Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top. Booker T. Washington
Saturday, 30 September 2017
And still yet more iconoclasm.
Darwin’s Point: No Evidence for Common Ancestry of Humans with Monkeys
Günter Bechly
In a recent post for Evolution News, we discussed vestigial structures as alleged evidence for evolution ((Chaffee 2017). As an illustration, the article featured an image of the auricular tubercles or “Darwin’s ear points,” a bump-like thickening on the helix of the auricle (exterior ear) of many people that is often claimed to be an atavistic vestige of the pointy ear tip found in monkeys. Evolutionists say the feature proves a shared ancestry of humans with lower primates.
The bump was originally discovered by the celebrated British sculptor Thomas Woolner, who informed Charles Darwin about it. In Darwin (1871:15-17) cited this structure as probable evidence for common ancestry of humans and monkeys. However, at the same time there were already published doubts about this interpretation (Meyer 1871), mainly because of the variability in humans.
Nevertheless, the claim that Darwin’s tubercle is an atavistic structure is still often heard today. Martin Nickels (1998), an anthropologist at Illinois State University, presented Darwin’s tubercle among his “Twelve Lines of Evidence for the Evolution of Humans & Other Primates,” which was featured at the Talk Origins website and published in the 1998 Creation-Evolution issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education. In the Wikipedia articles on “Vestigiality” and “Human Vestigiality,” the tubercle is mentioned as one example of vestigial structures. Many popular blogs list this feature as strong evidence for human evolution. Here are two examples:
In“WEIT: Human Vestigiality & Atavisms” (March 19, 2011), on the atheist blog Reflections from the Other Side: Leaving Christianity and Embracing Skepticism, the author refers to Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution Is True:
I want to add one atavistic feature that Coyne doesn’t mention: a tiny, almost imperceptible point on the outer rim of the ear known as Darwin’s tubercle.Only 10% of the population has it, but I’m lucky enough to be part of that statistic. Darwin’s tubercle demonstrates our common ancestry with other primates, which have significantly more prominent pointed ears, possibly to help funnel sound into the auditory canal. Below is my ear, a macaque’s ear and an example illustration from Darwin’s The Descent of Man.
It’s both startling and fascinating to realize that I carry tangible, visible evidence for evolution with me wherever I go. And by no means is this connection to the past is something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, to bear such tokens of our history just serves as a reminder of how far our species has come.
In “I Have Primitive Ears” (April 28, 2012), on the blog Rosa Rubicondior: Religion, science and politics from a centre-left atheist humanist. The blog religious frauds tell lies about, another writer observes;
I’m not one to boast, but I have primitive ears. I have the sort of ears of which my remote ancestors might have been proud, if they had had the cognitive ability to be proud.
I have Darwin’s Tubercles … It is a vestige of the ear point found in many simians and, presumably, in our common ancestors.
These are pretty strong claims, from the usual suspects. Yet there are two problems that show Darwin’s tubercles represent an example of evolutionary myth-making.
The first problem, a minor one, concerns a failed prediction. If Darwin’s tubercle were a homologue and an atavistic remnant of the pointy ears of monkeys, we should expect to find this structure in other apes, too, and especially in chimpanzees. The latter, of course, are claimed to be our closest relatives, and have rounded exterior ears similar to humans. According to personal information from British zoologist Edwin Ray Lankester, Darwin (1871:15) briefly mentioned that a chimp from the Zoological Garden at Hamburg did possess this feature. Of course, such dubious hearsay does not qualify as scientific evidence. Indeed, in their recent comprehensive literature review about Darwins’s tubercle, Loh & Cohen (2016) did not mention any record from apes. Likewise, I could not find any descriptions or images anywhere in literature or online that document a chimp ear with a Darwin’s tubercle. All available images of chimp ears do not show anything like a Darwin’s tubercle. So the evolutionary prediction seems to be refuted or at least highly dubious, at least until proven otherwise.
Darwin, in his fervor to present evidence for evolution, cannot always be trusted. This is also shown by the case of his figure (Darwin 1871: fig. 3) of an alleged orangutan fetus featuring a pointy ear unlike that of adult apes. Darwin considered this a kind of ontogenetic recapitulation of evolution. However, the claim is simply false, as Ankel-Simons (2010: 433) mentions:
Schultz (1965, 1969) states that the pointed ear of an “orangutan foetus” that was pictured and described by Darwin (1871) was caused by a deformation of that particular fetus, which Schultz was able to inspect. … Moreover, in Schultz’s judgment, the particular fetus is that of a gibbon and not of an orangutan.
The second problem is much more damaging to the atavism hypothesis. Pointed ear tips are a feature in many monkey species. It is present in all members of the concerned species and always symmetrically present on both ears in both sexes. This strongly suggests that the structure is genetically based and inherited. However, in humans, the feature shows great variability and occurs, for example, in only 10 percent of Spanish adults, 40 percent of Indian adults, and 58 percent of Swedish school children. Some people only have this tubercle on one ear. In half of the pairs of identical twins that were studied, only one of the twins had the ear bumps (Quelprud 1936).
Because of this evidence, and based as well on two genetic studies, McDonald (2011) concluded in an article about what he called the “myth” of Darwin’s tubercle:
The family and twin studies strongly indicate that Darwin’s tubercle is not determined by a single gene with two alleles, and there may be very little genetic influence on the trait at all. You should not use Darwin’s tubercle to demonstrate basic genetics.
But if these ear bumps have no genetic cause, but instead represent environmentally induced developmental accidents, they simply cannot be considered atavistic structures. There is no proof here of common ancestry of humans and monkeys!
Ankel-Simons (2010: 433) thus writes in his standard textbook on Primate Anatomy:
This point of the ear auricle has gone into natural history lore as “tuberculum Darwini” or “Darwin’s point.” It is still regarded by many as an atavism in humans, where the point is actually rarely found. Many human anatomy texts compare the “auricular tubercle of Darwin” with the pointed ears of “adult monkeys.” Lasinsky, however, shows that the two structures have nothing in common. The auricular tubercle of Darwin has had a rather exaggerated revival in the very pointed ears of alien “Vulcans” who evolved from the fantasy of the creators of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
So we can safely conclude that Darwin’s tubercle must be added to the ever-growing list of what Jonathan Wells calls Icons of Evolution (Wells 2000). Rather than modern science, they are debunked science fiction. But as Wells (2017) has also shown, such Zombie Science is hard to kill. It always creeps back from some dark corner of the Internet.
Yet we should add that there is a much more fundamental problem weighing against vestigiality as evidence for evolution and common ancestry.
Critics of evolution often refer to the discovery of function for allegedly vestigial organs, such as the human appendix, tonsils, and coccyx, or the tiny pelvic bones in whales (Klinghoffer 2014). The critics argue that such “vestigial” organs are equally compatible with the design hypothesis. Evolutionists, meanwhile, usually respond by emphasizing that vestigiality does not imply absence of any function. Instead, it is commonly defined as “the retention during the process of evolution of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of their ancestral function in a given species” (Wikipedia,“Vestigiality” ).
However, if the total or partial absence of function is restricted only to an assumed ancestral function, then common ancestry is itself assumed in the definition of the concept of vestigiality. The result is that vestigiality cannot be used as evidence for common ancestry without committing the logical fallacy of begging the question, or circular reasoning.
Alternatively, some evolutionists say that in vestigial organs, homology and not functionality is the crucial issue. However, this creates the same problem, on a different level. Just like vestigiality, the concept of homology presupposes common ancestry and therefore cannot be used to prove it. (See Wikipedia, “Homology”: “In biology, homology is the existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures, or genes, in different taxa.”) The presumption of common ancestry is not optional for homology, because without the notion of common ancestry one could not distinguish homologous similarities from convergent similarities.
Consequently, large parts of the allegedly strongest evidence for evolution from comparative morphology indeed are invalid and based on logically fallacious reasoning.
Literature:
Ankel-Simons F 2010. Primate Anatomy: An Introduction. Academic Press, Cambridge, 752 pp.
Chaffee S 2017. “Theology in Biology Class: Vestigial Structures as Evidence for Evolution.” Evolution News, September 21, 2017.
Darwin C 1871. Chap. I. Rudiments. p. 15 in: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. John Murray, London.
Klinghoffer D 2014. “Now It’s Whale Hips: Another Icon of Darwinian Evolution, Vestigial Structures, Takes a Hit.” Evolution News, September 15, 2014.
Lasinsky W 1960. Äußeres Ohr. pp. 41–74 in: Hofer HO, Schultz AH, Starck D (eds). Primatologia, Handbook of Primatology Vol. II. Karger, Basel.
Loh TY, Cohen PR 2016. “Darwin’s Tubercle: Review of a Unique Congenital Anomaly.” Dermatology and Therapy 6(2): 143–149, DOI: 10.1007/s13555-016-0109-6.
McDonald JH 2011. “Darwin’s tubercle: The myth.” pp. 26–27 in: Myths of Human Genetics. Sparky House Publishing, Baltimore.
Meyer L 1871. Ueber das Darwin’sche Spitzohr. Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medicin 53(2-3): 485–492.
Nickles M 1998. “Humans as a Case Study for the
Evidence of Evolution.” Reports of the National Center for Science Education 18(5): 24–27(also online as ENSI-article, “Twelve Lines of Evidence for the Evolution of Humans & Other Primates”).
Quelprud T 1936. Zur Erblichkeit des Darwinschen Höckerchens. Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie34: 343–363.
Wells J 2000. Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C., 362 pp.
Wells J 2017. Zombie Science. More Icons of Evolution.Discovery Institute Press, Seattle, 238 pp.
Wikipedia. “Darwin’s tubercle.”
Günter Bechly
In a recent post for Evolution News, we discussed vestigial structures as alleged evidence for evolution ((Chaffee 2017). As an illustration, the article featured an image of the auricular tubercles or “Darwin’s ear points,” a bump-like thickening on the helix of the auricle (exterior ear) of many people that is often claimed to be an atavistic vestige of the pointy ear tip found in monkeys. Evolutionists say the feature proves a shared ancestry of humans with lower primates.
The bump was originally discovered by the celebrated British sculptor Thomas Woolner, who informed Charles Darwin about it. In Darwin (1871:15-17) cited this structure as probable evidence for common ancestry of humans and monkeys. However, at the same time there were already published doubts about this interpretation (Meyer 1871), mainly because of the variability in humans.
Nevertheless, the claim that Darwin’s tubercle is an atavistic structure is still often heard today. Martin Nickels (1998), an anthropologist at Illinois State University, presented Darwin’s tubercle among his “Twelve Lines of Evidence for the Evolution of Humans & Other Primates,” which was featured at the Talk Origins website and published in the 1998 Creation-Evolution issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education. In the Wikipedia articles on “Vestigiality” and “Human Vestigiality,” the tubercle is mentioned as one example of vestigial structures. Many popular blogs list this feature as strong evidence for human evolution. Here are two examples:
In“WEIT: Human Vestigiality & Atavisms” (March 19, 2011), on the atheist blog Reflections from the Other Side: Leaving Christianity and Embracing Skepticism, the author refers to Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution Is True:
I want to add one atavistic feature that Coyne doesn’t mention: a tiny, almost imperceptible point on the outer rim of the ear known as Darwin’s tubercle.Only 10% of the population has it, but I’m lucky enough to be part of that statistic. Darwin’s tubercle demonstrates our common ancestry with other primates, which have significantly more prominent pointed ears, possibly to help funnel sound into the auditory canal. Below is my ear, a macaque’s ear and an example illustration from Darwin’s The Descent of Man.
It’s both startling and fascinating to realize that I carry tangible, visible evidence for evolution with me wherever I go. And by no means is this connection to the past is something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, to bear such tokens of our history just serves as a reminder of how far our species has come.
In “I Have Primitive Ears” (April 28, 2012), on the blog Rosa Rubicondior: Religion, science and politics from a centre-left atheist humanist. The blog religious frauds tell lies about, another writer observes;
I’m not one to boast, but I have primitive ears. I have the sort of ears of which my remote ancestors might have been proud, if they had had the cognitive ability to be proud.
I have Darwin’s Tubercles … It is a vestige of the ear point found in many simians and, presumably, in our common ancestors.
These are pretty strong claims, from the usual suspects. Yet there are two problems that show Darwin’s tubercles represent an example of evolutionary myth-making.
The first problem, a minor one, concerns a failed prediction. If Darwin’s tubercle were a homologue and an atavistic remnant of the pointy ears of monkeys, we should expect to find this structure in other apes, too, and especially in chimpanzees. The latter, of course, are claimed to be our closest relatives, and have rounded exterior ears similar to humans. According to personal information from British zoologist Edwin Ray Lankester, Darwin (1871:15) briefly mentioned that a chimp from the Zoological Garden at Hamburg did possess this feature. Of course, such dubious hearsay does not qualify as scientific evidence. Indeed, in their recent comprehensive literature review about Darwins’s tubercle, Loh & Cohen (2016) did not mention any record from apes. Likewise, I could not find any descriptions or images anywhere in literature or online that document a chimp ear with a Darwin’s tubercle. All available images of chimp ears do not show anything like a Darwin’s tubercle. So the evolutionary prediction seems to be refuted or at least highly dubious, at least until proven otherwise.
Darwin, in his fervor to present evidence for evolution, cannot always be trusted. This is also shown by the case of his figure (Darwin 1871: fig. 3) of an alleged orangutan fetus featuring a pointy ear unlike that of adult apes. Darwin considered this a kind of ontogenetic recapitulation of evolution. However, the claim is simply false, as Ankel-Simons (2010: 433) mentions:
Schultz (1965, 1969) states that the pointed ear of an “orangutan foetus” that was pictured and described by Darwin (1871) was caused by a deformation of that particular fetus, which Schultz was able to inspect. … Moreover, in Schultz’s judgment, the particular fetus is that of a gibbon and not of an orangutan.
The second problem is much more damaging to the atavism hypothesis. Pointed ear tips are a feature in many monkey species. It is present in all members of the concerned species and always symmetrically present on both ears in both sexes. This strongly suggests that the structure is genetically based and inherited. However, in humans, the feature shows great variability and occurs, for example, in only 10 percent of Spanish adults, 40 percent of Indian adults, and 58 percent of Swedish school children. Some people only have this tubercle on one ear. In half of the pairs of identical twins that were studied, only one of the twins had the ear bumps (Quelprud 1936).
Because of this evidence, and based as well on two genetic studies, McDonald (2011) concluded in an article about what he called the “myth” of Darwin’s tubercle:
The family and twin studies strongly indicate that Darwin’s tubercle is not determined by a single gene with two alleles, and there may be very little genetic influence on the trait at all. You should not use Darwin’s tubercle to demonstrate basic genetics.
But if these ear bumps have no genetic cause, but instead represent environmentally induced developmental accidents, they simply cannot be considered atavistic structures. There is no proof here of common ancestry of humans and monkeys!
Ankel-Simons (2010: 433) thus writes in his standard textbook on Primate Anatomy:
This point of the ear auricle has gone into natural history lore as “tuberculum Darwini” or “Darwin’s point.” It is still regarded by many as an atavism in humans, where the point is actually rarely found. Many human anatomy texts compare the “auricular tubercle of Darwin” with the pointed ears of “adult monkeys.” Lasinsky, however, shows that the two structures have nothing in common. The auricular tubercle of Darwin has had a rather exaggerated revival in the very pointed ears of alien “Vulcans” who evolved from the fantasy of the creators of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
So we can safely conclude that Darwin’s tubercle must be added to the ever-growing list of what Jonathan Wells calls Icons of Evolution (Wells 2000). Rather than modern science, they are debunked science fiction. But as Wells (2017) has also shown, such Zombie Science is hard to kill. It always creeps back from some dark corner of the Internet.
Yet we should add that there is a much more fundamental problem weighing against vestigiality as evidence for evolution and common ancestry.
Critics of evolution often refer to the discovery of function for allegedly vestigial organs, such as the human appendix, tonsils, and coccyx, or the tiny pelvic bones in whales (Klinghoffer 2014). The critics argue that such “vestigial” organs are equally compatible with the design hypothesis. Evolutionists, meanwhile, usually respond by emphasizing that vestigiality does not imply absence of any function. Instead, it is commonly defined as “the retention during the process of evolution of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of their ancestral function in a given species” (Wikipedia,“Vestigiality” ).
However, if the total or partial absence of function is restricted only to an assumed ancestral function, then common ancestry is itself assumed in the definition of the concept of vestigiality. The result is that vestigiality cannot be used as evidence for common ancestry without committing the logical fallacy of begging the question, or circular reasoning.
Alternatively, some evolutionists say that in vestigial organs, homology and not functionality is the crucial issue. However, this creates the same problem, on a different level. Just like vestigiality, the concept of homology presupposes common ancestry and therefore cannot be used to prove it. (See Wikipedia, “Homology”: “In biology, homology is the existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures, or genes, in different taxa.”) The presumption of common ancestry is not optional for homology, because without the notion of common ancestry one could not distinguish homologous similarities from convergent similarities.
Consequently, large parts of the allegedly strongest evidence for evolution from comparative morphology indeed are invalid and based on logically fallacious reasoning.
Literature:
Ankel-Simons F 2010. Primate Anatomy: An Introduction. Academic Press, Cambridge, 752 pp.
Chaffee S 2017. “Theology in Biology Class: Vestigial Structures as Evidence for Evolution.” Evolution News, September 21, 2017.
Darwin C 1871. Chap. I. Rudiments. p. 15 in: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. John Murray, London.
Klinghoffer D 2014. “Now It’s Whale Hips: Another Icon of Darwinian Evolution, Vestigial Structures, Takes a Hit.” Evolution News, September 15, 2014.
Lasinsky W 1960. Äußeres Ohr. pp. 41–74 in: Hofer HO, Schultz AH, Starck D (eds). Primatologia, Handbook of Primatology Vol. II. Karger, Basel.
Loh TY, Cohen PR 2016. “Darwin’s Tubercle: Review of a Unique Congenital Anomaly.” Dermatology and Therapy 6(2): 143–149, DOI: 10.1007/s13555-016-0109-6.
McDonald JH 2011. “Darwin’s tubercle: The myth.” pp. 26–27 in: Myths of Human Genetics. Sparky House Publishing, Baltimore.
Meyer L 1871. Ueber das Darwin’sche Spitzohr. Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medicin 53(2-3): 485–492.
Nickles M 1998. “Humans as a Case Study for the
Evidence of Evolution.” Reports of the National Center for Science Education 18(5): 24–27(also online as ENSI-article, “Twelve Lines of Evidence for the Evolution of Humans & Other Primates”).
Quelprud T 1936. Zur Erblichkeit des Darwinschen Höckerchens. Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie34: 343–363.
Wells J 2000. Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C., 362 pp.
Wells J 2017. Zombie Science. More Icons of Evolution.Discovery Institute Press, Seattle, 238 pp.
Wikipedia. “Darwin’s tubercle.”
E.T's design filter?
The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence – An Exercise in Intelligent Design
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC
We humans take our own intelligence for granted. We know when we make things on purpose, and we use “folk psychology” to attribute similar intentionality and motivation to our fellows. Most of the time, we have an intuitive sense of design for human artifacts, even if we didn’t observe them coming into existence. Can we project that kind of reasoning onto extraterrestrials? The question may sound strange, but playing along with it might illuminate some principles of intelligent design.
In Live Science, Sarah B. Puschman showed a picture of crop circles that she says look like “alien” works of art. She’s not talking about those elaborate artworks created in the middle of the night by hoaxers, but by the rather ordinary circles standing out in the desert due to farming practices (see the photo above).
To make the circles pictured, water is drawn to the surface and sprinkled onto crops through slowly spinning pipes using a process called center-pivot irrigation.
The water “is drawn” — by whom? By human beings using intelligent design, obviously. Pipes don’t create themselves. Pipes don’t rotate from a pivot by themselves. Humans took natural materials — metal, water, and seeds — and arranged them in a way that yields crop circles. They can really stand out from the surroundings when seen from an aircraft. How strong would the design inference be for alien intelligences, if irrigation circles were the only things they saw?
Circles can be made naturally: for instance, volcanic craters, calderas, and impact scars. There’s a large circular lake in Canada formed from a meteorite. Any geological process on earth that spreads material out from a center could form a circle. What makes the irrigation circle different? An artesian well might spread water out in a circle on a very flat plain, after all, allowing plants to grow within its reach. Looking at these crop circles, though, one knows immediately they were designed.
For one thing, there are lots of them laid out with regular spacing. For another, they are too perfect; no irregularities. Radioisotopes can create perfect circles (actually spheres) in rock, but those are not equally spaced. It’s highly improbable that volcanoes or meteorites would form circles in a regular grid pattern. While one crop circle might leave the design inference open to question, a lot of them with regular spacing clinches it, for humans at least. But could aliens, without knowledge of human practices, arrive at the same conclusion?
Some things obvious to us might not be obvious to sentient beings unfamiliar with human technology. We would have similar challenges on alien worlds. Visiting aliens might need a little more evidence at ground level. But even if they couldn’t find someone to ask, it seems likely they would arrive at a robust inference (if we assume that logical reasoning is universal among intelligent beings).
Are these circles, and the ingredients making them, natural occurrences on our strange planet? Alien design theorists might try to see if pipes are found in other locations, such as in forests, in random orientations. They might investigate whether water normally springs out of devices that are regularly spaced along the pipes anywhere else. Natural geysers might give them pause, but only temporarily, when they contrast their variability with the high degree of regularity in the irrigation pipes. They might consider whether the plants growing in the circles, whether wheat, potatoes, or chamomile, grow naturally outside circles or in the occasional oasis. And if math and geometry are available to all intelligent minds, as the human designers of the Voyager Golden Records assumed, we would expect aliens to be impressed by the extreme regularity of the geometry of crop circles. They might suspect functional coherence in the crops, that they are being grown for a purpose — even if the aliens can’t eat them. Lastly, they might find aesthetic beauty in the patterns.
We’re assuming a lot about alien minds, but we already know the answer as humans: Yes, these crop circles are designed for a purpose. If SETI believers expect to be able to distinguish alien artifacts from natural causes, they can certainly also expect aliens to decipher ours.
Crop Art
Puschman ends with a discussion of the artistic crop circles that appear within corn or wheat fields in the morning. When the crop-art fad first caught national attention, there were some who tried to find natural causes. Others wondered if we were being visited by UFOs, or whether aliens beamed microwaves to flatten the crops. As the patterns became more intricate, few were the observers who did not attribute them to intelligent design.
She refers to an August 2011 article in Popular Science by Rebecca Boyle about crop art. By then, when designs had become extremely elaborate, most people had given up on natural causes.
In the collective modern imagination, crop circles are usually attributed to either aliens or a vast human conspiracy; possibly both. Some circle-watchers believe the designs are landing strips, maybe, or some kind of communiqué from outer space. Others argue crop circles are the result of secret government tests, or perhaps secret codes meant to convey information to satellites and aerial drones.
Boyle turned from the origin question to the how question. How were they made? She talks to a scientist, who speculated that they required advanced technology to make, to an actual crop art maker, who says it’s easy to do with simple materials, a GPS device, and a portable computer.
The “how” question, though, lies outside of intelligent design theory, as does the “who” question. We just want to know if the circles are designed.
Using Dembski’s design filter, we can formulate a robust design inference by first ruling out chance and natural law. Chance can accomplish some pretty improbable events, but if we decide the probability is low, our work is not done. Laws of physics might bring circles about (like the volcano, meteorite, or artesian spring). If the circle had to happen, given a meteor strike, then it’s no longer a contingent phenomenon, so natural law is the preferred inference for a crater.
Contingency allows our minds to progress to the final stage of the design filter: Is there an independently specified pattern? Perfect circles in regular grids have low probability. They are also contingent; no known natural law requires them to form that way (even the natural “fairy circles” we’ve discussed previously lack that degree of geometric specificity). We know, however, from every other instance of regularly spaced set circles, such as in parking lot bump strips, corrugated sheet metal perforations, or polka dots in fabric, that human intelligence was the cause.
If aliens are intelligent enough to design space ships, they most likely understand math and logic to a high degree. There may not be any such aliens. We certainly haven’t detected any yet. But by projecting what we know about intelligence onto theoretical intelligences in a “reverse SETI” thought experiment, we learn whether a Search for Terrestrial Intelligence justifies a design inference.
Finally, let’s consider aliens encountering two spacecraft beyond Earth: Voyager and Cassini. The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched with the express intention of communicating to alien intelligences, even though we know nothing about such intelligences. Presumably, a craft with that high a degree of complex specified information (CSI) would easily pass the design inference, even if aliens could not decipher the inscriptions or functions of the craft. It would certainly stand out from all the asteroids they know!
All the molecules of Cassini, however, were disrupted on September 15 as it burned up in the atmosphere. Cassini isn’t “gone” but it has become a part of Saturn. The CSI of all its exquisitely sensitive instruments, its onboard computers, its subsystems, has been obliterated. The chance that aliens could detect anomalous molecules in the atmosphere of Saturn seems remote; that would be the only possible way now to determine that something unusual happened in the planet’s atmosphere. From this we learn that it is far easier to destroy CSI than to create it.
If they ever locate the intact Huygens probe on Titan, though, that’s a different matter. They might deduce that an object with those characteristics could not have flown itself to its location. By observing the probe carefully, they would know not only that it was designed, but there must have existed a craft capable of delivering it to Titan that was also designed. If they determined that it came from planet Earth, they might even be able to reverse-engineer some of the design requirements for the mother ship.
In short, we have seen that role-playing alien intelligences is not only idle speculation. It can help us reason our way through principles of intelligent design about real-world phenomena. Perhaps somewhere out there, extraterrestrials reading this — if they could — would signal their agreement.
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC
We humans take our own intelligence for granted. We know when we make things on purpose, and we use “folk psychology” to attribute similar intentionality and motivation to our fellows. Most of the time, we have an intuitive sense of design for human artifacts, even if we didn’t observe them coming into existence. Can we project that kind of reasoning onto extraterrestrials? The question may sound strange, but playing along with it might illuminate some principles of intelligent design.
In Live Science, Sarah B. Puschman showed a picture of crop circles that she says look like “alien” works of art. She’s not talking about those elaborate artworks created in the middle of the night by hoaxers, but by the rather ordinary circles standing out in the desert due to farming practices (see the photo above).
To make the circles pictured, water is drawn to the surface and sprinkled onto crops through slowly spinning pipes using a process called center-pivot irrigation.
The water “is drawn” — by whom? By human beings using intelligent design, obviously. Pipes don’t create themselves. Pipes don’t rotate from a pivot by themselves. Humans took natural materials — metal, water, and seeds — and arranged them in a way that yields crop circles. They can really stand out from the surroundings when seen from an aircraft. How strong would the design inference be for alien intelligences, if irrigation circles were the only things they saw?
Circles can be made naturally: for instance, volcanic craters, calderas, and impact scars. There’s a large circular lake in Canada formed from a meteorite. Any geological process on earth that spreads material out from a center could form a circle. What makes the irrigation circle different? An artesian well might spread water out in a circle on a very flat plain, after all, allowing plants to grow within its reach. Looking at these crop circles, though, one knows immediately they were designed.
For one thing, there are lots of them laid out with regular spacing. For another, they are too perfect; no irregularities. Radioisotopes can create perfect circles (actually spheres) in rock, but those are not equally spaced. It’s highly improbable that volcanoes or meteorites would form circles in a regular grid pattern. While one crop circle might leave the design inference open to question, a lot of them with regular spacing clinches it, for humans at least. But could aliens, without knowledge of human practices, arrive at the same conclusion?
Some things obvious to us might not be obvious to sentient beings unfamiliar with human technology. We would have similar challenges on alien worlds. Visiting aliens might need a little more evidence at ground level. But even if they couldn’t find someone to ask, it seems likely they would arrive at a robust inference (if we assume that logical reasoning is universal among intelligent beings).
Are these circles, and the ingredients making them, natural occurrences on our strange planet? Alien design theorists might try to see if pipes are found in other locations, such as in forests, in random orientations. They might investigate whether water normally springs out of devices that are regularly spaced along the pipes anywhere else. Natural geysers might give them pause, but only temporarily, when they contrast their variability with the high degree of regularity in the irrigation pipes. They might consider whether the plants growing in the circles, whether wheat, potatoes, or chamomile, grow naturally outside circles or in the occasional oasis. And if math and geometry are available to all intelligent minds, as the human designers of the Voyager Golden Records assumed, we would expect aliens to be impressed by the extreme regularity of the geometry of crop circles. They might suspect functional coherence in the crops, that they are being grown for a purpose — even if the aliens can’t eat them. Lastly, they might find aesthetic beauty in the patterns.
We’re assuming a lot about alien minds, but we already know the answer as humans: Yes, these crop circles are designed for a purpose. If SETI believers expect to be able to distinguish alien artifacts from natural causes, they can certainly also expect aliens to decipher ours.
Crop Art
Puschman ends with a discussion of the artistic crop circles that appear within corn or wheat fields in the morning. When the crop-art fad first caught national attention, there were some who tried to find natural causes. Others wondered if we were being visited by UFOs, or whether aliens beamed microwaves to flatten the crops. As the patterns became more intricate, few were the observers who did not attribute them to intelligent design.
She refers to an August 2011 article in Popular Science by Rebecca Boyle about crop art. By then, when designs had become extremely elaborate, most people had given up on natural causes.
In the collective modern imagination, crop circles are usually attributed to either aliens or a vast human conspiracy; possibly both. Some circle-watchers believe the designs are landing strips, maybe, or some kind of communiqué from outer space. Others argue crop circles are the result of secret government tests, or perhaps secret codes meant to convey information to satellites and aerial drones.
Boyle turned from the origin question to the how question. How were they made? She talks to a scientist, who speculated that they required advanced technology to make, to an actual crop art maker, who says it’s easy to do with simple materials, a GPS device, and a portable computer.
The “how” question, though, lies outside of intelligent design theory, as does the “who” question. We just want to know if the circles are designed.
Using Dembski’s design filter, we can formulate a robust design inference by first ruling out chance and natural law. Chance can accomplish some pretty improbable events, but if we decide the probability is low, our work is not done. Laws of physics might bring circles about (like the volcano, meteorite, or artesian spring). If the circle had to happen, given a meteor strike, then it’s no longer a contingent phenomenon, so natural law is the preferred inference for a crater.
Contingency allows our minds to progress to the final stage of the design filter: Is there an independently specified pattern? Perfect circles in regular grids have low probability. They are also contingent; no known natural law requires them to form that way (even the natural “fairy circles” we’ve discussed previously lack that degree of geometric specificity). We know, however, from every other instance of regularly spaced set circles, such as in parking lot bump strips, corrugated sheet metal perforations, or polka dots in fabric, that human intelligence was the cause.
If aliens are intelligent enough to design space ships, they most likely understand math and logic to a high degree. There may not be any such aliens. We certainly haven’t detected any yet. But by projecting what we know about intelligence onto theoretical intelligences in a “reverse SETI” thought experiment, we learn whether a Search for Terrestrial Intelligence justifies a design inference.
Finally, let’s consider aliens encountering two spacecraft beyond Earth: Voyager and Cassini. The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched with the express intention of communicating to alien intelligences, even though we know nothing about such intelligences. Presumably, a craft with that high a degree of complex specified information (CSI) would easily pass the design inference, even if aliens could not decipher the inscriptions or functions of the craft. It would certainly stand out from all the asteroids they know!
All the molecules of Cassini, however, were disrupted on September 15 as it burned up in the atmosphere. Cassini isn’t “gone” but it has become a part of Saturn. The CSI of all its exquisitely sensitive instruments, its onboard computers, its subsystems, has been obliterated. The chance that aliens could detect anomalous molecules in the atmosphere of Saturn seems remote; that would be the only possible way now to determine that something unusual happened in the planet’s atmosphere. From this we learn that it is far easier to destroy CSI than to create it.
If they ever locate the intact Huygens probe on Titan, though, that’s a different matter. They might deduce that an object with those characteristics could not have flown itself to its location. By observing the probe carefully, they would know not only that it was designed, but there must have existed a craft capable of delivering it to Titan that was also designed. If they determined that it came from planet Earth, they might even be able to reverse-engineer some of the design requirements for the mother ship.
In short, we have seen that role-playing alien intelligences is not only idle speculation. It can help us reason our way through principles of intelligent design about real-world phenomena. Perhaps somewhere out there, extraterrestrials reading this — if they could — would signal their agreement.
The root of the tree.
The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine
HIST Parts 3-5 examine the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. when the trinity doctrine was forced upon the church.)
1 It is certain that, in spite of the popularity of such concepts in the false religions surrounding them, the faithful Jewish people and prophets of the Old Testament never accepted a three-in-one God. It is true that the unfaithful among the Israelites often borrowed pagan gods, pagan customs, and pagan concepts (including Baal and Astarte) and added them to their God-given religion. But there is no record (scriptural or secular) of a trinity concept even among them.
2 Faithful Israel had only one God and He was always a single individual named Jehovah (possibly pronounced "Yahweh" or "Yehowah" in Hebrew - see the PRONOUNCE study), their Father in heaven - (Deut. 6:4, 5; Is. 64:8; Ps. 83:16-18). That is the concept known as monotheism (meaning "one person alone is God").
"The religion of the [Old Testament] and Judaism is monotheistic and personal. 1. In the [Old Testament] the words el, eloah, and elohim, from related roots, are generic designations of God. Alongside and alternating with them stands the individual, personal name Yahweh [Jehovah]." - The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 2, p. 67.
"The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a trinity is to be found there ... is utterly without foundation." [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
And Lohse states:
3 This, then, was the faith that Jesus passed on to his Apostles. This is the truth that the Apostles passed on to their followers (who lived and taught this very same concept up to at least 150 A. D.).
150 A.D.)
"In this period [1st century A.D.] churches were still regarded as synagogues, whose members prayed three times a day and fasted twice a week like Jews... They professed monotheism in the same terms as did the Jews. .... Within individual congregations they continued to think, argue, and act like their Jewish counterparts." - pp. 121-122, The Rise of Christianity, W. H. C. Frend (trinitarian), 1985, Fortress Press.
4 It was not until over 300 years after the death of Jesus that the trinity concept was fully developed, refined, and officially and finally accepted by Christendom through a decree by the Church at Rome. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26-26a] (Also see the CREEDS study.)
5 Yes, finally, by the end of the 4th century A.D., the trinity idea had been fully developed. The Roman Church had officially decreed the following points as being necessary for all Christians to believe:
There are said to be three divine persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - in the Godhead.
(1) Each of these separate persons is said to be eternal, none coming before or after the other in time.
(2) Each is said to be almighty, with none greater or lesser than the other.
(3) Each is said to be omniscient, knowing all things.
(4) Each is said to be true God.
(5) However, it is said that there are not three Gods but only one God.
6 But we should understand that in the more than 2,000 years from Abraham to the death of the last Apostle, John, Judaeo-Christianity had only one God, Jehovah ("YHWH"), the Father alone. (Cf. Ps. 83:18, KJV, ASV; Is. 63:16, ASV; and John 17:1, 3 - compare Jer.10:10, ASV).
But what about the powerful religious systems around them which controlled or profoundly influenced the entire known civilized world?
7 Babylon had a union of three gods who together represented all creation. This Babylonian concept was represented by the same equilateral triangle that represents the trinity concept in Christendom today.[27, 28, 29]
8 It is probable that this three-in-one god concept spread to India and Egypt at a very early date. Due to the perishable quality of much of the earliest writings in Egypt we get only glimpses of this concept in that land from a period before 700 B. C.[30, 31, 32] (It is abundantly clear from Egyptian sources in 200 B. C., but this will be covered when we discuss the powerful influence of Alexandria, Egypt.)
Morenz tells us, in fact:
And noted trinitarian scholar Dr. M.G. Easton tells us:
The book The Symbolism of Hindu Gods and Rituals admits, regarding the ancient Hindu trinity that was taught centuries before the first Christians:
12 We find that this Babylonian concept was popular with her "daughters" (her religious offspring), including India and Egypt, for hundreds of years while tiny, insignificant Israel stubbornly clung to her one, single-person God. Then, about 550 B. C., the rise of the extremely influential Greek philosophy/mystery religions began. Pythagoras (about 550 B.C.) may have been the founder of Greek philosophy and mystery religions. Certainly he was the earliest of the most influential Greek philosopher/religionists.
13 Pythagoras spent years studying with Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hindu religionists. When he finally returned to Greece, he formed a religious organization based on his knowledge gained in those foreign lands. He promoted a numerical symbolism in which he taught that God is number. More specifically, the Pythagoreans actually worshiped an equilateral triangle composed of dots.[44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50]
Aristotle said (over 300 years before Christ):
16 From Pythagoras (550 B. C.) until its decline (about 550 A. D.) the great influence of the Greek philosophy/mystery religions was spread by Pythagoreans, Platonists, Neopythagoreans, and finally Neoplatonists.
18 Yes, even if there had been no previous links leading back to Hindu India (and even Babylon), the study of the critical Alexandrian and Neo-Platonistinfluences would still be sufficient to expose the completely pagan origin of the trinity doctrine. The two are so intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to know how much one influenced the other and vice versa. In fact, this Alexandrian philosophy as a whole came to be known as Neoplatonism.[59]
19 Alexandria, Egypt, is probably the single most important source of the infiltration of an already popular pagan trinity concept into Christendom. We cannot fully appreciate its importance without a close look at this extremely influential city from its birth in the 4th century B. C. until its successful imposition of a trinity doctrine on the Roman church in the 4th century A. D.
"Under the [Roman] Empire, Alexandria became the greatest trade centre in the world. The Roman Alexandrian merchants had numerous settlements in South India. .... Moreover, Clement, Chrysostom, and other early Christian writers speak about the Indians [Hindus] in Alexandria and their cults." [61]
Alexandria, Egypt, had even developed a trinity doctrine of its very own long before Christian times. It appears to have been a blend (not surprisingly) of Egyptian, Hindu, and Greek philosophy/mystery religions.
"This fusing of one god with another is called theocrasia, and nowhere was it more vigorously going on than in Alexandria. Only two peoples resisted it in this period: The Jews, who already had their faith in the one God of heaven and earth, Jehovah, and the Persians, who had a monotheistic sun worship [Mithras]. It was Ptolemy I [who died in 283 B. C.] who set up not only the Museum in Alexandria, but the Serapeum, devoted to the worship of a trinity of gods which represented the result of a process of theocrasia applied more particularly to the gods of Greece and Egypt [with a distinct Hindu flavor].
"This trinity consisted of the god Serapis (= Osiris + Apis), the goddess Isis (= Hathor, the cow-moon goddess), and the child-god Horus. In one way or another almost every god was identified with one or other of these three aspects of the one god, even the sun god Mithras [very important in the religion of Constantine the Great [96, 97, 98] which we shall see when we examine the Nicene Council] of the Persians. and they were each ; THEY WERE THREE, BUT THEY WERE ALSO ONE." - The Outline of History, Wells, vol. 1, p. 307, 1956 ed.
other
22 Alexandria's most noteworthy feature was its permanent passion for syncretism.[66] Syncretism (like eclecticism) is a word that describes the way that the early church (after the death of the Apostolic Fathers) chose various ideas and doctrines from pagan religions and philosophies and incorporated them into the "Christian" church. The most influential center (by far) for this practice of borrowing pagan ideas and fusing them into Christendom was in Alexandria, Egypt.[67] It became known as the Alexandrian School[68] and the religious "Christian" philosophy it developed is known as the Alexandrian Philosophy.[69]
"Soon after the middle of the 2nd century [or soon after 150 A. D. when the Apostolic Fathers left the scene] a catechetical school [70] to instruct converts from paganism to Christianity was opened in Alexandria .... The men of the Alexandrian School were anxious to develop a system of theology that by the use of philosophy would give a systematic exposition of Christianity. They had been trained in the classical [pagan] literature and philosophy of the past and thought that it could be used in the formation of Christian theology....
(Again, what is really being done when someone attempts to "ADJUST the facts"?)
Remember that the influence of one philosophy/mystery religion became so great in Alexandria during this time that Alexandrian philosophy as a whole came to be known as Neo-Platonism. Let's briefly examine this extremely influential pagan philosophy/mystery religion.
24 Plotinus was a disciple of Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria (about 160-242 A. D.) who is considered to be the founder of Neo-Platonism. Saccas left no writings of his own, but his lectures greatly influenced Plotinus and others.[71]
Plotinus, like the Pythagoreans, had a high respect for the number three; and he makes great use of threefold distinctions." - The Greek Philosophers, Rex Warner, 1958, p. 221.
"Plotinus ... proclaimed that God is revealed in the material world in a trinity of manifestations" - p. 28, Bible Review, Feb., 1997.
"But what is God [in the writings of Plotinus]? `He' too is a triad …" – p. 610, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster, Inc.
(The earliest parts of this history are somewhat speculative concerning their influence on the trinity doctrine of Christendom. They get more certain as we go along until, when we reach Alexandria near the end of part one below, there is little doubt concerning the overall accuracy.
2 Faithful Israel had only one God and He was always a single individual named Jehovah (possibly pronounced "Yahweh" or "Yehowah" in Hebrew - see the PRONOUNCE study), their Father in heaven - (Deut. 6:4, 5; Is. 64:8; Ps. 83:16-18). That is the concept known as monotheism (meaning "one person alone is God")."The religion of the [Old Testament] and Judaism is monotheistic and personal. 1. In the [Old Testament] the words el, eloah, and elohim, from related roots, are generic designations of God. Alongside and alternating with them stands the individual, personal name Yahweh [Jehovah]." - The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 2, p. 67.
Professor of ecclesiastical history L. L. Paine L. L. Paine, A Critical History Of The Evolution Of Trinitarianism, p. 4, tells us:
"The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a trinity is to be found there ... is utterly without foundation." [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
And Lohse states:
"From the very beginning, of course, Christians not only believed in God in the sense in which the Jews did, but they also believed in Jesus Christ." - p. 38, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, Bernard Lohse, 1985, Fortress Press.
3 This, then, was the faith that Jesus passed on to his Apostles. This is the truth that the Apostles passed on to their followers (who lived and taught this very same concept up to at least 150 A. D.).
150 A.D.)
"In this period [1st century A.D.] churches were still regarded as synagogues, whose members prayed three times a day and fasted twice a week like Jews... They professed monotheism in the same terms as did the Jews. .... Within individual congregations they continued to think, argue, and act like their Jewish counterparts." - pp. 121-122, The Rise of Christianity, W. H. C. Frend (trinitarian), 1985, Fortress Press.
4 It was not until over 300 years after the death of Jesus that the trinity concept was fully developed, refined, and officially and finally accepted by Christendom through a decree by the Church at Rome. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26-26a] (Also see the CREEDS study.)
"Speculative thought began to analyze the divine nature until in the 4th century an elaborate theory of a threefoldness in God appears. In this Nicene or Athanasian form of thought God is said to consist of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all equally eternal, powerful and glorious." - Encyclopedia Americana, 1944, v. 6, p. 619, "Christianity".
5 Yes, finally, by the end of the 4th century A.D., the trinity idea had been fully developed. The Roman Church had officially decreed the following points as being necessary for all Christians to believe:
There are said to be three divine persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - in the Godhead.
(1) Each of these separate persons is said to be eternal, none coming before or after the other in time.
(2) Each is said to be almighty, with none greater or lesser than the other.
(3) Each is said to be omniscient, knowing all things.
(4) Each is said to be true God.
(5) However, it is said that there are not three Gods but only one God.
But what about the powerful religious systems around them which controlled or profoundly influenced the entire known civilized world?
7 Babylon had a union of three gods who together represented all creation. This Babylonian concept was represented by the same equilateral triangle that represents the trinity concept in Christendom today.[27, 28, 29]
8 It is probable that this three-in-one god concept spread to India and Egypt at a very early date. Due to the perishable quality of much of the earliest writings in Egypt we get only glimpses of this concept in that land from a period before 700 B. C.[30, 31, 32] (It is abundantly clear from Egyptian sources in 200 B. C., but this will be covered when we discuss the powerful influence of Alexandria, Egypt.)
Morenz tells us, in fact:
"The trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians .... Three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology." - Egyptian Religion.
And noted trinitarian scholar Dr. M.G. Easton tells us:
"The Egyptians believed in a resurrection and future life, as well as in a state of rewards and punishments dependent on our conduct in this world. The judge of the dead was Osiris, who had been slain by Set, the representative of evil, and afterwards restored to life. His death was avenged by his son Horus, whom the Egyptians invoked as their "Redeemer." Osiris and Horus, along with Isis, formed a trinity, who were regarded as representing the sun-God under different forms." – Easton's Bible Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publ.
9 India had a clearly defined trinity concept dating back to 300 B. C. at least.[33] The Brahmanas (probably composed about 800 B. C.) frequently mention the vedic triad.[33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43]
10 Understandably, some members of Christendom refuse to admit the close relationship between ancient triads and pantheism and the "modern" trinity doctrine of Christendom. If we closely examine the ancient Hindu pantheistic triad, however, there is no mistaking its close kinship with the trinity doctrine adopted more recently by Christendom: The One "universal self-existing world soul" is composed of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva who were worshiped equally and were merely different manifestations of the One.
"Siva is one of the gods of the Trinity. He is said to be the god of destruction. The other two gods are Brahma, the god of creation and Vishnu, the god of maintenance.... To indicate that these three processes are one and the same the three gods are combined in one form." - Published by A. Parthasarathy, Bombay. (As quoted in ti-E, p. 12.)
11 Yes, the ancient Hindu religionists who really believed in a single force or God found themselves unable to compete with the popularity of the many gods being worshiped throughout ancient India. So, in order to gain influence over the largest number of their countrymen, they actually compromised their belief and borrowed the trinity concept (probably right from its source in ancient Babylon), selected three of the most popular Indian gods, and incorporated them into their "One True God." - "I, the supreme indivisible Lord am three - Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva."[43]
12 We find that this Babylonian concept was popular with her "daughters" (her religious offspring), including India and Egypt, for hundreds of years while tiny, insignificant Israel stubbornly clung to her one, single-person God. Then, about 550 B. C., the rise of the extremely influential Greek philosophy/mystery religions began. Pythagoras (about 550 B.C.) may have been the founder of Greek philosophy and mystery religions. Certainly he was the earliest of the most influential Greek philosopher/religionists.
14 Although it was a secret religious organization whose "mysteries" were to be known only among its members, we have some clues to Pythagoreanism's deep "mysteries" that were borrowed from the religions of Babylon, India, and Egypt. Medieval numerologists, for example, admitted that they borrowed this mysterious knowledge from Pythagoreanism: The number three stands for "Trinity and extension of Godhead." [51]
Aristotle said (over 300 years before Christ):
"All things are three, and thrice is all: and let us use this number in the worship of the gods; for as the Pythagoreans say, everything and all things are bound by threes, for the end, and the middle, and the beginning have this number in everything, and these compose the number of the trinity."[52]
15 So it appears that this "holy" number three used to "worship the gods" in unity came down from Babylon through Egypt and India, and through the extremely influential Pythagoras to the ancient Greek philosophy/mystery religions and even to Plato himself. [53, 54, 55, 56-56a]
16 From Pythagoras (550 B. C.) until its decline (about 550 A. D.) the great influence of the Greek philosophy/mystery religions was spread by Pythagoreans, Platonists, Neopythagoreans, and finally Neoplatonists.
"NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM...appeared during the first century B. C. [the faithful Jews were still clinging to their faith in a single one-person God, Jehovah the Father] in Rome, whence it traveled to Alexandria (the sect's chief center) where it flourished until Neo-Platonism absorbed it in the 3rd century A. D." [57]
Neo-Pythagoreanism was mainly the old Pythagoreanism with some borrowing from Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism.
"They appear to have regarded Pythagoras as a divine being [founders of religions tend to `develop' into a divinity or deity for that religion after a period of time] a status which he shared with certain numbers also, particularly one, three, and ten." "Neo-Pythagoreanism's importance consists chiefly in its influence on Neoplatonism ... and on Christian [?] Theology by Clement of Alexandria (150-220 A. D.)." [57, 58]
17 We are now at the point where the links of the trinity chain (from pagan Babylon to pagan India to pagan Greece) become enormously strong in their joining to Christendom: The Alexandria and Neo-Platonism links (along with the Rome influence, of course) were the critical connections that led directly to the Roman Church officially adopting the "Jesus is equally God" doctrine in 325 A. D. at the Council of Nicaea.
18 Yes, even if there had been no previous links leading back to Hindu India (and even Babylon), the study of the critical Alexandrian and Neo-Platonistinfluences would still be sufficient to expose the completely pagan origin of the trinity doctrine. The two are so intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to know how much one influenced the other and vice versa. In fact, this Alexandrian philosophy as a whole came to be known as Neoplatonism.[59]
Alexander the Great had the Egyptian city of Alexandria built in 332 B. C. (The Hindu Trinity had been established in India by this time.) Alexander had already stretched his empire into the plains of India, "and brought many [Hindu] native princes under his rule." [60]
As time went on, the ties between Hindu India and Alexandria became even stronger.
"Under the [Roman] Empire, Alexandria became the greatest trade centre in the world. The Roman Alexandrian merchants had numerous settlements in South India. .... Moreover, Clement, Chrysostom, and other early Christian writers speak about the Indians [Hindus] in Alexandria and their cults." [61]
Alexandria, Egypt, had even developed a trinity doctrine of its very own long before Christian times. It appears to have been a blend (not surprisingly) of Egyptian, Hindu, and Greek philosophy/mystery religions.
"This fusing of one god with another is called theocrasia, and nowhere was it more vigorously going on than in Alexandria. Only two peoples resisted it in this period: The Jews, who already had their faith in the one God of heaven and earth, Jehovah, and the Persians, who had a monotheistic sun worship [Mithras]. It was Ptolemy I [who died in 283 B. C.] who set up not only the Museum in Alexandria, but the Serapeum, devoted to the worship of a trinity of gods which represented the result of a process of theocrasia applied more particularly to the gods of Greece and Egypt [with a distinct Hindu flavor].
"This trinity consisted of the god Serapis (= Osiris + Apis), the goddess Isis (= Hathor, the cow-moon goddess), and the child-god Horus. In one way or another almost every god was identified with one or other of these three aspects of the one god, even the sun god Mithras [very important in the religion of Constantine the Great [96, 97, 98] which we shall see when we examine the Nicene Council] of the Persians. and they were each ; THEY WERE THREE, BUT THEY WERE ALSO ONE." - The Outline of History, Wells, vol. 1, p. 307, 1956 ed.
(It may be of some interest to note the name of the first god of this pagan trinity - Serapis and the name of the temple devoted to the worship of this pagan trinity - the Serapeum. The name of an Egyptian bishop and "a prominent supporter of Athanasius"[62] and "defender of the [trinitarian] Nicene faith at the Council of Sardica in 343 [A. D.]" [63] was Serapion. This name appears to be a praise to the god Serapis.)[64]
20 In addition to its own home-grown pagan trinity (and the trinity in its imported Hindu cults), Alexandria became host to Neo-Platonism (which also incorporated a trinity concept as it came down through Pythagoras, and then Plato, into the western world). From the time of Jesus until about 150 A. D. Christian teachings had been passed down in fairly pure form. As the highly respected (and highly trinitarian) Christian history text, Christianity Through the Centuries, states:
"...the writings of the New Testament were completed just before the end of the first century after Christ. Men who knew the apostles and the apostolic doctrine continued the task of writing Christian literature. These men were known as the Apostolic Fathers. Most of the literary works of these men were produced between 95 and 150. Certain well-defined characteristics appear in their writings. Their utterances are informal 
simple statements of sincere faith and piety and show litt
le evidence of the philosophical training in pagan philosophy that one notices in the writings of Origen [in Alexandria] and Clement of Alexandria [and most who followed]." - p. 77.
simple statements of sincere faith and piety and show litt
le evidence of the philosophical training in pagan philosophy that one notices in the writings of Origen [in Alexandria] and Clement of Alexandria [and most who followed]." - p. 77.
21 The influence of Alexandria upon Christianity became so great that by the time the Apostolic Fathers had passed away (about 150 A. D.) it had "become the seat of Christian erudition and the Orthodox faith and was frequently torn by bloody religious dissensions."[65]
"Soon after the middle of the 2nd century [or soon after 150 A. D. when the Apostolic Fathers left the scene] a catechetical school [70] to instruct converts from paganism to Christianity was opened in Alexandria .... The men of the Alexandrian School were anxious to develop a system of theology that by the use of philosophy would give a systematic exposition of Christianity. They had been trained in the classical [pagan] literature and philosophy of the past and thought that it could be used in the formation of Christian theology....
"They developed an allegorical system [70] of interpretation that has plaguedChristianity since that time. .... This method of interpretation of the Scriptures has done much harm to the cause of correct interpretation and has resulted in absurd and, often, unscriptural theological ideas." - Christianity Through the Centuries, E. E. Cairns, Ph.D., Zondervan Publishing House, 1977 printing, pp. 119-120.
"Influences were strangely mingled [in the Alexandrian School], the reasoning of the refined and imaginative Greek, the practical, positive Roman, the visionary, idealistic Jew, the mystic Hindu, all brought to bear upon pagan philosophy and the new teachings of Christianity. The outgrowth of this movement was Neo-Platonism, a name sometimes given to Alexandrian philosophy as a whole.... The chief characteristic of Neo-Platonism was the attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy [including, of course, Pythagoreanism] with the teachings of Christianity. In other words, the Alexandrian Philosophy may be described as Christian truth MODIFIED by philosophic speculation." - New Standard Encyclopedia, v. 1, 1952, "Alexandrian School."
(But what is really being done when the Christian truth is being "MODIFIED"?)
We find this understanding confirmed by The Encyclopedia Americana:
"At Alexandria, Egypt ... the first serious attempt was made by Christians [?] to ADJUST the facts and truths of the gospel and the relations of Christian doctrine to reason and philosophy. Tertullian, ... the first [in Christendom] to apply the word `Trinity' to the conception ... of the triune Godhead, and Origen[89] ... are the commanding figures of the period." - 1944, v. 6, p. 609.
(Again, what is really being done when someone attempts to "ADJUST the facts"?)
Remember that the influence of one philosophy/mystery religion became so great in Alexandria during this time that Alexandrian philosophy as a whole came to be known as Neo-Platonism. Let's briefly examine this extremely influential pagan philosophy/mystery religion.
23 As we have already seen - the chief characteristic of Neo-Platonism was the extreme effort to thoroughly mix the leaven of "Greek philosophy with the teachings of Christianity." Let us see what the leaven of the philosophy of Neo-Platonism included.
"Neo-Platonism started as a synthesis [blending] of Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, adapted Jewish and Oriental [includes Hindu] religious elements, [and] crept, though professedly pagan, into patristic [early church] Christian theology. .... Its most potent phase [was] from 200 to 550 A. D. wherein it was the chief philosophy of classical paganism." - Encyclopedia Americana, v. 20, pp. 97-98, 1982.
"Neo-Platonism is a blend of almost all the major lines of philosophical thought which preceded its epoch; one of the most remarkable attempts in history to weave all the strands of existing systems into a single web of thought. Its greatest interpreter was Plotinus who was born near Alexandria in 205 A. D. and died in Rome 270. .... The influence of Plotinus and later Neo-Platonists on Christian theology is of immense importance." - An Encyclopedia of Religion, V. Ferm (ed.), 1945, p. 525.
Plotinus, like the Pythagoreans, had a high respect for the number three; and he makes great use of threefold distinctions." - The Greek Philosophers, Rex Warner, 1958, p. 221.
"Plotinus ... proclaimed that God is revealed in the material world in a trinity of manifestations" - p. 28, Bible Review, Feb., 1997.
"But what is God [in the writings of Plotinus]? `He' too is a triad …" – p. 610, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster, Inc.
25 To make a long story short, Plotinus (and undoubtedly his influential teacher, Ammonius Saccas, before him) included an already popular pagan trinity concept in his very influential teachings of Neo-Platonism.[72, 73, 74, 75] Scholars of Church history constantly emphasize the tremendous influence of Neo-Platonism (which has to include its basic pagan-developed trinity idea) on Christendom which had begun to borrow doctrines, customs, and philosophy from paganism by 200 A. D.[76, 77, 78, 79] The 1983 Academic American Encyclopedia states:
"Neoplatonism had a profound influence on Christian and Islamic philosophy and theology." - p. 85, v. 14.
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