File under "well said" XXIII

Look that nothing live in thy working mind, but a naked intent stretching into God. (Dionysius)

Stephen Meyer answers critiques of "signature in the cell"

Michael Denton on the Galapagos finches

Michael Denton on why Darwinism's crisis continues

Tertullian against Hermogenes Ch.18

If any material was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a far nobler and more suitable one in His own wisdom — one which was not to be gauged by the writings of philosophers, but to be learned from the words or prophets. This alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For who knows the things of God, and the things in God, but the Spirit, which is in Him? 1 Corinthians 2:11 Now His wisdom is that Spirit. This was His counsellor, the very way of His wisdom and knowledge. Isaiah 40:14 Of this He made all things, making them through It, and making them with It. When He prepared the heavens, so says (the Scripture ), I was present with Him; and when He strengthened above the winds the lofty clouds, and when He secured the fountains which are under the heaven, I was present, compacting these things along with Him. I was He in whom He took delight; moreover, I daily rejoiced in His presence: for He rejoiced when He had finished the world, and among the sons of men did He show forth His pleasure. Proverbs 8:27-31 Now, who would not rather approve of this as the fountain and origin of all things— of this as, in very deed, the Matter of all Matter, not liable to any end, not diverse in condition, not restless in motion, not ungraceful in form, but natural, and proper, and duly proportioned, and beautiful, such truly as even God might well have required, who requires His own and not another's? Indeed, as soon as He perceived It to be necessary for His creation of the world, He immediately creates It, and generates It in Himself. The Lord, says the Scripture, possessed me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works. Before the worlds He founded me; before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; moreover, before the hills He generated me, and prior to the depths was I begotten. Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the special reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning—I mean His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion for the arrangement of His creative works—how much more impossible is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord! But if this same Wisdom is the Word of God, in the capacity of Wisdom, and (as being He) without whom nothing was made, just as also (nothing) was set in order without Wisdom, how can it be that anything, except the Father, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? Not to say that what is unbegotten is stronger than that which is born, and what is not made more powerful than that which is made. Because that which did not require a Maker to give it existence, will be much more elevated in rank than that which had an author to bring it into being. On this principle, then, if evil is indeed unbegotten, while the Son of God is begotten (for, says God, my heart has emitted my most excellent Word ), I am not quite sure that evil may not be introduced by good, the stronger by the weak, in the same way as the unbegotten is by the begotten. Therefore on this ground Hermogenes puts Matter even before God, by putting it before the Son. Because the Son is the Word, and the Word is God, John 1:1 and I and my Father are one. John 10:30 But after all, perhaps, the Son will patiently enough submit to having that preferred before Him which (by Hermogenes), is made equal to the Father!

Tertullian's against Praxeas Ch.5

But since they will have the Two to be but One, so that the Father shall be deemed to be the same as the Son, it is only right that the whole question respecting the Son should be examined, as to whether He exists, and who He is and the mode of His existence. Thus shall the truth itself secure its own sanction from the Scriptures, and the interpretations which guard them. There are some who allege that even Genesis opens thus in Hebrew: In the beginning God made for Himself a Son. As there is no ground for this, I am led to other arguments derived from God's own dispensation, in which He existed before the creation of the world, up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone— being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. Yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought (or Consciousness) which the Greeks call λόγος, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason, which it thus proves to have been the prior existence as being its own substance. Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter through His Word. Now, while He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. And that you may the more readily understand this, consider first of all, from your own self, who are made in the image and likeness of God, Genesis 1:26 for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature, as being not only made by a rational Artificer, but actually animated out of His substance. Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever you conceive, there is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even then before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and, inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself.

On Jehovah's day:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

DAY OF JEHOVAH

The special period of time, not 24 hours, when Jehovah actively manifests himself against his enemies and in behalf of his people. With divine judgment executed against the wicked, Jehovah comes off victorious over his opposers during this “day.” It is also a time of salvation and deliverance for the righteous, the day in which Jehovah himself is highly exalted as the Supreme One. Thus, in a double way it is uniquely and exclusively Jehovah’s great day.

This day is detailed in the Scriptures as a time of battle, a great and fear-inspiring day of darkness and burning anger, a day of fury, distress, anguish, desolation, and alarm. “What, then, will the day of Jehovah mean to you people?” God asked wayward Israel by the mouth of his prophet Amos. This: “It will be darkness, and no light, just as when a man flees because of the lion, and the bear actually meets him; and as when he went into the house and supported his hand against the wall, and the serpent bit him.” (Am 5:18-20) Isaiah was told: “Look! The day of Jehovah itself is coming, cruel both with fury and with burning anger.” (Isa 13:9) “That day is a day of fury, a day of distress and of anguish, a day of storm and of desolation, a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick gloom.” (Zep 1:15) During such a time of trouble, one’s money is absolutely worthless. “Into the streets they will throw their very silver . . . Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah’s fury.”—Eze 7:19; Zep 1:18.

A sense of urgency is attached to the day of Jehovah by the prophets, who repeatedly warned of its nearness. “The great day of Jehovah is near. It is near, and there is a hurrying of it very much.” (Zep 1:14) “Alas for the day; because the day of Jehovah is near.” “Let all the inhabitants of the land get agitated; for the day of Jehovah is coming, for it is near!”—Joe 1:15; 2:1, 2.

Times of Destructive Judgment. From certain features of the prophecies, and in view of subsequent events, it appears that the expression, “the day of Jehovah,” at least in a miniature way, referred to different times of destructive judgment that occurred long ago at the hands of the Most High. For example, Isaiah envisioned what would befall unfaithful Judah and Jerusalem on “the day belonging to Jehovah of armies,” which was coming “upon everyone self-exalted and lofty” among them. (Isa 2:11-17) Ezekiel addressed himself to the unfaithful prophets of Israel, warning that they would in no way serve to fortify their cities “in order to stand in the battle in the day of Jehovah.” (Eze 13:5) By the mouth of his prophet Zephaniah, Jehovah foretold how he was about to stretch out his hand against Judah and Jerusalem, giving special attention so that not even the princes or the sons of the king would escape. (Zep 1:4-8) As the facts show, that “day of Jehovah” came upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E.

In that distressing time of trouble upon Judah and Jerusalem, her neighboring nations such as Edom showed their hatred for Jehovah and his people, causing the prophet Obadiah (vss 1, 15) to prophesy against them: “For the day of Jehovah against all the nations is near. In the way that you have done, it will be done to you.” Similarly, “the day of Jehovah” and all the fiery destruction embraced within that expression befell Babylon and Egypt just as foretold.—Isa 13:1, 6; Jer 46:1, 2, 10.

Later, through the prophet Malachi, another “great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah” was foretold, and it was said that it would be preceded by the coming of “Elijah the prophet.” (Mal 4:5, 6) The original Elijah had lived some 500 years before that prophecy was uttered, but in the first century C.E. Jesus indicated that John the Baptizer was the foretold counterpart of Elijah. (Mt 11:12-14; Mr 9:11-13) So at that time a “day of Jehovah” was near at hand. At Pentecost of 33 C.E., Peter explained that what was occurring was the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy (Joe 2:28-32) concerning the outpouring of God’s spirit and that this too was due to happen before “the great and illustrious day of Jehovah.” (Ac 2:16-21) That “day of Jehovah” came in 70 C.E., when, in fulfillment of his Word, Jehovah caused the armies of Rome to execute divine judgment upon the nation that had rejected the Son of God and defiantly shouted: “We have no king but Caesar.”—Joh 19:15; Da 9:24-27.

However, the Scriptures point forward to yet another “day of Jehovah.” After the restoration of the Jews to Jerusalem following the Babylonian exile, Jehovah caused his prophet Zechariah (14:1-3) to foretell “a day . . . belonging to Jehovah” when he would gather not merely one nation but “all the nations against Jerusalem,” at the climax of which day “Jehovah will certainly go forth and war against those nations,” bringing them to their end. The apostle Paul, under inspiration, associated the coming “day of Jehovah” with the presence of Christ. (2Th 2:1, 2) And Peter spoke of it in connection with the establishment of ‘new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness is to dwell.’—2Pe 3:10-13.


Security and safety during the great day of Jehovah should concern everyone. After asking, “Who can hold up under it?” Joel says, “Jehovah will be a refuge for his people.” (Joe 2:11; 3:16) The invitation is graciously extended to all, but few avail themselves of this provision of refuge by following Zephaniah’s counsel: “Before the statute gives birth to anything, before the day has passed by just like chaff, before there comes upon you people the burning anger of Jehovah, before there comes upon you the day of Jehovah’s anger, seek Jehovah, all you meek ones of the earth, who have practiced His own judicial decision. Seek righteousness, seek meekness. Probably you may be concealed in the day of Jehovah’s anger.”—Zep 2:2, 3.

A clash of Titans XIV

Another Failed Darwinian prediction XVII

Functionally unconstrained DNA is not conserved

As different species evolve, their DNA segments are preserved only if they contribute to the organism’s fitness. DNA segments that are not functionally constrained should mutate and diverge over time. The result is that similar yet functionally unconstrained DNA segments should not be found in distant species. The corollary to this prediction is that similar DNA sequences found in distant species must be functionally constrained.

This prediction has been falsified in the many examples of functionally-unconstrained, highly similar stretches of DNA that have been discovered in otherwise distant species. For instance, thousands of so-called ultra-conserved elements (UCEs), hundreds of base pairs in length, have been found across a range of species including human, mouse, rat, dog, chicken and fish. In fact, across the different species some of these sequences are 100% identical. Species that are supposed to have been evolving independently for 80 million years were certainly not expected to have identical DNA segments. “I about fell off my chair,” remarked one evolutionist. (Lurie) “It can’t be true” another commented. (Pennisi)

Evolutionists assumed such highly preserved sequences must have an important function. But laboratory studies failed to reveal any significant effects in mice. A variety of experiments were done to determine the function of these sequences that evolution was supposed to have preserved. But in many of the regions no function could be found. One study deleted several UCE regions, including a stretch of 731 DNA base pairs that was hypothesized to regulate a crucial gene. Evolutionists expected the removal to result in lethality or infertility but instead found normal, healthy mice. Months of observation and a battery of tests found no abnormalities or significant differences compared to normal mice. (Ahituv, et. al.) As one of the lead researchers explained:

For us, this was a really surprising result. We fully expected to demonstrate the vital role these ultraconserved elements play by showing what happens when they are missing. Instead, our knockout mice were not only viable and fertile but showed no critical abnormalities in growth, longevity, pathology, or metabolism. (Mice thrive missing ancient DNA sequences)

Another study knocked out two massive, highly conserved, DNA regions of 1.5 million and .8 million base pairs in laboratory mice and, again, the results were viable mice, indistinguishable from normal mice in every characteristic they measured, including growth, metabolic functions, longevity and overall development. (Nobrega, et. al.) “We were quite amazed,” explained the lead researcher. (Westphal)

References

Ahituv, N., Y. Zhu, A. Visel, A. Holt, V. Afzal, L. Pennacchio, E. Rubin. 2007. “Deletion of ultraconserved elements yields viable mice.” PLoS Biol 5:e234.

Lurie, Karen. 2004. “Junk DNA.” ScienCentral July 20.

“Mice thrive missing ancient DNA sequences.” 2007. ScienceDaily September 6. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070904151351.htm

Nobrega, M., Y. Zhu, I. Plajzer-Frick, V. Afzal, E. Rubin. 2004. “Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice.” Nature 431:988-993.

Pennisi, Elizabeth. 2004. “Disposable DNA puzzles researchers.” Science 304:1590-1591.

Westphal, S. 2004. “Life goes on without ‘vital’ DNA.” New Scientist June 3.

Right to die or license to kill?

Canada's Prescription for Getting Away with Murder
Wesley J. Smith 

The Canadian government has proposed its new euthanasia bill -- and as expected, it will be the most radical in the world.

Since the death doctor need not be present at the demise, the bill creates an unprecedented license for family members, friends -- heck, a guy down the street -- to make people dead. From the bill:

Exemption for person aiding patient

(5) No person commits an offence under paragraph (1) (b) if they do anything, at another person's explicit request, for the purpose of aiding that other person to self-administer a substance that has been prescribed for that other person as part of the provision of medical assistance in dying in accordance with section 241. 2.

Reasonable but mistaken belief

(6) For greater certainty, the exemption set out in any of subsections (2) to (5) applies even if the person invoking the exemption has a reasonable but mistaken belief about any fact that is an element of the exemption.

Once the lethal drugs are obtained, this means there are zero meaningful safeguards and protections for vulnerable people, since anyone can kill at the request of the patient. How will authorities know that actual consent was made to do the deed?

Coercion happens behind closed doors. Indeed, even if there was a "mistake," the killer is protected from culpability by claiming "good faith." In short, this provision is the perfect defense for the murder of sick and disabled people who requested lethal drugs.

The George Delury case is an example of what I mean: Delury said he assisted his wife Myrna Lebov's suicide out of "compassion" and at her request due to MS.

But his real hope was not only to be free from care giving, but to become famous by writing a book about her death. (He did, What If She Wants to Die?)

It almost worked. But because assisted suicide was a criminal offense, authorities conducted an investigation and discovered his diary. It showed that contrary to the compassionate face Delury was conjuring, in reality he emotionally pressured Myrna into wanting to commit suicide, telling her, for example, that she was a burden and ruining his life.

He also withheld full dosage of antidepressants so he could use those drugs to kill her. And, he but put a plastic bag over her head to make sure she died.

If euthanasia Canada's bill had been the law of New York when Delury killed Myrnov, he might have been able to coerce her into asking for lethal drugs. At that point, he could have killed her any time he wanted and there wouldn't have been a criminal investigation to find his diary.


Canada has just paved the way for a person hungry for an inheritance or ideologically predisposed to get away with the perfect murder.

On ID as zombie apocalypse.

Is the Market for Articles that Ask "Is Intelligent Design Dead?" Dead?

David Klinghoffer 

and theistic evolutionists keep pumping them out, as they've done for ten years now since the Dover decision. Yet all these numerous funeral processions later, here we still are. 

Here's a partial list of contributions:

• "Is Intelligent Design Dead?" (American Policy Roundtable 2006)
• "Is Intelligent Design Dead?" (Annals of Spacetime 2007)
• "Intelligent Design is Dead! Long Live Creationism?" (Vassar Alumnae/i Quarterly 2007)
• "Twenty years after Darwin on Trial, ID is dead" (Jason Rosenhouse 2011)
• "Jason Rosenhouse pronounces intelligent design dead" (Jerry Coyne 2011)
• "Intelligent Design Is Dead: A Christian Perspective" (Paul Wallace, Huffington Post 2012)
• "Paul Wallace Says, 'Intelligent Design Is Dead'" (Internet Monk, 2012)
• "Is 'intelligent design' dead since everybody realized it's just good old creationism?" (Yahoo Answers 2013)
• "Intelligent Design: Still Dead" (Jason Rosenhouse 2014)

Back in 2012, a person identified only as RJS wrote at the blog Jesus Creed, "Is Intelligent Design Dead?" Now RJS is back with more musings at the same venue, and asking the same question, "Is Intelligent Design Dead?" RJS begins:

A decade ago Intelligent Design with a capital I and a capital D was a hot topic. A major trial testing the teaching of the ID in Pennsylvania was decided in late 2005 and Stephen C. Meyer's massive book Signature in the Cell was published in 2009. It was a common topic in evangelical churches -- viewed as a way to combat the evil influence of evolution. Quite frankly, it was a topic I was ready to see disappear. The controversy was tainting most conversations about Christianity in my circles at the University.

"Tainting conversations"? Why? He doesn't say.

RJS quotes a religion professor at Pepperdine University, Ron Highfield, who's looked into ID a bit. He concludes on Highfield's authority that intelligent design isn't "a particularly useful scientific or theological approach."

Not "useful"? Toward what end? What about "true," "serious," "honest"? But fine, then what wouldbe "useful"? This, says RJS:

[T]he best empirical evidence for intelligence isn't found in the pattern of DNA but in the existence of intelligence in the universe. This is complexity at its highest. In fact, the sciences that look for intelligence ... forensic science, information theory, cryptography etc. ... rely on intelligence to detect intelligence. "Only a mind can detect information or the activity of another mind." (p. 163)

Intelligent design theory as an empirical science alone cannot get us to a designer. It cannot offer an alternative to biological evolution. There is no reason to set it up against modern science as science. On the other hand, as a philosophical argument -- reasoning from intelligence to intelligence -- it has something to offer.

RJS allows that as a Christian he believes "the world is intelligently designed for a purpose." What he rejects is recognizing objective, scientific evidence of that. If I follow the line of reasoning correctly, he would rather infer "intelligence" from "intelligence." Once again quoting the indispensable Ron Highfield:

Had [William] Dembski argued from the mind's perception of the pervasive presence of intelligible reality with in the universe, in itself and other human minds, in biological structures, in cosmological laws and in the micro world of subatomic structures to the existence of a cosmic mind, his argument would demand attention. It would be built on a primitive , undeniable and universal human experience. (p. 164)

What? I don't want to give RJS, or Ron Highfield, less credit than they deserve, but that makes no sense. Because we experience minds at the human level, therefore...intelligent design? That's an "undeniable" argument that would "demand attention"?

Guys, please. You may notice that everyone dramatically heralding the demise of the ID movement does so with his own idiosyncratic justifications, often leaning on the vaporous authority of someone else who said it first, and never taking note of the excellent decade that ID has in fact enjoyed since Dover.

With the religious critics in particular, it's hard to resist the suspicion that it's easier to say "ID Is Dead" than it is to grapple with the relevant science, which can admittedly be challenging. RJS seems to regard the sheer volume of Stephen Meyer's "massive" book as off-putting. (It's actually not that massive.) 

But this is not surprising. If you write for a blog called Jesus Creed, it's probably not because of your interest in biology.

And I sympathize. Not everyone can picture himself cracking open a "massive" science tome. But then at least when someone asks you "Is ID Dead?," or when it occurs to you to write an article with that title, have the humility to say, "I don't have the slightest idea."

On the Herods:TheWatchtower Society's commentary.

the Days of Herod the King”

IN AN attempt to kill the infant Jesus, Herod the Great, king of Judea, sent envoys to massacre all baby boys in Bethlehem. History records numerous events that took place “in the days of Herod the king,” events that throw light on the context of Jesus’ life and ministry.—Matthew 2:1-16.

What made Herod want to kill Jesus? And why was it that when Jesus was born, the Jews had a king, but when Jesus died, Pontius Pilate, a Roman, governed them? To get the full picture of Herod’s role in history and to understand why he is important to Bible readers, we need to look back several decades before Jesus’ birth.

Power Struggles in Judea

In the first half of the second century B.C.E., Judea was ruled by the Syrian Seleucids, one of the four dynasties that formed after the breakup of the empire of Alexander the Great. However, in about 168 B.C.E., when the Seleucid king attempted to replace worship of Jehovah with the cult of Zeus at their temple in Jerusalem, the Jews, led by the Maccabee family, revolted. The Maccabees, or Hasmoneans, ruled Judea from 142-63 B.C.E.

In 66 B.C.E., two Hasmonean princes, Hyrcanus II and his brother Aristobulus, fought for succession to the throne. Civil war ensued, and both sought the aid of Pompey, a Roman general who at the time was in Syria. Pompey jumped at the chance to interfere.

The Romans, in fact, were extending their influence eastward, and by this time, they controlled much of Asia Minor. A series of weak rulers in Syria, however, had allowed the area to sink into anarchy, menacing the peace that the Romans desired to maintain in the East. So Pompey had stepped in to annex Syria.

His solution to the Hasmonean quarrel was to back Hyrcanus, and in 63 B.C.E., the Romans stormed Jerusalem to install their nominee. Hyrcanus, however, was not going to be an independent ruler. The Romans now had a foot in the door and were not about to remove it. Hyrcanus became a Roman ethnarch, one who ruled by the grace of the Romans, dependent on their goodwill and support to retain his throne. He could administer internal affairs as he wished, but in foreign relations, he had to conform to Roman policy.

The Rise of Herod

Hyrcanus was a weak-willed ruler. He was supported, though, by Antipater, an Idumean and the father of Herod the Great. Antipater was the power behind the throne. He kept restless Jewish factions at bay and soon took effective control of Judea. He helped Julius Caesar fight his foes in Egypt, and the Romans rewarded Antipater by raising him to the position of procurator, answerable directly to them. Antipater, in turn, appointed his sons, Phasael and Herod, as governors of Jerusalem and of Galilee respectively.

Antipater taught his sons that nothing could be achieved without Rome’s consent. Herod remembered that lesson well. Throughout his career, he juggled the demands of his Roman patrons with those of his Jewish subjects. He was aided by his skills as an organizer and a general. On his appointment as governor, 25-year-old Herod promptly won himself the admiration of Jews and Romans alike by vigorously eliminating bands of bandits from his territory.

After rivals poisoned Antipater in 43 B.C.E., Herod became the most powerful man in Judea. Yet, he had enemies. The Jerusalem aristocracy considered him a usurper and sought to persuade Rome to remove him. The attempt failed. Rome was loyal to Antipater’s memory and valued his son’s abilities.

Made King of Judea

Pompey’s solution to the Hasmonean succession crisis some 20 years earlier had embittered many. The unsuccessful faction repeatedly attempted to retake power, and in 40 B.C.E., they succeeded with the help of Rome’s enemies, the Parthians. Exploiting the chaos created by civil war in Rome, they invaded Syria, deposed Hyrcanus, and installed an anti-Roman member of the Hasmonean family.

Herod fled to Rome, where he received a warm welcome. The Romans wanted the Parthians ousted from Judea and the territory returned to their control with an acceptable ruler. They needed a reliable ally and saw Herod as their man. The Roman Senate thus crowned Herod king of Judea. In an act symbolic of the many compromises that Herod would have to make to maintain his grip on power, he led a procession from the Senate to the temple of Jupiter, where he sacrificed to pagan gods.

Helped by Roman legions, Herod defeated his enemies in Judea and claimed his throne. His revenge upon those who had opposed him was brutal. He eliminated the Hasmoneans and the Jewish aristocracy who had supported them, as well as any others who chafed at having a friend of the Romans rule over them.

Herod Consolidates His Power

In 31 B.C.E. when Octavius emerged as the undisputed ruler of the Romans by defeating Mark Antony at Actium, Herod realized that his long-standing friendship with Mark Antony would be viewed with suspicion. So Herod hastened to assure Octavius of his loyalty. The new Roman ruler, in turn, confirmed Herod as king of Judea and enlarged his territories.

In the years that followed, Herod stabilized and enriched his kingdom, transforming Jerusalem into a center of Hellenistic culture. He embarked upon great construction projects—building palaces, the port city of Caesarea, and grand new edifices for Jerusalem’s temple. All the while, the focus of his policy and the source of his strength were friendship with Rome.

Herod’s control over Judea was total; his authority, absolute. Herod also manipulated the high priesthood, appointing to this office whomever he wished.

Murderous Jealousies

Herod’s private life was turbulent. Many of his ten wives wanted one of their sons to succeed his father. Palace intrigues aroused Herod’s suspicions and his cruelty. In a fit of jealousy, he had his favorite wife, Mariamne, executed, and he later had two of her sons strangled for alleged plots against him. Matthew’s account of the Bethlehem massacre thus harmonizes with what is known of Herod’s temperament and his resolve to eliminate possible rivals.

Some say that, aware of his own unpopularity, Herod was determined that his death should be met with national mourning rather than rejoicing. In a scheme to achieve that goal, he arrested Judea’s leading citizens and ordered that they all be executed when his own death was announced. The order was never carried out.

The Legacy of Herod the Great

On Herod’s death, Rome decreed that Archelaus succeed his father as ruler of Judea and that two other sons become independent princes, or tetrarchs—Antipas over Galilee and Perea, Philip over Iturea and Trachonitis. Archelaus proved unpopular with his subjects and masters. After a decade of his ineffectual dominion, the Romans removed him and appointed their own governor, the predecessor of Pontius Pilate. In the meantime, Antipas—whom Luke simply calls Herod—and Philip continued to govern their own tetrarchies. This was the political situation at the start of Jesus’ ministry.—Luke 3:1.

Herod the Great was an astute politician and a ruthless murderer, probably his worst act being his attempt to kill the infant Jesus. Examining Herod’s historical role is useful for Bible readers—it helps illuminate key events of the period, explains how the Romans became rulers of the Jews, and sets the stage for Jesus’ earthly life and ministry.

On why linking Darwin to Hitler matters to Darwinists.

Why My Critics Care So Much About the Darwin-Hitler Connection

Richard Weikart

published my earlier historical works, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004) and Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress. Hardly anyone, however, bothered to engage the arguments, except for Robert Richards at the University of Chicago, whose critique of my position is riddled with errors, not only of interpretation, but also of basic facts.

As I demonstrate in my newly released book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, there is a fundamental tension between many Darwinists' claim that morality is an evolved trait -- thus having no objective reality -- and their moral indignation toward Hitler (and toward me for explaining how Darwinism informed Hitler's ideology).

To be sure, I have encountered some true believers in Darwinism who have told me that their Darwinian-inspired moral relativism leads them to the conclusion that Hitler was neither right nor wrong. I once held a conversation with a philosophy graduate student who defended moral relativism on Darwinian grounds. After I pressed him to see if he was willing to be relativistic about Hitler's atrocities, he uttered the stunning words, "Hitler was OK."

Maybe you think this student was just off his rocker. However, the leading evolutionary biologist and world famous atheist Richard Dawkins took a similar position in an interview, where he was being questioned about his moral relativism. Dawkins asked, "What's to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn't right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question." If this is a tough moral question for Dawkins, he should stop pontificating about how religions are "the root of all evil," especially since he doesn't believe that evil actually exists!

Most Darwinists, however, including those who believe in the evolution of morality, do not have consciences as dead as Dawkins, so they are genuinely outraged by the historical connections between Darwin and Hitler. They consider Hitler truly evil, and they don't want their positive image of Darwin tarnished by any association with this evil man.

However, why do they care about this at all? If they believe, as many do, that morality is simply "an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes," as evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson and philosopher Michael Ruse famously put it, then what makes the illusions of some people superior to Hitler's illusions? Why do everything possible -- even denying obvious historical facts -- to obscure the historical linkages between Darwin and Hitler? I have a hunch that at some level they recognize that their evolutionary account of morality is inconsistent with reality.

In The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, I expose many of the inconsistencies within secular philosophies, such as Darwinism, materialism, positivism, and many others.

Dr. Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

On the alt-right and the monkey on Darwinism's back

Evolution and the Alt-Right

David Klinghoffer 

you know that a mostly online splinter called the "alternative right" or "alt-right" is currently a subject of bitter and voluminous indignation. At The Federalist today, Cathy Young has an interesting analysis ("You Can't Whitewash the Alt-Right's Bigotry"), taking issue with two other journalists at Breitbart who tried to explain the phenomenon in a sympathetic, even admiring manner.

There is great worry about the conservative brand image, and the alt-right figures prominently in that. Cathy Young's piece, you'll notice, has some intriguing references to evolution, "human biodiversity," "race-related genetic cognitive and behavioral differences," and related subjects. On that, she and other mainstream conservatives could have said much more. Though this has escaped focused attention, the alternative right draws heavily on themes of evolution-based racism. And that is significant.

Miss Young notes "retired California State University-Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, who has some peculiar theories about Jews: namely, that Judaism is an 'evolutionary strategy' by which Jews seek dominance...It's 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' dressed up as evolutionary psychology."

Another writer cited by Young raises eugenic, or rather dysgenic, concerns:

"The Pro-Life Temptation" by Aylmer Fisher -- presumably a pseudonym stolen from the innocent British geneticist -- which cautions the alt-right against adopting an anti-abortion stance in knee-jerk opposition to liberals. The pro-life position is 'dysgenic,' since it encourages breeding by 'the least intelligent and responsible' women.

If you think you know where this is going, you're right. Fisher argues that, firstly, the pro-life position is "dysgenic," since it encourages breeding by "the least intelligent and responsible" women who are most likely to have abortions and who are "disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and poor."

Taken from the Radix Journal (more on it in a moment), that's ugly stuff and Miss Young does a service in pointing it out. In her article, our old nemesis John Derbyshire, scrubbed from National Review, makes an appearance, along with the alt-right "movement's online hubs such as Richard Spencer's AlternativeRight.com and Steve Sailer's VDARE." (Actually VDARE is edited by Peter Brimelow, not Steve Sailer, who has his own blog at another alt-right hotspot, The Unz Review. Once upon a time, I enjoyed editing them both as writers for National Review.)

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. We've reported here in the past on the evolutionary preoccupations of Derbyshire and another "race-realist" outlet, Jared Taylor's American Renaissance. But not till reading Cathy Young's post did I recognize that the mother lode of pseudo-conservative, pseudo-scientific racism is Richard Spencer's AlternativeRight.com, which as she points out has been rebranded as Radix Journal, "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States, and around the world."

Here, the vein of evolutionary thinking is particularly rich. We read, "Darwinian Evolution Revolutionized the Natural Sciences. The Social Sciences Have Been Immune for Too Long." In "What Is Identitarian Religion?," writer "Alfred W. Clark" tells of a "long-standing 'Trad Catholic' I know [who] told me recently that he had left the Church. [H]is 'conservative' priest had become obsessed with [among other things]...denouncing evolution because it's 'racist'." More:

And what of identitarian atheists and agnostics? Can they co-exist with identitarian religion? Since identitarian religion is not at odds with nature, and thus not at odds with evolutionary science, it does not threaten secular knowledge but offers itself as an additional societal glue.

Another writer wonders why few women seem enthusiastic about "race-realism":

The evolutionary basis for this doesn't seem too hard to figure out. As a prehistoric man, you have to decide the best way to find food and kill the members of the other tribe....

There is sympathy for eugenics, and much fretting about the "dysgenic menace." A writer notes an "antisocial Darwinism" where "Society favors the broken at the expense of the fixed. The result isn't so much that the fixed are crushed, but that the broken proliferate and become permanent dependents of the state." 

Richard Spencer shares his "Foreword to a new annotated edition of [racial eugenicist] Madison Grant's Conquest of a Continent [1933]," explaining that "Darwinism offers a compelling and rational justification for Whites to act on behalf of their ancestors and progeny and feel a shared since of destiny with their extended kin group."

Again, Alfred W. Clark asks, "What Is the #Altright?" He explains: 

Michael Brendan Dougherty recently called the alt-right "race obsessed". A better phrase might be: race realists. Most alt-righters actually take Darwinism seriously. (If you are at a loss of what "taking Darwinism seriously" means, you might want to read this book.) Young alt-righters are comfortable with modern science which shows that human biodiversity is a facet of life. The fact that so many today in Conservatism Inc. want either to ignore or deny human biodiversity, shows how untethered from reality modern conservatism has become. 

And much more along these lines. 

The Right has periodically sought to purge itself of tendencies like this, and it's engaged in such a purge right now. I prefer understanding to demonizing. Darwinian "conservatives" operate with a particular picture in mind of what a human being is -- a very different picture from the one posited by the Judeo-Christian tradition on which conservatism has drawn in the past. It's either man the animal or man in the image of an intelligent designer. Those are the choices.

From such a stark dichotomy, everything else is downstream. Recognizing as much would be a first step to restoring the health of a fractured and troubled movement.

Biology as tech/Biology as art III

Denton's Challenge: Are Leaf Shapes Adaptive?

Evolution News & Views

In his new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton provides a cavalcade of examples of non-adaptive forms in nature. On page 77, he points to angiosperm leaves as a case visible to everyone.

It is not only the unicellular world that abounds with what appear to be abstract formal patterns. Even on the most cursory and passing observation of some of the most familiar natural forms, such as the forms of leaves and the variety of phyllotactic arrangements that might be observed in any suburban garden, it is hard to resist concluding that a vast amount of botanical order serves no specific adaptive end. [Emphasis added.]

Our film Biology of the Baroque explores this further starting at 4:20, showcasing the wide variety of leaf shapes in a forest. Each plant has its own shape in the same environment, yet they live side by side. "But for Darwinian evolution to explain the shape of these leaves," the narrator states:

...there ought to be some reason why that specific shape caused one organism to live and another to die in a given environment. Yet there appears to be no functional reason why there are so many different leaf shapes. Much like Baroque architecture, these shapes seem extra, perhaps even decorative. They're not needed to survive. They are simply beautiful.

Enter Current Biology to the rescue of Darwinian functionalism. In "Evolutionary and Environmental Forces Sculpting Leaf Development," evolutionary botanists Daniel H. Chitwood and Neelima R. Sinha try to give adaptive reasons for leaf shape.

Leaf shape is spectacularly diverse. As a major component of plant architecture and an interface for light capture, gas exchange, and thermoregulation, the potential contributions of leaves to plant fitness are innumerable. Particularly because of their intimate association and interaction with the surrounding environment, both the plasticity of leaf shape during the lifetime of a plant and the evolution of leaf shape over geologic time are revealing with respect to leaf function. Leaf shapes arise within a developmental context that constrains both their evolution and environmental plasticity. Quantitative models capturing genetic diversity, developmental context, and environmental plasticity will be required to fully understand the evolution and development of leaf shape and its response to environmental pressures. In this review, we discuss recent literature demonstrating that distinct molecular pathways are modulated by specific environmental inputs, the output of which regulates leaf dissection. We propose a synthesis explaining both historical patterns in the paleorecord and conserved plastic responses in extant plants. Understanding the potential adaptive value of leaf shape, and how to molecularly manipulate it, will prove to be invaluable in designing crops optimized for future climates.

And so the debate is engaged. They want to explain the spectacular diversity of leaf shapes in an adaptive context. To accomplish this, though, they would have to relate unguided genetic mutations to selection at the molecular level. They admit up front that "The molecular mechanisms underlying such morphological diversity are even more poorly understood." 

Yet, patterns of correlation among leaf shapes across extant species, temperature and precipitation, and between fossil leaves and the paleoclimate, provide tantalizing glimpses into hypotheses unifying the development, evolution, and environmental plasticity of leaf shape with the possible functions it might confer.

They make the following suggestions for possible adaptive reasons for leaf shapes:

1. Plasticity: Shapes are not fixed in a particular species; leaves respond during development to environmental cues as they grow. "The leaves displayed by a plant at successive nodes reflect the developmental and environmental context of each leaf from initiation onwards."
2. Time: Leaf shape across geologic time is sensitive to the environment. "Relationships between leaf dissection and paleoclimates provide the most sweeping evidence of the responsiveness of leaf dissection to temperature and precipitation," they claim. As evidence, they point to studies that show "leaf serration can be used as a reliable index of the paleoclimate."
3. Climate: Leaf shape is plastic within one plant's lifetime and across geologic time, they say. "That plasticity within the lifetime of a single plant, extant species distributions, and correlations with the paleoclimate follow each other suggests an intimate relationship between leaf morphology and climate." 
4. Transpiration: "Paleoclimate correlations are focused on marginal serrations, which have been hypothesized as a constraint arising in thinner leaves more reliant on major veins, an adaptive feature allowing early season growth in deciduous forests, sites of increased transpiration, or that arise from hydathodes to maintain optimal leaf turgor." This is not true of all plants, however. "Similar plasticity in annuals observed in cold temperatures involves more than just serrations and cannot be explained by features exclusive to woody eudicots alone."
5. Sunlight availability: "Leaf dissection may simply reduce leaf area and affect canopy light interception...."
6. Economy: "....while also minimizing the distance between photosynthetic tissue and veins."
7. Heat transfer: "The potentially reduced leaf area in dissected leaves also facilitates heat transfer, reducing the boundary layer effect, but leaf shape likely also affects boundary layers independent of size."
8. Embryonic packing: "Leaf dissection may even reflect developmental constraintsrelated to packing in buds."
9. Compound leaves: "The possible functions of compound leaves have centered on the associated costs of producing a branch with many leaves vs. a complex leaf with many leaflets, and the premium put on vertical growth and 'branch shedding'."

All these hypotheses amount to little more than suggestions and just-so stories. They admit that none of them constitute a general law.

While hypotheses about the function of leaf shape are fascinating, they are numerous and cannot be generalized. Focusing on changes in shape common to evolutionary transitions into new environments, plastic responses in model organisms and patterns observed in the paleorecord may help narrow the field of relevant hypotheses to arrive at a more robust understanding of leaf morphology.

We ain't there yet, in other words. They leave the problem of leaf shape virtually unexplained, despite the fact that "Integrating natural variation in leaf shape with molecular pathways has always been a central goal of evolutionary developmental biology."

How much time to the Darwinians get? They've been thinking about this problem for 157 years at least. Must a functionalist story be served up, no matter how fraught with anomalies? Think again about the diversity in a forest, all these leaf shapes coexisting in the same environment. Where is a general law that would make them all trend toward the same shape? There is none. The diversity is still spectacular.

Denton's book is filled with other examples. "It's OK if it's just a maple leaf," he says in the video:

You can perhaps pass over the maple leaf, but if non-adaptive order, like the maple leaf, permeates the biological world, and if a lot of the taxa-defining novelties seem to be non-adaptive, you now have a nightmarish scenario when the fundamental assumption of Darwinism is that all these novelties in nature are adaptive suddenly looks very insecure.

Intelligence is a cause that can make things beautiful and diverse. After 157 years, its explanatory robustness is doing a much better job than fruitless attempts to seek "tantalizing glimpses into hypotheses" in a search for "possible functions" in the adaptationist program.