Darwinian spin 101.

Answering Simplistic Presentations of Darwinism
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Every once in a while, popular science writers feel the need to re-educate their readers about the fact of evolution, lest the readers be swayed by certain fringe elements. It’s like the need for a booster shot against tetanus; just re-inoculate the public with the same medicine, and they will be safe for another year. The booster shot usually includes some of the following elements:

Evolution is a fact. It’s obvious. Things change, don’t they?

Charles Darwin was the greatest scientist who ever lived. He wrote the greatest book in the history of science.

Darwin was wrong about some things, but those have all been corrected now.

Natural selection is one of the best-tested laws of nature. It explains everything.

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming: whales, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and human sexual behaviors.

No serious scientist doubts evolution.

Some fringe groups like those intelligent design rascals don’t understand evolution. They can be ignored, like creationists.

Evolution is not against religion. You can be very religious and still accept the fact of evolution.

Controversy? What controversy?

These talking points are so predictable, they seem to come from the same source every time. Perhaps the reporter consults TalkOrigins or the National Center for Science Education. The reporter feels no need to consult actual ID sources, because nobody should consult fake science from discredited groups. Just ask the NCSE.

A good example of this booster-shot reporting is Ker Than’s article for Live Science, “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution: Definition & Evidence.”

The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring.

Evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology. 

The article uses all nine talking points plus a few others. It’s notable that most of the piece is not neo-Darwinian, but old-style Darwinism: universal common descent by natural selection on variations:

The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “All life on Earth is connected and related to each other,” and this diversity of life is a product of “modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in and environment over others,” he said.

More simply put, the theory can be described as “descent with modification,” said Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the study of human origins.

The theory is sometimes described as “survival of the fittest,” but that can be misleading, Pobiner said. Here, “fitness” refers not to an organism’s strength or athletic ability, but rather the ability to survive and reproduce.

The article does not point out the meaninglessness of this formulation of natural selection. Norman Macbeth and Tom Bethell are among many observers who find a tautology here. When fitness is defined in terms of reproduction, then reproduction is a measure of fitness by definition. Such a vacuous thought can explain anything. There’s no way to test it. If it’s fit, it survives. If it survives, it’s fit.

For evidence, Mr. Than appeals to both microevolutionary and macroevolutionary change. He sees evolution in the common human dilemma of seeking to date an appropriate person. Yet surely he would never claim that those who do succeed in dating Mr. or Miss Right are evolving into a new species in the Darwinian sense.

The article’s biggest evidential appeal is to whale evolution. The whale sequence shown is comparable to the “Parade of Man” icon that has been roundly debunked by evolutionists. All that is needed to explain the sequence, Mr. Than implies, is natural selection. What we see in microevolution changing hair color or size can be extrapolated endlessly. Time is the hero of the plot:

But natural selection is also capable of much more. Given enough time and enough accumulated changes, natural selection can create entirely new species, known as “macroevolution.” It can turn dinosaurs into birds, amphibious mammals into whales and the ancestors of apes into humans.

In Living Waters, Richard Sternberg pointed out the need for coordinated mutations to arrive on time to make complex systems work. His calculations, using standard population genetics equations, show that getting just two coordinated mutations would require vastly more time than evolutionists think the entire alleged whale sequence occurred. Yet Live Science weaves a just-so story bordering on the magical, where coordinated mutations happen all over the place:

Random genetic changes resulted in at least one whale having its nostrils placed farther back on its head. Those animals with this adaptation would have been better suited to a marine lifestyle, since they would not have had to completely surface to breathe. Such animals would have been more successful and had more offspring. In later generations, more genetic changes occurred, moving the nose farther back on the head.

Other body parts of early whales also changed. Front legs became flippers. Back legs disappeared. Their bodies became more streamlined and they developed tail flukes to better propel themselves through water.

Moving a nostril farther back on the head overlooks numerous coordinated changes that would have to occur, so that the animal could breathe, swallow, and perform echolocation. Without the coordination, the animal would be less fit. The assertions in that second paragraph are more Lamarckian than Darwinian. The article overlooks all these problems.

But natural selection isn’t the only mechanism by which organisms evolve, she said. For example, genes can be transferred from one population to another when organisms migrate or immigrate, a process known as gene flow. And the frequency of certain genes can also change at random, which is called genetic drift.

All three of those processes, lateral transfer, gene flow, and genetic drift, have nothing to do with progressive evolution — the kind Darwin envisioned, where a four-footed animal becomes a whale. Random changes to complex systems degrade information. Mr. Than equivocates here, making “evolution” any kind of genetic change. With that kind of definition, the Darwinist can’t lose: a species going extinct becomes evidence for Darwinian evolution.

Brian Richmond of the American Museum of Natural History caps off the article with a prediction:

Evolution is well supported by many examples of changes in various species leading to the diversity of life seen today. “If someone could really demonstrate a better explanation than evolution and natural selection, [that person] would be the new Darwin,” Richmond said.

This implies that the scientific community would immediately jump on the new alternative with gusto. Would that were true, because intelligent design scientists have made a case that not only undermines Darwinism, but offers a more logical and evidence-based alternative. They have the advantage of not taking one side’s talking points on faith, because many of them were evolutionists before they began critically evaluating the theory.

Recently, Evolution News humorously advised scientists on how to write a first-class biology paper.  Similar rules apply to writing science news stories for the popular media. They are sure to get published if the reporter follows the same rules for the Introduction, “Start by stating confidently that evolution is true,” and the Conclusion, “Evolution is true.”

For those who prefer a more balanced view of evolution, here are the most recent books where you will get a real debate looking at both sides:  Heretic, by Matti Leisola; Undeniable, by Douglas Axe; Darwin’s House of Cards, by Tom Bethell, and Zombie Science, by Jonathan Wells.

On eternal punishment v. eternal punishing.

“Punishment” and the Polysemy of Deverbal Nouns
by Chris Date ·

In the opening statement from my recent debate  I had said,

What we disagree on is the meaning of punishment. Traditionalists see it as suffering forever, whereas annihilationists see it as the everlasting effect of being executed. Linguists call this a deverbal result noun, a noun referring to the results of its corresponding verb, and it’s a phenomenon found both in Scripture and in modern language.

This was recently misunderstood by pseudonymous blogger TurretinFan, and understandably so—excuse the pun—because it didn’t come across quite right. I did not mean to say that linguists call “punishment” a deverbal result noun; I meant that they call the object to which I was referring—namely, a noun that refers to the results of its corresponding verb—a deverbal result noun. What’s more, I neither said nor implied that “punishment” is in every case a deverbal result noun, but that it is in the case of Matthew 25:46.

Nevertheless, TurretinFan argued that the “noun ‘punishment’ is a deverbal noun, but it is not a deverbal result noun” (emphasis his), going on to seemingly argue that this is inherent in the meaning of the noun. Let us examine this claim.

First, it should be noted that many deverbal nouns are polysemous, ambiguous between a process or result meaning. For example, the phrase, “The translation of the book took ten years,” means that the process of translating lasted ten years. The phrase, “The translation has been published recently,” on the other hand, means that the translation that resulted from, or was the outcome of, the translating process was recently published. Building may refer to the process (e.g., “building a house”) or to the result (e.g., “a beautiful building”); the word construction is similarly ambiguous. Isolation may refer to the process (e.g., “gene isolation”) or to the result (e.g., “forced into isolation”). Other ambiguous examples include separation, banishment, performance, subjugation, imprisonment, and many more.

TurretinFan cited Roget’s Thesaurus on “punishment” in support of his contention that “‘punishment,’ like ‘walk,’ is a manner noun, not a ‘result’ noun.” I do not dispute that “punishment” does sometimes—even often—refer to the process of punishing. But since such deverbal nouns are often polysemous, it does not follow that therefore “punishment” carries a process meaning every time it’s used. “Punishment” may often describe “a manner of treatment, not the result of that treatment,” but this is not always the case.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) includes a definition of punishment that describes a process, namely, “The infliction of a penalty or sanction in retribution for an offence or transgression” (emphasis mine), but it immediately follows this first definition with, “(also) that which is inflicted as a penalty.”1 This distinction, between the infliction of a penalty and the penalty which is inflicted, can serve to illustrate the difference between “punishment” as a process noun and “punishment” as a result noun.

One of the synonyms TurretinFan cites is “amercement,” for example, which the OED defines as “a discretionary penalty or fine.”2 The punishment of a fine certainly isn’t the infliction of the fine—the process of paying it—but rather the resulting absence of that money from the offender’s bank account. Consider “confiscation,” also included in the list of synonyms TurretinFan cites. The punishment of confiscation certainly isn’t the infliction of it—the process of having one’s property confiscated—but rather the resulting lack of something previously owned. Examples of punishments whose measure is in their process obviously exist, but they are not the only kinds of punishment.

Perhaps there is no better example of a punishment which does not fit TurretinFan’s conclusion than that of capital punishment. After all, what is the nature of capital punishment? Is it suffering as part of the process of death? And how is it measured? Is it measured in the amount of time it takes to die? TurretinFan’s insistence that “‘punishment’ [is] about the process” would render a lengthy prison sentence a greater punishment than a quick and painless execution, such as death by lethal injection. And yet capital punishment, by any means, is reserved for the most serious of crimes.

Saint Augustine rhetorically asked, “As to the award of death for any great crime, do the laws reckon the punishment to consist in the brief moment in which death is inflicted, or in this, that the offender is eternally banished from the society of the living?”3 TurretinFan alleged that my reference to Augustine misses the point: “Capital punishment is severe regardless of its duration, because of the kind of punishment it is. But ‘eternal punishment’ is specifically a comment on the duration of the punishment.” But I suspect it may be TurretinFan who misses the point.

Did we not see Augustine explicitly stating that the measure of capital punishment is not in the duration of the punishing, but rather in the duration of the consequent lifelessness? And the context of his statement is those punishments which last longer than the time it takes to commit a crime. In fact, he includes death in a list of such punishments, rhetorically asking again, “Is there any one of these which may be compressed into a brevity proportioned to the rapid commission of the offence, so that no longer time may be spent in its punishment than in its perpetration, unless, perhaps, reparation?”4 If it is not possible to compress the punishment of death into the amount of time it takes to commit a crime worthy thereof, then the duration of the punishment of death must be measured in the result, rather than the process, of being executed.

It seems to me that those critical of conditionalism cannot appeal to the phrase “eternal punishment” by itself, for it may refer to the everlasting effect of being punished by death. So Jonathan Edwards, arguing against annihilationists who posit a very extended period of suffering prior to annihilation, writes,5

For, if it be owned, that Scripture expressions denote a punishment that is properly eternal, but that it is in no other sense properly so, than as the annihilation, or state of non-existence, to which the wicked shall return, will be eternal; and that this eternal annihilation is that death which is so often threatened for sin, perishing for ever, everlasting destruction, being lost, utterly consumed … If this be all that these expressions denote, then they do not at all signify the length of the torments, or long continuance of their misery; so that the supposition of the length of their torments is brought in without any necessity, the Scripture saying nothing of it, having no respect to it, when it speaks of their everlasting punishments; and it answers the scripture expressions as well, to suppose that they shall be annihilated immediately, without any long pains, provided the annihilation be everlasting.

You see, Edwards’ argument is not that the language of eternal punishment works against annihilationism. Quite the contrary, he argues that annihilation answers the “scripture expressions” of eternal punishment well, but that if that’s what these expressions refer to, there remains no biblical justification for a lengthy period of penal suffering prior to annihilation. In Edwards’ mind, while there may be many reasons for rejecting annihilationism, the phrase “eternal punishment” is not in and of itself one of them.

Traditionalists would do well to recognize what Edwards recognized. Scripture has a lot to say about final punishment, and this vast wealth of biblical testimony cannot be read through the lens of this single, solitary, polysemous phrase in Matthew 25:46. Apparently, upon further thought, TurretinFan agreed. He wrote,

even if Date were correct that “punishment” were a deverbal result noun, he would have to argue that the context favors a result interpretation, not an event/process/manner interpretation…Words can have a range of meanings, known as the “semantic range” of the word. When there is a question about which meaning of the range of meanings applies, the very best clue to that meaning is the immediate context.

This is precisely what I argued in my opening statement. I said, “The question, then, is what is the nature of eternal punishment?…And the answer is clear from Jesus’ reference to the ‘eternal fire,’ a phrase found in two other places in the New Testament.” And then I went on to my make case from those uses of the phrase, which I’ll make in the future here at Rethinking Hell.

TurretinFan, however, appears to insist on a different element of the local context as the means by which we must determine whether “punishment” in Matthew 25:46 is a result or a process noun. He writes, “when ‘eternal punishment’ is placed in parallel with ‘eternal life,’ we are given an unmistakable clue that the ‘event’ or ‘manner’ sense is intended.” In other words, what determines one noun’s reading is that of its nearest neighbor. But this is not true. If a mechanic were to repair the engine of one’s car, guaranteeing that both the parts and labor will last for a year, one would naturally understand that while the parts themselves would function properly for a year, the laboring would not; the outcome of the labor would last for that period of time. TurretinFan’s test would render the guarantee nonsensical.

Were TurretinFan to object on the grounds that in this example one noun is deverbal and the other is not, another example could be brought to bear. If two people were to enter into an agreement that lasts for the duration of their lives, since the deverbal noun “agreement” refers to the result of agreeing, applying TurretinFan’s test would require that the deverbal noun “lives” refers to the time during which the agreeing takes place. Yet, clearly this is not the case. The result of agreeing would last for as long as these hypothetical partners live. And so, whether one deverbal noun has a process or result meaning is not what determines whether its neighbor carries the same meaning.

Thus the parallel between “eternal life” and “eternal punishment” in Matthew 25:46 does certainly indicate that “eternal” means “for eternity” in both cases, but the deverbal nouns described as “eternal” need not carry the same reading. The phrase Jesus uses a mere verses earlier, “eternal fire,” carries a certain meaning elsewhere, which along with the rest of Scripture must be the lens through which we interpret “eternal punishment,” rather than the other way around.

punishment, n. Oxford English Dictionary, Third edition, September 2007; online version June 2012; accessed 19 June 2012 [↩]

amercement, n.  Oxford English Dictionary, Third edition, March 2008; online version June 2012; accessed 19 June 2012 [↩]

St. Augustine (2011-10-04). The City of God - Enhanced (Kindle Locations 16804-16805). Kindle Edition. [↩]

Ibid. (Kindle Locations 16792-16794). [↩]

Edwards, Jonathan. The Works of President Edwards: With a Memoir of His Life (G. & C. & H. Carvill, 1830), 401. [↩]

An ancient witness adds to the testimony in favor of the Holy Scriptures

Most ancient Hebrew document since the Dead Sea Scrolls deciphered – it's Leviticus
3D scanning and advanced digital imaging enable verses from Leviticus in burned, 1,500-year-old scroll to be deciphered.

Advanced technology has enabled researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority to decipher parts of a burnt scroll unearthed in 1970 at the ancient Ein Gedi synagogue.

Scientists have dated the parchment scroll to the late sixth century C.E. The verses that have been deciphered are from the beginning of the Book of Leviticus, making it the most ancient Torah scroll found since the Dead Sea scrolls and the most ancient ever found in a synagogue.

The synagogue, along with the entire Ein Gedi settlement, was destroyed by fire in the sixth century, toward the end of the Byzantine Era. The residents did not return to the site after the fire, leaving the Torah scroll, a bronze menorah, a collection of 3,500 coins and other relics to be discovered by archaeologists. The synagogue was excavated in the 1960s.

Researchers, headed by Dr. Sefi Porath, believe the fire and subsequent destruction resulted from an attack by Bedouin raiders or as a result of a confrontation with Byzantine authorities.

Charred scroll fragments were found in what the archaeologists believe was most likely the Holy Ark of the synagogue. One of them was a roll that looked like a cigar. Initial attempts to decipher it, including efforts by the police forensics unit, were unsuccessful. Eventually, it was put in storage in the Israel Museum.

Scientists returned to the scroll recently, using new methods developed to scan and decipher ancient scrolls. High-resolution 3D scans of the scroll were sent to Professor Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky, developer of digital imaging software which allows the scroll to be virtually unrolled and the text visualized, according to an announcement by the authority.

The text that was rendered legible by the software is substantial parts of the first eight verses of Leviticus. From the initial reading, there are no major differences between the text and the traditional text recognized today.

The oldest biblical text ever found in a synagogue. Photo by Reuters

Deciphering the scroll allowed researchers to declare that they had discovered the oldest Torah within a synagogue excavation. The next oldest scroll is the 10th-century Aleppo Codex.

Pnina Shor, curator and director of the Antiquities Authority’s Dead Sea Scroll Projects, said that the plan is to continue deciphering the rest of the scroll’s layers and additional fragments in similar condition.

“The discovery absolutely astonished us; we were certain it was just a shot in the dark but decided to try and scan the burnt scroll anyway,” she said. “Now, not only can we bequeath the Dead Sea Scrolls to future generations, but also a part of the Bible from a Holy Ark of a 1,500-year-old synagogue.”

“The historic discovery before us is fascinating and important,” said Culture Minister Miri Regev, who was at the press conference on Monday in which the Antiquities Authority revealed the discovery. “It is instructive about the Jewish people’s deep connection to its country and homeland.”

“The finding reflects a tradition of thousands of years, which I am glad encountered the professional determination of Antiquities Authority workers who utilized all the existing scientific capabilities to present the world with this wonderful find,” said Israel Hasson, the authority’s director, who was also at the press conference.