A clash of Titans LVII

A clash of Titans LVI

The eyes of the global brotherhood of Jehovah's servants remain focused on our Russian brothers.

International Delegation of Brothers Shows Support for Russian Fellow Worshippers at Supreme Court Appeal Hearing

NEW YORK—The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses arranged for a delegation of brothers from three continents to travel to Moscow to demonstrate the global support for the brothers and sisters in Russia.

When the delegation arrived, they were met by the happy faces of their Russian brothers and sisters, some of whom traveled to Moscow from as far away as Siberia. The delegates assured the Russian brothers and sisters of their intense concern for them and the heartfelt prayers of the worldwide brotherhood. One member of the delegation stated: “I was truly moved by the courageous attitude of my Russian brothers, especially as there was very little expectation of a reversal of the unjust decision to ban their activity.”

Despite the negative decision by the three-judge panel, an atmosphere of genuine love and unity pervaded the courtroom. There was deep sadness at hearing Jehovah’s name reproached in such a public setting and a sober awareness that a time of testing lies ahead for the Witnesses in Russia. Yet, the dignity and affection displayed by the brothers and sisters in the courtroom was sufficient evidence to refute the erroneous charge of “extremism” upheld by the appeal judges.

Mark Sanderson, a member of the Governing Body, led the delegation. He warmly encouraged the brothers to “be strong and courageous” in the days ahead. As the visiting brothers left the courtroom, the local Witnesses embraced them and expressed appreciation for their support on this historic occasion.

The delegation also visited 21 embassies in Moscow to provide accurate information about the negative effects of Russia’s attack on Jehovah’s Witnesses. These include cases of arson on homes of Witnesses, jobs lost, harassment of children at schools, and criminal charges for organizing Christian meetings against several elders, including Brother Dennis Christensen, who remains in pre-trial detention. A number of ambassadors were visibly moved by a two-minute video that summarized these events. The most common question asked by officials was, ‘Why Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ In answer, our brothers gave a powerful witness by explaining that members of our organization are politically neutral and our preaching activity has positively changed the lives of many Russians. One ambassador responded: “The Orthodox Church does not like you fishing in their waters.” More than ten embassies sent representatives to the court hearing and stayed for the entire 8-hour duration.

The international delegation of brothers left Russia with their faith strengthened, heartened by their Russian brothers’ determination to remain loyal and the opportunity to give an effective witness to officials

The Trinity-Is It Taught in the Bible?

"The Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. . . . So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God."

IN THESE words the Athanasian Creed describes the central doctrine of Christendom—the Trinity. If you are a church member, Catholic or Protestant, you might be told that this is the most important teaching that you are to believe in. But can you explain the doctrine? Some of the best minds in Christendom have confessed their inability to understand the Trinity.

Why, then, do they believe it? Is it because the Bible teaches the doctrine? The late Anglican bishop John Robinson gave a thought-provoking answer to this question in his best-selling book Honest to God. He wrote: "In practice popular preaching and teaching presents a supranaturalistic view of Christ which cannot be substantiated from the New Testament. It says simply that Jesus was God, in such a way that the terms ‘Christ’ and ‘God’ are interchangeable. But nowhere in Biblical usage is this so. The New Testament says that Jesus was the Word of God, it says that God was in Christ, it says that Jesus is the Son of God; but it does not say that Jesus was God, simply like that."

John Robinson was a controversial figure in the Anglican Church. Nevertheless, was he correct in saying that the "New Testament" nowhere says that "Jesus was God, simply like that"?

What the Bible Does Say

Some may answer that question by quoting the verse that commences John’s Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1, King James Version) Does that not contradict what the Anglican bishop said? Not really. As John Robinson doubtless knew, some modem translators disagree with the King James Version’s rendering of that text. Why? Because in the expression "the Word was God" in the original Greek, the word for "God" does not have the definite article "the." In the earlier expression "the Word was with God," the word for "God" is definite, that is, it does have the definite article. This makes it unlikely that the two words have the same significance.

Hence, some translations bring out the qualitative aspect in their translations. For example, some render the expression "the Word was divine." (An American Translation, Schonfield) Moffatt renders it "the Logos was divine." However, indicating that "divine" would not be the most appropriate rendering here, John Robinson and the British textual critic Sir Frederick Kenyon both pointed out that if that was what John wanted to emphasize, he could have used the Greek word for "divine," the i’os. The New World Translation, correctly viewing the word "God" as indefinite, as well as bringing out the qualitative aspect indicated by the Greek structure, uses the indefinite article in English: "The Word was a god."

Professor C. H. Dodd, director of the New English Bible project, comments on this approach: "A possible translation. . . would be, ‘The Word was a god’. As a word-for-word translation it cannot be faulted." However, The New English Bible does not render the verse that way. Rather, John 1:1 in that version reads: "When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was." Why did the translation committee not choose the simpler rendering? Professor Dodd answers: "The reason why it is unacceptable is that it runs counter to the current of Johannine thought, and indeed of Christian thought as a whole."— Technical Papers for the Bible Translator, Volume 28, January 1977.

The Plain Sense of Scripture

Would we say that the idea that Jesus was a god and not the same as God the Creator is contrary to Johannine (that is, the apostle John’s) thought, as well as Christian thought as a whole? Let us examine some Bible texts that refer to Jesus and to God, and we will see what some commentators who lived before the Athanasian Creed was formulated thought about those texts.

"I and the Father are one."—JOHN 10:30.

Novatian (c. 200-258 C.E.) commented: "Since He said ‘one’ thing,[] let the heretics understand that He did not say ‘one’ person. For one placed in the neuter, intimates the social concord, not the personal unity.. .. Moreover, that He says one, has reference to the agreement, and to the identity of judgment, and to the loving association itself, as reasonably the Father and Son are one in agreement, in love, and in affection. "— Treatise Concerning the Trinity, chapter 27.

"The Father is greater than I am."—JOHN 14:28.

Irenaeus (c. 130-200 C.E.): "We may learn through Him [Christ] that the Father is above all things. For ‘the Father,’ says He, ‘is greater than I.’ The Father, therefore, has been declared by our Lord to excel with respect to knowledge. "—Against Heresies, Book II, chapter 28.8.

"This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ." —JOHN 17:3.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215 C.E.): "To know the eternal God, the giver of what is eternal, and by knowledge and comprehension to possess God, who is first, and highest, and one, and good. . . . He then who would live the true life is enjoined first to know Him ‘whom no one knows, except the Son reveal (Him).’ (Matt. 11:27) Next is to be learned the greatness of the Saviour after Him."— Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? VII, VIII

"One God and Father of all persons, who is over all and through all and in all."—EPHESIANS 4:6.

Irenaeus: "And thus one God the Father is declared, who is above all, and through all, and in all. The Father is indeed above all, and He is the Head of Christ."— Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 18.2.

These early writers clearly understood these verses to describe the Father as supreme, over everything and everyone including Jesus Christ. Their comments give no hint that they believed in a Trinity.

The Holy Spirit Reveals All Truth

Jesus promised his disciples that after his death and resurrection, the holy spirit would be given to them as a helper. He promised: "When that one arrives, the spirit of the truth, he will guide you into all the truth,.., and he will declare to you the things coming."—John 14:16, 17; 15:26; 16:13.

After Jesus’ death, that promise was fulfilled. The Bible records how new doctrines were revealed or clarified to the Christian congregation through the help of the holy spirit. These new teachings were written down in the books that later became the second part of the Bible, the Christian Greek Scriptures, or "New Testament." In this flood of new light, is there ever any revelation of the existence of a Trinity? No. The holy spirit reveals something very different about God and Jesus.

For example, at Pentecost 33 C.E., after holy spirit came upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, the apostle Peter witnessed to the crowd outside about Jesus. Did he speak about a Trinity? Consider some of his statements, and judge for yourself: "Jesus... , a man publicly shown by God to you through powerful works and portents and signs that God did through him in your midst." "This Jesus God resurrected, of which fact we are all witnesses." "God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you impaled." (Acts 2:22, 32, 36) Far from teaching a Trinity, these expressions by the spirit-filled Peter highlight Jesus’ subordination to his Father, that he is an instrument for the fulfillment of God’s will.

Soon after, another faithful Christian spoke about Jesus. Stephen was brought before the Sanhedrin to answer accusations. Instead, Stephen turned the situation around, charging that his accusers were like their rebellious ancestors. Finally, the record 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, and he said: ‘Look! I behold the heavens opened up and the Son of man standing at God’s right hand."’ (Acts 7:55, 56) Why did the holy spirit reveal Jesus to be simply the "Son of man" standing at God’s right hand and not part of a godhead equal with his Father? Clearly, Stephen had no concept of a Trinity.

When Peter carried the good news about Jesus to Cornelius, there was a further opportunity to reveal the Trinity doctrine. What happened? Peter explained that Jesus is "Lord of all." But he went on to explain that this lordship came from a higher source. Jesus was "the One decreed by God to be judge of the living and the dead." After Jesus’ resurrection, his Father "granted him [gave him permission] to become manifest" to his followers. And the holy spirit? It does appear in this conversation but not as the third person of a Trinity.

Rather, "God anointed [Jesus] with holy spirit and power." Thus, the holy spirit, far from being a person, is shown to be something impersonal, like the "power" also mentioned in that verse. (Acts 10:36, 38, 40, 42) Check the Bible carefully, and you will find further evidence that the holy spirit is not a personality but an active force that can fill people, impel them, cause them to be aglow, and be poured out upon them.

Finally, the apostle Paul had a fine opportunity to explain the Trinity—if it had been true doctrine—when he was preaching to the Athenians. In his talk, he referred to their altar "To an Unknown God" and said: "What you are unknowingly giving godly devotion to, this I am publishing to you." Did he publish a Trinity? No. He described the "God that made the world and all the things in it, being, as this One is, Lord of heaven and earth." But what of Jesus? "[God] has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed." (Acts 17:23, 24, 31) No hint of a Trinity there!

In fact, Paul explained something about God’s purposes that makes it impossible that Jesus and his Father are equal parts of a Trinity. I-fe wrote: "God ‘subjected all things under his [Jesus’] feet.’ But when he says that ‘all things have been subjected,’ it is evident that it is with the exception of the one who subjected all things to him. But when all things will have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will also subject himself to the One who subjected all things to him, that God may be all things to everyone." (1 Corinthians 15:27, 28) Thus, God will still be over all, including Jesus.

Is the Trinity taught in the Bible, then? No. John Robinson was right. It is not in the Bible, nor is it a part of "Christian thought." Do you view this as important to your worship? You should. Jesus said: "This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ." (John 17:3) If we take our worship of God seriously, it is vital that we know him as he really is, as he has revealed himself to us. Only then can we truly say that we are among the "true worshipers" who "worship the Father with spirit and truth." —John 4:23.

Yet more on the undeniability of the role of information in biology.

As Undeniable Debuts in Paperback, Frontiers in Biology Demonstrate Axe’s “Functional Coherence”
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Three brand new avenues of scientific discovery appear to need nothing from Darwinism. Instead they display in life what protein chemist Douglas Axe calls “functional coherence.” As Dr. Axe writes in his book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed — now out in paperback! — this quality represents “the hierarchical arrangement of parts needed for anything to produce a high-level function — each part contributing in a coordinated way to the whole.”

He writes there:

No high-level function is ever accomplished without someone thinking up a special arrangement of things and circumstances for that very purpose and then putting those thoughts into action. The hallmark of all these special arrangements is high-level functional coherence, which we now know comes only by insight — never by coincidence.

This is just what we see at the leading edges of biology.

What Is Circular DNA?

Writing in the journal Science, Elizabeth Pennisi quips, “Circular DNA throws biologists for a loop.” There’s something old and new about these closed loops of DNA that range in length from 300 to 16,000 base pairs. As she explains:

Are geneticists ready for the circulome? For decades biologists have known of mysterious rings of DNA in the nuclei of some human cells, interspersed among the linear chromosomes. Now, what were once curiosities are increasingly looking like key players in health and disease. The circulome, a term introduced at the Biology of Genomes meeting here, may turn out to be a new frontier in genetics. 

Not to be confused with bacterial chromosomes, which are often circular, nor with circular RNA transcripts, these circular DNA loops, formally called “extrachromosomal circular DNA” or eccDNA, are just now coming to the attention of molecular biologists. “That they exist in normal cells with such huge complexity is amazing,” one said. Another commented, “It basically opens a new field and a new way of thinking about DNA and about how dynamic the genome is.” The approach proposed by Axe and other design proponents, approaching a problem with the assumption that parts of a working system must be playing important roles, seems best suited to find out what eccDNA is doing.

How Can We Crack the Sugar Code?

The DNA code was the first to be elucidated. The protein code, with its more complex alphabet, is still being deciphered. But coming up in the challenge of biological forensics is the sugar code. In Nature, Esther Landhuis looks ahead to “sweet success” with new tools for making progress in glycobiology, or glycoscience.

What makes this area in molecular biology so challenging is the “crazy complexity” in the glycome. Proteins and genes, for all their complexities, can be boiled down to linear sequences of building blocks. Sugars, by contrast, branch out in all kinds of directions. Landhuis explains why cracking this code is so hard:

Researchers generally study biomolecules such as DNA and peptides by synthesizing them in the lab and then probing how they react to different circumstances. But DNA and peptides are linear molecules with no branches, and tools for analysing them took off in the 1970s and 1980s. Sugars, however, have numerous branching points and each of those linkages can exhibit left- or right-handed asymmetrical forms depending on the orientation of the attached molecule. They also have exponentially more potential configurations than do DNA or proteins, and that makes them much harder to synthesize in the lab, says Peter Seeberger, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Munich, Germany. DNA is made up of four nucleotides (G, A, T and C), so there are theoretically 4,096 possible ways to build a string of six elements, or a 6-mer. Proteins have more building blocks (20 amino acids) and can potentially assemble into 64 million different 6-mers. But 6-mer carbohydrates can adopt 193 billion possible configurations. As a result, tools for synthesizing sugars are about 35 years behind those for DNA and peptides, Seeberger says.

Despite these challenges, Landhuis says that new tools are becoming available to analyze and classify sugars and detect their roles in cells. One new technique allows researchers to detect which “glycans” (sugars that stud the surfaces of cell membranes) bind to proteins. This can accelerate functional studies, cutting through years of difficult work. With an eye out for functional coherence, the sky is the limit for discovering roles of sugars in biology.

How Does a Cell Become an Organism?

Ever since John Sulston began to map the fate of every cell in the lab roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, a dream of biologists has been to follow the pathways of cells in complex organisms, including human beings, from zygote to adult. In Nature, Ewen Callaway calls this project “The trickiest family tree in biology.”

The effort is attracting not just developmental biologists, but also geneticists and technology developers, who are convinced that understanding a cell’s history — where it came from and even what has happened to it — is one of biology’s next great frontiers. The results so far serve up some tantalizing clues to how humans are put together. Individual cells from an organ such as the brain could be related more closely to cells in other organs than to their surrounding tissue, for example. And unlike the undeviating developmental dance of C. elegans, more-complex organisms invoke quite a bit of improvisation and chance, which will undoubtedly complicate efforts to unpick the choreography.

Sulston and two colleagues went on to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002 for their work on the humble roundworm. In a video from Discovery Institute, “How to Build a Worm,” Paul Nelson explains the implications for intelligent design. Each cell division begins a descent down a decision tree, he shows, leading to specializations and irreversible fates as different genes get switched on or off, and organs develop.

Sulston set the “gold standard” with his work. Following the development of more complex animals, like mammals or birds, will be extraordinarily more challenging. “But even incomplete cellular ancestries could be informative,” Callaway says hopefully. With new tools like CRISPR-Cas9 and recombinases, some of the problems are becoming tractable. Here’s one brief look into this frontier:

The trees they produced show that a small number of early-forming embryonic lineages give rise to the majority of cells in a given organ. More than 98% of one fish’s blood cells, for instance, came from just 5 of the more than 1,000 cell lineages that the team traced. And although these five contributed to other tissues, they did so in much lower proportions. They were almost entirely absent from the muscle cells in the heart, for example, which was mostly built from its own small number of precursors. “It was profoundly surprising to me,” says Shendure. His colleague Schier says he is still trying to make sense of the data.

Many questions arise in this field: Is there more than one way to build a heart? How comparable are the developmental stages in different individuals? Callaway ends with images of the great voyages of discovery:

It is that vast unknown that could make such work transformative, says Elowitz: “It would change the kinds of questions you could ask.” Sulston’s map led biologists into uncharted territory, says Schier, and this could do the same. “We can’t tell you what exactly we’re going to find, but there is a sense that we’re going to find some new continents out there.”

Opportunities for Design Science

These three frontiers show how much work remains in biology. The shallow science of Darwinism seems ill-prepared for it; indeed, none of the three articles talks about evolution at all. When poised at the dock of a great voyage of discovery, the time may be ripe for new heads and new ideas.

The recent failings of Darwinism with ENCODE, junk DNA and other fallen predictions are fresh in scientists’ minds. Books we published in 2016 and 2017 by  Michael Denton, Tom Bethell, and Jonathan Wells  document Darwinism’s theory in crisis, a tottering house of cards, reliant on zombie icons that only serve to delay the inevitable. They make the negative case against Darwin compellingly.

But the frontiers described above are just a few that help open up a fresh, new, positive case. They offer the opportunity to prove the value of the integrated “systems biology” approach that Steve Laufmann talked about in a recent pair of ID the Future podcasts (see here and here ). He described how biologists with an engineer’s perspective are able to detect patterns of function, making sense of the welter of data, showing that “this makes sense because” it fits into the big picture.

Doug Axe’s concept of “functional coherence” can be a guiding light in the unknown waters of these voyages of discovery. Needless to say, the potential benefits of successful design-theoretic biology at the cutting edge are enormous: new approaches to cancer treatment, improvements to agriculture, or insights into biomimetic applications. This is our chance to redeem science from a veritable dark age of materialistic reductionism — stepping boldly forward into a new era where the design everyone admits is intuitive becomes design that is transformative.

Yet more on Darwinism and the deprivileging of human life.

Jerry Coyne, Infanticide, and the Evolution of Morality
Richard Weikart

In a recent blog post, already noted by Michael Egnor and Wesley Smith, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne not only argued  that infanticide and assisted suicide should be permitted, but he insisted that our increasing acceptance of these deeds is a sign of moral improvement in our society. He stated, “This change in views about euthanasia and assisted suicide [i.e., legalization in some states and countries] are [sic] the result of a tide of increasing morality in our world.”

In his book Faith Versus Fact, Coyne made a similar proclamation: “Indeed, secular morality, which is not twisted by adherence to the supposed commands of a god, is superior to most ‘religious’ morality.” (p. 261)

Earlier in Faith Versus Fact, Coyne argued that morality was the product of evolutionary forces, as well as cultural changes.  He denied that morality is fixed and objective and decreed that it is malleable. He even makes a big deal out of this argument, claiming that it disproves the existence of God.

It seems to me that Coyne is talking out of both sides of his mouth. There can be no “increasing morality” and no “superior” morality unless there is some objective moral standard, a point that Coyne rejects. Evolution, we are told again and again, has no goal, so any morality it produces has no objective reality. (That’s why the famous evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson and philosopher of science Michael Ruse called morality “an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes.”)

Of course, one of the other major problems with Coyne’s analysis of morality is that many people see the policies he favors, such as infanticide, as evidence of our moral decline.

So, how does Coyne justify his claim that infanticide and assisted suicide are morally praiseworthy?  He relies on arguments that are based on his understanding of evolutionary biology. He claims humans are not a special or unique species, a point he bases on Darwinism. After thus undermining the sanctity-of-life ethic, he states in his blog: “After all, we euthanize our dogs and cats when to prolong their lives would be torture, so why not extend that to humans?”

Does Coyne really believe that we should treat humans like dogs and cats? Given his desire to see the United States embrace progressive public policies similar to those in Scandinavia, I rather doubt it. But let’s test and see.

I have a modest proposal for Coyne to consider. Picture this: Round up all the homeless people in Chicago, sterilize them, and then incarcerate them until someone comes to provide them a home. If no one is willing to take them in after a few weeks, then we can euthanize them. The problem of homelessness would be solved.

I’m confident Coyne will be outraged by this proposal — as he should be. However, this is exactly how we treat dogs. Apparently, Coyne does not think humans should be treated like dogs. Apparently, he recognizes that some things are objectively immoral.

Coyne, like many secular intellectuals, sees morality as non-objective, because he thinks it is produced by random mutations, natural selection, and also changing cultural factors. He uses this moral relativism as a sledgehammer against morality (and religion) that he doesn’t like. But then he turns around to promote a different “progressive” morality and tries to impose that on everyone. This morality, we are assured, is better and more advanced — hence the term “progressive.” It thus claims to be moving toward an objective moral standard.  You cannot have it both ways, Dr. Coyne.

For further analysis of Coyne, see pp. 84-87 of my book The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life.