Yale epidemiologist advocates for hydroxychloroquine and responds to his critics

 Yale epidemiology professor Harvey Risch advocates for early outpatient treatment of Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine.  He has been criticized by his Yale colleagues, Dr. Fauci, and others. Here is his reply:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/hydroxychloroquine-works-in-high-risk-patients-and-saying-otherwise-is-dangerous

NY Synagogue Provides Worship Space to Muslims After Fire

How the world should be:

  NY Synagogue Provides Worship Space to Muslims After Fire

A List of Behe's replies to the critical reviews of Darwin Devolves

I thought it would be convenient to post a list of Prof. Michael Behe's replies to the critical reviews of his book, Darwin Devolves.  Behe has not finished replying, but here are the replies he has posted, so far:

To the pre-publication review in the journal Science:

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/train-wreck-of-a-review-a-response-to-lenski-et-al-in-science/

To Jerry Coyne:

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/coyne-and-polar-bears-why-you-should-never-rely-on-incompetent-reviewers/

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/bullet-points-for-jerry-coyne/

To Richard Lenski:

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/lessons-from-polar-bear-studies/

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/for-dreams-of-darwinian-evolution-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution-is-an-insuperable-problem/

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/thanks-professor-lenski-the-ltee-is-doing-great/

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/04/cant-anybody-here-make-distinctions/

To his Lehigh colleagues, Greg Lang and Amber Rice:

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/a-response-to-my-lehigh-colleagues-part-1/

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/response-to-my-lehigh-colleagues-part-2/

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/03/a-response-to-my-lehigh-colleagues-part-3/

As Behe continues to reply, I will continue to add them here. 

How Judaism (through Christianity) improved the view of human dignity in the Pagan world.

The Christian theologian David Bently Hart has written a short essay explaining how Christianity improved the view of human dignity in the Pagan world.  It did so by spreading the Jewish view that every human being has been created in the image of God.

Human Dignity Was a Rarity Before Christianity.

Settling the Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Teleology Debate

Philosophers who favor Aristotle and other ancient views of Nature, see it as more of an organism, while philosophers who favor modern views see Nature more as machine.  Intelligent Design theory has come about in the modern age and is usually framed within the modern view that Nature is a machine, and that God or whoever the designers were had to manipulate life, much as an engineer or mechanic has to manipulate the parts of a machine.  This causes all sorts of hostile reactions from the first group of philosophers, who reject the idea that living organisms are mere machines.

What's interesting is that the Biblical view straddles the fence.  Nature is an organism that God has created, with potential capacities.  But she can only exercise these capacities at God's command.  God tells her to make light, and she does.  He tells her to bring forth life and she does.  He tells living organisms to be fruitful and multiply, and they obey.

So on the Biblical view, it sounds as if Nature has the ability to evolve new living organisms, but only at God's command.  Once he tells her to make new phyla, she will.

Does God's command include the information that Nature needs to produce new organisms?  Or is the information already inherent in Nature, waiting for God's command to put it to new use?

In his book, Darwin Devolves, Professor  Michael Behe  mentions that Eugene Koonin thought the first bacteria and archaea already contained all the different kinds of genes that all organisms use up to the present day.  If so, then it sounds like the information was already present, just waiting for God's command to bring forth new forms of life.

So is teleology intrinsic or extrinsic?  Yes.

Seeing the Pentagon Plane

Though 9/11 Truthers pretty much agree that WTC buildings 1,2, and 7 were brought down by controlled demolitions on 9/11, there has been vigorous debate among them about what crashed into the Pentagon on that day.  The problem is that there hasn't been incontrovertible photographic evidence of a plane crashing into the building...until now.  Using a technique that astronomers use to identify changes in the night sky, by quickly shifting back and forth between two photographs, it has now been made rather obvious that yes, indeed, it was a plane that crashed into the Pentagon on that fateful day.

Seeing the Pentagon Plane

A Very Proud Moment for Democrats

Of the 430 or so members in the House of Representatives, 407 voted for this resolution.  The only ones who opposed were 23 Republicans.

Anti-Hate House Resolution

If you're having trouble with that one, try this one:

Full Text of Anti-Hate House Resolution

Who is the Fool? How Christians misread the Bible to attack atheists.

A great excerpt from Randal Rauser's excellent book, Is the Atheist my Neighbor?

Here.

Did our Govt release UFO info to divert our attention from Trump/Putin relationship?

In case you missed it, the Department of Defense has recently admitted that they have been studying UFOs, and they even released a 2004 video of one.  But why tells us now?  I think Tucker Carlson may have let the cat out of the bag, at the 3:55 mark of this interview.  He said that he thought this was a bigger story than Vladimir Putin.  Is the government so desperate to divert our attention from Trump's relationship with Putin, that they are even willing to disclose some of their UFO info?

New Testament scholar, Larry Hurtado takes on Mythicist, Richard Carrier.

"We have examined each of Carrier’s three claims and found each of them readily falsified.  It’s 'three strikes you’re out' time.  Game over.

"There are much better reasons offered by people for finding Christian faith (or any kind of belief in God) too much of a stretch.  The attempts to deny Jesus’ historical existence are, for anyone acquainted with the relevant evidence, blatantly silly.  So, let those who want to argue for or against Christian faith do so on more serious grounds, and let those of us who do historical investigation of Jesus and Christian Origins practice our craft without having to deal with the strategems-masquerading-as-history represented by the mythical Jesus advocates."

    Why the "Mythical Jesus" claim has no traction with scholars.

More Evidence that Trump is a Traitor

From Vanity Fair:

 "It was against this reassuring backdrop of recent successes and shared history, an Israeli source told Vanity Fair, that a small group of Mossad officers and other Israeli intelligence officials took their seats in a Langley conference room on a January morning just weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump. The meeting proceeded uneventfully; updates on a variety of ongoing classified operations were dutifully shared. It was only as the meeting was about to break up that an American spymaster solemnly announced there was one more thing: American intelligence agencies had come to believe that Russian president Vladimir Putin had “leverages of pressure” over Trump, he declared without offering further specifics, according to a report in the Israeli press. Israel, the American officials continued, should “be careful” after January 20—the date of Trump’s inauguration. It was possible that sensitive information shared with the White House and the National Security Council could be leaked to the Russians. A moment later the officials added what many of the Israelis had already deduced: it was reasonable to presume that the Kremlin would share some of what they learned with their ally Iran, Israel’s most dangerous adversary."

Can you be prolife and vote for a prochoice politician?

Randal Rauser's answer.

Trump waves flag while betraying U.S. to Russia

Trump gets the country riled up because a few NFL players take a knee during the national anthem.  Meanwhile, he is betraying America to the Russians.

Against Trump's Absurd Moral Equivalence Thesis

Christian theologian Randal Rauser has written an excellent essay, which I will just reprint here:

Today Donald Trump presented a moral equivalence thesis according to which protesters against racism are as culpable for violence that resulted in Charlottesville as the neo-Nazis, the Klan, and white nationalists whose views they were protesting.

Unfortunately, some Christians have also courted this notion of moral equivalence. Consider, for example, this tweet from Michael Brown:

"I denounce violence and hate whether it comes from neo-Nazis or Antifa. Do you?

Of course we “denounce violence and hate,” whatever the source. The problem is that the tacit message of this tweet in context — the implicature — is that there is some sort of moral equivalence between the two groups represented in Charlottesville.

There isn’t.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that both sides were equally violent. (That, of course, is a false assumption. For one thing, only one side included a bona fide terrorist act culminating in one murder and an additional nineteen casualties.)

Even if the hatred and violence that unfolded were equal, it wouldn’t follow that there was a moral equivalence for one simple reason: on the first side, the hatred and violence were borne of racism; on the second side, the hatred and violence were borne of a reaction, a moral censure, to the despicable racist views of the first side.

Let’s put it in simple terms. Imagine that you’re a school teacher on the playground at lunch when you see two boys — Jimmy and Johnny — fighting. After you break them up you ask why they were fighting. Jimmy, a Jewish child, tells you that Johnny called him a “dirty Jew.” And from that point, the fight was on.

Perhaps Jimmy shouldn’t have responded to that slur by fighting with Johnny, but who can seriously suggest there exists a moral equivalence between the two?

List of peer-reviewed papers challenging official explanations of collapses of WTC buildings on 9/11

I've obtained the following list from https://911inacademia.com/journal-papers/

August 2008 | Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials
Journal: The Environmentalist (2009) 29: 56-63
Authors: Kevin Ryan et al
Link: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f67q6272583h86n4/
Download Paper (PDF): The Environmentalist – Environmental Anomalies at the WTC Evidence for Energetic Materials

April 2008 | Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction
Journal: The Open Journal of Civil Engineering (Bentham Open)
Authors: Dr. Steven Jones (S&J Scientific Co.) et al
Link: http://www.allanstime.com/NIST_Whistleblower_on_911_Cover-Up/14pointspaper.pdf

August 2008 | Comments on WTC 7 Report 
Host of publication: National Institute of Standards and Technology
Authors: Dr. David Proe and Dr. Ian Thomas (Victoria University, Australia)
Link: PDF
Note: This is not a peer-reviewed paper. It is an analysis that was submitted to the NIST during the public comments period by two of Australia’s top researchers in fire engineering. Their analysis refutes NIST’s WTC 7 Report. NIST has yet not responded to their questions.

April 2009 | Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe

Journal: The Open Journal of Chemical Physics
Authors: Dr. Niels H. Harrit (University of Copenhagen) et al
Link: https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOCPJ/TOCPJ-2-7.pdf

April 2011 | Collapse Time Analysis of Multi-Story Structural Steel Buildings

Journal: The Open Civil Engineering Journal (Bentham Open) (Vol.5, 2011, pp. 25-35)
Authors: Dr. Robert Korol (McMaster University) et al
Link: https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOCIEJ-5-25

February 2012 | Temporal Considerations in Collapse of WTC Towers

Journal: Int. J. Structural Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp.189-207
Author: Dr. Gregory Szuladzinski  (PhD, Structural Mechanics; FEIA & Member of ASCE)
Link: http://www.inderscience.com/offer.php?id=47711

November 2012 | Energy Absorption Potential of Light Weight Concrete FloorsJournal: Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering (Vol. 39, pp: 1193-1201)
Authors: Dr. Robert Korol and Dr. K. S. Sivakumaran (McMaster University)
Link: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/l2012-107?journalCode=cjce#.ULJfcmfK3GE

June 2013 | Some Misunderstanding Related to WTC Collapse AnalysisJournal: International Journal of Protective Structures (Vol. 4, No. 2 / June 2013)
Authors: Dr. Gregory Szuladzinski  (PhD, Structural Mechanics), Tony Szamboti (ME), and Richard Johns.
Link: http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/bl60385h25254748/Download Preview (PDF): Preview – Some Misunderstandings of WTC Collapse Analysis

February 2014 | Reassessing the Plastic Hinge Model for Energy Dissipation of Axially Loaded 
ColumnsJournal: Journal of Structures, Vol. 2014, Article ID 795257, 7 pages, 2014. doi:10.1155/2014/795257.
Authors: Dr. Robert Korol and Dr. K. S. Sivakumaran (McMaster University)
Link:  https://www.hindawi.com/archive/2014/795257/abs/


July 2015 I Performance-based fire Protection of Office Buildings: A Case Study Based on the Collapse of WTC 7
Journal:  Challenge Journal of Structural Mechanics, (Vol. 1, No. 3, 2015)
Authors:  Dr. Robert Korol,  Frank Greening, and Paul Heerema
Link:    http://www.challengejournal.com/index.php/cjsmec/article/view/36/19


February 2016 | The Collapse of WTC 7: A Re-examination of the “Simple Analysis” Approach
Journal: Challenge Journal of Structural Mechanics (Vol 2, No 1, 2016)
Authors: Dr. Robert Korol , Paul Heerema, and K. S. Sivakumaran (McMaster University)
Link: http://www.challengejournal.com/index.php/cjsmec/article/view/50
Download full paper – PDF

The Mueller-Manafort Connection

Before we jump up and down for joy at the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel investigating possible Russian/Trump campaign ties: 

"Another potential legal complication could arise from the law firm where Mueller worked until his appointment as special counsel. That firm, WilmerHale, has represented Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who has been under investigation relating to his work and payments for advising Ukrainian government officials." (Washington Post)

The firing of James Comey is just the beginning.

When Nixon carried out what came to be called the Saturday Night Massacre, both chambers of Congress had Democratic majorities. Thus, Nixon's political demise was pretty much guaranteed.  Today, both chambers are controlled by Republicans.  So unless Republicans in the Senate and/or House agree to an independent investigation of Trump and his ties to Russia, this is only the beginning.  Eventually, we will all get Trump'd.

The Puffer Fish's Sand Circles: A Truly Remarkable Story

I found this video of the puffer fish's design of sand circles to be truly remarkable.  

Fox News anchor Shep Smith says CNN is not fake news.

Muslims raise funds to restore vandalized Jewish cemeteries.

Thanks to Trump, Muslim and Jewish communities in America have drawn closer together. For example, Muslims crowdfunding to restore vandalized Jewish cemeteries.