Blog Heap o'Urantiana Links 19 February 2016

| All Dates |
Links regarding faith and belief
and men, women, marriage, and family life,
also sciences, the spritual and the 'supernatural,'
and, of course, Jesus of Nazareth.

Spiritual Matters

Pope Spox: Remarks About Trump Were Not About Trump
Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit Fri 2016-Feb-19 6:29pm

…After the uproar from pundits, religious leaders and Christians who believe in state borders, the Vatican tried desperately tried to clarify the pope’s remarks today. Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican radio on Friday the comments were “in no way a personal attack” on Donald Trump. … The remarks by Pope Francis were in response to a direct question on Donald Trump, were directed at Trump and were an attack on Donald Trump. This Vatican is not being honest.…

Blah blah something about false witness blah blah...

Evolution Isn't Easy

What sparked the Cambrian explosion?
Douglas Fox, Nature Fri 2016-Feb-19 6:52pm

…over the past several years, discoveries have begun to yield some tantalizing clues about the end of the Ediacaran. Evidence gathered from the Namibian reefs and other sites suggests that earlier theories were overly simplistic — that the Cambrian explosion actually emerged out of a complex interplay between small environmental changes that triggered major evolutionary developments.

Some scientists now think that a small, perhaps temporary, increase in oxygen suddenly crossed an ecological threshold, enabling the emergence of predators. The rise of carnivory would have set off an evolutionary arms race that led to the burst of complex body types and behaviours that fill the oceans today.…

But last year, a major study1 of ancient sea-floor sediments challenged that view.… oxygen could already have been abundant enough “for a long, long time before”.… The gradual emergence of predators, driven by a small rise in oxygen, would have meant trouble for Ediacaran animals that lacked obvious defences.…