Deconstructing David Hume.

What Darwin's Darlings Need to Know about David Hume

Michael Flannery January 29, 2015 11:11 AM

 

 

 

There is little question that David Hume (1711-1776), patron saint of nearly every skeptic who came after him, has profoundly influenced Darwin's most passionate believers. Michael Shermer touts the so-called "Hume Maxim," Daniel Dennett considers him his "favorite" philosopher, and Richard Dawkins's attack on the rationality of theism is said to have a particularly "Humean aroma." Indeed, as William B. Huntley has explained so well, Darwin himself took his cues from Hume.

But Darwin's contemporary and natural selection's co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, was unimpressed by Hume, and his Miracles and Modern Spiritualism delivered a detailed response to Hume's many claims and assertions about belief and the miraculous that Darwin's darlings would do well to heed.

Referring to Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Wallace took careful note of Hume's definition of a miracle, which was that a miracle "is a violation of the laws of nature" and that it "is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent." Wallace protested that "both these definitions are bad or imperfect. The first assumes that we know all the laws of nature, that the particular effect could not be produced by some unknown law of nature overcoming a law we do know." Why, he added, must products of intelligence in nature invariably violate natural laws? Wallace suggests that Hume's assertions about the violation of natural laws are assumed without, in his words, "a shadow of proof."

Wallace burrows further into Hume's argument. Hume insisted that one test for a miracle should be "uniform experience," which he asserts "amounts to a proof." For example, that a seemingly healthy man should die would not be considered a miracle because it has on occasion occurred, but that a dead man should rise from the grave would clearly be a miracle because, according to Hume, it has never been observed to occur. Upon such reasoning Hume built his case for discounting all miracles simply because of their sheer improbability.

Wallace replied:

This argument is radically fallacious, because if it were sound, no perfectly new fact could ever be proved, since the first and each succeeding witness would be assumed to have universal experience against him. Such a simple fact as the existence of flying fish [i.e. the Exocoetidae family comprising seven to nine genera] could never be proved, if Hume's argument is a good one; for the first man who saw and described one, would have the universal experience against him that fish do not fly, or make any approach to flying, and his evidence being rejected, the same argument would apply to the second, and to every subsequent witness; and thus no man at the present day who has not seen a flying fish alive, and actually flying, ought to believe that such things exist.

Wallace goes on to demonstrate how Hume contradicts himself. For example, in one passage Hume proclaims that in all of history no miracle has ever been attested to by a sufficient number of men of good sense, education, and learning. In the next passage Hume admits that the miracles of the then-popular Jansenist healings at the Abbé Paris from 1727-1730 were attributed in great number and "proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity." But, for Hume, ''we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such religion.''

But if we may doubt all human testimony -- something Wallace emphatically denied -- then all our epistemological certainties could be called into doubt, and the courtrooms that rely upon them might as well (by Humean standards) be shut down.

Hume continued to insist that various religions "abound in miracles" and that some are very different, and moreover, that "whatever is different is contrary." So the sheer number of miracles associated with various different, and therefore contrary, faiths undermine or negate the validity of these alleged miracles. Wallace retorts that Hume "confounds the evidence for the fact [of a miracle] with the theories to account for the fact, and most illogically and unphilosophically argues, that if the theories lead to contradictions, the facts themselves do not exist."

In the end, Wallace leveled four charges against Hume:

1. Hume's definition of miracles is false and simply begs the question of their possibility;
2. Hume claims that miracles are isolated facts, a fallacy to which the entire course of human testimony -- and human history -- is opposed;
3. Hume deliberately and absolutely contradicted himself as to the amount and quality of the testimony in favor of miracles; and
4. Hume propounds a fallacy that miracles connected with opposing religions destroy each other or negate each other by contradictory claims. The miracles may stand separate and distinct from whatever religious claims might be made for them.

It should be said that Wallace objected to Hume's assumption that every miraculous act had to come directly from God in some unmediated sense. Wallace believed that there were an "infinite number of intelligent beings who may exist in the universe between ourselves and the Deity." And before we get too taken aback at this statement as merely exchanging Hume's blasphemy for Wallace's heresy, it is worth a reminder that Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica believed that God governs many things through angels that allows for a sharing of the causality inherent in God's nature -- the First Cause. Dominican Aidan Nichols has noted, "the First Cause gives being; secondary causes determine it." But perhaps more importantly the occasion of a miracle and the specific operations behind a miracle are two separate things; uncertainty of operation does not equal negation of the act.

In any case, it is clear that Wallace was unimpressed by Hume's skepticism. He felt Hume's arguments failed the test of logic and posed simplistic -- even naïve -- formulations about religion and religious claims. Insisting upon the utmost rationalism, Hume's own argument would stop all rational inquiry in its tracks since no human testimony could ultimately be admitted into court unless it met a test of "uniformity" defined and constructed so as to affirm the very premise in question, namely, that miracles cannot exist.

Wallace's dissection of Hume anticipated C.S. Lewis's Miracles some 73 years later. What a shame that such "informed" and "rational" men of "science" as Shermer, Dennett, and Dawkins have been so limited in their reading as to continue to praise ideas long since refuted.

Do try this at home.

No Spin: Endogenous Retroviruses Are Important for Brain Function, and Aren't Junk

Casey Luskin January 26, 2015 3:10 AM

 

 

Ann Gauger recently wrote an excellent piece about interpreting scientific writings minus all the unnecessary evolutionary gloss. Let's apply her methods to a recent news story.

The claim is that junk DNA helped our brain cells evolve. The raw data shows that what we typically have called endogenous retroviruses are not necessarily junk but are genetic elements that are important for controlling brain function. Yet science journalists have been spinning the demise of this evolutionary icon as a win for Darwinian theory, the very opposite of what it really is. The Daily Mail frames the study this way:

It's long been known that DNA from so-called retroviruses make up around 5 percent of our genetic makeup.

But for years, this was dubbed junk DNA with no real use, and was considered to be a side effect of evolution -- until now.

New research suggests that, over the course of evolution, the viruses took an 'increasingly firm hold' on how cells work, and they may have made brain cells in particular more active and dynamic, ultimately making us smarter.

In particular, the study from Lund University in Sweden claims that inherited viruses, which are millions of years old, play an important role in building up the complex networks that characterise our brains.

Very similarly, an article at R&D Magazine states:

Researchers have long been aware endogenous retroviruses constitute around 5 percent of our DNA. For many years, they were considered junk DNA of no real use, a side effect of our evolutionary journey.

In the current study, Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues show that retroviruses seem to play a central role in the basic functions of the brain, more specifically in the regulation of which genes are to be expressed, and when. The findings indicate that, over the course of evolution, the viruses took an increasingly firm hold on the steering wheel in our cellular machinery. ...

"We have been able to observe that these viruses are activated specifically in the brain cells and have an important regulatory role. We believe that the role of retroviruses can contribute to explaining why brain cells in particular are so dynamic and multifaceted in their function. It may also be the case that the viruses' more or less complex functions in various species can help us to understand why we are so different," says Jakobsson, head of the research team for molecular neurogenetics at Lund University.

Let's try rewriting that without the evolutionary overlay. Here's what the Daily Mail story might look like, with my inserted words italicized and their deleted words struck through:

It's long been known that DNA from so-called retroviruses make up around 5 percent of our genetic makeup.

For years, this was dubbed junk DNA with no real use, and was considered to be a side effect of evolution -- until now.

New research suggests that, over the course of evolution, the what we once thought were viruses and a form or parasitic, junk DNA took an 'increasingly firm hold' on how cells work, and they may have made are actually important genetic elements that play a vital role in making brain cells in particular more active and dynamic, ultimately making us smarter.

In particular, the study from Lund University in Sweden claims that what we once thought were mere inherited viruses, which are millions of years old, are actually normal DNA sequences that play an important role in building up the complex networks that characterise our brains.

Likewise, we can rewrite this passage from R&D Magazine:

Researchers have long been aware endogenous retroviruses constitute around 5 percent of our DNA. For many years, they were considered junk DNA of no real use, a side effect of our evolutionary journey.

In the current study, Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues show that genetic elements which we used to think were mere retroviruses seem to play a central role in the basic functions of the brain, more specifically in the regulation of which genes are to be expressed, and when. The findings indicate that, over the course of evolution, the viruses these genetic elements aren't mere retroviruses but actually are genetic elements that play an important role in brain function, and take a took an increasingly firm hold on the steering wheel in our cellular machinery. ...

And there you have it: the functions of endogenous retroviruses, no longer to be considered junk DNA, are perfectly well explained without reference to Darwinian evolution. Feel free to try this at home, if you like.

On separating science from mysticism II

It Takes Great Faith to Be an Astrobiologist

Evolution News & Views January 22, 2015 4:28 AM | 

NASA's Astrobiology Magazine, funded with taxpayer dollars, illustrates the mystical view -- what else to call it? -- of nature in the astrobiologist community. In Elizabeth Howell's article, "How the Code of Life Passed Through Primitive Kinds of Cells," we see Harold Fellerman of the University of Denmark showing his mystical streak:

"I'm very interested in the creative potential of nature," he said. "Nature in general seems to be fertile with creativity that outperforms any human imagination. We find solutions to problems in nature that no engineer would envision." [Emphasis added.]

The statement is hardly distinguishable from animism. To see why, we need to nail down some rules. These rules should be uncontroversial to any modern scientist, because they follow logically from naturalism.

1. "Nature" to a materialist has no spirit, imagination, or goal.
2. Inanimate matter has no "desire" to become animate; vitalism is out.
3. "Building blocks of life" have no obligation or desire to assemble into a living thing.
4. A lucky accident in one part of the origin-of-life scenario has no obligation or desire to join forces with another lucky accident somewhere else.
5. A random chain of building blocks is not "information" in a biological sense, nor is a "pattern" of building blocks, nor are copies of a random chain or a pattern.
6. Investigators are not allowed to interfere with natural processes in origin-of-life scenarios, because this sneaks information into the system.
7. Wishful thinking is not science. One needs evidence. Putting the evidence into the future, "i.e., further research is needed," is a cop-out.
8. The complex functions of living cells cannot be used to infer origins in inanimate matter without begging the question raised by Rules 2 and 3.

Go ahead and call foul any time someone violates one of these rules in Howell's story:

• "Life's origins are a mystery, but every year scientists get a little bit closer to understanding what made life possible on Earth, and possibly on other planets or moons." [Violates Rules 1, 4 and 7]

• "We only have one known case study of life so far, on our own planet, but microbial life is considered possible in many other areas around the Solar System, such as on Mars, Jupiter's icy Europa, and on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that erupts water as geysers." [Violates Rule 7]

• "One large wish of scientists these days is to create artificial cells that closely mimic what biological ones do so that it would be easy to create laboratory conditions to test out how they evolve." [Violates Rules 2, 6, 7, and 8]

• "Researchers would be happy to create an artificial protocell, but that's far from easy. Figuring out how inheritance work [sic] -- how traits of a parent protocell are passed on to the next generation -- is one of the largest problems facing scientists today." [Violates Rules 6, 7, and 8]

• "The researchers brought in a hypothesis from three decades ago that assumed that any sequence of polymers (chain of small molecules) can encode information, and can becopied from one polymer strand to another using a process called template directed replication." [Violates Rules 5 and 7]

• "When simulating information strings in the computer simulation, the researchers came up with a surprising discovery. Replication occurred as expected, with information strings duplicating themselves, but the scientists were surprised to see shorter and longer strings being created in strikingly regular patterns." [Violates Rules 3, 4, 5 and 6]

• "Over time, the simulation showed the information strings were occurring in equal proportions of long and short lengths in predictable patterns. While the scientists can't say for sure that this was a step along the road to life, they said it bears further investigation as they work to create artificial protocells." [Violates Rules 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8]

You get the idea. Check the rest of the article by the rules as an exercise in critical thinking. So what remains after the violations are stricken? Essentially, nothing. There is hardly a sentence in this article that does not violate one or more rules.

This stripped-down remainder is sheer mysticism, as expressed in the Fellerman quote:

"I'm very interested in the creative potential of nature," he said. "Nature in general seems to be fertile with creativity that outperforms any human imagination. We find solutions to problems in nature that no engineer would envision."

It takes great faith to be an astrobiologist.

Iconoclasm II

Now It's Whale Hips: Another Icon of Darwinian Evolution, Vestigial Structures, Takes a Hit

David Klinghoffer September 15, 2014 4:05 AM 

In the case presented by advocates of Darwinian evolution, vestigial organs are a star in the firmament, frequently and gloatingly pointed to. Darwin himself cited them as such in The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, referring to body parts like the human appendix that, he believed, no longer serve a function:

On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility... should so frequently occur.

Of course the appendix is a great example of an organ once thought to be without utility that now turns out to serve a vital role.

In the catalogue of purported vestigial parts, whale hips are "the marquee example," writes Stephanie Keep at the absurdly named "Science League of America" blog populated by our Darwin-lobbying friends at the National Center for Science Education. Unfortunately whale hips have now gone the way of appendix. A paper in the journal Evolution reports that rather than being a useless reminder of the evolutionary past, when whale ancestor Pakicetus strode thThe pelvic bone supports the muscles that guide the penis. In male whales and other cetaceans, performance and thus successful sexual competition hinge on the size of the hips. The paper explains:

Male genitalia evolve rapidly, probably as a result of sexual selection. Whether this pattern extends to the internal infrastructure that influences genital movements remains unknown. Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) offer a unique opportunity to test this hypothesis: since evolving from land-dwelling ancestors, they lost external hind limbs and evolved a highly reduced pelvis which seems to serve no other function except to anchor muscles that maneuver the penis. Here we create a novel morphometric pipeline to analyze the size and shape evolution of pelvic bones from 130 individuals (29 species) in the context of inferred mating system. We present two main findings: 1) males from species with relatively intense sexual selection (inferred by relative testes size) have evolved relatively large penises and pelvic bones compared to their body size, and 2) pelvic bone shape diverges more quickly in species pairs that have diverged in inferred mating system. Neither pattern was observed in the anterior-most pair of vertebral ribs, which served as a negative control. This study provides evidence that sexual selection can affect internal anatomy that controls male genitalia. These important functions may explain why cetacean pelvic bones have not been lost through evolutionary time.

Under selection pressure from reality, Darwinists have already had to back away from Darwin's own understanding of what it means for a structure to be vestigial. Rather than serving no purpose, writes Jerry Coyne in Why Evolution Is True, now being vestigial can mean serving adifferent purpose than in one's distant ancestors. He defines "vestigial trait" this way:

A trait that is the evolutionary remnant of a feature once useful in an ancestral species but that is no longer useful in the same way. Vestigial traits can be either nonfunctional (the wings of the kiwi) or co-opted for new uses (the wings of the ostrich).

Stephanie Keep agrees:

[T]here's a problem when vestigial structures are defined as evolutionary remnants that have no function. As I discussed in a previous post, the correct way to describe a vestigial structure is to say that it no longer has its original function.

She is excited about Carl Zimmer's post on the subject, which elaborates:

While [whale hips] may not be essential for walking, they still matter a lot to whales. To see why, we have to go back to those hips of land mammals. They are important for walking on land, but they serve other purposes, too. Among other things, they anchor muscles that control the sex organs. If these muscles are anesthetized in men, for example, they have a hard time gaining an erection.

As whale hips stopped mattering to walking, they didn't stop mattering to having sex. In male whales, the pelvis controls the penis with an especially elaborate set of muscles. In some whale and dolphin species, these muscles make the penis downright prehensile.

You see the problem. Whale hips are "vestigial" yet still extremely important. Comments our colleague Michael Behe, "So doesn't that make everything a vestigial structure from a Darwinian viewpoint? And if so, of what use is the word?" Or as Jonathan Wells wrote here back in 2009 in reviewing Coyne's book ("The Myth of Vestigial Organs and Bad Design: Why Darwinism Is False"):

As [biologist Steven] Scadding had pointed out nearly thirty years ago, ... Darwin's argument rested on lack of function, not change of function. Furthermore, if vestigiality were redefined as Coyne proposes, it would include many features never before thought to be vestigial. For example, if the human arm evolved from the leg of a four-footed mammal (as Darwinists claim), then the human arm is vestigial. And if (as Coyne argues) the wings of flying birds evolved from feathered forelimbs of dinosaurs that used them for other purposes, then the wings of flying birds are vestigial. This is the opposite of what most people mean by "vestigial."

In this way, the concept of a vestigial trait is reduced to meaninglessness. In the most minimal definition, evolution denotes change over of time. No trait goes unchanged. Under the framework of Darwinian evolution, therefore, everything is vestigial. So nothing is.

This is not just our observation. The scientists who revealed the usefulness of whale hips are rethinking what it means to be vestigial. Or so it sounds from the remarks of biologist Matthew Dean at USC, a co-author of the paper in Evolution, commenting in Science Daily:

"Our research really changes the way we think about the evolution of whale pelvic bones in particular, but more generally about structures we call 'vestigial.' As a parallel, we are now learning that our appendix is actually quite important in several immune processes, not a functionally useless structure," Dean said.

Anyone who thinks whale hips are functionless, just like your appendix, should try telling that to a lonely gentleman whale. The career of this evolutionary icon isn't over yet, I'm sure, but its importance in the evolutionary pantheon is due for a serious downgrade.e land on all fours, they in fact serve an unquestionably important purpose.

Iconoclasm

Moth turns from black to white as Britain's polluted skies change colour

 The Peppered moth, which changed its colour from white to black in areas of Britain with heavy pollution, is now reverting to its original appearance.The moth was white with small black speckles but over time it evolved to being almost black in parts of the UK because of heavy industrial pollution. The change made it less obvious to predators against backgrounds of grime and soot.

Having declined by more than two thirds compared to 40 years ago, it is regarded as a classic example of natural selection and has consequently become known as "Darwin's moth."

Now in post-industrial Britain, 200 years after Darwin's birth, the moth is changing back to its original white colour.

Scientists at Butterfly Conservation, based in Dorset, are now appealing to the public for help in finding out how widespread this change has become.

As part of Garden Moths Count 2009 they want people to search their gardens for the moth and log their sightings.

"We have seen these moths making a big swing back to their original colour," said Richard Fox, project manager of Moths Count.

"It has been happening for decades as air pollution is cleaned up and with the demise of heavy industry in the big cities.

"The moths have been responding to this and the numbers of black and white moths will vary across the county.

"In Dorset it is very rare to see the moth in its dark form, but in industrial cities 150 years ago they were almost all black and that's where we will notice the greatest changes now."

He said they were also hoping to discover why the moth has been declining so dramatically since the 1960's.

"It's an iconic moth, the one that everyone learns about at school because it is such an amazing example of natural selection," he said.

"But it has actually undergone a major decline of 61 per cent since the 1960's and we don't know why.

"We will be fascinated to see where people are finding the two different forms of the moth and whether in fact people are finding it in their gardens at all."

Moth experts are also asking the public to look out for the beautiful day-flying Scarlet Tiger, which until recently was rarely seen outside South West England and South Wales.

In recent years the moth has spread to further parts of Britain as a result of climate change.

Scientists want to access how far they have flown to access the impact of climate change on our wildlife.

Garden Moths Count is part of the national Moths Count project, established after research indicated massive declines in moth numbers, especially in the southern half of Britain.

Some people are put off moths by the myth that they all eat clothes.

But in reality only half a dozen of Britain's 2,500 moth species do this - and they prefer dirty items that are hidden away in the dark in places where they are not disturbed.

Mr Fox added: "Moths are important indicators and observing them can tell us a lot.

"They are an essential food source for many birds and they are important pollinators in the garden.

"Some are very beautiful and, despite their recent decline, there are still very colourful moths to be seen in all of our gardens."

Sightings of moths seen by day or at night can be logged at the Garden Moths Count website www.mothscount.org .

Store bought sense V Horse sense II

The latest body blow to religious liberty in Russia

Russian Federation Supreme Court Decision Sets Dangerous Precedent for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia

On November 12, 2014, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld a lower court ruling that declared the Local Religious Organization (LRO) of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Samara to be extremist. The prosecutor’s office in Samara initiated its case against the Samara LRO in 2014 after law-enforcement officials searched facilities that the Witnesses rent for religious meetings and “found” a handful of their religious publications that have been banned nationwide. The banned publications had earlier been declared extremist by Russian courts and were posted on the Ministry of Justice’s Federal List of Extremist Materials. * However, the Witnesses in Samara had already complied with these Russian court decisions and removed the publications from the facilities that they rent for worship.

The Witnesses argued before the lower court and in the Supreme Court that the police conducting the search had planted the banned literature as a pretext to initiate charges. The Witnesses also explained that the European Court of Human Rights is currently examining the legality of earlier Russian court decisions that banned some of their publications. Additionally, the Witnesses argued that even if the Samara prosecutor’s allegations were true—that they had stored banned literature—the punishment was disproportionate for such a minor offense. Storing banned literature is an administrative violation punishable with a fine or a temporary suspension of the LRO’s activity, not the severe measure of liquidation. However, the Supreme Court dismissed these arguments.

Liquidation of a Legal Entity—One Step Closer to Criminal Prosecution?

The Samara LRO liquidation is following a pattern similar to that of the case in the city of Taganrog, where the Rostov Regional Court liquidated the LRO in 2009 on extremism charges. Subsequently, Taganrog law-enforcement authorities interpreted that decision as a de facto ban on the religious activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the area. Sixteen Witnesses in Taganrog were criminally charged in 2013 for merely carrying out their religious worship—the same practices that Jehovah’s Witnesses perform worldwide, including in Samara. Seven Witnesses were heavily fined; four of them, who are congregation elders, were also given lengthy prison sentences. However, the judge waived the fines because the investigation and trial exceeded the statute of limitations, and he imposed suspended sentences. The Witnesses have appealed these convictions, and on December 12, 2014, the Rostov Regional Court ordered a new trial with a new judge.

The 1,500 of Jehovah’s Witnesses living in the Samara region are now at risk of being criminally prosecuted merely for carrying out their worship. Where will it end? Russian authorities are conducting similar investigations of Witness LROs in various parts of the country. How these repressive state actions will affect the nearly 180,000 Witnesses living in Russia remains to be seen. However, the Supreme Court decision sets a dangerous precedent that jeopardizes the freedom of Jehovah’s Witnesses and other religious minorities in Russia.

Mark13:9NASB "But ^[e]be on your guard; for they will deliver you to the ^[f]courts, and you will be flogged in the synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them."

Pointing out the emperor's nudity.

The Pope is wrong on religious speech

By Heidi Schlumpf

 

 

 

The popular Pope Francis is taking some hits himself after some lighthearted comments that included a pretend punch to a colleague. The comments came while trying to make the point that free speech should have some limits, including on the right to insult another's faith.

Speaking Thursday to reporters on the plane ride to the Philippines, the Pope gestured with a fake punch to demonstrate what he would do if someone were to say "a swear word against my mother."

Heidi Schlumpf

Most journalists interpreted it as a joke, not a justification of violence, especially since the Pope had also just forcefully stated that "one cannot kill in the name of God."

Still, the Vatican felt the need to clarify, in response to a later CNN question about the punch, that his words were "spoken colloquially" and consistent with the Pope's "free style of speech."

I don't for one minute think the Pope is advocating for any type of violence, whether religiously motivated murder or sparring among friends who dis each other's mamas.

 

What concerns me is his apparent belief that religion should have special protection when it comes to free speech.

"One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people's faith, one cannot make fun of faith," he said. "There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity. ... In freedom of expression there are limits."

 

 

The Pope, responding to a general question about the interplay between religious liberty and free expression, was clearly referencing the massacre of journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine by Islamist militants in Paris last week.

Although he did not say the slain cartoonists brought the attack upon themselves because of their satirical criticism of Islam, it's not a huge logical leap to that conclusion and raises the likelihood of such a misinterpretation.

Let's just say it's not what most public relations professionals would advise.

And while the Pope has been known to talk more informally with reporters on the papal plane (his "Who am I to judge?" comment about gay Catholics came on the return flight from Brazil in 2013), he's still on the record and obviously aware that his words will be reported and analyzed.

The Pope is not the only prominent Catholic raising the issue.

Bill Donahue, a self-appointed spokesman fighting "anti-Catholicism" as the president of the New York-based Catholic League, released a statement with the headline, "Muslims have a right to be angry," on the day of the killings.

 

On Thursday, his statement was headlined: "Pope sides with Catholic League." Such chutzpah.

While no one can match the offensive tone of Donahue, who actually said Charlie Hebdo's Stephane Charbonnier "didn't understand the role he played in his own death," the gist of the Pope's message was the same: Criticism of religion is problematic.

As an aside, I'll be curious to see if those who slammed Donahue have the same harsh words for the Pope.

Perhaps both of them should take a lesson from the response of another Christian, Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a progressive, evangelical community and publication. He had a different suggestion for how people of faith should respond to the Paris attacks:

"Jesus tells us to bless those who persecute us, to return love for hate and good for evil, and even to love our enemies," Wallis wrote. "Loving your enemies certainly includes supporting the foundational commitment to free speech, and defending the right of free speech, even, or especially, for those who offend you."

I think most American Catholics agree that while blasphemy -- offensive speech against God or religion -- is not particularly nice, it does not follow that it can or should be regulated or outlawed. In the United States, the Supreme Court outlawed blasphemy laws in 1952.

I'm hoping the Pope was only offering counsel to his followers, rather than advocating for any sort of legal position. No one has the right not to be offended. Even the Pope.

 

Bottled sunlight.

On separating science from mysticism

In Light of New BIO-Complexity Paper, Maintaining Neo-Darwinism Means Rejecting Established Methods of Historical Science

Casey Luskin January 23, 2015 4:31 AM

 

In the new BIO-Complexity paper, "Enzyme Families-Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family," Mariclair Reeves, Ann Gauger, and Douglas Axe find that modern enzymes cannot be easily mutated to acquire new functions. One 2009 study that their paper cites states, "[M]any attempts at interchanging activities in mechanistically diverse superfamilies have since been attempted, but few successes have been real¬ized." This suggests that modern enzymes are not amenable to evolutionary conversions. The typical response from evolutionists is that perhaps ancient enzymes were different, and more readily mutable to acquire new functions. Perhaps so. However, as Reeves, Gauger, and Axe explain, this means evolutionary scientists must then ignore experimental evidence showing that protein conversions require many mutations. That would reveal Darwinism as being grounded in speculation instead of experimental data. In their new paper they write:

We are asking whether the enzymes now pres¬ent in life are as amenable to functional conversion as ancient enzymes must have been in order for evolution to work. If the answer to this is No, then the classical recruitment scenario does not work today, anyway. That realization would be of consider¬able importance, in that it would call for careful consideration of how processes that do not work today somehow did work long ago. In other words, it would reinforce the importance of grounding evolutionary explanations in observable science.

The same rejoinder might be offered to defenders of the "promiscuity" hypothesis of protein evolution. According to this model, perhaps ancient enzymes performed many functions. Then, over time some of those functions may have been lost and others finely tuned, leading to today's enzymes which perform specific functions extraordinarily well. Do modern enzymes show the kind of promiscuity that ancient enzymes supposedly needed? That's not clear. Moreover, this model relies upon loss of function to explain enzyme specificity, and never accounts for the origin of new enzyme functions in the first place. Reeves, Gauger, and Axe continue:

This idea of functional divergence from promiscuous ancestral enzymes, though possibly of some value, leaves the most fundamental aspects of the origins question unchanged. Whether ancient enzymes resembled modern ones closely or only loosely, the modern ones are both the things to be explained and the things we can observe. The importance of grounding evolutionary explanations in actual study of modern enzymes therefore remains as important now as ever. Yet the promiscuity hypothesis leaves the actual origin of new enzyme functions unexplained. In the end, then, functional conversion by mutation is still the only evolutionary explanation for those first appearances.

As we saw previously, their experimental data suggests that many mutations -- including deleterious ones -- would be necessary to generate new protein functions. It would take enormously long periods of time -- longer than the age of the earth -- to generate the mutations needed for new protein functions. When the experimental data conflicts with the predictions of the theory, what is a Darwinian to do?
The answer is they ignore the experimental data. They assume that biological systems in the past could evolve because they worked very differently than they do today. This is not a scientific form of reasoning. It's a dictated not by the evidence but by faith in the overall Darwinian doctrine.
We saw the same kind of thing when UC Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall debated Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer in 2013 on the origin of new biological information. A point that emerged was that Marshall simply pushed back the question of the origin of new information. He ignored the evidence showing that modern developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) don't tolerate mutations, making it very difficult to evolve new body plans. When you mutate developmental gene regulatory networks, the organism dies. In response to Meyer, Marshall argued that perhaps in the past, dGRNs were more plastic than they are today, thereby allowing new body plans to evolve. Meyer explained in rebuttal that Marshall had stopped using uniformitarian reasoning:

Marshall and other defenders of evolutionary theory reverse the epistemological priority of the historical scientific method as pioneered by Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin and others. Rather than treating our present experimentally based knowledge as the key to evaluating the plausibility of theories about the past, Marshall uses an evolutionary assumption about what must have happened in the past (transmutation) to justify disregarding experimental observations of what does, and does not, occur in biological systems. The requirements of evolutionary doctrine thus trump our observations about how nature and living organisms actually behave. What we know best from observation takes a back seat to prior beliefs about how life must have arisen.

In light of the experimental data from Biologic Institute, much the same could be said of proponents of the co-option model of protein evolution. As Meyer artfully put it, those who simply assume that ancient enzymes were more amenable to evolutionary conversions "reverse the epistemological priority of the historical scientific method." Evolutionists are welcome to ignore the experimentally derived real-world workings of modern biology if that's what they want to do, but they should acknowledge that they are asking for special treatment for their theory. In defense of Darwinism, they have departed from the established methods of historical science.

Another side of the narrative

Its been said that there are at least three sides to every narrative.Without prejudice here is one of the at least two other sides to a narrative being widely broadcasted in the global press.

 

Chomsky: Paris attacks show hypocrisy of West's outrage

By Noam Chomsky

 

 

 

After the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, which killed 12 people including the editor and four other cartoonists, and the murder of four Jews at a kosher supermarket shortly after, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared "a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity."

Millions of people demonstrated in condemnation of the atrocities, amplified by a chorus of horror under the banner "I am Charlie." There were eloquent pronouncements of outrage, captured well by the head of Israel's Labor Party and the main challenger for the upcoming elections, Isaac Herzog, who declared that "Terrorism is terrorism. There's no two ways about it," and that "All the nations that seek peace and freedom [face] an enormous challenge" from brutal violence.

Noam Chomsky

The crimes also elicited a flood of commentary, inquiring into the roots of these shocking assaults in Islamic culture and exploring ways to counter the murderous wave of Islamic terrorism without sacrificing our values. The New York Times described the assault as a "clash of civilizations," but was corrected by Times columnist Anand Giridharadas, who tweeted that it was "Not & never a war of civilizations or between them. But a war FOR civilization against groups on the other side of that line. #CharlieHebdo."

The scene in Paris was described vividly in the New York Times by veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger: "a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris."

READ: Suspected ringleader of Belgian terror cell sought

 

Erlanger also quoted a surviving journalist who said that "Everything crashed. There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It was like a nightmare." Another reported a "huge detonation, and everything went completely dark." The scene, Erlanger reported, "was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation."

These last quotes, however -- as independent journalist David Peterson reminds us -- are not from January 2015. Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24 1999, which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on the NATO "missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters" that "knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air," killing 16 journalists.

"NATO and American officials defended the attack," Erlanger reported, "as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia." Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that "Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic's murder machine as his military is," hence a legitimate target of attack.

There were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of "We are RTV," no inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and history. On the contrary, the attack on the press was lauded. The highly regarded U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then envoy to Yugoslavia, described the successful attack on RTV as "an enormously important and, I think, positive development," a sentiment echoed by others.

There are many other events that call for no inquiry into western culture and history -- for example, the worst single terrorist atrocity in Europe in recent years, in July 2011, when Anders Breivik, a Christian ultra-Zionist extremist and Islamophobe, slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers.

READ: Why Islam forbids images of Mohammed

Also ignored in the "war against terrorism" is the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times -- Barack Obama's global assassination campaign targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby. Other unfortunates are also not lacking, such as the 50 civilians reportedly killed in a U.S.-led bombing raid in Syria in December, which was barely reported.

One person was indeed punished in connection with the NATO attack on RTV -- Dragoljub Milanović, the general manager of the station, who was sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights to 10 years in prison for failing to evacuate the building, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia considered the NATO attack, concluding that it was not a crime, and although civilian casualties were "unfortunately high, they do not appear to be clearly disproportionate."

The comparison between these cases helps us understand the condemnation of the New York Times by civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams, famous for his forceful defense of freedom of expression. "There are times for self-restraint," Abrams wrote, "but in the immediate wake of the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory, [the Times editors] would have served the cause of free expression best by engaging in it" by publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Mohammed that elicited the assault.

Abrams is right in describing the Charlie Hebdo attack as "the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory." The reason has to do with the concept "living memory," a category carefully constructed to include Their crimes against us while scrupulously excluding Our crimes against them -- the latter not crimes but noble defense of the highest values, sometimes inadvertently flawed.

This is not the place to inquire into just what was being "defended" when RTV was attacked, but such an inquiry is quite informative (see my A New Generation Draws the Line).

There are many other illustrations of the interesting category "living memory." One is provided by the Marine assault against Fallujah in November 2004, one of the worst crimes of the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq.

The assault opened with occupation of Fallujah General Hospital, a major war crime quite apart from how it was carried out. The crime was reported prominently on the front page of the New York Times, accompanied with a photograph depicting how "Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs." The occupation of the hospital was considered meritorious and justified: it "shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties."

Evidently, this is no assault on free expression, and does not qualify for entry into "living memory."

There are other questions. One would naturally ask how France upholds freedom of expression and the sacred principles of "fraternity, freedom, solidarity." For example, is it through the Gayssot Law, repeatedly implemented, which effectively grants the state the right to determine Historical Truth and punish deviation from its edicts? By expelling miserable descendants of Holocaust survivors (Roma) to bitter persecution in Eastern Europe? By the deplorable treatment of North African immigrants in the banlieues of Paris where the Charlie Hebdo terrorists became jihadis? When the courageous journal Charlie Hebdo fired the cartoonist Siné on grounds that a comment of his was deemed to have anti-Semitic connotations? Many more questions quickly arise.

Anyone with eyes open will quickly notice other rather striking omissions. Thus, prominent among those who face an "enormous challenge" from brutal violence are Palestinians, once again during Israel's vicious assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014, in which many journalists were murdered, sometimes in well-marked press cars, along with thousands of others, while the Israeli-run outdoor prison was again reduced to rubble on pretexts that collapse instantly on examination.

Also ignored was the assassination of three more journalists in Latin America in December, bringing the number for the year to 31. There have been more than a dozen journalists killed in Honduras alone since the military coup of 2009 that was effectively recognized by the U.S. (but few others), probably according post-coup Honduras the per capita championship for murder of journalists. But again, not an assault on freedom of press within living memory.

It is not difficult to elaborate. These few examples illustrate a very general principle that is observed with impressive dedication and consistency: The more we can blame some crimes on enemies, the greater the outrage; the greater our responsibility for crimes -- and hence the more we can do to end them -- the less the concern, tending to oblivion or even denial.

Contrary to the eloquent pronouncements, it is not the case that "Terrorism is terrorism. There's no two ways about it." There definitely are two ways about it: theirs versus ours. And not just terrorism.