On the Fate of the dead :The Watchtower Society's commentary.

What Hope Is There for the Dead?

1. What is the good news about the dead?

When Jesus arrived at Bethany near Jerusalem, his friend Lazarus had been dead for four days. Jesus went to the burial place with Martha and Mary, sisters of the deceased man. Soon, a crowd gathered. Can you imagine the joy of Martha and Mary when Jesus raised Lazarus back to life?—Read John 11:21-24, 38-44.


Martha was already aware of the good news about the dead. She knew that Jehovah will resurrect the dead to live on earth again.—Read Job 14:14, 15.

2. What is the condition of the dead?

Humans are made from dust. (Genesis 2:7; 3:19) We are not spirits living in a body of flesh. We are physical creatures, so no part of us survives death. When we die, our brain dies too, and our thoughts perish. Thus, Lazarus said nothing about his experience of death because the dead are unconscious.—Read Psalm 146:4; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6, 10.


Does God torment people with fire after death? Since the Bible shows that the dead are unconscious, hellfire is clearly a false teaching that slanders God. The very idea of tormenting people with fire disgusts him.—Read Jeremiah 7:31.

3. Can the dead speak to us?

The dead can neither speak nor hear. (Psalm 115:17) But some angels are wicked, and they may speak to people and pretend to be dead humans. (2 Peter 2:4) Jehovah forbids trying to inquire of the dead.—Read Deuteronomy 18:10, 11.

4. Who will return to life?

Many millions of people who are dead in the grave will return to life on earth. Even some who did not know God and who practiced bad things will be resurrected.—Read Luke 23:43; Acts 24:15.


Resurrected ones will be able to learn the truth about God and to exercise faith in Jesus by obeying him. (Revelation 20:11-13) Those who return to life and do good things will be able to enjoy life forever on earth.—Read John 5:28, 29.

5. What does the resurrection tell us about Jehovah?

God made hope for the dead possible by sending his Son to die for us. So the resurrection tells us about Jehovah’s love and undeserved kindness. When the dead return to life, whom do you especially want to see?—Read John 3:16; Romans 6:23.

The patriarch Joseph on getting the mind of God:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

“Do Not Interpretations Belong to God?”

JOSEPH walked along the dark corridor, dripping with sweat from his toil in the stifling heat. Outside, the Egyptian sun was baking the prison like a kiln. It seemed at times as if he knew every brick in the place, every crack in every wall. This was his whole world now. True, he was highly regarded here. Nonetheless, he was a prisoner.

How often he must have cast his thoughts back to his life in the high rocky hills in Hebron, where he had tended his father’s flocks! He was about 17 years old when his father, Jacob, sent him on an errand that took him dozens of miles (km) from home. Such freedom seemed almost unimaginable now. Joseph’s jealous brothers had turned on him with murderous hatred and then sold him as a slave. He was taken down to Egypt, where he first served in the household of the Egyptian official Potiphar. Joseph held his master’s trust until a false accusation of rape from Potiphar’s wife landed him here in this prison. *—Genesis, chapters 37, 39.

Joseph was 28 years old now, with about a decade of slavery and imprisonment behind him. To put it mildly, his life was not turning out as he had hoped. Would he ever be set free? Would he see his dear elderly father again or his beloved younger brother, Benjamin? How long would he be stuck in this pit?


Have you ever felt as Joseph did? Sometimes life turns out to be a far cry from our youthful hopes. Indeed, painful situations can seem to drag on endlessly, and it can be hard to see a way out or a way to endure. Let us see what we can learn from the faith of Joseph.

“JEHOVAH CONTINUED WITH JOSEPH”

Joseph knew that his God, Jehovah, never lost sight of him, and this knowledge surely helped him to endure. Even here in a foreign prison, Jehovah found ways to bless Joseph. Thus, we read: “Jehovah continued with Joseph and kept showing loyal love to him and granting him favor in the eyes of the chief officer of the prison.” (Genesis 39:21-23) As Joseph continued to work hard, he kept giving his God a basis for blessing him. How comforting it must have been for him to know that Jehovah was always with him!

Did Jehovah intend to let Joseph remain in that prison indefinitely? Joseph could only guess at the answer, and he surely kept the matter before his God in prayer. As it so often happens, the answer came in a most unexpected way. One day, there was some commotion in the prison as two new inmates arrived—officers from Pharaoh’s personal staff. One was the king’s chief baker; the other was the chief cupbearer.—Genesis 40:1-3.


The chief of the guard entrusted Joseph with the care of those two formerly prominent  men. * One night they each had a vivid and puzzling dream. When Joseph saw them in the morning, he could tell that something was wrong. So he asked: “Why are your faces gloomy today?” (Genesis 40:3-7) Perhaps his kindly manner assured the men that it was safe for them to reveal their troubles. Joseph did not know it, but that conversation would lead to a turning point in his life. Would there have been any conversation, though, had Joseph not chosen to show a little kind concern for others? His choice may move us to ask ourselves, ‘Do I express my faith in God by showing an interest in fellow humans?’

The two men explained that they were agitated by their vivid and puzzling dreams—and by the fact that they had no interpreter with them. The Egyptians placed a lot of weight on dreams and depended heavily on the men who claimed to be able to interpret them. The two men did not know that their dreams had come from Joseph’s God, Jehovah. But Joseph knew. He assured them: “Do not interpretations belong to God? Relate it [the dream] to me, please.” (Genesis 40:8) Joseph’s words resound today for all sincere students of the Bible. If only every religious person showed the same humility! We need to be willing to set aside prideful human thinking and to rely on God as we seek correct interpretations of his word.—1 Thessalonians 2:13; James 4:6.

The cupbearer went first. He told Joseph of a dream about a vine with three twigs that bore clusters of grapes. The grapes ripened, and the cupbearer squeezed the juice into Pharaoh’s cup. Thanks to Jehovah, Joseph instantly knew the meaning behind the dream. He told the cupbearer that the three twigs meant three days; within that time, Pharaoh would restore the cupbearer to his former position. As relief swept over the cupbearer’s features, Joseph added this request: “Please show me loyal love and mention me to Pharaoh.” Joseph explained that he had been kidnapped from his home and imprisoned without just cause.—Genesis 40:9-15.

Encouraged by the good news the cupbearer had received, the baker asked Joseph the meaning of his own dream in which he had seen three baskets of bread as well as birds eating from one of the baskets on his head. The answer to this riddle was also given to Joseph. But it did not mean good news for the baker. Joseph said: “This is its interpretation: The three baskets are three days. Three days from now, Pharaoh will behead you  and will hang you on a stake, and the birds will eat your flesh from you.” (Genesis 40:16-19) Like all of God’s faithful servants, Joseph boldly revealed God’s messages, both the good news and the news of impending judgment.—Isaiah 61:2.


Three days later, Joseph’s words came true. Pharaoh held a birthday party—a practice not found among God’s people in Bible times—and pronounced judgment on his two servants. The baker was executed, just as Joseph had foretold, whereas the cupbearer was restored to his former position. Sadly, though, that neglectful man forgot all about Joseph.—Genesis 40:20-23.

“I NEED NOT BE CONSIDERED!”

Two full years passed. (Genesis 41:1) Imagine how frustrating that must have been for Joseph! Perhaps his hopes were high after Jehovah gave him the understanding of the puzzling dreams of the cupbearer and the baker. Thereafter, as each day dawned, Joseph may have awakened with renewed hope that this would be the day of his release—only to find once again that the dull routine of prison life dragged on, unchanged. Those two years might well have been the most challenging of all for Joseph to endure. Yet, he never gave up his trust in his God, Jehovah. Rather than giving in to despair, he was determined to endure, and he emerged from that trying time all the stronger.—James 1:4.

In these difficult times, who of us does not need to work on our endurance? In order to face life’s ongoing trials, we need the kind of determination, patience, and inner peace that only God can give us. As he did with Joseph, he can help us to fight despair and hold on to hope.—Romans 12:12; 15:13.

The cupbearer may have forgotten Joseph, but Jehovah never did. One night, he sent Pharaoh a pair of unforgettable dreams. In the first, the king saw seven fine-looking, fat cows emerge from the Nile River, followed by seven ugly, thin cows. The thin ones devoured the fat ones. Later, Pharaoh dreamed that he saw a stalk of grain sprouting seven choice ears. But then another seven ears, wind-parched and sickly, sprouted up and devoured the choice ones. In the morning, Pharaoh awoke deeply agitated over the dreams, so he called on all his wise men and magic-practicing priests to interpret them. They all failed. (Genesis 41:1-8) Whether that means that they were dumbfounded or that they came up with a variety of conflicting ideas, we do not know. At any rate, Pharaoh was let down—yet he was more desperate than ever to find an answer to this puzzle.

Finally, the cupbearer remembered Joseph! His conscience stung him, and he told Pharaoh about the remarkable young man in prison who two years earlier had correctly interpreted his dream and that of the baker. Immediately, Pharaoh had Joseph summoned from prison.—Genesis 41:9-13.


Imagine Joseph’s feelings as Pharaoh’s messengers came with the royal summons. He quickly changed his clothes and shaved—likely removing all the hair from his head, for such was the Egyptian custom. No doubt he prayed fervently that Jehovah would bless him in this interview! Soon he found himself in the opulent court of the royal palace, standing before the monarch. We read: “Then Pharaoh said to Joseph: ‘I had a dream, but there is no one to interpret it. Now I have heard it said about you that you can hear a dream and interpret it.’” Joseph’s response showed, once again, both his humility and his faith in his God: “I need not be considered! God will speak concerning Pharaoh’s welfare.”—Genesis 41:14-16.

Jehovah loves humble, faithful people, so it is no wonder that he gave Joseph the answer that had eluded the wise men and priests. Joseph explained that Pharaoh’s two dreams had the same meaning. By repeating the message, Jehovah was signifying that the matter was “firmly established”—absolutely sure of fulfillment. The fat cows and the healthy ears of grain represented seven years of plenty in Egypt, while the lean cows and the sickly ears of grain pictured seven years of famine that would follow the years  of plenty. That famine would devour the land’s abundance.—Genesis 41:25-32.


Pharaoh knew that Joseph had the answer. But what could be done? Joseph recommended a plan of action. Pharaoh needed to find a man both “discreet and wise” to oversee the gathering of the land’s surplus grain into storehouses during the seven years of plenty and then to distribute that surplus to the needy during the ensuing famine. (Genesis 41:33-36) Joseph’s experience and abilities more than qualified him for that job, but he did not promote himself. His humility made such a presumptuous course unthinkable; his faith made it unnecessary. If we have real faith in Jehovah, we have no need for ambition or self-promotion. We can be at peace, leaving matters in his capable hands!

“CAN ANOTHER MAN BE FOUND LIKE THIS ONE?”

Pharaoh and all his servants saw the wisdom in Joseph’s plan. The king also acknowledged that Joseph’s God was the real force behind Joseph’s wise words. He said to his servants there in the royal court: “Can another man be found like this one in whom there is the spirit of God?” To Joseph, he said: “Since God has caused you to know all of this, there is no one as discreet and wise as you. You will personally be over my house, and all my people will obey you implicitly. Only in my role as king will I be greater than you.”—Genesis 41:38-41.

Pharaoh was as good as his word. Joseph was soon clothed in fine linen. Pharaoh gave him a gold necklace, a signet ring, a royal chariot, and full authority to travel through the land and put his plan into effect. (Genesis 41:42-44) Within the space of a day, then, Joseph went from prison to palace. He awoke a lowly convict, and he fell asleep as the ruler second to Pharaoh. How clear that Joseph’s faith in Jehovah God was justified! Jehovah saw all the injustices that his servant had suffered through the years. He addressed those issues at just the right time and in just the right way. Jehovah had in mind not only correcting the wrongs done to Joseph but also preserving the future nation of Israel. We will see how that was so in a future article in this series.


If you face a trialsome situation, perhaps an injustice that seems to drag on for years on end, do not despair. Remember Joseph. Because he never lost his kindness, his humility, his endurance, and his faith, he gave Jehovah every reason to reward him in the end.

Even some Darwinist admit that the tree of life is fallen.

 As the Tree of Life Tumbles: Now, the "Public Goods" Hypothesis
Evolution News & Views


Even as Richard Dawkins informs presidential candidate Rick Perry that "evolution is a fact," many evolutionary biologists are quietly (or not so quietly) abandoning what Dawkins claims as the central aspect of that fact, namely, the Tree of Life (TOL) hypothesis. In his bestseller The Greatest Show on Earth (2009), Dawkins writes that "today we are pretty certain that all living creatures on this planet are descended from a single ancestor" (p. 408). But this textbook picture, widely accepted since Darwin's time, is increasingly being dumped by biologists, in favor of very different histories.

You can follow the action by visiting the lively open access journal  Biology Direct. This journal is exceptional because it includes the referee reports, along with the authors' replies to the referees, at the end of each paper. This admirable practice enables the reader to follow the details of scientific debate, usually hidden from public scrutiny.

As an example, check out a paper published this week (still in manuscript form), "The public goods hypothesis for the evolution of life on Earth," by four European evolutionary biologists (James McInerney, Eric Bapteste, Davide Pisani, and Mary J. O'Connell). McInerney et al. argue that the TOL is "becoming increasingly implausible." Although the TOL "has been stretched to fit the data" in various ways, "given our knowledge of the data, it seems that the elastic limit of the original hypothesis has been passed." Time to try a different picture.

To replace the TOL, McInerney et al. favor what they call "the public goods hypothesis." Borrowing a term from the economics Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, they argue that many (but not all) genes and proteins are "public goods," meaning entities that belong to no one in particular. These genes and proteins are thus available for use by all, and their presence in any lineage does not necessarily indicate common ancestry. As they explain,

According to this hypothesis, nucleotide sequences (genes, promoters, exons, etc.) are simply seen as goods, passed from organism to organism through both vertical and horizontal transfer. Public goods sequences are defined by having the properties of being largely non-excludable (no organism can be effectively prevented from accessing these sequences) and non-rival (while such a sequence is being used by one organism it is also available for use by another organism). The universal nature of genetic systems ensures that such non-excludable sequences exist and non-excludability explains why we see a myriad of genes in different combinations in sequenced genomes.

The radical consequences of this hypothesis are easy to imagine -- but we leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Complexity or bust?

"Irremediable Complexity"
Michael Behe 


An intriguing "hypothesis" paper entitled "How a neutral evolutionary ratchet can build cellular complexity"1, where the authors speculate about a possible solution to a possible problem, recently appeared in the journal IUBMB Life. It is an expanded version of a short essay called "Irremediable Complexity?"2 published last year in Science. The authors of the manuscripts include the prominent evolutionary biologist W. Ford Doolittle.

The gist of the paper is this. The authors think that over evolutionary time, neutral processes would tend to "complexify" the cell. They call that theoretical process "constructive neutral evolution" (CNE). In an amusing analogy they liken cells in this respect to human institutions:

Organisms, like human institutions, will become ever more ''bureaucratic,'' in the sense of needlessly onerous and complex, if we see complexity as related to the number of necessarily interacting parts required to perform a function, as did Darwin. Once established, such complexity can be maintained by negative selection: the point of CNE is that complexity was not created by positive selection.2
In brief, the idea is that neutral interactions evolve serendipitously in the cell, spread in a population by drift, get folded into a system, and then can't be removed because their tentacles are too interconnected. It would be kind of like trying to circumvent the associate director of licensing delays in the Department of Motor Vehicles -- can't be done.
The possible problem the authors are trying to address is that they think many systems in the cell are needlessly complex. For example, the spliceosome, which "splices" some RNAs (cuts a piece out of the middle of a longer RNA and stitches the remaining pieces together), is a huge conglomerate containing "five small RNAs (snRNAs) and >300 proteins, which must be assembled de novo and then disassembled at each of the many introns interrupting the typical nascent mRNA."1 What's more, some RNAs don't need the spliceosome -- they can splice themselves, without any assistance from proteins. So why use such an ungainly assemblage if a simpler system would do?

The authors think the evolution of such a complex is well beyond the powers of positive natural selection: "Even Darwin might be reluctant to advance a claim that eukaryotic spliceosomal introns remove themselves more efficiently or accurately from mRNAs than did their self-splicing group II antecedents, or that they achieved this by 'numerous, successive, slight modifications' each driven by selection to this end."1

Well, I can certainly agree with them about the unlikelihood of Darwinian processes putting together something as complex as the spliceosome. However, leaving aside the few RNAs involved in the splicesome, I think their hypothesis of CNE as the cause for the interaction of hundreds of proteins -- or even a handful -- is quite implausible. (An essay skeptical of large claims for CNE, written from a Darwinian-selectionist viewpoint, has appeared recently3 along with a response from the authors4).

The authors' rationale for how a protein drifts into becoming part of a larger complex is illustrated by Figure 1 of their recent paper (similar to the single figure in their Science essay). A hypothetical "Protein A" is imagined to be working just fine on its own, when hypothetical "Protein B" serendipitously mutates to bind to it. This interaction, postulate the authors, is neutral, neither helping nor harming the ability of Protein A to do its job. Over the generations Protein A eventually suffers a mutation which would have decreased or eliminated its activity. However, because of the fact that Protein B is bound to it, the mutation does not harm the activity of Protein A. This is still envisioned to be a neutral interaction by the authors, and organisms containing the Protein A-Protein B complex drift to fixation in the population. Then other mutations come along, co-adapting the structures of Protein A and Protein B to each other. At this point the AB complex is necessary for the activity of Protein A. Repeat this process several hundred more times with other proteins, and you've built up a protein aggregate with complexity of the order of the spliceosome.

Is this a reasonable hypothesis? I don't mean to be unkind, but I think that the idea seems reasonable only to the extent that it is vague and undeveloped; when examined critically it quickly loses plausibility. The first thing to note about the paper is that it contains absolutely no calculations to support the feasibility of the model. This is inexcusable. The mutation rates of various organisms -- viral, prokaryotic, eukaryotic -- are known to sufficient accuracy5 that estimates of how frequently the envisioned mutations arrive could have been provided. The neutral theory of evolution is also well-developed6, which would allow the authors to calculate how long it would take for the postulated neutral mutations to spread in a population. Yet no numbers -- not even back-of-the-envelope calculations -- are provided. Previous results by other workers7-9 have shown that the development of serendipitous specific binding sites between proteins would be expected to be quite rare, and to involve multiple mutations. Kimura6 showed that fixation of a mutation by neutral drift would be expected to take a looong time. Neither of these previous results bodes well for the authors' hypothesis.

The second thing to notice about the paper is that there is no experimental support for its hypothesis. As the authors point out:

Development of in vitro experimental systems with which to test CNE will be an important step forward in distinguishing complex biology that arose due to adaptation versus nonadaptive complexity, as part of a larger view to understand the interplay between neutral and adaptive evolution, such as the intriguing long-term evolution experiments of Lenski and coworkers.1
Yet no such experimental evolutionary results have been reported to my knowledge, either by Lenski or by other workers.10
Besides the lack of support from calculations or experiments, the authors discuss no possible obstacles to the scheme. I certainly understand that workers want to accentuate the positive when putting a new model forward, but potential pitfalls should be pointed out, so that other researchers have a clearer idea of the promise of the model before they invest time in researching it.

The first possible pitfall comes at the first step of the model, where a second protein is postulated to bind in a neutral fashion to a working protein. How likely is that step to be neutral? At the very least, we now have two proteins, A and B, that now have a large part of their surfaces obstructed that weren't before. Will this interfere with their activities? It seems there is a good chance. Second, simply by Le Chatelier's principle the binding of the two proteins must affect the free energies of their folded states. What's more, the flexibility of both proteins must be affected. Will these individual effects serendipitously cancel out so that the overall effect will be neutral? It seems like an awful lot to ask for without evidence.

In the next step of the model Protein A is supposed to suffer a mutation that would have caused it to lose activity, but, luckily, when it is bound to Protein B it is stabilized enough so that activity is retained. What fraction of possible mutations to Protein A would fall in that range? It seems like a very specialized subfraction. Looking at the flip side, what fraction of mutations to Protein A and/or Protein B which otherwise would not have caused A to lose activity will now do so because of its binding to Protein B?

The last step of the model is the "co-adaptation" of the two proteins, where other, complementary mutations occur in both proteins. Yet this implies that the protein complex must suffer deleterious mutations at least every other step, provoking the "co-adaptive" mutation to fix in the population. Wouldn't these deleterious mutations be very unlikely to spread in the population?

Finally, multiply these problems all by a hundred to get a spliceosome. Or, rather, raise these problems to the hundredth power. But, then, why stop at a hundred? As the authors note approvingly:

Indeed, because CNE is a ratchet-like process that does not require positive selection, it will inevitably occur in self-replicating, error prone systems exhibiting sufficient diversity, unless some factor prevents it.1
Why shouldn't the process continue, folding in more and more proteins, until the cell congeals? I suppose the authors would reply, "some factor prevents it." But might not that factor kick in at the first or second step? The authors give us no reason to think it wouldn't.
The CNE model (at least on the scale envisioned by the authors) faces other problems as well (for example, it would be a whole lot easier to develop binding sites for metal ions or metabolites that are present in the cell at much higher concentrations than most proteins), but I think this is enough to show it may not be as promising as the article would have one believe.

Besides the model itself, it is interesting to look at a professed aspect of the motivation of the authors in proposing it. It may not have escaped your notice, dear reader, that "irremediable complexity" sort of sounds like "irreducible complexity." In fact, the authors put the model forward as their contribution to the good fight against "antievolutionists":

... continued failure to consider CNE alternatives impoverishes evolutionary discourse and, by oversimplification, actually makes us more vulnerable to critiques by antievolutionists, who like to see such complexity as ''irreducible.''1
So there you have it. The authors don't think Darwin can explain such complexity as is found in the proteasome, and they apparently rule out intelligent design. (By the way, when will these folks ever grasp the fact that intelligent design is not "antievolution"?) "Irremediable complexity" seems to be all that's left, no matter how unsupported and problematic it may be.
Although the authors seem not to notice, their entire model is built on a classic argument from ignorance, beginning with the definition of irremediable complexity:

''irremediable complexity'': the seemingly gratuitous, indeed bewildering, complexity that typifies many cellular subsystems and molecular machines, particularly in eukaryotes.1
"Seemingly gratuitous." In other words, the authors don't know of a function for the complexity of some eukaryotic subsystems; therefore, they don't have functions. Well the history of arguments asserting that something or other in biology is functionless is pretty grim. More, the history of assertions that even "simple" things (like, say, DNA, pre-1930) in the cell either don't have a function or are just supporting structures is abysmal. Overwhelmingly, progress in biology has consisted of finding new and ever-more-sophisticated properties of systems that had been thought simple. If apparently simple systems are much more complex than they initially seemed, I would bet heavily against the hypothesis that apparently complex systems are much simpler than they appear.
References
1. Lukes, J., J. M. Archibald, P. J. Keeling, W. F. Doolittle, and M. W. Gray, 2011 How a neutral evolutionary ratchet can build cellular complexity. IUBMB Life 63: 528-537.
2. Gray, M. W., J. Lukes, J. M. Archibald, P. J. Keeling, and W. F. Doolittle, 2010 Cell biology. Irremediable complexity? Science 330: 920-921.
3. Speijer, D., 2011 Does constructive neutral evolution play an important role in the origin of cellular complexity? Making sense of the origins and uses of biological complexity. Bioessays 33: 344-349.
4. Doolittle, W. F., J. Lukes, J. M. Archibald, P. J. Keeling, and M. W. Gray, 2011 Comment on "Does constructive neutral evolution play an important role in the origin of cellular complexity?" Bioessays 33: 427-429.
5. Drake, J. W., B. Charlesworth, D. Charlesworth, and J. F. Crow, 1998 Rates of spontaneous mutation. Genetics 148: 1667-1686.
6. Kimura M., 1983 The neutral theory of molecular evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
7. Nissim, A., H. R. Hoogenboom, I. M. Tomlinson, G. Flynn, C. Midgley, D. Lane, and G. Winter, 1994 Antibody fragments from a 'single pot' phage display library as immunochemical reagents. EMBO Journal 13: 692-698.
8. Griffiths, A. D., S. C. Williams, O. Hartley, I. M. Tomlinson, P. Waterhouse, W. L. Crosby, R. E. Kontermann, P. T. Jones, N. M. Low, T. J. Allison, and G. Winter, 1994 Isolation of high affinity human antibodies directly from large synthetic repertoires. EMBO Journal 13: 3245-3260.
9. Smith, G. P., S. U. Patel, J. D. Windass, J. M. Thornton, G. Winter, and A. D. Griffiths, 1998 Small binding proteins selected from a combinatorial repertoire of knottins displayed on phage. Journal of Molecular Biology 277: 317-332.
10. Behe, M. J., 2010 Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-function Mutations, and "The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution". Quarterly Review of Biology 85: 1-27.

Mr. Berlinski on why many mathematicians are sceptical re:the canonisation of Darwin.

Darwin and the Mathematicians

David Berlinski November 7, 2009 7:00 AM

ENV: In the past, you've remarked about mathematicians and their opinions of Darwin's theory of evolution. They were skeptical, you said; very skeptical. John Von Neumann was an example. How do you know that about him and about other mathematicians?

DB: How do I know? Here's how:

I have been close to a number of mathematicians, and friends with others: Daniel Gallin (who died before he could begin his career), M.P. Schutzenberger (my great friend), René Thom (a friend as well), Gian-Carlo Rota (another friend), Lipman Bers (who taught me complex analysis and with whom I briefly shared a hospital room, he leaving as I was coming), Paul Halmos (a colleagues in California), and Irving Segal (a friend by correspondence, embattled and distraught). Some of these men I admired very much, and all of them I liked.

I had many other friends in the international mathematical community. Weexchanged views; I got around.

Among the mathematicians that I knew from very roughly 1970 to 1995, the general attitude toward Darwin's theory was one of skepticism. These days, I do not get around all that much, and whatever the mathematician's pulse, I do not have my finger on it. But the reactions of which I speak were hardly surprising. Until recently, mathematicians have been skeptical of any discipline beyond mathematics, and I say until recently because attitudes as well as times have changed.

In talking of the mathematician's skepticism, I mentioned Von Neumann because his name was widely known. I might have mentioned Gian-Carlo Rota. He despised the enveloping air of worship associated with Darwin; he thought biology primitive and dishonest.

How do I know this? I know it because we were close friends, and because he said so. He said so to me.

Gian-Carlo had, in fact, read closely one of my unpublished papers on Darwinian evolution. Written in late 1970, during my stay at IIASA (the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), my essay later made its way into Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic & Luck, stripped by then of almost all of its technical details.

A few mathematicians at IIASA had already read what I had written; they had, after all, encouraged me to write it. When we met later in the year, Gian-Carlo offered me his delighted agreement, which he extended in the spirit ofit's about time; he urged me to keep at it; he considered publishing my essay in his journal; but after some back and forth between us, he decided that it would be best were I never to publish another word on the subject.

Gian-Carlo was a man of very refined political sensibilities.

It is a mistake to read back into the recent past the political and emotional structure of discussions now current.

Reading things backwards is vulgar as intellectual history and false to the facts -- vulgar because it assigns an aspect of permanence to our own obsessions; and false because it distorts the play of forces playing just a few decades ago.

In the first part of the 20th century, Darwin v. Dissent had not yet acquired its riveting incarnation as a melodrama of intolerance. No heresy, no heretics is a useful proverb, and using, say, 1950 as a reference point, there were no heretics among the mathematicians because there was yet no heresy. Darwin's theory was not then considered totemic; and his touch was not widely understood to cure erysipelas. Darwin v. Dissent is of our time and place.

Now Von Neumann turned from pure mathematics in the 1940s and the early 1950s. Like so many other mathematicians and physicists, he regarded the theory of evolution as a place holder, the full and so the real theory waiting somewhere in the wings of time.

When Erwin Schrödinger published What is Life? in 1944, he electrified the mathematicians and the physicists; and he influenced profoundly biologists such as Francis Crick, the latter a form of Rural Electrification, I suppose. Schrödinger's impact is easy to understand: He gave biologists a set of ideas that they had been unable to give themselves.

"How can the events in space and time," Schrödinger asked, "which take place within the spatial boundary of living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry."

These words were written in 1944, just sixty-six years ago.

"The preliminary answer which this little book will endeavor to expound," Schrödinger went on to say, ... "can be summarized as follows: the obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for such events is no reason at all for doubting that they can be accounted for by those scientists.''

I have placed in italics words that establish Schrödinger attitude. I do not know which word to stress more: The obviousness of an inability, or theinability of an obviousness.

So I have stressed them together. They reflect the attitude of mathematicians and physicists toward biology during the 1940s, 1950s, and at least a part of the 1960s.

Having asked for a clue, Schrödinger found one on his own. He predicted the existence of a code script, one governing heredity. Just eight years later, Watson and Crick published the first of their two great papers on the structure of DNA.

Everyone took notice, the biologists because Schrödinger had been prophetic, and the mathematicians and physicists because Schrödinger had been one of their own.

These remarks belong to the considerable category of things that must be kept in mind.

So keep them in mind.

What was it that comprised Von Neumann's skepticism about evolution?

It was an attitude in three aspects. Von Neumann, in the first place, saw what mathematicians had seen since Darwin first published his theory. The theory required life to clamber over some very sobering improbabilities; indeed, it seemed to require miracles. Other mathematicians were making the same point. "[T]he formation within geological time of a human body," Kurt Gödel remarked in conversation with Hao Wang, "by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components."

Note the word geological. Gödel, like everyone else, quite understood that Darwin's theory played out over long stretches of time. He might even have grasped the concept of natural selection, commonly said to be too difficult for all but a handful of initiates. He was skeptical nonetheless. It was precisely to do battle against this kind of skepticism that Richard Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker. His proximate target may have been the physicist, Fred Hoyle, but his general target was a whole climate of opinion current among mathematicians and physicists.

Von Neumann, in the second place, thought Darwin's theory inadequate. He thought the theory inadequate because the theory did not yet exist. This is as inadequate as it gets. What did exist lacked the fundamentals. It answered no questions. It had no depth. And it was largely anecdotal. This sense of anecdotal has nothing to do with the idea of just-so stories made popular by Lewontin and Gould. Darwin's theory was anecdotal, Von Neumann suggested, because it lacked the rich and productive concepts that only mathematicians could provide the sciences.

Writing in the 1967 Wistar Symposium, Murray Eden offered a fine sense of the way in which mathematicians and physicists thought Darwin's theory inadequate. "...[T]he continuity of evolution does not demonstrate that natural laws are operative, for the laws are not known."

Murray then added a most useful analogy. "It is," he wrote referring to Darwin's theory, "as if some pre-Newtonian cosmologist had proposed a theory of planetary motion which supposed that natural force of unknown origin held the planets to their courses."

Just so. This is what Darwin's theory is like; and it was how it appeared to a great many mathematicians and physicists.

And then Murray added a demurral. "The supposition is right enough and the idea of a force between two celestial bodies is a very useful one, but it is hardly a theory."

Far from being controversial among mathematicians in the 1940s and 1950s, a sense of the inadequacy of Darwin's theory was widespread.

And there is a third and final component to Von Neumann's skepticism, this one no more than a hint. To say that Von Neumann was skeptical of Darwin's theory is not to say that he was a supporter of intelligent design. I have no reason to think so. I know nothing about his religious views. Yet there is a curious remark he made to Stan Ulam. I suspect that he made the remark at the end of his life. Von Neumann pointed to a house in the distance and remarked to Ulam how absurd it would be to think that the house just assembled itself. The men were discussing Darwin's theory. It was not simply a doubt about improbability to which Von Neumann gave voice: It was a more general susurrus of discontent. The remark suggests that just possibly Von Neumann's sensibility had undergone a change. Ulam never said anything more to Marco and Marco never said anything more to me.

There remains nonetheless that air of intellectual poignancy. Perhaps Von Neumann was aware of his impending death.

So much for what mathematicians thought and think; so much for what Von Neumann thought and thank.

I now pass to the point of this exercise. Where did I get my information? Let me tell you. I got my information about Von Neumann from the horse's mouth, the horse one step removed from the horse himself.

Quite obviously I did not know Von Neumann personally. He was too old and I too young ever to have met. So what I know of views I know at second hand. I know it from my friends.

Stanislaw Ulam was close to von Neuman -- very close; and Ulam was also close to Marco and Gian-Carlo Rota -- very close again. They were close enough to share their views. I knew Marco and Gian-Co very well; and they were close friends of mine.

Since Marco and I were writing a book together about evolution, our interest in Von Neuman's views was natural. Natural, but not consuming. It was a part of the chatter, and it would be wrong to suppose that our curiosity was anything more than curiosity. The subject came up. What had Von Neumann thought? We discussed it. Von Neumann stories were told, as they always were.

Let me fix the time and place:

The winter of 1979 - 1980.

Paris.

And again a year later in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, where I gave a lecture and Gian-Carlo acted as my host and the source for further stories.

When this issue first emerged, I was asked for references. I am not a Von Neumann scholar, and I have not consulted any of the sources. What I know of Von Neumann's views, I know from his friends. But what I know is entirely consistent with the development of his own ideas. Von Neumann's work on self-reproducing automata is an interesting attempt to make good the deficiencies of a theory that he understood had deficiencies and needed remedying, a demonstration of the thesis, left unremarked, unanalyzed and unstated in Darwin's theory, that a self-reproducing automata is logically possible. It fills one hole.

Ulam's paper 'On some mathematical problems suggested by problems in biology,' fills another hole. In it he introduced what he called a "biological metric space" into theoretical biology. The date is 1970. The place is the Rockefeller Institute. And the idea, by the way, is pure Marco. Ulam's paper marks his indifference to the dominant paradigm of Sewell Wright's population genetics. Gone are both Euclidean metrics and Wright's very elaborate apparatus of differential equations.

Whether a theory with quite so many holes in its plush is worth mending is another question entirely.

When the issue of Von Neumann's views appeared in the Bogosphere, Douglas Theobold, a contributor to the Panda's Thumb, much occupied in discharging his indignation, wrote a little post. Von Neumann had apparently said something: "I shudder," Von Neumann wrote in a letter to George Gamow, "at the thought that highly purposive organizational elements, like the protein, should originate in a random process."

Having shuddered, Von Neumann apparently got hold of himself. "Yet many efficient (?) and purposive (??) media, e.g., language, or the national economy, also look statistically controlled, when viewed from a suitably limited aspect. On balance, I would therefore say that your argument is quite strong."

"This," Theobold writes, "may be the ultimate source of many of the claims that von Neumann was anti-evo."

It may well be, but it is not my source as I have explained in detail.

Still, what lends to this exchange its lurid aspect is that having shuddered, Von Neumann might have kept right on shuddering, for if Von Neumann was criticizing Gamow's theories about protein formation, he was right to do so because Gamow's theories were wrong.

And there is the final, the inimitable, touch. I have never claimed that Von Neumann was "anti-evo."

What an idea. No one is. What I did claim is that like so many others, Von Neumann was profoundly skeptical about Darwin's theory of evolution.

And I have just said why.

Check out David Berlinski's newest book, The Deniable Darwin

What's in a name?

                                 

Jehovah" in the NT

A number of anti-Watchtower writers take delight in "exposing" the "fraudulent" use of Jehovah in the NT by the NWT translators. They correctly point out that none of the still existing MSS of the NT use the divine name. Therefore, they claim it is a terrible dishonest act to replace that name where it should have been (in NT quotes from the OT which originally used it, for example.)

But, if we know it belongs there. And if we know the MSS we have today were copies of copies, etc., written hundreds of years after the originals, and therefore may well have been changed when the name became a hated "Jewish" name to "Christians" (around 135 A.D.). Why is it considered so terribly wrong to restore, for the sake of clarity if nothing else, the name we know belongs there.

Does the fact that the name is not in the text used today mean that it should not be used in the places where the term "Lord" now is, even if that term produces confusion? ("Lord" can be used for God, Jesus, and men. "Jehovah" can be used only for God!)

What about other, trinitarian-respected Bibles? Would they be accused of terrible crimes against God, misuse of God's inspired word, deliberate mistranslation, etc. if they added a personal name to their translation for clarity or to make some other point, when it wasn't actually in the NT text to begin with?

Well, let's look at John 12:41 as an example. The scripture says in the available manuscripts: "Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him."

This could be understood to mean God's glory or Jesus' glory. Whether for clarity or to try to make a trinitarian point here, Some respected trinitarian Bibles replace "he" or "him" with "Jesus"! See, for example, NIV; NJB; and NAB ('70).

We see the same thing, probably just to make it clear to the readers what was probably intended, at Mark 1:41, 45 (as well as other places throughout the NT.)

Mark 1:41 says in the Greek text: "And being moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him". But look what these respected trinitarian Bibles write here instead:

KJV - "Jesus , moved with compassion, put forth his hand"

NKJV – "Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand"

NIV – "Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand"

NRSV – "Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand"

REB – "Jesus was moved to anger; he stretched out his hand"

NEB – "In warm indignation Jesus stretched out his hand"

JB - "Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand"

NJB – "Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand"

So, have these respected trinitarian translations been accused of terrible crimes against God, misuse of God's inspired word, deliberate mistranslation, etc. because they have added a personal name to their translation which was not in the original Greek text?

Let's do one more that's near by, Mark 1:45 (there are plenty more). The Greek says:

"… the man started to proclaim it … so that he was not able to enter openly into the city".

NASB – "to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city"

KJV – "… insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city"

NKJV – "So that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city"

NIV – "As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly"

RSV – "So that Jesus* could no longer openly enter a town"

NRSV – "so that Jesus* could no longer go into a town openly"

REB - "until Jesus could no longer show himself in any town."

NEB - "until Jesus could no longer show himself in any town,"

JB - "so that Jesus could no longer go openly into any town"

NJB - "so that Jesus could no longer go openly into any town"

NAB ('91) – "so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly."

MLB - "so widely that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly"

* "Greek he"

Again, have all these respected trinitarian translations been accused of terrible crimes against God, misuse of God's inspired word, deliberate mistranslation, etc. because they have added a personal name to their translation which was not in the original Greek text? Of course not!

The following is my reply to a letter from a Bible-studying acquaintance: 

Dear Harvey,

You wrote in your 27 May `94 letter [p. 4, HARVEY-H]:

"Since the name `Jehovah' is never used in the New Testament at any time or in any place in thousands of manuscripts early or late, not by Jesus or any other, I see no evidence -- none whatsoever -- to support the idea that the use of this name is essential. I'm just going by the evidence. This is not to say that the use of the name Jehovah is inappropriate because it has Biblical antecedents. ....

"When the theory was first propounded ... that the name `Jehovah' was originally part of the Greek New Testament—but later expunged—it was before the Egyptian papyrus texts had come to light or been published.

....

"In the late 20^th century because of our increased state of knowledge this 19^th century thesis is no longer tenable; we have early texts, as early as 125 A. D. and we have different text-types. And evidence of systematic tampering of this nature is not there."

I agree that most of the physical evidence found in existing NT manuscripts does not support "Jehovah" in the NT, and, ordinarily that would be enough for me. But what makes such a difference to me is the belief that BOTH "Testaments" are the word of God and must not contradict each other in important areas of knowledge.

We can accept both "Testaments" as the inspired word of God and still see understandable differences occurring between the two, but not basiccontradictory differences. For example, we know how and why animal sacrifices to God have been done away with. It has been carefully, logically explained in the NT and, therefore, does not contradict the OT teachings where such sacrifices were required (essential). But where is the careful, logical explanation that shows that the necessary knowledge and use of God's name (as clearly acknowledged by word and example throughout the OT) was done away with in the NT? It's not there! How can it be that God reveals his personal name and commands that it be publicly acknowledged and used forever by his servants (and they respectfully do so for over a thousand years) and then, for no scriptural reason, His worshipers suddenly begin refusing to use that name and even hide it?

I see the solution to the issue of God's name in the NT as similar to the solution for the question of Zechariah 12:10 which you acknowledged as a "disputed" text. We may not find the physical evidence in OT manuscripts to prove that Zech 12:10 originally read "They will look upon him whom they have pierced..." (in fact the majority of existing MS evidence for the OT points the other way). But the clear, undisputed (even by the trinitarians' "Majority" Text or the Byzantine, or Received Text, etc.) physical evidence of the NT where this OT scripture is quoted exactly that way (Jn 19:37) is proof for me that that is what was originally written in the OT as well. I don't see how anyone (even a trinitarian) who agrees that both "Testaments" are the inspired word of God could honestly disagree no matter how much he wants to believe the trinitarian interpretation of Zech. 12:10. The undisputed proof of the one testimony makes the other (more doubtful) one certain also!

I hope you agree that the inspired OT writers, at least, considered God's Holy Name (YHWH, "Jehovah" in traditional English transliteration or "Yahweh" in another transliteration) as essential. It was used and praised and revered in the OT to an overwhelming degree. It was reverently used nearly 7000 times, much more than any other name in the entire Bible or any title used for God ("God," "Lord," etc.). It was declared to be of essential importance (not in a magical, superstitious sense, but as an essential ingredient in the knowledge of the only true God and in proper worship of him):

Ex. 3:15 -

"Jehovah ... This is my name for ever; this is my title in every generation."-NEB.

"Jehovah, .... This is My name forever and by this I am to be remembered through all generations." - MLB.

"Jehovah ... This is my eternal name, to be used throughout all generations." -LB.

"Jehovah ... this is my name forever." - Byington.

"Jehovah, ... this is my name forever" - ASV.

"Jehovah ... this is My name forever" - KJIIV and MKJV.

"Jehovah, .... This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." - Darby.

"Yahweh .... This has always been my name, and this shall remain my title throughout the ages." - AT.

"Yahweh .... This is my name for all time, and thus I am to be invoked for all generations to come." - JB & NJB.

"By this name I am to be remembered by all people for all time." - NLV.

"My name will always be YAHWEH." - ETRV.

This scripture alone shows us that His name is essential! Those who worship him, the witnesses of Jehovah, are commanded to know and use it. There are many other Scriptures, however. A few of them are:

1 Chron. 16:8 -

"O give thanks unto Jehovah, call upon his name; Make known his doings among the peoples." - ASV.

"Give thanks to Yahweh, call his name aloud, proclaim his deeds to the peoples [`among the nations' - NAB (1991); MLB; GNB; `world' - LB]." - NJB.

"O give thanks to Jehovah, call upon His name" - KJIIV.

"Give thanks to Jehovah, call in His name" - Young's.

"Invoke him by name" - REB.

"... call upon him by his name" - The Septuagint, Zondervan Publ., 1970.

"Praise [Jehovah]; call on His name" – The Tanakh

Is. 12:4 -

"And in that day shall ye say, Give thanks unto Jehovah, call upon his name, declare his doings among the peoples, make mention that his name is exalted." - ASV.

"And, that day, you will say, `Praise Yahweh, invoke his name. Proclaim his deeds to the people [`nations', RSV, NRSV, MLB, NAB (1991), GNB; `world', LB], declare his name sublime.'" - NJB.

"call his name aloud." - JB.

"invoke him by name" - NEB & REB.

"call aloud upon his name" [Boate to onoma autou, literally: "call aloud his name"] - The Septuagint, Zondervan Publ., 1970.

"Praise [Jehovah], proclaim His name" - Tanakh.

Zeph. 3:9 -

"For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve him with one consent." - ASV.

"Yes, then [the last days] I shall purge the lips of the peoples, so that all mayinvoke the name of Yahweh." - NJB, c.f. JB.

"That they may invoke [Jehovah] by name" - NEB & REB.

"call out the name of [Jehovah]." - ETRV.

"So that they all invoke [Jehovah] by name" – Tanakh.

Joel 2:26, 32 -

"And ye ... shall praise the name of Jehovah your God .... And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered." - ASV.

"You will ... praise the name of Yahweh your God .... All who call on [`invoke' - REB & NEB] the name of Yahweh will be saved" - JB & NJB.

"you shall … praise the name of [Jehovah] your God …. But everyone who invokes the name of [Jehovah] shall escape" – The Tanakh (Joel 2:26; 3:5)

Here, like knowing God (Jn 17:3; 2 Thess. 1:8, 9), calling on (or invoking) Jehovah's name is an essential part of the road that leads to life.

Since it is a requirement to call upon, or invoke the name Jehovah, the knowledge and use of that name is essential (as made known in the OT at least)!  And, like knowing God, "calling upon his name, Jehovah" includes much more than merely pronouncing his name aloud in prayer. But, nevertheless, it does necessarily include the knowledge of and the respectful use of his personal name, Jehovah (or Yahweh).

For example, Elijah, in his famous demonstration of who the only true God is, told the priests of Baal,

"Call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of Jehovah: and the God that answers by fire, let him be God."

So how did the priests of Baal call on the name of their god?

"And they ... called on the name of Baal ... saying `O Baal, hear us.'" [And how did Elijah call on the name of Jehovah?] "O Jehovah .... Hear me, O Jehovah, hear me, that this people may know that thou, Jehovah, art God.... And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said [aloud, uncoded, in plain language], `Jehovah, he is God'" - ASV, 1 Ki. 18:24, 26, 36-39.

Obviously, calling on (or invoking) the name of Jehovah includes the reverent use of that only personal name of the true God!

Many other scriptures throughout the OT declare the extreme importance (to God and us) of our knowing and declaring and calling upon the name Jehovah:

Jer. 16:19, 21 -

"O Jehovah ... unto thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Our fathers have inherited nought but lies ... and they will know that my name is Jehovah." - ASV.

"and they shall know that My name is Jehovah." - KJIIV & MKJV.

"and they will be certain that my name is [Jehovah]." - BBE.

"and they shall know that my name is Jehovah." - Darby.

"and they shall know that my name is JEHOVAH." - Webster.

"and they shall learn that My name is [Jehovah]. – Tanakh.

Zech. 13:9 -

"They shall call upon my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say [aloud, uncoded, in plain language], Jehovah is my God." - ASV.

"They shall call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, It is My people, and they shall say, Jehovah is my God." - KJIIV.

"They shall call on my name, and I will answer them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God." - Darby.

"They will invoke me by name, … And they will declare, [Jehovah] is our God" – Tanakh.

Notice the parallelism: `They shall call upon my name' is paralleled with `Jehovah is my God."

Ezek. 39:7 -

"And my holy name will I make known ... and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah" - ASV.

"The nations will know that I am Yahweh" - NJB.

"I will make My holy name known among My people Israel, and never again will I let My holy name be profaned. And the nations shall know that I [Jehovah] am holy in Israel." – Tanakh.

Ps. 83:16, 18 -

"Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, [O Jehovah].... that men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth." - KJV.

"Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name .... Let them be ashamed and troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame, and lost; so that men may know that Your name is JEHOVAH, that You alone are the Most High over all the earth." - MKJV.

"Cover their faces with shame so that they seek Your name, O [Jehovah] …. May they know that Your name, Yours alone, is [Jehovah], supreme over all the earth." – Tanakh.

Ps. 135:13 -

"Thy name, O Jehovah, endureth forever; Thy memorial name, O Jehovah, throughout all generations" - ASV.

"Thy name, O Jehovah, is for ever; thy memorial, O Jehovah, from generation to generation." - Darby.

"O Jehovah, your name endures forever" - LB.

"O [Jehovah], your name endures forever" – Tanakh.

We are to know and use Jehovah's name, but we must not misunderstand how extremely important it is to Him (and to us). One of God's Ten Commandments, for example commands:

"You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses [1] his name." - Ex. 20:7, NJB [also NRSV, NIV, NEB, REB, GNB, CEV, NLV, ETRV].

God certainly didn't say, "Don't ever use my Holy Name"! By direct Bible statements and commands and by the clear, thousand-fold repeated examples of all the prophets of God in the OT we know that God's Holy Name must be known and used by his people - for all generations. Instead, this Scripture shows the extreme importance of that name (would God really punish anyone who deceitfully misuses his name if that name weren't extremely important?) and that it must be used in a manner that shows its great importance.

(Please comment on the undeniable removal of God's personal name by "Christian" translators from thousands of places in the OT where the inspired Bible writers originally placed it! After all, for hundreds of translations - in the last few centuries at least - we can see the actual Hebrew OT manuscripts which the "orthodox" translators used and compare that with their actual translations which have God's name removed!

Honestly, isn't this a terrible misuse of his Memorial Name? Isn't this "Christian" tradition inexcusable? How can it be supported by any Christian? How could it even be quietly condoned? Doesn't it illustrate a basic error that the vast majority of Christendom has embraced for many centuries? The complete elimination of the name of the "Hebrew" God has been a goal of the majority of Christendom for so long that its beginning is all but lost in the shrouded mist of time. But for Christendom to claim that this was the case from the very beginning of Christianity is a terrible thing to do.)

Malachi 2:2; 3:16, 17 -

"Unless you listen to me and pay heed to the honouring of my name, says [Jehovah], I shall lay a curse on you .... A record was written before [Jehovah] of those who feared him and had respect for his name. They will be mine, says [Jehovah] ... and I shall spare them" - REB.

(Doesn't the removal of Jehovah's name from the inspired scriptures display a clear lack of respect for his Holy Name? How could there be a more blatant misuse of his Name?)

I don't understand how anyone can deny the extreme importance of God's eternal, holy name in the OT nor that that name was used respectfully much more than any other name (nearly 7000 times) throughout the OT. Nor that God foretold that it would have to be known worldwide by all the nations. And that name was YHWH in the OT! Nor can I understand anyone honestly refusing to admit that YHWH simply does not translate nor transliterate, by any stretch of the imagination, into "Lord"!

Therefore, if we translate YHWH to its most probable equivalent ("He Who Will Be [With You]") or transliterate it into a possible Hebrew form ("Yahweh" or "Yahowah" - see the PRONOUNCE study) or even its traditional English form ("Jehovah" - to match the traditional English form of "Jesus")[2] and leave it where it was actually placed by the inspired OT writers, that is not only good but essential.

............................................

What are we doing if we purposely change the inspired scriptures; if we purposely remove an essentially important word 7000 times from the inspired Scriptures (and add words and meanings not intended in the original)? We are not just interpreting and translating, but we are actually disobeying God's clear commandments concerning his Most Holy Name and disobeying his clear commandments concerning adding to and taking away from his inspired word! How can this possibly be Christian (whether it started in the 2^nd century or the 17^th century)?

And if Jesus (the Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking Palestinian Jew) quotes from the OT to his fellow Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking Jews, he is not going to do it from the Greek Septuagint! He is going to do it from the scrolls found in the temple in Jerusalem (or copies thereof): the Hebrew Scriptures!

"...the Hebrew text, ... was the only authoritative form of the scriptures recognized by the Palestinian Jews." - p. 168, Vol. 2, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan Publ., 1987. (In any case even the Septuagint at this time in Palestine also used the Divine Name in Hebrew characters.)

When Jesus quotes Ps. 110:1, he will say "Jehovah said unto my lord, `Sit thou on my right hand...'." - Matthew 22:44. (Notice the use of "LORD" instead of "Lord" here in the NT in the KJV - what does the code word "LORD" really mean in the KJV?) He would not substitute another entirely different word with an entirely different meaning from what was written by the inspired Bible writers (certainly not if he was quoting the only personal name of God). He continually, fearlessly broke the superstitions and man-made traditions of the Jews in favor of what his Father actually taught and commanded.

So even if the Jewish tradition of substituting "Lord" for "Yahweh" when reading Scripture aloud had been established in Jerusalem itself at this time (which is highly arguable), Jesus would not have hesitated to ignore it in favor of the truth. Certainly he would not have polluted the holy `Shema' but would have said "Jehovah [is] our God; Jehovah [is] one" to the admiring Jewish scribe at Mark 12:29! - see NKJV ("LORD"). Also notice Jesus' words at Matt. 4:4, 7, 10; 5:33; 21:42; 22:37, 44. (Likewise, the inspired Jewish Christian writers of the NT when quoting OT scripture where the Name was clearly written would have also written that Name - e.g., Matt. 3:3, etc.)

I cannot believe that the only-begotten Son of God would deliberately and knowingly change any part of the scriptures. I cannot even conceive of him actually changing the very name of God found in those holy Scriptures! (If the very Son of God himself was forced to never say aloud the name of his Father, we would be terribly wrong to presume that it is acceptable for us to pronounce that most holy name - and all the preceding holy prophets of God would have been terribly, tragically wrong to use the name aloud almost incessantly as they did!)

We need to know this important information from Scripture itself, not from what is acknowledged to be a "superstitious tradition" of the later Jews! But there is nothing in the Scriptures to support it, and the entire OT shows conclusively that the name YHWH was used frequently and respectfully by all his people from the beginning.

Therefore, if we are to keep the Scriptures from terribly contradicting themselves in an extremely important area, we must conclude that either the OT scriptures are wrong or the oldest available NT manuscripts and fragments (at least those which actually contain places that quote from the OT where "YHWH" was originally used) are copies that have been changed from the original! Since the name of God being used as YHWH even in everyday life is attested to by archaelogical findings back to the 8^th century B. C. at least, I am forced to conclude that, yes, the existing NT manuscripts are terribly wrong in this particular area.

I don't believe that the very earliest fragments of papyrus of the NT (that date back to the 2^nd century) even have quotations of the OT where God's name would be expected to be found. (For example, the very oldest papyrus manuscript which I believe you refer to - p⁵² ca. 125 A. D. - is only a fragment of parts of John 18 and contains no quotation from the OT, or allusion to it, which uses God's name and, therefore, cannot be honestly used as evidence for the use or non-use of the divine name in NT manuscripts of that time.) But even if they do, they are still copies of the original whose copyists must have changed the Divine Name in much the same way as the Septuagint copyists changed it about the same time period and probably by the same "Christian" scribes.

When did the Jews begin avoiding the pronunciation of the Divine Name and changing the written form (if they did)?

Some claim that it began following the Babylonian exile.... This theory, however, is based on a supposed reduction in the use of the name by the later writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, a view that does not hold up under examination. Malachi, for example, was evidently one of the last books of the Hebrew Scriptures written (in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.E.), and it gives great prominence to the divine name.

Many reference works have suggested that the name ceased to be used [aloud] by about 300 B.C.E. Evidence for this date supposedly was found in the absence of the Tetragrammaton (or a transliteration of it) in the Greek Septuaginttranslation of the Hebrew Scriptures begun about 280 B.C.E. It is true that the most complete manuscript copies of the Septuagint now known do consistently follow the practice of substituting the Greek words Kyrios (Lord) or Theos (God) for the Tetragrammaton. But these major manuscripts date back only as far as the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. [A.D.]. More ancient copies, though in fragmentary form, have been discovered that prove that the earliest copies of the Septuagint did contain the divine name." - p. 5, Vol. 2, Insight on the Scriptures, WBTS, 1988.

[Among others, fragments of a leather scroll (LXX^{VTS 10a}) dated to the end of the first century A.D. found in a cave in the Judean desert used the tetragrammaton in Hebrew letters extensively in 5 of the `minor prophets,' and a fragment of a parchment scroll of Zechariah (LXX^VTS 10b) dated to the middle of the first century C.E. found in the Judean desert used the tetragrammaton in ancient Hebrew characters.]

So, at least in written form, there is no sound evidence of any disappearance or disuse of the divine name in the B. C. E. period. In the first century C. E., there first appears some evidence of a superstitious attitude toward the name. Josephus, a Jewish historian from a priestly family, when recounting God's revelation to Moses at the site of the burning bush, says: `Then God revealed His name, which ere then had not come to men's ears, and of which I am forbidden to speak.' (Jewish Antiquities, II, 276 [xii, 4]) Josephus' statement, however, besides being inaccurate as to knowledge of the divine name prior to Moses, is vague and does not clearly reveal just what the general attitude current in the first century was as to pronouncing or using the divine name.

The Jewish Mishnah, a collection of rabbinic teachings and traditions, is somewhat more explicit. Its compilation is credited to a rabbi known as Judah the Prince, who lived in the second and third centuries C.E. Some of the Mishnaic material clearly relates to circumstances prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 C. E. Of the Mishnah, however, one scholar says: `It is a matter of extreme difficulty to decide what historical value we should attach to any tradition recorded in the Mishnah. The lapse of time which may have served to obscure or distort memories of times so different; the political upheavals, changes, and confusions brought about by two rebellions and two Roman conquests; the standards esteemed by the Pharisean party (whose opinions the Mishnah records) which were not those of the Sadducean party ... - these are factors which need to be given due weight in estimating the character of the Mishnah's statements. Moreover there is much in the contents of the Mishnah that moves in an atmosphere of academic discussion pursued for its own sake, with (so it would appear) little pretence at recording historical usage.' (The Mishnah, translated by H. Danby, London, 1954, pp. xiv, xv) Some of the Mishnaic traditions concerning the pronouncing of the divine name are as follows:

In connection with the annual Day of Atonement, Danby's translation of the Mishnah states: "And when the priests and the people which stood in the Temple Court heard the Expressed Name come forth from the mouth of the High Priest, they used to kneel and bow themselves and fall down on their faces and say, `Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom for ever and ever!'" (Yoma 6:2) Of the daily priestly blessings, Sotah 7:6 says: "In the Temple they pronounced the Name as it was written, but in the provinces by a substituted word." Sanhedrin 7:5 states that a blasphemer was not guilty `unless he pronounced the Name,' .... Sanhedrin 10:1, in listing those "that have no share in the world to come," states: "Abba Saul says: Also he that pronounces the Name with its proper letters." Yet despite these negative views, one also finds in the first section of the Mishnah the positive injunction that "a man should salute his fellow with [the use of] the Name [of God]," the example of Boaz (Ru 2:4) then being cited. - Berakhot 9:5.

Taken for what they are worth, these traditional views may reveal a superstitious tendency to avoid using [pronouncing aloud] the divine name sometime before Jerusalem's temple was destroyed in 70 C. E. Even then, it is primarily the priests who are explicitly said to have used a substitute name in place of the divine name, and that only in the provinces. Additionally the historical value of the Mishnaic tradition is questionable, as we have seen.

There is, therefore, no genuine basis for assigning any time earlier than the first and second centuries C. E. for the development of the superstitious view calling for discontinuance for the [oral] use of the divine name. The time did come, however, when in reading the Hebrew Scriptures in the original language, the Jewish reader substituted either `Adhonai' Sovereign Lord) or `Elohim' (God) rather than the divine name represented by the Tetragrammaton. This is seen from the fact that when vowel pointing came into  use in the second half of the first millennium C. E. [after 500 C. E.], the Jewish copyists inserted the vowel points for either `Adhonai' or `Elohim' into the Tetragrammaton, evidently to warn the reader to say those words in place of pronouncing the divine name. If using the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in later copies, the reader, of course, found the Tetragrammaton completely replaced by Kyrios and Theos ....

Translations into other languages, such as the Latin Vulgate, followed the example of these later copies of the Greek Septuagint. The Catholic Douay Version (of 1609-1610) in English, based on the Latin Vulgate, therefore does not contain the divine name, while the King James Version (1611) uses LORD or GOD (in capital and small capitals) to represent the Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew scriptures, except in four cases. - pp. 5-7, Vol. 2, Insight.

The fact that all complete manuscripts of the Septuagint in existence today (4^th century A.D. and later) use "Lord" was thought to mean that it had been originally produced that way. But many relatively recent discoveries of fragments of much older Septuagint manuscripts (1^st cent. B.C. to 3^rd cent. A.D.) have been made.[3] When those fragments include places where the divine name is used in the original Hebrew Scriptures, it is either written "YHWH" in Hebrew characters or trans-literated into a corresponding Greek sound, (e.g., IAO) but not "Lord"! It would appear most likely that the original Septuagint translation used the Divine Name properly and reverently.

"Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX   translated the tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios ["Lord"]. LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Hebrew characters in the Greek text. This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the OT in the first centuries A.D. One LXX MS from Qumran [1^st century B.C.] even represents the tetragrammaton by IAO. These instances have given support to the theory that the thorough-going use of kyrios for the tetragrammaton in the text of the LXX was primarily the work of Christianscribes (P. E. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, 1959, 222; cf. S. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 1968, 185 f., 271 f.)." - p. 512, Vol. 2, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Zondervan Publishing House, 1986.

So how does the Watchtower Society explain the lack of Tetragrammata in the existing NT manuscripts? And on what basis have they attempted to restore them to today's NT translation?

The argument long presented [to justify the teaching by Christendom that the original inspired manuscripts of the NT did not contain the Tetragrammaton] was that the inspired writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures made their quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures on the basis of the Septuagint,^[[4]] and that, since this version substituted Kyrios or Theos for the Tetragrammaton, these writers did not use the name Jehovah. As has been shown, this argument is no longer valid. Commenting on the fact that the oldest fragments of the Greek Septuagint do contain the divine name in its Hebrew form, Dr. P. Kahle says: `We now know that the Greek Bible text [the Septuagint] as far as it was written by Jews for Jews did not translate the Divine Name by kyrios, but the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters was retained in such MSS [manuscripts]. It was the Christians [so-called] who replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios, when the divine name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more.' (The Cairo Geniza, Oxford, 1959, p. 222) When did this change in the Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures take place?

It evidently took place in the centuries following the death of Jesus and his apostles. In Aquila's Greek version, dating from the second century C. E., the Tetragrammaton still appeared in Hebrew characters. Around 245 C. E., the noted scholar Origen produced his Hexapla, a six-column reproduction of the inspired Hebrew Scriptures: (1) in their original Hebrew and Aramaic, accompanied by (2) a transliteration into Greek, and by the Greek versions of (3) Aquila, (4) Symmachus, (5) the Septuagint, and (6) Theodotion. On the evidence of the fragmentary copies now known, Professor W. G. Waddell says: `In Origen's Hexapla ... the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and LXX[Septuagint] all represented JHWH by [a representation of the Tetragrammaton in Greek letters]; in the second column of the Hexapla the Tetragrammaton was written in Hebrew characters.' (The Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford, Vol. XLV, 1944, pp. 158, 159) Others believe the original text of Origen's Hexapla used Hebrew characters for the Tetragrammaton in all its columns. Origen himself stated that `in the most accurate manuscripts THE NAME occurs in Hebrew characters, yet not in today's Hebrew [characters], but in the most ancient ones.'

....

The so-called Christians, then, who `replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios' in the Septuagint copies, were not the early disciples of Jesus. They were persons of later centuries, when the foretold apostasy was well developed and had corrupted the purity of Christian teachings. - 2 Th 2:3; 1 Ti 4:1." - pp. 9-10, Vol. 2., Insight.

So why is the name absent from existing NT manuscripts and why have some translators (beginning with a 14^th century translation of Matthew, including the Hebrew translations of the NT by the United Bible Societies, 1983 ed., and the Lutheran scholar Delitsch, 1981 ed., and the English translation of the New World Translation) actually used the Tetragrammaton (or its transliterated form) in their NT translations?

[The name is absent from existing NT manuscripts] "Evidently because by the time those extant copies were made (from the third century C.E. onward) the original text of the writings of the apostles and disciples had been altered. Thus later copyists undoubtedly replaced the divine name in Tetragrammaton form with Kyrios and Theos. .... This is precisely what the facts show was done in later copies of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures ....

"As to the properness of this course [replacing the Divine Name at certain places in NT translations], note the following acknowledgment by R. B. Girdlestone, late principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. The statement was made before manuscript evidence came to light showing that the Greek Septuagintoriginally contained the name Jehovah. [Girdlestone] said: `If [the Septuagint] had retained the word [Jehovah], or had even used one Greek word for Jehovah and another for Adonai, such usage would doubtless have been retained in the discourses and arguments of the N.T. Thus our Lord, in quoting the 110^th Psalm, instead of saying, "The Lord said unto my Lord," might have said, "Jehovah said unto Adoni." ' ^[[5]]