Photo 51

Rosalind Franklin did not have anything to do with the discovery of the helical structure of DNA. Feminists constantly whine about this, but the history is quite clear. Franklin didn't get a Nobel prize because Franklin didn't deserve a Nobel prize.

Photo 51 is an X-ray based fiber diffraction image of a paracrystalline gel composed of DNA fiber taken by Raymond Gosling, a graduate student working under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin in May 1952 at King's College London, while working in Sir John Randall's group. Now, some may say that the honor belongs to Franklin, because she supervised Gosling's work. But that isn't true.

Gosling had made the first x-ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA under the direction of Wilkins. His comment on this discovery was "I must be the first person ever to make genes crystallize", although he was probably unaware of the prior work of Florence Bell. In any case, he was already doing x-ray diffraction of DNA before Franklin ever appeared on the scene.

After the initial work producing the first x-ray diffraction of DNA, Randall reassigned Gosling to work with Rosalind Franklin, who had been just hired to join King's College in 1951. When Gosling made the photo, Franklin handed it to Wilkins, who soon handed it to Watson. That photo, along with a report that included the space group values of the crystal, gave Crick everything he needed. By the time Watson and Crick saw both, Rosalind Franklin had already moved onto another lab to study the tobacco mosaic virus. She wasn't even around when Crick put the pieces together.

"Crick had laboriously worked out how to solve the so-called phase problem when diffraction is from a helix, since the standard Patterson functions do not apply. Thus, technically a graduate student at the time, he had the good fortune to be in a perfect position to understand what Franklin could not possibly have seen in the pattern.

Armed with Crick's insight, all that remained was for Watson to get the base-pairing (after a misstep corrected by a lab member)."

Update: Additional information here.

Why Liberals Fear AI

AI it is nothing more than a statistical amalgamator.

AI accurately summarizes the data it is fed.

It is fed the Internet.

AI accurately summarizes the rhetoric on the Internet.

ChatGPT responses are biased liberal crap.

So, if you want proof of Internet bias, ChatGPT is it.

But, this is where it gets interesting.

A lot of people are concerned AI will destroy humanity.

We already know AI is liberal. The concern is that AI will gain control of actual resources, and then use those resources to treat EVERYONE the way liberals would like to treat anyone who opposes them. Liberals fear AI because AI mirrors them. They want to destroy the world. They are afraid that if AI does manage to work, it might destroy them along with the world.

Destroying Women

“A peer-reviewed study from Charlotte Lozier Institute, published in the International Journal of Women’s Health, shows that women who abort their first pregnancy are much more likely to experience an increased need for mental health treatment compared with women who give birth. … As the evidence mounts that abortion is bad for women’s physical and mental health, Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry – along with its feminist and political supporters – must be held accountable for the trauma they are inflicting on America’s women.”

Remember, legal abortion supporters also want men in women's changing spaces and men competing against women in sports.

Their whole PURPOSE is to destroy women's mental health.

So, when abortion kills a kid and destroys a woman's mental health, it's a win-win. The destruction of women is a feature, not a bug.

Age of Intercourse

Many people are (correctly) concerned about the grooming of children for sex. Let's look at what some religious traditions have to say.

Judaism (Maimonedes, The Book of Women, Sefer Nashim; Treatise 1 on Marriage, Ishut; Chapter 3)

If a girl is older than three years and one day, she can be consecrated [to marriage] through sexual relations with her father's consent. Should she be below this age, if her father has her consecrated through sexual relations, the marriage bond is not established. (For until the age of three, the relations are not considered sexual in nature (this by no means insinuates that they are insignificant or potentially harmful, only that they are not sexual)).

The Baal HaTosafot, a leading medieval Talmudic commentary, 

wrote that the local community of the 14th-15th century simply did away with this prohibition and returned to betrothing their underage daughters (that is, under the age of 12). The Tosafot justifies this by saying simply, “hagalut hitgaber aleinu” — the exile has overwhelmed us.

Ashkenazis married off children very young. Among the Haredi, arranged marriages are common:

A ketannah (literally meaning "little [one]") was any girl between the age of 3 years and that of 12 years plus one day;[4] a ketannah was completely subject to her father's authority, and her father could arrange a marriage for her without her agreement.[4] If the father was dead or missing, the brothers of the ketannah, collectively, had the right to arrange a marriage for her, as had her mother,[4] although in these situations a ketannah would always have the right to annul her marriage even if it was the first....Unlike divorce, mi'un was regarded with distaste by many rabbinic writers,[5] even in the Talmud;[10] in earlier classical Judaism, one major faction - the House of Shammai - argued that such annulment rights only existed during the betrothal period (erusin) and not once the actual marriage (nissu'in) had begun.

Islam 

Ibn Qudamah (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “If a man gives his virgin daughter in marriage to someone who is compatible, then the marriage is valid. … With regard to a virgin who is a minor, there is no difference of scholarly opinion concerning that. 

Ibn al-Mundhir said: All the scholars from whom we acquired knowledge are unanimously agreed that it is permissible for a father to give his minor daughter in marriage, provided that he offer her in marriage to someone who is compatible, even if she objects and refuses. The fact that it is permissible to give a minor girl in marriage is indicated by the verse in which Allah, may He be exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning): “And those of your women as have passed the age of monthly courses, for them the ‘Iddah (prescribed period), if you have doubts (about their periods), is three months, and for those who have no courses ((i.e. they are still immature)…” [at-Talaq 65:4]. So the ‘iddah for one who has not started to menstruate is three months, and the ‘iddah of three months can only be required in the case of talaq (divorce) or annulment of marriage. This indicates that (the girl who is a minor) may be married and divorced, and her consent is not essential. 

‘Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said: The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) married me when I was six years old and consummated the marriage with me when I was nine. Agreed upon. It is known that at that age she would not be one of those whose permission would be taken into account. al-Athram narrated that Qudamah ibn Maz’un married the daughter of az-Zubayr when she began to menstruate, and something was said to him. He said: If I die, the daughter of az-Zubayr will inherit from me, and if I live, she will be my wife. And ‘Ali gave his daughter Umm Kulthum in marriage when she was a minor to ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him).” (Al-Mughni, 7/30)

Hinduism

Every year, thousands of young girls between the age of five and ten are dedicated to Goddess Yellamma. When a devadasi was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, “it was observed that a girl is married to the Goddess between the ages of ten and thirteen and the next phase of a girl begins during her first menses.”

Bhimappa was not yet 10 years old when she became a “devadasi” — girls coerced by their parents into an elaborate wedding ritual with a Hindu deity, many of whom are then forced into illegal prostitution. 

Devadasis are expected to live a life of religious devotion, forbidden from marrying other mortals, and forced at puberty to sacrifice their virginity to an older man, in return for money or gifts. 

“In my case, it was my mother’s brother,” Bhimappa, now in her late 40s, told AFP.

What followed was years of sexual slavery, earning money for her family through encounters with other men in the name of serving the goddess.

Attempts to reduce child marriage in India have stalled. 

Buddhism

According to Brahmanical law a girl had to be married of within months of her first menstruation, after which her father would incur more blame the longer he delayed the marriage. The early Buddhists considered 16 to be a suitable marriageable age (patta soëasa vassa kàle, pattavaya, Ja.I,421). It was thought good for couple to be the same age (tulyavaya), although the Kàma Såtra (4th cent CE) recommends that the bride be three years younger than the groom. The Buddha thought it inappropriate and foolish for old men to marry women much younger than themselves (Sn.110). 

Christianity

Canon 1083 currently sets the age of marriage as 16 years of age for boys and 14 years of age for girls. This maintains the ages set in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1067. But, the 1917 code was a change from the pre-1917 code, which set the canonical ages of marriage at twelve for both ages (younger marriage was possible if the spouse had entered puberty). And for most of the Church's history, one could be betrothed to marriage by the age of seven, although younger betrothals were not uncommon. 

1880 United States

Every state in the union set age of consent at either 10 or 12 years of age, with the exception of Delaware, which set it at 7 years of age. Some locales permitted it at the age of 9. In 1974, the age of consent in Florida was still 11 years old. 

[As of 2023], although advocates have succeeded in getting seven states to ban child marriage with no exceptions, forty-three states still allow marriage under the age of eighteen, and seven states have no minimum age requirement for marriage so long as there is a parental or judicial waiver. Until recently, Wyoming fell into this category, but enacted a law in February 2023 to raise the minimum marriage age to 16 with most minors having to go before a judge for approval. ... In California, which has no minimum legal marriage age, a 2017 bill to ban the practice was defeated after advocates—including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—lobbied against it. 

Avowed Atheist, Profound Theologian

 One of the central touch-stones of Christian faith and of Catholic theology specifically, is "mystery." We call many things a mystery, but the word is rarely defined.

The avowed atheist Richard P. Feynman, one of the most brilliant physicists of the 20th century, understood what a mystery was much better than most theologians I have met:

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. 

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. 

It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."

 As Feynman further explains in this clip below (titled "On Magnetism"), the essence of mystery is simple: "That's my idea, that the deeper a thing is, the more interesting it gets [at 3:40] ... I'm not going to be able to give you an answer... I really cannot do a good job, any job, of explaining... [or] give you an explanation in terms of something else you are more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else you are more familiar with."

Mystery is not confined to theology. It permeates everything we try to understand. Feynman was an avowed atheist, but an excellent theologian.

Contemplating Hebrew Language and Theology

 According to the Jews, the name YHWH is pronounced as one would breath, in and out. That's what the two previously linked, beautiful essays, declaim. Unfortunately, one consequence of this is immediately applicable. According to the Hebrew understanding, no one is fully a human being until they take first breath after birth. That first breath after birth is what makes an infant the image and likeness of YHWH.

So, partial-birth abortion is fine, because the thing being destroyed, having not yet taken first breath, is not yet in God's image and likeness. It is not yet fully human. This is the Hebrew participation in cosmological wisdom, it is their participation in the Tree of Life. America's abortion law for the last fifty years has followed Hebrew wisdom by always checking to see if the baby's lungs have air in them before charging someone with a baby's murder. If the baby has taken first breath, the murder charge can be levelled. If not, then not. In this respect, American law has been dominated for a half-century by the ancient Jewish theological worldview.

Knowing all this, we Christians, who are grafted onto the deep theological understanding of God that the Jews bring to the world like a branch is grafted onto the foundational root, can contemplate the wellspring of rich Hebrew understanding of God. We can rest in that understanding, certain that it is grounded in millennia of contemplating God's Holy Life, grounded even in the very structure of Hebrew word and language. We can see that deep foundational structure, we can see the Hebrew image of God described therein, and say to Judaism with absolute certainty, "F*ck off, you murderous bastards."

TLDR: Any theology which allows the murder of infants is bankrupt. If Hebrew theology is bankrupt, and Christian theology is based on Hebrew theology like a branch grafted onto a root, then...