Sunday, 29 May 2016
Peer review demythified.
1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility
Monya Baker
More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature's survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research.
The data reveal sometimes-contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility. Although 52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant 'crisis' of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.
Data on how much of the scientific literature is reproducible are rare and generally bleak. The best-known analyses, from psychology1 and cancer biology2, found rates of around 40% and 10%, respectively. Our survey respondents were more optimistic: 73% said that they think that at least half of the papers in their field can be trusted, with physicists and chemists generally showing the most confidence.
The results capture a confusing snapshot of attitudes around these issues, says Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “At the current time there is no consensus on what reproducibility is or should be.” But just recognizing that is a step forward, he says. “The next step may be identifying what is the problem and to get a consensus.”Failing to reproduce results is a rite of passage, says Marcus Munafo, a biological psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who has a long-standing interest in scientific reproducibility. When he was a student, he says, “I tried to replicate what looked simple from the literature, and wasn't able to. Then I had a crisis of confidence, and then I learned that my experience wasn't uncommon.”
The challenge is not to eliminate problems with reproducibility in published work. Being at the cutting edge of science means that sometimes results will not be robust, says Munafo. “We want to be discovering new things but not generating too many false leads.”
The scale of reproducibility
But sorting discoveries from false leads can be discomfiting. Although the vast majority of researchers in our survey had failed to reproduce an experiment, less than 20% of respondents said that they had ever been contacted by another researcher unable to reproduce their work. Our results are strikingly similar to another online survey of nearly 900 members of the American Society for Cell Biology (see go.nature.com/kbzs2b). That may be because such conversations are difficult. If experimenters reach out to the original researchers for help, they risk appearing incompetent or accusatory, or revealing too much about their own projects.A minority of respondents reported ever having tried to publish a replication study. When work does not reproduce, researchers often assume there is a perfectly valid (and probably boring) reason. What's more, incentives to publish positive replications are low and journals can be reluctant to publish negative findings. In fact, several respondents who had published a failed replication said that editors and reviewers demanded that they play down comparisons with the original study.
Nevertheless, 24% said that they had been able to publish a successful replication and 13% had published a failed replication. Acceptance was more common than persistent rejection: only 12% reported being unable to publish successful attempts to reproduce others' work; 10% reported being unable to publish unsuccessful attempts.Survey respondent Abraham Al-Ahmad at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo expected a “cold and dry rejection” when he submitted a manuscript explaining why a stem-cell technique had stopped working in his hands. He was pleasantly surprised when the paper was accepted3. The reason, he thinks, is because it offered a workaround for the problem.Others place the ability to publish replication attempts down to a combination of luck, persistence and editors' inclinations. Survey respondent Michael Adams, a drug-development consultant, says that work showing severe flaws in an animal model of diabetes has been rejected six times, in part because it does not reveal a new drug target. By contrast, he says, work refuting the efficacy of a compound to treat Chagas disease was quickly accepted4.The corrective measures
One-third of respondents said that their labs had taken concrete steps to improve reproducibility within the past five years. Rates ranged from a high of 41% in medicine to a low of 24% in physics and engineering. Free-text responses suggested that redoing the work or asking someone else within a lab to repeat the work is the most common practice. Also common are efforts to beef up the documentation and standardization of experimental methods.
Any of these can be a major undertaking. A biochemistry graduate student in the United Kingdom, who asked not to be named, says that efforts to reproduce work for her lab's projects doubles the time and materials used — in addition to the time taken to troubleshoot when some things invariably don't work. Although replication does boost confidence in results, she says, the costs mean that she performs checks only for innovative projects or unexpected results.
Consolidating methods is a project unto itself, says Laura Shankman, a postdoc studying smooth muscle cells at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. After several postdocs and graduate students left her lab within a short time, remaining members had trouble getting consistent results in their experiments. The lab decided to take some time off from new questions to repeat published work, and this revealed that lab protocols had gradually diverged. She thinks that the lab saved money overall by getting synchronized
instead of troubleshooting failed experiments piecemeal, but that it was a long-term investment.
Irakli Loladze, a mathematical biologist at Bryan College of Health Sciences in Lincoln, Nebraska, estimates that efforts to ensure reproducibility can increase the time spent on a project by 30%, even for his theoretical work. He checks that all steps from raw data to the final figure can be retraced. But those tasks quickly become just part of the job. “Reproducibility is like brushing your teeth,” he says. “It is good for you, but it takes time and effort. Once you learn it, it becomes a habit.”
One of the best-publicized approaches to boosting reproducibility is pre-registration, where scientists submit hypotheses and plans for data analysis to a third party before performing experiments, to prevent cherry-picking statistically significant results later. Fewer than a dozen people mentioned this strategy. One who did was Hanne Watkins, a graduate student studying moral decision-making at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Going back to her original questions after collecting data, she says, kept her from going down a rabbit hole. And the process, although time consuming, was no more arduous than getting ethical approval or formatting survey questions. “If it's built in right from the start,” she says, “it's just part of the routine of doing a study.”
The cause
The survey asked scientists what led to problems in reproducibility. More than 60% of respondents said that each of two factors — pressure to publish and selective reporting — always or often contributed. More than half pointed to insufficient replication in the lab, poor oversight or low statistical power. A smaller proportion pointed to obstacles such as variability in reagents or the use of specialized techniques that are difficult to repeat.
But all these factors are exacerbated by common forces, says Judith Kimble, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: competition for grants and positions, and a growing burden of bureaucracy that takes away from time spent doing and designing research. “Everyone is stretched thinner these days,” she says. And the cost extends beyond any particular research project. If graduate students train in labs where senior members have little time for their juniors, they may go on to establish their own labs without having a model of how training and mentoring should work. “They will go off and make it worse,” Kimble says.What can be done?
Respondents were asked to rate 11 different approaches to improving reproducibility in science, and all got ringing endorsements. Nearly 90% — more than 1,000 people — ticked “More robust experimental design” “better statistics” and “better mentorship”. Those ranked higher than the option of providing incentives (such as funding or credit towards tenure) for reproducibility-enhancing practices. But even the lowest-ranked item — journal checklists — won a whopping 69% endorsement.The survey — which was e-mailed to Nature readers and advertised on affiliated websites and social-media outlets as being 'about reproducibility' — probably selected for respondents who are more receptive to and aware of concerns about reproducibility. Nevertheless, the results suggest that journals, funders and research institutions that advance policies to address the issue would probably find cooperation, says John Ioannidis, who studies scientific robustness at Stanford University in California. “People would probably welcome such initiatives.” About 80% of respondents thought that funders and publishers should do more to improve reproducibility.
“It's healthy that people are aware of the issues and open to a range of straightforward ways to improve them,” says Munafo. And given that these ideas are being widely discussed, even in mainstream media, tackling the initiative now may be crucial. “If we don't act on this, then the moment will pass, and people will get tired of being told that they need to do something.”
Monya Baker
More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature's survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research.
The data reveal sometimes-contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility. Although 52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant 'crisis' of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.
Data on how much of the scientific literature is reproducible are rare and generally bleak. The best-known analyses, from psychology1 and cancer biology2, found rates of around 40% and 10%, respectively. Our survey respondents were more optimistic: 73% said that they think that at least half of the papers in their field can be trusted, with physicists and chemists generally showing the most confidence.
The results capture a confusing snapshot of attitudes around these issues, says Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “At the current time there is no consensus on what reproducibility is or should be.” But just recognizing that is a step forward, he says. “The next step may be identifying what is the problem and to get a consensus.”Failing to reproduce results is a rite of passage, says Marcus Munafo, a biological psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who has a long-standing interest in scientific reproducibility. When he was a student, he says, “I tried to replicate what looked simple from the literature, and wasn't able to. Then I had a crisis of confidence, and then I learned that my experience wasn't uncommon.”
The challenge is not to eliminate problems with reproducibility in published work. Being at the cutting edge of science means that sometimes results will not be robust, says Munafo. “We want to be discovering new things but not generating too many false leads.”
The scale of reproducibility
But sorting discoveries from false leads can be discomfiting. Although the vast majority of researchers in our survey had failed to reproduce an experiment, less than 20% of respondents said that they had ever been contacted by another researcher unable to reproduce their work. Our results are strikingly similar to another online survey of nearly 900 members of the American Society for Cell Biology (see go.nature.com/kbzs2b). That may be because such conversations are difficult. If experimenters reach out to the original researchers for help, they risk appearing incompetent or accusatory, or revealing too much about their own projects.A minority of respondents reported ever having tried to publish a replication study. When work does not reproduce, researchers often assume there is a perfectly valid (and probably boring) reason. What's more, incentives to publish positive replications are low and journals can be reluctant to publish negative findings. In fact, several respondents who had published a failed replication said that editors and reviewers demanded that they play down comparisons with the original study.
Nevertheless, 24% said that they had been able to publish a successful replication and 13% had published a failed replication. Acceptance was more common than persistent rejection: only 12% reported being unable to publish successful attempts to reproduce others' work; 10% reported being unable to publish unsuccessful attempts.Survey respondent Abraham Al-Ahmad at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo expected a “cold and dry rejection” when he submitted a manuscript explaining why a stem-cell technique had stopped working in his hands. He was pleasantly surprised when the paper was accepted3. The reason, he thinks, is because it offered a workaround for the problem.Others place the ability to publish replication attempts down to a combination of luck, persistence and editors' inclinations. Survey respondent Michael Adams, a drug-development consultant, says that work showing severe flaws in an animal model of diabetes has been rejected six times, in part because it does not reveal a new drug target. By contrast, he says, work refuting the efficacy of a compound to treat Chagas disease was quickly accepted4.The corrective measures
One-third of respondents said that their labs had taken concrete steps to improve reproducibility within the past five years. Rates ranged from a high of 41% in medicine to a low of 24% in physics and engineering. Free-text responses suggested that redoing the work or asking someone else within a lab to repeat the work is the most common practice. Also common are efforts to beef up the documentation and standardization of experimental methods.
Any of these can be a major undertaking. A biochemistry graduate student in the United Kingdom, who asked not to be named, says that efforts to reproduce work for her lab's projects doubles the time and materials used — in addition to the time taken to troubleshoot when some things invariably don't work. Although replication does boost confidence in results, she says, the costs mean that she performs checks only for innovative projects or unexpected results.
Consolidating methods is a project unto itself, says Laura Shankman, a postdoc studying smooth muscle cells at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. After several postdocs and graduate students left her lab within a short time, remaining members had trouble getting consistent results in their experiments. The lab decided to take some time off from new questions to repeat published work, and this revealed that lab protocols had gradually diverged. She thinks that the lab saved money overall by getting synchronized
instead of troubleshooting failed experiments piecemeal, but that it was a long-term investment.
Irakli Loladze, a mathematical biologist at Bryan College of Health Sciences in Lincoln, Nebraska, estimates that efforts to ensure reproducibility can increase the time spent on a project by 30%, even for his theoretical work. He checks that all steps from raw data to the final figure can be retraced. But those tasks quickly become just part of the job. “Reproducibility is like brushing your teeth,” he says. “It is good for you, but it takes time and effort. Once you learn it, it becomes a habit.”
One of the best-publicized approaches to boosting reproducibility is pre-registration, where scientists submit hypotheses and plans for data analysis to a third party before performing experiments, to prevent cherry-picking statistically significant results later. Fewer than a dozen people mentioned this strategy. One who did was Hanne Watkins, a graduate student studying moral decision-making at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Going back to her original questions after collecting data, she says, kept her from going down a rabbit hole. And the process, although time consuming, was no more arduous than getting ethical approval or formatting survey questions. “If it's built in right from the start,” she says, “it's just part of the routine of doing a study.”
The cause
The survey asked scientists what led to problems in reproducibility. More than 60% of respondents said that each of two factors — pressure to publish and selective reporting — always or often contributed. More than half pointed to insufficient replication in the lab, poor oversight or low statistical power. A smaller proportion pointed to obstacles such as variability in reagents or the use of specialized techniques that are difficult to repeat.
But all these factors are exacerbated by common forces, says Judith Kimble, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: competition for grants and positions, and a growing burden of bureaucracy that takes away from time spent doing and designing research. “Everyone is stretched thinner these days,” she says. And the cost extends beyond any particular research project. If graduate students train in labs where senior members have little time for their juniors, they may go on to establish their own labs without having a model of how training and mentoring should work. “They will go off and make it worse,” Kimble says.What can be done?
Respondents were asked to rate 11 different approaches to improving reproducibility in science, and all got ringing endorsements. Nearly 90% — more than 1,000 people — ticked “More robust experimental design” “better statistics” and “better mentorship”. Those ranked higher than the option of providing incentives (such as funding or credit towards tenure) for reproducibility-enhancing practices. But even the lowest-ranked item — journal checklists — won a whopping 69% endorsement.The survey — which was e-mailed to Nature readers and advertised on affiliated websites and social-media outlets as being 'about reproducibility' — probably selected for respondents who are more receptive to and aware of concerns about reproducibility. Nevertheless, the results suggest that journals, funders and research institutions that advance policies to address the issue would probably find cooperation, says John Ioannidis, who studies scientific robustness at Stanford University in California. “People would probably welcome such initiatives.” About 80% of respondents thought that funders and publishers should do more to improve reproducibility.
“It's healthy that people are aware of the issues and open to a range of straightforward ways to improve them,” says Munafo. And given that these ideas are being widely discussed, even in mainstream media, tackling the initiative now may be crucial. “If we don't act on this, then the moment will pass, and people will get tired of being told that they need to do something.”
When scientism trumps actual science.
On that South Dakota Academic Freedom Bill, Here's More Bad Journalism -- and Science Censorship -- from Patrick Anderson
I have already noted the grossly inaccurate reporting by Patrick Anderson with the Argus Leader in South Dakota, who falsely claimed that the academic freedom bill in that state would bring intelligent design into public schools. Now I've discovered another article by Mr. Anderson, "S.D. plan allows evolution critique in class," which is even more inaccurate.
It opens with the statement that "Creationism would be easier to teach in South Dakota classrooms if a bill in the state Senate becomes law, according to a California-based nonprofit." Of course that innocuous-sounding California-based outfit is the National Center for Science Education, whose mission is focused on censorship. They constantly relabel credible scientific viewpoints as "creationism" and other forms of "religion," in hopes of using the law to censor those ideas and keep them hidden from students in public schools. Anderson, as we'll see, is following their lead and becoming a science censor himself.
He quotes NCSE deputy director Glenn Branch. But does he quote the language of the bill itself, which clearly excludes religious advocacy from protection under its provisions? Take a wild guess. The answer is no.
To Anderson's credit, he did talk to us here at Discovery Institute as well, and wrote:
But the model bill and South Dakota's do not advance intelligent design or creationism, said Casey Luskin, research coordinator for the Institute.
"If a teacher were to teach creationism in a state that has an academic freedom bill, they would not be protected by that bill in any way, shape or form," Luskin said. "We actually do not support teaching or pushing intelligent design in public schools."
Debating evolution doesn't mean invoking religion, Luskin said. His group's model legislation offers protection to teachers who question the science of evolution, so they don't have to worry about losing their job, Luskin said.
If something is written into curriculum, such as climate change or evolution, an academic freedom bill allows teachers to, in the case of South Dakota, "understand, analyze, critique, or review" without being stopped by school officials.
"Schools should teach the evidence for and against evolution," Luskin said.
"If a teacher were to teach creationism in a state that has an academic freedom bill, they would not be protected by that bill in any way, shape or form," Luskin said. "We actually do not support teaching or pushing intelligent design in public schools."
Debating evolution doesn't mean invoking religion, Luskin said. His group's model legislation offers protection to teachers who question the science of evolution, so they don't have to worry about losing their job, Luskin said.
If something is written into curriculum, such as climate change or evolution, an academic freedom bill allows teachers to, in the case of South Dakota, "understand, analyze, critique, or review" without being stopped by school officials.
"Schools should teach the evidence for and against evolution," Luskin said.
But that last comment merely serves Anderson as a foil, as he immediately thereafter cites the president of the South Dakota Teachers Association, Julie Olson, who could hardly be more dogmatic:
Evolutionary principles are central to science, not just biology, and they're not up for debate, Olson said....
"I don't know what their arguments would be," Olson said. "What's the proof?"
"I don't know what their arguments would be," Olson said. "What's the proof?"
Olson is candid in stating her view that students should be prevented from debating and questioning Darwinian evolution. She claims ignorance about what the scientific challenges to Darwin's theory might be, and I wouldn't be surprised if she really is unaware of those challenges.
But the reporter, Patrick Anderson, is aware of them. I know that because I sent him the very answer to Olson's objection in an e-mail -- information that he apparently did not see fit to print in his article. Here's what I wrote (the numbers in parentheses refer to PDFs of papers from the mainstream technical literature that I also sent to Anderson):
Per our conversation I wanted to send you some mainstream scientific papers that discuss scientific challenges to core tenets of neo-Darwinian evolution, especially as they're taught in textbooks. Please note that many of these authors are neo-Darwinian evolutionists. But they all nonetheless recognize scientific weaknesses in neo-Darwinian theory that challenge common textbook claims about the evidence for evolution, including:
(1) Major conflicts in the tree of life (011; 274b). It's not religion to note that genome sequence data does not fit the treelike pattern seen in textbook diagrams.
(2) Problems with textbook discussions of vertebrate embryos (064; 300). It's not religion to note that vertebrate embryos start off development differently, contradicting textbook diagrams.
(3) Non-speciation and limited change in "Darwin's finches" (015, Speciation Undone). It's not religion to point out that Darwin's finches can still interbreed and only exhibit small-scale oscillating selection which does not show the evolution of fundamentally new types of organisms.
(4) The lack of importance of evolutionary theory for doing good biology research (020). It's not religion to point out that you don't need neo-Darwinian evolution to figure out how molecular machines like ATP synthase work.
(5) Challenges to the adequacy or primacy of natural selection and random mutation for causing evolution (023, 373). It's not religion to point out that living organisms contain features which would require multiple mutations to arise before giving any advantage, and that population genetics models shows that evolving these structures by mutation and selection would be infeasible given normal population sizes and timescales.
This is just a small smattering of what's out there in the peer-reviewed literature as far as challenges go to the evidence that's cited for the mainstream neo-Darwinian viewpoint.
(1) Major conflicts in the tree of life (011; 274b). It's not religion to note that genome sequence data does not fit the treelike pattern seen in textbook diagrams.
(2) Problems with textbook discussions of vertebrate embryos (064; 300). It's not religion to note that vertebrate embryos start off development differently, contradicting textbook diagrams.
(3) Non-speciation and limited change in "Darwin's finches" (015, Speciation Undone). It's not religion to point out that Darwin's finches can still interbreed and only exhibit small-scale oscillating selection which does not show the evolution of fundamentally new types of organisms.
(4) The lack of importance of evolutionary theory for doing good biology research (020). It's not religion to point out that you don't need neo-Darwinian evolution to figure out how molecular machines like ATP synthase work.
(5) Challenges to the adequacy or primacy of natural selection and random mutation for causing evolution (023, 373). It's not religion to point out that living organisms contain features which would require multiple mutations to arise before giving any advantage, and that population genetics models shows that evolving these structures by mutation and selection would be infeasible given normal population sizes and timescales.
This is just a small smattering of what's out there in the peer-reviewed literature as far as challenges go to the evidence that's cited for the mainstream neo-Darwinian viewpoint.
The papers I sent him provide strong documentation of the scientific criticisms, found in the mainstream scientific literature, of core neo-Darwinian claims, especially as they are taught in textbooks. Here are the full citations of the papers that the numbers refer to:
- 011: Trisha Gura, "Bones, Molecules or Both?," Nature, 406 (July 20, 2000): 230-233.
- 274b: Graham Lawton, "Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life," New Scientist, 2692 (January 21, 2009).
- 064: Michael K. Richardson, James Hanken, Mayoni L. Gooneratne, Claude Pieau, Albert Raynaud, Lynne Selwood, and Glenda M. Wright, "There is No Highly Conserved Embryonic Stage in the Vertebrates: Implications for Current Theories of Evolution and Development," Anatomy and Embryology, 196 (1997): 91-106
- 300: Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," Science, 277 (September 5, 1997): 1435.
- 015: Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant, "Unpredictable Evolution in a 30-Year Study of Darwin's Finches," Science, 296 (April 26, 2002): 707-711
- Speciation Undone: Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant, "Speciation undone," Nature, 507 (March 13, 2014): 178-179.
- 020: Philip S. Skell, "Why do we invoke Darwin?," The Scientist, 19 (August 29, 2005): 10.
- 023: Michael J. Behe and David W. Snoke, "Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Features That Require Multiple Amino Acid Residues," Protein Science, 13 (2004): 2651-2664.
- 373: Eugene V. Koonin, "The Origin at 150: is a new evolutionary synthesis in sight?," Trends in Genetics, 25 (2009): 473-475.
Neither enough monkeys nor keyboards
Essential Prediction of Darwinian Theory of Macroevolution Falsified by Information Degradation
Kirk Durston
I was struck, but not surprised, by a statement made a few days ago by Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics here in Waterloo, Ontario. Speaking of the apparent collapse of evidence for a critical component of the Big Bang theory, he responded, ‘even though hundreds or thousands of people are working on an idea, it may still be wrong.’
His statement is a harbinger of a much greater collapse looming on the scientific horizon, also involving thousands of scientists. There is mounting evidence that most, if not all the key predictions of the neo-Darwinian theory of macroevolution are being consistently falsified by advances in science, several of which I will discuss in later posts. Here, we look at a fundamental prediction Darwinism makes regarding the increase of genetic information.
Computer information is digitally encoded using just two symbols (‘1’ and ‘0’). We now know that the instructions for the full diversity of life, are digitally encoded in the DNA of all living things using a four-symbol alphabet. In more technical terms, this is referred to as functional information.
In the neo-Darwinian scenario for the origin and diversity of life, the digital functional information for life would have had to begin at zero, increase over time to eventually encode the first simple life form, and continue to increase via natural processes to encode the digital information for the full diversity of life.
An essential, falsifiable prediction of Darwinian theory, therefore, is that functional information must, on average, increase over time.
Interestingly enough, a prediction of intelligent design science is quite the opposite. Since information always degrades over time for any storage media and replication system, intelligent design science postulates that the digital information of life was initially downloaded into the genomes of life. It predicts that, on average, genetic information is steadily being corrupted by natural processes. The beauty of these two mutually incompatible predictions in science is that the falsification of one entails verification of the other. So, which prediction does science falsify, and which one does science verify?
Ask any computer programmer what effect ongoing random changes in the code would do for the integrity of a program, and they will universally agree that it degrades the software. This is precisely the first problem for neo-Darwinian theory. Mutations produce random changes in the digital information of life. It is generally agreed that the rate of deleterious mutations is much greater than the rate of beneficial mutations. My own work with 35 protein families suggests that the rate of destruction is, at minimum, 8 times the rate of neutral or beneficial mutations. Simply put, the digital information of life is being destroyed much faster than it can be repaired or improved. New functions may evolve, but the overall loss of functional information in other areas of the genome will, on average, be significantly greater. The net result is that the digital information of life is running down.
The second series of falsifying observations is indicated by actual organisms we have studied most closely. First, the digital information for the bacterial world is slowly eroding away due to a net deletional bias in mutations involving insertions and deletions. A second example is the fruit fly, one of the most studied life forms in evolutionary biology. It, too, is showing an ongoing, genome-wide loss of DNA across the entire genus. Finally, humans are not exempt. As pointed out in this PNAS paper, "a consideration of the long-term consequences of current human behaviour for deleterious-mutation accumulation leads to the conclusion that a substantial reduction in human fitness can be expected over the next few centuries in industrialized societies unless novel means of genetic intervention are developed".
We continue to discover more examples of DNA loss, suggesting that the biological world is slowly running down. Microevolution is good at fine-tuning existing forms within their information limits and occasionally getting something right, but the steady accumulation of deleterious mutations on the larger scale suggests that mutation-driven evolution is actually destroying biological life, not creating it.
In conclusion, the digital information of life appears to be steadily degrading rather than increasing, falsifying an essential prediction of neo-Darwinian theory, and verifying a prediction of intelligent design science. This is hardly a surprise, as every other area of science, except for evolutionary biology, grants that natural processes degrade information, regardless of the storage media and copying process. For neo-Darwinian macroevolution to work, it requires something that is in flat-out contradiction to the real world.
(Edited for clarity, 11:46 EDT, June 26, 2015)
Kirk Durston
I was struck, but not surprised, by a statement made a few days ago by Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics here in Waterloo, Ontario. Speaking of the apparent collapse of evidence for a critical component of the Big Bang theory, he responded, ‘even though hundreds or thousands of people are working on an idea, it may still be wrong.’
His statement is a harbinger of a much greater collapse looming on the scientific horizon, also involving thousands of scientists. There is mounting evidence that most, if not all the key predictions of the neo-Darwinian theory of macroevolution are being consistently falsified by advances in science, several of which I will discuss in later posts. Here, we look at a fundamental prediction Darwinism makes regarding the increase of genetic information.
Computer information is digitally encoded using just two symbols (‘1’ and ‘0’). We now know that the instructions for the full diversity of life, are digitally encoded in the DNA of all living things using a four-symbol alphabet. In more technical terms, this is referred to as functional information.
In the neo-Darwinian scenario for the origin and diversity of life, the digital functional information for life would have had to begin at zero, increase over time to eventually encode the first simple life form, and continue to increase via natural processes to encode the digital information for the full diversity of life.
An essential, falsifiable prediction of Darwinian theory, therefore, is that functional information must, on average, increase over time.
Interestingly enough, a prediction of intelligent design science is quite the opposite. Since information always degrades over time for any storage media and replication system, intelligent design science postulates that the digital information of life was initially downloaded into the genomes of life. It predicts that, on average, genetic information is steadily being corrupted by natural processes. The beauty of these two mutually incompatible predictions in science is that the falsification of one entails verification of the other. So, which prediction does science falsify, and which one does science verify?
Ask any computer programmer what effect ongoing random changes in the code would do for the integrity of a program, and they will universally agree that it degrades the software. This is precisely the first problem for neo-Darwinian theory. Mutations produce random changes in the digital information of life. It is generally agreed that the rate of deleterious mutations is much greater than the rate of beneficial mutations. My own work with 35 protein families suggests that the rate of destruction is, at minimum, 8 times the rate of neutral or beneficial mutations. Simply put, the digital information of life is being destroyed much faster than it can be repaired or improved. New functions may evolve, but the overall loss of functional information in other areas of the genome will, on average, be significantly greater. The net result is that the digital information of life is running down.
The second series of falsifying observations is indicated by actual organisms we have studied most closely. First, the digital information for the bacterial world is slowly eroding away due to a net deletional bias in mutations involving insertions and deletions. A second example is the fruit fly, one of the most studied life forms in evolutionary biology. It, too, is showing an ongoing, genome-wide loss of DNA across the entire genus. Finally, humans are not exempt. As pointed out in this PNAS paper, "a consideration of the long-term consequences of current human behaviour for deleterious-mutation accumulation leads to the conclusion that a substantial reduction in human fitness can be expected over the next few centuries in industrialized societies unless novel means of genetic intervention are developed".
We continue to discover more examples of DNA loss, suggesting that the biological world is slowly running down. Microevolution is good at fine-tuning existing forms within their information limits and occasionally getting something right, but the steady accumulation of deleterious mutations on the larger scale suggests that mutation-driven evolution is actually destroying biological life, not creating it.
In conclusion, the digital information of life appears to be steadily degrading rather than increasing, falsifying an essential prediction of neo-Darwinian theory, and verifying a prediction of intelligent design science. This is hardly a surprise, as every other area of science, except for evolutionary biology, grants that natural processes degrade information, regardless of the storage media and copying process. For neo-Darwinian macroevolution to work, it requires something that is in flat-out contradiction to the real world.
(Edited for clarity, 11:46 EDT, June 26, 2015)
On our ransom the Watchtower Society's commentary.
RANSOM:
A price paid to buy back or to bring about release from some obligation or undesirable circumstance. The basic idea of “ransom” is a price that covers (as in payment for damages or to satisfy justice), while “redemption” emphasizes the releasing accomplished as a result of the ransom paid. The most significant ransom price is the shed blood of Jesus Christ, which made deliverance from sin and death possible for the offspring of Adam.
In the various Hebrew and Greek terms translated “ransom” and “redeem,” the inherent similarity lies in the idea of a price, or thing of 9, given to effect the ransom, or redemption. The thought of exchange, as well as that of correspondency, equivalence, or substitution, is common in all. That is, one thing is given for another, satisfying the demands of justice and resulting in a balancing of matters.—See RECONCILIATION.
A Price That Covers. The Hebrew noun ko′pher comes from the verb ka·phar′,meaning, basically, “cover,” as in Noah’s covering the ark with tar. (Ge 6:14) Ka·phar′,however, is used almost entirely to describe the satisfying of justice through the covering of or atoning for sins. The noun ko′pher refers to the thing given to accomplish this, the ransom price. (Ps 65:3; 78:38; 79:8, 9) A covering corresponds to the thing it covers, either in its form (as in a material lid, such as the “cover [kap·po′reth]” of the ark of the covenant;Ex 25:17-22), or in its value (as in a payment to cover the damages caused by an injury).
As a means for balancing justice and setting matters straight with his people Israel, Jehovah, in the Law covenant, designated various sacrifices and offerings to atone for, or cover, sins, including those of the priests and the Levites (Ex 29:33-37; Le 16:6, 11), of other individuals, or of the nation as a whole (Le 1:4; 4:20, 26, 31, 35), as well as to purify the altar and tabernacle, making atonement because of the sins of the people surrounding these. (Le 16:16-20) In effect, the life of the animal sacrificed went in place of the life of the sinner, its blood making atonement on God’s altar, that is, to the extent that it could. (Le 17:11; compare Heb 9:13, 14; 10:1-4.) The “day of atonement [yohm hak·kip·pu·rim′]” could just as properly be referred to as the “day of the ransoms.” (Le 23:26-28) These sacrifices were required if the nation and its worship were to have and maintain the acceptance and approval of the righteous God.
Well illustrating the sense of a redeeming exchange is the law regarding a bull known to gore. If the owner allowed the bull to go loose so that it killed someone, the owner was to be put to death, paying for the life of the slain person with his own life. However, since he did not deliberately or directly kill another, if the judges viewed it proper to impose upon him a “ransom [ko′pher]” instead, then he must pay that redemption price. The sum assessed and paid was viewed as taking the place of his own life and compensating for the life lost. (Ex 21:28-32; compare De 19:21.) On the other hand, no ransom could be accepted for the deliberate murderer; only his own life could cover the death of the victim. (Nu 35:31-33) Evidently because a census involved lives, at the time such was taken each male over 20 had to have a ransom (ko′pher) of half a shekel ($1.10) given for his soul to Jehovah, the same price applying whether the individual was rich or poor.—Ex 30:11-16.
Since any imbalance of justice is displeasing to God, as well as among humans, the ransom, or covering, could have the additional effect of averting or quelling anger. (Compare Jer 18:23; also Ge 32:20, where “appease” translates ka·phar′.) The husband enraged at the man committing adultery with his wife, however, refuses any “ransom [ko′pher].” (Pr 6:35) The term may also be used with regard to those who should execute justice but who instead accept a bribe or gift as “hush money [ko′pher]” to cover over the wrongdoing in their sight.—1Sa 12:3; Am 5:12.
The Redemption, or Releasing. The Hebrew verb pa·dhah′ means “redeem,” and the related noun pidh·yohn′ means “redemption price.” (Ex 21:30) These terms evidently emphasize the releasing accomplished by the redemption price, while ka·phar′ places stress on the quality or content of the price and its efficacy in balancing the scales of justice. The releasing, or redeeming (pa·dhah′), may be from slavery (Le 19:20; De 7:8), from other distressing or oppressive conditions (2Sa 4:9; Job 6:23; Ps 55:18), or from death and the grave. (Job 33:28; Ps 49:15) Frequent reference is made to Jehovah’s redeeming the nation of Israel from Egypt to be his “private property” (De 9:26; Ps 78:42) and to his redeeming them from Assyrian and Babylonian exile many centuries later. (Isa 35:10; 51:11; Jer 31:11, 12; Zec 10:8-10) Here, too, the redemption involved a price, an exchange. In redeeming Israel from Egypt, Jehovah evidently caused the price to be paid by Egypt. Israel was, in effect, God’s “firstborn,” and Jehovah warned Pharaoh that his stubborn refusal to release Israel would cause the life of Pharaoh’s firstborn and the firstborn of all Egypt, human and animals, to be exacted. (Ex 4:21-23; 11:4-8) Similarly, in return for Cyrus’ overthrow of Babylon and his liberation of the Jews from their exiled state, Jehovah gave “Egypt as a ransom [form of ko′pher] for [his people], Ethiopia and Seba” in their place. The Persian Empire thus later conquered those regions, and so ‘national groups were given in place of the Israelites’ souls.’ (Isa 43:1-4) These exchanges are in harmony with the inspired declaration that the “wicked is [or serves as] a ransom [ko′pher] for the righteous one; and the one dealing treacherously takes the place of the upright ones.”—Pr 21:18.
Another Hebrew term associated with redemption is ga·Ê¼al′, and this conveys primarily the thought of reclaiming, recovering, or repurchasing. (Jer 32:7, 8) Its similarity to pa·dhah′ is seen by its parallel use with that term at Hosea 13:14: “From the hand of Sheol I shall redeem [form of pa·dhah′] them; from death I shall recover [form of ga·Ê¼al′] them.” (Compare Ps 69:18.) Ga·Ê¼al′ gives emphasis to the right of reclaiming or repurchasing, either by a near kinsman of a person whose property or whose very person needed to be repurchased or reclaimed, or by the original owner or seller himself. A near kinsman, called a go·Ê¼el′, was thus “a repurchaser” (Ru 2:20; 3:9, 13) or, in cases where a murder was involved, a “blood avenger.”—Nu 35:12.
The Law provided that in the case of a poor Israelite whose circumstances forced him to sell his hereditary lands, his city house, or even to sell himself into servitude, “a repurchaser closely related to him,” or go·Ê¼el′, had the right to “buy back [ga·Ê¼al′] what his brother sold,” or the seller could do so himself if funds became available to him. (Le 25:23-27, 29-34, 47-49; compare Ru 4:1-15.) If a man should make a vow offering to God of a house or a field and then desire to buy it back, he had to pay the valuation placed on the property plus a fifth in addition to that estimated value. (Le 27:14-19) However, no exchange could be made for anything “devoted to destruction.”—Le 27:28, 29.
In the case of murder, the murderer was not allowed sanctuary in the appointed cities of refuge but, after the judicial hearing, was turned over by the judges to the “avenger [go·Ê¼el′] of blood,” a near kinsman of the victim, who then put the murderer to death. Since no “ransom [ko′pher]” was allowed for the murderer and since the near kinsman with right of repurchase could not reclaim or recover the life of his dead relative, he rightfully claimed the life of the one who had taken his relative’s life by murder.—Nu 35:9-32; De 19:1-13.
Not Always a Tangible Price. As has been shown, Jehovah “redeemed” (pa·dhah′) or ‘reclaimed’ (ga·Ê¼al′) Israel from Egypt. (Ex 6:6; Isa 51:10, 11) Later, because the Israelites kept “selling themselves to do what was bad” (2Ki 17:16, 17), Jehovah on several occasions ‘sold them into the hands of their enemies.’ (De 32:30; Jg 2:14; 3:8; 10:7; 1Sa 12:9) Their repentance caused him to buy them back, or reclaim them, out of distress or exile (Ps 107:2, 3; Isa 35:9, 10; Mic 4:10), thereby performing the work of a Go·Ê¼el′, a Repurchaser related to them inasmuch as he had espoused the nation to himself. (Isa 43:1, 14; 48:20; 49:26; 50:1, 2; 54:5-7) In ‘selling’ them, Jehovah was not paid some material compensation by the pagan nations. His payment was the satisfaction of his justice and the fulfillment of his purpose to have them corrected and disciplined for their rebellion and disrespect.—Compare Isa 48:17, 18.
God’s ‘repurchasing’ likewise need not involve the payment of something tangible. When Jehovah repurchased the Israelites exiled in Babylon, Cyrus willingly liberated them, without tangible compensation in his lifetime. However, when redeeming his people from oppressor nations that had acted with malice against Israel, Jehovah exacted the price from the oppressors themselves, making them pay with their own lives. (Compare Ps 106:10, 11; Isa 41:11-14; 49:26.) When the people of the kingdom of Judah were “sold,” or delivered over, to the Babylonians, Jehovah received no personal compensation. And the deported Jews did not pay money either to the Babylonians or to Jehovah to buy back their freedom. It was “for nothing” that they were sold and “without money” that they were repurchased. Jehovah therefore needed to make no payment to their captors to balance matters out. Instead, he effected the repurchase through the power of “his holy arm.”—Isa 52:3-10; Ps 77:14, 15.
Jehovah’s role of Go·Ê¼el′ thus embraced the avenging of wrongs done to his servants and resulted in the clearing of his own name of the charges raised by those who used Israel’s distress as an excuse to reproach him. (Ps 78:35; Isa 59:15-20; 63:3-6, 9) As the Great Kinsman and Redeemer of both the nation and its individuals, he conducted their “legal case” to effect justice.—Ps 119:153, 154; Jer 50:33, 34; La 3:58-60; compare Pr 23:10, 11.
Though living before and outside the nation of Israel, the disease-stricken Job said: “I myself well know that my redeemer is alive, and that, coming after me, he will rise up over the dust.” (Job 19:25; compare Ps 69:18; 103:4.) Following God’s own example, Israel’s king was to act as a redeemer in behalf of the lowly and poor ones of the nation.—Ps 72:1, 2, 14.
Christ Jesus’ Role as Ransomer. The foregoing information lays the basis for understanding the ransom provided for humankind through God’s Son, Christ Jesus. Mankind’s need for a ransom came about through the rebellion in Eden. Adam sold himself to do evil for the selfish pleasure of keeping continued company with his wife, now a sinful transgressor, so he shared the same condemned standing with her before God. He thereby sold himself and his descendants into slavery to sin and to death, the price that God’s justice required. (Ro 5:12-19; compare Ro 7:14-25.) Having possessed human perfection, Adam lost this valuable possession for himself and all his offspring.
The Law, which had “a shadow of the good things to come,” provided for animal sacrifices as a covering for sin. This, however, was only a symbolic or token covering, since such animals were inferior to man; hence, it was “not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats [actually] to take sins away,” as the apostle points out. (Heb 10:1-4) Those pictorial animal sacrifices had to be without blemish, perfect specimens. (Le 22:21) The real ransom sacrifice, a human actually capable of removing sins, must therefore also be perfect, free from blemish. He would have to correspond to the perfect Adam and possess human perfection, if he were to pay the price of redemption that would release Adam’s offspring from the debt, disability, and enslavement into which their first father Adam had sold them. (Compare Ro 7:14; Ps 51:5.) Only thereby could he satisfy God’s perfect justice that requires like for like, a ‘soul for a soul.’—Ex 21:23-25; De 19:21.
The strictness of God’s justice made it impossible for mankind itself to provide its own redeemer. (Ps 49:6-9) However, this results in the magnifying of God’s own love and mercy in that he met his own requirements at tremendous cost to himself, giving the life of his own Son to provide the redemption price. (Ro 5:6-8) This required his Son’s becoming human to correspond to the perfect Adam. God accomplished this by transferring his Son’s life from heaven to the womb of the Jewish virgin Mary. (Lu 1:26-37; Joh 1:14) Since Jesus did not owe his life to any human father descended from the sinner Adam, and since God’s holy spirit ‘overshadowed’ Mary, evidently from the time she conceived until the time of Jesus’ birth, Jesus was born free from any inheritance of sin or imperfection, being, as it were, “an unblemished and spotless lamb,” whose blood could prove to be an acceptable sacrifice. (Lu 1:35; Joh 1:29; 1Pe 1:18, 19) He maintained that sinless state throughout his life and thus did not disqualify himself. (Heb 4:15; 7:26; 1Pe 2:22) As a ‘sharer of blood and flesh,’ he was a near kinsman of mankind and he had the thing of value, his own perfect life maintained pure through tests of integrity, with which to repurchase mankind, emancipate them.—Heb 2:14, 15.
The Christian Greek Scriptures make clear that the release from sin and death is indeed by the paying of a price. Christians are said to be “bought with a price” (1Co 6:20; 7:23), having an “owner that bought them” (2Pe 2:1), and Jesus is presented as the Lamb who ‘was slaughtered and with his blood bought persons for God out of every tribe, tongue, and nation.’ (Re 5:9) In these texts the verb a·go·ra′zo is used, meaning simply “buy at the market [a·go·ra′].” The related e·xa·go·ra′zo (release by purchase) is used by Paul in showing that Christ released “by purchase those under law” through his death on the stake. (Ga 4:5; 3:13) But the thought of redemption or ransoming is more frequently and more fully expressed by the Greek ly′tron and related terms.
Ly′tron (from the verb ly′o, meaning “loose”) was especially used by Greek writers to refer to a price paid to ransom prisoners of war or to release those under bond or in slavery. (Compare Heb 11:35.) In its two Scriptural occurrences it describes Christ’s giving “his soul a ransom in exchange for many.” (Mt 20:28; Mr 10:45) The related word an·ti′ly·tron appears at 1 Timothy 2:6. Parkhurst’s Greek and English Lexicon to the NewTestament says it means: “a ransom, price of redemption, or rather a correspondentransom.” He quotes Hyperius as saying: “It properly signifies a price by which captives areredeemed from the enemy; and that kind of exchange in which the life of one is redeemedby the life of another.” He concludes by saying: “So Aristotle uses the verb [an·ti·ly·tro′o] forredeeming life by life.” (London, 1845, p. 47) Thus Christ “gave himself a corresponding ransom for all.” (1Ti 2:5, 6) Other related words are ly·tro′o·mai, “loose by ransom” (Tit 2:14; 1Pe 1:18, 19), and a·po·ly′tro·sis, “a releasing by ransom.” (Eph 1:7, 14; Col 1:14) The similarity of the usage of these words with that of the Hebrew terms considered is evident. They describe, not an ordinary purchase or releasing, but a redeeming or ransoming, a deliverance effected by payment of a corresponding price.
Though available to all, Christ’s ransom sacrifice is not accepted by all, and “the wrath of God remains” upon those not accepting it, as it also comes upon those who first accept and then turn away from that provision. (Joh 3:36; Heb 10:26-29; contrast Ro 5:9, 10.) They gain no deliverance from the enslavement to Kings Sin and Death. (Ro 5:21) Under the Law the deliberate murderer could not be ransomed. Adam, by his willful course, brought death on all mankind, hence was a murderer. (Ro 5:12) Thus, the sacrificed life of Jesus is not acceptable to God as a ransom for the sinner Adam.
But God is pleased to approve the application of the ransom to redeem those of Adam’s offspring who avail themselves of such a release. As Paul states, “as through the disobedience of the one man many were constituted sinners, likewise also through the obedience of the one person many will be constituted righteous.” (Ro 5:18, 19) At the time of Adam’s sin and his being sentenced to death, his offspring or race were all unborn in his loins and so all died with him. (Compare Heb 7:4-10.) Jesus as a perfect man, “the last Adam” (1Co 15:45), had a race or offspring unborn in his loins, and when he died innocently as a perfect human sacrifice this potential human race died with him. He had willingly abstained from producing a family of his own by natural procreation. Instead, Jesus uses the authority granted by Jehovah on the basis of his ransom to give life to all those who accept this provision.—1Co 15:45; compare Ro 5:15-17.
Thus, Jesus was indeed “a corresponding ransom,” not for the redemption of the one sinner, Adam, but for the redemption of all mankind descended from Adam. He repurchased them so that they could become his family, doing this by presenting the full value of his ransom sacrifice to the God of absolute justice in heaven. (Heb 9:24) He thereby gains a Bride, a heavenly congregation formed of his followers. (Compare Eph 5:23-27; Re 1:5, 6; 5:9, 10; 14:3, 4.) Messianic prophecies also show he will have “offspring” as an “Eternal Father.” (Isa 53:10-12; 9:6, 7) To be such, his ransom must embrace more than those of his “Bride.” In addition to those “bought from among mankind as firstfruits” to form that heavenly congregation, therefore, others are to benefit from his ransom sacrifice and gain everlasting life through the removal of their sins and accompanying imperfection. (Re 14:4; 1Jo 2:1, 2) Since those of the heavenly congregation serve with Christ as priests and “kings over the earth,” such other recipients of the ransom benefits must be earthly subjects of Christ’s Kingdom, and as children of an “Eternal Father” they attain everlasting life. (Re 5:10; 20:6; 21:2-4, 9, 10; 22:17; comparePs 103:2-5.) The entire arrangement manifests Jehovah’s wisdom and his righteousness in perfectly balancing the scales of justice while showing undeserved kindness and forgiving sins.—Ro 3:21-26.
A price paid to buy back or to bring about release from some obligation or undesirable circumstance. The basic idea of “ransom” is a price that covers (as in payment for damages or to satisfy justice), while “redemption” emphasizes the releasing accomplished as a result of the ransom paid. The most significant ransom price is the shed blood of Jesus Christ, which made deliverance from sin and death possible for the offspring of Adam.
In the various Hebrew and Greek terms translated “ransom” and “redeem,” the inherent similarity lies in the idea of a price, or thing of 9, given to effect the ransom, or redemption. The thought of exchange, as well as that of correspondency, equivalence, or substitution, is common in all. That is, one thing is given for another, satisfying the demands of justice and resulting in a balancing of matters.—See RECONCILIATION.
A Price That Covers. The Hebrew noun ko′pher comes from the verb ka·phar′,meaning, basically, “cover,” as in Noah’s covering the ark with tar. (Ge 6:14) Ka·phar′,however, is used almost entirely to describe the satisfying of justice through the covering of or atoning for sins. The noun ko′pher refers to the thing given to accomplish this, the ransom price. (Ps 65:3; 78:38; 79:8, 9) A covering corresponds to the thing it covers, either in its form (as in a material lid, such as the “cover [kap·po′reth]” of the ark of the covenant;Ex 25:17-22), or in its value (as in a payment to cover the damages caused by an injury).
As a means for balancing justice and setting matters straight with his people Israel, Jehovah, in the Law covenant, designated various sacrifices and offerings to atone for, or cover, sins, including those of the priests and the Levites (Ex 29:33-37; Le 16:6, 11), of other individuals, or of the nation as a whole (Le 1:4; 4:20, 26, 31, 35), as well as to purify the altar and tabernacle, making atonement because of the sins of the people surrounding these. (Le 16:16-20) In effect, the life of the animal sacrificed went in place of the life of the sinner, its blood making atonement on God’s altar, that is, to the extent that it could. (Le 17:11; compare Heb 9:13, 14; 10:1-4.) The “day of atonement [yohm hak·kip·pu·rim′]” could just as properly be referred to as the “day of the ransoms.” (Le 23:26-28) These sacrifices were required if the nation and its worship were to have and maintain the acceptance and approval of the righteous God.
Well illustrating the sense of a redeeming exchange is the law regarding a bull known to gore. If the owner allowed the bull to go loose so that it killed someone, the owner was to be put to death, paying for the life of the slain person with his own life. However, since he did not deliberately or directly kill another, if the judges viewed it proper to impose upon him a “ransom [ko′pher]” instead, then he must pay that redemption price. The sum assessed and paid was viewed as taking the place of his own life and compensating for the life lost. (Ex 21:28-32; compare De 19:21.) On the other hand, no ransom could be accepted for the deliberate murderer; only his own life could cover the death of the victim. (Nu 35:31-33) Evidently because a census involved lives, at the time such was taken each male over 20 had to have a ransom (ko′pher) of half a shekel ($1.10) given for his soul to Jehovah, the same price applying whether the individual was rich or poor.—Ex 30:11-16.
Since any imbalance of justice is displeasing to God, as well as among humans, the ransom, or covering, could have the additional effect of averting or quelling anger. (Compare Jer 18:23; also Ge 32:20, where “appease” translates ka·phar′.) The husband enraged at the man committing adultery with his wife, however, refuses any “ransom [ko′pher].” (Pr 6:35) The term may also be used with regard to those who should execute justice but who instead accept a bribe or gift as “hush money [ko′pher]” to cover over the wrongdoing in their sight.—1Sa 12:3; Am 5:12.
The Redemption, or Releasing. The Hebrew verb pa·dhah′ means “redeem,” and the related noun pidh·yohn′ means “redemption price.” (Ex 21:30) These terms evidently emphasize the releasing accomplished by the redemption price, while ka·phar′ places stress on the quality or content of the price and its efficacy in balancing the scales of justice. The releasing, or redeeming (pa·dhah′), may be from slavery (Le 19:20; De 7:8), from other distressing or oppressive conditions (2Sa 4:9; Job 6:23; Ps 55:18), or from death and the grave. (Job 33:28; Ps 49:15) Frequent reference is made to Jehovah’s redeeming the nation of Israel from Egypt to be his “private property” (De 9:26; Ps 78:42) and to his redeeming them from Assyrian and Babylonian exile many centuries later. (Isa 35:10; 51:11; Jer 31:11, 12; Zec 10:8-10) Here, too, the redemption involved a price, an exchange. In redeeming Israel from Egypt, Jehovah evidently caused the price to be paid by Egypt. Israel was, in effect, God’s “firstborn,” and Jehovah warned Pharaoh that his stubborn refusal to release Israel would cause the life of Pharaoh’s firstborn and the firstborn of all Egypt, human and animals, to be exacted. (Ex 4:21-23; 11:4-8) Similarly, in return for Cyrus’ overthrow of Babylon and his liberation of the Jews from their exiled state, Jehovah gave “Egypt as a ransom [form of ko′pher] for [his people], Ethiopia and Seba” in their place. The Persian Empire thus later conquered those regions, and so ‘national groups were given in place of the Israelites’ souls.’ (Isa 43:1-4) These exchanges are in harmony with the inspired declaration that the “wicked is [or serves as] a ransom [ko′pher] for the righteous one; and the one dealing treacherously takes the place of the upright ones.”—Pr 21:18.
Another Hebrew term associated with redemption is ga·Ê¼al′, and this conveys primarily the thought of reclaiming, recovering, or repurchasing. (Jer 32:7, 8) Its similarity to pa·dhah′ is seen by its parallel use with that term at Hosea 13:14: “From the hand of Sheol I shall redeem [form of pa·dhah′] them; from death I shall recover [form of ga·Ê¼al′] them.” (Compare Ps 69:18.) Ga·Ê¼al′ gives emphasis to the right of reclaiming or repurchasing, either by a near kinsman of a person whose property or whose very person needed to be repurchased or reclaimed, or by the original owner or seller himself. A near kinsman, called a go·Ê¼el′, was thus “a repurchaser” (Ru 2:20; 3:9, 13) or, in cases where a murder was involved, a “blood avenger.”—Nu 35:12.
The Law provided that in the case of a poor Israelite whose circumstances forced him to sell his hereditary lands, his city house, or even to sell himself into servitude, “a repurchaser closely related to him,” or go·Ê¼el′, had the right to “buy back [ga·Ê¼al′] what his brother sold,” or the seller could do so himself if funds became available to him. (Le 25:23-27, 29-34, 47-49; compare Ru 4:1-15.) If a man should make a vow offering to God of a house or a field and then desire to buy it back, he had to pay the valuation placed on the property plus a fifth in addition to that estimated value. (Le 27:14-19) However, no exchange could be made for anything “devoted to destruction.”—Le 27:28, 29.
In the case of murder, the murderer was not allowed sanctuary in the appointed cities of refuge but, after the judicial hearing, was turned over by the judges to the “avenger [go·Ê¼el′] of blood,” a near kinsman of the victim, who then put the murderer to death. Since no “ransom [ko′pher]” was allowed for the murderer and since the near kinsman with right of repurchase could not reclaim or recover the life of his dead relative, he rightfully claimed the life of the one who had taken his relative’s life by murder.—Nu 35:9-32; De 19:1-13.
Not Always a Tangible Price. As has been shown, Jehovah “redeemed” (pa·dhah′) or ‘reclaimed’ (ga·Ê¼al′) Israel from Egypt. (Ex 6:6; Isa 51:10, 11) Later, because the Israelites kept “selling themselves to do what was bad” (2Ki 17:16, 17), Jehovah on several occasions ‘sold them into the hands of their enemies.’ (De 32:30; Jg 2:14; 3:8; 10:7; 1Sa 12:9) Their repentance caused him to buy them back, or reclaim them, out of distress or exile (Ps 107:2, 3; Isa 35:9, 10; Mic 4:10), thereby performing the work of a Go·Ê¼el′, a Repurchaser related to them inasmuch as he had espoused the nation to himself. (Isa 43:1, 14; 48:20; 49:26; 50:1, 2; 54:5-7) In ‘selling’ them, Jehovah was not paid some material compensation by the pagan nations. His payment was the satisfaction of his justice and the fulfillment of his purpose to have them corrected and disciplined for their rebellion and disrespect.—Compare Isa 48:17, 18.
God’s ‘repurchasing’ likewise need not involve the payment of something tangible. When Jehovah repurchased the Israelites exiled in Babylon, Cyrus willingly liberated them, without tangible compensation in his lifetime. However, when redeeming his people from oppressor nations that had acted with malice against Israel, Jehovah exacted the price from the oppressors themselves, making them pay with their own lives. (Compare Ps 106:10, 11; Isa 41:11-14; 49:26.) When the people of the kingdom of Judah were “sold,” or delivered over, to the Babylonians, Jehovah received no personal compensation. And the deported Jews did not pay money either to the Babylonians or to Jehovah to buy back their freedom. It was “for nothing” that they were sold and “without money” that they were repurchased. Jehovah therefore needed to make no payment to their captors to balance matters out. Instead, he effected the repurchase through the power of “his holy arm.”—Isa 52:3-10; Ps 77:14, 15.
Jehovah’s role of Go·Ê¼el′ thus embraced the avenging of wrongs done to his servants and resulted in the clearing of his own name of the charges raised by those who used Israel’s distress as an excuse to reproach him. (Ps 78:35; Isa 59:15-20; 63:3-6, 9) As the Great Kinsman and Redeemer of both the nation and its individuals, he conducted their “legal case” to effect justice.—Ps 119:153, 154; Jer 50:33, 34; La 3:58-60; compare Pr 23:10, 11.
Though living before and outside the nation of Israel, the disease-stricken Job said: “I myself well know that my redeemer is alive, and that, coming after me, he will rise up over the dust.” (Job 19:25; compare Ps 69:18; 103:4.) Following God’s own example, Israel’s king was to act as a redeemer in behalf of the lowly and poor ones of the nation.—Ps 72:1, 2, 14.
Christ Jesus’ Role as Ransomer. The foregoing information lays the basis for understanding the ransom provided for humankind through God’s Son, Christ Jesus. Mankind’s need for a ransom came about through the rebellion in Eden. Adam sold himself to do evil for the selfish pleasure of keeping continued company with his wife, now a sinful transgressor, so he shared the same condemned standing with her before God. He thereby sold himself and his descendants into slavery to sin and to death, the price that God’s justice required. (Ro 5:12-19; compare Ro 7:14-25.) Having possessed human perfection, Adam lost this valuable possession for himself and all his offspring.
The Law, which had “a shadow of the good things to come,” provided for animal sacrifices as a covering for sin. This, however, was only a symbolic or token covering, since such animals were inferior to man; hence, it was “not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats [actually] to take sins away,” as the apostle points out. (Heb 10:1-4) Those pictorial animal sacrifices had to be without blemish, perfect specimens. (Le 22:21) The real ransom sacrifice, a human actually capable of removing sins, must therefore also be perfect, free from blemish. He would have to correspond to the perfect Adam and possess human perfection, if he were to pay the price of redemption that would release Adam’s offspring from the debt, disability, and enslavement into which their first father Adam had sold them. (Compare Ro 7:14; Ps 51:5.) Only thereby could he satisfy God’s perfect justice that requires like for like, a ‘soul for a soul.’—Ex 21:23-25; De 19:21.
The strictness of God’s justice made it impossible for mankind itself to provide its own redeemer. (Ps 49:6-9) However, this results in the magnifying of God’s own love and mercy in that he met his own requirements at tremendous cost to himself, giving the life of his own Son to provide the redemption price. (Ro 5:6-8) This required his Son’s becoming human to correspond to the perfect Adam. God accomplished this by transferring his Son’s life from heaven to the womb of the Jewish virgin Mary. (Lu 1:26-37; Joh 1:14) Since Jesus did not owe his life to any human father descended from the sinner Adam, and since God’s holy spirit ‘overshadowed’ Mary, evidently from the time she conceived until the time of Jesus’ birth, Jesus was born free from any inheritance of sin or imperfection, being, as it were, “an unblemished and spotless lamb,” whose blood could prove to be an acceptable sacrifice. (Lu 1:35; Joh 1:29; 1Pe 1:18, 19) He maintained that sinless state throughout his life and thus did not disqualify himself. (Heb 4:15; 7:26; 1Pe 2:22) As a ‘sharer of blood and flesh,’ he was a near kinsman of mankind and he had the thing of value, his own perfect life maintained pure through tests of integrity, with which to repurchase mankind, emancipate them.—Heb 2:14, 15.
The Christian Greek Scriptures make clear that the release from sin and death is indeed by the paying of a price. Christians are said to be “bought with a price” (1Co 6:20; 7:23), having an “owner that bought them” (2Pe 2:1), and Jesus is presented as the Lamb who ‘was slaughtered and with his blood bought persons for God out of every tribe, tongue, and nation.’ (Re 5:9) In these texts the verb a·go·ra′zo is used, meaning simply “buy at the market [a·go·ra′].” The related e·xa·go·ra′zo (release by purchase) is used by Paul in showing that Christ released “by purchase those under law” through his death on the stake. (Ga 4:5; 3:13) But the thought of redemption or ransoming is more frequently and more fully expressed by the Greek ly′tron and related terms.
Ly′tron (from the verb ly′o, meaning “loose”) was especially used by Greek writers to refer to a price paid to ransom prisoners of war or to release those under bond or in slavery. (Compare Heb 11:35.) In its two Scriptural occurrences it describes Christ’s giving “his soul a ransom in exchange for many.” (Mt 20:28; Mr 10:45) The related word an·ti′ly·tron appears at 1 Timothy 2:6. Parkhurst’s Greek and English Lexicon to the NewTestament says it means: “a ransom, price of redemption, or rather a correspondentransom.” He quotes Hyperius as saying: “It properly signifies a price by which captives areredeemed from the enemy; and that kind of exchange in which the life of one is redeemedby the life of another.” He concludes by saying: “So Aristotle uses the verb [an·ti·ly·tro′o] forredeeming life by life.” (London, 1845, p. 47) Thus Christ “gave himself a corresponding ransom for all.” (1Ti 2:5, 6) Other related words are ly·tro′o·mai, “loose by ransom” (Tit 2:14; 1Pe 1:18, 19), and a·po·ly′tro·sis, “a releasing by ransom.” (Eph 1:7, 14; Col 1:14) The similarity of the usage of these words with that of the Hebrew terms considered is evident. They describe, not an ordinary purchase or releasing, but a redeeming or ransoming, a deliverance effected by payment of a corresponding price.
Though available to all, Christ’s ransom sacrifice is not accepted by all, and “the wrath of God remains” upon those not accepting it, as it also comes upon those who first accept and then turn away from that provision. (Joh 3:36; Heb 10:26-29; contrast Ro 5:9, 10.) They gain no deliverance from the enslavement to Kings Sin and Death. (Ro 5:21) Under the Law the deliberate murderer could not be ransomed. Adam, by his willful course, brought death on all mankind, hence was a murderer. (Ro 5:12) Thus, the sacrificed life of Jesus is not acceptable to God as a ransom for the sinner Adam.
But God is pleased to approve the application of the ransom to redeem those of Adam’s offspring who avail themselves of such a release. As Paul states, “as through the disobedience of the one man many were constituted sinners, likewise also through the obedience of the one person many will be constituted righteous.” (Ro 5:18, 19) At the time of Adam’s sin and his being sentenced to death, his offspring or race were all unborn in his loins and so all died with him. (Compare Heb 7:4-10.) Jesus as a perfect man, “the last Adam” (1Co 15:45), had a race or offspring unborn in his loins, and when he died innocently as a perfect human sacrifice this potential human race died with him. He had willingly abstained from producing a family of his own by natural procreation. Instead, Jesus uses the authority granted by Jehovah on the basis of his ransom to give life to all those who accept this provision.—1Co 15:45; compare Ro 5:15-17.
Thus, Jesus was indeed “a corresponding ransom,” not for the redemption of the one sinner, Adam, but for the redemption of all mankind descended from Adam. He repurchased them so that they could become his family, doing this by presenting the full value of his ransom sacrifice to the God of absolute justice in heaven. (Heb 9:24) He thereby gains a Bride, a heavenly congregation formed of his followers. (Compare Eph 5:23-27; Re 1:5, 6; 5:9, 10; 14:3, 4.) Messianic prophecies also show he will have “offspring” as an “Eternal Father.” (Isa 53:10-12; 9:6, 7) To be such, his ransom must embrace more than those of his “Bride.” In addition to those “bought from among mankind as firstfruits” to form that heavenly congregation, therefore, others are to benefit from his ransom sacrifice and gain everlasting life through the removal of their sins and accompanying imperfection. (Re 14:4; 1Jo 2:1, 2) Since those of the heavenly congregation serve with Christ as priests and “kings over the earth,” such other recipients of the ransom benefits must be earthly subjects of Christ’s Kingdom, and as children of an “Eternal Father” they attain everlasting life. (Re 5:10; 20:6; 21:2-4, 9, 10; 22:17; comparePs 103:2-5.) The entire arrangement manifests Jehovah’s wisdom and his righteousness in perfectly balancing the scales of justice while showing undeserved kindness and forgiving sins.—Ro 3:21-26.
On the temptations of Christ the Watchtower Society's commentary.
Did Satan physically take Jesus to the temple when tempting him?
Put simply, we cannot be certain whether Jesus actually stood in the temple or he did so only by means of a vision. At times, both possibilities have been presented in our publications.
Consider first what the Bible record says. In his Gospel account of this event, the apostle Matthew was inspired to write: “Then the Devil took him [Jesus] along into the holy city, and he stationed him on the battlement [“parapet; highest point,” ftn.] of the temple.” (Matt. 4:5) Luke’s parallel account puts it this way: “He then led him into Jerusalem and stationed him on the battlement of the temple.”—Luke 4:9.
In the past, our publications have reasoned that this event may not have happened literally. For example, in the issue of March 1, 1961, The Watchtower explained: “It does not seem reasonable to place a literal construction on all that appears in the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Certainly there is no mountain from which one could be shown ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.’ So too, we must reasonably conclude that Satan did not literally, bodily, physically, take Jesus ‘along into the holy city’ and station him ‘upon the battlement of the temple.’ Such was not at all necessary for the temptation to have force.” However, in subsequent issues of this journal, we have observed that Christ’s complying with Satan’s request could have resulted in Jesus’ suicide.
Some have stated that, as a non-Levite, Jesus was not authorized to stand on top of the temple sanctuary. So it was assumed that Jesus may have been ‘taken along’ to the temple by means of a vision. That is similar to what happened centuries earlier to the prophet Ezekiel.—Ezek. 8:3, 7-10; 11:1, 24; 37:1, 2.
However, if this temptation occurred only in the form of a vision, the following questions arise:
Was the temptation real or imaginary?
If the other temptations were efforts to lure Jesus into carrying out physical actions such as turning literal stones into bread or performing a real act of worship before Satan, would not this temptation have been similar—requiring Jesus physically to jump from the temple?
On the other hand, if Jesus did stand physically on the battlement of the temple, other questions arise:
Did Jesus violate the Law by standing on top of the sanctuary?
How did Jesus get from the wilderness to Jerusalem?
Further research helps us to see some possibilities that may answer these last two questions.
First, Professor D. A. Carson notes that the Greek word hi·e·ron’, translated “temple” in both accounts, “probably refers to the entire complex, not the sanctuary itself.” So Jesus would not necessarily have had to stand on top of the sanctuary itself. He could have stood, for example, on the southeastern corner of the temple area. From that location, there was a drop of some 450 feet (137 m) to the floor of the Kidron Valley. The southeast structure had a flat roof with a parapet and was the highest in the temple. The ancient historian Josephus stated that if a person stood there and looked down, he “would become dizzy” because of the height. As a non-Levite, Jesus would have been allowed to stand in that location, and his doing so would not have caused any commotion.
But how could Jesus have been taken along to the temple when he was in the wilderness? The basic answer is that we cannot know for certain. The brief description of the temptations does not state how long a period was involved or where Jesus was in the wilderness. We cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus may have walked back to Jerusalem, even though doing so may have taken some time. The account does not specifically say that Jesus remained in the wilderness throughout the time of the temptations. Rather, it merely says that he was taken into Jerusalem.
What, though, of the temptation wherein Jesus was shown “all the kingdoms of the world”? Obviously, he did not literally see all the kingdoms; there is no literal mountain from which all of them can be seen. So Satan may have used some sort of vision to show these to Jesus, similar to the way a projector and a screen can be used to show someone pictures of various places on earth. However, although a vision may have been used, the “act of worship” would have been real, not imaginary. (Matt. 4:8, 9) It could be argued, then, that the temptation to jump off the battlement of the temple involved a real action with real consequences—adding a greater seriousness to this temptation than would be the case were it a mere vision.
The fact is, as stated at the outset, we cannot be dogmatic about this matter. Hence, we cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus actually went to Jerusalem and stood on the battlement of the temple. But one thing we can be sure about is that these temptations were real and that Jesus gave a conclusive answer to the Devil in each case.
Put simply, we cannot be certain whether Jesus actually stood in the temple or he did so only by means of a vision. At times, both possibilities have been presented in our publications.
Consider first what the Bible record says. In his Gospel account of this event, the apostle Matthew was inspired to write: “Then the Devil took him [Jesus] along into the holy city, and he stationed him on the battlement [“parapet; highest point,” ftn.] of the temple.” (Matt. 4:5) Luke’s parallel account puts it this way: “He then led him into Jerusalem and stationed him on the battlement of the temple.”—Luke 4:9.
In the past, our publications have reasoned that this event may not have happened literally. For example, in the issue of March 1, 1961, The Watchtower explained: “It does not seem reasonable to place a literal construction on all that appears in the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Certainly there is no mountain from which one could be shown ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.’ So too, we must reasonably conclude that Satan did not literally, bodily, physically, take Jesus ‘along into the holy city’ and station him ‘upon the battlement of the temple.’ Such was not at all necessary for the temptation to have force.” However, in subsequent issues of this journal, we have observed that Christ’s complying with Satan’s request could have resulted in Jesus’ suicide.
Some have stated that, as a non-Levite, Jesus was not authorized to stand on top of the temple sanctuary. So it was assumed that Jesus may have been ‘taken along’ to the temple by means of a vision. That is similar to what happened centuries earlier to the prophet Ezekiel.—Ezek. 8:3, 7-10; 11:1, 24; 37:1, 2.
However, if this temptation occurred only in the form of a vision, the following questions arise:
Was the temptation real or imaginary?
If the other temptations were efforts to lure Jesus into carrying out physical actions such as turning literal stones into bread or performing a real act of worship before Satan, would not this temptation have been similar—requiring Jesus physically to jump from the temple?
On the other hand, if Jesus did stand physically on the battlement of the temple, other questions arise:
Did Jesus violate the Law by standing on top of the sanctuary?
How did Jesus get from the wilderness to Jerusalem?
Further research helps us to see some possibilities that may answer these last two questions.
First, Professor D. A. Carson notes that the Greek word hi·e·ron’, translated “temple” in both accounts, “probably refers to the entire complex, not the sanctuary itself.” So Jesus would not necessarily have had to stand on top of the sanctuary itself. He could have stood, for example, on the southeastern corner of the temple area. From that location, there was a drop of some 450 feet (137 m) to the floor of the Kidron Valley. The southeast structure had a flat roof with a parapet and was the highest in the temple. The ancient historian Josephus stated that if a person stood there and looked down, he “would become dizzy” because of the height. As a non-Levite, Jesus would have been allowed to stand in that location, and his doing so would not have caused any commotion.
But how could Jesus have been taken along to the temple when he was in the wilderness? The basic answer is that we cannot know for certain. The brief description of the temptations does not state how long a period was involved or where Jesus was in the wilderness. We cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus may have walked back to Jerusalem, even though doing so may have taken some time. The account does not specifically say that Jesus remained in the wilderness throughout the time of the temptations. Rather, it merely says that he was taken into Jerusalem.
What, though, of the temptation wherein Jesus was shown “all the kingdoms of the world”? Obviously, he did not literally see all the kingdoms; there is no literal mountain from which all of them can be seen. So Satan may have used some sort of vision to show these to Jesus, similar to the way a projector and a screen can be used to show someone pictures of various places on earth. However, although a vision may have been used, the “act of worship” would have been real, not imaginary. (Matt. 4:8, 9) It could be argued, then, that the temptation to jump off the battlement of the temple involved a real action with real consequences—adding a greater seriousness to this temptation than would be the case were it a mere vision.
The fact is, as stated at the outset, we cannot be dogmatic about this matter. Hence, we cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus actually went to Jerusalem and stood on the battlement of the temple. But one thing we can be sure about is that these temptations were real and that Jesus gave a conclusive answer to the Devil in each case.
Jehovah's Spirit the Watchtower Society's commentary.
What Is the Holy Spirit?
The Bible’s answer
The holy spirit is God’s power in action, his active force. (Micah 3:8; Luke 1:35) God sends out his spirit by projecting his energy to any place to accomplish his will.—Psalm 104:30; 139:7.
In the Bible, the word “spirit” is translated from the Hebrew word ru′ach and the Greek word pneu′ma. Most often, those words refer to God’s active force, or holy spirit. (Genesis 1:2) However, the Bible also uses those words in other senses:
Breath.—Habakkuk 2:19; Revelation 13:15.
Wind.—Genesis 8:1; John 3:8.
The vital, or animating, force in living creatures.—Job 34:14, 15.
A person’s disposition or attitude.—Numbers 14:24.
Spirit persons, including God and the angels.—1 Kings 22:21; John 4:24.
These meanings all share the sense of something invisible to humans that produces visible effects. Similarly, the spirit of God, “like the wind, is invisible, immaterial and powerful.”—An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, by W. E. Vine.
The Bible also refers to God’s holy spirit as his “hands” or “fingers.” (Psalm 8:3; 19:1; Luke 11:20; compare Matthew 12:28.) Just as a craftsman uses his hands and fingers to do his work, God has used his spirit to produce such results as the following:
The universe.—Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 66:1, 2.
The Bible.—2 Peter 1:20, 21.
The miracles performed by his ancient servants and their zealous preaching.—Luke 4:18; Acts 1:8; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.
The fine qualities displayed by people who obey him.—Galatians 5:22, 23.
The Bible’s answer
The holy spirit is God’s power in action, his active force. (Micah 3:8; Luke 1:35) God sends out his spirit by projecting his energy to any place to accomplish his will.—Psalm 104:30; 139:7.
In the Bible, the word “spirit” is translated from the Hebrew word ru′ach and the Greek word pneu′ma. Most often, those words refer to God’s active force, or holy spirit. (Genesis 1:2) However, the Bible also uses those words in other senses:
Breath.—Habakkuk 2:19; Revelation 13:15.
Wind.—Genesis 8:1; John 3:8.
The vital, or animating, force in living creatures.—Job 34:14, 15.
A person’s disposition or attitude.—Numbers 14:24.
Spirit persons, including God and the angels.—1 Kings 22:21; John 4:24.
These meanings all share the sense of something invisible to humans that produces visible effects. Similarly, the spirit of God, “like the wind, is invisible, immaterial and powerful.”—An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, by W. E. Vine.
The Bible also refers to God’s holy spirit as his “hands” or “fingers.” (Psalm 8:3; 19:1; Luke 11:20; compare Matthew 12:28.) Just as a craftsman uses his hands and fingers to do his work, God has used his spirit to produce such results as the following:
The universe.—Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 66:1, 2.
The Bible.—2 Peter 1:20, 21.
The miracles performed by his ancient servants and their zealous preaching.—Luke 4:18; Acts 1:8; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.
The fine qualities displayed by people who obey him.—Galatians 5:22, 23.
The holy spirit is not a person
By referring to God’s spirit as his “hands,” “fingers,” or “breath,” the Bible shows that the holy spirit is not a person. (Exodus 15:8, 10) A craftsman’s hands cannot function independent of his mind and body; likewise, God’s holy spirit operates only as he directs it. (Luke 11:13) The Bible also compares God’s spirit to water and associates it with such things as faith and knowledge. These comparisons all point to the impersonal nature of the holy spirit.—Isaiah 44:3; Acts 6:5; 2 Corinthians 6:6.
The Bible gives the names of Jehovah God and of his Son, Jesus Christ; yet, nowhere does it name the holy spirit. (Isaiah 42:8; Luke 1:31) When the Christian martyr Stephen was given a miraculous heavenly vision, he saw only two persons, not three. The Bible says: “He, being full of holy spirit, gazed into heaven and caught sight of God’s glory and of Jesus standing at God’s right hand.” (Acts 7:55) The holy spirit was God’s power in action, enabling Stephen to see the vision.
Misconceptions about the holy spirit
Misconception: The “Holy Ghost,” or holy spirit, is a person and is part of the Trinity, as stated at 1 John 5:7, 8 in the King James version of the Bible.
Fact: The King James version of the Bible includes at 1 John 5:7, 8 the words “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth.” However, researchers have found that those words were not written by the apostle John and so do not belong in the Bible. Professor Bruce M. Metzger wrote: “That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain.”—A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament.
Misconception: The Bible personifies the holy spirit, and this proves that it is a person.
Fact: The Scriptures do at times personify the holy spirit, but this does not prove that the holy spirit is a person. The Bible also personifies wisdom, death, and sin. (Proverbs 1:20; Romans 5:17, 21) For example, wisdom is said to have “works” and “children,” and sin is depicted as seducing, killing, and working out covetousness.—Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:35; Romans 7:8, 11.
Similarly, when the apostle John quoted Jesus, he personified the holy spirit as a “helper” (paraclete) that would give evidence, guide, speak, hear, declare, glorify, and receive. He used masculine personal pronouns such as “he” or “him” when referring to that “helper.” (John 16:7-15) However, he did so because the Greek word for “helper” (pa·ra′kle·tos) is a masculine noun and requires a masculine pronoun according to the rules of Greek grammar. When John referred to the holy spirit using the neuter noun pneu′ma, he used the genderless pronoun “it.”—John 14:16, 17.
Misconception: Baptism in the name of the holy spirit proves that it is a person.
Fact: The Bible sometimes uses “name” to stand for power or authority. (Deuteronomy 18:5, 19-22; Esther 8:10) This is similar to its use in the English expression “in the name of the law,” which does not mean that the law is a person. A person who is baptized “in the name of ” the holy spirit recognizes the power and role of the holy spirit in accomplishing God’s will.—Matthew 28:19.
Misconception: Jesus’ apostles and other early disciples believed that the holy spirit was a person.
Fact: The Bible does not say that, nor does history. The Encyclopædia Britannica states: “The definition that the Holy Spirit was a distinct divine Person . . . came at the Council of Constantinople in ad 381.” This was over 250 years after the last of the apostles had died.
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