Dag Hammarskjöld: a brief history.

 Dag Hammarskjöld 

(/ˈhæmərʃʊld/ HAM-ər-shuuld,[1] Swedish: [ˈdɑːɡ ˈhâmːarˌɧœld] 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2022, he remains the youngest person to have held the post, having been only 47 years old when he was appointed. 

Hammarskjöld's tenure was characterized by efforts to strengthen the newly formed UN both internally and externally. He led initiatives to improve morale and organisational efficiency while seeking to make the UN more responsive to global issues. He presided over the creation of the first UN peacekeeping forces in Egypt and the Congo and personally intervened to defuse or resolve diplomatic crises. Hammarskjöld's second term was cut short when he died in a plane crash while en route to cease-fire negotiations during the Congo Crisis.

Hammarskjöld was and remains well regarded internationally as a capable diplomat and administrator, and his efforts to resolve various global crises led to him being the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.[2] He is considered one of the two best UN secretaries-general, along with his successor U Thant,[3] and his appointment has been hailed as one of the most notable successes for the organization.[4] U.S. President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld "the greatest statesman of our century."[5] 

From 1930 to 1934, Hammarskjöld was Secretary of a governmental committee on unemployment. During this time he wrote his economics thesis, "Konjunkturspridningen" ("The Spread of the Business Cycle"), and received a doctorate from Stockholm University. In 1936, he became a secretary in Sweden's central bank, the Riksbank. From 1941 to 1948, he served as chairman of the Riksbank's General Council.[8]

Hammarskjöld quickly developed a successful career as a Swedish public servant. He was state secretary in the Ministry of Finance 1936–1945, Swedish delegate to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation 1947–1953, cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1949–1951 and minister without portfolio in Tage Erlander's government 1951–1953.[8]

He helped coordinate government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-World War II period and was a delegate to the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan. In 1950, he became head of the Swedish delegation to UNISCAN, a forum to promote economic cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries.[9] Although Hammarskjöld served in a cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats, he never officially joined any political party.[8]

In 1951, Hammarskjöld was vice chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris. He became the chairman of the Swedish delegation to the General Assembly in New York in 1952. On 20 December 1954, he was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy.[10] 

On 10 November 1952 Trygve Lie announced his resignation as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Several months of negotiations ensued between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, without reaching an agreement on his successor. On 13 and 19 March 1953, the Security Council voted on four candidates. Lester B. Pearson of Canada was the only candidate to receive the required majority, but he was vetoed by the Soviet Union.[11][12] At a consultation of the permanent members on 30 March 1953,[13] French permanent representative Henri Hoppenot suggested four candidates, including Hammarskjöld, whom he had met at the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation.[14]

The superpowers hoped to seat a Secretary-General who would focus on administrative issues and refrain from participating in political discussion. Hammarskjöld's reputation at the time was, in the words of biographer Emery Kelèn, "that of a brilliant economist, an unobtrusive technician, and an aristo-bureaucrat". As a result, there was little to no controversy in his selection;[15] the Soviet permanent representative, Valerian Zorin, found Hammarskjöld "harmless".[16] Zorin declared that he would be voting for Hammarskjöld, surprising the Western powers.[17] The announcement set off a flurry of diplomatic activity. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was strongly in favor of Hammarskjöld and asked the United States to "take any appropriate action to induce the [Nationalist] Chinese to abstain".[18] (Sweden recognized the People's Republic of China and faced a potential veto from the Republic of China.) At the U.S. State Department, the nomination "came as a complete surprise to everyone here and we started scrambling around to find out who Mr. Hammarskjold was and what his qualifications were".[19] The State Department authorized Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the US Ambassador, to vote in favor after he told them that Hammarskjöld "may be as good as we can get".[20][21] 

On 31 March 1953, the Security Council voted 10-0-1 to recommend Hammarskjöld to the General Assembly, with an abstention from Nationalist China.[22] Shortly after midnight on 1 April 1953, Hammarskjöld was awakened by a telephone call from a journalist with the news, which he dismissed as an April Fool's Day joke.[a] He finally believed the news after the third phone call.[14] The Swedish mission in New York confirmed the nomination at 03:00 and a communique from the Security Council was soon thereafter delivered to him.[23] After consulting with the Swedish cabinet and his father, Hammarskjöld decided to accept the nomination.[22] He sent a wire to the Security Council:[24]

With strong feeling personal insufficiency I hesitate to accept candidature but I do not feel I could refuse to assume the task imposed on me should the [UN General] Assembly follow the recommendation of the Security Council by which I feel deeply honoured.

Later in the day Hammarskjöld held a press conference at the Swedish Foreign Ministry. According to diplomat Sverker Åström, he displayed an intense interest and knowledge in the affairs of the UN, which he had never shown any indication of before.[24]

The UN General Assembly voted 57-1-1 on 7 April 1953 to appoint Dag Hammarskjöld as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Hammarskjöld was sworn in as Secretary-General on 10 April 1953.[22] He was unanimously reelected on 26 September 1957 for another term, taking effect on 10 April 1958.[25]

Immediately following the assumption of the Secretariat, Hammarskjöld attempted to establish a good rapport with his staff. He made a point of visiting every UN department to shake hands with as many workers as possible, eating in the cafeteria as often as possible, and relinquishing the Secretary-General's private elevator for general use.[26] He began his term by establishing his own secretariat of 4,000 administrators and setting up regulations that defined their responsibilities. He was also actively engaged in smaller projects relating to the UN working environment; for example, he spearheaded the building of a meditation room at the UN headquarters, where people can withdraw into themselves in silence, regardless of their faith, creed, or religion.[27]

During his term, Hammarskjöld tried to improve relations between Israel and the Arab states. Other highlights include a 1955 visit to China to negotiate the release of 11 captured US pilots who had served in the Korean War,[6] the 1956 establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force, and his intervention in the 1956 Suez Crisis. He is given credit by some historians for allowing participation of the Holy See within the UN that year.[28]

In 1960, the newly independent Congo asked for UN aid in defusing the Congo Crisis. Hammarskjöld made four trips to Congo, but his efforts toward the decolonisation of Africa were considered insufficient by the Soviet Union; in September 1960, the Soviet government denounced his decision to send a UN emergency force to keep the peace. They demanded his resignation and the replacement of the office of Secretary-General by a three-man directorate with a built-in veto, the "troika". The objective was, citing the memoirs of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, to "equally represent interests of three groups of countries: capitalist, socialist and recently independent".[29][7]

The UN sent a nearly 20,000-strong peacekeeping force to restore order in Congo-Kinshasa. Hammarskjöld's refusal to place peacekeepers in the service of Lumumba's constitutionally elected government provoked a strong reaction of disapproval from the Soviets. The situation would become more scandalous with the assassination of Lumumba by Tshombe's troops. In February 1961, the UN authorized the Peacekeeping Forces to use military force to prevent civil war. The Blue Helmets' attack on Katanga caused Tshombe to flee to Zambia. Hammarskjöld's erratic attitude in not providing support to Lumumba's government, which had been elected by popular vote, drew severe criticism among non-aligned countries and communist and socialist countries. In the end, his actions were supported only by the United States and Belgium.[30] 

On 18 September 1961, Hammarskjöld was en route to negotiate a cease-fire between United Nations Operation in the Congo forces and Katangese troops under Moise Tshombe. His Douglas DC-6 airliner SE-BDY crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld perished as a result of the crash, as did all of the 15 other passengers.[31] Hammarskjöld's death set off a succession crisis at the United Nations,[32] as there was no line of succession and the Security Council had to vote on a successor.[33]

The circumstances of the crash are still unclear. A 1962 Rhodesian inquiry concluded that pilot error was to blame, while a later UN investigation could not determine the cause of the crash.[34] There is evidence suggesting the plane was shot down.[35][36][37] A CIA report claimed the KGB was responsible.[38]

The day after the crash, former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld "was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said 'when they killed him'."[38]

In 1998, documents surfaced suggesting CIA, MI6, and/or Belgian mining interest involvement via a South African paramilitary organization. The information was contained in a file from the South African National Intelligence Agency turned over to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in relation to the 1993 assassination of Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party. These documents included an alleged plot to "remove" Hammarskjöld and contained a supposed statement from CIA director Allen Dulles that "Dag is becoming troublesome … and should be removed." Hammarskjöld's mission to end the war over the mineral-rich Katangese secession from the newly formed Republic of the Congo was contrary to the interests of those organizations. However these documents were copies rather than originals, precluding substantiation of authenticity through ink and paper testing.[34]

Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker whose father worked for the UN in Zambia, wrote in 2011 that he believed Hammarskjöld's death was a murder committed, in part, to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarskjöld had made the UN intervene in the Katanga crisis. Björkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash near the border of the DRC with Zambia and on archival documents.[39][40]

In 2013 accident investigator Sven Hammarberg was asked by the International Commission of Jurists to investigate Hammarskjöld's death.[41]

In 2014, newly declassified documents revealed that the American ambassador to the Congo sent a cable to Washington D.C. warning that the plane could have been shot down by Belgian mercenary pilot Jan van Risseghem [nl], commander of the small Katanga Air Force. Van Risseghem died in 2007.[36]

On 16 March 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed members to an Independent Panel of Experts to examine new information related to Hammarskjöld's death. The three-member panel was led by Mohamed Chande Othman, the Chief Justice of Tanzania, and included Kerryn Macaulay (Australia's representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization) and Henrik Larsen (a ballistics expert from the Danish National Police).[42] The panel's 99-page report, released 6 July 2015, assigned "moderate" value to nine new eyewitness accounts and transcripts of radio transmissions. Those accounts suggested that Hammarskjöld's plane was already on fire as it landed and that other jet aircraft and intelligence agents were nearby.[43]In 2016, the original documents from the 1998 South African investigation surfaced. Those familiar with the investigation cautioned that even if authentic, the documents could have been initially authored as part of a disinformation campaign.[34]

In 2017, "Airplane Disasters", Series 9, Episode 10: "Deadly Mission" analyzed that the pilot attempting the night landing simply flew into an uncharted hill near the airport.

In 2019, the documentary film Cold Case Hammarskjöld by Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger claimed that Jan van Risseghem had told a friend that he shot down Hammarskjöld's aircraft. This went against the official stance maintained by van Risseghem's family that he was not involved in the death of Hammarskjöld. According to an interview with van Risseghem's wife, he was in Rhodesia negotiating the purchase of a plane for the Katanga Air Force, with the logbooks providing "proof that he was not flying for Katanga at the time". The documentary crew interviewed multiple colleagues of van Risseghem for the film, all of whom supported their theory.[44][45][46] In an interview with Swedish historian Leif Hellström, van Risseghem claimed that he was not in southern Africa at the time the crash happened, and dismissed the idea of his being potentially involved as "fairy stories".[46]

Previously unpublished documents continue to emerge from the UN archives. One found in November 2021, is a death warrant for Hammarskjöld signed by the infamous OAS, the secret organisation nestled in the French army at the time of Algeria's war of independence. The document reads: "It is high time to put an end to his harmful intrusion (…) this sentence common to justice and fairness to be carried out, as soon as possible". The source was revealed by the French journalist Maurin Picard, according to whom the links between the white mercenaries in Katanga and OAS are overt.[47]

In Hammarskjöld's 1959 will he left his personal archive to the National Library of Sweden.[48]

We continue to seek straight answers.

 Why is it that expression God the Son occurs nowhere in scripture if there is such an entity that Christians ought to worship? 

Why is it that the expression God the spirit appears nowhere in scripture if there is such an entity that Christians must worship? 

We know that Jesus is called Son of the God because his Father is the God, so why is JEHOVAH never called the Father of the God if his Son is the God?

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model XIV

 Darwinism's predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter 

A fundamental concept in evolutionary theory is the inheritance of genetic variations via blood lines. (Forbes) This so-called vertical transmission of heritable material means that genes, and genomes in general, should fall into a common descent pattern, consistent with the evolutionary tree. Indeed, such genes are often cited as a confirmation of evolution. But as more genomic data have become available, an ever increasing number of genes have been discovered that do not fit the common descent pattern because they are missing from so many intermediate species. (Andersson and Roger 2002; Andersson and Roger 2003; Andersson 2005; Andersson, Sarchfield and Roger 2005; Andersson 2006; Andersson et. al. 2006; Andersson 2009; Andersson 2011; Haegeman, Jones and Danchin; Katz; Keeling and Palmer; Richards et. al 2006a; Richards et. al 2006b; Takishita et. al.; Wolf et. al.)

 

This type of pattern is also found for genome architecture features which are sporadically distributed and then strikingly similar in distant species. In fact these similarities do not merely occur twice, in two distant species. They often occur repeatedly in a variety of otherwise distant species. This is so widespread that evolutionists have named the phenomenon “recurrent evolution.” As one paper explains, the recent explosion of genome data reveals “strikingly similar genomic features in different lineages.” Furthermore, there are “traits whose distribution is ‘scattered’ across the evolutionary tree, indicating repeated independent evolution of similar genomic features in different lineages.” (Maeso, Roy and Irimia) 

One example is the uncanny similarity between the kangaroo and human genomes. As one evolutionist explained: “There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order. We thought they’d be completely scrambled, but they’re not.” (Taylor)

 

It is now well recognized that this prediction has failed: “Vertical transmission of heritable material, a cornerstone of the Darwinian theory of evolution, is inadequate to describe the evolution of eukaryotes, particularly microbial eukaryotes.” (Katz) And these sporadic, patchy patterns require complicated and ad hoc scenarios to explain their origin. As one paper explained, the evolution of a particular set of genes “reveals a complex history of horizontal gene transfer events.” (Wolf et. al.) The result is that any pattern can be explained by arranging the right mechanisms. Features that are shared between similar species can be interpreted as “the result of a common evolutionary history,” and features that are not can be interpreted as “the result of common evolutionary forces.” (Maeso, Roy and Irimia)

 

These common evolutionary forces are complex and must have been created by evolution. They can include horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer, gene loss, gene fusion, and even unknown forces. For instance, one study concluded that the best explanation for the pattern of a particular gene was that it “has been laterally transferred among phylogenetically diverged eukaryotes through an unknown mechanism.” (Takishita et. al.) Even with the great variety of mechanisms available, there still remains the unknown mechanism.

References 

Andersson, J., A. Roger. 2002. “Evolutionary analyses of the small subunit of glutamate synthase: gene order conservation, gene fusions, and prokaryote-to-eukaryote lateral gene transfers.” Eukaryotic Cell 1:304-310.

 

Andersson, J., A. Roger. 2003. “Evolution of glutamate dehydrogenase genes: evidence for lateral gene transfer within and between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.” BMC Evolutionary Biology 3:14.

 

Andersson, J. 2005. “Lateral gene transfer in eukaryotes.” Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 62:1182-97.

 

Andersson, J., S. Sarchfield, A Roger. 2005. “Gene transfers from nanoarchaeota to an ancestor of diplomonads and parabasalids.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 22:85-90.

 

Andersson, J. 2006. “Convergent evolution: gene sharing by eukaryotic plant pathogens.” Current Biology 16:R804-R806.

 

Andersson, J., R. Hirt, P. Foster, A. Roger. 2006. “Evolution of four gene families with patchy phylogenetic distributions: influx of genes into protist genomes.” BMC Evolutionary Biology 6:27.

 

Andersson, J. 2009. “Horizontal gene transfer between microbial eukaryotes.” Methods in Molecular Biology 532:473-487.

 

Andersson, J. 2011. “Evolution of patchily distributed proteins shared between eukaryotes and prokaryotes: Dictyostelium as a case study.” J Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology 20:83-95.

 

Haegeman, A., J. Jones, E. Danchin. 2011. “Horizontal gene transfer in nematodes: a catalyst for plant parasitism?.” Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 24:879-87.

Katz, L. 2002. “Lateral gene transfers and the evolution of eukaryotes: theories and data.” International J. Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 52:1893-1900.

 

Keeling, P., J. Palmer. 2008. “Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution,” Nature Reviews Genetics 9:605-18.

 

Maeso, I, S. Roy, M. Irimia. 2012. “Widespread Recurrent Evolution of Genomic Features.” Genome Biology and Evolution 4:486-500.

 

Richards, T., J. Dacks, J. Jenkinson, C. Thornton, N. Talbot. 2006. “Evolution of filamentous plant pathogens: gene exchange across eukaryotic kingdoms.” Current Biology 16:1857-1864.

 

Richards, T., J. Dacks, S. Campbell, J. Blanchard, P. Foster, R. McLeod, C. Roberts. 2006. “Evolutionary origins of the eukaryotic shikimate pathway: gene fusions, horizontal gene transfer, and endosymbiotic replacements.” Eukaryotic Cell 5:1517-31.

 

Takishita, K., Y. Chikaraishi, M. Leger, E. Kim, A. Yabuki, N. Ohkouchi, A. Roger. 2012. “Lateral transfer of tetrahymanol-synthesizing genes has allowed multiple diverse eukaryote lineages to independently adapt to environments without oxygen.” Biology Direct 7:5.

 

Taylor, R. 2008. “Kangaroo genes close to humans,” Reuters, Canberra, Nov 18.

Wolf, Y., L. Aravind, N. Grishin, E. Koonin. 1999. “Evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases--analysis of unique domain architectures and phylogenetic trees reveals a complex history of horizontal gene transfer events.” Genome Research 9:689-710. 

 

The thumb print of JEHOVAH: cosmic edition.

A Miraculous Existence 

Marvin Olasky 

In A Big Bang in a Little Room, Zeeya Merali describes the consensus among science’s biggest brains: “The notion that a god made our universe is several rungs on the wackiness ladder above the idea that it was made by aliens.” Nevertheless, Merali describes herself as a believer in God. She’s also the holder of an Ivy League PhD in theoretical physics. So she asks a good question: If God desired to send us a message, how would He do it?

Published in 1985, Carl Sagan’s novel Contact included speculation about finding a code in the digits of pi, which starts out 3.14159 and keeps going forever — but no one’s found it. Others said God might encode a message within the human genome — but that would be useful only for creatures on this planet. Merali suggests a message embedded in background radiation, so any sufficiently advanced creatures anywhere in the universe could perceive it. (Astronomers learn about distant galaxies and galaxy clusters by mapping tiny radiation wrinkles.)

The Moment of Creation 

The time to engrave such a message in the sky would be at the moment of creation, Merali writes: “Think of it like drawing a smiley face in marker on a balloon straight out of the package. Blow up the balloon and the picture stretches with the rubber. In the same way, as the cosmos rapidly inflated, its creator’s message would shine out across the whole sky.” She says no one has found such a message thus far, thus disappointing those who believe in God.

No such message? With respect for Merali, who writes charmingly, I think she’s wrong, for three reasons. 

First, we live on a Goldilocks “just right” planet within a Goldilocks universe. More than one thousand features of the universe and Earth must fall within narrow ranges to allow for the possibility of life, and then for advanced life. For example: We need a particular composition of the earth’s core and atmosphere, a particular Earth axis tilt and rotation speed, particular capillary action and surface tension, and so on.We exist because of things most of us know nothing about: cosmic ray protons, intergalactic hydrogen gas clouds, molecular hydrogen formed by supernova eruptions, etc. If one loose definition of a miracle is “a highly improbable or extraordinary event,” look at the likelihood of simple bacteria being able to survive anywhere in the universe apart from divine action: One chance in 10 followed by 556 zeros. What about the likelihood of advanced life? One chance in 10 followed by 1,054 zeros. 

In the memorable 2017 Super Bowl, the New England Patriots trailed by 25 points with 17 minutes and seven seconds left in the game. They managed to tie the game and win it in overtime: Headlines proclaimed “a miracle comeback.” But what if the Patriots had trailed by 8,216 points and needed to score one touchdown (plus two extra points) in every one of those 1,027 seconds left in the game? That gives us a sense of the unlikeliness of our existence purely through material causes — and we’d have to multiply that physical improbability/impossibility by about a trillion. (That’s why some atheistic scientists grab on to the wacky multiverse theory.)

Flipping the Surmise 

A second piece of evidence for God’s existence: the history of the 20th century. Decisions by three atheists — Mao, Stalin, and Hitler — led to one hundred million deaths. Some people say that shows a merciful God does not exist, but we should flip the surmise: Atheism kills, and we’ve seen since the 1930s what happens when we worship human gods. God warns us throughout the Bible that sin has consequences: Should we consider Him a liar because He tells the truth?

Why don’t we wake up every morning and realize our existence is miraculous? Maybe because so much noise surrounds us. But here’s a third reason to believe in God: I’ve met some men in their twenties whose thinking as teens was so destructive that it looked like they would soon be dead, imprisoned, or traitorous. I was one of them. But “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” — and the Bible tells me so. 

God has sent a message, not in background radiation but in our existence, our history, and in what should be our daily reading.

 

Yet another attempt to school JEHOVAH goes off the rails.

 The Supposed Bad Design of the Human Pharynx 

Howard Glicksman and Steve Laufmann 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present this excerpt adapted from Your Designed Body, the new book by engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman. 

In our book, Your Designed Body, we apply a five-part test for evaluating ostensible instances of bad design. This test can help determine whether we’re looking at a bad design, or simply a bad argument. Let’s consider the example of the human pharynx. Is it poorly engineered?

The figure below shows that the pharynx is the common entry for both the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts. Whatever is ingested can potentially go down the airway and cause obstruction, which can result in death by choking.

Some insist that the pharynx is therefore miserably designed, something no wise designer would engineer, but that evolution, with its trial-and-error messiness, very well might. “The biggest danger in the human throat’s design is choking,” writes Nathan Lents. “If we had separate openings for air and food, this would never happen. Swallowing is a good example of the limits of Darwinian evolution. The human throat is simply too complex for a random mutation — the basic mechanism of evolution — to undo its fundamental defects. We have to resign ourselves to the absurdity of taking in air and food through the same pipe.”1

Abby Hafer, in her pointedly titled book, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not, sounds a similar note. “A better designed system would keep the tubes for air and food separate to avoid unnecessary fatalities,” she writes. “If we were designed why did the Designer do this job so badly? Or is it that the Creator likes other animals better? There are creatures in which the air passages and food passages are entirely separate. The whale’s respiratory system is separate from its digestive system. This means that a whale, unlike a human, can’t choke on its food by inhaling it. If the Creator could do that for the whales, I don’t know why he couldn’t do it for us?”2

These arguments are riddled with problems. To see why, we need to take a closer look at the human pharynx.

How It Works 

In addition to the structures identified in the figure above, fifty different pairs of muscles, connected by six different nerves, are needed to swallow. After food in the mouth has been formed into a small ball (bolus), the tongue voluntarily moves it to the pharynx, which automatically triggers the involuntary swallow reflex.

As the bolus enters, the pharynx sends sensory information to the swallow center in the brainstem, which immediately turns off respiration so that air is not breathed in during swallowing. This prevents the lungs from drawing food into the airway. The brainstem also sends precisely ordered signals telling the various muscles to contract and move the bolus downward into the esophagus, bypassing the airway. This takes about a second.

As swallowing begins, several muscles contract to move the bolus into the pharynx, while moving the back of the palate and the upper pharynx close together to close off the path to the nose. 

Next comes the tricky part. The bolus has been blocked from going up into the nose, and muscular contraction is hurtling it down towards the airway and the esophagus. Three separate actions take place to protect the airway. First, muscles contract to close the larynx, which is the gateway to the lungs. Second, other muscles move the larynx up and forward (which you can feel in the front of your neck while swallowing) to hide it under the floor of the mouth and the base of the tongue while being protected by the epiglottis. Third, this action, combined with other muscular activity, opens the upper esophagus to allow the bolus to enter.3The timing and coordination are remarkable. The swallow center must send the right signals via the right nerves to the right muscles, with the exact right split-second timing. Since all this is triggered by the bolus entering the pharynx, the signals from throat to brainstem and back to the many muscles involved (with their reaction times) must be fast enough to prevent choking.

While critics seem to miss the amazing design of this system, it should give the reader pause. Somehow, swallowing happens, usually without incident, a thousand times a day. 

Where did the information come from that specifies the size, shape, position, and range of movement of the pharynx, each of its nearby structures, and the fifty pairs of muscles involved in swallowing? How could such a system come about gradually, by accident? 

Where did the information come from to make the swallow center in the brainstem and the logic it uses to control safe swallowing? Where is the repository for the information needed to orchestrate the precisely ordered, well-coordinated contraction sequence of fifty pairs of muscles?

Scoring the Pharynx-Is-Poorly-Designed Argument 

With that primer on the pharynx and the swallowing system of which it’s a part, let’s now score the argument that the pharynx is badly designed and therefore not intentionally designed. 

1. Not Understanding the Design of the Pharynx 

The pharynx affords us the dual abilities to breathe and swallow food and water, but it does much more. It affords the ability for speech, language, and tonal activities like lyrical speech and singing. The percussion and acoustic shaping of the tongue, teeth, throat, oral and nasal cavities, and most of the other parts of the pharynx, are absolutely required for the nuanced communication that’s essential to the human experience. So the pharynx has at least three major functional design objectives. If you were asked to design a system with these capabilities, how would you approach it? How would your design make the trade-offs needed to do all this with a single system? If you used separate systems, as advocated by the critics above, how would you achieve the right kinds of functions, and how would this affect how these functions are packaged into the body as a whole? The critics ignore these questions, apparently because they haven’t bothered to understand the design of the system, as a system — either its core objectives or the orchestration of its many parts. 

2. Not Considering Trade-Offs when Criticizing the Pharynx 

Clearly, the pharynx’s main three functions cause design conflicts that must be solved. We could use two or maybe even three separate systems to achieve these vastly different goals. However, since all three functions need similar components, two or possibly three copies of many of these structures would be necessary. If, as the critics recommend, we were structured to use the mouth only for swallowing food and water, and not for breathing, thereby precluding speech and language as we know it, the nasal passageways would need to be much larger to bring in enough oxygen during high levels of activity. 

To keep all three functions, duplication of parts may be an option. We’d need two mouths, one for eating and another for breathing and speaking, and we’d need two large pipes, one for air and the other for food. We’d need two tongues, one for manipulating food in the eating mouth, and another for speaking in the breathing/speaking mouth. For making the hard-consonant sounds in speech, we’d need something like teeth in the breathing/speaking mouth, but we’d also need teeth for chopping up food in the eating mouth. For making complex tonal sounds, the nasal cavities would need to be attached to the breathing/speaking mouth. But we’d also need the nose’s smell sensors in the eating mouth in order to fully experience the taste of our food. We could go on, but you get the idea.In the end, the anatomical changes for either scenario, precluding or preserving speech and language as we know it, would require a complete reconfiguration of the head and neck and possibly also some parts of the lungs and stomach in the body’s core. At a minimum, an increase in the size of the nasal passageways would require the head and face to be much wider. But to house duplicate systems, the volume of the head and neck would need to roughly double, and depending on the positioning of the two mouths, the passageways to the lungs and stomach would likely need to be rearranged too.

Maybe if our bodies were shaped more like a whale, this would work better, but of course this might make it harder to climb mountains. Or even to turn our heads quickly.

Building these different functions into a single set of components, with the programming and orchestration to make them work properly, is another example of elegant invention. The obvious trade-off is that it’s possible to choke, never mind how well-designed the system that’s in place to avoid this problem. Of course, the critics also neglect to consider whether it would be easier or harder to choke in a system with two mouths, as the risk of this happening would be their relative positions to each other. 

The marvel is that the system combines these three separate functions in such a compact space, and the whole works so well at all three of its core functions.  

3. Not Acknowledging Pharynx Degradation over Time 

How and why do humans die from choking? One common cause of swallowing problems is neuromuscular injury or degeneration related to aging or disease. Since swallowing requires precisely orchestrated contractions of many different muscles, any condition that compromises nerve or muscle function can lead to difficulties in swallowing. Common conditions include stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis (MS), each of which puts the person at risk for aspirating food into their lungs and choking to death. These represent about half of the annual deaths by choking. One could argue that the body’s inability to fight off Parkinson’s or MS is also a design flaw, but these are also instances of degradation. Complex systems always degrade over time and generations, so it’s unrealistic to think this should never happen to the human body if it were well designed.

Another common cause of choking is user abuse. When a healthy adult takes in too large a piece of food, or doesn’t chew sufficiently, or a child takes in a foreign object like a small toy, these objects can get stuck in the airway and choking results. One could insist that the design should have been foolproof against such abuses, but this merely takes us back to the question of trade-offs. 

To even hope to make the system abuse-proof, the three functions of the pharynx would have to be divided out into two or three separate systems, and we’ve already seen all the problems that attend that strategy. Moreover, no matter how carefully an engineer designs a product, it’s always at risk of being misused and, due to wear and tear, its functional capacity lessening over time.

4. Jumping from Poor Design of the Pharynx to No Intentional Design 

Even if we were to grant for the sake of argument that the pharynx is a case of shoddy engineering, it wouldn’t follow from this alone that it wasn’t intentionally designed (as the Yugo car and Tacoma Narrows bridge aptly illustrate). The evolutionists who reach this unsound conclusion perhaps get there by embracing the false premise that poorly designed things must be unintentionally designed things, and combining it with the equally mistaken view that the pharynx is a botched design. But perhaps the error is a bit subtler. 

In logic, one of the formal fallacies is known as affirming the consequent. That logical fallacy runs like this:

Major Premise: If A is true, then B is true.

Minor Premise: B is true.

Conclusion: Therefore, A is true.

That’s an invalid syllogism. For it to be valid, the major premise would need to be “If B is true, then A is true.” As it is, the conclusion simply doesn’t follow. This is affirming the consequent, or put more generally, it’s a non sequitur. This may be how the evolutionists above have reached their invalid conclusion, thus: 

Major Premise: If A (something came about without intention), then B (it is poorly constructed).

Minor Premise: B is the case: the human pharynx is poorly constructed.

Conclusion: A is true: the pharynx came about without intention.

Even if we granted both premises, the conclusion wouldn’t follow, since it’s an invalid syllogism guilty of affirming the consequent. 

It’s not clear that this is exactly how evolutionists are reasoning, but it well may be close to the mark based on their statements.

But wait, there’s more. Professor Lents asserts that “if we had separate openings for air and food, [choking] would never happen.” But in any system that requires breathing air into the body, the opening for the air can become blocked — no matter where you put it on the body or how it’s configured. How will these critics’ “improved” system prevent choking from ever happening? 

Even a design that is truly suboptimal in one respect cannot demonstrate that it’s a poor design, since the “suboptimal” feature may simply be the natural outcome of a perfectly reasonable design trade-off. (And as noted, even if a suboptimal feature were a true design blunder, this would not be sufficient warrant to claim that it wasn’t intentionally designed.)

Another error in reasoning: “The human throat is simply too complex for a random mutation — the basic mechanism of evolution — to undo its fundamental defects,”4 Lents insists. But if the human throat is too complex for a random mutation to undo a “design defect,” how could random mutations have built such a complex feature in the first place? And if it works and the species thrives, can it be called a defect? 

Or recall this argument from Hafer: “If the Creator could [separate the respiratory from the digestive systems] for the whales, I don’t know why he couldn’t do it for us?”5 Being capable of doing something doesn’t make it a good idea. We could design an iPhone with tires, but this may not be helpful to that device’s purpose. Whales are also able to live their whole lives in the ocean. Why couldn’t the Creator give humans that ability, too? It would certainly cut down on skateboard injuries and fatal traffic accidents. Maybe it just wasn’t the plan.

While the above are likely intended as arguments to poor design, in the end they come across as logical “rubbish,” to borrow a phrase from our British colleagues.

5. Aesthetic Considerations in Evaluating the Pharynx 

The two critics above, at least in the quotations above, do not level aesthetic objections against the design of the pharynx. The irony is that if the designer of the human body had taken their advice and used the vastly clunkier and less elegant approach of creating two or three separate systems for breathing, eating/drinking, and communicating in order to minimize choking, the anti-design critics might have lodged an aesthetic argument against such a choice, namely that no properly ingenious “tidy-minded engineer” would have failed to elegantly combine the three primary functions into a single clever system. 

Engineers know this game — damned if you do and damned if you don’t, with critics ignoring the question of trade-offs. Engineers develop thicker skins as a natural coping mechanism. (Which, come to think of it, is another clever adaptive design feature of the human body!)

Ingenious Design 

Most people swallow a thousand times a day without incident, all the while breathing in enough air, swallowing enough food and water, verbally communicating with nuance, and sometimes even singing. Thus, the rare possibility of choking to death provides little actual evidence of incompetent design. Rather, the human pharynx is more accurately viewed as a clever, elegant solution to a complicated set of competing design objectives, with justifiable choices regarding design trade-offs, within rigid constraints. Further, the solution is profoundly well packaged and even provides a way to equalize the air pressure in the middle ear. This is ingenious design. 

Plato's republic: a brief history

 By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 

The Republic, one of the most important dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, renowned for its detailed expositions of political and ethical justice and its account of the organization of the ideal state (or city-state)—hence the traditional title of the work. As do other dialogues from Plato’s middle period, and unlike his early or Socratic dialogues, the Republic reflects the positive views of Plato himself rather than the generally skeptical stance of the historical Socrates, who had been Plato’s teacher. (“Socrates” is the main character in most of Plato’s dialogues.) The middle dialogues are literary as well as philosophical masterpieces, containing sensitive portrayals of characters and their interactions, dazzling displays of rhetoric, and striking and memorable tropes and myths, all designed to set off their leisurely explorations of philosophy.

In the Republic, Plato undertakes to show what justice is and why it is in each person’s best interest to be just. Although the dialogue starts from the question “Why should I be just?,” Socrates proposes that this inquiry can be advanced by examining justice “writ large” in an ideal state. Thus, the political discussion is undertaken to aid the ethical one. According to Plato, the ideal state comprises three social classes: rulers, guardians (or soldiers), and producers (e.g., farmers and craftsmen). The rulers, who are philosophers, pursue the good of the entire state on the basis of their knowledge of the form of the Good and the form of the Just—both being abstract essences, knowable only by the mind, through which things or individuals in the sensible world are, to varying degrees, good or just, respectively. Political justice, then, is the condition of a state in which each social class performs its role properly, including by not attempting to perform the role of any other class.

More From Britannica Plato: Happiness and virtue

Corresponding to the three social classes are the three parts of the individual soul—reason, spirit, and appetite—each of which has a particular object or desire. Thus, reason desires truth and the good of the whole individual, spirit is preoccupied with honour and competitive values, and appetite has the traditional low tastes for food, drink, and sex. Justice in the individual, or ethical justice, is a condition analogous to that of political justice—a state of psychic harmony in which each part of the soul performs its role properly. Thus, reason understands the form of the Good and desires the actual good of the individual, and the other two parts of the soul desire what it is good for them to desire, so that spirit and appetite are activated by things that are healthy and proper.

The middle books of the Republic contain a sketch of Plato’s views on knowledge and reality and feature the famous figures of the Sun and the Cave, among others. The position occupied by the form of the Good in the intelligible world is the same as that occupied by the Sun in the visible world: thus, the Good is responsible for the being and intelligibility of the objects of thought. The usual cognitive condition of human beings is likened to that of prisoners chained in an underground cave, with a great fire behind them and a raised wall in between. The prisoners are chained in position and so are able to see only shadows cast on the facing wall by statues moved along the wall behind them. They take these shadows to be reality. The account of the progress that they would achieve if they were to go aboveground and see the real world in the light of the Sun features the notion of knowledge as enlightenment. Plato proposes a concrete sequence of mathematical studies, ending with harmonics, that would prepare future rulers to engage in dialectic, whose task is to say of each thing what it is—i.e., to specify its nature by giving a real, rather than merely lexical, definition. The dialogue concludes with a myth concerning the fate of souls after death. See also Political philosophy: Plato.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.

Allan Bloom

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Philosophy & Religion

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Allan Bloom

American philosopher and author

Alternate titles: Allan David Bloom

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Edit History

Allan Bloom, in full Allan David Bloom, (born Sept. 14, 1930, Indianapolis, Ind., U.S.—died Oct. 7, 1992, Chicago, Ill.), American philosopher and writer best remembered for his provocative best-seller The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987). He was also known for his scholarly volumes of interpretive essays and translations of works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Plato.

Born: September 14, 1930 Indianapolis Indiana

Died: October 7, 1992 (aged 62) Chicago Illinois

Notable Works: “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students”

Subjects Of Study: higher education

Bloom received a Ph.D. in 1955 from the University of Chicago, where, under the tutelage of the German-born political philosopher Leo Strauss, he became a devotee of the Western classics and a proponent of the philosophical tenet of “transcultural truth.” He taught at the University of Chicago (1955–60) and Yale (1962–63) and Cornell (1963–70) universities and was on the faculties of several foreign universities. He published such well-received works as Shakespeare’s Politics (1964), a collection of essays, and a translation of Plato’s Republic (1968).

Britannica Quiz Philosophy 101

In 1969 a group of students took control of Cornell’s administration building and demanded that certain mandatory classes be dropped in favour of those deemed more “relevant” to them. After the university yielded to their demands, Bloom tendered his resignation, and in 1979 he returned to the University of Chicago. In The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom argued that universities no longer taught students how to think and that students, especially those attending the top schools, were unconcerned about the lessons of the past or about examining ideas in a historical context. His blistering critique, which offered no solutions to the crisis in education, blamed misguided curricula, rock music, television, and academic elitism for the spiritual impoverishment of students. A later collection of essays, Giants and Dwarfs, was published in 1990. Bloom’s Love and Friendship (1993) and Shakespeare on Love and Friendship (2000) appeared posthumously.

This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.

In the Republic, Plato undertakes to show what justice is and why it is in each person’s best interest to be just. Although the dialogue starts from the question “Why should I be just?,” Socrates proposes that this inquiry can be advanced by examining justice “writ large” in an ideal state. Thus, the political discussion is undertaken to aid the ethical one. According to Plato, the ideal state comprises three social classes: rulers, guardians (or soldiers), and producers (e.g., farmers and craftsmen). The rulers, who are philosophers, pursue the good of the entire state on the basis of their knowledge of the form of the Good and the form of the Just—both being abstract essences, knowable only by the mind, through which things or individuals in the sensible world are, to varying degrees, good or just, respectively. Political justice, then, is the condition of a state in which each social class performs its role properly, including by not attempting to perform the role of any other class. 

Corresponding to the three social classes are the three parts of the individual soul—reason, spirit, and appetite—each of which has a particular object or desire. Thus, reason desires truth and the good of the whole individual, spirit is preoccupied with honour and competitive values, and appetite has the traditional low tastes for food, drink, and sex. Justice in the individual, or ethical justice, is a condition analogous to that of political justice—a state of psychic harmony in which each part of the soul performs its role properly. Thus, reason understands the form of the Good and desires the actual good of the individual, and the other two parts of the soul desire what it is good for them to desire, so that spirit and appetite are activated by things that are healthy and proper.

The middle books of the Republic contain a sketch of Plato’s views on knowledge and reality and feature the famous figures of the Sun and the Cave, among others. The position occupied by the form of the Good in the intelligible world is the same as that occupied by the Sun in the visible world: thus, the Good is responsible for the being and intelligibility of the objects of thought. The usual cognitive condition of human beings is likened to that of prisoners chained in an underground cave, with a great fire behind them and a raised wall in between. The prisoners are chained in position and so are able to see only shadows cast on the facing wall by statues moved along the wall behind them. They take these shadows to be reality. The account of the progress that they would achieve if they were to go aboveground and see the real world in the light of the Sun features the notion of knowledge as enlightenment. Plato proposes a concrete sequence of mathematical studies, ending with harmonics, that would prepare future rulers to engage in dialectic, whose task is to say of each thing what it is—i.e., to specify its nature by giving a real, rather than merely lexical, definition. The dialogue concludes with a myth concerning the fate of souls after death. See also Political philosophy: Plato.

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model XIII

Darwinism's Predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter

The only figure in Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species, showed how he envisioned species branching off of one another. Similar species have a relatively recent common ancestor and have had limited time to diverge from each other. This means that their genes should be similar. Entirely new genes, for instance, would not have enough time to evolve. As François Jacob explained in an influential paper from 1977, “The probability that a functional protein would appear de novo by random association of amino acids is practically zero.” (Jacob) Any newly created gene would have to arise from a duplication and modification of a pre-existing gene. (Zhou et. al.; Ohno) But such a new gene would retain significant similarity to its progenitor gene. Indeed, for decades evolutionists have cited minor genetic differences between similar species as a confirmation of this important prediction. (Berra, 20; Futuyma, 50; Johnson and Raven, 287; Jukes, 120; Mayr, 35)

 

But this prediction has been falsified as many unexpected genetic differences have been discovered amongst a wide range of allied species. (Pilcher) As much as a third of the genes in a given species may be unique, and even different variants within the same species have large numbers of genes unique to each variant. Different variants of the Escherichia coli bacteria, for instance, each have hundreds of unique genes. (Daubin and Ochman)

Significant genetic differences were also found between different fruit fly species. Thousands of genes showed up missing in many of the species, and some genes showed up in only a single species. (Levine et. al.) As one science writer put it, “an astonishing 12 per cent of recently evolved genes in fruit flies appear to have evolved from scratch.” (Le Page) These novel genes must have evolved over a few million years, a time period previously considered to allow only for minor genetic changes. (Begun et. al.; Chen et. al., 2007)

 

Initially some evolutionists thought these surprising results would be resolved when more genomes were analyzed. They predicted that similar copies of these genes would be found in other species. But instead each new genome has revealed yet more novel genes. (Curtis et. al.; Marsden et. al.; Pilcher)

 

Next evolutionists thought that these rapidly-evolving unique genes must not code for functional or important proteins. But again, many of the unique proteins were in fact found to play essential roles. (Chen, Zhang and Long 1010; Daubin and Ochman; Pilcher) As one researcher explained, “This goes against the textbooks, which say the genes encoding essential functions were created in ancient times.” (Pilcher)

References 

Begun, D., H. Lindfors, A. Kern, C. Jones. 2007. “Evidence for de novo evolution of testis-expressed genes in the Drosophila yakuba/Drosophila erecta clade.” Genetics 176:1131-1137.

 

Berra, Tim. 1990. Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

 

Chen, S., H. Cheng, D. Barbash, H. Yang. 2007. “Evolution of hydra, a recently evolved testis-expressed gene with nine alternative first exons in Drosophila melanogaster.” PLoS Genetics 3.

 

Chen, S., Y. Zhang, M. Long. 2010. “New Genes in Drosophila Quickly Become Essential.” Science 330:1682-1685.

 

Curtis, B., et. al. 2012. “Algal genomes reveal evolutionary mosaicism and the fate of nucleomorphs.” Nature 492:59-65.

 

Daubin, V., H. Ochman. 2004. “Bacterial genomes as new gene homes: The genealogy of ORFans in E. coli.” Genome Research 14:1036-1042.

 

Futuyma, Douglas. 1982. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. New York: Pantheon Books.

 

Jacob, François. 1977. “Evolution and tinkering.” Science 196:1161-1166.

 

Johnson, G., P. Raven. 2004. Biology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

 

Jukes, Thomas. 1983. “Molecular evidence for evolution” in: Scientists Confront Creationism, ed. Laurie Godfrey. New York: W. W. Norton.

 

Le Page, M. 2008. “Recipes for life: How genes evolve.” New Scientist, November 24.

 

Levine, M., C. Jones, A. Kern, H. Lindfors, D. Begun. 2006. “Novel genes derived from noncoding DNA in Drosophila melanogaster are frequently X-linked and exhibit testis-biased expression.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 9935-9939.

 

Marsden, R. et. al. 2006. “Comprehensive genome analysis of 203 genomes provides structural genomics with new insights into protein family space.” Nucleic Acids Research 34:1066-1080.

 

Mayr, Ernst. 2001. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books.

 

Ohno, Susumu. 1970. Evolution by Gene Duplication. Heidelberg: Springer.

 

Pilcher, Helen. 2013. “All Alone.” NewScientist January 19.

Zhou, Q., G. Zhang, Y. Zhang, et. al. 2008. “On the origin of new genes in Drosophila.” Genome Research 18:1446-1455.

Sons of the original firemaker?

Early Humans Were More Sophisticated than We Thought 

Denyse O'Leary 

Recent findings suggest that some things we take for granted in human civilizations are much older than thought. Now, these findings are provisional but they are worth looking at.

Some owl stones from 5,500 and 4,750 years ago may be children’s art 

But new research suggests the palm-sized plaques decorated in geometric patterns and with two engraved circles at the top might be the work of children.

Numbering in the thousands and made from slate, the owl-like objects — previously dated the stone objects to be between 5,500 and 4,750 years old — may be “the archaeological trace of playful and learning activities carried out by youngsters,” according to the team of Spanish researchers behind the new study…

They suggest kids would have been able to easily engrave slate using pointed tools made of flint, quartz, or copper, creating ‘body’ patterns that emulate the streaked plumage of owls, and the circles for eyes are unmistakably owl-like, casting an unwavering stare straight at the observer.

The “owliness” of the designs is comparable to the drawing skills of modern school children who depict owls in much the same way. 

CLARE WATSON, “THOUSANDS OF MYSTERIOUS ‘OWL’ STONES MAY BE THE WORK OF ANCIENT CHILDREN” AT SCIENCE ALERT (DECEMBER 7, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

The fact that the owl stones might have been made by children does not, the researchers suggest, rule out the possibility that they might have had a ritual significance. Evolutionary biologist Juan Negro and colleagues suggest, “young people might have paid homage to their elders by leaving objects they had made together as tributes to the deceased.” (Science Alert) 

So CrayolaTM didn’t invent the idea of children’s creativity.

Now, About Cooking … 70,000 Years Ago

Neanderthals were not just downing raw hunks of meat 70,000 years ago, as many of us have assumed:Researchers analyzed charred food remains at two locations — the Shanidar Cave in Iraq’s Zagros Mountains and the Franchthi Cave in Greece — to gain insight into how Neanderthals and early modern humans prepared food. They found evidence of cooking involving a variety of ingredients, processes and deliberate decisions…

The researchers’ analysis suggests that early modern humans and Neanderthals weren’t just consuming protein from animals; they had complex diets that consisted of a wide selection of plants and varied depending on location. They also used “a range of tricks to make their food more palatable” such as soaking and pounding, per a statement from the University of Liverpool… For example, wild nuts and grasses were often combined with pulses, like lentils, and wild mustard.” 

JACQUELYNE GERMAIN, “NEANDERTHALS COOKED SURPRISINGLY COMPLEX MEALS” AT SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 30, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

Let’s just say, the Neanderthals have gotten smarter as we have gotten to know them better.

Homo Naledi Used Fire, Say Researchers

Now let’s go waaay back to Homo naledi — first unearthed in 2015 in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. The remains of the 15 individuals date to between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. It turns out that they may have lit fires in their caves: 

Researchers have found remnants of small fireplaces and sooty wall and ceiling smudges in passages and chambers throughout South Africa’s Rising Star cave complex, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger announced in a December 1 lecture hosted by the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington, D.C.

“Signs of fire use are everywhere in this cave system,” said Berger, of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg…

Such behavior has not been attributed to H. naledi before, largely because of its small brain. But it’s now clear that a brain roughly one-third the size of human brains today still enabled H. naledi to achieve control of fire, Berger contends…

Meanwhile, expedition codirector and Wits paleoanthropologist Keneiloe Molopyane led excavations of a nearby cave chamber. There, the researchers uncovered two small fireplaces containing charred bits of wood, and burned bones of antelopes and other animals. Remains of a fireplace and nearby burned animal bones were then discovered in a more remote cave chamber where H. naledi fossils have been found, Berger said. 

BRUCE BOWER, “HOMO NALEDI MAY HAVE LIT FIRES IN UNDERGROUND CAVES AT LEAST 236,000 YEARS AGO” AT SCIENCE NEWS (DECEMBER 2, 2022) HERE’S THE LECTURE ANNOUNCEMENT. 

One hitch is that the charred wood, bones, etc. have yet to be dated, to see if they come from the same layers as the Homo naledi fossils. But there are currently no other known groups that could have made the fires. 

It’s interesting to note that the basics of human culture seem to undergo much less development than we think. The culture may appear at about the same time as the humans.

You may also wish to read: Why is Neanderthal art considered controversial? It makes sense that whenever humans started to wonder about life, we started to create art that helps us think about it. Science writer Michael Marshall reports that some researchers are accused of banning others from taking samples that would prove a Neanderthal was the artist.

 

What Colwell's rule actually states.

 Colwell's rule. 

Wikipedia 

"Colwell discovered that "Definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article ... a predicate nominative which precedes the verb cannot be translated as an indefinite or a 'qualitative' noun solely because of the absence of the article; if the CONTEXT suggests that the predicate is definite, it should be translated as a definite noun ... "

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model XI

 Darwinism's predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter 

Early in the twentieth century scientists studied blood immunity and how immune reaction could be used to compare species. The blood studies tended to produce results that parallel the more obvious indicators such as body plan. For example, humans were found to be more closely related to apes than to fish or rabbits. These findings were said to be strong confirmations of evolution. In 1923 H. H. Lane cited this evidence as supporting “the fact of evolution.” (Lane, 47) Later in the century these findings continued to be cited in support of evolution. (Berra, 19; Dodson and Dodson, 65)

 

But even by mid century contradictions to evolutionary expectations were becoming obvious in serological tests. As J.B.S.Haldane explained in 1949, “Now every species of mammal and bird so far investigated has shown quite a surprising biochemical diversity by serological tests. The antigens concerned seem to be proteins to which polysaccharides are attached.” (quoted in Gagneux and Varki)

 

Indeed these polysaccharides, or glycans, did not fulfill evolutionary expectations. As one paper explained, glycans show “remarkably discontinuous distribution across evolutionary lineages,” for they “occur in a discontinuous and puzzling distribution across evolutionary lineages.” (Bishop and Gagneux) These glycans can be (i) specific to a particular lineage, (i) similar in very distant lineages, (iii) and conspicuously absent from very restricted taxa only.

Here is how another paper described glycan findings: “There is also no clear explanation for the extreme complexity and diversity of glycans that can be found on a given glycoconjugate or cell type. Based on the limited information available about the scope and distribution of this diversity among taxonomic groups, it is difficult to see clear trends or patterns consistent with different evolutionary lineages.” (Gagneux and Varki) 

References 

Berra, Tim. 1990. Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

 

Bishop J., P. Gagneux. 2007. “Evolution of carbohydrate antigens--microbial forces shaping host glycomes?.” Glycobiology 17:23R-34R.

 

Dodson, Edward, Peter Dodson. 1976. Evolution: Process and Product. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company.

 

Gagneux, P., A. Varki. 1999. “Evolutionary considerations in relating oligosaccharide diversity to biological function.” Glycobiology 9:747-755.

Lane, H. 1923. Evolution and Christian Faith. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

The Catholic reformatíon :a brief history.

 The Catholic reformatíon.

Wikipedia

The Counter-Reformation (Latin: Contrareformatio), also called the Catholic Reformation (Latin: Reformatio Catholica) or the Catholic Revival,[1] was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation. It began with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and largely ended with the conclusion of the European wars of religion in 1648.[citation needed] Initiated to address the effects of the Protestant Reformation,[citation needed] the Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort composed of apologetic and polemical documents and ecclesiastical configuration as decreed by the Council of Trent. The last of these included the efforts of Imperial Diets of the Holy Roman Empire, heresy trials and the Inquisition, anti-corruption efforts, spiritual movements, and the founding of new religious orders. Such policies had long-lasting effects in European history with exiles of Protestants continuing until the 1781 Patent of Toleration, although smaller expulsions took place in the 19th century.[2] 

Such reforms included the foundation of seminaries for the proper training of priests in the spiritual life and the theological traditions of the Church, the reform of religious life by returning orders to their spiritual foundations, and new spiritual movements focusing on the devotional life and a personal relationship with Christ, including the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality.[1] It also involved political activities that included the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa and Bombay-Bassein etc. A primary emphasis of the Counter-Reformation was a mission to reach parts of the world that had been colonized as predominantly Catholic and also try to reconvert nations such as Sweden and England that once were Catholic from the time of the Christianisation of Europe, but had been lost to the Reformation.[1] Various Counter-Reformation theologians focused only on defending doctrinal positions such as the sacraments and pious practices that were attacked by the Protestant reformers,[1] up to the Second Vatican Council in 1962–1965.[3]

Key events of the period include: the Council of Trent (1545–63); the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570), the codification of the uniform Roman Rite Mass (1570), and the Battle of Lepanto (1571), occurring during the pontificate of Pius V; the construction of the Gregorian observatory in Rome, the founding of the Gregorian University, the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and the Jesuit China mission of Matteo Ricci, all under Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585); the French Wars of Religion; the Long Turkish War and the execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600, under Pope Clement VIII; the birth of the Lyncean Academy of the Papal States, of which the main figure was Galileo Galilei (later put on trial); the final phases of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) during the pontificates of Urban VIII and Innocent X; and the formation of the last Holy League by Innocent XI during the Great Turkish War (1683–1699).[

On the designed intelligence of cephalopods.

 MicroRNAs: A New Clue About Octopus Intelligence? 

Denyse O'Leary 

In general, the “intelligent” animals (apes, elephants, crows, whales, dogs, dolphins) are vertebrates, not invertebrates. There is one glaring exception: the cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish). They, like vertebrates, developed large, complex brains and unexpectedly sophisticated cognitive abilities.

When thinking about the puzzle, we sometimes fall victim to a sort of confusion: We reason that greater intelligence results from the fact that it “helps the octopus survive better.” Perhaps it does. But, while greater intelligence might help many life forms survive better, only a few develop it. In short, we need a “how” explanation here, not a “why” explanation. 

The Role of MicroRNAs 

A recent study from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine points to the possible role of microRNAs (miRNAs). MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression after genes have been transcribed. They are considered powerful regulators of activities like cell growth, differentiation, development, and death. Octopuses have 

… a massively expanded repertoire of microRNAs (miRNAs) in their neural tissue – reflecting similar developments that occurred in vertebrates. “So, this is what connects us to the octopus!” says Professor Nikolaus Rajewsky, Scientific Director of the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB), head of the Systems Biology of Gene Regulatory Elements Lab, and the paper’s last author. He explains that this finding probably means miRNAs play a fundamental role in the development of complex brains. 

MAX DELBRÜCK CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE IN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION, “WHAT OCTOPUS AND HUMAN BRAINS HAVE IN COMMON” AT EUREKALERT (NOVEMBER 25, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

That probably isn’t the whole story of intelligence but some features are very suggestive: 

The most interesting discovery was in fact the dramatic expansion of a well-known group of RNA genes, microRNAs. A total of 42 novel miRNA families were found — specifically in neural tissue and mostly in the brain. Given that these genes were conserved during cephalopod evolution, the team concludes they were clearly beneficial to the animals and are therefore functionally important…

“This is the third-largest expansion of microRNA families in the animal world, and the largest outside of vertebrates,” says lead author Grygoriy Zolotarov, MD, a Ukrainian scientist who interned in Rajewsky’s lab at MDC-BIMSB while finishing medical school in Prague, and later. “To give you an idea of the scale, oysters, which are also mollusks, have acquired just five new microRNA families since the last ancestors they shared with octopuses — while the octopuses have acquired 90!” Oysters, adds Zolotarov, aren’t exactly known for their intelligence. 

MAX DELBRÜCK CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE IN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION, “WHAT OCTOPUS AND HUMAN BRAINS HAVE IN COMMON” AT EUREKALERT (NOVEMBER 25, 2022) 

Ways Octopuses Are Smart but Weird 

Octopuses are unusual in that they have both a central brain and a nervous system that controls the tentacles that can act independently. The central brain is not at all like ours: 

The construction of the octopus eye itself is like our own, but that’s where the similarity ends. Behind the eye, the octopus’ brain is wildly different from mammalian brains in terms of architecture and design, yet it uses similar building blocks and accomplishes the same tasks…

For a team of neuroscientists in Oregon, understanding this invertebrate brain is both fascinating and informative. “The sensor is really similar, but the brain that’s processing the information is completely different,” explained Cris Niell, professor of biology and neuroscience at the University of Oregon. 

BRADLEY VAN PARIDON, “MAPPING THE OCTOPUS BRAIN” AT ADVANCED SCIENCE NEWS (NOVEMBER 22, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

How different? Much information doesn’t even go through the brain: 

Now, in a new study published on November 28 in Current Biology, Hale, William Rainey Harper Professor of Organismal Biology and Vice Provost at UChicago, and her colleagues have described something new and totally unexpected about the octopus nervous system: a structure by which the intramuscular nerve cords (INCs), which help the animal sense its arm movement, connect arms on the opposite sides of the animal. 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER, “UNIQUE FEATURES OF OCTOPUS CREATE ‘AN ENTIRELY NEW WAY OF DESIGNING A NERVOUS SYSTEM’” AT EUREKALERT (NOVEMBER 28, 2022) PAPER. 

And another study found that the octopus uses different neurotransmitters from vertebrates. 

A “Second Genesis”  

The octopus brain and nervous system has been called a “second genesis” of intelligence. That raises an interesting issue: If intelligence was a fluke when it was generated once, as some claim, what about finding it generated again in a different neurological format? When flukes repeat themselves, something else is usually going on. 

Note: This year, researchers spotted octopuses throwing things at each other: “Underwater cameras captured the cephalopods collecting shells, silt and algae with their arms and hurling them at one another by using jets of water from their siphon to propel the scraps. The researchers even observed the receiving octopuses ducking to avoid a hit.” (Scientific American, December 7, 2022) 

You may also wish to read: Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests. The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink what we believe to be the origin of intelligence. The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues. 

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model VIII

 Darwin's Predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter 

The pentadactyl structure—five digits (four fingers and a thumb for humans) at the end of the limb structure—is one of the most celebrated proof texts for evolution. The pentadactyl structure is found throughout the tetrapods and its uses include flying, grasping, climbing and crawling. Such diverse activities, evolutionists reason, should require diverse limbs. There seems to be no reason why all should need a five digit limb. Why not three digits for some, eight for others, 13 for some others, and so forth? And yet they all are endowed with five digits. As Darwin explained, “What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include similar bones, in the same relative positions?” (Darwin, 382)

 

Such a suboptimal design must be an artefact of common descent—a suboptimal design that was handed down from a common ancestor rather than specifically designed for each species. And the common descent pattern formed by this structure is often claimed as strong evidence for evolution. (Berra, 21; Campbell et. al., 509; Futuyma, 47; Johnson and Losos, 298; Johnson and Raven, 286; Mayr, 26) One text calls it a “classic example” of evolutionary evidence. (Ridley, 45) 

Such a suboptimal design must be an artefact of common descent—a suboptimal design that was handed down from a common ancestor rather than specifically designed for each species. And the common descent pattern formed by this structure is often claimed as strong evidence for evolution. (Berra, 21; Campbell et. al., 509; Futuyma, 47; Johnson and Losos, 298; Johnson and Raven, 286; Mayr, 26) One text calls it a “classic example” of evolutionary evidence. (Ridley, 45)

 

But this prediction is now known to be false as the digit structure in the tetrapods does not conform to the common descent pattern. In fact, appendages have various digit structures and they are distributed across the species in various ways. This is found both in extant species and in the fossil record. As evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould explained, “The conclusion seems inescapable, and an old ‘certainty’ must be starkly reversed.” (Gould)

 

This means that evolutionists cannot model the observed structures and pattern of distribution merely as a consequence of common descent. Instead, a complicated evolutionary history is required (Brown) where the pentadactyl structure re-evolves in different lineages, and appendages evolve, are lost, and then evolve again. And as one recent study concluded, “Our phylogenetic results support independent instances of complete limb loss as well as multiple instances of digit and external ear opening loss and re-acquisition. Even more striking, we find strong statistical support for the re-acquisition of a pentadactyl body form from a digit-reduced ancestor. … The results of our study join a nascent body of literature showing strong statistical support for character loss, followed by evolutionary re-acquisition of complex structures associated with a generalized pentadactyl body form.” (Siler and Brown) 

References 

Berra, Tim. 1990. Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Brown, R., et. al. 2012. “Species delimitation and digit number in a North African skink.” Ecology and Evolution 2:2962-73.

Campbell, Neil, et. al. 2011. Biology. 5th ed. San Francisco: Pearson.

 

Darwin, Charles. 1872. The Origin of Species. 6th ed. London: John Murray.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F391&viewtype=text&pageseq=1

 

Futuyma, Douglas. 1982. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. New York: Pantheon Books.

 

Gould, Steven Jay. 1991. “Eight (or Fewer) Little Piggies.” Natural History 100:22-29.

 

Johnson, G., J. Losos. 2008. The Living World. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

 

Johnson, G., P. Raven. 2004. Biology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

 

Mayr, Ernst. 2001. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books.

 

Ridley, Mark. 1993. Evolution. Boston: Blackwell Scientific.

Siler C., R. Brown. 2011. “Evidence for repeated acquisition and loss of complex body-form characters in an insular clade of Southeast Asian semi-fossorial skinks.” Evolution 65:2641-2663.