February 10-11, 2016::End of the day round-up

 

Besides Ham's bizarre response, and hissy fit,,,

Ken Ham Declares Darwin Was Wrong Day

Secularists are becoming increasingly aggressive and intolerant in promoting their anti-God philosophy. Evolutionary ideas provide the foundation for this worldview because they seemingly allow mankind the ability to explain the existence of life and the universe without God. As Christians, we need to be bold in proclaiming the truth of God’s Word to a hurting (groaning, Romans 8:22) world. This year, on February 12, instead of celebrating Darwin’s anti-God religion, we can take this opportunity to show the world that Darwin’s ideas about our supposed evolutionary origins were wrong, and that God’s Word is true, from the very beginning. Let’s make February 12 Darwin Was Wrong Day and point people to the truth of God’s Word.

Dan Arel notes,

The rest of the AiG article is mostly rehashed arguments against evolutionary theory that show the organizations great misunderstanding and ignorance of not only the theory but of the scientific method, first discrediting life from non-life ideas (that have nothing to do with the theory of evolution by the way) to not understanding what natural selection is.

As a handful of people on Twitter have pointed out to me. It is rather telling that Ham’s organization spends all of its time attacking Darwin and focuses almost zero time on the latest scientific information available on the subject.

19 Kids and Counting Is Not Returning to Television, but Some of the Duggar Kids May Be

In short, TLC hasn’t severed its ties with the Duggar family. They may very well air more episodes — maybe even entire shows — around the 18 Duggar kids who aren’t mired in scandal.

But 19 Kids and Counting, the show that focused on the entire Duggar family (including Josh), doesn’t appear to be returning to television anytime soon, no matter what the Christian Post says.

Update on the Zika Virus

The bigger concern is if a pregnant women becomes infected. There are numerous reports of poor pregnancy outcomes, mostly microcephaly, in women who have been infected with Zika while pregnant. Microcephaly means small head, and results from poor brain development (more on this below).

There is currently no treatment for a Zika infection (other than usual supportive care if necessary). There is also no vaccine, although efforts are already underway to develop one.
,,,
There are as yet no cases of locally acquired Zika in the US. There have been a few cases of people returning from travel to South America with a Zika infection. It is possible for Zika to become endemic in the US.

The virus can spread wherever there are Aedes mosquitoes, which exist throughout the Americas except for Peru and Canada. Interestingly, these mosquitoes were previously localized to the tropics and subtropics, but have been spread as invasive species by human activity – paving the way for later viral infections.

Zika is in the news now because its pace of spread has dramatically increased. It is no longer a “slow” pandemic, but rather is spreading rapidly.
,,,
While the connection between Zika and the spike in microcephaly needs to be absolutely confirmed, the evidence so far is very compelling, and other likely causes so far have been ruled out.
,,,
Another popular conspiracy theory is that the virus is being spread by genetically modified mosquitoes. This theory fails on multiple levels but perhaps the single biggest failure is that the genetically modified mosquitoes are all male, and male mosquitoes do not bite. The males are nectar feeders, and only the females feed on blood.