On the firstfruits :The Watchtower Society's commentary.

FIRSTFRUITS

The earliest fruits of a season; the first results or products of anything. The Hebrew word reʼ·shithʹ (from a root meaning “head”) is used in the sense of first part, point of departure, or “beginning” (De 11:12; Ge 1:1; 10:10); the “best” (Ex 23:19, ftn); and “firstfruits” (Le 2:12). “First ripe fruits” is rendered from the Hebrew bik·ku·rimʹ, which is used especially with regard to grain and fruit. (Na 3:12) The Greek term for firstfruits (a·par·kheʹ) comes from a root having the basic meaning “primacy.”

Jehovah required of the nation of Israel that the firstfruits be offered to him, whether it be of man, animal, or the fruitage of the ground. (Ex 22:29, 30; 23:19; Pr 3:9) Devoting the firstfruits to Jehovah would be an evidence of the Israelites’ appreciation for Jehovah’s blessing and for their land and its harvest. It would be an expression of thankfulness to the Giver of “every good gift.”—De 8:6-10; Jas 1:17.

Jehovah commanded the nation, representatively, to offer firstfruits to him, especially at the time of the Festival of Unfermented Cakes. Then, on Nisan 16, at the sanctuary the high priest waved before Jehovah some of the firstfruits of the grain harvest, a sheaf of barley, which was the first crop of the year based on the sacred calendar. (Le 23:5-12) Again, at Pentecost, on the 50th day after the sheaf of barley was waved, the firstfruits of the wheat harvest in the form of two leavened loaves made of fine flour were presented as a wave offering.—Le 23:15-17; see FESTIVAL.

Besides these grain offerings by the high priest on behalf of the nation, the Israelites were required to bring the firstfruits of all their produce as offerings. Every firstborn male of man and beast was sanctified to Jehovah, being either offered or redeemed. (See FIRSTBORN, FIRSTLING.) The firstfruits of coarse meal were to be offered in the form of ring-shaped cakes. (Nu 15:20, 21) Fruitage of the soil was also put in baskets and taken by the Israelites to the sanctuary (De 26:1, 2), where they then recited certain words recorded at Deuteronomy 26:3-10. The words were actually an outline of the nation’s history from their entering into Egypt to their deliverance and their being brought into the Promised Land.

It is said that the custom arose whereby each locality would send a representative with the firstfruits contributed by the inhabitants of the district in order that not all would have to undergo the inconvenience of going up to Jerusalem each time that the firstfruits were ripe. The quantity of these firstfruits to be offered was not fixed by the Law; it apparently was left to the generosity and appreciative spirit of the giver. However, the choicest portions, the best of the firstfruits, were to be offered.—Nu 18:12; Ex 23:19; 34:26.

In the case of a newly planted tree, for the first three years it was considered impure as though uncircumcised. In the fourth year all its fruit became holy to Jehovah. Then, in the fifth year, the owner could gather in its fruit for himself.—Le 19:23-25.

Contributions of firstfruits to Jehovah by the 12 non-Levitical tribes of Israel were used by the priests and Levites, since they received no inheritance in the land. (Nu 18:8-13) The faithful offering of the firstfruits brought pleasure to Jehovah and a blessing to all parties involved. (Eze 44:30) A failure to bring them would be counted by God as robbing him of his due and would bring his displeasure. (Mal 3:8) In Israel’s history at times this practice was neglected, being restored in certain periods by rulers zealous for true worship. In King Hezekiah’s reformation work, he held an extended celebration of the Festival of the Unfermented Cakes, and on this occasion Hezekiah instructed the people to fulfill their duty with respect to the contribution of firstfruits and tithes. Cheerfully the people responded by bringing in great quantities of the firstfruits of the grain, new wine, oil, honey, and all the produce of the field, from the third month to the seventh. (2Ch 30:21, 23; 31:4-7) After the restoration from Babylon, Nehemiah led the people in taking an oath to walk in Jehovah’s law, including the bringing to him of firstfruits of every sort.—Ne 10:29, 34-37; see OFFERINGS.

Figurative and Symbolic Use. Jesus Christ was spiritually begotten at the time of his baptism and was resurrected from the dead to life in the spirit on Nisan 16, 33 C.E., the day of the year on which the firstfruits of the first grain crop were presented before Jehovah at the sanctuary. He is, therefore, called the firstfruits, being actually the first firstfruits to God. (1Co 15:20, 23; 1Pe 3:18) The faithful followers of Jesus Christ, his spiritual brothers, are also a firstfruits to God, but not the primary firstfruits, being similar to the second grain crop, the wheat, which was presented to Jehovah on the day of Pentecost. They number 144,000 and are called the ones “bought from among mankind as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb” and “certain firstfruits of his creatures.”—Re 14:1-4; Jas 1:18.

The apostle Paul also speaks of the faithful Jewish remnant who became the first Christians as being “firstfruits.” (Ro 11:16) The Christian Epaenetus is called “a firstfruits of Asia for Christ” (Ro 16:5), and the household of Stephanas “the firstfruits of Achaia.”—1Co 16:15.

Since the anointed Christians are begotten by the spirit as sons of God with the hope of resurrection to immortality in the heavens, they are said during their lifetime on earth to “have the firstfruits, namely, the spirit . . . while we are earnestly waiting for adoption as sons, the release from our bodies by ransom.” (Ro 8:23, 24) Paul says that he and fellow Christians with hopes of life in the spirit have “the token of what is to come, that is, the spirit,” which he also says is “a token in advance of our inheritance.”—2Co 5:5; Eph 1:13, 14.

Darwinists still don't (won't?)get it.

Methinks This Robot Has Been, Like, Weaseled into a Darwinian Tale

Evolution News &Views 

It's been 29 years since Richard Dawkins committed the Weasel Blunder and 25 years since Tim Berra committed Berra's Blunder, but some evolutionists still don't get it. You can't design something for a purpose and call it Darwinism. Even if some randomness is thrown in, once a goal is specified in advance, that's not evolution; it's intelligent design.

The latest example comes from PLOS One: "Morphological Evolution of Physical Robots through Model-Free Phenotype Development," by Brodbeck, Hauser, and Iida. Look for the evidence of guidance by the investigators:

Artificial evolution of physical systems is a stochastic optimization method in which physical machines are iteratively adapted to a target function. The key for a meaningful design optimization is the capability to build variations of physical machines through the course of the evolutionary process. Theoptimization in turn no longer relies on complex physics models that are prone to the reality gap, a mismatch between simulated and real-world behavior. We report model-free development and evaluation of phenotypes in the artificial evolution of physical systems, in which a mother robot autonomously designs and assembles locomotion agents. The locomotion agents are automatically placed in the testing environment and their locomotion behavior is analyzed in the real world. This feedbackis used for the design of the next iteration. Through experiments with a total of 500 autonomously built locomotion agents, this article shows diversification of morphology and behavior of physical robots for the improvement of functionality with limited resources. [Emphasis added.]

These researchers from Switzerland carefully crafted a "mother robot" that could assemble pre-fab parts into blocks that could perform some simplified locomotion. The algorithm was set to reward "offspring" that performed faster. Despite employing Darwinian words like "fitness" and "selection," their work has "design" stamped all over it. Reporters, though, went ape attributing this to Darwinian evolution.

At PhysOrg, Sarah Collins titled her report, "On the origin of (robot) species" in tribute to the Great Bearded Guru. She's like a viewer of a magic show unaware of how the trick is done:

For each robot child, there is a unique 'genome' made up of a combination of between one and five different genes, which contains all of the information about the child's shape, construction and motor commands. As in nature, evolution in robots takes place through 'mutation', where components of one gene are modified or single genes are added or deleted, and'crossover', where a new genome is formed by merging genes from two individuals.

In order for the mother to determine which children were thefittest, each child was tested on how far it travelled from its starting position in a given amount of time. The most successfulindividuals in each generation remained unchanged in the next generation in order to preserve their abilities, while mutation and crossover were introduced in the less successful children.

In all fairness, Collins points out some differences between robots and natural organisms. Still, nowhere does she explain how the experiment clearly requires design instead of natural selection. She thinks the "mother" robot did the designing. And she takes on faith the opinion of one of the authors that they were watching Darwinian evolution happen before their eyes:

"Natural selection is basically reproduction, assessment, reproduction, assessment and so on," said lead researcher Dr Fumiya Iida of Cambridge's Department of Engineering, who worked in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich. "That's essentially what this robot is doing -- we can actually watch the improvement and diversification of the species."

At the BBC News, evolution reporter Pallab Ghosh titled his coverage, "Robots learn to evolve and improve." It's not clear how one could "learn to evolve" if evolution is an unguided natural process, but that's not the only conundrum in his article. Like Collins, he fails to make any distinction between intelligently designed robots and natural processes.

Engineers have developed a robotic system that can evolve and improve its performance.

A robot arm builds "babies" that get progressively better at moving without any human intervention.

The ultimate aim of the research project is to develop robots that adapt to their surroundings.

There's a second conundrum: if human minds are developing robots that evolve, isn't Ghosh making a case for intelligent design?

What the designers and reporters all seem to be missing is the fact that goals were determined from the outset. "Improvement" was defined as the ability to move faster. Yet in nature, not every successful animal is the speediest (consider the sloth, or the fabled tortoise and hare). Darwinian evolution cannot work toward a distant target. As Paul Nelson remarks in the film Living Waters, "Any evolutionary process you consider, any materialistic process you can consider has no foresight. It can't see five years, five seconds, five milliseconds into the future. For that, you need a mind."

The paper actually makes a powerful if unintended case for intelligent design when you think about it. Ghosh reports that Dr. Iida got into robotics because the ones he saw in real life were not as good as the ones he enjoyed in movies like Star Trek and Star Wars. "His aim was to change that," Ghosh says, "and his approach was to draw lessons from the natural world to improve the efficiency and flexibility of traditional robotic systems." He had an aim. He had an approach. He wanted to gain knowledge, or information. So he looked at the efficiency and flexibility of natural solutions, where he found efficient designs worth copying. In other words, he was motivated by biomimicry -- an approach saturated with design thinking.

But he used an evolutionary algorithm, someone might complain. True, but it wasn't evolutionary in the Darwinian sense. There's no such thing as a Darwinian "algorithm" despite the use of familiar lingo like mutation, selectionand fitness in the paper. Algorithms are intelligently designed for function. Once an algorithm is defined, a mindless mechanism like a computer program or robot can use it, applying inputs and monitoring outputs, as in this case. But those mechanisms were also predesigned to implement the predetermined goal.

Animal and plant breeders use "evolutionary algorithms" of a sort; they know what they want; they use algorithms of sexual reproduction, and they monitor the output to decide what offspring get to breed in the next iteration. All this is under the guiding hand of the intelligent agent (the breeder). Artificial selection is intelligent design, not Darwinism.

If the authors and reporters really wanted to see materialistic Darwinian processes in action, they should have taken their hands off the equipment, shut the door, and let nature take its course. Most likely, nothing more interesting would happen than rust.

Dawkins set a goal of generating Shakespeare's phrase "Methinks it is like a weasel." Berra watched cars "evolve" but missed the role of designers. The designers of these robots (and their Darwin-friendly reporters) committed both blunders. They had a target, designed a way to reach it, yet presumed after the fact that their carefully engineered "mother robot" resembled a mindless, material entity working by Darwinian natural selection. We can at least thank them for providing another opportunity to show why they really made the case for design.

With apologies to Johnny cash.

Being Hated by the Right People

Jonathan Wells 

As Johnny Cash reputedly once said, "It's good to know who hates you, and it's good to be hated by the right people."

Darwinist bloggers P. Z. Myers and Ian Musgrave hate me. In fact, Myers writes, "My animus for Jonathan Wells knows no bounds." Well, at least he (unlike Musgrave) spells my name right.

The most recent outbursts by Myers and Musgrave were provoked bymy February 29 blog on Evolution News & Views, in which I predicted that Darwinists would try to take credit for a recent French discovery regarding antibiotic resistance. And indeed they did.

In the course of claiming credit for Darwinism, Musgrave claims that I completely misrepresent evolution, molecular biology, genetics and history. Wow. At least I get points for comprehensiveness. As proof of my misrepresentations, Musgrave cites Wikipedia, which everyone involved in this controversy knows is about as balanced and reliable on this issue as P.Z. Myers's Pharyngula or The National Center for Science Miseducation's Panda's Thumb.

The main points in my original blog post were these:

I. Darwinism provides no explanation for the origin of complex enzymes (such as the one described in the French study) except to invoke "imaginary mutations over unimaginable time scales." Musgrave counters that the enzyme in the French study "isn't particularly complex, it's a simple 201 amino acid long protein." Of course, it doesn't take much of a skeptic to doubt that a 201 amino acid enzyme could originate by random mutation and natural selection. But instead of tackling that problem Musgrave simply describes how single mutations have been demonstrated to alter the properties of existing enzymes.

Fine. Except that the issue is not how existing enzymes can be altered, but how they originated in the first place. As in the case of whole organisms, mutation and selection can explain minor changes in existing species, but not the origin of species. Yet that's what Darwin's theory was supposedly about.

II. Darwinism played no role in the current research. The principal researcher in the French study disagrees, and >wrote to Musgrave's blog that "we did indeed use Darwinian evolution within this work (something unusual in structural biology). In order to obtain an enzyme with increased stability (a critical point for structural studies), we used selective pressure to obtain mutants of the enzyme."

So the researchers used artificial selection to good advantage. But artificial selection is not Darwinism. People were using artificial selection for centuries before Darwin came along, and they didn't need Darwin to explain it to them. Darwin argued that an analogous process also operates in natural populations -- and so it does. But he and his devoted followers went much further and claimed that it also explains the origin of new species, organs and body plans, which it doesn't.

The question remains whether our understanding of antibiotic resistance would owe anything to Darwinian theory even in the limited (and true) sense that selection operates in natural populations. I don't think so. Antibiotic resistance arises in clinical situations that are anything but natural. In 1956 Selman Waksman, the discoverer of streptomycin, pointed out that the isolation, purification and clinical application of antibiotics is highly artificial and has no counterpart in nature. According to Waksman, the application of Darwinian theory to antibiotics in nature was "totally unjustified." (Waksman, "The Role of Antibiotics in Natural Processes," Giornale di Microbiologia 2 (1956): 1-14.)

So I repeat the question with which I concluded my original blog post: "How, exactly, is Darwinian evolution essential to understanding and overcoming antibiotic resistance -- as the Darwinists claim it is?"

On Quirinius :The Watchtower Society's commentary.

QUIRINIUS

Roman governor of Syria at the time of the “registration” ordered by Caesar Augustus that resulted in Jesus’ birth taking place in Bethlehem. (Lu 2:1, 2) His full name was Publius Sulpicius Quirinius.

In the Chronographus Anni CCCLIIII, a list of Roman consuls, the name of Quirinius appears in 12 B.C.E. along with that of Messala. (Chronica Minora, edited by T. Mommsen, Munich, 1981, Vol. I, p. 56) Roman historian Tacitus briefly recounts Quirinius’ history, saying: “[He] sprang from the municipality of Lanuvium—had no connection; but as an intrepid soldier and an active servant he won a consulate under the deified Augustus, and, a little later, by capturing the Homonadensian strongholds beyond the Cilician frontier, earned the insignia of triumph . . . , adviser to Gaius Caesar during his command in Armenia.” (The Annals, III, XLVIII) His death took place in 21 C.E.

Not mentioned by Tacitus is Quirinius’ relationship to Syria. Jewish historian Josephus relates Quirinius’ assignment to Syria as governor in connection with the simultaneous assignment of Coponius as the Roman ruler of Judea. He states: “Quirinius, a Roman senator who had proceeded through all the magistracies to the consulship and a man who was extremely distinguished in other respects, arrived in Syria, dispatched by Caesar to be governor of the nation and to make an assessment of their property. Coponius, a man of equestrian rank, was sent along with him to rule over the Jews with full authority.” Josephus goes on to relate that Quirinius came into Judea, to which his authority was extended, and ordered a taxation there. This brought much resentment and an unsuccessful attempt at revolt, led by “Judas, a Gaulanite.” (Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 1, 2, 3, 4 [i, 1]) This is evidently the revolt referred to by Luke at Acts 5:37. According to Josephus’ account it took place in “the thirty-seventh year after Caesar’s defeat of Antony at Actium.” (Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 26 [ii, 1]) That would indicate that Quirinius was governor of Syria in 6 C.E.

For a long time this was the only governorship of Syria by Quirinius for which secular history supplied confirmation. However, in the year 1764 an inscription known as the Lapis Tiburtinus was found in Rome, which, though not giving the name, contains information that most scholars acknowledge could apply only to Quirinius. (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, edited by H. Dessau, Berlin, 1887, Vol. 14, p. 397, No. 3613) It contains the statement that on going to Syria he became governor (or, legate) for ‘the second time.’ On the basis of inscriptions found in Antioch containing Quirinius’ name, many historians acknowledge that Quirinius was also governor of Syria in the B.C.E. period.

There is uncertainty on their part, however, as to where Quirinius fits among the secularly recorded governors of Syria. Josephus lists Quintilius Varus as governor of Syria at the time of, and subsequent to, the death of Herod the Great. (Jewish Antiquities, XVII, 89 [v, 2]; XVII, 221 [ix, 3]) Tacitus also refers to Varus as being governor at the time of Herod’s death. (The Histories, V, IX) Josephus states that Varus’ predecessor was Saturninus (C. Sentius Saturninus).

Many scholars, in view of the evidence of an earlier governorship by Quirinius, suggest the years 3-2 B.C.E. for his governorship. While these dates would harmonize satisfactorily with the Biblical record, the basis on which these scholars select them is in error. That is, they list Quirinius as governor during those years because they place his rule after that of Varus and hence after the death of Herod the Great, for which they use the popular but erroneous date of 4 B.C.E. (See CHRONOLOGY; HEROD No. 1 [Date of His Death].) (For the same reason, that is, their use of the unproved date 4 B.C.E. for Herod’s death, they give Varus’ governorship as from 6 to 4 B.C.E.; the length of his rule, however, is conjectural, for Josephus does not specify the date of its beginning or of its end.) The best evidence points to 2 B.C.E. for the birth of Jesus. Hence Quirinius’ governorship must have included this year or part thereof.

Some scholars call attention to the fact that the term used by Luke, and usually translated “governor,” is he·ge·monʹ. This Greek term is used to describe Roman legates, procurators, and proconsuls, and it means, basically, a “leader” or “high executive officer.” Some, therefore, suggest that, at the time of what Luke refers to as the “first registration,” Quirinius served in Syria in the capacity of a special legate of the emperor exercising extraordinary powers. A factor that may also aid in understanding the matter is Josephus’ clear reference to a dual rulership of Syria, since in his account he speaks of two persons, Saturninus and Volumnius, serving simultaneously as “governors of Syria.” (Jewish Antiquities, XVI, 277, 280 [ix, 1]; XVI, 344 [x, 8]) Thus, if Josephus is correct in his listing of Saturninus and Varus as successive presidents of Syria, it is possible that Quirinius served simultaneously either with Saturninus (as Volumnius had done) or with Varus prior to Herod’s death (which likely occurred in 1 B.C.E.). The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge presents this view: “Quirinius stood in exactly the same relation to Varus, the governor of Syria, as at a later time Vespasian did to Mucianus. Vespasian conducted the war in Palestine while Mucianus was governor of Syria; and Vespasian was legatus Augusti, holding precisely the same title and technical rank as Mucianus.”—1957, Vol. IX, pp. 375, 376.

An inscription found in Venice (Lapis Venetus) refers to a census conducted by Quirinius in Syria. However, it provides no means for determining whether this was in his earlier or his later governorship.—Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, edited by T. Mommsen, O. Hirschfeld, and A. Domaszewski, 1902, Vol. 3, p. 1222, No. 6687.


Luke’s proved accuracy in historical matters gives sound reason for accepting as factual his reference to Quirinius as governor of Syria around the time of Jesus’ birth. It may be remembered that Josephus, virtually the only other source of information, was not born until 37 C.E., hence nearly four decades after Jesus’ birth. Luke, on the other hand, was already a physician traveling with the apostle Paul by about 49 C.E. when Josephus was but a boy of 12. Of the two, Luke, even on ordinary grounds, is the more likely source for reliable information on the matter of the Syrian governorship just prior to Jesus’ birth. Justin Martyr, a Palestinian of the second century C.E., cited the Roman records as proof of Luke’s accuracy as regards Quirinius’ governorship at the time of Jesus’ birth. (A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, edited by B. Orchard, 1953, p. 943) There is no evidence that Luke’s account was ever challenged by early historians, even by early critics such as Celsus.

On Wikipedia's wizards of ID

Meet the Cast of Characters Who Edit Wikipedia’s Page on Intelligent Design

David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

In the few weeks since the fate of paleontologist Günter Bechly at the hands of Wikipedia editors came to light, we’ve been reminded of an important truth: the world is far too dependent on the well-known online encyclopedia. Its treatment of intelligent design and ID scientists, like the now-erased Dr. Bechly or the disemboweled Dr. Walter Bradley, is a case in point.

Here are links to recent posts:

• “Wikipedia Erases Paleontologist Günter Bechly”
• “How “Notable” Do You Really Have to Be to Merit a Wikipedia Entry?”
• “You’ve Been Edited — Another ID Scholar, Walter Bradley, Gets the WikipediaTreatment”
• “If Trolls Wrote and Edited an Influential Online Encyclopedia”
• “Scientist Protests Wikipedia’s Mob Rule; Gets a Form Letter in Response”
• “In Challenging Wikipedia‘s Masked Mob, It’s Not Just Intelligent Design Proponents”

We so long ago gave up on the main entry on ID itself that I’ve hardly mentioned it. But the first sentence is a distortion or a lie, depending on how charitable you feel about it.

Intelligent design (ID) is a religious argument for the existence of God.

ID is neither of those things. Nor is it, as they go on, “pseudoscience,” a “form of creationism,” “lack[ing] empirical support and offer[ing] no testable or tenable hypotheses .” These are all complaints we’ve addressed   many times over.

What readers most need to understand about Wikipedia is that the editors are almost all pseudonyms of volunteer non-authorities. Many have an axe to grind. They wield power over mass opinion not because they’re objective or knowledgeable but simply by virtue of being dedicated to Wikipedia, on call at a moment’s notice to “fix” any correction they don’t like. The sociological profile there, someone with that kind of free time on his hands, guarantees that the page will attract people unfriendly to an idea like the design hypothesis.

Who’s been editing the ID entry lately? Check out the Revision history. The participants’ User pages can be interesting to read. The editors include, most recently, PaleoNeonate, claiming expertise in Computer Science, “a male born in the seventies in Canada. I am not notable.” He says, under Interests, that he is “an agnostic with naturalist pantheistic tendencies, who has long ceased to believe in the supernatural.”

One week ago, someone cut the word “religious” in the description of ID as a “religious argument.” That was on October 27 at 6:41 pm. At 6:43 pm, PaleoNeonate was on the scene, putting “religious” back in. Two minutes later! These people can wear anyone out.

PaleoNeonate is not a rarity. MrBill3, another editor, is “a skeptic who works as a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit.” Pepperbeast is “from Earth,” “interested in New Zealand,” “interested in religion as an anthropological and historical phenomenon,” a “freethinker,” a “skeptic,” and a “foodie.” MPants at Work is “a (male) skeptical liberal atheist feminist American gun nut SJW.” He lets loose with a paragraph of insults and profanities if you care to check it out.

Some editors sound like normal people. Others appear random. Roxy the dog is a dog owner who just discovered that his pet has lymphoma, which is sad to hear. The only other information about Roxy is that he “resists the POV pushing of lunatic charlatans.” Others give neither a real name nor any other information at all to go on.

Someone called “dave souza” sounds like that could be his actual name. In a short autobiography on his page, written in the third person, he is frank about his bias against ID:

Irritated by something in the Charles Darwin article which didn’t fit with his memory of a library book, he borrowed the book and was soon involved in extensive revisions of the page and adding related articles. Nine months later he was still renewing the book and distilling its goodness into offshoots like the “the Devil’s Chaplain” while frantically editing related texts like Radicalism. He strayed into the history of creationismm [sic] leading to an unhealthy fascination with the great intelligent design con. Soon he was spending sunny days when he should have been out mowing the lawn hunched over his laptop, as each edit spawned innumerable corrections to other articles or new red links demanding to be fed. [Emphasis added.]

Now pull back and consider. ID poses an ultimate question that should be of interest to all thoughtful people. It’s a scientific argument, not a religious one. It’s not an argument for God’s existence, though it’s compatible with theism. The latter prompts us to expect evidence of purpose in nature.

Looking up ID on Google is very often the beginning and end of people’s investigation of the design question. Directed immediately to Wikipedia, the reader will find an article that starts out with a distortion, edited by this cast of pseudonymous characters. Few visitors to the page will think to wonder where the information came from, or who maintains or edits it. It’s like something out of a very weird and bad dream.

On Adam,Eve and Darwin.

Is a First Human Pair Possible or Impossible?
Ann Gauger


Sometimes the claims that scientists make go beyond what can be definitively established. They may overestimate the sensitivity of their analytical methods, or engage in somewhat circular reasoning. These kinds of things are hard for laypeople to detect; even scientists trained in a different field may not recognize there is a problem. That’s why it is enormously useful to have important claims evaluated by someone who is knowledgeable in the particular subject under dispute, especially if the dispute matters to a great many people.

Richard Buggs, Reader at Queen Mary University of London, is a well-respected geneticist, with numerous papers published in molecular ecology, genomics, and molecular evolution. He knows something about population genetics. In a post on October 28 on the Nature Ecology and Evolution community website, Buggs questioned assertions made by Professor Dennis Venema (Trinity Western University) in his book Adam and the Genome, concerning the possibility of a first human pair. He begins thusly:


Does genomic evidence make it scientifically impossible that the human lineage could have ever passed through a population bottleneck of just two individuals? This is a question I am asked semi-frequently by religious friends….

The issue is this. Believers in Abrahamic religions who accept evolution often combine it with belief that all humans have descended from a single couple. Until now, many have assumed that this belief is compatible with evolution and mainstream science.

This needs to change, according Christian biologist Dennis Venema writing in the 2017 book Adam and the Genome. Chapter 3 of this book claims that three population genetic studies give independent estimates that the population size of humans has never dropped below around 10,000 individuals. Venema declares that a bottleneck of two is impossible, and this is a fact of comparable scientific certainty to heliocentrism. He gives his Christian readers a stark choice between embracing mainstream science, or sticking with untenable beliefs about an ancestral couple.

Buggs finds himself unable to agree with such a dogmatic statement.

This is fine, so long as mainstream science really is showing that a single-pair bottleneck somewhere in the history of humankind is an absolute impossibility. But having looked at the evidence that Venema describes and cites, I am not yet convinced. I can’t echo him and say to someone who believes in an extreme human population bottleneck that they are against science.

His article goes through the arguments that Venema addresses in his book, and shows for each why it is impossible to rule out the possibility of a first pair as the origin of humanity.

Reduction in Genetic Diversity

Venema argues that having a single pair as the starting point for humanity would cause an extreme bottleneck, leading to an extreme loss in genetic diversity. (He assumes humanity is descended from ape-like ancestors that are the source of that diversity.) On the face of it, it seems reasonable that such a bottleneck in the human lineage would cause an extreme reduction in genetic diversity. But not all bottlenecks are the same. Bottlenecks that last a long time do eliminate diversity, but short sharp ones may not, such as would be the case for a single pair at the start of humanity.


[P]opulation geneticists (M. Nei, T. Maruyama and R. Chakraborty 1975 Evolution, 29(1):1-10) showed that even a bottleneck of a single pair would not lead to massive decreases in genetic diversity, if followed by rapid population growth. When two individuals are taken at random from an existing large population, they will on average carry 75% of its heterozygosity (M. Slatkin and L. Excoffier 2012 Genetics 191:171–181). From a bottleneck of a single fertilised female, if population size doubles every generation, after many generations the population will have over half of the heterozygosity of the population before the bottleneck (Barton and Charlesworth 1984, Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 15:133-64). If population growth is faster than this, the proportion of heterozygosity maintained will be higher.

Buggs then goes on to address a related subject called allelic richness, or how many variants of each gene there are. Venema states the problem as follows:

Taking into account the human mutation rate, and the mathematical probability of new mutations spreading in a population or being lost, these methods indicate an ancestral population size for humans right around that 10,000 figure. In fact, to generate the number of alleles we see in the present day from a starting point of just two individuals, one would have to postulate mutation rates far in excess of what we observe for any animal.

How does Buggs respond?

We need to bear in mind that explosive population growth in humans has allowed many new mutations to rapidly accumulate in human populations (A. Keinan and A. G. Clark (2012) Science 336: 740-743). Hyper-variable loci like MHC genes or microsatellites have so many alleles that they seem to defy the idea of a single couple bottleneck until we consider that they have very rapid rates of evolution, and could have evolved very many alleles since a bottleneck.

Linkage Disequilibrium Within Populations

Linkage disequilibrium (LD) is a measure of how much recombination has occurred between sites on a chromosome, and because of mathematical relationships between LD and population size, can be used to estimate the size of a population at a particular time. Venema chose to use an LD study (Tenesa et al. “Recent Human Effective Population Size Estimated from Linkage Disequilibrium,” Genome Research 17: 520–26) to argue that we could never have come from just two. As Venema says:

The researchers found that, during this period [200,000 years ago], humans living in sub-Saharan Africa maintained a minimum population of about 7,000 individuals, and that the ancestors of all other humans maintained a minimum population of about 3,000 — once again, adding up to the same value other methods arrive at.

Buggs responds:

This is a rather inaccurate presentation of the paper. The paper’s discussion starts with the sentence: “Overall, the estimates of Ne [effective population size] appear to be much lower than the usually quoted value of 10,000”. It seems to me that the paper gives no warrant for Venema’s addition of effective population sizes above and below the Sahara, as it explains that the non-sub-Saharan populations contain a “subset of the amount of genetic variation present in the African population” due to an out-of-Africa expansion. It is the ancestral sub-Saharan estimate that therefore is of main interest to us. The mean estimated Ne for this population among chromosomes is 6286, with a standard deviation of 1357.

This study depends critically on knowing the recombination rate of the populations. Recombination rate is used both to calculate effective population size (from LD) and to estimate the time point that this is being measured for (from distance between loci). But the main method used to estimate the recombination rate by the authors is patterns of LD. Linkage disequilibrium patterns are also being used to calculate the effective population sizes given a known recombination rate. A degree of circular reasoning seems to be inevitable here. When the authors use a slightly different method to estimate recombination rate (which also relies upon measures of LD), all their estimates of Ne dropped by a mean of 27%. Thus, with the best will in the world, all we have here are ballpark figures for past effective population sizes. I am sure the authors of the study would not view their results as being of equivalent certainty to heliocentrism.

Obviously, however, the paper at no point gives an effective population size estimate as low as two individuals. Does this therefore disprove the hypothesis of a bottleneck of two? I don’t think so, because such a scenario is simply not on the radar of the methods employed. The methods assume that the populations at any given time point are at equilibrium and not expanding exponentially (the authors deliberately exclude the last 10,000 years from this analysis as they know that exponential population growth has occurred in this timeframe). It is hard to see how they could pick up on a short, sharp bottleneck even if one had happened. It would be nice to see this modelled, just to check.


Even if the results of this study are entirely correct, the authors do not make any statements about population size more than 200,000 years ago. This would appear to leave open the possibility of a bottleneck in the previous 5.8 million years.

PSMC Method

The pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent model (PSMC) is used to analyze single genomes to infer past effective population sizes from patterns of heterozygosity. The first paper to do so was Li and Durbin 2011 (“Inference of Human Population History from Individual Whole-Genome Sequences” Nature 475: 493– 96). Buggs explains:


When run on human genomes, these analyses did not drop below an Ne [effective population size] of 5,700 for African individuals. Does this prove that a sudden, short bottleneck never happened? I don’t think so. Because a single couple can carry with them 0.75 of the heterozygosity of their ancestral population, we would not expect an extreme number of coalescence events at the bottleneck. Furthermore, those that are there were would be smeared out over a long period of time around the bottleneck.

Li and Durbin themselves acknowledge that their technique cannot detect short sharp bottlenecks.


…simulations did, however, reveal a limitation of PSMC in recovering sudden changes in effective population size. For example, the instantaneous reduction from 12,000 to 1,200 at 100 kyr ago in the simulation was spread over several preceding tens of thousands of years in the PSMC reconstruction.

Buggs concludes:

Thus I cannot see that PSMC analyses (many more of which have been done on human genomes since the original paper by Li and Durbin) can be cited as rigorously disproving a short, sharp bottleneck.

Incomplete Lineage Sorting

Short and sweet: incomplete lineage sorting doesn’t matter because it all happened before the human lineage was established.

Venema makes an argument based on incomplete lineage sorting among humans, apes and gorillas, which gives a large estimated effective population size. This argument is not relevant if we are only interested in the human lineage (the occurrence of ILS does not require maintenance of large populations sizes in every lineage after speciation and so does not exclude a bottleneck in the exclusively human lineage).

Conclusion

None of the methods that Venema cites are able to address the problem of the existence of a first pair. Either they are insensitive to short sharp bottlenecks (reduction in genetic diversity, PMSC) or they are not designed to ask the questions at hand, and even engage in somewhat circular reasoning (linkage disequilibrium, incomplete lineage sorting), or they neglect the fact of explosive population growth and high rates of mutation accumulation (allelic richness). It is not to say that these papers are bad, rather they do not address the possibility of a short sharp bottleneck. For that a new approach is needed.


In closing it is best to let Buggs speak for himself:

The question asked by my religious friends is different to the questions being asked in the studies discussed above. My religious friends are not asking me if it is probable that humans have ever passed through a bottleneck of two; they are asking me if it is possible. None of the studies above set out to explicitly test the hypothesis that humans could have passed through a single-couple bottleneck. This is what we need to nail this issue down.

I would very much appreciate feedback from scientific readers of this blog. I have dealt with arguments made in a single book chapter, that has addressed this issue more directly than any other source I have come across. The author, Dennis Venema, is the go to expert on this issue within the organisation BioLogos, set up by Francis Collins (now director of NIH) to explore science-faith issues, so he ought to know what he is talking about. However, there may well be other, perhaps better, arguments that Venema has not made and I have therefore not interacted with.


If I am missing something, then I would very much like to know. Whilst this issue may seem trivial to many readers, for large numbers of religious believers in the world, this is a critical issue. Do they really face a binary choice between accepting mainstream science and believing that humans have, at some point in their history, all descended from a single couple? I am open to the possibility that they do face this dilemma, but I need more evidence before I am persuaded.