The Watchtower Society's commentary on the bible's promise of a new earth.

Everlasting Life on Earth—A Hope Rediscovered

 

“O Daniel, make secret the words . . . until the time of the end. Many will rove about, and the true knowledge will become abundant.”—DAN. 12:4.

MILLIONS of people today clearly understand the Scriptural basis for the hope of living forever in an earthly paradise. (Rev. 7:9, 17) At the beginning of human history, God revealed that man was made, not to live a few years and then die, but to live forever.—Gen. 1:26-28.

² The lifting of mankind to the perfection that Adam lost was part of the hope of Israel. The Christian Greek Scriptures explain by what means God will make possible everlasting life for mankind in Paradise on earth. So why did man’s hope have to be rediscovered? How was it brought to light and made known to millions?

A Hope Obscured

³ Jesus foretold that false prophets would corrupt his teachings and that most people would be misled. (Matt. 24:11) The apostle Peter warned Christians: “There will also be false teachers among you.” (2 Pet. 2:1) The apostle Paul spoke of “a period of time when [people would] not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they [would] accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled.” (2 Tim. 4:3, 4) Satan is involved in misleading people and has used apostate Christianity to obscure the heartwarming truth about God’s purpose for man and the earth.—Read 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4.

⁴ The Scriptures explain that the Kingdom of God is a government in heaven that will crush and put an end to all man-made rulerships. (Dan. 2:44) During Christ’s rule of a thousand years, Satan will be confined to an abyss, the dead will be resurrected, and mankind will be elevated to perfection on earth. (Rev. 20:1-3, 6, 12; 21:1-4) However, apostate religious leaders of Christendom have embraced other ideas. For example, third-century Church Father Origen of Alexandria condemned believers in the earthly blessings of the Millennium. Catholic theologian Augustine of Hippo (354-430 C.E.) “held to the conviction that there will be no millennium,” says The Catholic Encyclopedia.*

⁵ Why did Origen and Augustine oppose millennialism? Origen was a pupil of Clement of Alexandria, who borrowed the idea of an immortal soul from Greek tradition. Being strongly influenced by Plato’s ideas about the soul, Origen “built into Christian doctrine the whole cosmic drama of the soul, which he took from Plato,” observes theologian Werner Jaeger. Consequently, Origen shifted the earthly blessings of the Millennium to the spiritual realm.

⁶ Before converting to “Christianity” at the age of 33, Augustine had become a Neoplatonist—an adherent of a version of Plato’s philosophy developed by Plotinus in the third century. After Augustine’s conversion, his thinking remained Neoplatonic. “His mind was the crucible in which the religion of the New Testament was most completely fused with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy,” states The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Augustine explained the Thousand Year Reign depicted in Revelation chapter 20 by giving “an allegorical explanation of [it],” states The Catholic Encyclopedia. It adds: “This explanation . . . was adopted by succeeding Western theologians, and millenarianism in its earlier shape no longer received support.”

⁷ Mankind’s hope of everlasting life on earth was undermined by an idea that prevailed in ancient Babylon and spread worldwide—the idea that man has an immortal soul or spirit that merely inhabits a physical body. When Christendom adopted that idea, theologians twisted the Scriptures to make texts that describe the heavenly hope appear to teach that all good people go to heaven. According to this view, a person’s life on earth is intended to be transitory—a test to determine if he is worthy of life in heaven. Something similar happened to the early Jewish hope of everlasting life on earth. As the Jews gradually adopted the Greek idea of inherent immortality, their original hope of life on earth faded. How different this is from the way man is presented in the Bible! Man is a physical creature, not a spirit. Jehovah said to the first man: “Dust you are.” (Gen. 3:19) The earth, not heaven, is man’s everlasting home.—Read Psalm 104:5; 115:16.

Truth Flashes Up in the Darkness

⁸ Although most religions that claim to be Christian deny the hope of everlasting life on earth, Satan did not always succeed in obscuring the truth. Down through the ages, a few careful Bible readers saw flashes of truth as they understood some aspects of how God will restore mankind to perfection. (Ps. 97:11; Matt. 7:13, 14; 13:37-39) By the 1600’s, Bible translation and printing had made the Holy Scriptures more widely available. In 1651, one scholar wrote that since through Adam men “have forfeited Paradise, and Eternall Life on Earth,” so in the Christ “all men shall be made to live on Earth; for else the comparison were not proper.” (Read 1 Corinthians 15:21, 22.) One of the English-speaking world’s famous poets, John Milton (1608-1674), wrote Paradise Lost and its sequel Paradise Regained. In his works, Milton referred to the reward that the faithful will receive in an earthly paradise. Although Milton dedicated much of his life to Bible study, he recognized that Scriptural truth would not be pieced together until Christ’s presence.

⁹ The famous mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) also had a keen interest in the Bible. He understood that the holy ones will be raised to heavenly life and will rule invisibly with Christ. (Rev. 5:9, 10) As for the subjects of the Kingdom, he wrote: “The earth shall continue to be inhabited by mortals after the day of judgment and that not only for a 1000 years but even for ever.”

¹⁰ Newton considered Christ’s presence to be centuries away. “One reason why Newton saw the Kingdom of God so far in the future was because he was profoundly pessimistic about the deep Trinitarian apostasy he saw around him,” said historian Stephen Snobelen. The good news was still veiled. And Newton saw no Christian movement that could preach it. He wrote: “These prophecies of Daniel and John [the latter recorded in the book of Revelation] should not be understood till the time of the end.” Newton explained: “‘Then,’ saith Daniel, ‘many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.’ For the Gospel must be preached in all nations before the great tribulation, and end of the world. The palm-bearing multitude, which come out of this great tribulation, cannot be innumerable out of all nations, unless they be made so by the preaching of the Gospel before it comes.”—Dan. 12:4; Matt. 24:14; Rev. 7:9, 10.

¹¹ In the days of Milton and Newton, to express ideas contrary to official doctrine of the church was dangerous. Therefore, much of their Bible scholarship remained unpublished until after their deaths. The Reformation of the 16th century failed to reform the teaching about inherent immortality, and mainstream Protestant churches continued to teach Augustine’s idea that the Millennium was past, not future. Has knowledge increased in the time of the end?

“The True Knowledge Will Become Abundant”

¹² As regards “the time of the end,” Daniel foretold a very positive development. (Read Daniel 12:3, 4, 9, 10.) “At that time the righteous ones will shine as brightly as the sun,” said Jesus. (Matt. 13:43) How did the true knowledge become abundant in the time of the end? Consider some historical developments in the decades prior to 1914, the year when the time of the end began.

¹³ In the late 1800’s, a number of sincere individuals were searching for an understanding of “the pattern of healthful words.” (2 Tim. 1:13) One such person was Charles Taze Russell. In 1870 he and a few other truth-seekers formed a class for Bible study. In 1872 they examined the subject of restitution. Later, Russell wrote: “Up to that time we had failed to see clearly the great distinction between the reward of the church now on trial and the reward of the faithful of the world.” The reward of the latter will be “restoration to the perfection of human nature once enjoyed in Eden by their progenitor and head, Adam.” Russell acknowledged that he had been helped in his study of the Bible by others. Who were these?

¹⁴ Henry Dunn was one of them. He had written about the “restoration of all things of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets of old time.” (Acts 3:21) Dunn knew that this restoration included the elevation of mankind to perfection on earth during the Thousand Year Reign of Christ. Dunn also examined a question that had puzzled many, Who will live forever on earth? He explained that millions will be resurrected, taught the truth, and have the opportunity to exercise faith in Christ.

¹⁵ In 1870, George Storrs also came to the conclusion that the unrighteous will be resurrected to an opportunity of everlasting life. He also discerned from the Scriptures that a resurrected one who fails to respond to this opportunity “will end in death, even if the ‘sinner be a hundred years old.’” (Isa. 65:20) Storrs lived in Brooklyn, New York, and edited a magazine called the Bible Examiner.

¹⁶ Russell discerned from the Bible that the time had come to make the good news widely known. So in 1879, he started publishing Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, now called The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. Previously, the truth about mankind’s hope was understood by very few people, but now groups of Bible Students in many countries were receiving and studying The Watchtower. The belief that only a few will go to heaven, whereas millions will be given perfect human life on earth, set the Bible Students apart from most of Christendom.

¹⁷ The foretold “time of the end” began in 1914. Did true knowledge about the hope of mankind become plentiful? (Dan. 12:4) By 1913, Russell’s sermons were printed in 2,000 newspapers with a combined readership of 15,000,000. By the end of 1914, over 9,000,000 people on three continents had seen the “Photo-Drama of Creation”—a program including motion pictures and slides that explained Christ’s Millennial Reign. From 1918 until 1925, the talk “Millions Now Living Will Never Die,” which explained the hope of everlasting life on earth, was presented by Jehovah’s servants in over 30 languages worldwide. By 1934, Jehovah’s Witnesses realized that those hoping to live forever on earth should be baptized. This understanding filled them with renewed zeal for preaching the good news of the Kingdom. Today, the prospect of living forever on earth fills the hearts of millions with gratitude toward Jehovah.

“Glorious Freedom” Ahead!

¹⁸ The prophet Isaiah was inspired to write about the kind of life that God’s people will enjoy on earth. (Read Isaiah 65:21-25.) Certain trees that were alive some 2,700 years ago when Isaiah wrote those words are evidently still alive today. Can you imagine yourself living that long with strength and good health?

¹⁹ Instead of being a short walk from the cradle to the grave, life will present endless opportunities to build, plant, and learn. Think of the friendships you will be able to cultivate. Those loving relationships will continue to grow indefinitely. What “glorious freedom” will then be enjoyed on earth by “the children of God”!—Rom. 8:21.

[Footnote]

Augustine claimed that the Thousand Year Reign of God’s Kingdom was not future but had already begun with the founding of the church.

21st century divination.

"Clocks Versus Rocks": Fossil Explosion of Placental Mammals Contradicts "Molecular Clock" Evidence

Casey Luskin January 17, 2014 1:19 PM

 

 

 

A new article in The Scientist, "Clocks Versus Rocks," reports a contradiction between the fossil record and the molecular data as regards the origin of placental mammals. The problem is that, as a fossil-based study led by Maureen O'Leary found last year, "placental mammal diversity exploded" starting around 65 million years ago, but as The Scientist now puts it, "Genetic studies that compare the DNA of living placentals suggest that our last common ancestor lived between 88 million and 117 million years ago, when the dinosaurs still ruled." So we have a conflict: fossils show the abrupt explosion of many modern mammal groups starting around 65 million years ago. However, living members of those groups are so genetically different that "molecular clock" studies suggest their origins must be deep into the Mesozoic, during the age of the dinosaurs. Which dataset are we to trust?

When evolutionary biologists hear about an "explosion," including the mammal explosion, they become nervous. Thinking under a Darwinian evolutionary mindset, they presume that mass diversity couldn't arise rapidly, and thus the fossil record is incomplete and the evolutionary origins of this group has simply not yet been discovered by fossil hunters. This, in fact, is exactly what they think is going on here, as The Scientist explains:

The researchers' main criticism is that O'Leary's team took the age of the oldest fossil from various placental groups to be the age of the group itself. This is unlikely to be true: even older fossils probably exist but have not been found yet.

Thus, molecular clock data, which places placental origins deep in Mesozoic, is preferred. Nonetheless, the fact remains that we haven't found fossils documenting the Mesozoic origin of these placental mammal groups. Rather, modern orders of placental mammals appear abruptly, in what many have called an "explosion."

Where have we heard of this problem before? The same sort of conflict exists with the "Cambrian explosion," where many animal phyla appear abruptly, without evolutionary precursors, so scientists turn to molecular data to try to push their evolutionary origins back deep into the Precambrian. Stephen Meyer covers this in detail in Chapter 5 of Darwin's Doubt. He evaluates the "molecular clock" hypothesis, which proposes that by using known mutation rates and comparing the differences between genes of living organisms, we can determine how long ago they shared a common ancestor. Molecular clock studies, however, are notoriously fraught with difficulties, and make dubious assumptions. One paper in Trends in Genetics compared molecular clock methods to "reading the entrails of chickens," ¹ and another in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences admitted:

Specifically, rates of molecular evolution may vary considerably, both across taxa and over time. Furthermore the accuracy of the technique depends upon having an accurate calibration point or points, and a reliable phylogeny with correct branching order and branch-length estimates. ... The idea that there is a universal molecular clock ticking away has long since been discredited.²

Such criticisms reflect the fact that molecular clock studies have yielded widely divergent dates for the supposed most recent common ancestors of animals. As Meyer documents, some molecular clock studies place the most recent common ancestor after the Cambrian explosion and others calculate that the common ancestors of various animal groups lived prior to the origin of the universe -- obviously absurd results.³ One article acknowledges the severity of the problem:

The second area where molecules and morphology are in serious disagreement concerns the origins of the metazoan phyla. Although the difference between the molecular and morphological estimates for bird and mammal origins may be as much as 50 million years, the discord between the two for the animal phyla may be as much as 500 million years, almost the entire length of the Phanerozoic.⁴

In each of those cases -- birds, mammals, and the animal phyla -- we see an explosive origin of modern groups, where genetic differences between living organisms are far greater than an evolutionary view of their fossil history would suggest. Maybe that's because evolution isn't what generated their history.

References Cited:

[1.] Dan Graur and William Martin. "Reading the Entrails of Chickens: Molecular Timescales of Evolution and the Illusion of Precision," Trends in Genetics, 20 (2004): 80-86.

[2.] Andrew B. Smith and Kevin J. Peterson, "Dating the Time and origin of Major Clades," Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 30 (2002): 65-88.

[3.] Meyer documents these studies in detail on pages 107-110 of Darwin's Doubt, and accompanying endnotes.

[4.] Andrew B. Smith and Kevin J. Peterson, "Dating the Time and origin of Major Clades," Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 30:65-88 (2002).

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.