Friday 14 June 2024
Thursday 13 June 2024
Toward a Darwin devotion filter?
Only Thick Darwinism Served Here
Author’s note: James Barham and I developed this questionnaire some years back for an educational website. To appease the search engines, the website eventually dropped it. Lightly dusted off, it is presented here. The questionnaire provides a useful mirror for understanding the influence of Darwinian ideas on our lives and culture.
How devoted a disciple of Charles Darwin’s are you, really? Take the Darwin Devotion Detector (DDD) test and find out. Higher scores on this test indicate increasing devotion to Darwin and his ideas.
The DDD consists of 40 pairs of statements. For each pair, select the statement with which you more nearly agree. This is a forced-choice test. For some statement pairs, you may not feel drawn to either choice, but do the best you can.
The correct Darwinian answer is marked with a hash sign (#) — add one for each such answer. The test is short and will take only a few minutes to complete.
Only scores close to zero indicate someone outside Darwin’s thrall.
The Test
1.
Evolution in the sense that all present-day organisms arose from one or a few ancestors (common descent) is now a proven fact.#
Evolution in that sense is still an unproven hypothesis.
2.
The theory of natural selection (i.e., retention of chance variations) adequately explains common descent.#
Even assuming full-blown evolution to be a fact, the theory of natural selection does not adequately explain it.
3.
The theory of natural selection accounts for the phenomenon of adaptation — and thus the appearance of design — in organisms.#
For an organism to be selected it must already be well adapted; therefore, the theory of natural selection begs the question of the origin of adaptations (or design).
4.
The formula “survival of the fittest” amounts to “survival of the survivors,” suggesting that the theory of natural selection is empirically empty, or even a tautology.
“Survival of the fittest” is a useful short-hand formula for characterizing the theory of natural selection.#
5.
Although Charles Darwin is an important figure in the history of science, the conceptual importance of natural selection has been significantly exaggerated.
Natural selection is one of the greatest ideas ever, and conceiving of it put Darwin in the company of Newton and Einstein.#
6.
Because Darwin’s birthday falls on the same day as Abraham Lincoln’s (February 12, 1809), if Americans were to celebrate one or the other, we should celebrate Darwin Day.#
Lincoln’s impact on the U.S. and the world was far more positive than Darwin’s and we should continue to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday as it is.
7.
Darwinism, suitably updated, is good 21st-century science.#
Darwinism is a relic of 19th-century science; Darwin’s work has now been largely superseded.
8.
Darwin shared many of the conventional opinions of his day, including the superiority of the white race.
Darwin embodies humanity at its best and deserves the status of a secular saint.#
9.
Darwin’s ideas and their unintended consequences have done great harm.
The world would be a better place if everyone had to learn about Darwin’s ideas.#
10.
Hostility toward evolution is a major factor in the decline of American educational standards in relation to international standards.#
Other factors (such as classroom disorder and the breakdown of the family) have contributed more to the decline of American educational standards than hostility toward evolution.
11.
Public school biology teachers in the U.S. should be free to teach what they can defend to be true based on evidence.
Public school biology teachers in the U.S. should be required to teach the received views of professional evolutionary biologists.#
12.
In Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that it is illegal to “disparage or denigrate” Darwinism in the public schools; Judge Jones decided this case correctly.#
By suppressing dissent and creating a state-imposed ideology in America, Judge Jones’s ruling parallels Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union.
13.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is as well supported scientifically as Einstein’s theory of general relativity.#
Putting Darwin’s theory of evolution in the same league as Einstein’s theory of general relativity is an affront to the exact sciences.
14.
The Darwin Awards, given to people who kill themselves due to their rash or foolish actions, reflect an unhealthy cynicism and low view of humanity.
The Darwin Awards rightly recognize individuals for contributing to human evolution by weeding themselves out of the gene pool through their stupidity.#
15.
The eugenics movement — which led to the mass sterilization of people deemed “defective” in the United States and to mass murder in Germany — was largely based on Darwin’s ideas.
To lay the eugenics movement at Darwin’s feet is grossly unfair.#
16.
Living things are collections of ordinary chemical elements organized in particular ways; there is nothing physically distinctive about life.#
The “living state of matter” is physically distinctive, implying the existence of special causal powers that inorganic systems do not possess.
17.
Living things are basically just vehicles for their genes.#
Genes play a necessary but not sufficient causal role in living things.
18.
Organisms, while highly complex, are fundamentally no different from humanly constructed machines.#
Organisms are essentially different from humanly constructed machines.
19.
The concept of “junk DNA” was a major scientific blunder directly attributable to Darwinian thinking.
Darwinian thinking advanced science by correctly characterizing non-coding DNA regions as “junk DNA.”#
20.
Darwin speculated that life began in a “warm little pond”; in this, as with so many of his ideas, he was remarkably prescient.#
Nobody today has any real insight into how life began.
21.
Human beings are fundamentally different from all other animals.
Human beings are basically no different from other animals.#
22.
The most important fact about human beings is our capacity for conscious reflection, reason, and language.
Human mental capacities are a minor and superficial adaptation of an unexceptional primate.#
23.
Human beings can freely choose what to do.
Free will is an illusion.#
24.
The capacity for mature love is one of the noblest aspects of human nature.
Humans experience “love” as the result of oxytocin and other hormones coursing through the body — just as for other mammals.#
25.
Referring to “kin selection,” J. B. S. Haldane remarked: “I would gladly lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”; this principle helps us to understand the nature of human altruism.#
Mother Teresa (who ministered to dying homeless people in Kolkata) and holocaust rescuers (who risked their lives to help Jews escape Nazi death camps) have more to teach us about human altruism than kin selection.
26.
Some things (like killing innocents) are absolutely wrong.
Nothing is right or wrong except in relation to its consequences, especially for one’s genes.#
27.
Rape is morally wrong because it treats an autonomous human person as an object.
Rape is properly viewed as an adaptation in early hominid males to help them spread their genes.#
28.
If scientists could crossbreed a human and chimpanzee to form a hybrid “humanzee,” it would be a triumph and cause for celebration.#
Hybridizing a human being with a chimpanzee or any other animal is likely to be biologically impossible and, in any case, would be a moral outrage.
29.
Goodness, truth, and beauty are illusions that helped our hominid ancestors to survive.#
Goodness, truth, and beauty are objectively real norms that guide human belief and action.
30.
The motivations of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice cannot be understood at the deepest level without a knowledge of evolutionary theory.#
Jane Austen had no need of evolutionary theory to understand human motivations at the deepest level relevant to literature.
31.
Memes are the units of selection of human culture, much as genes are the units of selection of organismic traits.#
Meme theory is a crude caricature of the way human beings come up with new ideas and share them with one another.
32.
Richard Dawkins is a distinguished scientist who deserves a Nobel Prize.#
Richard Dawkins is a brilliant popularizer who has not done any original scientific work in decades.
33.
Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.#
The atheist worldview still contains major conceptual gaps.
34.
Religion is a legitimate activity in which humans try to understand and make contact with what is ultimately real.
Religion is an irrational response to unknown causes operating in nature; as we understand nature better, religion will disappear.#
35.
Due to our uncontrolled population growth, human beings have become a scourge upon the earth not unlike cancer.#
Human beings are the crown of creation.
36.
Third-world economic development to relieve poverty is more important than preserving biological diversity at all costs.
Preserving biological diversity is more important than third-world economic development.#
37.
Purpose, value, and meaning are “folk-psychology” categories that do not correspond to anything in reality.#
Purpose, value, and meaning are objectively real.
38.
Darwinian evolutionary theory has weaknesses and those who point them out should be tolerated, if not applauded.
Darwinian evolutionary theory has no weaknesses and those who say it does are usually religiously motivated.#
39.
Intelligent design, as a voice of dissent, does useful work in keeping the evolutionary biology community honest.
Intelligent design has no intellectual merits and deserves no public hearing.#
40.
The theory of natural selection is a “universal acid” that dissolves every problem in the biological and social sciences; Darwinian theory explains virtually everything.#
A theory that explains everything explains nothing; for all practical purposes, Darwinian theory is unfalsifiable and so is essentially unscientific.
Against nincsnevem ad pluribus VIII
Nincs:The consistent testimony of Scripture affirms Christ’s divinity and role as the Creator. This comprehensive involvement in creation underscores His divine nature. If Jesus were a created being, He could not be the agent through whom all creation came into existence. John 1:3 explicitly states that "all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." This explicitly states that Christ is not part of creation but its Creator, which excludes the possibility of Christ being a created being.
Me: The fact that the creation is "en" "Dia" Christ is evidence that he is NOT the source of the information and energy in the creation. The fact that all things were created "en""dia" him is no more evidence that he is not created than the fact that all are to be resurrected "en""dia" him is evidence that he was not resurrected.
1Corinthians Ch.15:22NKJV"For as in Adam ALL die, even so in Christ ALL shall be made alive."
The Bible routinely uses the word all with sensible exceptions.
Tuesday 11 June 2024
Monday 10 June 2024
Sunday 9 June 2024
On the willful credulity of Darwinists.
Deconstructing Belief in Evolution
In a recent Evolution News article on the sophisticated engineering marvel of insect wings, David Coppedge finds another source of wonder — the willingness of the Caltech researchers to extol these wonders. Coppedge concludes with a droll acknowledgement of evolutionary origin:
They will wax eloquent over the sophistication of some biological wonder, only to spoil the awe with a claim that it evolved by blind, material processes.
What causes otherwise intelligent and perceptive researchers to relegate stunning examples of biological design to the vaporous agency of evolution? Of course, we know about the conformity pressure of the scientific academy, with the threat of exclusion for crediting design to a designer. But there’s more to it than that. Even in private conversation, many researchers hold to the reality of naturalistic evolution as the efficient cause to form all the complex, functional elements of living organisms, from the macroscopic level down to individual biochemical reactions within the cell.
A Blithe Assumption
Although much has been written about the information barrier that natural processes face in attempting to ratchet up the functional complexity of living systems, it seems that many scientists blithely assume nature’s prowess extends to the generation of countless living wonders. Why is this? In our common human experience in the world, do we see examples of natural forces molding matter into complex, functional arrangements?
In our investigation of how the natural world informs our thinking, the origin and development of living organisms constitutes the case in point. So, we shouldn’t exhibit examples from the realm of biology to support the contention that natural forces can increase the information content of a system by increasing functional complexity. Poignantly, however, this is just what the theory of evolution does. Its claims ignore the restrictions of the laws of physics. Evolution’s tenet of the survival of the fittest appeals immediately to our ego, gratuitously affirming that humans have attained consciousness, self-awareness, intelligence, morality, and ultimately, a technologically advanced civilization because we are the fittest and have survived.
In a more objective sense, we find agreement with evolution’s predictions that the record of living forms on Earth shows a general trend from simpler forms to more complex forms of life. But a theory’s validity is not measured simply by predictive success; its underlying assumptions must also conform to scientific reality. Moreover, it could be argued that life’s history is the opposite of the expected outcome of survival of the fittest, where fittest is usually taken to mean greater success at producing offspring. Without a doubt, the simplest life forms have always out-produced more advanced life forms in the arena of reproduction.
Considering Hurricanes
But let’s get back to examining nature for any non-living examples of complex, functional outcomes arising from combinations of the forces of nature acting on non-organic matter. Several years ago, a young biochemist suggested to me that hurricanes, with their rotational structure and wind-speed gradients, constitute an observable example of a natural artifact exhibiting complexity. However, this example falls short of the information content of even a single cell.
While a “hurricane” has a macroscopic structure, its microscopic components (molecules found in our air) are randomly arranged. Contrast this with a cell: not only does a cell have a macroscopic structure, but its microscopic constituents are tightly constrained to specific arrangements. A hurricane is not in the least destroyed by flying an airplane through it (I don’t recommend trying this), but a cell’s functionality would be irreparably damaged by inserting a microscopic needle into the cell and breaking up its internal molecular structure. No matter how long you wait, the molecules within the cell will not reform after they have been broken up.
Could it be that part of the reason many scientists accept that evolution is true is that they have not been taught the limitations of natural forces to increase the functional complexity (and thereby the information content) of an unorganized arrangement of atoms? For, producing a living cell is almost an atom-by-atom process.
Human construction projects proceed by intelligently interconnecting macroscopic arrangements of atoms, with each component of what we’re building (whether it’s a skyscraper or a cell phone) consisting of trillions upon trillions of atoms. We know that natural forces could not possibly succeed in manufacturing any of our technological products, but when it comes to the molecular scale, we disregard this wisdom and assume that natural forces can manufacture a living cell that far exceeds the complexity of any artificial product.
We don’t directly perceive how the electric force between atoms causes chemical reactions to proceed, and by virtue of that ignorance, we might imagine their abilities to be practically unlimited. We also have some conception of the vast numbers of atoms in a chemical soup, so perhaps we conclude that any lack of systematic productive prowess is made up for by the brute force of rapidly repeated efforts. Again, ignorance bewitches us, since not many scientists, and very few non-scientists, are aware of the magnitude of the combinatorial options for producing the large, functional biomolecules of life. Even with the large number of random attempts in a chemical soup to form a specific, functional molecule, the number of ways to go wrong always mounts up exponentially to defeat production of the necessary outcome.
Another Factor — Openness
One other factor comes into play that rivets some people to the evolutionary viewpoint: openness, or the lack of it. The only way someone can change his mind is to have a willingness to examine the relevant evidence objectively. Not just to scrutinize it for a way to bolster presuppositions, but to be willing to evaluate it as possibly supporting the deconstruction of one’s viewpoint. This willingness to face reality is important no matter what position we hold.
In the pursuit of truth, freedom is ultimately at stake. Believing a falsehood may be comfortable — temporarily. The issue with evolution may not matter if we are just “accidents of nature,” having no future or hope beyond the grave. But one of the strong truths at stake in the debate over evolution is our ultimate significance as more than animated matter. For us as designed beings, at least in my view, the outcome of our belief may have an impact for eternity.
Saturday 8 June 2024
A technology indistinguishable from magic?
Our Universe Works … Yet Doesn’t Make Sense; How Could That Be?
Prominent science writer John Horgan finds himself stumped (and somewhat vexed?) by quantum mechanics — the behavior of the fundamental particles of the universe:
Quantum principles underpin our modern scientific worldview and much of our technology, including the laptop on which I’m writing these words. And yet a century after its invention, physicists and philosophers cannot agree on what quantum mechanics means.
JOHN HORGAN, “QUANTUM MECHANICS, PLATO’S CAVE AND THE BLIND PIRANHA,” CROSS-CHECK, MAY 22, 2024
He Has a Point
How can so much uncertainty lie placidly at the basis of our universe but disrupt nothing in particular? In fact, as he says, we build better computers using its principles. Why doesn’t fundamental uncertainty cause us to build worse ones or nothing at all?
Horgan, author of My Quantum Experiment (2023), takes this disjunction personally:
I’m blindly thrashing about for insights, epiphanies, revelations. Every now and then I think I’ve grasped some slippery truth, but my satisfaction is always fleeting. Sooner or later, I end up bouncing off an invisible barrier. I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m in the dark.
HORGAN, “QUANTUM MECHANICS, PLATO’S CAVE AND THE BLIND PIRANHA”
Horgan Is Certainly Not Alone
The greatest scientists who tackled quantum mechanics are as much in the dark as the prominent science writer, if that’s any help. For example,
“For those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.” —Niels Bohr (1885–1962), in 1952, quoted by Werner Heisenberg (1971), Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper and Row), p. 206.
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics” — Richard Feynman (1918–1988), YouTube Video clip from his 1964 Messenger lecture series at Cornell University.
“No other theory of the physical world has caused such consternation as quantum theory, for no other theory has so completely overthrown the previously cherished concepts of classical physics and our everyday apprehension of reality.” — Peter Atkins in Foreword to Beyond Measure (2004), by Jim Baggott.
“Quantum mechanics was, and continues to be, revolutionary, primarily because it demands the introduction of radically new concepts to better describe the world.” — Nobelist Alain Aspect, “Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution” in J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (2nd ed, 2004), by John Stuart Bell (1928–1990).
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) never accepted quantum mechanics, and spent much of his career opposing it: “Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one.’ I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.” — Letter to Max Born (4 December 1926); The Born-Einstein Letters (translated by Irene Born) (Walker and Company, New York, 1971).
Note: Einstein apparently believed in the idea of God espoused by philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and that is what he seems to mean by the “old one.”
So How Can the Universe Be Like This?
The most reasonable theory of how the universe can be both uncertain at its base yet reliable in everyday life is the least popular one: As atheist mathematician and astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) reluctantly suggested, “A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”
If so, we can understand some of the universe created by a greater intelligence but perhaps not all of it, or at least not at present.
That points in the direction of deism or theism — an impersonal or personal God. It was what caused lifetime atheist philosopher Antony Flew (1923–2010) to conclude toward the end of his life that There Is a God. (HarperOne, 2007). And that’s hard to discuss casually today. The problem isn’t that the scientists who think that there is a God are proceeding without evidence. Rather, because theirs is an unpopular perspective, they might be canceled even if they have plenty of evidence. Even if evidence, in the form of further discoveries of the fine-tuning of the universe, is piling up… One way of describing a situation like that is intellectual stagnation.
Note: In his essay, Horgan compares himself to a “blind piranha” that he once saw. It could find and eat minnows that were thrown to it but it really had no idea of its surroundings (an aquarium in a bar).
Friday 7 June 2024
Comic book science?
Fossil Friday: No, Magnetic Field Collapse Did Not Trigger the Emergence of Animals
In previous articles about the sudden appearance of the Ediacaran biota (Avalon Explosion) and the sudden appearance of animal body plans in the Cambrian Explosion, I discussed the common strategy in evolutionary biology to make up fancy just-so-stories to allegedly explain these striking events in the history of life, without proposing any causally adequate mechanism for the actual origin of biological novelty. A popular idea is that increased oxygen content played a significant role in the origin of complex life (see Bechly 2023a).
Now, a new study by Huang et al. (2024) in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment suggests that a near-collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field in the Ediacaran caused an increased oxygenation of the atmosphere and thereby allowed a diversification of macroscopic and mobile animals of the Ediacara fauna. The press release from the University of Rochester (2024) even more boldly asked “Did a magnetic field collapse trigger the emergence of animals?” and claimed that the “researchers uncovered compelling evidence” that “a weak magnetic field millions of years ago may have fueled the proliferation of life.” Media reports (e.g., Pappas 2024) as usual enthusiastically promoted this claim with headlines like “Earth’s Magnetic Field ‘Near-Collapse’ Boosted Evolution, Scientists Think” by Newsweek (Thomson 2024). Let’s for a moment ignore the fact that the identification of the Ediacaran biota as early animal fauna is a hotly debated issue even in mainstream paleobiology (see by numerous Evolution News articles debunking alleged Ediacaran animals with peer reviewed science). Let’s also ignore the staggering amount of unscientific imaginative speculation that is evident from the use of formulations like “may have” or “may be” not less than ten times in the press report by Pappas (2024). Let’s just look at the actual findings and claims of the new study.
What the Study Claims
The scientists had studied the preserved magnetization in ancient feldspar crystals from southern Brazil and describe evidence that the geomagnetic field was 30 times weaker in the Ediacaran compared to today’s level. This low level allegedly lasted for about 26 million years. The authors propose that:
A weak magnetic field makes it easier for charged particles from the sun to strip away lightweight atoms such as hydrogen from the atmosphere, causing them to escape into space. If hydrogen loss is significant, more oxygen may remain in the atmosphere instead of reacting with hydrogen to form water vapor. These reactions can lead to a buildup of oxygen over time.
(UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER 2024)
Smithsonian Magazine (Wu 2024) commented:
Earth’s Magnetic Field Nearly Collapsed 600 Million Years Ago. Then, Weird and Complex Life Evolved … A new study suggests more solar radiation reached Earth while the magnetic field weakened, leading to a rise in oxygen that drove an explosion of multicellular organisms during the Ediacaran Period. … this near-disaster may have actually been the key to a burst of evolution.
The authors also believe that oxygen is “a key ‘environmental gatekeeper‘, allowing for evolutionary innovation” and say that “multiple lines of geochemical evidence point to a possible increase in atmospheric and oceanic O2 levels in the late Ediacaran Period.” The latter claim indeed was a scientific consensus and textbook wisdom for many decades. So far so good.
A Fly in the Ointment
There is a little fly in the ointment though that spoils this whole just-so-story. Last year a sensational study by Ostrander et al. (2023) decisively refuted all earlier claims of a correlation of the Ediacaran Avalon Explosion with an increased oxygen content and instead found the very opposite with widespread seafloor anoxia. I reported about this surprising discovery in a previous Fossil Friday article last year (Bechly 2023a) and further elaborated the issue in a podcast (Bechly 2023b).
The authors of the new study do not seem to be aware of this crucial discovery at all, as the Ostrander paper is not even cited by them. This is yet another failure of the peer review system, which apparently only works when it can censor inconvenient challenges to mainstream paradigms (Sewell 2013, Bechly 2024a, 2024c), but not when it should do what it is supposed to do, i.e., ensure high scientific standards. The whole foundation of the new study’s main conclusion is a house of cards built on quicksand. Their hypothesis is dead in the water because there simply was no Ediacaran oxygenation.
But even in the counterfactual case that it were true that the abrupt appearance of the Ediacaran biota in the Avalon Explosion would correlate with oxygenation due to a geomagnetic field collapse, this would of course not explain the origin of biological novelty with new proteins, new tissues. new organs, and new body plans. It might have been a necessary condition for the emergence of complex multicellular organisms, but certainly not a sufficient condition. You find this simple logical error all too often in evolutionary story telling (see Bechly 2023a, 2024b). But in this case the point is moot anyway, because in fact the correlation turned out to be simply non-existent.
Another Interesting Point
But there is another interesting point concerning the geomagnetic field that is mentioned by John Tarduno (quoted in Wu 2024) from the University of Rochester, who is the lead researcher and corresponding author of the new study:
The solidification of the inner core was also a crucial event for the evolution of life — it allowed Earth’s magnetic field to regain its strength and protect the planet’s water from being entirely eroded by solar radiation. … We need the Earth’s magnetic field to preserve water on the planet, …
This of course adds to the many points of fine-tuning that make Earth a privileged planet that can uniquely sustain life, and therefore is part of a cumulative case for design.
References
- Bechly G 2023a. Fossil Friday: Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom on Origin of Multicellular Life Turns Out to Be Wrong. Evolution News September 1, 2023. https://evolutionnews.org/2023/09/fossil-friday-seventy-years-of-textbook-wisdom-on-the-origin-of-multicellular-life-turns-out-to-be-wrong/
- Bechly G 2023b. Günter Bechly on Why Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom Was Wrong. ID The Future episode 1813. https://idthefuture.com/1813/
- Bechly G 2024a. Fossil Friday: Suppressed Dissent About Neanderthal DNA in Modern Humans. Evolution News April 19, 2024. https://evolutionnews.org/2024/04/fossil-friday-suppressed-dissent-about-neanderthal-dna-in-modern-humans/
- Bechly G 2024b. Fossil Friday: Discontinuities in the Fossil Record — A Problem for Neo-Darwinism. Evolution News May 10, 2024. https://evolutionnews.org/2024/05/fossil-friday-discontinuities-in-the-fossil-record-a-problem-for-neo-darwinism/
- Bechly G 2024c. Fossil Friday: Three Modern Scientific Challenges to the Causal Adequacy of Darwinian Explanations. Evolution News May 17, 2024. https://evolutionnews.org/2024/05/fossil-friday-three-modern-scientific-challenges-to-the-causal-adequacy-of-darwinian-explanations/
- Huang W, Tarduno JA, Zhou T et al. 2024. Near-collapse of the geomagnetic field may have contributed to atmospheric oxygenation and animal radiation in the Ediacaran Period. Communications Earth & Environment 5(1): 207, 1–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01360-4
- Ostrander CM, Bjerrum CJ, Ahm A-SC, Stenger SR, Bergmann KD, El-Ghali MAK, Harthi AR, Aisri Z & Nielsen SG 2023. Widespread seafloor anoxia during generation of the Ediacaran Shuram carbon isotope excursion. gebiology 21(5), 556–570. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12557
- Pappas S 2024. Collapse of Earth’s magnetic field may have fueled evolution of life 600 million years ago. LiveScience May 9, 2024. https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/collapse-of-earths-magnetic-field-may-have-fueled-evolution-of-life-600-million-years-ago
- Sewell G 2013. How the Scientific Consensus Is Maintained — and How It Can Be Challenged. Evolution News September 3, 2013. https://evolutionnews.org/2013/09/how_the_scienti_1/
- Thomson J 2024. Earth’s Magnetic Field ‘Near-Collapse’ Boosted Evolution, Scientists Think. Newsweek May 2, 2024. https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-field-weakening-life-evolution-1896611
- UCPH 2023. Life on Earth didn’t arise as described in textbooks. Faculty of Science Press Release July 18, 2023. https://science.ku.dk/english/press/news/2023/life-on-earth-didnt-arise-as-described-in-textbooks/
- University of Rochester 2024. Did a magnetic field collapse trigger the emergence of animals? ScienceDaily May 3, 2024. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240503135331.htm
- Wu T 2024. Earth’s Magnetic Field Nearly Collapsed 600 Million Years Ago. Then, Weird and Complex Life Evolved. Smithsonian Magazine May 15, 2024. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/earths-magnetic-field-nearly-collapsed-600-million-years-ago-then-weird-and-complex-life-evolved-180984353/
On the arrival of the fittest.
The Junk Shop of Andreas Wagner
This is the second part of a review of Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture, by Andreas Wagner (2023). The first part is here.
After rehashing some old arguments for why Darwinian evolution must have occurred, Dr. Wagner moves on to his own, more original, arguments for how it might have happened. Unlike some evolutionary biologists, he is willing to admit that Darwin’s theory does not explain the “arrival of the fittest.” Instead, he has his own theories.
But before getting into that, Wagner devotes some time to elucidating what he calls the “old fashioned” (yet post-Darwinian) explanation for the arrival of the fittest, formulated by the French biologist François Jacob.
Argument 3: Co-Option Can Explain the Origin of Complex Structures
Summing up Jacob’s hypothesis, Wagner writes:
[E]volution is like a tinkerer with a huge workshop full of junk, devices in various states of assembly and repair, gizmos with half-forgotten uses, and countless tools just as likely to be working as to be broken. And like a tinkerer, evolution modifies, fiddles and plays with these parts, assembling them into ever-new contraptions, gadgets, and molecular machines.
The junk-shop tinkerer is an (unintentionally) apt metaphor, for two reasons. First, because the re-useable junk was already made by an intelligent designer in the first place (good luck “tinkering around” in, say, a sand pit!); and second, because the act of recombining junk into new machines itself requires intelligent design.
The co-option argument is a good explanation for how a large number of complex biological machines might be aggregated in a single system, but it doesn’t explain how each of those machines developed. That’s because the basic quality of a complex machine is that it requires the coordination of several pieces to perform a single function — which is why Behe has argued that complex machines cannot arise through a gradual, stepwise process. The pieces could be co-opted from elsewhere, but that would not provide the necessary information regarding how the pieces must interact to make a complex machine, which was the main problem in the place.
The fundamental dilemma is this: whenever you co-opt any part from an old system and put it in a new system, there are two possibilities. If (1) the co-opted part itself was complex, then that original complexity is left unexplained; but if (2) it was not complex, then the co-opted part does little to explain the complexity of the system it was co-opted into. For example, neither (1) “The GPS system in this car was taken from a helicopter!” nor (2) “The screws in this car were taken from a helicopter!” does much to explain the complexity found in the car, even if the explanations are true.
There is direct negative correlation at work here: the more complexity in the new system the co-option explains, the less complexity in the source system it explains. In other words, you’re just shuffling information around. And as information theorists like William Dembski can tell you, that will never give you new information — there’s no free lunch.
So the co-option argument amounts to nothing. It’s like if a child asked, “Where do toys come from?” and got the reply, “From the toy store.” This might be a satisfying answer to a child, because (so they say) children are prone to magical thinking. But it shouldn’t be satisfying to an adult scientist.
Argument 4: There’s More Than One Way to Skin (or Build) A Cat
This is not Wagner’s star argument, however. Although he does agree that evolution is like a tinkerer in a junk shop, he says that Jacob was “dead wrong” in thinking that evolution cannot make new genes from scratch (i.e., “de novo genes”). Wagner writes that Jacob can’t be blamed for his false assumption, because he was writing in the days before genomics. He goes on to say:
One can hardly blame Jacob for arguing against de novo genes, because a gene really is a very special stretch of DNA. It has complex features that Jacob knew well — he had discovered some of them — and whose origin is hard to imagine. [Here follows a lengthy description of the complexity required for a single functioning gene.] …Given these requirements, it’s hard to imagine indeed that a gene could emerge from scratch.
Hard to imagine, but still true… Comparing an ever-increasing number of genomes resulted in many discoveries, but none more mystifying than this one: every newly sequenced genome contained hundreds to thousands of genes whose DNA was unique, bearing no resemblance to DNA in any other organism. Such genes were called orphans.
Now, an outside observer might say that this is a classic case of a hypothesis being tested and falling short. The hypothesis of unguided, incremental evolution resulted in the prediction that de novo genes would be impossible. In Jacob’s words, as Wagner quotes him: “The probability that a functional protein would appear de novo by random association of amino acids is practically zero.” So if evolution was unguided, it must have built genes slowly, from other genes; we wouldn’t expect to find any de novo genes.
It was a reasonable prediction. Yet genomics proved that prediction wrong.
Normally, when a hypothesis fails to make successful predictions, that means the hypothesis should be discarded. But some hypotheses are too big to fail. For these privileged hypotheses, when the predictions don’t pan out, rather than ditch the hypothesis, you think and think until you come up with some explanation for why the prediction failed.
So what’s the new explanation? Wagner argues that de novo genes might be individually unlikely, but they are not unlikely in aggregate. That’s because there are so many possible genes. Any given gene might be astronomically improbable, but there are also an astronomically large number of possible viable genes — so getting some gene that fulfills a given need is not unlikely.
This is a clever argument, in my opinion. At least, unlike most anti-Behean arguments, it doesn’t fall apart at the level of basic logic. To see the problem with it, you have to think a bit deeper.
So let’s return to the junk-yard analogy. Imagine that you are walking through a junkyard with your friend (as one does), and you come across what appears to be a fully functioning car.
“I wonder why they left a perfectly good car here?” you say.
“Maybe they didn’t,” says your friend. “There are lots of usable parts here, and this is tornado country. Maybe a tornado picked them up and combined them into a car.”
“That doesn’t seem very probable,” you point out.
“Does it not?” your friend replies. “Think about it: there’s more than one way to build an automobile. It could have three wheels, for example. Or six. Or, why not 1,000 little wheels? Or legs, like a spider. Or it could bounce on springs! When you think about it, the number of ways to make a device of locomotion is probably infinite, or practically infinite at least. With that many options, the chances of making an automobile can’t be very low. And anyhow, we know the odds must not be prohibitively low, because — there’s the automobile!”
Forgetting for a moment that this is an analogy — would you find this argument convincing, or not?
Of course you wouldn’t. That’s because you intuitively know a strange truth about math: that infinity is not the largest number.
Even if something has infinite opportunities to occur, that does not mean it is likely to occur. Why? Because each one of those infinite possibilities of success might come with its own sea of infinite possibilities of failure. Infinity squared, or times infinity is much larger than infinity. Think of an infinite plane versus an infinite line; despite both being infinite, one is clearly larger than the other in a very real and practical sense.
Think of it another way. Imagine you throw a dart at the natural number line. The odds of hitting any integer with infinite precision (that is, 2.00000…000 with zeroes repeating to infinity, rather than 2.00000….00013 or anything like that) is infinitely small. That is true even though there are an infinite number of integers to hit! Each integer is infinitely small and has an infinite number of non-integer possibilities on each side, so the fact that you are aiming at an infinite sea of integers does not make hitting one any more than infinitesimally probable.
In the example of the automobile from the junk-yard tornado, you intuitively knew that getting any sort of automobile is unlikely, no matter how many potential sorts there are. It does not matter if there are literally infinite ways to make an automobile, because there are (give or take) infinity-squared ways of not making one.
The only relevant difference between this hypothetical scenario and the real scenario in question with molecular machines is that molecule machines are far more complex than automobiles. There is no reason to consider them more likely to form by chance in a cell than an automobile is likely to form by chance in a junkyard. Even the vast age and size of the universe doesn’t make a dent in the unlikeliness of it.
Wagner has discovered the interesting fact that there are many ways to make a complex system, and is unduly impressed by this fact. It’s not actually that revolutionary of an idea. Anyone could have guessed that there would be nearly infinite ways to arrange, say, a metabolic pathway, or a bacterial motor—there’s always more than one way to skin a cat, as they say.
But there are far, far more ways to fail to skin a cat.
The Thrall of the Zeitgeist
In the later part of the book, Wagner moves on from evolution to examples of Sleeping Beauties in human culture. He writes:
We heard that innovations come easily to evolution. They come just as easily to culture, and multiple discoveries are exhibit A for this claim. The wheel, discovered in the new and in the old world, is only one among hundreds of examples. Even more ancient is agriculture. It has at least eleven independent origins…The pendulum clock was invented at least three different times, the thermometer seven times, the telegraph four times and the radar six times.
The thing is…cultural innovation is easy because of the intelligent minds behind it. The comparison is (again, unintentionally) quite rich.
If Wagner had felt like it, he could have just as easily made his book into an argument for intelligent design, rather than against it. Wagner makes no controversy about the basic facts: irreducible complexity, vastly improbably sequences in genes, etc. His arguments against design all amount to rhetorical glosses and strange contortions of reasoning.
It’s a shame. The book, as I’ve said, is truly delightful, and there’s no reason it had to be marred by naturalist blustering against a theory Wagner can’t be bothered to understand. Wagner is obviously a man of great intelligence, curiosity, and erudition. It’s a shame he doesn’t let those qualities shine through when he’s taking up the task of debating the most important questions of life.
It’s a shame, but it isn’t shocking. Wagner wouldn’t be the first otherwise intelligent and curious person to suddenly lose interest in rational exploration of ideas when it comes to intelligent design. It happens all the time.
The cause of that isn’t so strange. In fact, it’s something that Wagner highlights in his book. Wagner writes that one reason that Sleeping Beauties stay asleep for so long is that people are prevented from appreciating them by the mind-numbing power of the Zeitgeist, the “spirit of the age.” Every age has its own spirit, and any idea that contradicts the spirit of the age is doomed to obscurity — at least, until the age changes.
What’s the antidote? Once again, Wagner has the answer in his book: stop worrying about what others think, and pursue the object of your passion for its own sake.
It’s good advice, and I hope Dr. Wagner will follow it when it comes to the ultimate question of his field. He seems to want to; he just needs to go all the way. If he does, he may ultimately reject ID or affirm it — but at least he will have to give it a fair hearing, not the cursory glance and mishmash of half-arguments he served up in this book.
Thursday 6 June 2024
Wednesday 5 June 2024
On speaking truth while retaining ones bona fides in a one party state.
Persecution and the Art of “Darwinist” Writing
I want to point out to you again Robert Shedinger’s striking review of avowed Darwinist and science writer Philip Ball’s new book. Shedinger observes the numerous self-contradictions in the work — a work by an excellent writer and a very smart man. Ball on one hand renounces intelligent design, in the clearest terms, and on the other, uses design language and design evidence. Writes Ball, “I do want to be clear…that there is no obvious challenge in any of what I have said or say hereafter to the core principles of Darwinism — or perhaps we should say of neo-Darwinism.” In reality, there is a range of “obvious challenges.” What’s going on here?
Political scientist Leo Strauss had a sharp idea that many writers, including some of the very best and very smartest, have used a system of hints as to their true beliefs that has involved deliberate self-contradiction. From the Wikipedia article:
In the late 1930s, Strauss called for the first time for a reconsideration of the “distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching.” In 1952 he published Persecution and the Art of Writing, arguing that serious writers write esoterically, that is, with multiple or layered meanings, often disguised within irony or paradox, obscure references, even deliberate self-contradiction. Esoteric writing serves several purposes: protecting the philosopher from the retribution of the regime, and protecting the regime from the corrosion of philosophy; it attracts the right kind of reader and repels the wrong kind; and ferreting out the interior message is in itself an exercise of philosophic reasoning.
Taking his bearings from his study of Maimonides and Al-Farabi, and pointing further back to Plato’s discussion of writing as contained in the Phaedrus, Strauss proposed that the classical and medieval art of esoteric writing is the proper medium for philosophic learning: rather than displaying philosophers’ thoughts superficially, classical and medieval philosophical texts guide their readers in thinking and learning independently of imparted knowledge. Thus, Strauss agrees with the Socrates of the Phaedrus, where the Greek indicates that, insofar as writing does not respond when questioned, good writing provokes questions in the reader — questions that orient the reader towards an understanding of problems the author thought about with utmost seriousness.
Basically, the approach, in the face of persecution from the “regime,” is to inform discerning readers of what you really mean without being direct and getting yourself suppressed. The “right kind of reader” will take the hint and absorb the “esoteric” meaning.
From scientists and science writers, it’s far from the first time we’ve seen possible evidence of this kind of thing. Our colleague David Coppedge, for one, has documented many instances that, at least for me, raise the question. Self-contradiction is a staple in more than a little scientific literature that deals with issues of life’s origin, molecular machines, irreducible complexity, and the like. Please note: I’m not saying Philip Ball, or Denis Noble or anyone else in particular, has an esoteric agenda. But the trend in some scientific writing is too noticeable to ignore, and too persistent to deny. And of course, there is a scientific “regime” in the academy and in journalism that doesn’t hesitate to persecute.
Maybe, in the context of intelligent design as it is handled in some mainstream science literature, Strauss was onto something. The foundations of Darwin’s house may be shakier than many realize.
On early Coptic translations re:John1:1
Translating John 1:1: The Coptic Evidence
(Solomon Landers, September 2006)
The Coptic translation of John 1:1
1a. Š„‹‘…Š‚‹‹ŒŠ …Œ}†
1b. }‘Œ}†Š‚‹‹ŒŠŠ}„Ž‰ŒŠ‹‘
1c. }‘Š‘Š‹‘ŒŒ}†
It is becoming well-known that the primary Coptic translations of John 1:1c – the
Sahidic, the proto-Bohairic, and the Bohairic – do not render it “the Word was
God,” as is common in many English versions, but “the Word was a god,” found
notably in the New World Translation.
The significance of this is remarkable. First, the Coptic versions precede the New
World Translation by some 1,700 years, and are part of the corpus of ancient textual
witnesses to the Gospel of John. Second, the Coptic versions were produced at a
time when the Koine Greek of the Christian Greek Scriptures was still a living
language whose finer nuances could be understood by the Coptic translators, so
much so that many Greek words are left untranslated in the Coptic texts. Third,
the Coptic versions do not show the influence of later interpretations of Christology
fostered by the church councils of the 4
th
and 5
th
centuries CE.
The Greek text of John 1:1c says, E
construction that can be literally rendered as, “and a god was the Word.”
Likewise, the Sahidic Coptic text of John 1:1c reads, }‘Š‘Š‹‘Œ
Œ}†, an indefinite construction that literally says “and a god was the Word.”
Coptic grammarians agree that this is what the Coptic says literally. But the
theological presuppositions of certain grammarians do not allow them to be
satisfied with that reading. Just as they attempt to do with the Greek text of John
1:1c, certain Evangelical scholars seek to modify the clear impact of “a god was the
Word.”
But whereas the Greek text allows for some ambiguity in an anarthrous
construction, the Coptic text does not allow for the same ambiguity in an indefinite
construction. Unlike Koine Greek, Coptic has not only the definite article, but the
indefinite article also. Or, a Coptic noun may stand without the article, in the “zero
article” construction. Thus, in Coptic we may find : ŒŠ‹‘ , “the god,”
‹‘Š‹‘, “a god,” or Š‹‘, “god.”
The Sahidic Coptic indefinite article is used to mark “a non-specific individual or
specimen of a class: a morpheme marking an element as a non-specific or individual
or specimen of a class (“a man,” “other gods,” etc.).” – Coptic Grammatical
Chrestomathy (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 1988), A. Shisha-Halevy, p. 268
Given these clear choices, it cannot but be highly relevant to their understanding of
the meaning of John 1:1c that the Coptic translators of the Greek text chose to
employ the Coptic indefinite article in their translation of it.
Were the Coptic translators looking at John 1:1c qualitatively, as has been
suggested by some scholars in their analysis of the Greek text? That is not likely,
since the Coptic text does not use the abstract prefixes before the count noun for
god, Š‹‘. They were specifically calling the Word “a god,” and only in the
sense that a god is also “divine” can a translation in the order of “the Word was
divine” be glossed from the Coptic text. Whereas “the Word was divine” can be a
legitimate English paraphrase of the Coptic text, it is not the literal reading.
The Coptic evidence is significant given the fact that Bible scholars have roundly
chastised the New World Translation for its supposedly “innovative” rendering, “the
Word was a god” at John 1:1c. But this very way of understanding the Greek text
of John 1:1c now proves to be, not new, but ancient, the same translation of it as
given at a time when people still spoke the Greek that John used in composing his
Gospel.
But what about John 1:18, where the Coptic text has the definite article before
Š‹‘ with reference to the only[-begotten] Son: ŒŠ‹‘Œy•ŽŠ‹‘?
Certain Evangelical scholars have asked, ‘Is it reasonable that the Coptic
translators understood the Word to be “a god” at John 1:1 and then refer to him as
“the god,” or “God,” at John 1:18?’
That is a logical question, but the logic is backwards. Since John 1:1 is the
introduction of the Gospel, the more logical question is ‘Is it reasonable that the
Coptic translators understood the Word to be God at John 1:18 after referring to
him as “a god” at John 1:1c?’
No. Although the Coptic translators use the definite article at John 1:18 in
identifying the Word, this use is demonstrative and anaphoric, referring back to the
individual , “the one who” is previously identified as “a god” in the introduction.
Thus, John 1:18 identifies the Word specifically not as“God,” but as “the god”
previously mentioned who was “with” (“in the presence of,” Coptic: ŠŠ} Ž‰)
God. This god, who has an intimate association with his Father, is contrasted with
his Father, the God no one has ever seen.
A modern translation of the Coptic of John 1:18 is “No one has ever seen God at all.
The god who is the only Son in the bosom of his Father is the one who has explained
him,´as found at
http://copticjohn.com
Being closer in time to the original writings of the apostle John, and crafted at a
time when Koine Greek was still spoken and well-understood, the Coptic evidence
weighs heavily in the direction of those who see in the Gospels a Jesus who is not
God, but the Son of God, a divine being who is “the image of the invisible God,” but
not that Invisible God himself. This one is the Representative of his Father, who
declared the Good News of salvation to mankind, and sanctified his Father’s Name.
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