Thursday 1 February 2024
Newly revealed evidence for ID
Hidden, Now Revealed: Amazonia, Fitness Landscapes, and Fibonacci Numbers
Here are some news items of interest for those who have followed my previous articles about Amazonia, fitness landscapes, and Fibonacci numbers. They are united by the theme of “hidden” things now revealed.
Hidden Cities in the Jungle
In 2022 (here), I shared news about “mind blowing” discoveries made with LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in the Amazon rainforest. The forest-penetrating technology uncovered “geoglyphs” (large structures) that were made by previously unknown people groups. Last fall (here) I updated the story with new estimates that there might be many thousands more to discover. This was a classic test of The Design Inference: eliminating chance by specified complexity and small probability.
Since then, a “huge ancient city” has been revealed by LIDAR, reports BBC News, and was explored by ground crews. Some 6,000 mounds are at the large site, probably foundations for homes.
“It changes the way we see Amazonian cultures. Most people picture small groups, probably naked, living in huts and clearing land — this shows ancient people lived in complicated urban societies,” says co-author Antoine Dorison.
The city was built around 2,500 years ago, and people lived there for up to 1,000 years, according to archaeologists.
It is difficult to accurately estimate how many people lived there at any one time, but scientists say it is certainly in the 10,000s if not 100,000s.
See New Scientist’s article on this find, with a LIDAR scan of the extensive site. It adds,
In 2015, Rostain’s team did an aerial survey with lidar, a laser scanning technique that can create a detailed 3D map of the surface beneath most vegetation, revealing features not normally visible to us. The findings, which have only now been published, show that the settlements were far more extensive than anyone realised….
The survey also revealed a network of straight roads created by digging out soil and piling it on the sides. The longest extends for at least 25 kilometres, but might continue beyond the area that was surveyed.
This month, Jay Silverstein, an archaeologist renowned for the detection of hidden artifacts in Amazonia and elsewhere, wrote in The Conversation about these amazing discoveries. The title of his essay promises big news ahead, “Valley of lost cities found in the Amazon — technological advances in archaeology are only the beginning of discovery.”
A valley of lost cities has been discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When you hear of such a discovery you might think of archaeologists with chisels and brushes or explorers in pith helmets stumbling across sites deep in the forest. Instead, without needing to brave the hazards of the forest, Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) has revealed networks of buried roads and earthen mounds.
The point of exploratory science is to reveal what has so far been hidden. Whether at the edge of the universe with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the bottom of the sea with Underwater Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs), or through the canopy of the densest forests with Lidar, we are discovering things that reshape our understanding of the world.
It’s like finding the key to a cryptogram, or the figures in a stereogram, to see these city-scale structures under the forest canopy for the first time. Silverstein believes that scientists are nowhere near running out of things to discover. LIDAR and aerial search systems have revolutionized archaeology, but there will always be a need for ground-based searches and excavations — meaning, there will continue to be ample opportunities for design detection. (This is not to imply that design in the forest leaves, loaded with ATP synthase motors, does not warrant its own design inference.)
Hidden Assumptions in the Fitness Landscape
Like letters crossing in the mail, scientific papers can contradict one another. The authors of a paper in Oxford’s International Journal of Organic Evolution, blithely assuming there is wisdom in Wright’s “fitness landscape” metaphor, were apparently unaware of the PNAS paper the previous month that debunked it (see my post on that paper here). True, authors can innocently miss others’ work due to lag times between research, writing, and publication, even if they do a literature search, but this points to a problem in peer-reviewed scientific publications: wrong notions can persist even after they have been falsified.
The Oxford Evolution paper, “The fitness landscape of a community of Darwin’s finches,” by 18 authors, builds its case on the notion of a Gaussian landscape, not realizing that the landscape is flat with trapdoors (according to the PNAS authors), and that “holey landscapes” represent “the dominant evolutionary process.”
The drivers of adaptive radiation have often been conceptualized through the concept of “adaptive landscapes,” yet formal empirical estimates of adaptive landscapes for natural adaptive radiations have proven elusive. Here, we use a 17-year dataset of Darwin’s ground finches (Geospiza spp.) at an intensively studied site on Santa Cruz (Galápagos) to estimate individual apparent lifespan in relation to beak traits.
Onward they go, eager to perpetuate this icon of evolution that Jonathan Wells debunked 24 years ago. Now, with the collapse of Wright’s “fitness landscape” metaphor (at least the smooth Gaussian kind with curving hills and valleys), their work has been doubly debunked. It’s kind of sad. They mention fitness peaks 90 times, fitness valleys 16 times, landscape 154 times, and “fitness” 194 times. It would be one thing if they argued that Dochtermann et al. were wrong in their assessment of the landscape metaphor being “holey” in their PNAS paper, but these authors seem oblivious to the problem that composite traits cannot gain fitness on a flat landscape. They can only disappear through one of the trapdoors.
One can only wonder how long it will take for the landscape myth — organisms gradually ascending to higher fitness by natural selection — to collapse. Since the “fitness landscape” metaphor has been extremely useful to Darwinians, as in this new paper, it is likely to continue as a useful lie for some time. Perhaps Dr. Wells can use it as another case of Zombie Science.
Hidden Glories in the Infrared
The James Webb Space Telescope Mission Team revealed a blockbuster set of images at the end of January: a catalog of spiral galaxies displayed in exquisite detail. Adding to the splendor of the gallery, NASA scientists combined images from the Hubble Space Telescope and data from other instruments, including the “the Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, including observations in ultraviolet, visible, and radio light.” The combined data sets provided a multicolored, high-resolution gallery of images that is sure to tantalize astronomers and delight the public.
The caption for one image of spiral galaxy NGC 628 (pictured at the top) includes this note: “The spiraling filamentary structure looks somewhat like a cross section of a nautilus shell.” This recalls posts here at Evolution News about the uncanny ubiquity of phenomena exhibiting the Fibonacci series (here, here, here, here, here). Why should a nautilus shell mimic the structure of a spiral galaxy differing in size by many orders of magnitude? As I remarked in this link, the question remains unanswered in spite of modelers’ attempts to explain one example in plant stems.
Darwinism's simple beginning nowhere in sight?
Astrophysicist: “We Do Not Yet Know How, Where, or Why Life First Appeared”
A fantastic article at Universe Today reports on “The Improbable Origins of Life on Earth.” It opens with a striking admission of our ignorance about how life arose:
We do not yet know how, where, or why life first appeared on our planet. Part of the difficulty is that “life” has no strict, universally agreed-upon definition.
The author is Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University — and he’s absolutely right: there’s presently no natural explanation for the origin of life.
What Is Life?
Sutter provides some useful definitions of life, starting with what he calls a “simple statement”:
Life is that which is subject to Darwinian evolution. That is, life experiences natural selection, that unceasing pressure that chooses traits and characteristics to pass down to a new generation through the simple virtue of their survivability.
If we accept this definition at face value, life must be highly complex. That’s because Darwinian evolution requires both survival and replication. Survival requires the ability to metabolize materials from the surrounding environment into energy needed to power the chemical reactions of life, and replication requires the ability to make copies of yourself with some minimal level of fidelity. Both of these requirements entail highly complex systems.
Here’s how Walter Bradley and I described the minimal complexity of life in our chapter “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, published in 2021:
[A]ll living systems (1) process energy, (2) store information, and (3) replicate. In nature, these processes are performed primarily by molecules from three families of large biopolymers: proteins, DNA, and RNA. The mystery of how life began is essentially the mystery of how these three types of biopolymers formed and congregated within a cell with a barrier made of lipids as a self-replicating system.
Sutter seems to unwittingly agree with this description of life, because he then elaborates on what is necessary to make Darwinian evolution possible, and lands on exactly the same three requirements for life (though listed in a different order):
To succeed at evolution and separate itself from mere chemical reactions, life must do three things. First, it must somehow store information, such as the encoding for various processes, traits, and characteristics. This way the successful traits can pass from one generation to another.
Second, life must self-replicate. It must be able to make reasonably accurate copies of its own molecular structure, so that the information contained within itself has the chance to become a new generation, changed and altered based on its survivability.
Lastly, life must catalyze reactions. It must affect its own environment, whether for movement, or to acquire or store energy, or grow new structures, or all the many wonderful activities that life does on a daily basis.
Again, this is exactly right. And doing these “three things” — “store information,” “self-replicate” and “catalyze reactions” — isn’t simple. The whole process requires complex DNA and RNA molecules and molecular machines. Sutter appreciates this fact and gives a decent sketch of the complexity of life:
[L]ife on Earth has evolved a dizzying array of chemical and molecular machines to propagate itself — a menagerie so complex and interconnected that we do not yet fully understand it. But a basic picture has emerged. Put exceedingly simply (for I would hate for you to mistake me for a biologist), life accomplishes these tasks with a triad of molecular tools.
Sutter is correct that life is full of molecular machines and that we’re still untangling its complexity. And the molecular triad he refers to is composed of DNA, RNA, and proteins.
The Molecular Triad of Life
Regarding DNA, he says strikingly that, “The raw ability of DNA to store massive amounts of information is nothing short of a miracle.”
Regarding RNA, Sutter says that it “stores information but, again speaking only in generalities, has the main job of reading the chemical instructions stored in the DNA and using that to manufacture the last member of the triad, proteins.” Of course he’s right that RNA stores (and transports) information that is used in manufacturing proteins, but I would argue he understates its other important functions. As we recently discussed, we can now identify “RNA genes” which produce RNAs as an end in themselves that perform numerous important cellular functions.
As for proteins, Sutter provides a nice summary of their importance and their diversity:
“Proteins” is a generic catch-all term for the almost uncountable varieties of molecular machines that do stuff: They snip apart molecules, bind them back together, manufacture new ones, hold structures together, become structures themselves, move important molecules from one place to another, transform energy from one form to another, and so on.
But there’s a catch: proteins are also necessary for replicating DNA. Sutter explains: “DNA stores information, RNA uses that information to manufacture proteins, and the proteins interact with the environment and perform the self-replication of DNA.”
The Irreducible Complexity of Life
But then Sutter closes with a powerful conclusion that the “interconnected” nature of this triad means that all aspects of the system must be present for life to function:
The interconnected nature of DNA, RNA, and proteins means that it could not have sprung up ab initio from the primordial ooze, because if only one component is missing then the whole system falls apart — a three-legged table with one missing cannot stand.
This almost sounds like a description of “irreducible complexity” — if “one component is missing then the whole system falls apart.” And once again, he’s absolutely right: Life as we know it requires DNA, RNA, and protein to function, and it can’t arise in a stepwise manner on the early earth.
A Potent Challenge to Chemical Evolution
What about his comment that life’s “interconnected nature” means “it could not have sprung up ab initio from the primordial ooze”? That sounds like a potent challenge to chemical evolution.
Now make no mistake, Sutter clearly endorses evolution at multiple points in his article, and I have no idea what he thinks about intelligent design. And while he thinks that life “could not have sprung up ab initio from the primordial ooze,” it’s not entirely clear if that wording is intended to leave the door open to some other unspecified types of models for a natural origin of life. Nonetheless, his arguments here about obstacles to a stepwise explanation of chemical evolution — even alluding to the irreducibly complex nature of life’s fundamental biomolecules — are exactly right.
It’s good to find another scientist — with no connections to intelligent design — who sees the issue so clearly
The great apostasy: The Watchtower society's commentary.
An expression used by the apostle Paul at 2 Thessalonians 2:2, 3 in warning of the great anti-Christian apostasy that would develop before “the day of Jehovah.” The Greek word for “apostasy” here used, a·po·sta·siʹa, denotes more than a mere falling away, an indifferent sliding back. It means a defection, a revolt, a planned, deliberate rebellion. In ancient papyrus documents a·po·sta·siʹa was used politically of rebels.
A Religious Revolt. This rebellion, however, is not a political one. It is a religious one, a revolt against Jehovah God and Jesus Christ and therefore against the Christian congregation.
Foretold. Other forecasts of this apostasy were made by the apostles Paul and Peter both verbally and in writing, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself warned of its coming. In his illustration of the wheat and the weeds (Mt 13), Jesus said that the Devil would sow “weeds,” imitation Christians, “sons of the wicked one,” among the “wheat,” the “sons of the kingdom.” These would exist until the conclusion of the system of things, when they would be identified and ‘burned up.’
Paul warned the Christian overseers of Ephesus that after his going away “oppressive wolves” would enter in among true Christians and would not treat the flock with tenderness but would try to draw away “the disciples” after themselves (not just making disciples for themselves but trying to draw away the disciples, Christ’s disciples). (Ac 20:29, 30) He wrote, at 1 Timothy 4:1-3: “However, the inspired utterance says definitely that in later periods of time some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons, by the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, marked in their conscience as with a branding iron [feelingless, seared, so that they do not feel any twinges of conscience because of hypocritically speaking lies]; forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be partaken of with thanksgiving.”
Paul later wrote to Timothy that “there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth.”—2Ti 4:3, 4.
The apostle Peter drew a parallel between the apostasy from Christianity and that which occurred in the natural house of Israel. He said: “However, there also came to be false prophets among the people, as there will also be false teachers among you. These very ones will quietly bring in destructive sects and will disown even the owner that bought them, bringing speedy destruction upon themselves. Furthermore, many will follow their acts of loose conduct, and on account of these the way of the truth will be spoken of abusively.” Peter goes on to point out that these would exploit the congregation but that “the destruction of them is not slumbering.”—2Pe 2:1-3.
A composite “man.” The “man” of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 is, therefore, not an individual, but a composite “man,” a collective group, as the foregoing scriptures show, and this “man” was to continue after the apostles’ death and exist down until the time of the Lord’s presence.
Treason against God. The “lawlessness” that this composite apostate “man” commits is lawlessness against Jehovah God the Universal Sovereign. This “man” is guilty of treason. He is called “the son of destruction,” as was Judas Iscariot, the traitor who betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ and who was instrumental in bringing about his death. He, like Judas, is to be annihilated, sent into extinction forever. This “man” is not “Babylon the Great,” who also fights against God, for she is a woman, a harlot. However, since he carries on a religious rebellion against God, he is evidently a part of mystic Babylon.—Joh 17:12; Re 17:3, 5.
“The man of lawlessness” sets himself in opposition to God and is therefore a “satan,” which means “resister.” And, indeed, his “presence is according to the operation of Satan.” (2Th 2:9) In the days of the apostle Paul, there was “mystery,” or a religious secret, about the identity of this “man of lawlessness.” To this day mystery shrouds his identity in the minds of many persons, because his wickedness is practiced under the guise of godly devotion. (2Th 2:7) By his lying teachings contrary to or superseding, as it were, the law of God, “the man of lawlessness” sets himself up over Jehovah God and other ‘gods,’ mighty ones of the earth, and also against God’s holy ones, true spiritual brothers of Jesus Christ. (Compare 2Pe 2:10-13.) Since he is a hypocrite, a false teacher claiming to be Christian, he “sits down in the temple of The God,” that is, what such false teachers claim to be that temple.—2Th 2:4.
A restraint. Paul speaks of “the thing that acts as a restraint.” (2Th 2:6) It appears that the apostles constituted this restraint. Paul had told the Ephesian overseers that after his going away wolflike men would enter in. (Ac 20:29) He repeatedly wrote admonitions about such apostasy not only here in Second Thessalonians but in many exhortations to Timothy. And he counseled Timothy to commit the things he had heard from Paul to faithful men who would be qualified to teach others. He spoke of the congregation of the living God as being “a pillar and support of the truth.” He wanted it built up as strongly as possible before the great apostasy blossomed out.—2Ti 2:2; 1Ti 3:15.
Much later, at the command of Christ, the apostle John was told to write, warning against sects, mentioning especially the sect of Nicolaus and speaking of false prophets like Balaam and of the woman Jezebel who called herself a prophetess.—Re 2:6, 14, 15, 20.
At work in apostles’ days. The apostle Paul said that the mystery was “already at work.” (2Th 2:7) There were those trying to teach false doctrine, some of these even disturbing the Thessalonian congregation, prompting, in part, the writing of his second letter to them. There were antichrists when John wrote his letters, and doubtless before that. John spoke of “the last hour” of the apostolic period, and said: “Just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now there have come to be many antichrists . . . They went out from us, but they were not of our sort; for if they had been of our sort, they would have remained with us. But they went out that it might be shown up that not all are of our sort.”—1Jo 2:18, 19; see ANTICHRIST.
Revealed. Following the apostles’ death, “the man of lawlessness” came out into the open with his religious hypocrisy and false teachings. (2Th 2:3, 6, 8) According to Paul’s words, this “man” would gain great power, operating under Satan’s control, performing “every powerful work and lying signs and portents.” Persons deceived by the operation of the composite “man of lawlessness” are referred to as “those who are perishing [literally, “destroying themselves”], as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth that they might be saved.” The apostle shows that they “get to believing the lie” and they will all “be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2Th 2:9-12; see Int.) The judgment is therefore a condemnatory one.—See RESURRECTION (Sin against the holy spirit).
Destroyed. This composite, hypocritical “man of lawlessness” is to be done away with by the Lord Jesus “by the spirit of his mouth” and brought to nothing “by the manifestation of his presence.” The annihilation of this wicked opposer of God will be visible, concrete proof that the Lord Jesus Christ is sitting and acting as Judge. He will not judge according to his own standards, hence the destruction “by the spirit of his mouth” evidently means in expression of Jehovah’s judgment against this wicked class of persons.—2Th 2:8; compare Re 19:21, as to “the long sword . . . which sword proceeded out of his mouth.”
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