -- for a legitimately explosive illustration. As Gramling's cheering congregation looked on, the pastor sat in a car that was blown up, and emerged unscathed [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJugWuKJ12w (next below, as embedded; no comments yet)].
Christian swingers: 'God uses us to spread his word'
Dean and Christy Parave believe "God put people on the earth to breed and enjoy each other" Fitness Swingers
Carey Lodge Christian Today Journalist Published 26 September 2014
A devout Christian couple from Florida are championing an unusual evangelism technique – swinging.
Christy and Dean Parave met online eight years ago, and began swinging after being approached in a DIY store.
They now regularly swap partners with other couples.
While most would regard sexual promiscuity as conflicting with their religious beliefs, the Paraves, who both compete as bodybuilders, believe that they can use their newfound connections to share the Gospel.
"God has put me here to spread his word and our lifestyle community is a great place to do it," Dean told Barcroft Media.
"You can't get closer to someone than having sex with them."
He believes that he's been given a unique opportunity to share his faith with those who might otherwise never hear about Jesus.
"I'm getting to people that will probably never even visit a church," he said.
"God's not gonna put a lion with a bunch of elephants, so what's he gonna do? He's gonna put a swinger with a bunch of swingers to spread his word. Simple as that."
"If all the swinger are sinners what's the best way to talk to the sinners? To join them, right?"
It's an unconventional pastime for a Christian couple, but the pair insist they have a mutual understanding.
"I don't think God would be mad at what we're doing. At first I was conflicted but the more we looked at it the more it makes sense to us," Christy explained.
"Dean and I are both in agreement with this lifestyle, so we're not committing adultery. God put people on the earth to breed and enjoy each other – I feel God is always with me and he has put us here for a reason."
The Paraves have even set up a website, http://www.fitnessswingers.com , to help other like-minded couples – those who have an interest in faith and healthy living – to find one another.
Their Twitter account, https://twitter.com/fitnessswingers , reveals a rather bizarre mix of swinging resources, Bible verses and links to worship songs.
They insist that they remain committed to a single goal, however.
"If I can go to the next swinger's event and get 10 people to believe in Christ...my job is done," Dean said.
Anti-Gay Missouri GOP House Speaker Caught Sexting With Intern
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 5/13/2015 4:00 pm
The Kansas City Star today reported that the speaker of the Missouri House, Republican John Diehl, sent several sexually charged text messages [ http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article20822424.html ] to a female college freshman who was working as an intern in the state legislature.
Diehl, who is married, has championed the Religious Right’s anti-gay [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/anti-gay ] agenda in the state house, and has in turn been praised by state conservative groups for his “moral leadership.”
“Missourians owe a debt of gratitude to Speaker of the House Tim Jones, Senate President Pro Tempore Tom Dempsey and Speaker of the House-designee John Diehl for intervening on behalf of the state in the Jackson County case where state Circuit Judge J. Dale Youngs ruled that 10 same-sex couples married in other states, but now living in Missouri, are entitled to the same benefits as heterosexual married couples,” said Don Hinkle [ http://www.mbcpathway.com/2014/12/05/marxists-judges-elections-and-random-thoughts/ ], editor of the Missouri Southern Baptist newsletter The Pathway. “Their action took political courage and they are to be commended for their leadership.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time called it [id.] a “hateful and unconstitutional attack on individual rights” and slammed Diehl for backing “a loathsome bill in a cynical attempt to garner support from the right wing.”
19 Kids and Counting built its reputation on preaching family values, but the mass-media platforms that made the family famous might also be their undoing.
The information came to light because, in 2006—two years before 17 Kids and Counting first aired on TLC, and thus two years before the Duggars became reality-TV celebrities—the family recorded an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Before the taping, an anonymous source sent an email to Harpo warning the production company Josh’s alleged molestation [ http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/bombshell-duggar-police-report-jim-bob-duggar-didn-t-report-son-josh-s-alleged-sex-offenses-for-more-than-a-year-58906 ]. Harpo forwarded the email to authorities, triggering a police investigation (the Oprah appearance never aired). The news was reported this week by In Touch Weekly—after the magazine filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the police report on the case—and then confirmed by the Duggars in a statement posted on Facebook [ https://www.facebook.com/duggarfamilyofficial/posts/653931128073873 ].
The Duggars, Jim Bob and Michelle, knew what Josh had done; prior to the Harpo incident, however, they had handled the matter privately. But that their sad secret would be revealed because the family did an interview with Oprah seems, in retrospect, appropriate. All reality TV—and reality TV about families, in particular—revels in the systemic collision of intimacy and publicity, the none-of-your-business and the everybody’s-business. All famous families are alike; all famous families are unhappy in their own way.
But the Duggars, whose recent additions to their family have made them, now, the stars of 19 Kids and Counting, also represent a unique strain of reality TV stars. They are, on the one hand, like the Thompsons [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Honey_Boo_Boo ] and the Kardashians [ http://www.eonline.com/now/keeping-up-with-the-kardashians ] and the hair-gelled kids from Jersey Shore: They consider what it means to be a family. These shows, which celebrate and denigrate their stars in pretty much equal measure, would be painfully unwatchable if it weren't for that. And 19 Kids presents a particularly charming answer to the question of family-hood. It offers up a (very large) group of people who enjoy each other, who tease each other, who laugh with each other—who seem to like as well as love each other.
The difference between the Duggars and their fellow reality-TV families, though, has been that the Kardashians and the Thompsons and their fellow families don't claim moral superiority over their viewers. They claim, instead, a moral distance from those viewers. The Kardashians, in some ways the polar opposites of the Duggars, revel in their uniqueness, in their marginality, in the collection of idiosyncrasies that got them their own reality show(s) in the first place. The Kardashians have no interest in making people want to be like them. They have an interest, instead, in making people want to be not at all like them. They have an interest in inspiring fascination rather than emulation. Their weirdness is their capital, and their currency.
So the Duggars have built a micro-empire by way of the mass media. They are celebrating the rejection of mass culture through the tools of that culture. They have been using their fame; now, they are victims of it. The extremely sad scandal they are now contending with is what happens when family values collide with cultural norms.
The Springdale, Ark., Police Department has destroyed Josh Duggar's record pursuant to a judge's order. Normally, records are kept indefinitely. (Photo: D Dipasupil, Getty Images for Extra)
Jayme Deerwester, USA TODAY 12:29 p.m. EDT May 23, 2015
Arkansas police have destroyed the records of Josh Duggar's nearly decade-old molestation case.
Springdale Police spokesman Scott Lewis told the Associated Press that Judge Stacey Zimmerman ordered the 2006 offense report destroyed Thursday. Zimmerman didn't return a request for comment on Friday.
"The judge ordered us yesterday to expunge that record," Lewis said, adding that similar records are typically kept indefinitely. "As far as the Springdale Police Department is concerned this report doesn't exist."
The move came a day after the 19 Kids and Counting reality TV personality resigned his position as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council after news of sexual misconduct allegations from his teenage years surfaced.
The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which obtained the offense report before its destruction, reports Duggar was accused of fondling five girls in 2002 and 2003. Duggar issued an apology Thursday on Facebook. On Friday, TLC, the network that airs 19 Kids, announced they are pulling reruns from their schedule. (The 10th season concluded on May 19.)
Springdale Police began investigating Duggar in 2006 when officers were alerted to a letter containing the allegations that was found in a book lent by a family friend to someone else.
The report, originally published by tabloid In Touch Weekly, states that a member of Harpo Studios, the producer of Oprah Winfrey's then show, received an email containing the allegations before the family was set to appear in 2006. The tipster warned producers against allowing the Duggars on the show and studio staff members faxed a copy of the email to Arkansas State Police.
Neither Duggar nor his father, a former state representative, returned calls seeking comment Friday.
Several Arkansas Republicans have rallied behind the Duggar family, which is still engrained in state politics. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar attended the kickoff event earlier this month for Republican presidential nominee Mike Huckabee, who supported the family in a Facebook post on Friday.
"Those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins in order to discredit the Duggar family have actually revealed their own insensitive bloodthirst, for there was no consideration of the fact that the victims wanted this to be left in the past and ultimately a judge had the information on file destroyed — not to protect Josh, but the innocent victims," Huckabee wrote.
On Friday, TLC released a statement saying it was "deeply saddened" and pulled the show off the air. However, the program has not been officially canceled.
This is not the first time the channel has been linked to sexual assault. In October 2014, TLC's Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was canceled [ http://www.people.com/article/honey-boo-boo-canceled-tlc ] after matriarch June Shannon, 35, was rumored to be dating a convicted sex offender. Shortly after the show's cancellation, TLC swiftly cut all ties with the family.
Last week, InTouch published police reports revealing the dark allegations from Josh's past.
In the police report, which PEOPLE has confirmed is in reference to Josh, it appears that Josh’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, knew about the alleged molestations and didn’t go to authorities at first, but rather to fellow church members.
"Twelve years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends," Josh said on Thursday before announcing he had resigned from his position at the Family Research Council.
Josh Duggar Cancels Appearance at Christian Home-School Convention in Sandusky, OH Amid Molestation Allegations
AP Photo/Danny Johnston
by Corinne Heller Sat., May. 23, 2015 1:29 PM PDT
A scheduled speaking engagement by 19 Kids and Counting star and conservative activist Josh Duggar [ http://www.eonline.com/news/josh_duggar ] has been canceled in wake of recently unearthed allegations that he molested five underage girls when he was a teenager, marking the latest career setback for the eldest child in the famous reality show family.
Josh was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at one of the Teach Them Diligently Christian home-school conventions in the city of Sandusky, OH, which runs between May 28 and May 30. His parents, Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar, homeschool their children at their house in Arkansas.
"While we could fret or argue over what is truth and what is gossip in the recent media reports, we would rather change the focus for a moment to what God has in store for the families that will be arriving on Thursday for Teach Them Diligently in Sandusky, OH," the letter said.
Since the reports were published, Josh also quit his job as executive director of the legislative affiliate of the Family Research Council, a Christian lobbying group that describes itself as a "Pro Marriage and Pro Life Organization."
"Today Josh Duggar made the decision to resign his position as a result of previously unknown information becoming public concerning events that occurred during his teenage years," Family Research Council President Tony Perkins had said in a statement posted on the official website [ http://www.frc.org/ ] of the FRC. "Josh believes that the situation will make it difficult for him to be effective in his current work. We believe this is the best decision for Josh and his family at this time. We will be praying for everyone involved."
After In Touch posted its report on Thursday, it was revealed that the police report was expunged to protect the identity of a minor child who was alleged to be the victim of a sex crime.
"I sought forgiveness from those I had wronged and asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life," he added. "I would do anything to go back to those teen years and take different actions."
Uproar as pastor's wife and mother of 11 suggests child molester Josh Duggar was simply 'PLAYING DOCTOR' as a teenager - and should be 'left alone to live a good life'
Controversy: Pastor's wife Carrie Hurd (left) has sparked outrage online after suggesting that Josh Duggar (pictured, right, with his wife Anna) was simply 'playing doctor' when he molested young girls as they slept.
Dispute: Mrs Hurd used her husband, Patrick's (left) Facebook account to address Vyckie Garrison (right).
Fundamentalist: Like the Duggars, Mr and Mrs Hurd are part of the conservative fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, which promotes the beliefs that children are a blessing from God and families should 'trust the Lord' with their family planning. Above, Mrs Hurd works on the roof of her home in a Facebook photo.
Response: Within hours of Mrs Hurd posting her 'playing doctor' comment on Facebook on Saturday, Ms Garrison had copied it, word-for-word, and posted it as a public Facebook status for the world to see.
Award: Ms Garrison has been named 'American Atheist Of The Year' by the American Atheist Association.
'Following in their parents' footsteps': Mr and Mrs Hurd have 11 children - a staggering amount, but still significantly fewer than Michelle and Jim Bob Duggars' 19. Above, Mr Hurd and some of his children.
Happy family snap: Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar beam as they head out to vote in the latter's 2002 run for a seat in the US Senate with their children. Just months earlier, Josh, now 27, had admitted to molesting young girls.
Family: Josh Duggar stands beside his mother (far left) as he and his daughter are interviewed on 'Extra'.
All the gang: Michelle, 47, who stars in TLC's hit show 19 Kids and Counting with her family, is pictured with her husband, Jim Bob, and children in 2014 - just a year before the scandalous police report would emerge.
• Carrie Hurd, a Texas pastor's wife, ranted on an atheist's Facebook page • Suggested Duggar was 'playing doctor' when he molested sleeping girls • Also described reality TV star's actions as 'a little Christian misbehavior' • Her 'blatantly ignorant' remarks have caused anger among Internet users • Atheist, Vyckie Garrison, told Daily Mail Online she was 'flabbergasted' • Mrs Hurd and husband Patrick have 11 children and live a Quiverfull life • Mother of eleven later admitted: 'I did a really bad job in my frustration'
By Sophie Jane Evans For Dailymail.com Published: 21:51 EST, 24 May 2015 | Updated: 00:56 EST, 25 May 2015
A pastor's wife and mother of eleven has sparked outrage online after suggesting that 19 Kids and Counting star Josh Duggar was simply 'playing doctor' when he molested young girls as they slept.
In a rant on a Quiverfull critic's Facebook page, Carrie Hurd, the wife of Texas minister Patrick Hurd, also referred to Josh's actions as 'a little Christian misbehavior' and said he should be 'left alone'.
Using her husband’s account to address atheist Vyckie Garrison, she wrote: 'When I was a kid, it was often called "playing doctor", there were just as many girls initiating this kind of behavior as boys.
'Most of those never went on to perp horrible things. The Duggars, who I have never watched - am not a fan, did it properly and the 14 year old boy should probably be left alone to live a good life.'
She added: 'You troll the news for any little Christian misbehavior. Get a life! Go to Iraq and fight ISIS if you are seriously worried about women being treated well by men and society.'
Mrs Hurd's comment was posted on Saturday - just two days after it emerged that Josh, now 27, had admitted to molesting several young girls at his family's Arkansas home when he was a teenager.
It has since provoked a storm of criticism on Ms Garrison's Facebook page, with many accusing Mrs Hurd of defending sexual assault and 'making excuses' for a boy who 'knew what he was doing'.
Ms Garrison herself told Daily Mail Online on Sunday that Mrs Hurd's comment had left her 'flabbergasted', saying: 'It was quite a thing to come out with. It was beyond ignorant.'
Facebook user Lynn Beisner responded to Mrs Hurd's post with the words: 'The difference between playing doctor and sexual assault is consent. And a sleeping child cannot give consent. Period.'
Another, Cat Givens, wrote: 'Molestation is not the same as "playing doctor"', while Tina Littleton said: 'Who are the people never to be blamed in child molestation cases? Answer: The victims.'
And one user noted: 'When I was fourteen I was training to be on a search and rescue team... That age is plenty old enough to have a moral compass and to know exactly what he was doing.'
Like the Duggars, the Hurds are part of the conservative fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, which promotes the beliefs that children are a blessing from God and families should 'trust the Lord' with their family planning. Therefore, couples should eschew all birth control, including sterilization, it teaches.
Mr and Mrs Hurd have 11 children - a staggering amount, but still significantly fewer than Michelle and Jim Bob Duggars' 19 - whom Ms Garrison said are following in their Christian parents' footsteps.
Speaking to Daily Mail Online, Ms Garrison, who was recently named this year's 'American Atheist Of The Year' by the American Atheist Association, revealed she herself formerly lived a Quiverfull life.
However, after she gave birth to her third child, doctors warned her that another pregnancy could kill her due to a health condition, leaving her and her now-former husband forced to employ birth control.
Ms Garrison subsequently re-examined everything she had been taught and eventually altered her beliefs. She left the movement around seven years ago and now runs the site 'No Longer Quivering [ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/ ]'.
'It got to the point where I just couldn't keep Quivering up,' the mother-of-three told Daily Mail Online.
'It was an oppressive, restrictive lifestyle, I looked at my children and realized they were miserable.'
Mrs Hurd uploaded her 'playing doctor' comment to Ms Garrison's Facebook page on Saturday after the latter posted an Identities.Mic article about the Duggar scandal and the family's 'Christian cult'.
Two hours later, Ms Garrison copied Mrs Hurd's message, word-for-word, and posted it as a public Facebook status for the world to see. In doing so, she 'exposed' Mrs Hurd's controversial beliefs.
'Think twice before you decide to put a former Quiverfull mama in her place. I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to the pitfalls and family horrors of Christian patriarchy.'
One of the Hurds' sons has since spoken out about the Raw Story article, writing: 'You know you are doing something right when an atheist writes a whole article just to complain about you.'
On Sunday night, Mrs Hurd told Daily Mail Online: 'I did a really bad job in my frustration and Vickie did a great job of twisting it. Or maybe we just just have different views of the world. It was my understanding from the reports that the police were involved and all had received counseling.
'I like to think the best of people, and if a 14-year-old has changed and is living a lawful life after a crime, he should be able to live his adult life in peace. I like to believe rehabilitation is possible.'
She added: 'If he hasn't, he should go to jail.'
On Thursday, a police report emerged revealing that, in March 2002, an unnamed youngster had come forward saying Josh Duggar 'had been touching her breasts and genitals while she slept.'
Shortly after, Josh - who has three children, and another on the way, with wife Anna - admitted to his actions to his parents. At the time, the family had a meeting, but did not inform authorities.
A year later, 'several' more minors came forward to say that Josh had touched them, and the teen was sent away to the Basic Life Principles Training Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, for treatment.
However, authorities only became aware of Josh's actions in 2006 after Oprah Winfrey's production team alerted them to an email they had been sent warning the host about the molestation scandal.
The father-of-three also apologized, admitting that he had 'acted inexcusably' as a teenager.
'Twelve years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends,' Josh said in a statement.
'I confessed this to my parents who took several steps to help me address the situation.
'We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing, and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling.'
He also resigned from his position at the Family Research Council in Washington D.C.
Jim Bob and Michelle - former Arkansas 'Mother of the Year' - released their own statement, saying: 'Back 12 years ago our family went through one of the most difficult times of our lives.
'When Josh was a young teenager, he made some very bad mistakes, and we were shocked. We had tried to teach him right from wrong.
'That dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before.'
The police report detailed Josh's molestation of five minors in 2002 and 2003. He was never charged with a crime for the incidents as by the time police learned of the offenses the statue of limitations had passed, and his parents did not notify authorities in an official capacity at any point.
Following the revelations concerning Josh's molestation of young girls, General Mills said it had 'blacklisted' the TLC show, 19 Kids and Counting, and removed it from its advertising schedule.
And on Friday, TLC pulled the show from its schedule. The move came one day after the network decided to run a marathon of the show that heavily featured Josh, which had outraged fans.
TLC is yet to comment on the program's long-term future. It is also yet to address queries over how TLC executives were apparently unaware of Josh's molestation claims following the Oprah incident.
The network has also pulled the Duggars from its Summer Block Party event, Philly.com reported.
On Friday night, Arkansas police confirmed that they had destroyed the report on Josh after one of his victims came forward and requested the document be expunged from public record.
The girl told a judge she feared her name would be released and she was still a minor. The judge agreed and signed off to have the report into the nine-year-old investigation destroyed.
Daily Mail Online has contacted Mrs Hurd for comment.
*
JOSH DUGGAR'S MOLESTATION OF MINORS
In March 2002, an unnamed minor said that Josh Duggar, then 14, 'had been touching her breasts and genitals while she slept.'
He would admit to this a few months later in July, and a member of the family claims they had a meeting to discuss the incident.
Then, in March 2003, 'several' minors came forward to say that Josh had been touching them 'when they sleep,' leading to his father Jim Bob holding another family meeting and deciding to speak with elders at the family's church about the offenses.
It was suggested that Josh should enter a treatment program, at which point he spent four months in Little Rock, Arkansas helping a family friend remodel a building.
Upon his return, Jim Bob informed those aware of the situation that Josh had received counseling and took him to a family friend who was a state trooper to reveal what had occurred, resulting in the teenager getting a stern lecture but no formal report being filed by police.
By all accounts, the offenses stopped and Josh apologized to the victim, but some time in 2006 an individual in the church who had borrowed a book from the Duggars found a note detailing Josh's molestation of minors.
That person then sent that information in an email to The Oprah Winfrey Show shortly before the Duggars were set to appear, and they in turn notified authorities who began conducted an investigation.
Jim Bob and Michelle along with all the victims were interviewed, though Josh was made unavailable to speak by his parents and no charges were pursued in the end as the statute of limitations had by that point run out.
*
TLC'S CHILD MOLESTER PROBLEM
The Duggar child molestation scandal is just the latest in a long line of incidents involving inappropriate behavior by a TLC star with a minor.
- Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: The show was cancelled last year after photos emerged of star June Shannon, better known as Mama June, with her ex Mark McDaniel. McDaniel had just been released from jail at the time after serving time for molesting an 8-year-old girl. That girl was one of Shannon's daughters.
- Sons of Guns: Gunsmith and former Marine Will Hayden was charged with raping a 12-year-old girl in 2014, forcing TLC to quickly cancel the reality show. That girl was revealed to be his own daughter, and shortly after his other daughter came forward she too had been raped by Hayden when she was 12-years-old. He is currently awaiting trial.
- Cheer Perfection: Another reality the network had to cancel following a scandal, this time involving mother Andrea Clevenger who received two 10 year prison sentences when she was found guilty of having multiple sexual encounters with a boy in 2013 who was just 13.
- Cake Boss: Remigio Gonzalez, who was married to the sister of the show's title character Buddy Valastro, received nine years in prison in 2012 after he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl. While he did appear on that show, by the time these charges were brought against him he was no longer a character on the program.
According to the 2006 police report, Duggar family patriarch, JimBob actively covered up Josh’s confession and neglected to notify authorities or provide professional help for Josh and/or his victims. To make matters worse, Josh’s pregnant wife, Anna Duggar, believes her husband is a changed man and continues - along with the couple’s three young children - to live with an admitted child sex offender. And to top it all off, the Duggar family publicly declared that God used the tragic situation to draw their family closer to Him.
Jesus Friggin’ Christ, what a mess! As a former Quiverfull [ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/what-is-quiverfull/ ] believer, I recognize in this Duggar family debacle several essential beliefs which are widely held amongst fundamentalist Christians which shackle True Believer’s™ common sense to an outdated and irrelevant god-myth and seriously impair their ability to make sound moral choices.
#1 - The Duggars are “Pro-life.”
Michelle and JimBob Duggar take very seriously the Evangelical “pro-life” teachings which have influenced the couple to have way too many children:
God allows or causes miscarriages. One of the key verses from which fundamentalists get their “Choose Life” catch phrase comes from a passage in Deuteronomy 30 [ http://biblehub.com/kjv/deuteronomy/30.htm ] which promises God’s blessing for the faithful. The blessing which God promises is a multiplication of crops, cattle, and children. The passage also warns of judgment and curses for those who disobey: specifically, God promises death … including death of “thy seed”, i.e., miscarriage and stillbirth.
Birth control is sinful. Another common teaching in Evangelical churches is that hormonal birth control such as oral contraception causes “micro-abortions [ https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/prolonged-contraceptive-use-could-increase-chances-of-miscarriage-study/ ]” and early miscarriages (which believers also consider abortions). Many Christians take this a step further to say that ALL forms of birth control, including Natural Family Planning are sinful because controlling a woman’s fertility is tantamount to “playing God,” by thwarting The Big Guy’s prerogative to determine when and if a new soul with potential for eternal life comes into existence.
In 2002, when the alleged molestations occurred, JimBob and Michelle had 14 children aged 14 and under. Is anyone surprised that young Josh was not supervised adequately to prevent his access to five young girls? As a former Quiverfull mom who birthed 7 children in 17 years, even I cannot imagine how overwhelmed and ill-equipped Michelle must have been simply keeping up with the basic maintenance of her young brood. It’s no wonder she wasn’t attentive enough to her children to know what Josh was doing, practically under her nose, for years [ http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/bombshell-duggar-police-report-jim-bob-duggar-didn-t-report-son-josh-s-alleged-sex-offenses-for-more-than-a-year-58906 ].
I am in no way making excuses for Michelle’s negligence. My point here is to say that contemporary evangelical Christianity sets “biblical families” up for this sort of disaster. Let me tell you more …
#2 - The Duggars believe that, under God, the FAMILY is the highest authority, particularly Daddy.
There is a teaching amongst Evangelicals in which matters of discipline must be addressed according to God’s order of authority which goes like this: God, Family (within the family, the Father has ultimate authority), Church elders, Church family, Extended family, All Like-minded believers, Satan [ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+5%3A5&version=KJV ], and finally (maybe) … the Civil Magistrate.
This explains why, according to the police report, JimBob Duggar’s first response when he learned of Josh’s sexual crimes was not to call the police or social services. Instead, the Duggars decided to handle the situation “in-house,” and later consulted with the elders in his church. The Duggars sent Josh to a program [ http://defamer.gawker.com/josh-duggar-accused-of-molesting-several-sisters-as-a-t-1706096839 ] that involved hard physical labor and “counseling” by an untrained family friend. Even when JimBob and the church elders did eventually take Josh to the “civil magistrate,” they only paid a visit to an Arkansas State Trooper, Jim Hutchens, a personal friend of the Duggars who gave Josh “a very stern talk” and took no official action.
Here’s why fundamentalists only consult law enforcement officials as a last resort:
Like the majority of fundamentalist Christians, JimBob and Michelle harbor a grave mistrust of pretty much every respected, evidence-based approach to behavioral issues: secular psychology is “spiritually dangerous [ http://family.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/25688/~/do-christianity-and-psychology-really-mix ],” modern medicine, therapy, and pharmaceuticals are equated with “witchcraft [id.],” and abusive, criminal behavior is often attributed to “a heart issue,” or even demonic influence or possession.
The sad fact is, the Duggar family called Josh’s sexual abuse of minor girls a “teenage mistake [ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/josh-duggar-responds-child-molestation-797521 ]” and they naively believe that because the boy repented, humbled himself before God, and asked forgiveness, God’s “grace, mercy, and redemption” have changed Josh into a new man who can be trusted not to molest minor children.
Anna Duggar, Josh’s wife and mother of his three young children (with another baby on the way), is standing behind her husband, calling him, “a man who knows how to be a gentleman and treat a girl right.” Apparently, her immersion in Christian culture influenced Anna to interpret the revelation of Josh’s “past mistakes” (which she says he confessed to her and her parents two years before he proposed to her) through the “sin, forgiveness, and redemption” narrative rather than giving credence to the prevailing understanding that sex offenders rarely (never?) change.
Christians who trust in repentance and forgiveness of sins when it comes to abusive situations will PRAY for the abuser rather than PROTECT the abuse victim.
#4 - The Duggars embrace Evangelical Christian teachings on “modesty.”
According to the Duggars, female bodies are a source of irresistible temptation to boys and men. Upon learning of their oldest son’s fondling and groping of the younger girls, JimBob and Michelle’s first reaction was undoubtedly to question the girls’ - as well as their own - culpability rather than immediately believe it was Josh himself who has a problem.
Did the girls, however innocently, run around the house in their nightgowns? Had Michelle failed to keep the bathroom door closed when the little girls were bathing?
In Quiverfull homes, the onus of sexual indiscretion always lies primarily with the father for failing to adequately protect his daughters, and secondarily with the girl or woman for failing to avail herself of adequate protection of clothing and/or her parents’ supervision.
Was 14-year-old Josh actually responsible for his behavior? Strange as it may seem, JimBob and Michelle would definitely have had serious doubts as to whether or not their son could help himself. Rather than recognizing immediately that Josh needed professional help, the Duggars were more likely to believe that demonic forces were at work … the Devil made him do it.
#5 - The Duggars believe that a benevolent God is intimately involved in every aspect of their lives and He is working all circumstances out for their ultimate good.
JimBob and Michelle Duggar live in a fantasy world of their own making, and they believe that, just like in the fairy tales, they all will live happily ever after. While confessing to not being a perfect family [ https://www.facebook.com/duggarfamilyofficial/posts/653931128073873 ], and admitting their family faces challenges and struggles every day, the Duggars are convinced “that dark and difficult time caused [the family] to seek God like never before,” which in their minds, means the molestation really wasn’t so bad, and in fact, has turned out to be a kind of blessing in disguise since each one of them “drew closer to God,” as a result of “something so terrible.”
According to the “eternally happy ending” story which the Duggars are telling themselves, the little girls whom Josh allegedly groped and fondled are not victims or even survivors of sexual abuse, but are instead equated with the “highly favored” Old Testament Joseph whose brothers sold him into slavery: What Satan meant for evil, God used for good.
Suffering in this life is insignificant - even trifling - compared to the faith-strengthening [ http://solidjoys.desiringgod.org/en/devotionals/suffering-that-strengthens-faith ] and soul-saving purpose of trials which will be richly rewarded with eternal life in Heaven … so praise the fucking Lord for whatever misery He sends to you and your children.
The Duggar delusion is so deeply ingrained that even in the midst of this horrifying revelation, JimBob and Michelle are hoping that the onlooking world will be inspired [ https://www.facebook.com/duggarfamilyofficial/posts/653931128073873 ] by their family’s witness: “We hope somehow the story of our journey — the good times and the difficult times — cause you to see the kindness of God and learn that He can bring you through anything.”
Stop. Please, just stop. Quit trying to spin this situation into a pretty story. Do not attempt to salvage your “Reality” TV program. Go home and “focus on your family”: get some legitimate, professional help for yourselves and your children. You have a quiver full of kids counting on you to stop the delusion and self-deception. For their sakes, do not allow your legacy to be the prolific multiplication of mania.
Hobby Lobby billionaires behind the Christian counseling center that treated Josh Duggar
Bill Gothard, Josh Duggar - Facebook
Joan Shipps 24 May 2015 at 23:18 ET
For more than a decade, Hobby Lobby billionaires provided substantial financial support to Bill Gothard, a politically influential religious leader who — among other things — founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles [ http://iblp.org/ ] and the chain of Christian ‘treatment’ centers to which Josh Duggar’s parents sent him after he was caught molesting young girls.
Hobby Lobby founder David Green and his family are committed donors to evangelical Christian causes. Mother Jones reports that [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/hobby-lobby-bill-gothard-institute-basic-life-principles ] the Greens sold Gothard — for $10 — a 2,250-acre campus in Big Sandy, Texas, complete with landing strip and aircraft hangar. The Greens further gifted Gothard a 529,717-square-foot building Little Rock, Arkansas, and a campus in New Zealand.
Although the developments moved quickly, the allegations themselves have existed out of the public eye for more than a decade. A police report obtained by In Touch Weekly and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette appears to detail those allegations, though the names of the suspect and all of the victims have been redacted from the report, because all were minors at the time.
In Touch Weekly, based on its unnamed sources, has said that the redacted suspect in the report is Josh Duggar. The Democrat-Gazette noted that the details of the report it has reviewed match statements made by the Duggars concerning the unspecified “wrongdoing” for which Josh Duggar has apologized. Although Josh Duggar was named by both publications and made statements of apology, he has not specifically addressed the molestation allegations.
March 2002: This is when the Duggar parents say they were first made aware of allegations that a person in their home was improperly touching others, according to a 2006 statement to police. The couple added that the person confessed to the behavior in July of that same year. Josh Duggar would have been about 14 years old at the time these incidents occurred.
March 2003: According to the report’s 2006 statement from Jim Bob Duggar and his wife, Michelle, to police, there was a second incident that month. Jim Bob Duggar first told the elders at his church about the incidents about the same time.
March 17 to July 17, 2003: At the agreement of the elders at the Duggars’ church, the report says, the person was sent to a Christian treatment program.
In his apology earlier this week, here is how Josh Duggar appeared to describe a similar situation: “We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing, and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling.”
In a separate interview with police, Michelle Duggar later says that the treatment program the person attended was not with a certified counselor but with a “guy they knew in Little Rock who is remodeling a building,” the report says.
Pulaski County assessor’s records show the nearly 500,000-square-foot former VA hospital building was purchased by Hobby Lobby in 1998.
The craft-store company then donated the building in 2000 to the Institute in Basic Life Principles, an Illinois-based ministry founded by televangelist Bill Gothard.
Shortly after the institute acquired the building, Gothard began renovating the space, saying it would be used for the Little Rock Training Center, which would house “court-referred youthful offenders in the organization’s Bible-based rehabilitation program,” according to an April 2000 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
July 2003: According to Jim Bob Duggar’s statement to police, this is the first time that the family tells a law enforcement official about the incidents in their home. The 2006 report says that the discussion between a church elder, a person believed to be Josh Duggar, and Jim Bob Duggar was with a corporal in the Arkansas State Police, who gave the person “a very stern talk” about his actions. The matter went no further at this time, according to the report, and the corporal told the group who approached him that because they “had already put [redacted] through a treatment program, there was nothing else to do.”
September 2004: The Duggars star in their first big national television special [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810740/ ], “14 Children and Pregnant Again!” The special aired on Discovery Health [ http://www.figure8films.tv/shows/dug.htm#synapsis ]. The Duggars did a series of specials from 2004 to 2007 that documented the births of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Duggar children, as well as the family’s move into a larger home.
Dec. 7, 2006: An anonymous tipster calls the Arkansas Child Abuse Hot¬line, 3½ years after the first time the alleged offense was brought to police. Springdale Police reach out to the Duggar family to schedule interviews to investigate and are told that the family is in Chicago until Dec. 11.
On the same day, an anonymous source sends an e-mail to Harpo Studios in Chicago. The e-mail seeks to warn Oprah Winfrey’s television program against airing a scheduled interview with the family because of the allegations. The producers of Oprah’s show passed along the e-mail to law enforcement.
Dec. 12, 2006: Springdale police begin interviewing Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, along with the person believed to be Josh Duggar and the victims.
Dec. 20, 2006: Investigators determine that the statute of limitations has expired and that no charges may be filed.
2007: As Gawker reporter Allie Jones (who, for disclosure, was a past colleague of this reporter at the Atlantic Wire) has written [ http://defamer.gawker.com/the-web-has-known-about-josh-duggar-for-years-when-did-1706258269 ], 2007 is approximately when similar rumors of sexual misconduct begin to appear online, mainly on comment threads and forums that focus on the Duggars. At the time, the rumors do not appear to be substantiated by any publicly available information.
A trial in that case took place Aug. 6, 2007, according to notes attached to the file. Sealed cases aren’t supposed to be left in public view, but the Duggar case file had been left in a stack of routine court filings at the circuit clerk’s office. The reporter saw no other information on the case at the time.
According to the Democrat-Gazette, the reporter asked Jim Bob and Josh Duggar about the trial at the time, but they declined to comment.
February to May 19, 2015: TLC airs the most recent season of “19 Kids and Counting.” One episode features the gender-reveal party for the child Josh and his wife, Anna, are expecting this year.
May 21: In Touch Weekly publishes a follow-up [ http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/bombshell-duggar-police-report-jim-bob-duggar-didn-t-report-son-josh-s-alleged-sex-offenses-for-more-than-a-year-58906 ] to its original article, this time with a police report online that, it says, details the allegations against Josh Duggar. In Touch reports that it obtained the police report through a Freedom of Information request. The Democrat-Gazette is also able to obtain the document through an FOI request, but a Thursday FOI request from The Washington Post was answered on the same day with a court order, dated May 21, ordering that the police report in question be destroyed. The order was a result of a “motion to expunge” from one of the alleged victims.
Twelve years ago, as a young teenager I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends. I confessed this to my parents who took several steps to help me address the situation. We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling. I understood that if I continued down this wrong road that I would end up ruining my life. I sought forgiveness from those I had wronged and asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life. I would do anything to go back to those teen years and take different actions. In my life today, I am so very thankful for God’s grace, mercy and redemption.
That evening, TLC continues to air a marathon of past “19 Kids and Counting” episodes.
On the same day, Springdale Police Department spokesman Scott Lewis confirms to reporters that the department has destroyed the police report in question. Speaking to the Associated Press, Lewis says, “The judge ordered us yesterday to expunge that record … as far as the Springdale Police Department is concerned this report doesn’t exist.” Similar reports, Lewis added, are typically kept on file indefinitely.
The Seewald family stands with the Duggar family in solidarity. We stand with the unnamed victims of these incidents. Our thoughts and prayers are for you. I want to say to Josh, hang in there, the shame you feel is legitimate, yet Jesus took your shame as he was punished in your place. Rest in his forgiveness and grace. Remember that he gives you his righteousness as a covering for your shame. Let this trial in your life build humility and grace. Don’t be angry at the world for their hatred of you. Show them through your love for them that it is Jesus Christ that made all the difference in your life. I’m rooting for you.
“There is blood in the water and the sharks are in a feeding frenzy,” Seewald wrote. “Finally, the Duggar family’s opponents have found what they have been eagerly waiting for: shocking revelations of scandal by Jim Bob and Michelle’s firstborn son, Josh.”
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar “are to be commended,” Seewald wrote. “I believe that Josh’s parents acted in a way that godly parents should. They did not turn a blind eye, but earnestly sought help from the church, counselors, and eventually the police. Maybe they didn’t do it in a way that pleases everyone, but they acted decisively to confront the sin, to call a penitent son back from his errors, and to seek to aid the hurting victims.”
He added: “Are the Duggars perfect in their interpretation of God’s moral standards? No. But neither is anyone else.”
Seewald also wrote that “the victims of Josh’s actions should not be lost in all of this,” adding:
Sadly, this type of thing is all too common. Victims of sexual abuse of any kind often suffer greatly for many years as a result of these sins. We should not downplay the seriousness of these offenses particularly, nor gloss over the pain and confusion they often bring, sometimes for a lifetime.
“Do not keep silent if you are being abused, tell someone you trust, a parent, a teacher, a friend, anyone is better than silence,” he wrote. “You are likely not the only one who has been abused. Tell someone so that they will be stopped.”
Josh Duggar, Seewald noted, “sinned because like all of us he is a sinner.”
We are never to condone sin, and the sins of Josh’s youth are reprehensible. Civil penalties are sometimes required and we should never begrudge the victims of crimes or the civil authorities from seeking justice, but we are not to condemn repentant sinners in our hearts or with our tongues or pens.
Seewald added that “the ultimate answer … is what Josh found and millions like him. He found forgiveness and cleansing from Jesus Christ. There are many of you that are reading these words right now having had thoughts and deeds no better than what Josh had and did.”
Among the only people close to the family to speak out prior to Seewald’s post was former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who on Friday criticized “those who have enjoyed revealing [Duggar’s] long ago sins.” Huckabee, a 2016 GOP presidential hopeful who recently received the Duggars’ endorsement [ http://www.businessinsider.com/duggar-family-deserts-rick-santorum-for-mike-huckabee-2015-5 ], said: “No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story.”
Noting that he “would rather not discuss something of this nature on my blog, especially since it is dredging up past sins that have been painfully grieved over once already by all involved,” Seewald said he felt “compelled to bring some context and reason to the bloodletting that many are engaging in and to come to the aid of our dear friends and family.”
Ben Seewald married now-22-year-old Jessa Duggar — the fifth of the 19 Duggar kids — last November.
The two met through church, and their courtship and wedding were prominent storylines on “19 Kids and Counting.”
Josh Duggar @joshduggar Who else is watching #19Kids tonight? The long awaited wedding ceremony of @BenSeewald @JessaSeewald airs at 9/8c on @TLC!#DuggarIDo 7:10 PM - 31 Mar 2015 [ https://twitter.com/joshduggar/status/583058784001634305 ]
Last month, the couple announced that they are expecting their first child.
Jessa Seewald @JessaSeewald Ben and I are so excited to announce that we're expecting a baby!!!!! [baby face] [heart][heart][heart]Due Nov. 1st! #BabySeewald @BenSeewald 12:59 PM - 21 Apr 2015 [ https://twitter.com/JessaSeewald/status/590575545861169152 ]
Until Thursday, Josh Duggar was a popular man in the Republican party.
From former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, nearly every 2016 presidential candidate courting the social conservative vote has been happy to pose for a photo with the high-profile member of the Duggar family from TLC's reality-TV series "19 Kids and Counting."
It's safe to say the GOP's courtship with Duggar is off.
The problem: There's no shortage of photos on Twitter and Facebook of Duggar posing cheek-to-cheek with some of the Republican Party's most prominent leaders.
Josh Duggar @joshduggar Great meeting today w @SenTedCruz. He always conveys passion for America & the importance of faith, family & freedom! 12:52 PM - 6 May 2015 [ https://twitter.com/joshduggar/status/596009631438270464 ]
Candidates who had been cozying up to Duggar may need to reverse course and denounce his actions. That would be difficult given the Washington-based Duggar's increasing prominence within the party. Duggar spoke as recently as late April at a marriage rally in Washington.
"Marriage begins with the Lord," he said, to cheers.
In January, Duggar posted a photo with the head of the Republican National Committee at the March for Life event.
Huckabee's 2016 Web site [ http://www.mikehuckabee.com/ ] still features pictures of the Duggar family patriarch, Jim Bob, and matriarch, Michelle, as two people who "like Mike."
Makela confirmed that the Grindr profile was his in an email exchange with Queerty, but declined to comment further. The former pastor did not immediately return a request for comment from The Huffington Post.
Queerty, which said it had received the screenshots from an anonymous source, has listed several examples of Makela making derogatory remarks about gays and transgender people.
In November, for example, another pastor wrote a letter to a local newspaper that described same-sex attraction as "a sinful temptation to be resisted and overcome by God’s grace and power, just as a temptation to steal or lie or overeat must be resisted and overcome." Makela posted a comment to the paper's website [ http://www.ourmidland.com/opinion/letters/friday-reader-s-view-a-stand-for-the-truth/article_1457fade-9168-50cd-b5dc-977673e66c22.html ] in which he endorsed the other pastor's views and compared homosexuality to alcoholism. The comment has since been deleted.
In another instance, Makela wrote in a March Facebook post that "the transgender movement is going to assist opportunistic sickos in preying upon children and others." That post, too, has since been deleted.
"The details of sin that have been kept confidential are being posted online by those who seek to do harm to the Makela family and to St. John’s," the statement said, apparently referring to the Queerty story. "This is taking an already difficult situation and making it even more painful. I write this to you to warn you that you may be confronted with the details of the sin, and to remind you that sin is never pretty."
Kempin urged his congregation to avoid reading stories about Makela.
"If you click on a website to see, or respond to what is being said -- even in a positive way -- you are only rewarding those who are trying to shame the Makelas," the statement said.
The church did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.
Makela is only the latest in a long series of anti-gay clergy members and politicians to be outed. In 2010, Lutheran pastor Tom Brock was put on leave from his Minneapolis church after Lavender magazine reported that he attended a support group [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/24/tom-brock-hope-lutheran-c_n_623766.html ] for people trying to rid themselves of same-sex attraction.
that God disrupted a gathering of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with a tornado because of the church's liberal policy on gay clergy members.
Mom Says Pastor Outed On Gay Hook-Up App Told Her Gay Son He Was Going To Hell (UPDATE)
By Simon McCormack Posted: 05/22/2015 12:26 pm EDT Updated: 05/22/2015 4:59 pm EDT
UPDATE: 3:35 p.m. -- Michigan mother Jennifer Kish said that former pastor Matthew Makela, who resigned from his position this week at St. John's Lutheran Church in Midland after his activity on a gay hook-up app was revealed, told her son that he was going to hell for being gay. But, Kish told The Huffington Post, the pastor did not suggest to her son that he kill himself.
Jennifer Kish said her then 17-year-old son Tyler suffered from serious depression and was considering suicide because he was told by Makela he was going to hell because he was gay.
"If he was going to go to hell for being gay then he might as well go to hell by committing suicide," Jennifer Kish said, regarding what Makela told her son.
Kish told HuffPost that the remark was describing her son's own conclusions at the time. "He was thinking, 'What's the difference, if I’m going to go to hell for being gay, I might as well go to hell for killing myself,'" she said.
The highlighted passage above was changed Friday afternoon on the station's website to read "regarding how Tyler Kish interpreted Makela's comments to him."
A representative for WNEM did not immediately return HuffPost's request for comment.
Previously:
A mother is alleging that a pastor with a history of making anti-gay comments -- who was recently outed as gay himself -- told her teenage son he would go to hell for being gay and should commit suicide.
Kish told local news station WNEM that the pastor told her son that "if he was going to go to hell for being gay then he might as well go to hell by committing suicide."
Tyler Kish said he did contemplate suicide as he struggled to reconcile his identity with what his pastor told him.
"Deep down I think I knew what he was saying was wrong, but it was just hard being a kid and an adult telling you that," he told WNEM.
A phone number listed for "Matthew Makela" in Midland was disconnected. An attempt to get in touch with the former pastor through St. John's was not immediately successful, and a request for comment sent to the church was also not immediately returned.
However, on the church's website, Senior Pastor Daniel Kempin responded [ http://www.sjlmidland.org/ ] to the media coverage surrounding Makela.
"The nature of Matt’s sin broke on the news and is now out there for everyone to see," Kempin said. "Most difficult is to see the way he has been savaged in all of this."
"We must remember that this was never about the details of sin. Not for us," he added. "Those details have been revealed now, but they don’t really matter."
"They condemned gays and rock music outside Carolina Rebellion," a rock festival, the anonymous owner wrote in the Imgur post. "I bought the (unexpectedly expired) domain from their signs and pointed it at gay porn of people who probably like rock music. Fair?"
'Hello N*gger': Conservatives Welcome President Obama To Twitter
Ten minutes after President Barack Obama announced he would be personally tweeting from his new Twitter account, the right began calling him a "n*gger."
by David Badash May 19, 2015 8:45 AM
Editor's note: It should go without saying that we find all these tweets and the image beyond abhorrent, as we noted in the article below. Some have complained to Facebook, which removed the article from my Facebook page.
At 11:38 Monday morning, President Barack Obama sent his first tweet from the new White House Twitter account, @POTUS (President of the United States).
President Obama @POTUS Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account. 10:38 AM - 18 May 2015 [ https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/600324682190053376 (with comments)]
Gippo Dudee @DudeeGippo @POTUS nice job with the banner, gotta let everyone know that you're some kinda communist nigger right? 11:15 AM - 18 May 2015 [ https://twitter.com/DudeeGippo/status/600333892688551936 (no comments yet)]
PROTECT GUN RIGHTS @GruntVet2012 @POTUS SO WILL THE PERSON THAT CALLED YOU A NIGGER BE CHARGED WITH A HATE CRIME, LIKE WHEN GAYS ARE CALLED FAGGOTS? 6:16 AM - 19 May 2015 [ https://twitter.com/GruntVet2012/status/600621044106268672 (with comments)]
Of course, the "n" word wasn't the only ugly slur the right threw at @POTUS.
We counted eleven instances of tweets calling @POTUS a "fag," five with "faggot" or "faggots," and you can imagine the rest of the tweets from the right, like this one:
Arkansas Family Receives Pizza With Racial Slurs Inside Box
By James Gerken Posted: 05/20/2015 9:55 am EDT Updated: 05/20/2015 9:59 am EDT
Two Pizza Hut employees in Arkansas were fired this week after two teenagers were given a pizza with a racial slur and "KKK" written inside the box. A swastika was also drawn on it.
Wallace's mother, Sierrna Harris, told CBS affiliate THV 11 she’s “speechless, really” and couldn’t believe “there’s someone [who] would even do this.”
“Why? What is the reason behind this?” she said.
After the incident, she contacted Pizza Hut and the responsible employees were promptly fired.
"We have a zero tolerance policy for this type of behavior and regularly train our employees to treat everyone fairly, equally and with respect," Pizza Hut said in a statement to the news station. "As soon as the local franchise owner found out about this he contacted the customer and apologized. We extend that sincere apology to everyone who was offended by this ignorant act."
Earlier this month, employees at a Florida Pizza Hut demonstrated the right way to treat a customer.
Racist Letter Tells Black Family To Leave Neighborhood
By Simon McCormack Posted: 05/24/2015 1:51 pm EDT Updated: 05/24/2015 1:59 pm EDT
A family in suburban New York discovered a letter in their mailbox that, in no uncertain terms, told them to move out of the neighborhood because "it will be better for all of us."
Copes did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.
County executive Steven Bellone said he hopes the person who wrote the letter is discovered and punished.
"To the coward who committed a hate crime against an innocent family in Lindenhurst — There is no place for intolerance in Suffolk County," Bellone said in a statement obtained by PIX11 [ http://pix11.com/2015/05/23/racist-letter-tells-black-lidenhurst-family-you-dont-belong-here/ ]. "I know the Suffolk County Police Department will do everything possible to solve this hate crime, out you and see you punished."
No tickets are required for family members and guests to attend any of the graduation events.
Friday, May 8th 2015
Commencement Check-In 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Lahaye Student Union
All graduates are required to stop by the Commencement Check-In to receive specific information about graduation events and pick up their name cards for their degree presentation ceremony. Honor cords will also be distributed to eligible students. Visit the Graduates page [ http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=10426 ] for more information.
Army ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 10:00 a.m to 11:00 a.m. Towns-Alumni lecture hall
Graduation Reception 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Williams Stadium, concourse level
Graduating students and their families are invited to attend.
Air Force ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Tower Theatre
Military Spouse Graduate Recognition Ceremony 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Towns-Alumni lecture hall
The Baccalaureate service is a traditional service held each year during the Commencement weekend that serves as a demonstration of Liberty's Christian commitment to the Great Commission and also the Great Commandment. The graduates will not process for this ceremony, but are instead encouraged to be seated with their family and friends. The faculty will process at 5:35 p.m., we ask that you are seated prior to the processional.
Military Graduate Recognition Ceremony 7:30 p.m. Vines Center
This ceremony is a military recognition ceremony that will be held in honor of all military graduates. Each military graduate will be presented with a challenge coin.
Saturday, May 9th 2015
Graduate Procession 7:30 a.m. Graduates line-up at the Williams Stadium football practice fields. 8:45 a.m. Graduate procession begins Williams Stadium
O.S. Hawkins, CEO of GuideStone Financial Resources, speaks to students about leadership by personal conviction rather than consensus during Liberty University's 2015 Commencement.
Jeb Bush Attacks Obama Administration For Failing 'Easy Calls' On Religious Freedom
Potential Republican presidential hopeful and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush waits onstage prior to delivering the commencement address at Liberty University on May 9, 2015, in Lynchburg, Virginia. Drew Angerer via Getty Images
By Sam Levine Posted: 05/09/2015 11:10 am EDT Updated: 05/09/2015 12:59 pm EDT
Former Florida governor and likely GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush offered a defense of conservative Christian principles and attacked the Obama administration for failing to preserve religious freedom during his commencement address at Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Bush accused the Obama administration of using "coercive federal power" to infringe on the religious rights of Americans.
"What should be easy calls, in favor of religious freedom, have instead become an aggressive stance against it. Somebody here is being small-minded and intolerant, and it sure isn’t the nuns, ministers, and laymen and women who ask only to live and practice their faith," he said, according to remarks released ahead of the speech. "Federal authorities are demanding obedience, in complete disregard of religious conscience -- and in a free society, the answer is 'no.'”
"[S]ome moral standards are universal. They do not bend under the weight of cultural differences or elite opinion. Wherever there is a child waiting to be born, we say choose life, and we say it with love," Bush said on Saturday. "Wherever women and girls in other countries are brutally exploited, or treated as possessions without rights and dignity, we Christians see that arrogance for what it is. Wherever Jews are subjected to the oldest bigotry, we reject that sin against our brothers and sisters, and we defend them."
Jeb Bush Liberty University Graduation Commencement Speech (Jeb Bush Liberty University Graduation Speech 2015) at Liberty University that Pastor Kent Hovind ( http://www.freekenthovind.com ) is being illegally imprisoned in America. There is great injustice going on in America and REAL Christians that believe and follow Jesus Christ should stand up and take the country back.
Likely Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said that Christian business owners should not have to provide services for gay weddings if it goes against their religious beliefs.
The former Florida governor justified his position by claiming that not providing a service does not count as discrimination if business owners feel that it violates their religious rights.
“A big country, a tolerant country, ought to be able to figure out the difference between discriminating someone because of their sexual orientation and not forcing someone to participate in a wedding that they find goes against their moral beliefs,” he said. “This should not be that complicated. Gosh, it is right now.”
After widespread backlash, Pence was forced to sign a revised version of the law [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/mike-pence-religious-freedom_n_6996144.html ], which delineated that businesses could not discriminate against customers and clients on the basis of sexual orientation or identity. But gay rights advocates argued that the revised law did little to amend the original one, and that it still leaves much room for interpretation and opens the door for discrimination.
Jeb Bush: It's 'Intellectual Arrogance' To Agree With Scientists About Humans Driving Climate Change
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) told a New Hampshire crowd that it was "intellectual arrogance" to think that the science is settled on whether human activity is driving climate change. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
By Kate Sheppard Posted: 05/21/2015 10:44 am EDT Updated: [c.] 05/21/2015 12:05 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Likely Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Wednesday that while he acknowledges "the climate is changing," he's not clear on the extent to which human activity may be causing those changes.
"I don't think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted," the former Florida governor said at an event in Bedford, New Hampshire.
"For the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant, to be honest with you," he said, according to CNN [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/20/politics/jeb-bush-climate-change/ ]. "It's this intellectual arrogance that now you can't have a conversation about it, even. The climate is changing. We need to adapt to that reality."
While acknowledging that climate change is happening and must be adapted to does set him apart from some of his Republican colleagues, the science is fairly clear that human activity -- namely, the burning of fossil fuels -- is the leading driver of rising temperatures in the modern era. As NASA explains [ http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ ], scientists are able to observe the increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, and they're able to distinguish current warming trends from historic, natural temperature shifts. Ninety-seven percent of peer-reviewed studies [ http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article ] agree with this conclusion that human activity is causing global warming, as do the country's leading scientific bodies -- including [ http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ ] the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Geophysical Union.
Bush also criticized President Barack Obama's commencement speech to the United States Coast Guard Academy on Wednesday, in which the president argued that climate change is a national security threat [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/obama-climate-change_n_7341638.html ]. Bush said climate is an issue but should not be "the highest priority."
But even his brother, former President George W. Bush, finally acknowledged the consensus view on climate change near the end of his time in office, after years of denying it and avoiding action. In 2005 he said [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601630.html ], "It's now recognized that the surface of the earth is warmer, and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem." And in 2007 he said the country needed to "confront the serious challenge of global climate change."
But the former president's brother is apparently not there yet.
Democrats immediately pushed back on Bush's comments. "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that human activity has led to climate change. Ninety-seven percent," said Holly Shulman, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. "But Jeb Bush thinks they’re wrong. Who’s being intellectually arrogant now?"
Jeb Bush claimed that the science is unclear as to how much humans contribute to global warming. The United Nations climate change research organization, however, has deemed it “extremely likely” that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.
Bush, May 20: I don’t think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. I just don’t — it’s convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you.
This suggests that the relative contributions to global warming from humans and from natural causes are unknown. Though absolute certainty on this issue is impossible, much research has gone into the question, and relatively good answers are indeed available from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report [ https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf ] that was released in 2013.
IPCC, 2013: It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in GMST [global mean surface temperature] from 1951 to 2010. This assessment is supported by robust evidence from multiple studies using different methods.
“Extremely likely” means that the likelihood of an outcome is between 95 percent and 100 percent certain [ https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter01_FINAL.pdf ]. The IPCC added that it is “virtually certain” — which means 99 percent to 100 percent probability — “that internal variability alone cannot account for the observed global warming since 1951.” In the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers [ https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf ], the authors summarize clearly: “The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” In other words, the best guess is that humans have caused essentially all of the warming that has occurred.
The fifth assessment report goes into more detail on specific amounts of warming. Over that 1951 to 2010 period, there was a total rise in temperature of 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about one degree Fahrenheit. Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide “likely” (66 percent to 100 percent probability) caused between 0.5 and 1.3 degrees C of warming in total. Other human activities such as the release of aerosols have had more of a cooling effect, because they scatter and block sunlight [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/page3.php ] as it reaches the atmosphere; this effect totaled between -0.6 and 0.1 degrees C.
Natural influences, including things like changes in the sun’s output and volcanic eruptions, have had little effect — between -0.1 and 0.1 degrees C. Internal variability, which refers to natural fluctuations in temperature, also only accounted for a change between -0.1 and 0.1 degrees C.
Here’s a visual version of these numbers, from the IPCC’s report.
The top bar represents the observed warming since 1951 — how much hotter it has actually become, according to the planet’s numerous weather stations [ http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/nothing-false-about-temperature-data/ ]. Below that in green is the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions; the yellow bar represents other anthropogenic — human-caused — activities like aerosol emissions, and the orange bar combines those two human sources. At the bottom are the relatively small contributions from natural sources like the sun and volcanos, and internal variability.
To be clear, all these results have uncertainty associated with them — that’s what the lines with brackets on each bar represent. But even with that uncertainty, the human contribution to warming clearly is far larger than that of natural sources.
How do scientists attribute warming to one source over another? One method is to compare what has happened to what scientists expect would happen under certain circumstances. To do this, scientists use computer models: They simulate what would happen without human activity like burning fossil fuels, then add in that activity, and see how the simulation results differ. If the actual, observable trends — that 0.6 degrees C rise in temperature, in this case — mirror what happens in the model with human activity but not without it, then that means human activity is likely responsible for the trend.
Here’s how the IPCC describes this idea:
IPCC, 2013: If observed changes are consistent with simulations that include human influence, and inconsistent with those that do not, this would be sufficient for attribution. …
Here is a visual representation [ https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf ] (see page 875) of what the models say would happen with and without human activities compared with the observed temperature trend. (This is a simplified, or “idealized,” version of reality for visualization purposes, according to the IPCC, but more complete studies have used this method to arrive at the results mentioned above.)
The blue line represents what multiple climate models say would have happened over more than 100 years with only natural variability — basically, only a small change in temperature would have been expected. The orange line is the same models’ guess at how the climate would react to human activities like burning fossil fuels. And all those dots, and the black line fitted to them, are what actually happened. The close link between the observed trend and the models’ guess suggests that human activity is indeed causing the planet to warm up.
This sort of analysis has been repeated and confirmed in several published studies, which the IPCC used in its synthesis of the evidence. For example, a study by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists published in the Journal of Climate [ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00567.1 ] in 2013 found there were “detectable anthropogenic warming components” over most of the surface of the world for temperatures between 1901 and 2010, and in most cases the amount of warming was consistent with the models as well.
Another 2013 paper [ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-012-1585-8 ] published in the journal Climate Dynamics used a different type of analysis and found that “the expected warming due to all human influences since 1950 (including aerosol effects) is very similar to the observed warming.” Yet one more, from 2011 in Nature Geoscience [ http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n1/abs/ngeo1327.html ], found very similar results — human emissions caused 0.85 degrees C of warming, half of which was offset by aerosol emissions. This paper as well concluded that “human-induced causes dominate the observed warming.”
Other studies, included in the IPCC analysis, have found that human influence is likely the major contributor to warming over every specific part of the world with the exception of Antarctica. There are a number of other lines of evidence as well, regarding the global water cycle, the warming of the oceans and other pieces of the climate puzzle. In all, the totality of this evidence led the IPCC to make a firm conclusion:
IPCC, 2013: Taken together, the combined evidence increases the level of confidence in the attribution of observed climate change, and reduces the uncertainties associated with assessment based on a single climate variable. From this combined evidence it is virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system.
Again, “virtually certain” means between 99 percent and 100 percent probability. Bush is correct if he means that researchers are unlikely to ever have an exact number for how many degrees are caused by humans — scientific calculations always have a certain amount of uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean that nothing at all is known on the topic. In this case, the science says that humans “dominate” the causes of global warming.
Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
Jeb Bush Confronted By College Student: 'Your Brother Created ISIS'
By Marina Fang Posted: 05/13/2015 11:33 pm EDT Updated: 05/14/2015 10:59 am EDT
A college student told likely GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Wednesday that his brother, former President George W. Bush, was to blame for the rise of the Islamic State.
The heated confrontation took place at a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada, according to The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/13/college-student-to-jeb-bush-your-brother-created-isis/ ]. Ivy Ziedrich, 19, a student at the University of Nevada, approached the former Florida governor to question him about comments he had made during the event. Bush had argued that the Obama administration's weak foreign policy was responsible for the rise of the terrorist group, also known as ISIS, in the Middle East.
Ziedrich countered that Obama wasn't to blame -- and that it was his predecessor's decision to disband the Iraqi army that made the group's formation possible.
"Your brother created ISIS," she told Bush.
What followed was a contentious exchange, according to the Times. Ziedrich accused Bush of "spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars," pointing out that under his brother, the U.S. had spent years in the Middle East, waging "pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism."
Bush responded by defending the war in Iraq. "When we left Iraq, security had been arranged, al Qaeda had been taken out," he said. "There was a fragile system that could have been brought up to eliminate the sectarian violence."
Ziedrich's case is stronger than it may seem. To be sure, had the U.S. not invaded Iraq, the region's history would have unfolded differently. But more to her point, specific decisions made by the Bush administration also led to the rise of ISIS. Most notably, the administration engaged in a widespread and controversial policy known as debaathification, which made most people, even low-level bureaucrats, who had been associated with the former regime, ineligible for government employment in the new era. The German magazine Der Spiegel [ http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html ] in April published a trove of documents that once belonged to the mastermind of ISIS, Haji Bakr, who created the infrastructure of the Islamic State.
Der Spiegel describes the route Bakr took to found ISIS:
In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later "caliph," the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.
Bakr was "a nationalist, not an Islamist," says Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, as he recalls the former career officer, who was stationed with Hashimi's cousin at the Habbaniya Air Base. "Colonel Samir," as Hashimi calls him, "was highly intelligent, firm and an excellent logistician." But when Paul Bremer, then head of the US occupational authority in Baghdad, "dissolved the army by decree in May 2003, he was bitter and unemployed."
Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies. Bakr went underground and met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth, had previously run a training camp for international terrorist pilgrims in Afghanistan. Starting in 2003, he gained global notoriety as the mastermind of attacks against the United Nations, US troops and Shiite Muslims. He was even too radical for former Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi died in a US air strike in 2006.
Bush has advocated a hawkish approach to dealing with the Islamic State, and has repeatedly criticized Obama for not combating the extremist group more aggressively.
For The Record, Yes, George W. Bush Did Help Create ISIS
By Akbar Shahid Ahmed and Ryan Grim Posted: 05/14/2015 5:18 pm EDT Updated: 05/15/2015 9:59 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- Jeb Bush isn't even an official presidential candidate yet, but he's already facing a serious challenge to his candidacy -- and it just got worse because of a 19-year-old.
Moments earlier, the former Florida governor had been telling the audience that President Barack Obama was responsible for the rise of the militant group. But Ziedrich, a student at the University of Nevada, Reno, replied that Bush's version of history glossed over a few key events.
"You stated that ISIS was created because we don't have enough presence and we've been pulling out of the Middle East," she said [ http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meet-college-democrat-told-jeb-bush-brother-created/story?id=31041091 ]. "However, the threat of ISIS was created by the Iraqi coalition authority, which ousted the entire government of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who are part of the Iraqi military were forced out. They had no employment, they had no income, yet they were left with access to all the same arms and weapons."
Ziedrich's rebuttal to Bush came at a moment when the likely candidate was already facing questions over an earlier statement [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/12/jeb-bush-iraq-war_n_7268096.html ] that appeared to suggest he supported the invasion of Iraq. (Bush walked back those comments Thursday, saying that [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/14/jeb-bush-iraq-war_n_7285094.html ] "knowing what we know now," he would not have invaded the country.) And while Bush might not like to admit it, the truth is that Ziedrich's comments capture a point that has long been emphasized by Middle East watchers -- namely, that the Bush administration's mismanagement of Iraq encouraged thousands of skilled Iraqis to take their expertise to the anti-American insurgency that eventually became the Islamic State.
Jeb Bush and other Republicans have accused Obama of enabling the insurgency by withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011. The administration says it could not have maintained the troops there without an agreement to protect them that Baghdad was not at the time willing to sign.
But Bush's preferred reading of history overlooks the fact that the risk of an Islamic State-level militant expansion was clear back in 2003, after George W. Bush had ordered a U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of sketchy evidence. Saddam Hussein had at that point effectively controlled Iraq for more than 30 years [ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/world/middleeast/30saddam.html?pagewanted=all ]. First tasting great power as the country's intelligence and internal security chief, Hussein invested heavily in making Iraq a police state, with loyal, well-trained agents of his Baath Party government as numerous in the country as conspiracy theories about their activities. He also focused on making his army a formidable force, appointing Sunni Arabs -- members of his own sect of Islam and a minority in Iraq -- to leadership positions. Hussein's rule forced those soldiers and officials to become even closer to the despot, because they, like many other people in the centralized quasi-socialist state that was Iraq, were reliant on government salaries, subsidies and favor.
Then an American came to Baghdad and told all those well-trained, well-armed men that their services would no longer be required. Or allowed.
Just over 12 years ago, George W. Bush appointed L. Paul Bremer to run Iraq. Bremer was given massive powers and a mandate to turn Iraq into a GOP dream: a free-market-loving, America-backing Muslim state that would stand as a shining beacon in the Middle East.
Bremer quietly left the country 14 months later, handing over power to an interim government in which 85 percent of Iraqis [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13216-2004Jun28.html ], at the time, said they lacked confidence. Much of their discontent had to do with Iraq's security problems, which U.S. officials told The Washington Post [id.] were exacerbated by Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi army.
One of the men who lost his job was, according to a major recent report by the German magazine Der Spiegel, a key architect of the Islamic State.
Der Spiegel spoke about Bakr with Iraqi researcher Hisham al-Hashimi, who has advised the Iraqi government. Hashimi said that Bremer's move left the onetime Hussein loyalist "bitter and unemployed."
The report continues:
Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies. Bakr went underground and met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth, had previously run a training camp for international terrorist pilgrims in Afghanistan. Starting in 2003, he gained global notoriety as the mastermind of attacks against the United Nations, US troops and Shiite Muslims. He was even too radical for former Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi died in a US air strike in 2006.
Although Iraq's dominant Baath Party was secular, the two systems ultimately shared a conviction that control over the masses should lie in the hands of a small elite that should not be answerable to anyone -- because it ruled in the name of a grand plan, legitimized by either God or the glory of Arab history. The secret of IS' success lies in the combination of opposites, the fanatical beliefs of one group and the strategic calculations of the other.
Bakr, a top adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in 2014 [ http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/02/isis_confirms_death.php ]. By that point, according to Der Spiegel's story and an analysis [id.] of Islamic State comments by The Long War Journal [ http://www.longwarjournal.org/ ], Bakr had firmly established Baghdadi's pre-eminence within the group, helped the militants take over key towns in Syria and played a major role in the group's split from the central al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. That last move was central to the Islamic State's claim to statehood and global leadership over Muslims. It is also thought to have enhanced the group's prestige among radicalized youth from around the world, thus making it more attractive to potential recruits.
A Washington Post report from last month confirmed the importance of former Hussein figures like Bakr in the overall Islamic State structure.
Much as Jeb Bush might dislike the legacy of his brother's policies in Iraq, it will be difficult for him to pretend it doesn't exist. It's one thing to say that he would not repeat the invasion, and another to acknowledge that the decisions made after the invasion have at least as much to do with the rise of the Islamic State as anything Obama later did. The question for Bush now will be how to account for that legacy, because it seems unlikely that Ziedrich will be the last person to bring it up.
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But Francis has also placed a strong emphasis on mercy. In the past, he’s criticized [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/pope-francis-gay_n_3954776.html ] church leaders for becoming “obsessed” with hot-button issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, instead of focusing on making sure the church is a “home for all.”
Leaders of the Catholic Church in America have been strong opponents of abortion rights [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-miller/pro-choice-catholics_b_6526314.html ] for decades. Most recently, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed an amicus brief [ http://www.usccb.org/news/2014/14-024.cfm ] with the Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs in the Hobby Lobby case, who argued against mandatory health care coverage of drugs they believed were abortifacients.
Patti Miller, author of “Good Catholics: The Battle Over Abortion In The Catholic Church,” told HuffPost she suspects church leaders in the U.S. may not react favorably to the pope’s new plan.
“By my calculation, they’ve spent 40 years building up the idea abortions are non-negotiable things, that a woman can never do it,” Miller told HuffPost. “It gets to the heart of Francis’ papacy, his pastoral and progressive approach to forgiving people.”
In the pews, American Catholics continue to have mixed views on the issue. Forty-six percent of Catholics agree that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Public Religion Research Institute [ http://publicreligion.org/research/2014/03/fact-sheet-american-catholics-in-2013/ ]. About 47 percent believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
And despite the church’s official stance, Catholic women are still exercising their reproductive rights. According to a report from the Guttmacher Institute [ https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/US-Abortion-Patients.pdf ], Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as all American women.
“The Catholic Church also officially prohibits contraception,” Miller said. “You can’t use contraception and you can’t get an abortion, so the Catholic hierarchy doesn’t have a lot of credibility here. It just doesn’t leave women with a lot of options.”
Fox Doc Argues Men Should Have 'Veto' Power Over Women's Abortions (VIDEO)
Fox News
By Catherine Thompson Published May 5, 2015, 1:36 PM EDT
Dr. Keith Ablow [gesundheit!] may already hold the title of Fox News' biggest race-hustler [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/keith-ablow-race-hustler-fox ], but he's also a strong contender for the distinction of being the network's premier men's rights activist.
Ablow [gesundheit!], a psychiatrist, declared Tuesday on "Outnumbered" that a man should have the right to compel his female partner to take a pregnancy to term if he's willing to take full responsibility for their child after he or she is born.
The comment came during a discussion of a dispute between wealthy businessman Nick Loeb and his former partner, "Modern Family" star Sofía Vergara, over their frozen embryos. Loeb claimed in a vindictive New York Times op-ed [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/opinion/sofiavergaras-ex-fiance-our-frozen-embryos-have-a-right-to-live.html ] that Vergara was blocking him from taking full custody of two of those embryos he wished to bring to term.
"Why would a woman's right to decide what to do with a frozen embryo trump a man's right every time?" Ablow [gesundheit!] asked. "If he wants to bring these embryos to term, good for him. He wants to parent. If he wants to have them adopted, good for him. It's not a coin toss. Whoever wants that potential being to survive, that's who wins."
"I've been outspoken on this," he added later. "I think men should be able to veto women's abortions if they're willing to care for the child after it's born."
That's quite a startling argument to make, although it may sound par for the course on a Fox News set. And Ablow [gesundheit!] has indeed made it several times before. In May 2014, he argued there was a "huge double standard [ http://www.rawstory.com/2014/05/fox-news-psychiatrist-crazy-that-men-cant-force-pregnant-women-to-have-babies/ ]" in the fact that a woman could block a man from implanting a surrogate with her donated egg, whereas he said it's considered "crazy" for a man to try to block a woman from aborting an unwanted pregnancy.
But Ablow's [double gesundheit!] tour de force was a 2011 FoxNews.com op-ed [ http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/22/men-should-be-allowed-to-veto-abortions/ ] that argued a woman who seeks an abortion over a man's objections should be civilly and criminally liable for both wrongful death and her partner's "psychological suffering." The op-ed contained such feats of logic as arguing men's lack of veto power over their female partner's abortions correlates with America's "epidemic of absentee fathers," and the assertion that no women who took "full responsibility for their sexual activity and their bodies" would run any risk of becoming pregnant and then having to take their pregnancies to term.
Ablow [gesundheit!] also wrote in the op-ed that he was unable to confirm that a woman forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term suffered significant psychological damage.
"I understand that adopting social policy that gives fathers the right to veto abortions would lead to presently unknown psychological consequences for women forced to carry babies to term," he wrote. "But I don’t know that those consequences are greater than those suffered by men forced to end the lives of their unborn children."
Judge Allows Sofia Vergara's Ex To Sue For Custody Of Frozen Embryos
Sofia Vergara’s ex-fiancé, Nick Loeb, will be allowed to file a revised lawsuit seeking custody of two frozen embryos the couple created. John Shearer/Invision/AP
By Hilary Hanson Posted: 05/24/2015 3:32 pm EDT Updated: 05/24/2015 [c.] 11:55 am EDT
Nick Loeb, ex-fiancé of “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara, was granted permission on Friday to file a revised lawsuit seeking custody of two frozen embryos the couple created when they were together.
Loeb, 39, first sued Vergara in August 2014 -- four months after they split up -- seeking to void the contract that they both signed when they had the embryos created using Loeb's sperm and Vergara's eggs in 2013. The contract stated that “any embryos created through the process could be brought to term only with both parties’ consent [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/30/sofia-vergara-nick-loeb-embryos-nytimes-op-ed_n_7181028.html ].” Loeb’s suit argued that the contract should be voided because it did not specify what would happen if the pair broke up.
Loeb’s attorneys have claimed that the first lawsuit was an attempt to ensure Vergara did not destroy the embryos. However, lawyers for the 42-year-old actress stated that she never wanted the embryos destroyed, but merely wished to leave them frozen indefinitely.
Vergara said the lawsuit “makes no sense [ http://www.people.com/article/sofia-vergara-embryo-lawsuit-nick-loeb-howard-stern ]” in an interview with Howard Stern earlier this month, People reported. She told Stern that a child "needs a loving relationship of parents that get along, that don't hate each other” and it would be “selfish” to bring the embryos to term otherwise.
She indicated that if the issue were “so serious” for Loeb, he should have taken the legal contract more seriously when he signed it.
Republican war on reproductive rights seen in DC bill
The Rachel Maddow Show 5/6/15
Rachel Maddow shares a piece of satire from Amy Schumer and shows that despite the absurdity of the Republican obsession with women's reproductive rights, the actions of House Republicans targeting women, most recently in Washington, D.C., are serious.
Reproductive rights remain brightest partisan dividing line
The Rachel Maddow Show 5/11/15
Rep. Diana DeGette, chair of the Pro-choice Caucus in the House, talks with Rachel Maddow about the recent spate of anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation from both state and national Republicans, including in cases of rape and incest.
Why I Strongly Oppose the Republican Anti-Choice Bill
By Rep. Jan Schakowsky U.S. Representative for Illinois's 9th congressional district Posted: 05/13/2015 5:59 pm EDT Updated: 05/13/2015 7:59 pm EDT
Today I voted against H.R. 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The House Republican leadership is once again spending their time and energy trying to restrict women's right to safe and legal abortions instead of advancing policies that actually help hardworking Americans.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act doesn't protect women's health. It threatens it. That is why I join with the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Nurses Association and many other organizations that believe that politicians should not intrude in decisions that should be left to women and their doctors.
Under this legislation, women whose lives are in danger would be prohibited from receiving a safe and legal abortion after 20 weeks -- even when their doctor determines it is medically necessary. Doctors could face up to five years in jail for acting to prevent serious and potentially lifelong harm to their patient.
In addition, the bill would enact senseless barriers for rape victims, making it even harder for them to get timely health care. A rape victim would be required to undergo multiple trips to different healthcare providers and be required to wait 48 hours before she could receive a safe and legal abortion. Incest victims under the age of 18 would have to notify law enforcement or a government agency before being able to obtain a safe and legal abortion.
This bill makes one thing clear: In this new Congress, the old Republican war on women continues. I strongly reject their efforts and stand with the many groups and individuals who are fighting against this misguided and harmful legislation.
In 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision concluded that women have a constitutionally protected right to safe and legal abortions. That landmark decision wasn't the beginning of women having abortions; it was the end of women dying from abortions. As a country we must go forward, empowering women's health rights and fighting against all attempts to restrict these extremely important rights.
Monsignor Kevin Wallin's public defender requested leniency. His defender cited Wallin's three decades of charity work as well as 80 letters of support, which included one from the late New York Cardinal Edward Egan.
Around 75 people crowded into the courtroom. Ninety people submitted letters showing their support.
Wallin pleaded guilty in 2013 to a methamphetamine conspiracy charge and agreed to a potential prison sentence of 10 to 11 years.
Imprisoned for the past two years, he asked for a sentence of no more than four years in prison, followed by a year of home confinement, 500 hours of community service and drug treatment.
"The record evidence demonstrates that Kevin Wallin is an extraordinary man whose remarkable character and acts have touched thousands of people," Wallin's public defender, Kelly Barrett, wrote in the sentencing request in March. "Kevin tragically became a methamphetamine addict. He fell from grace and did criminal wrong, but has confessed his crimes and has been working hard to atone for them."
Wallin's numerous accomplishments included serving as pastor of St. Peter's Parish in Danbury and the Cathedral Parish in Bridgeport, volunteering with a variety of community groups, helping found an AIDS ministry program, leading an inner city charity group, serving on the Danbury Cultural Commission and serving on the board of directors of Sacred Heart University.
Egan, who died in March, praised Wallin in a letter to the court.
"He was outstanding in the fulfillment of his assignments and in his concern for people in need," Egan wrote. "Father Wallin was held in highest regard as a dedicated clergyman and an outstanding citizen as well."
Federal prosecutors said Wallin committed serious crimes and most people convicted of conspiring to sell meth are sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
It was learned that Wallin's associates in California sent him methamphetamine beginning in late 2008 or early 2009. By 2011, Wallin's partners were sending him one to three pounds of meth monthly. Wallin was running the drug operation out of his apartment in Waterbury, investigators said.
Wallin also bought the "Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place" adult video and sex toyshop in North Haven and apparently intended to launder drug proceeds that totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Copywriter 2015 - Distributed by THE NEWS CONSORTIUM
Pope Francis Prayer Intentions for May 2015
Universal: That, rejecting the culture of indifference, we may care for our neighbours who suffer, especially the sick and the poor.
Evangelization: That Mary's intercession may help Christians in secularized cultures be ready to proclaim Jesus.
Raul Castro Says Pope Inspiring Him To Return To Church Pope Francis talks with Cuban President Raul Castro during a private audience at the Vatican on Sunday. May 10, 2015 Cuban leader Raul Castro, on a visit to the Vatican, where he thanked the pope for helping broker a thaw in relations between Havana and Washington [ http://www.npr.org/2014/12/18/371597771/obama-announces-diplomatic-thaw-with-cuba ], said he was so impressed with the pontiff that he might return to Catholicism, the faith he [and Fidel] grew up in. "I will resume praying and turn to the Church again if the Pope continues in this vein," Castro, the 83-year-old younger brother of Fidel, told reporters, adding, "I mean what I say." "The pontiff is a Jesuit, and I, in some way, am too. I studied at Jesuit schools," he said. [...] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/05/10/405685050/raul-castro-says-pope-inspiring-him-to-return-to-church [with comments]
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Ireland’s gay marriage referendum a sign of Roman Catholic decline
A poster supporting the Yes vote is displayed in the Dame Street area of Dublin on May 19, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
Trevor Grundy May 20, 2015
CANTERBURY, England (RNS) “In Ireland,” says a character in a 1904 George Bernard Shaw play, “the people is the Church, and the Church is the people.”
But not so much anymore.
On Friday (May 22), voters in this once deeply Roman Catholic country will decide whether the country’s constitution should be amended to allow for gay marriage. If the amendment passes, Ireland will become the first country to legalize same-sex civil marriage by popular vote.
Catholic faith has been faltering among the younger Irish for the last 40 years, undermined, in part, by a series of long-covered-up cases of sexual abuse involving priests and choirboys and altar boys.
In her book ”Goodbye to Catholic Ireland,” Mary Kenny wrote: “The scandals left the people with the feeling that the clerical way of life was in itself an error, and that Catholicism as a system has been seen to fail to practice the virtues it so ardently preached.”
Many Catholics wonder what right the Catholic Church has to oppose gay marriage when those charged with proclaiming and upholding Christian morality were abusing children.
The amendment reads: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
Were it to pass, it would be a heavyweight punch to the body of the church that for centuries governed every aspect of life.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in Ireland in 1993. In 2010, the Civil Partnership Act was introduced. In 2013 the Irish Cabinet agreed to a same-sex marriage referendum.
Equality Minister Pat Carey said that in the urban centers, the gay marriage referendum is getting a good reception. But he added: “A lot of people in middle Ireland and among an older age group still don’t feel comfortable about it.”
Indeed, no ballot initiative can pass in Ireland without significant Catholic votes, and those votes could spell defeat.
Carey came out as a gay man earlier this year, at 67.
“I am sorry I didn’t speak out earlier,” he told the BBC, “but I didn’t have the confidence or the courage.”
Carey now hopes he may soon be able to marry his partner.
With the final ballots counted, the vote was 62 percent in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and 38 percent opposed.
The turnout was large — more than 60 percent of the 3.2 million eligible voters cast ballots, and only one district out of 43 voted the measure down. Cheers broke out among the crowd of supporters who had gathered in the courtyard of Dublin Castle when Returning Officer Riona Ni Fhlanghaile announced around 7 p.m. that the ballot had passed, 1,201,607 votes to 734,300.
Not long ago, the vote would have been unthinkable. Ireland decriminalized homosexuality only in 1993, the church dominates the education system, and abortion remains illegal except when a mother’s life is at risk. But the influence of the church has waned amid scandals in recent years, while attitudes, particularly among the young, have shifted.
“Today Ireland made history,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny said at a news conference, adding that “in the privacy of the ballot box, the people made a public statement.”
“This decision makes every citizen equal and I believe it will strengthen the institution of marriage,” Mr. Kenny said.
The vote is also the latest chapter in a sharpening global cultural clash. Same-sex marriage is surging in the West, legal in 19 nations before the Irish vote and 37 American states, but almost always because of legislative or legal action. At the same time, homosexuality is illegal across much of the Middle East and gay rights are under renewed attack in Russia and parts of Africa.
The results showed wide and deep support for a measure that had dominated public discourse and dinner-table conversation in the months before the vote on Friday. Supporters celebrated in gatherings and on the streets, with the rainbow colors of the gay rights movement and Yes vote buttons conspicuously on display.
Surprising many who had predicted a generational divide, the support cut across age and gender, geography and income, early results showed.
With early vote counts suggesting a comfortable victory, crowds began to fill the courtyard of Dublin Castle, a government complex that was once the center of British rule. By late morning, the leader of the opposition, David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, conceded [ https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/602036483906805760 ] the outcome on Twitter: “Congratulations to the Yes side. Well done.”
For older activists, the moment marked a profound evolution for their country. For the world, it suggested how far the gay rights movement has come, to make such a significant step in a country with a storied history as a religious stronghold.
“Throughout my youth, adolescence and young adulthood, it was a criminal offense to be gay,” said David Norris, a 70-year-old Irish senator and longtime activist.
He said he had faced “total isolation” as a young man.
“There was silence on the subject,” he said. “It wasn’t mentioned in the newspapers, it wasn’t mentioned in the broadcast media. Then there was a fear of criminal prosecution, of being involuntarily placed in a lunatic asylum, losing your job, being socially destroyed. It was a terrible situation.”
The referendum changes Ireland’s Constitution so that civil marriage between two people is now legal “without distinction as to their sex.” It requires ratification by both houses of the Irish Parliament and the president. Though that is a formality, the date when gay and lesbian couples can marry will be determined in that process.
There was support for the measure across the political spectrum, including from Prime Minister Kenny, of the center-right Fine Gael party, and his Labour coalition partner, which had pushed for the referendum. Sinn Fein, an opposition party, also expressed support.
Many placed the results in a national context, saying it pointed not only to change but also to the compassion and tolerance of the Irish people.
Alex White, the government’s minister for communications, said: “This didn’t change Ireland — it confirmed the change. We can no longer be regarded as the authoritarian state we once might have been perceived to be. This marks the true separation of church and state.”
Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, said: “There are two Irelands, the elite Ireland and the hidden Ireland. And today the hidden Ireland spoke.”
Gay rights activists around the world had said a victory would be an important milestone.
“I think this is a moment that rebrands Ireland to a lot of folks around the world as a country not stuck in tradition but that has an inclusive tradition,” said Ty Cobb, the international director of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Late in the campaign, four Catholic bishops urged parishioners to vote against the measure. But as ballot boxes were opened one by one, and paper yes and no votes stacked up in front of counters at long tables in a cavernous hall, optimism among referendum supporters grew.
Campaigning on both sides of the debate had been underway for months, with posters, billboards and commercials. One opposition commercial [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25qhj7CYfss (next below)]
same-sex marriage featured young people encouraging their parents to vote.
Thousands are believed to have returned to Ireland to take part in the vote; plane tickets from London Friday night sold out.
Ireland’s paradigm shift from a quasi theocracy to a leader on gay rights was the result of a sustained campaign by gay activists. They set up a network of support groups around the country and fused a grass-roots movement with aggressive social media outreach and a registration drive that brought in more than 100,000 new voters since last November. Tens of thousands of doors were knocked on, extensive leafleting campaigns took place and posters were ubiquitous.
“Commentators just don’t seem to have grasped that this has been the culmination of a 10-year campaign to change attitudes in this country,” said Colm O’Gorman, chief executive of Amnesty International (Ireland) and a leading gay rights campaigner.
Leaders on both sides tried to strike a conciliatory note, though they said some issues remain to be sorted out, from rules on surrogacy to the ability of religious groups to hew to their views.
“The personal stories of people’s own testimonies, as to their difficulties growing up being gay certainly struck a chord with people,” said Jim Walsh, an Irish senator who opposed the marriage referendum, during a television interview.
“I would like today to not get back into the arguments that we had during the campaign but to wish them well,” he said. “But I think that going forward we will need to address issues which are going to arise.”
But it also said “we will continue to affirm the importance of the biological ties and of motherhood and fatherhood” and urged the government to “address the concerns voters on the No side have about the implications for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”
Nick O’Connell, 42, who is from a rural area in County Kilkenny in the Irish Midlands, was cradling a celebratory drink in a Dublin bar, the Back Lounge. He said he had been too afraid to come out as gay until his mid-20s.
“Today I’m thinking of all those young people over the years who were bullied and committed suicide because of their sexuality. This vote was for them, too.”
He added: “This is different from other countries because it was the people who gave it to us, not a legislature.”
When Same-Sex Marriages Became Legal
About 20 countries have already legalized same-sex marriages. Here is a list of when each did.
'Well Done': The Legalization of Gay Marriage in Ireland Yes supporters celebrate as first results in the Irish referendum start to come through at Dublin castle, Ireland, Saturday, May 23, 2015. Only 22 years after decriminalizing homosexuality, the country becomes the first in the world to approve marriage equality by popular vote. May 23, 2015 [...] A “Most Catholic Country” Saturday’s legalization of same-sex marriage represents a stunning turnaround in an Ireland that, for decades, was known for its religiosity and social conservatism. Deemed the “world’s most Catholic country [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/22/ireland_was_once_the_most_catholic_country_now_it_might_be_the_first_to.html ]” by Pope Paul VI in 1946, more than 90 percent of Irish citizens attended Mass as recently as the 1970s. Correspondingly, the church’s conservative values held sway over the country’s political and legal life. Homosexuality remained a criminal offense until 1993, 26 years after a similar law was overturned in England, and Irish voters only legalized divorce [ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/why-one-of-the-worlds-most-catholic-countries-might-approve-gay-marriage/393770/ ] (by a slim margin) in 1995. Abortion remains illegal to the present day. Ireland’s evolution on same-sex marriage was not unlike similar movements across Europe and North America. But the country’s turn toward liberal social values also reflects the declining influence of the Catholic Church in the country, whose sexual abuse scandal dominated national headlines for years. A poll conducted in 1981 showed that 51 percent [id.] of Ireland’s population had confidence in the church. By 2008, that number had fallen to 19 percent. Once an exporter of Catholic priests, only 15 men [ http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-ireland17apr17-story.html#page=1 ] across the entire country were ordained in 2004. A People’s Victory Universally illegal until 2001, same-sex marriage is permitted across western Europe, where only Italy [ http://qz.com/410739/there-might-soon-be-only-one-country-left-in-western-europe-that-doesnt-recognize-same-sex-unions/ ] recognizes neither marriage nor non-marriage partnerships. But Ireland is so far unique in achieving marriage equality without legislation. “While there is no doubt that certain politicians deserve applause for their work during the campaign, this was a people’s campaign,” wrote Una Mullaly [ http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/una-mullally-decency-of-irish-not-limited-to-liberal-dublin-1.2223717 ] in the Irish Times. “The work on the ground was by and large done by regular citizens, who had nothing to gain other than the betterment of society.” http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/ireland-gay-marriage/394052/ [with comments]
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Catholic Church Ponders Future After Same-Sex Marriage Vote in Ireland
Gerry Adams, head of the Sinn Fein, greeted supporters of same-sex marriage at Dublin Castle on Saturday. The referendum was passed with 62 percent of votes. Credit Paul Faith/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A celebration at Dublin Castle as Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by a popular vote. "Your world is different from mine," Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told children awaiting confirmation on Sunday. Credit Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times
It could be found at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral [ http://www.procathedral.ie/ ] here, in downtown Dublin, as two rows of children awaited confirmation before him in the lofty, column-lined church.
“Boys and girls, I made my confirmation 60 years ago,” he told them, adding, “Your world is different from mine.”
Not far away, the streets were quiet after a long night of celebrating. Revelers filled the bars, beeped horns, waved rainbow flags and drank Guinness after the result was announced on Saturday. The size of the victory energized supporters, with the referendum affirmed by 62 percent of the electorate and passed in all but one of Ireland’s 43 districts.
After the votes were counted, the carefully planned and executed campaign by activist groups seemed as much about putting behind a past entrenched in theocracy and tradition as it was about marriage for gays and lesbians. And it underscored how different Ireland is today for the young, who turned out in droves to vote. In a little more than a generation, Ireland has both distanced itself from the church and sharpened its secular identity.
At St. Mary’s, the results of the referendum, as one might expect, did not come up — the archbishop instead quipped about his first experience with a cellphone. But afterward, speaking at a house next to the church, he conceded that much had changed.
“The church needs to take a reality check,” Archbishop Martin said after the Mass, repeating a comment he had made Saturday. “It’s very clear there’s a growing gap between Irish young people and the church, and there’s a growing gap between the culture of Ireland that’s developing and the church.”
The country’s cultural evolution reflects a blend of disaffection with the church, and Ireland’s willingness to embrace a wider vision of itself in the world. As the church lost many people in its scandals and its unwillingness to yield to sexual freedoms, the European Union [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_union/index.html ] found itself with a willing and eager member.
In 1979, more than one million people turned out for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Dublin, a staggering crowd in a country with a population of about 3.4 million at the time. In 1983, by a two-thirds majority, Ireland hewed to church teachings and passed a referendum outlawing abortion except in cases where a mother’s life was at risk, after a divisive campaign.
But signs of resistance had already been showing. In 1971, women’s rights activists organized a “condom train,” going over the border to Belfast and bringing back condoms to a country that outlawed contraception.
And it “was the first time that Irish Catholics first questioned church teaching,” Mr. Flannery said. “That opened the door, and after that they increasingly began to question a whole raft of Catholic sexual teaching, and then the child sexual abuse scandal came along which destroyed church credibility in the whole area of sexuality.”
“The people have changed their relationship with the Catholic Church because they’ve been disappointed and let down,” said Christina Breen, 54, who visited Dublin Castle on Saturday to see the results of the vote, a show of support because one of her sons is gay.
Or, as Mr. Flannery put it, “The day when the church had the power to influence social debate in Ireland, or to swing it, is gone.”
The legal system began to chip away at the laws restricting homosexuals. In 1988, a lawyer named Mary Robinson successfully argued a case in the European court system challenging Ireland’s law that made homosexuality a crime. Five years later, after Ms. Robinson became Ireland’s first female president in 1990, she signed a law decriminalizing homosexuality.
At the same time that the church’s moral authority was flagging, the Irish were finding a new identity within the European Union. They share the euro, and are more willing to take advantage of low-cost airfares for weekend jaunts to the Continent and beyond, broadening an outlook that for their parents and grandparents had been molded by the church and Britain.
While young people are still emigrating for opportunities elsewhere, they are not as inclined to leave for good, as previous generations had. The return of thousands to vote showed a connection to their homeland that had been largely lacking in earlier emigrants.
An influx of young people from Eastern Europe and elsewhere has made Ireland more diverse. The Irish political scene has largely avoided the toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric that has surfaced in much of Europe. In large part, that is because Sinn Fein, the opposition party that was once the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, has gained ground [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/world/europe/sinn-fein-benefits-as-ireland-moves-left.html ] by attacking austerity instead of immigrants. The same-sex marriage referendum had broad support across the political parties.
“The biggest change I see is the young people,” said Annie Dillon, 58, who works for a community-based health organization.
“I’m thinking of my 20-year-old nephew; it was like a no-brainer for him,” she said. “He was like, ‘Of course, why wouldn’t we want to be including everybody?’ That seems to be the prevailing attitude.”
Ms. Dillon said that when she came out, at 21, “you had to have a dual existence almost.”
“It was easy to be out when you’re with other people who were gay, but I came out to my brothers and sisters gradually,” she said, adding, “I never talked about it much to my parents.”
Even as it widely celebrates the change that the same-sex marriage vote indicated, Ireland is not entirely beyond the kind of cultural battles that have led to far more contentious political campaigns in the past. Many believe there will be a much more fierce cultural debate over legalizing abortion.
With the vote for the same-sex referendum going nearly two to one in favor, Archbishop Martin said Sunday that the church needed what he called “a new language that will be understood and heard by people.” Many young people, he added, “go in today and find a church that is for the like-minded,” as opposed to being inclusive.
But he did not offer a solution for attracting young people back to the church, and reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“For many, and I’ve said this before, inside the church becomes almost alien territory to them in today’s society,” he said. “If the leadership of the Irish Catholic church don’t recognize that, then they’re in severe denial. Have I got a magic formula? Certainly not.”
Winding back the years: Detectives used a computer program to reverse the ageing process on an image from the Turin Shroud (top left) to arrive at the younger Christ (bottom right). [id.]
Debate rages over the authenticity of the Shroud, which is imprinted with the image of a man who appears to have been crucified. Many believe it to be Jesus, but others says the relic only dates back to the 13th century. [id.]
Using the Turin Shroud, the supposed burial cloth of Jesus, police investigators have generated a photo-fit image from the negative facial image on the material
Michael Day Rome Monday 04 May 2015
Detectives claim to have revealed how Jesus Christ looked as a child – based on computer forensics and the world’s most famous relic.
Using the Turin Shroud, the supposed burial cloth of Jesus, police investigators have generated a photo-fit image from the negative facial image on the material. And from this they reversed the ageing process to create an image of a young Jesus, by reducing the size of the jaw, raising the chin and straightening the nose.
The technique effectively reverses the method that Italian police use to generate current likenesses of criminals, including senior mob bosses, for whom new photo fit images are needed when they have been on the run for decades.
Such techniques were used to produce an image of Mafia boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano, from a photo taken in 1959. Provenzano was eventually captured in 2006.
This image of Jesus as a young boy, and the methods used to create it, will be the subject of an upcoming programme on Italian television. But the exercise was done to mark the latest ostensione – a rare public display of the Shroud at Turin Cathedral.
The 14-foot-long sheet, made of herring-bone linen cloth, appears to show the front and back impression of a bearded man with long hair.
The body imprinted on the cloth appears to bear numerous injuries consistent with crucifixion, plus a gash in its side, consistent with the lance-wound suffered by Jesus.
It will be on public display for two months, with millions of visitors expected. Pope Francis is due to visit and pray before the relic on June 21.
The ingenuity of the Italian police is unlikely to dispel the doubts of the many regarding the veracity of the image on which their detective work was based, however.
Carbon dating tests reported in 1998 in the prestigious research journal Nature, appeared to spell curtains for Shroud wavers. The researchers estimated that the image was made between 1260 and 1390 – and therefore nothing more than a medieval hoax.
Believers countered with claims that the researchers had mistakenly tested modern inserts on the cloth, and said that other tests suggested it contained pollen grains from plants that could only be found in the Holy Land.
But just last month research by Matteo Borrini, a professor of forensic anthropology, now at John Moores University in Liverpool, and Luigi Garlaschelli at the University of Pavia, which was presented at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Orlando, suggested the Shroud was a fake.
Based on Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, their experiments with a dummy to see which way the blood would have run from Crucifixion wounds and how they would have stained a burial cloth -- showed remarkably different staining from that on the Shroud.
The blood stains on the cloth bear no relation to the placement or to the type of marks caused by a crucifixion – or even the blood stains caused by a wounded body lying in the tomb, the researchers said.
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FACE OF JESUS OR AN ELABORATE FAKE... WHAT IS THE TURIN SHROUD?
Sacred: The Turin Shroud (above) is an ancient linen sheet revered by some Christians as the burial cloth that wrapped Christ's body after his crucifixion and contains the image of his face.
The linen cloth, believed by some to have wrapped the body of Jesus Christ, has captivated the imagination of historians, church chiefs, sceptics and Catholics for more than 500 years.
There are no definite historical records concerning the shroud prior to the 14th century.
Although there are numerous reports of Jesus' burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the 14th century.
But there is no historical evidence that these refer to the shroud currently at Turin Cathedral.
A burial cloth, which some historians maintain was the Shroud, was owned by the Byzantine emperors but disappeared during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Historical records seem to indicate that a shroud bearing an image of a crucified man existed in the small town of Lirey around the years 1353 to 1357. It was in the possession of a French Knight, Geoffroi de Charny, who died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.
However the correspondence of this shroud with the shroud in Turin, and its very origin has been debated by scholars and lay authors, with claims of forgery attributed to artists born a century apart.
Some contend that the Lirey shroud was the work of a confessed forger and murderer.
The history of the shroud from the 15th century is well recorded.
In 1532, the shroud suffered damage from a fire in a chapel of Chambéry, capital of the Savoy region, where it was stored.
A drop of molten silver from the reliquary produced a symmetrically placed mark through the layers of the folded cloth. Poor Clare Nuns attempted to repair this damage with patches.
In 1578 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy ordered the cloth to be brought from Chambéry to Turin and it has remained at Turin ever since.
The shroud has had many notorious admirers. It even obsessed Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who wanted to steal it so he could use it in a black magic ceremony.
In May 2010, five years after he became Pope, Benedict authorised a public viewing of the Shroud - the first since 2000.
The mystery of the 'Devil's Bible': Sinister drawing inside 'cursed' medieval manuscript that legend says was drawn by Lucifer himself
The Codex Gigas [ http://www.kb.se/codex-gigas/eng/Browse-the-Manuscript/ , http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episodes/devils-bible/ , http://www.the-line-up.com/devils-bible/ ], or the Devil’s Bible, is today located at the National Library in Stockholm. It is thought to have been created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery in the Czech Republic. The Codex Gigas is the largest medieval manuscript in the world. At nearly nine inches (22cm) thick and 36 inches (92cm) tall, the book is so large that it is said to have required more than 160 animal skins to complete. A signature in the text – 'hermann inclusis' – points to the fact there was likely to have only been one author. The book begins with the Old Testament, and it is followed by two works by Flavius Josephus who lived in the first century AD. It ends with the New Testament and the last of the long works is a Chronicle of Bohemia by Cosmas from Prague. [ah, a predecessor -- . . .] • The mysterious Codex Gigas has a full-page colour image of the Devil • Legend has it that a monk made a deal with the devil to create the text • Handwriting analysis has revealed that the text was written by one scribe 11 May 2015 | Updated: 12 May 2015 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3077265/The-mystery-Devil-s-Bible-World-s-largest-manuscript-required-one-person-write-non-stop-FIVE-YEARS.html [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLANwXrZmvw [with comments]
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Jesus gets bored of toast, appears in a Polish dumpling
Members of a Michigan church, St. Andre Bessette Church, said they were ‘shocked’ when Jesus’ hairy face appeared in the savoury snack – instead of nearby tacos (Picture St. Andre Bessette Church)
Rob Waugh for Metro.co.uk Wednesday 15 Apr 2015 12:30 pm
Our Lord Jesus Christ seems to have tired of the burnt toast where he normally appears, and has popped up in a pierogi, a Polish dumpling.
Either that or it’s 60s mass murderer Charles Manson, we can’t be sure.
Members of a Michigan church, St. Andre Bessette Church, said they were ‘shocked’ when Jesus’ hairy face appeared in the savoury snack – instead of nearby tacos.
The holy pierogi is being kept frozen while church officials decide what it may mean.
St. Andre Bessette Church Festival Chairman Robert Hellar said, ‘I was in the taco booth making tacos, and they came up to me and said, ‘Jesus loves Polish food more than Mexican food’ and I asked why.’
He looked, and saw Our Lord’s face.
‘I was shocked. I looked at it, and you can definitely see the face of Jesus.’
Internet sensation Megan Fox ("The Nut at the Museum [the first item/YouTube in the post to which this is a reply]") audited The Creation Museum in Kentucky in May 2015. She loved it and thinks it is the best museum she ever visited! Here's an overview of her visit and some of the things that she saw!
CREATION MUSEUM! Megan Fox talks Dragons with Steve Ham - Part 1
Published on May 26, 2015 by Megan Fox
Megan Fox traveled to Kentucky to interview Steve Ham at the Creation Museum. Here, they talk about dragons and the encounters that ancient people had with animals that no longer exist (which scientists struggle to understand and explain). This is Part 1 of Mrs. Fox's in-depth look at The Creation Museum in Kentucky.
CREATION MUSEUM! Part 2 of Megan Fox and Steve Ham interview!
Published on May 27, 2015 by Megan Fox
PART 2 of Megan Fox's in-depth interview with Steve Ham, brother of Ken Ham, who built the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Here, Mrs. Fox and Mr. Ham talk about the most controversial aspects of the Creation Museum and what important things you can learn by visiting this wonderful place just across the border from Ohio!
This segment features the world famous "Child Playing with T-Rexes" animatronic figures, which are as good as anything that Disney has in Spaceship Earth or Animal Kingdom at EPCOT. The Creation Museum is extremely well-made and highly themed and detailed. It is better than any natural history museum around, for sure!
Megan Fox (the famous "Nut at the Museum") takes her unique brand of museum-auditing to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Here, she evaluates the research findings and history on display and decides whether the Creation Museum or the Field Museum does a better job of presenting its individual worldview. Which museum will Mrs. Fox like better? Tune in to find out!
I'm Megan Faux, and when I took my kids to the Field Museum in Chicago, I was disgusted by all the pro-science bias in the Evolving Planet exhibit. I mean, these scientists don't have any video tapes or coloring books proving what they say, so they're all hateful, lying psychos who want to indoctrinate your children into worshiping Obama. Watch as I expose the pro-science bias with the common sense only we homeschooling moms have!
Today we’ll be discussing neanderthals, penises, and dragons. Yes, really.
NOTE- when I compare humans and Neanderthals, I am referring to modern humans VS Neanderthals. We are all Hominids, but my convention was that humans (homo sapiens) are a subset of Hominids, just like Neanderthals.
CORRECTION ABOUT THE NEANDERTHAL DNA: I apparently misread the graph, taking the y-axis to mean "percentage of DNA differences" when it's actually something a bit more subtle. Neanderthals and humans DO have more DNA in common than do humans and chimps. That said, the data still fucks this lady's argument because the graph DOES show, from the x-axis, that human-to-human sets have much fewer variations among their DNA than do human-to-Neanderthal sets. Sorry for the hiccup ;O
The video that I’m responding to is pretty long, and the saturation of nonsense in that video is toxic- indeed, after wading through only half her feature, I’d written about ten pages for the first draft of this video’s script before deciding that I was just going to talk about some of my favorite parts. If you make a video response to her, please let me know- if it’s funny and informative, you might get a shout-out in my next video :)
These images were not taken by me. It was a mistake by me to refer to the couple as atheists in the video. By their own admission they simple are two people who do not believe in creationism.
I always put museum in quotes as this building makes a mockery of the fine history of science and art institutions. The slides I have selected show clear evidence that creationists believe in and promote the idea of Super Evolution. Here I present very simple evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that such rapid change is completely impossible and goes against every single piece of data collected over the past century and a half.
This "museum" goes beyond teaching super evolution. The real goal is to convince the visitor that science in general does not work. And of course this makes sense. How else can one reconcile the ideas offered by creationists with the millions of facts collected by scientists. In short, creationists want people to accept what they say, and not think for themselves. Because even the most marginal effort of free thought will unmask their ideas as completely ludicrous.
This "museum" makes it clear that creationists want our society to fall back into the dark ages. Ask yourself this: Where have all of our medical breakthroughs come from? Where have our communications and transportation technologies come from? The scientific method, logic, and human reason are the backbone of modern civilization. Creationists want us to abandon them for blind acceptance. Yet they are more than willing to use these technologies to advance their ignorance. And yes that does make them hypocrites.
The slide at 4:33 should read "most animals are diploid" as the vast majority are but a few specie are in fact haploid.
Blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh, in fourth such attack this year
Machete-wielding attackers killed Niloy Neel, a critic of religion who called for end to attacks on free expression
August 7, 2015 7:51AM ET
A group of attackers armed with machetes killed a blogger in Bangladesh on Friday, making it the fourth such deadly attack in the country this year.
Niloy Chatterjee, a 40-year-old blogger who advocated secularism and freedom of expression, was best known by his pen name Niloy Neel. He was killed at his apartment in the capital, Dhaka, according to police official Mustafizur Rahman.
Ansar Al-Islam, Al-Qaeda's branch in Bangladesh claimed responsibility for the attack, English-language newspaper The Daily Star reported, citing an email sent to the Bangladeshi press.
“We are speechless. He was demanding justice for killing of other bloggers,” said Imran Sarker, head of a network of activists and bloggers. “Who will be next for demanding justice for Niloy?”
Sarker told Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that attackers entered Chatterjee's fifth floor apartment then "hacked him to death." Muntashirul Islam, a deputy police commissioner, told AFP that "there were six people who knocked his door, saying that they were looking to rent a flat."
"Two of them then took him to a room and then slaughtered him there," Islam said. "His wife was in the flat, but she was confined to another room."
Chatterjee, whose last name has also been reported as Chowdhury and Chakrabarti in media reports, was a critic of religion. He also focused his writing on human rights, minorities and the war crimes tribunal set up to punish those who allegedly collaborated with Pakistani soldiers during Bangladesh's war of independence with Pakistan. Bangladesh says more than 3 million people were killed and 200,000 women were raped during the nine-month war that ended in December 1971.
Critics say the government has shown indifference to the recent attacks on defenders of secularism and free expression. "Niloy was an activist of the pro-liberation platform. He was killed because there is no justice in the country,” Sarker told The Daily Star [ http://www.thedailystar.net/country/blogger%E2%80%99-stabbed-dead-dhaka-123238 ]. “I am embarrassed to raise any demand to the government for the arrest of the perpetrators, as bloggers are being killed, but no killer has yet been tried."
Most secular bloggers have either gone into hiding or have fled abroad, and they often use pseudonyms in their posts. Activist groups say they fear that hit squads are targeting the bloggers and have access to their full names and addresses.
Secular writers in Bangladesh have been targeted in recent years, even as the government attempts to crack down on groups seeking to promote their version of Sharia law. Most of the 160 million people in Bangladesh are Muslim, but the country's constitution establishes it as a secular country.
Chatterjee was one of hundreds of bloggers driving a movement demanding the death penalty for those accused of atrocities during the war. A tribunal, opened by Prime Minister Sheik Hasina in 2010, has since convicted several senior leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami of various crimes. The group in 1971 opposed the breakaway of Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan, from Pakistan. They denied wrongdoing. So far, two people have been put to death since the tribunals were set up.
However, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, has criticized the tribunal, saying it is politically motivated and intended to weaken the opposition. Jamaat-e-Islami is the main political ally of Zia's party.
Bangladesh blogger Niloy Neel hacked to death in Dhaka Niloy Neel was an atheist from a Hindu background A Bangladeshi blogger known for his atheist views has been hacked to death by a gang armed with machetes in the capital Dhaka, police say. 7 August 2015 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33819032
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Homo naledi, the newly discovered species of ancient human, explained
It lived millions of years ago — and may have buried its dead.
Updated by Joseph Stromberg on September 10, 2015, 5:46 p.m. ET @josephstromberg joseph@vox.com
Over the past two years, an international team of scientists has discovered more than 1,500 mysterious fragments of bone in a tiny cave in South Africa. Thursday morning, the team announced that the fossils are from a new species of ancient human that is believed to have lived 2 to 3 million years ago: Homo naledi.
They appear to resemble another ancient hominin .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini .. species, Homo erectus, but they have much smaller brains, more along the lines of a gorilla's. There's even tantalizing evidence that they might have buried their dead — something scientists previously thought only modern humans did.
When it comes to the study of human evolution, all this is a really big deal. To date, we know of only a handful of other species similar enough to us to fit in to our genus: Homo. Scientists will debate this designation for H. naledi — as they do for all newly discovered species — but the bottom line is that these fossils, detailed in a pair of new papers .. http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09561 .. in the journal eLIFE, give us a fascinating glimpse into a new part of our ancient history.
How are we related to the new species?
That's hard to answer. They could, theoretically, be our direct ancestors. But it's much more likely they were our ancestors' cousins, who diverged, evolved their own unique traits, and at some point died off.
Why don't we know? A good analogy .. http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_1.htm .. for our current situation is that the many semi-human-like species that predated us made up a complicated, densely branching family tree. But today, every single branch of that tree has disappeared, minus the last twig: us.
Using fossils, we can get a rough idea of what some of the branches looked like, but it's really difficult to put them all together accurately.
As such, we know of a dozen or so species that evolved sometime in the past 10 million years — when our ancestors first split off from the ancestors of chimps — but we don't know exactly how all these species fit together. In some cases, we're not even sure if certain fossils are from different species or the same one. The best we can do, at the moment, is roughly put the species into groups, based on shared traits:
(S.V. Medaris/University of Wisconsin–Madison) The scientists say H. naledi belongs to the Homo genus.
The Homo group (technically called a genus) includes modern humans, as well as a handful of relatively recent species that are most closely related to us: H. erectus, for instance, walked upright. By contrast, Australopithecus — the older group that includes the famous "Lucy .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus) " fossil — had much smaller brains.
The scientists behind this new discovery, led by Lee R. Berger .. http://profleeberger.com/ .. of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, say the H. naledi species belongs in the Homo group. Other scientists, though, might dispute that — and even if it does fit there, it doesn't mean H. naledi were actually our ancestors.
What did this new species look like?
(John Hawks/University of Wisconsin–Madison)
If you came across a live H. naledi, you might have trouble deciding if it was a human or an ape. The average individual, scientists believe, was around 5 feet tall and 100 pounds. Many of the beings' features — especially their feet and relatively long legs, seemingly suited to long-distance walking — look a lot like ours. And the proportions of their skulls (with small teeth and a narrowing just behind the eyes, at the temple) also roughly resemble ours and other species in the Homo genus.
At the same time, these skulls are way, way smaller than ours: They held brains about the size of an orange, more along the lines of the older, more ape-like Australopithecus species. The fossils also have chests and hips that look more like Australopithecus than Homo, as well as arms, shoulders, and curved fingers that seem to be adapted for climbing.
How did this new species live?
(John Hawks/University of Wisconsin–Madison) H. naledi's hand.
We don't know much about their lifestyle yet. H. naledi's legs and arms make it seem likely that they walked upright, but also spent time climbing trees. The scientists speculate that their hands might have been capable of making tools, but we don't know for sure, and no stone tools were found in the cave
The one fascinating glimpse we have into their lifestyle, though, is where the fossils were found: jammed into a tiny crevice in a cave that's more than 200 feet from the surface. What's more, the 15 different bodies — which include infants, juveniles, and one elderly individual — appear to have been brought in whole, over time.
All this makes scientists suspect that H. naledi may have intentionally buried their dead or dropped them down a chute that led to the cave. (It's not certain, but there's no evidence of bite marks or anything else to suggest predators brought the bodies there.) If it's true, it would be the oldest instance of intentional burial by far. Currently the oldest burial site .. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/burial/qafzeh-oldest-intentional-burial , in modern-day Israel, is 100,000 years old and is filled with anatomically modern humans.
Why are scientists so excited about this?
(John Hawks/University of Wisconsin–Madison) H. naledi's foot looks surprisingly like ours.
One reason is the absolute bonanza of fossils that prompted this discovery. Some ancient hominin species are known by just a few shards of bone. Here, scientists found more than 1,500 fossil pieces from at least 15 different individuals, of varying ages, which lets us see the variation within the species. The find includes nearly complete hands and feet, something essentially unheard of in the fossil record. All this gives us a much clearer picture of H. naledi's anatomy than we have for species we've known of for decades.
But H. naledi's particular characteristics are also surprising, and in some ways, unique. Some scientists have thought that ancient hominins went from climbing trees to walking on the ground, but here's a species that seemingly did both at once. Others thought that many distinctively human-like behaviors (such as burial of the dead and toolmaking) depended upon the large brains we've evolved more recently, but H. naledi challenges that idea too.
Figuring out the answers will take a lot of time. One problem is that scientists have been unable to figure out the age of the H. naledi fossils because they were found in soft sediments, rather than hard, easily dateable rock.
But the scientists are now beginning the process of radiocarbon dating (which was avoided so far because it requires destroying small pieces of the material). Between that and study of the many more pieces of H. naledi fossil that remain in the cave, we'll hopefully learn a lot more.
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