Married to the mob? III

Jailed mobsters given communion after Pope's 'excommunication': priest

Reuters) - A Roman Catholic priest said he was continuing to give Holy Communion to mafia bosses at a high-security prison in Italy, even after Pope Francis said members of organized crime groups were "excommunicated".

During a trip to one of Italy's most mafia-infested regions last month, Francis for the first time described mafiosi as "excommunicated" - totally cut off from the Church - because "their lives follow this path of evil".

After the pope's comments, "some prisoners came to me and asked me if they should consider themselves excommunicated, saying that if they could no longer take the sacrament, they would stop coming to Mass," prison chaplain Marco Colonna told la Repubblica newspaper in an article published on Monday.

"I tried to explain to them that the Church doesn't kick anyone out, and after a few days of reflection, I told them that they would continue to receive the sacrament," said Colonna, who works at the prison in the southern town of Larino.

"I continued to give communion to bosses ... I cannot avoid it," the priest added.

The Vatican has said the pope's use of the word "excommunication" last month had not amounted to a formal decree under church law.

Instead, a Vatican spokesman said, the pope had meant to tell the criminals they had effectively excommunicated themselves and could not participate in Church sacraments because they had distanced themselves from God.

High-ranking Church officials also quoted in the Italian media on Monday said the pope's words meant mafia bosses should not be allowed to take communion, but added that did not mean they were shut out forever.

"Someone who is excommunicated cannot take communion and is excluded from the sacraments, but he can listen to the word of God," Nunzio Galantino, secretary general of the Italian Bishop's conference whose diocese the pope was visiting when he spoke out against the mob, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

In some areas, like the one Galantino comes from, the Church has taken a strong stand against organized crime.

But many members of organized crime groups in Italy see themselves as part of a religious, cult-like group and regularly take part in sacraments.

On Wednesday, during a religious procession of a statue of Saint Mary in the southern Italian town of Oppido Mamertina, parishioners paused before the home of the town's elderly mafia boss as a sign of respect, triggering an impassioned debate in the Italian media.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

 

 

1Samuel2:22-25RSV(Catholic Edition) " Now Eli was very old, and he heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting. ²³ And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. ²⁴ No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. ²⁵ If a man sins against a man, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father; for it was the will of the Lord to slay them."

 

 

1Samuel3:11-14RSV(Catholic Edition)"Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel, at which the two ears of every one that hears it will tingle. ¹² On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. ¹³ And I tell him that I am about to punish his house for ever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God,^[c] and he did not restrain them. ¹⁴ Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering for ever.”

 

In the shadow of the secular arm.

JULY 1, 2014 | RUSSIA

The European Court of Human Rights Again Condemns Russia for Its Failure to Respect Freedom of Religion

 

On June 26, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in favor of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their right to worship without unlawful interference from the Russian authorities. In its unanimous judgment, the Court found that Russia violated Articles 5 (right to liberty and security) and 9 (freedom of thought, conscience, and religion) of the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention) when police overwhelmed a religious service with an illegal raid on the night of April 12, 2006.

On that night, Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world were gathered together for their annual religious observance commemorating the death of Jesus Christ. Two congregations in Moscow had rented a school auditorium for the special meeting and anticipated an attendance of over 400 worshippers. While the meeting was in progress, riot police arrived at the scene in ten police vehicles and two minibuses, with an armed unit of the Special Police Force (OMON) and dozens of uniformed police officers. They quickly cordoned off the building, and without warrant for their actions, disrupted the religious service. They ordered all in attendance to leave the building, then searched the auditorium, confiscated religious literature, and forcibly took 14 male attendees to the local police station and detained them. An attorney who had been contacted to represent the detained Witnesses arrived at the police station to assist them. The police searched him, threw him to the ground, put a knife to his throat, and threatened that if he filed a complaint, there would be unpleasant consequences for his family. After nearly four hours, the detainees were released and allowed to return home.

Nikolay Krupko, lead applicant in the case

Nikolay Krupko, along with three other Witnesses who were detained, brought suit against the authorities for illegally disrupting the religious meeting and unlawfully detaining them. After the Lyublino District Court and the Moscow City Court rejected their complaint, the men submitted an application to the ECHR in June 2007.

In its June 26 judgment entitled Krupko and Others v. Russia, the ECHR stated: “The Court has consistently held that, even in cases where the authorities had not been properly notified of a public event but where the participants did not represent a danger to the public order, dispersal of a peaceful assembly by the police could not be regarded as having been ‘necessary in a democratic society.’ . . . This finding applies a fortiori in the circumstances of the present case where the assembly in question was not a tumultuous outdoors event but a solemn religious ceremony in an assembly hall which was not shown to create any disturbance or danger to the public order. The intervention of armed riot police in substantial numbers with the aim of disrupting the ceremony, even if the authorities genuinely believed that lack of advance notice rendered it illegal, followed by the applicants’ arrest and three-hour detention, was disproportionate for the protection of public order.”

This is the third judgment against Russia for violating the rights of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In a 2007 judgment entitled Kuznetsov and Others v. Russia, the ECHR ruled that Russia violated the Convention when local authorities illegally disrupted a meeting of hearing-impaired Witnesses in Chelyabinsk. In 2010, the ECHR ruled against Russia in Jehovah’s Witnesses of Moscow v. Russia, a case in which the Moscow City Prosecutor’s Office unlawfully liquidated and banned the Witnesses’ legal entity in Moscow.

The judgments of the ECHR add further proof that the Russian authorities, in attempting to suppress the worship of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, have violated the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the Convention.

Married to the mob?II

On the frontline in Syria: the Danish gangster who turned jihadi

Director trails Big A, leader of one of Copenhagen's most notorious gangs, as he joins rebels fighting the Assad regime

 

 

Two Danes lie in the back of a pickup truck on the Turkish-Syrian border waiting for a call. They're with a young British jihadi and a group of ultra-conservative Syrian Salafi Islamists. Soon they'll be smuggled into Syria to join the fight against the Assad regime.
One of the Danes, a 40-year-old father of three, doesn't want to be named. The other doesn't care; he knows that as long as he avoids proscribed terrorist groups, he can't be prosecuted under Danish law. On the streets of Copenhagen he is known as Big A, a convicted drug trafficker and the leader of one of Denmark's most notorious organised crime gangs. But on the frontline in northern Syria, Abderozzak Benarabe is just another have-a-go jihadi, a man who joined the fight against Bashar al-Assad through a mix of restlessness, curiosity and a need for some kind of personal redemption.
I followed Benarabe's experiences in northern Syria and subsequently back in Copenhagen, for a documentary broadcast by the Guardian on Tuesday. The footage was shot in 2012, but the scenes it exposes take on added resonance in the light of mounting concerns about the number of Europeans believed to be flocking to Syria. Some estimates put the number at about 1,000.
It's not all plain sailing for the Dane. Benarabe's entry into Syria is secured by crawling through a hole in the Turkey-Syria border fence and running through fields for 10 minutes until he and his fellow travellers reach a waiting car. They are driven to Sarjeh, a city in the Zawiyah mountain region of Idlib, north-west Syria.
There, they meet a burly Canadian of Iraqi descent with a long beard and military fatigues. "God willing, we'll replace Assad with an Islamic state. I am tired of the immorality in Canada and if we succeed I'm going to live here," he said.
Also there are three Uzbeks. Two of them speak neither Arabic nor English, and have to communicate with the rebels with hand gestures.
Every morning, rebel fighters leave for a battle that's raging in the nearby city of Ariha. Benarabe endures a frustrating induction during which he isn't even given a weapon. He befriends a group of young fighters – they say they're 16, but look younger – and hangs out and shares cigarettes with them, and borrows one of their AK-47s to fire on an enemy target. He's clearly familiar with guns and needs no instruction on how to shoot.
But the sights of the battlefield are grim even for a man inured to violence. A machine-gunner gets shot in the face, just yards from where I am standing. The bullet penetrates his skull and hits another rebel behind him in the chest. Two more fighters are hit as they fire off rounds at the sniper. I follow them into the makeshift operating theatre – a bedroom in one of the houses – and film as two more rebels lie dying as doctors try in vain to perform CPR. Three are dead and their mourning comrades cover them with sheets.
The aerial bombardment intensifies and Benarabe and the rebels take shelter in the lower floor of the apartment blocks. The idea is that the bombs will not penetrate the upper floors. All they can do is wait and pray while the sound of the jets gets louder and the bombs fall. The blasts are getting closer. Suddenly a massive explosion shakes the building. Rubble falls, glass shatters and the air is thick with smoke and dust. It was very close.
The commander, Ibrahim Abu Muhammed – a small, softly spoken man with rosy cheeks – sits and reads his Qur'an.
"We're staying here and showing them that we are resilient," he says, looking his men in the eyes. "We'll show them we are only afraid of Allah."
That night, after they have been relieved by a contingent of fresh fighters, the other Dane starts to act strangely. He appears traumatised by the violence and becomes paranoid that the rebels want to kill him. He thinks my camera is making them nervous. To calm him down I stop filming, telling the commander my camera is broken.
For the next four days, Benarabe is at the forefront of the battle. He comes back one night with a grenade fragment that hit his backpack and his comrades tell of his bravery in leading charges and volunteering for every mission. The young fighters hope he will lead their unit, and Benarabe talks of buying a house in the town and funding and equipping the contingent himself. He has become even more fervent in his belief that he is fighting for a worthy cause. "We have to stop the Syrian army," he says, "Or we'll have more massacres like in Daraya."
But the commander quickly realises that Benarabe will be more useful to the rebel effort drumming up cash and supplies from Copenhagen.
Back in the Danish capital, Benarabe collects about £50,000 through donations and, it is rumoured, through "taxing" local drug dealers. He buys three mini-vans and fills them mostly with medical equipment, but he also says he's transporting some hi-tech military paraphernalia, including night-vision goggles and heat sensors.
He and some associates drive the cargo to Syria and hand it over to the rebels. Benarabe plans to stay and fight.
Big A, who leads one of Denmark's most notorious gangs, needs no instruction in how to use a weapon. Then he drops off the radar. Soon afterwards, I hear he is back in Copenhagen. He never said why he didn't stay in Syria, but there was a flair-up in gang violence in Denmark at the time and there were rumours that rival gangsters were trying to muscle in on his turf.
I next catch up with him in Morocco, where he is hiding out from an aggravated assault charge. He is proud of what he's done in Syria, and still talks of being religious, but he says his loyalties to his gang have superseded anything else.
"These are my brothers, the people I grew up with, and when they need me I must do whatever I can for them."
Benarabe is currently in jail in Copenhagen. Last I heard, he was in hospital after being badly beaten by inmates from a rival gang.

Married to the mob?

Church procession detours its route to honour convicted Mafia crook – in defiance of Pope Francis who has excommunicated the mobsters

• Procession in 'ndrangheta stronghold detoured to pass mobster's home
• The 82-year-old convicted murderer was inside under house arrest
• It's less than a month since Francis excommunicated 'ndrangheta members

ByDaily Mail Reporter

Less than a month after Pope Francis excommunicated members of the mob, a church procession has apparently defied him by changing route to honour a convicted gangster.

The procession through Oppido Mamertina, a Calabrian town and stronghold of the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, detoured to pass the home of an 82-year-old convicted murderer.

The mayor, local clergy, parents pushing baby strollers and dozens of local men carrying an ornate Madonna statue marched past the home of the killer who, because of his age, was allowed to serve out his life sentence under house arrest.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano on Sunday denounced the tribute as 'deplorable and disgusting' and praised three Carabinieri policemen who abandoned the procession in disapproval.

Carabinieri officer Andrea Marino said he and his fellow officer walked away from the July 2 procession after the detour and headed to the church to complain about what happened.

 

One of Calabria's anti-Mafia prosecutors, Nicola Gratteri, told The Associated Press that the detour to the mobster's house appeared to be a 'challenge to the diktat' of Francis.

The 'ndrangheta, a global cocaine trafficker, is one of the world's most powerful crime syndicates. Religious rituals hold an important place in the mobsters' mentality.

On June 21, Francis, visiting Calabria, had denounced the 'ndrangheta for its 'adoration of evil' and said its members were excommunicated.

Oppido Mamertino's bishop, Monsignor Francesco Milito, said he would take undescribed 'measures' against those exploiting the church procession to pay homage to the local boss.

Elsewhere in southern Italy, other 'ndrangheta members appeared to have paid attention to the pope's words but perhaps not in the way he intended.

Another bishop, Monsignor Giancarlo Bregantini, told Vatican Radio Sunday that some 200 inmates in the maximum-security section of Larino prison told their chaplain they would boycott Mass.

They reasoned that if they had been excommunicated it made no sense for them to attend anymore

 

 

No, Pope Francis did not officially excommunicate the mafia

Updated by Brandon Ambrosino on June 23, 2014, 12:00 p.m

 

 

By now, the news is everywhere: the Pope has declared the mafia excommunicated from the Catholic Church: "Those who in their life have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the mafia, they are not with God, they are excommunicated," he said on Saturday in the Italian city of Calabria. But did Francis really excommunicate the entire mafia from the Catholic Church?

Here are some things to consider.

Francis made the remarks during an outdoor mass in Calabria, the power base of the notorious mafia crime syndicate known as the 'Ndrangheta. Francis was in the area to meet with the family of a three-year-old boy who was gunned down last year by the mafia. Nicola "Coco" Campolongo, along with his grandfather and another adult, were shot in their heads. The car they were in was then doused in gasoline and set on fire.

Though his comments were harsh, they really shouldn't come as a shock. One of the defining themes of Francis' papacy has been his consistent call for economic justice, which, on many occasions, has manifested itself in his indictment of economic exploitation — something the mafia is known for. As Eric J. Lyman reported for USA Today, the 'Ndrangheta, with a reach extending stretching as far as Germany and Austria, amasses a revenue of around $75 billion — about 3.5 percent of Italy's gross domestic product. According to CNN, much of this profit comes from the global cocaine trade. The 'Ndrangheta, which number around 6,000 members, specialize in drug trafficking, murder, bombings, counterfeiting, gambling, frauds, thefts, labor racketeering, and loansharking, according to an FBI profile. It makes sense, then, that such a corrupt organization would receive condemnation from the Pontiff of the poor.

But Francis' critique of the mafia should not be seen as an official excommunication, according to Chad Pecknold, an assistant professor of theology at Catholic University of America. In Roman Catholicism, an official excommunication is a strict censure that deprives the excommunicated of fellowship with the rest of the Church body. When a Church member is excommunicated, she is not allowed to take communion. Excommunication, though severe, is not irreversible. According to Canon Law, the censure is "medicinal," meaning it's given to a Catholic in the hopes of urging him to repentance.

As Pecknold explained it to me, the Pope's comment was "just something he said in a homily — which is not a vehicle for disciplinary pronouncements." Further, excommunication is "only for individuals," and not entire organizations. Rather, said Pecknold, what Francis was doing was simply describing the "self-excommunication" the 'Ndrangheta is already experiencing because of their "serious sin."

Chris Haw, author of Jesus for President, and PhD student in theology at Notre Dame, told me to think of excommunication like a flashlight: "It just illuminates what's already the case." In other words, rather than officially shutting out mafiosi from the Church, Francis was describing their own self-alienation from "the common good."

So Francis did not officially kick the mafia out of the church. What he did was describe what he imagined to be the spiritual state of those who engage in the kind of behavior that results in the death of children and the exploitation of the poor. Those people, said Francis, are "not with God."

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed some quotes by Chad Pecknold to Chris Haw. We regret the error.

Through the looking glass?

The Strange Mental World of Darwinian Fundamentalists

Stephen H. Webb April 5, 2014 6:53 AM

 

 

 

As I mentioned earlier, I participated in good faith in an open forum blog discussion at the National Center for Science Education site, hoping to deepen my understanding about something, even if it was only the thoughts of my critics or the limits of my own understanding. Surely, I thought, if I explain my position and analyze my opponents' comments, I will at least see some progress toward mutual agreement. I might have to change my mind about a few things, and we might find out that we are using different terms or trying to answer different questions. But surely we will shed some light on something.

Boy, was I wrong. The only thing I deepened was my despair that Darwinian fundamentalists will ever give up their mission to deride their critics at all costs. I do not think the people I was arguing with are evil or dumb. They are no doubt hard-working, highly ethical professionals, smart and well educated. So why could they respond to hardly any of my challenges or analyze any of my claims?

[The only conclusion I could come to was that they think, on this particular issue, I am so crazy that they must try to save me from some cult rather than take anything I say seriously. That is the only explanation that makes sense of why they ignored what I said, kept changing the topic when I pinned them down, refused to answer any of my challenges, and felt free to turn my words around to suit their interests.]*

They were acting like therapists who were professionally forbidden from taking me seriously. When the patient says he thinks he is Julius Caesar, the therapist talks about the weather. When I say that you have to understand mental causation in order to understand God's action in the world, the response I get is, "What would it look like if we could see it?" This bit of naïve empiricism came from a scientist who knows quite well that we cannot see all the things we believe in.

Or there was this exchange with James McGrath, a professor of New Testament at Butler University. Me: "Biologists are among the worst in academia in appealing to credentialism to shut down criticism." McGrath:

I find it hard to believe that Steve Webb, himself an educator, is claiming that someone who has never pursued high level academic study in a field and never engaged in the kind of research that academics are required to pursue will nonetheless be as well poised to comment on a matter as those who have undertaken and continue to engage in such study.

Well, yes James, you should find it hard to believe, because I never said anything close to the view that you attribute to me.

Or take this exchange with Professor McGrath, prompted by my use of the term "Darwinism" to refer to evolutionary theory in general. McGrath:

Whenever someone talks about "Darwinism" I always have to wonder whether they are kidding. If you aren't going to interact with the current state of biology then what is the point of the exercise? If biologists are not dealing with the evidence in 19th-century terms, of what value are criticisms of the state of our knowledge a century and a half ago?

Me: "You know that when I say Darwinism I mean the current state of his theory." McGrath: "I find 'Darwinism' to rarely be used anywhere except among critics who are not themselves working within the relevant fields or well acquainted with them." Me:

I just Googled it, and the first three entries use it to refer to the contemporary theory of evolution, and talk about it in terms of its origin in Darwin and its later developments. Those cites are: Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. So I don't know why you are nitpicking about this except to exhaust me and distract us from substantial issues.

McGrath: "Ah, well, reference to Wikipedia settles the matter. I apologize."

But here is the oddest exchange of all. Glenn Branch, the deputy director of the NCSE, raised the objection that advocates of intelligent design are being dishonest when they say that ID theory makes no judgments about who the intelligent designer is. Everyone knows, he says, that ID is talking about God. I reply that the point is empirical evidence can point to a causal agent that just might be God, but it does not tell us anything specific about the nature of that agent. Logic, metaphysics, revelation, scripture, and other sources have to kick in to answer such a question.

Me: "It is perfectly logical to argue that evidence points to a kind of cause without being able to specify all the features of that cause." Branch:

It's a trivial consequence of the underdetermination of theory by data that a theory won't specify all of the features of a theoretical entity, so that's hardly the accusation against "intelligent design." Rather, the accusation is that its reluctance to pronounce on the identity and nature of the designer is essentially unargued, ad hoc, and impossible to explain except in the context of the strategic goals of its proponents.

So Branch agrees that evidence can point to a cause without specifying all of the features of that cause. Yet he continues to insist that ID is being dishonest in not "pronouncing on the identity" of its intelligent cause. Hmm.

Me:

I'm glad we agree that identifying all the features of a theoretical entity, or really of any causal agent, is not necessary for identifying the causal efficacy of that entity. Now you have to help me out Glenn, because I truly don't understand your second sentence. ID folks all the time talk about the restrictions they operate under in positing an intelligent designer. That is, they are very open and honest about what science can and cannot say about the intelligent designer. So how do you come up with that last sentence?

I'm still waiting for an answer -- a real answer, this time.


* "The only conclusion I could come to was that they think, on this particular issue, I am so crazy that they must try to save me from some cult rather than take anything I say seriously. That is the only explanation that makes sense of why they ignored what I said, kept changing the topic when I pinned them down, refused to answer any of my challenges, and felt free to turn my words around to suit their interests." I feel your pain.
 
 

Why frankenstein can't help darwnists.

BIO-Complexity Paper: Why Chaitin's Mathematical "Proof" of Darwinian Evolution Fails

Casey Luskin April 7, 2014 5:08 AM

 

 

 

A new peer-reviewed paper in BIO-Complexity, "Active Information in Metabiology," reports on the further investigations of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab into the ability of unguided evolutionary mechanisms to produce new information. This time, authors Winston Ewert, William Dembski, and Robert Marks show that the budding field of metabiology only produces creative outputs through active information -- i.e., informational inputs donated by an intelligent source -- and does not truly demonstrate that unguided processes can produce new information.

What is "metabiology"? According to the paper, it's "a fascinating intellectual romp in the surreal world of the mathematics of algorithmic information theory" where "halting oracles hunt for busy beaver numbers and busy beaver numbers unearth Chaitin's number, knowledge of which in turn allows resolution of numerous unsolved mathematical problems, many of whose solutions would earn large cash bounties." That description may not help most of us very much. The field of "metabiology" was developed by the Argentine-American computer scientist and mathematician Gregory Chaitin. In his 2013 book Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical, Chaitin describes metabiology as an "answer" to David Berlinski's "stinging critique of Darwinism" in The Devil's Delusion. "Metabiology" is Chaitin's attempt to use mathematics and (hypothetical) computer simulations to formally prove that Darwinian theory can create new information. It relies on an inherently gene-centered view of evolution, where a simulated "genetic code" (i.e., a computer program) can be "mutated," and when the program "halts" or stops running, it outputs a number that correlates with the program's "fitness." If the number goes up as the evolutionary simulation proceeds, Chaitin thinks he's shown Darwinian processes can increase fitness over time.

There are many reasons why Chaitin's model does not accurately reflect how Darwinian evolution works, if it does work, in the real world of biology (some of which are summarized nicely over at Theory, Evolution, and Games Group). Not the least of such problems is the fact that the simulation basically grants itself infinite probabilistic resources (actually, computing resources, but that's analogous to probabilistic resources in biology).

As Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain:

Because metabiology programs have unbounded length and can run for an unbounded amount of time, the unboundedness essentially undermines the creativity required to solve the large-number problem. With unbounded resources and unbounded time, one can do most anything.

In the real world, probabilistic resources are limited. Time is finite, and populations have finite sizes, and this imposes limits on what traits can evolve especially (as Stephen Meyer shows in Darwin's Doubt) when traits require multiple mutations before providing some advantage. Metabiology uses a population of one single "digital organism," which then "evolves" over time, but it grants itself essentially infinite computing resources to do this. With such a generous endowment, sure, anything can eventually evolve. But we don't live in an unlimited world, which is precisely why Darwinian evolution faces major theoretical problems. They thus write:

Although elegant in conception, metabiology departs from reality because it pays no attention to resource limitations. Metabiology's math obscures the huge amounts of time required for the evolutionary process. The programs can run for any arbitrarily large number of steps. Additionally, programs can be of any length with no penalty imposed for longer programs.

Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain that Chaitin's program uses a halting oracle as a source of "active information." A halting oracle is a hypothetical meta-program that can tell you if a given program will ever stop running. As they explain, such an oracle could be useful in disproving certain mathematical conjectures, such as Goldbach's conjecture, "which hypothesizes that all even numbers greater than two can be written as the sum of two primes." They discuss how a halting oracle could determine if the conjecture was false:

Suppose a program X can be written to test each even number sequentially to see if it were the sum of two primes. If a counterexample is found, the program stops and declares "I have a counterexample!" Otherwise, the next even number is tested. If Goldbach's conjecture is true, the program will run forever.

If a halting oracle existed, we could feed it X. If the halting oracle says "this program halts," Goldbach's conjecture is disproved. A counterexample exists. If the halting oracle says, "This program never halts," then Goldbach's conjecture is proven! There exists no counterexample.

The difficulty for Chaitin is he admits that for metabiology, "[The halting oracle] is where all the creativity is really coming from in our program," but also admits that such an oracle is "mathematical fantasy." Ewert, Dembski, and Marks thus aptly observe, "A computer tool proven not to exist is admittedly at the outset an obvious major strike against a theory purporting to demonstrate reality."

Now at this point, one might reasonably ask, "If a halting oracle is a hypothetical fantasy, how can Chaitin claim to use one in metabiology?" The answer is that Chaitin isn't actually creating a computer program. He's seeking a mathematical proof of the Darwinian model, where he's allowed to indulge thought experiments that invoke hypothetical entities. All he needs to be able to do is to prove what might happen if he theoretically had a halting oracle. But it doesn't help that one could never exist.

That problem aside, they explain that the "halting oracle" used by Chaitin's program has three different options of how to find a search target: "

• Exhaustive Search (poor)
• Random Evolution (good)
• Intelligent Design (better)

Metabiology uses "random evolution" but not in a manner that is biologically realistic. The program is capable of systematically simulating all possible programs, which in effect allows it to totally rewrite itself instantly -- something that simply doesn't happen in biology -- and thereby grants unrealistic access to the equivalent of unlimited resources in an organism's developmental process. This unrealistically guarantees the program could never get stuck on a local fitness peak because it can keep trying out entirely new "genetic codes" indefinitely until a better one is found.

Which, again, is nothing like how the real world of biology, where an organism is forced to rely on the genome it receives, which at best will have just a few small mutational differences from its parents. Darwinian evolution in real biology requires a grueling ascent of mount improbable, but Chaitin's program can fly wherever it wants at any time. To put it another way, metabiology cheats by giving a digital organism unrealistic access to any program at any time which will lead to a higher fitness state. As Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain:

As any computer programmer will tell you, landscapes of computer program fitness are the opposite of smooth. We would therefore not expect Darwinian evolution to fare well. Chaitin notes this when he writes [3], "The fitness landscape has to be very special for Darwinian evolution to work."

The environment for evolution to occur, therefore, has to be carefully designed. Indeed, in the paradigm of conservation of information, smooth landscapes can be source of significant active information [14]. Metabiology's construction of smooth landscapes is accomplished by running all viable programs, a computationally expensive approach that is only possible because there are no resource limitations.

Chaitin also presents a different model that uses what he calls "intelligent design" to find a search target. This obviously doesn't help show what unguided evolutionary processes can accomplish. The author of the blog "Theory, Evolution and Games Group" critiques Chaitin's model, writing that metabiology uses "a teleological model -- a biologist's nightmare." Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain:

Like AVIDA and ev, metabiology makes use of external information sources to assist in the search. Like the simple Hamming oracle, the halting oracle can be mined for information with various degrees of sophistication. Evolution thus requires external sources of knowledge to work. The degree to which this knowledge is used can be assessed using the idea of active information.

They conclude: "In order for evolution to occur in these models, external knowledge must be imposed on the process to guide it. Metabiology thus appears to be another example where its designer makes an evolutionary model work. ... Consistent with the laws of conservation of information, natural selection can only work using the guidance of active information, which can be provided only by a designer." Properly understood, in other words, these programs demonstrate that evolution requires intelligent design.

On atheism and its scientific pretensions.

To doubt or not to doubt?

How "Sudden" Was the Cambrian Explosion? Nick Matzke Misreads Stephen Meyer and the Paleontological Literature; New Yorker Recycles Misrepresentation

Casey Luskin July 16, 2013 11:14 AM

 

 

On June 19, the day after Darwin's Doubt was first available for purchase, Nick Matzke published a 9400-word "review" of the book in which it appears that he tried to anticipate many of Stephen Meyer's arguments. Unfortunately, he often either guessed wrong as to what Meyer would say or -- assuming he actually read the book as he claims -- misread many of Meyer's specific claims. As I showed in a previous response to Matzke, Matzke repeatedly misquoted Meyer, at one point claiming he referred to the Cambrian explosion as "instantaneous," when Meyer nowhere makes that claim. Indeed, Matzke faulted Meyer for not recognizing that the Cambrian explosion "was not really 'instantaneous' nor particularly 'sudden.'" Oddly, he also criticized Meyer for not recognizing that the Cambrian explosion "took at least 30 million years" -- despite expert opinion showing it was far shorter.

Since Matzke published his review, The New Yorker reviewed Meyer's book. Gareth Cook, the science writer who wrote the piece, relied heavily on Matzke's critical evaluation, even though Matzke is a graduate student and not an established Cambrian expert. Cook uncritically recycled Matzke's claim that the Cambrian explosion took "many tens of millions of years," even saying that the main problem with Darwin's Doubt is that Meyer failed to recognize this alleged fact.

So, was Matzke right about the length of the Cambrian explosion? In fact, Matzke's preemptive -- or hastily written -- review not only misrepresented Meyer's view, it also misrepresented the length and character of the Cambrian explosion as numerous authoritative peer-reviewed scientific sources on the subject clearly show.

Before going on, let's briefly look first at what Meyer actually says. First, Meyer does not equate the Cambrian explosion with the entire radiation -- as most Cambrian experts also do not. By "radiation" here I mean the period of time in which all the new phyla, classes, orders that first arose during the Cambrian apparently did so. Instead, he equates the Cambrian explosion with the most explosive period of the Cambrian radiation (as most Cambrian experts do) in which the vast majority of the higher taxa arose. He asserts specifically that the re-dating of critical Cambrian strata in 1993 established that the strata documenting the first appearance of the majority of the Cambrian phyla and classes took place within a 10 million year period -- a period Meyer does equate with "the explosion of novel Cambrian animal forms." (pp. 71-72) As he describes it, "these studies [i.e., radiometric analyses of zircon crystals in Siberian rocks] also suggested that the explosion of novel Cambrian animal forms" took about 10 million years. (p. 71)

In affirming this, however, Meyer offers a nice discussion of how different scientists may judge the duration of the Cambrian explosion differently, depending upon how they choose to define it and how many separate events they decide to include. (See pp. 71-73.) Thus, Meyer notes that if paleontologists decide to include as part of the Cambrian explosion (a) the origin of the Ediacaran organisms in the late Precambrian, and (b) the small shelly fossils at the base of the Cambrian and (c) the main pulse of morphological innovation in the early Cambrian, and (d) subsequent diversification events right up until the end of the Cambrian period, they might claim that the Cambrian explosion lasted nearly 80 million years, as, for example, geologist Donald Prothero does (a point Meyer also notes in his book). Nick Matzke appears to include in the Cambrian explosion everything from the appearance of the small shelly fossils at the base of the Cambrian (541 million years ago) to the main pulse of morphological innovation (530-520 million years ago) to events in the late Cambrian (about 512-505 million years ago).

In any case, Meyer recognizes the conventional and somewhat subjective nature of attempts to define and delimit "the Cambrian explosion." He nevertheless accepts a 10-million-year duration of the explosion itself, in keeping with the common judgment of numerous Cambrian experts about the length of time in which the vast majority of new phyla and classes arose -- as I will document below. Yet, to circumvent issues of semantics and subjective definitions, Meyer focused his analysis on the problem of the origin of novel animal form, and, thus, the main or most explosive pulse of such "morphological innovation." This makes sense because the problem that Meyer ultimately addresses, and the problem that evolutionary biology must address, is that of building novel animal forms or body plans in the first place. Can the neo-Darwinian mechanism generate the amount of novel form and information that arises in the Cambrian period in the time allowed by the fossil record? By focusing his analysis on the main period of morphological innovation, Meyer defines clearly the most salient challenge posed to the adequacy of neo-Darwinian (and other evolutionary) mechanisms.

To establish the length of the most explosive period of innovation within the Cambrian explosion itself, Meyer cites the work of MIT geochronologist Samuel Bowring and his colleagues as well the work of another group led by Smithsonian paleontologist Douglas Erwin. The Bowring-led study showed that (in their words) "the main period of exponential diversification" within the Cambrian lasted "only 5-6 million years" (emphasis added). Meyer explains:

An analysis by MIT geochronologist Samuel Bowring has shown that the main pulse of Cambrian morphological innovation occurred in a sedimentary sequence spanning no more than 6 million years. Yet during this time representatives of at least sixteen completely novel phyla and about thirty classes first appeared in the rock record. In a more recent paper using a slightly different dating scheme, Douglas Erwin and colleagues similarly show that thirteen new phyla appear in a roughly 6-million-year window. (p. 73)

To see why Meyer made these claims, take a look first at the following figure that Bowring and his colleagues included in their definitive 1993 article, published in the journal Science. They use radiometric methods to date the different stages of the Cambrian period, including the crucial Tommotian and Atdabanian stages in which the greatest number of new animal phyla and classes arise. Note that the so-called Manykaian stage of the Cambrian period lasts about 10-14 million years. Note also that the main pulse of morphological innovation didn't begin during this stage but rather during the Tommotian and Atdabanian -- a period that they describe as taking between "5 to 10 million years," and in a more detailed passage as taking about 5-6 million years.

From Samuel A. Bowring, John P. Grotzinger, Clark E. Isachsen, Andrew H. Knoll, Shane M. Pelechaty, Peter Kolosov, "Calibrating Rates of Early Cambrian Evolution," Science, Vol. 261 (September 3, 1993): 1293-1298. Reprinted with permission from AAAS.

In the figure above, the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages of the Cambrian period together span only about 5 million years, starting at about 530 and ending about 525 million years ago. Bowring's figure also depicts the total number of classes and orders present at any given time during the Cambrian period. The biggest increases in morphological innovation occur during the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages. Indeed, during this period the number of known orders nearly quadruples. Moreover, Bowring and his colleagues also make clear that this period corresponds to the main pulse of Cambrian morphological innovation as measured by the number of new phyla and classes that first appear. They note that, while a few groups of animals do arise in the earliest Manykaian stage of the Cambrian, the most rapid period of "exponential increase of diversification," corresponding to the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages, "lasted only 5 to 6 m.y." They explain:

[T]he initial (Manykaian) interval of slow diversification followed the ediacaran faunal epoch by no more than 20 million years (m.y.) and lasted approximately 14 m.y. In contrast, if we accept the age of 525 Ma for the Atdabanian-Botomian boundary, then the Tommotian-Atdabanian period of exponential increase of diversification lasted only 5 to 6 m.y. In any event it is unlikely to have exceeded 10 m.y. Numbers of phyla, classes, orders, families, and genera all reached or approached their Cambrian peaks during the short Tommotian-Atdabanian interval. For phyla and classes, most of the diversity known for the Phanerozoic [the eon of time since the Cambrian] as a whole differentiated by the end of the Atdabanian. (emphasis added)

Meyer also cites a 2011 paper in Chapter 3 (page 73) by Douglas Erwin and several colleagues. Although Erwin et al. use slightly different starting and ending dates and different names for the stages of the Cambrian period, they too estimate that that the most explosion stage took about 5-6 million years. Indeed, the supplemental documentation to their article shows 13 or 14 new phyla arising during "Stage 3" of the Cambrian period, a stage that corresponds to a narrow 5-6 million year window (see figure 3 in their article), just as Meyer wrote in Darwin's Doubt.

Erwin and his colleagues note that "most paleontologists favor a near literal reading of the fossil record, supporting a rapid (~25-million-year) evolutionary divergence of most animal clades near the base of the Cambrian" -- a duration a bit shorter than but close to the "at least 30 million years" given by Matzke. But here the authors are talking about not only the most explosive stage (Stage 3) or stages (Stages 2 and 3) of the Cambrian, but also Stage 1, which they and most experts usually exclude from "the Cambrian explosion."

Indeed, Erwin, writing more recently with James Valentine in their new book The Cambrian Explosion, dates the Cambrian explosion to "a geologically brief interval between about 530 to 520 Ma" (emphasis added):

[A] great variety and abundance of animal fossils appear in deposits dating from a geologically brief interval between about 530 to 520 Ma, early in the Cambrian period. During this time, nearly all the major living animal groups (phyla) that have skeletons first appeared as fossils (at least one appeared earlier). Surprisingly, a number of those localities have yielded fossils that preserve details of complex organs at the tissue level, such as eyes, guts, and appendages. In addition, several groups that were entirely soft-bodied and thus could be preserved only under unusual circumstances also first appear in those faunas. Because many of those fossils represent complex groups such as vertebrates (the subgroup of the phylum Chordata to which humans belong) and arthropods, it seems likely that all or nearly all the major phylum-level groups of living animals, including many small soft-bodied groups that we do not actually find as fossils, had appeared by the end of the early Cambrian. This geologically abrupt and spectacular record of early animal life is called the Cambrian explosion. (The Cambrian Explosion, p. 5, emphases added)

Like many Cambrian experts, Erwin and Valentine focus their analysis on that part of the Cambrian radiation in which the greatest amount of morphological innovation arises -- and define "the Cambrian explosion" accordingly. They believe that nearly the full breadth of Cambrian diversity arose in less than ten million years, writing: "the basic structure of Phanerozoic ecosystems had been achieved within at most 10 million years after the onset of bilaterian diversification." (The Cambrian Explosion, p. 226, emphasis added) Moreover, many other Cambrian experts focus on precisely this period of the origin of maximum morphological novelty in their discussion (and definition) of the Cambrian explosion. They define the Cambrian explosion as an event that encompassed about (or even less than) 10 million years just as Meyer does, not one that took "at least 30 million years" as Matzke claimed. For example:

• Prominent paleontologist Robert Carroll stated in Trends in Ecology and Evolution that the Cambrian explosion took less than ten million years:
  
  

  "The most conspicuous event in metazoan evolution was the dramatic origin of major new structures and body plans documented by the Cambrian explosion. Until 530 million years ago, multicellular animals consisted primarily of simple, soft-bodied forms, most of which have been identified from the fossil record as cnidarians and sponges. Then, within less then 10 million years, almost all of the advanced phyla appeared, including echinoderms, chordates, annelids, brachiopods, molluscs and a host of arthropods. The extreme speed of anatomical change and adaptive radiation during this brief time period requires explanations that go beyond those proposed for the evolution of species within the modern biota." (Robert L. Carroll, "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 15: 27-32 (January, 2000), emphasis added.)

An article in the journal Development by Erwin, Valentine and David Jablonski explains that:


"The Cambrian explosion is named for the geologically sudden appearance of numerous metazoan body plans (many of living phyla) between about 530 and 520 million years ago, only 1.7% of the duration of the fossil record of animals." (James W. Valentine, David Jablonski and Douglas H. Erwin, "Fossils, molecules and embryos: new perspectives on the Cambrian explosion," Development, Vol. 126: 851-859 (1999), emphases added.)


Another article in a major evolution journal states that "recent geological investigations suggest that the Cambrian explosion may have occurred within a period of only 5-10 million years." (Michael A. Bell, "Origin of the metazoan phyla: Cambrian explosion or proterozoic slow burn," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 12: 1-2 (January 1, 1997), emphasis added.)




A paper in BioEssays states: "Because of the sudden appearance of a near complete diversity of animal body plans in the fossil record around 530- 520 million years ago, this diversification is commonly referred to as the 'Cambrian explosion'." (Tanya Vavouri and Ben Lehner, "Conserved noncoding elements and the evolution of animal body plans," BioEssays, Vol. 31: 727-735 (2009), emphasis added.)




Another paper by the eminent biologist Susumu Ohno states, "this Cambrian explosion, during which nearly all the extant animal phyla have emerged, was of an astonishingly short duration, lasting only 6-10 million years." (Susumu Ohno, "The notion of the Cambrian pananimalia genome," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, Vol. 93: 8475-8478 (August, 1996), emphasis added.)




A paper by Andrew R. Parker of the Department of Zoology at the Natural History Museum in London states: "The Cambrian explosion, or Big Bang in animal evolution, was the most dramatic event in the history of life on Earth. During this blink of an eye in such history, most phyla found today evolved their first hard parts and distinct shapes at the same time. In other words, it is the event where animals suddenly took on very different appearances, in the form they exist today. The event itself, however, occupied only a small part of the Cambrian period, somewhere between 520 and 515 Ma. Prior to this, there were only three animal phyla with the type of external shapes they still possess today. Yet in a geological instant later there were at least several more -- and perhaps most -- of the phyla known today." (Andrew R. Parker, "On the origin of optics," Optics & Laser Technology, Vol. 43: 323-329 (2011), emphasis added.)




Even a 2007 paper in Journal of College Science Teaching, authored by zoologist Thomas Gregg (who criticizes intelligent design in the article) states: "The Cambrian explosion is the appearance of several dozen fossilized species with different body plans over a period of 5-15 million years during the Cambrian period." (Thomas Gregg, "Intelligent Design: Jonathan Wells and the Tree of Life," Journal of College Science Teaching (July/August, 2007), emphasis added.)

In case you didn't notice, none of these authorities are saying the Cambrian explosion "took at least 30 million years."

Matzke does cite one paper when attempting to justify his claim that the Cambrian explosion "took at least 30 million years, and was not really 'instantaneous' nor particularly 'sudden.'" But that source -- a 2005 paper in Paleobiology by Kevin J. Peterson, Mark A. McPeek, and David A. D. Evans -- does not place exact numbers on the timescale of the Cambrian explosion, so it doesn't help Matzke's case much. Indeed, a close analysis of the figure Matzke posts from that paper shows that it too reveals a rapid pulse of diversification in the mid-early Cambrian. Moreover, two of those three authors directly contradicted Matzke's thesis about the length of the Cambrian explosion in a paper in BioEssays, published four years later:

Part of the intrigue with the Cambrian explosion is that numerous animal phyla with very distinct body plans arrive on the scene in a geological blink of the eye, with little or no warning of what is to come in rocks that predate this interval of time. The abruptness of the transition between the "Precambrian" and the Cambrian was apparent right at the outset of our science with the publication of Murchison's The Silurian System, a treatise that paradoxically set forth the research agenda for numerous paleontologists -- in addition to serving as perennial fodder for creationists. The reasoning is simple -- as explained on an intelligent-design t-shirt.

Fact: Forty phyla of complex animals suddenly appear in
the fossil record, no forerunners, no transitional forms
leading to them; "a major mystery," a "challenge." The Theory
of Evolution -- exploded again (idofcourse.com).

Although we would dispute the numbers, and aside from the last line, there is not much here that we would disagree with. Indeed, many of Darwin's contemporaries shared these sentiments, and we assume -- if Victorian fashion dictated -- that they would have worn this same t-shirt with pride.

(Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich and Mark A. McPeek, "MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion," BioEssays, Vol. 31: 736-747 (2009) (emphases added).)

Matzke appears unaware of what the very authorities he cites have said about the length of the Cambria explosion.

Indeed, unquestionably, many senior Cambrian paleontologists and other established Cambrian experts contradict Matzke's claim about the length of the Cambrian explosion. Of course, Matzke is free to define the Cambrian explosion in whatever idiosyncratic way he chooses. However by defining it as a series of separate events in the fossil record spanning "at least 30 million years'" he not only introduces confusion around a term with a relatively stable meaning in paleontology, he diverts attention from the crucial problem of explaining the most explosive appearance of evolutionary and morphological novelty that "the Cambrian explosion" has commonly been used to describe. In any case, Matzke's attack on Meyer on this point is entirely unjustified.

Was the Cambrian Explosion "Sudden"?
But what about Matzke's claim that Meyer should not have referred to the event as geologically "sudden"? We have already seen that Valentine, Jablonski, and Erwin called the Cambrian explosion "geologically sudden." As it turns out, many other authors in the technical literature have used that exact terminology to describe the Cambrian explosion:

• "Nobody seriously doubts that the sudden appearance in the fossil record of numerous marine animal groups of both familiar and enigmatic type close to the base of the Cambrian reflects one of the important events in the history of the biosphere." (R.A. Fortey, D.E.G. Briggs, M.A. Wills "The Cambrian evolutionary cexplosion': decoupling cladogenesis from morphological disparity," Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. 57: 13-33 (1996), emphasis added.)


"Beautifully preserved organisms from the Lower Cambrian Maotianshan Shale in central Yunnan, southern China, document the sudden appearance of diverse metazoan body plans at phylum or subphylum levels, which were either short-lived or have continued to the present day." (J.Y. Chen, "The sudden appearance of diverse animal body plans during the Cambrian explosion," International Journal of Developmental Biology, Vol. 53: 733-51 (2009), emphases added.)




"...the sudden expansion in phyla of the Cambrian explosion" (Lynn Helena Caporale, "Putting together the pieces: evolutionary mechanisms at work within genomes," BioEssays, Vol. 31: 700-702 (2009), emphasis added.)




A college-level invertebrate biology textbook states: "Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear, "fully formed" and identifiable as to their phylum, in the Cambrian .... The fossil record is therefore of no help with respect to understanding the origin and early diversification of the various animal phyla..." (R. S. K. Barnes, P. Calow, P. J. W. Olive, D. W. Golding, and J. I. Spicer, The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis, 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 2001), pp. 9-10, emphasis added.)




"...the sudden appearance of a near complete diversity of animal body plans in the fossil record around 530-520 million years ago" (T. Vavouri and B. Lehner, "Conserved noncoding elements and the evolution of animal body plans," BioEssays, Vol. 31: 727-735 (July 31, 2009), emphasis added.)




"...the profound morphological gaps among the major groups, set against the background of sudden appearances in the fossil record of many novel taxa and the absence of easily recognizable transitional forms" (Richard K. Grosberg, "Out on a Limb: Arthropod Origins," Science, Vol. 250: 632-633 (November 2, 1990), emphasis added.)




"Darwin recognized that the sudden appearance of animal fossils in the Cambrian posed a problem for his theory of natural selection. ... Recent geochronological studies have reinforced the impression of a 'big bang of animal evolution' by narrowing the temporal window of apparent divergences to just a few million years." (Gregory A. Wray, Jeffrey S. Levinton, Leo H. Shapiro, "Molecular Evidence for Deep Precambrian Divergences," Science, Vol. 74: 568-573 (October 25, 1996), emphasis added.)




"The apparently sudden origin of animal phyla has contributed to the view that phyla represent a fundamental level of organization." (Lindell Bromham, "What can DNA Tell us About the Cambrian Explosion?," Integrative and Comparative Biology, Vol. 43: 148-156 (2003), emphasis added.)




"The fossil record of metazoa shows a sudden expansion at around 550-530 million years ago." (Science, Vol. 288: 929 (May 12, 2000), emphasis added.)




"This paucity of metazoan fossils in the strata of Earth is broken by the sudden appearance of highly developed metazoan fossils in the Cambrian, a pattern colloquially referred to as the Cambrian evolutionary 'explosion'." (Christopher W. Wheat and Niklas Wahlberg, "Phylogenomic Insights into the Cambrian Explosion, the Colonization of Land and the Evolution of Flight in Arthropoda," Systematic Biology, Vol. 62: 93-109 (2013), emphasis added.)




"[T]he fossil record displays the sudden appearance of intracellular detail and the 32 phyla." (Michael A. Crawford, C. Leigh Broadhurst, Martin Guest, Atulya Nagar, Yiqun Wang, Kebreab Ghebremeskel, Walter F. Schmidt, "A quantumtheory for the irreplaceable role of docosahexaenoic acid in neural cell signalling throughout evolution," Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, Vol. 88: 5-13 (2013), emphasis added.)




"The Cambrian explosion in animal evolution during which all the diverse body plans appear to have emerged almost in a geological instant is a highly publicized enigma." (Eugene V. Koonin, "The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution," Biology Direct, Vol. 2: 21 (2007), emphasis added.)




"At the beginning of the Cambrian, however, life took a sudden turn toward the complex. In a few million years -- the equivalent of a geological instant -- an ark's worth of sophisticated body types filled the seas. This biological burst, dubbed the Cambrian explosion, produced the first skeletons and hard shells, antennae and legs, joints and jaws. It set the evolutionary stage for all that followed by giving rise to most of the major phyla known on Earth today. Even our own chordate ancestors got their start during this long-past era." (Richard Monastersky, Science News, Vol. 146 (9) (August 27, 1994), emphases added.)

So, again, Matzke's claims stand at odds with the technical literature in a field he purports to represent. At the very least, Meyer seems fully justified in calling the Cambrian explosion "sudden" because so may other authorities use that same term--authorities I suspect Nick Matzke never told The New Yorker about. It's too bad The New Yorker, once legendary for meticulous fact-checking, didn't dig a little deeper but instead relied on Matzke's claims, which have turned out to be incorrect.

There is a concluding irony in all this. As Meyer shows in Chapter 10 and Chapter 12 of Darwin's Doubt, the extreme rarity of genes and proteins in sequence space means that even thirty million years is not nearly enough time to give the neo-Darwinian mechanism a realistic opportunity to generate a new gene or protein -- let alone a new form of animal life. Further, as he shows in Chapter 12, the calculated waiting times using the standard principles of population genetics for the occurrence of just a few (three or more) coordinated mutations vastly exceed 30 million years. In his review, Matzke summarily dismissed these arguments, neither engaging nor rebutting them, as other articles here at ENV have shown, and will do so in more detail.