Darwinists brainstorm yet another just so story.

How to Build Life in a Pre-Darwinian World:
By: Emily Singer


How did life’s myriad parts come together? At a minimum, the first life forms on Earth needed a way to store information and replicate. Only then could they make copies of themselves and spread across the world.One of the most influential hypotheses states that it all began with RNA, a molecule that can both record genetic blueprints and trigger chemical reactions. The “RNA world” hypothesis comes in many forms, but the most traditional holds that life started with the formation of an RNA molecule capable of replicating itself. Its descendants evolved the ability to perform an array of tasks, such as making new compounds and storing energy. In time, complex life followed.

However, scientists have found it surprisingly challenging to create self-replicating RNA in the lab. Researchers have had some success, but the candidate molecules they have manufactured to date can only replicate certain sequences or a certain length of RNA. Moreover, these RNA molecules are themselves quite complicated, raising the question of how they might have formed through chance chemical means.

Nick Hud, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his collaborators are looking beyond biology to the role of chemistry in the development of life. Perhaps before biology arose, there was a preliminary stage of proto-life, in which chemical processes alone created a smorgasbord of RNAs or RNA-like molecules. “I think there were a lot of steps before you get to a self-replicating self-sustaining system,” Hud said.

In this scenario, a variety of RNA-like molecules could form spontaneously, helping the chemical pool to simultaneously invent many of the parts needed for life to emerge. Proto-life forms experimented with primitive molecular machinery, sharing their parts. The entire system worked like a giant community swap meet. Only once this system was established could a self-replicating RNA emerge.At the heart of Hud’s proposal is a chemical means for generating a rich diversity of proto-life. Computer simulations show that certain chemical conditions can produce a varied collection of RNA-like molecules. And the team is currently testing the idea with real molecules in the lab; they hope to publish the results soon.

Hud’s group is leading the way for a number of researchers who are challenging the traditional RNA-world hypothesis and its reliance on biological rather than chemical evolution. In the traditional model, new molecular machinery was created using biological catalysts, known as enzymes, as is the case in modern cells. In Hud’s proto-life stage, myriad RNA or RNA-like molecules could form and change through purely chemical means. “Chemical evolution could have helped life get started without enzymes,” Hud said.

Hud and his collaborators have taken this idea one step further, suggesting that the ribosome, the only piece of biological machinery that is found in all living things today, emerged through chemistry alone. That’s an unconventional thought to many in the field, who think that the ribosome was born of biology.

If Hud’s team can create proto-life forms under conditions that might have existed on the early Earth, it would suggest that chemical evolution may have played a much more significant role in the origins of life than scientists expected. “Maybe there was some simpler form of evolution that preceded Darwinian evolution,” said Niles Lehman, a biochemist at Portland State University in Oregon.

The Pre-Darwinian World

When most people think about evolution, they think about Darwinian evolution, in which organisms compete with one another for limited resources and pass on genetic information to their offspring. Each generation undergoes genetic tweaks, and the most successful progeny survive to pass along their own genes. That mode of evolution dominates life today.

Carl Woese, a renowned biologist who gave us the modern tree of life, believed that the Darwinian era was preceded by an early phase of life governed by very different evolutionary forces. Woese thought it would have been nearly impossible for an individual cell to spontaneously come up with everything it needed for life. So he envisioned a rich diversity of molecules engaged in a communal existence. Rather than competing with each other, primitive cells shared the molecular innovations they invented. Together, the pre-Darwinian pool created the components needed for complex life, priming the early Earth for the emergence of the magnificent menagerie we see today.

Hud’s model takes Woese’s pre-Darwinian vision even further back in time, providing a chemical means for producing the molecular diversity that primitive cells needed. One proto-life form might have developed a way to make the building blocks it needed to make more of itself, while another might have found a way to harvest energy. The model differs from the traditional RNA-world hypothesis in its reliance on chemical rather than biological evolution.

According to RNA world, the first RNA molecules replicated themselves using a built-in enzyme called a ribozyme that was made of RNA. In Hud’s proto-life world, that task is accomplished through purely chemical means. The story begins with a chemical soup of RNA-like molecules. Most of these would have been short, as short strands are more likely to form spontaneously, but a few longer, more complex molecules might have come together as well. Hud’s model describes how the longer molecules might have replicated without the aid of an enzyme.In Hud’s vision of a prebiotic world, the primordial RNA soup underwent regular cycles of heating and cooling in a thick, viscous solution. Heat separated the bound pairs of RNA, and the viscous solution kept the separated molecules apart for a while. In the interim, small segments of RNA, just a few letters in length, stuck to each long strand. The small segments eventually got sewn together, forming a new strand of RNA that matched the original long strand. The cycle then began again.

Over time, a pool of varied RNA-like molecules would have accumulated, some of them capable of simple functions, such as metabolism. And just like that, purely chemical reactions would have produced the molecular diversity needed to create Woese’s pre-Darwinian cornucopia of proto-life.

Hud’s team has been able to carry out the first stages of the replication process in the laboratory, although they can’t yet glue together the short segments without resorting to biological tools. If they can get over that hurdle, they’ll have created a versatile way of replicating any RNA that pops up.

Yet some scientists are skeptical that chemically mediated replication could work well enough to produce the pre-Darwinian world Hud describes. “I don’t know whether I believe it,” said Paul Higgs, a biophysicist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who studies the origins of life. “It would have to be sufficiently accurate and rapid to pass on the sequence” — that is, it would need to produce new RNAs more quickly than they broke down and with enough fidelity to create near copies of the template molecule.Chemical change on its own wouldn’t have been enough to trigger the emergence of life. The pool of proto-life would also have needed some kind of selection to make sure that useful molecules succeeded and multiplied. In their model, Hud’s team proposes that very simple proto-enzymes might have spread if they did something helpful for their maker and the larger community. For example, an RNA molecule that made more of its own building blocks would benefit itself and its neighbors by providing additional raw materials for replication. In computer simulations that Hud’s team performed, this type of molecule did indeed take root. “If a sequence comes along that does something useful, it can then be enriched in the pool,” Hud said.

Ribosomal Roots

One possible glimpse of the pre-Darwinian world can be seen in the ribosome, an ancient piece of molecular machinery that lies at the heart of our genetic code. It is an enzyme that translates RNA, which encodes genetic information, into proteins, which carry out the many chemical reactions in our cells.

The core of the ribosome is made of RNA. This feature makes the ribosome unique — the vast majority of enzymes in our cells are made from proteins. Both the ribosomal core and the genetic code are shared among all living things, suggesting that they were present very early in the evolution of life, perhaps before it crossed the Darwinian threshold.

Related Articles:

Chemists Seek Possible Precursor to RNA
Scientists have discovered building blocks similar to those in modern RNA that can effortlessly assemble when mixed in water and heated.

New Twist Found in the Story of Life’s Start
All life on Earth is made of molecules that twist in the same direction. New research reveals that this may not always have been so.

How Structure Arose in the Primordial Soup
Life’s first epoch saw incredible advances — cells, metabolism and DNA, to name a few. Researchers are resurrecting ancient proteins to illuminate the biological dark ages.

Hud and his collaborator Loren Williams, also at Georgia Tech, point to the ribosome as support for their chemically dominated world. In a paper published last year, they made the controversial proposal that the core of the ribosome was created via chemical evolution. They also suggested that it arose before the first self-replicating RNA molecule. Perhaps the ribosomal core was a successful experiment in chemical evolution, they said. And after it took root in the pre-Darwinian soup, it crossed the Darwinian threshold and became an essential part of all life.

Their argument centers on the relative simplicity of the ribosomal core, more formally known as the peptidyl transferase center (PTC). The PTC’s job is to bring together amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Unlike traditional enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions by using “fancy chemical tricks,” as Lehman put it, it works almost like a dehydrator. It coaxes two amino acids to bond simply by removing a molecule of water. “It’s kind of a poor way to drive a reaction,” Lehman said. “Protein enzymes typically rely on more powerful chemical strategies.”

Lehman notes that simplicity likely preceded power in the earliest stages of life. “When thinking about the origins of life, you have to think about simple chemistry first; any process with simple chemistry is probably going to be ancient,” he said. “I think that’s more powerful evidence than the fact that it’s [shared] among all life.”

Despite the powerful evidence, it’s still hard to imagine how the ribosomal core could have been created by chemical evolution. An enzyme that makes more of itself — like the replicator RNA of the RNA-world hypothesis — automatically creates a feedback loop, continually boosting its own production. By contrast, the ribosomal core doesn’t produce more ribosomal cores. It produces random chains of amino acids. It’s unclear how this process would encourage the production of more ribosomes. “Why would making random peptides make that thing better?” Higgs said.

Hud and his collaborators propose that RNA and proteins evolved in tandem, and those that figured out how to work together survived best. This idea lacks the simplicity of the RNA world, which posits a single molecule capable of both encoding information and catalyzing chemical reactions. But Hud suggests that facility might trump elegance in the emergence of life. “I think there’s been an overemphasis on what we call simplicity, that one polymer is simpler than two,” he said. “Maybe it’s easier to get certain reactions going if two polymers work together. Maybe it’s simpler for polymers to work together from the start.”

This article was reprinted on TheAtlantic.com.

The crisis continues. II

Conversations with Dr. Denton: The Hierarchy of Nature
David Klinghoffer February 24, 2016 4:13 AM 

Tardigrades vs. Darwin.

That's a Tough Tardigrade
David Klinghoffer February 24, 2016 3:23 AM

Last month, Evolution News explained the problem of accounting in evolutionary term for the superpowers of tardigrades, or "water bears." These incredibly tough little creatures, just a millimeter long, are capable of surviving under the most trying circumstances on Earth -- and off Earth, in outer space, that is to say in a vacuum. Yet they originated in the Cambrian explosion, just like that, presumably ready for action.The Abstract in the journal Cryobiology reporting this achievement elaborates:

Long-term survival has been one of the most studied of the extraordinary physiological characteristics of cryptobiosis in micrometazoans such as nematodes, tardigrades and rotifers. In the available studies of long-term survival of micrometazoans, instances of survival have been the primary observation, and recovery conditions of animals or subsequent reproduction are generally not reported. We therefore documented recovery conditions and reproduction immediately following revival of tardigrades retrieved from a frozen moss sample collected in Antarctica in 1983 and stored at −20 °C for 30.5 years. We recorded recovery of two individuals and development of a separate egg of the Antarctic tardigrade, Acutuncus antarcticus, providing the longest records of survival for tardigrades as animals or eggs. One of the two resuscitated individuals and the hatchling successfully reproduced repeatedly after their recovery from long-term cryptobiosis. This considerable extension of the known length of long-term survival of tardigrades recorded in our study is interpreted as being associated with the minimum oxidative damage likely to have resulted from storage under stable frozen conditions. The long recovery times of the revived tardigrades observed is suggestive of the requirement for repair of damage accrued over 30 years of cryptobiosis. Further more detailed studies will improve understanding of mechanisms and conditions underlying the long-term survival of cryptobiotic organisms.

They not only survive but on waking, go about repairing the damage entailed by three decades of such abuse. This confirms what we said earlier:

What researchers should be focusing on is the amazing design of these tiny animals. They have stubby legs with claws. They have a mouth and eyes. They lay eggs. They molt periodically. They have a digestive tract and sexual organs. They have muscles and nerves. That's a lot of specialized tissue to pack into half a millimeter! And to think that these are among the most durable animals on Earth, able to survive in habitats beyond all necessity for a Cambrian marine organism, including outer space -- that should challenge all notions of unguided evolution. Organisms should only adapt to their immediate circumstances, not to distant unknown habitats they might encounter some future day, or never.

Warning: Don't try this trick with food currently stored in your freezer.

Cambrian life continues to redefine the meaning of "primitive"

Cambrian Arthropod Was a Loving Mother
Evolution News & Views December 21, 2015 3:18 AM


An egg clutch has been identified within the carapace of Waptia, an arthropod previously known from the Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian, dated 508 million years ago). The eggs are highlighted in a photo from the University of Toronto (above), which calls this the "oldest evidence of brood care" in any animal.

Long before kangaroos carried their joeys in their pouches and honey bees nurtured their young in hives, there was the 508-million-year-old Waptia. Little is known about the shrimp-like creature first discovered in the renowned Canadian Burgess Shale fossil deposit a century ago, but recent analysis by scientists from the University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, and Centre national de la recherche scientifique has uncovered eggs with embryos preserved within the body of the animal. It is the oldest example of brood care in the fossil record. [Emphasis added.]

Five examples of the egg clusters were found. The research paper in Current Biology lists the following highlights from this fossil discovery:

Brooded embryos are described in the bivalved arthropod Waptia fieldensis

Waptia from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale had few but large eggs

A diversity of clutch and egg sizes evolved during the Cambrian explosion

Brooding in primitive arthropods might have required presence of a carapace

The authors explain the significance of the find: "Brood care, including the carrying of eggs or juveniles, is a form of parental care, which, like other parental traits, enhances offspring fitness with variable costs and benefits to the parents." Pointing to another arthropod with smaller eggs from 515 million years ago, they attempt to weave an evolutionary narrative:

The presence of these two different parental strategies suggests a rapid evolution of a variety of modern-type life-history traits, including extended investment in offspring survivorship, soon after the Cambrian emergence of animals. Together with previously described brooded eggs in ostracods from the Upper Ordovician (ca. 450 million years ago), these new findings suggest that the presence of a bivalved carapace played a key role in the early evolution of parental care in arthropods.

The other Cambrian arthropod carried its eggs differently, but no less effectively:

Kunmingella douvillei also presented a different method of carrying its young, as its eggs were found lower on the body and attached to its appendages.

Connecting the dots between small eggs and larger eggs (2mm in Waptia) or where they were carried is the least of the Darwinians' worries. Waptia is a "shrimp-like arthropod" with a lot more body complexity than the ability to lay eggs and hold them under its carapace. It had a nervous system, sensory organs, stalked eyes, antennae, respiration, digestion, and the ability to swim. Nevertheless, the ability to lay eggs and transport them to a protective place constitutes an additional design in this animal, requiring genetics and behavioral preparedness.

It's amusing to see the euphemisms evolutionists use for the Cambrian explosion. The paper spoke of the "Cambrian emergence of animals." The news release calls the Cambrian explosion "a period of rapid evolutionary development when most major animal groups appear in the fossil record." Why call it evolutionary development? If animal groups just "emerged" or "appeared" in the record, that's not evolutionary.

Graham Budd's New "Savannah" Hypothesis

Meanwhile, Graham Budd is back. We saw him in October admitting that the trace fossils at the base of the Cambrian are "bilaterian in origin," not precursors to bilaterians. That notion was strengthened by the news that the "small shelly fossils" may include sclerites from complex animals known as kinorhynchs (see our report). That's not helpful to Darwinians. Now, accompanied by Sören Jensen, Budd has a new idea to run up the flagpole. In Biological Reviews, he presents "The origin of the animals and a 'Savannah' hypothesis for early bilaterian evolution." The news from the University of Uppsala sets the stage:

The fossil record of animals starts for sure by about 540 million years ago, but their origins before this point have remained obscure. Darwin himself worried about this problem at length in the "Origin of species". But after Darwin was writing, a famous group of fossils were discovered called the Ediacaran biota, named after a remote mine in South Australia where many were found. They are now known to be widespread around the globe from the interval of time just before the animal fossil record starts.

But what are these peculiar organisms? Their very strange morphology has made relating them to modern organisms very difficult, and they have been suggested to be related to anything from plants, fungi and lichens through to recognisable animals such as worms and arthropods.

So what is Budd and Jensen's "savannah" hypothesis? The term is drawn from an evolutionary notion that humans evolved when forests were replaced by grasslands, isolating the forest "hotspots" with distances between them. The change in environment forced our tree-climbing ancestors to come down to the ground so they could travel between the forests, learning to walk upright and forage in the open as they did. A similar situation occurred when the Ediacarans came along, they suggest; scattered nutrient hotspots constituted a "savannah" that created new opportunities for the evolution of motile animals:

In their new 'savannah' hypothesis, they propose that concentration of nutrients both above and below the sediment-water interface were enhanced around the stationary Ediacarans, and the creation of these resource "hot spots" created a very diverse environment, ideal for both diversification and for investment of energy into movement. Rather than the Ediacarans and later animals being direct competitors then, the Ediacarans themselves created a permissive environment that was ideal for higher animals to evolve in. This idea fits well into a modern view of evolution, called "ecosytem engineering" whereby key species (such as beavers) influence the environment in order to create new evolutionary and diversity opportunities for other species. Perhaps then, the Ediacaran taxa weren't impediments but the drivers of the evolution that was eventually to lead to all the rich animal diversity we see today.

Call it the "Come and Get It" theory of the Cambrian explosion. The Ediacarans set the table, put the nutritious food on it, and called out, "Come forth, Animalia!" It's honestly hard not to describe it any other way. The Ediacarans gave their permission? They created opportunities? They became "drivers of the evolution" of animals? The main paper merely states the same ideas with the addition of jargon: "The Ediacaran biota thus played an enabling role in bilaterian evolution similar to that proposed for the Savannah environment for human evolution and bipedality."

It shouldn't be necessary to belabor the point. This hypothesis fails to address the main problem that Stephen Meyer emphasized in Darwin's Doubt: What was the source of the information required to build new complex body plans and integrated organ systems at multiple hierarchical levels? Won't someone please address that question?

Oxygen Again

Let's try two more recent papers. Another paper in Nature Communications looks to oxygen as the cause of animal evolution:

Neoproterozoic (1,000-542 Myr ago) Earth experienced profound environmental change, including 'snowball' glaciations, oxygenation and the appearance of animals....Overall, increased ocean oxidation and atmospheric O2 extended over at least 100 million years, setting the stage for early animal evolution.

The news release from the Birkbeck University of London repeats this theme, implying that oxygen gives permission for animals to evolve: "It took 100 million years for oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere to increase to the level that allowed the explosion of animal life on Earth...."

We've already dealt with the just-add-oxygen theory (here and here).

Molecular Clock Again

Last, a dispatch in Current Biology comments on the Yang paper about the molecular clock (see our response here). That paper cast doubt on the precision of molecular clock measurements; here, Pisani and Liu agree:

This imprecision of the molecular clock deep in the history of life is frustrating. While the clock provided hope that divergence times for lineages could be dated in the absence of fossil information, it is now clear that the only way to increase its precision is to improve our knowledge of the fossil record itself, via the discovery of new fossils, resolving the affinities of existing ones, and accurately dating fossil occurrences. With genomic data now available our focus should return to palaeontology, and particularly to the investigation of the early and middle Neoproterozoic. It is evident that in isolation, neither fossils nor molecular data can derive the precise and accurate timescale of life so essential to our efforts to robustly test proposed correlations between the history of life and that of planet Earth.

Obviously this is not helpful to Darwinians either, so it's not surprising that they, too, ignore the information problem.

Space Jams?

Jehovah God's warning to the nations:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

Questions From Readers:

What is causing “the desirable things of all the nations” to come into the “house” of true worship?—Haggai 2:7.:

Through the prophet Haggai, Jehovah foretold: “I will rock all the nations, and the desirable things of all the nations must come in; and I will fill this house with glory.” (Haggai 2:7) Is the rocking “of all the nations” causing “the desirable things” of the nations—honesthearted individuals—to embrace true worship? The answer is no.

Consider what rocks, or shakes, the nations and what this shaking leads to. The Bible says that “the nations [have] been in tumult and the national groups themselves kept muttering an empty thing.” (Psalm 2:1) The “empty thing” they keep “muttering,” or meditating on, is the continuation of their own sovereignty. Nothing shakes them more than any threat to their rulership.

The worldwide preaching of the established Kingdom of God done by Jehovah’s Witnesses has become just such a threat to the nations. After all, the Messianic Kingdom of God in the hands of Jesus Christ is going to “crush and put an end to all [man-made] kingdoms.” (Daniel 2:44) The message of judgment included in our preaching work is sending out a tremor among the nations. (Isaiah 61:2) And the shaking gets more severe as the preaching work increases in scope and intensity. Of what is the rocking foretold at Haggai 2:7 a portent?

At Haggai 2:6, we read: “This is what Jehovah of armies has said, ‘Yet once—it is a little while—and I am rocking the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry ground.’” Quoting from this verse, the apostle Paul wrote: “He has promised, saying: ‘Yet once more I will set in commotion not only the earth but also the heaven.’ Now the expression ‘Yet once more’ signifies the removal of the things being shaken as things that have been made, in order that the things not being shaken [the Kingdom] may remain.” (Hebrews 12:26, 27) Yes, the entire present system of things is going to be shaken out of existence to make room for the new world of God’s making.

Honesthearted people are drawn to true worship but not because the nations are rocked, or shaken. The action that is drawing them to Jehovah and his worship is the same action that is causing the nations to rock, namely the worldwide preaching of the established Kingdom of God. The declaration of the ‘glad tidings of everlasting good news’ draws rightly inclined individuals to the worship of the true God.—Revelation 14:6, 7.


The Kingdom message is one of judgment and of salvation. (Isaiah 61:1, 2) The results of preaching it worldwide are twofold: the rocking of the nations and the coming in of the desirable things of the nations to Jehovah’s glory.

The Watchtower Society's commentary on 'the Nations'.

NATIONS:

In the broad and general sense, a nation is made up of people who are more or less related to one another by blood and who have a common language. Such a national group usually occupies a defined geographic territory and is subject to some form of central governmental control. According to the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, “Hebrew evidences a tendency for goy to describe a people in terms of its political and territorial affiliation, and so to approximate much more closely to our modern term ‘nation.’ ʽam [people], conversely, always retains a strong emphasis on the element of consanguinity as the basis of union into a people.” (Edited by G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren, Vol. 2, 1975, p. 427) The Greek terms eʹthnos (nation) and la·osʹ (people) are used similarly. In the Scriptures the plural forms of gohy and eʹthnos usually refer to Gentile nations.

Origin. The first notice of the forming of separate nations appears in the post-Flood period, in connection with the building of the Tower of Babel. Those sharing in this project were united in their opposition to God’s purpose. The principal factor facilitating united action was that “all the earth continued to be of one language and of one set of words.” (Ge 11:1-4) Jehovah took notice of this and, by confusing their language, “scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth.”—Ge 11:5-9; MAP Vol. 1, p. 329.

Separated now by communication barriers, each linguistic group developed its own culture, art, customs, traits, and religion—each its own ways of doing things. (Le 18:3) Alienated from God, the various peoples contrived many idols of their mythical deities.—De 12:30; 2Ki 17:29, 33.

There were three great branches of these nations stemming from the sons and grandsons of Noah’s sons Japheth, Ham, and Shem, and these were reckoned as the founding fathers of the respective nations called by their names. The listing in Genesis, chapter 10, therefore might be termed the oldest tabulation of nations, 70 in number. Fourteen were Japhetic, 30 Hamitic, and 26 Shemitic in origin. (Ge 10:1-8, 13-32; 1Ch 1:4-25) For more information regarding these national groups, see CHART, Vol. 1, p. 329, as well as articles on each of the 70 descendants of Noah.

Many changes, of course, came with the passing of time. Some nations were absorbed by their neighbors or disappeared altogether, because of weakness, disease, or war; others came into existence through new migrations and population increases. The spirit of nationalism at times became very strong among certain groups, and this, coupled with great military exploits, gave ambitious men the necessary thrust to build world empires at the expense of weaker nations.

A Father of Nations. God told Abram to leave Ur and move to a land He would show him, for as He said, “I shall make a great nation out of you.” (Ge 12:1-4) Later, God enlarged on his promise, saying, “You will certainly become a father of a crowd of nations. . . . And I will make you very, very fruitful and will make you become nations, and kings will come out of you.” (Ge 17:1-6) This promise was fulfilled. Abraham’s son Ishmael fathered “twelve chieftains according to their clans” (Ge 25:13-16; 17:20; 21:13, 18), and through the six sons of Keturah, other nations traced their ancestry back to Abraham. (Ge 25:1-4; 1Ch 1:28-33; Ro 4:16-18) From Abraham’s son Isaac sprang the Israelites and Edomites. (Ge 25:21-26) In a much larger, spiritual sense Abraham became “a father of many nations,” for persons of many national groups, including those of the Christian congregation in Rome, by reason of their faith and obedience could call Abraham their father, “the father of all those having faith.”—Ro 4:11, 16-18; see ISRAEL No. 2.

How God Views the Nations. As the Creator and Universal Sovereign, God is within his absolute rights in setting the nations’ territorial boundaries (if he chooses to do so), as he did with Ammon, Edom, and Israel. (De 2:17-22; 32:8; 2Ch 20:6, 7; Ac 17:26) The Most High and Lofty One over all the earth is not to be compared in greatness with nations of mankind. (Jer 10:6, 7) Actually the nations are as but a drop from the bucket in his sight. (Isa 40:15, 17) So when such nations rage and mutter against Jehovah, as when they put Jesus to death on a torture stake, He only laughs at them in derision and confounds and destroys their presumptuous counsel against Him.—Ps 2:1, 2, 4, 5; 33:10; 59:8; Da 4:32b, 34, 35; Ac 4:24-28.

Yet for all of Jehovah’s superlative greatness and power, no one can rightly charge him with being unjust in his treatment of national groups. It makes no difference whether God is dealing with a single man or a whole nation, he never compromises his righteous principles. (Job 34:29) If a nation is repentant, as were the people of Nineveh, he blesses them. (Jon 3:5-10) But if they turn to doing bad, even though in a covenant with him, he destroys them. (Jer 18:7-10) When an issue arises, Jehovah sends his prophets with a message of warning. (Jer 1:5, 10; Eze 2:3; 33:7) God is not partial toward any, great or small.—De 10:17; 2Ch 19:7; Ac 10:34, 35.

Therefore, when whole nations refuse to recognize and obey Jehovah, or they cast him out of their minds and hearts, Jehovah executes his judgments upon them. (Ps 79:6; 110:6; 149:7-9) He devotes them to destruction and turns them back to Sheol. (Ps 9:17; Isa 34:1, 2; Jer 10:25) In descriptive language God says that the wicked nations will be turned over to his Son, the one called “Faithful and True . . . The Word of God,” to be dashed to pieces.—Ps 2:7-9; Re 19:11-15; compare Re 12:5.

The New Nation of Spiritual Israel. For centuries Jehovah God dealt exclusively with natural Israel, time and again sending his prophets to the nation so that the people might turn from their wayward course. Finally he sent his Son, Christ Jesus, but the majority rejected him. Therefore, Jesus said to the unbelieving chief priests and Pharisees: “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and be given to a nation producing its fruits.”—Mt 21:33-43.

The apostle Peter clearly identified that “nation” as one composed of persons who had accepted Christ Jesus. (1Pe 2:4-10) In fact, Peter applied to fellow Christians the very words that had been directed to natural Israel: “You are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for special possession.’” (1Pe 2:9; compare Ex 19:5, 6.) All of them recognized God as Ruler and his Son as Lord and Christ. (Ac 2:34, 35; 5:32) They possessed heavenly citizenship (Php 3:20) and were sealed with the holy spirit, which was an advance token of their heavenly inheritance. (2Co 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:13, 14) Whereas natural Israel was constituted a nation under the Law covenant, the “holy nation” of spirit-begotten Christians became such under the new covenant. (Ex 19:5; Heb 8:6-13) For these reasons it was most appropriate that they be called “a holy nation.”

When God’s spirit was first poured out upon about 120 disciples of Jesus (all natural Jews) on the day of Pentecost in the year 33 C.E., it became evident that God was dealing with a new spiritual nation. (Ac 1:4, 5, 15; 2:1-4; compare Eph 1:13, 14.) Later, beginning in the year 36 C.E., membership in the new nation was extended to uncircumcised Gentiles, who likewise received God’s spirit.—Ac 10:24-48; Eph 2:11-20.

Regarding the preaching of the good news to all nations, see GOOD NEWS.


Gog and Magog. The Bible book of Revelation (20:7, 8) states that, after Christ’s Thousand Year Reign, Satan “will go out to mislead those nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog.” Evidently such nations are the product of rebellion against Christ’s administration.—See GOG No. 3.

On how Darwinism is taught

Darwinism vs. the real world. XXX

You Are What You Eat: The Beginnings of the Digestive Process:
Howard Glicksman February 21, 2016

Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.


Take a good look at yourself. Everything you see (and can't see) is made up of chemicals that had to be taken into your body before they could be formed into organs and tissues. These chemicals are things like water, glucose and other sugars, amino acids, cholesterol, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, and vitamins, just to name a few. In fact, other than molecular oxygen (O2), which is used for energy and is taken in through the lungs, all the other atoms and molecules the body needs to live, grow, and work properly enter through the gastrointestinal system. In other words, you are, quite literally, what you eat.

Since the body is made of matter, it must follow the laws of nature. Many of the nutrients the body needs are chemically locked up inside more complex molecules that cannot enter the body through the gastrointestinal system because they are too big. These include carbohydrates, which consist of chains of sugar molecules; proteins, which are made up of many different types of amino acids joined together; and fats, which consist of fatty acids and glycerol. To procure what the body needs, the gastrointestinal system must use enzymes to first breakdown these complex molecules into smaller ones in a process called digestion. Then it absorbs these simpler molecules so the body can use them to construct the complex molecules it needs to survive.

The gastrointestinal system depends on many different parts to digest and absorb the necessary nutrients for life and excrete what is not needed. These include the mouth, teeth, tongue, salivary glands, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver, gall bladder, colorectum, and anus. Here's how it all works. The gastrointestinal tract is basically a long, muscular, hollow tube that contracts to push its contents along. Food and drink enter the mouth and are swallowed into the tract. The contents are then slowly transported at a speed that allows for optimal digestion.

Fluids, containing various chemicals and different enzymes to help breakdown the complicated chemical structures within its contents, are secreted into the lumen. These fluids break down the molecules into simpler ones, like glucose, amino acids, free fatty acids, and cholesterol. Once the complex molecules have been broken down, the cells that line the lumen of the gastrointestinal tract absorbs them into the body and places them in the blood. From here they are transported to where they are needed. Let's consider how the body follows the rules and takes control to begin this process.

The process of digestion is similar to how a pulp and paper mill works. The mill uses mechanics and chemicals to take huge logs and chop and mash them into pulp for paper and other products. Similarly, the first job of the gastrointestinal system is to use mechanical and chemical means to take in complex molecules and unlock the nutrients within them so the nutrients can be absorbed into the body. However, the equipment and the chemicals at the mill don't do anything unless there are actually logs to be processed, otherwise it would be wasting energy and other resources. So too, the gastrointestinal system begins the process of digestion in earnest only when you eat or drink.

There are many different sensors in the body that stimulate the hunger center, which is the integrator that analyzes the data, and then notifies the conscious mind to take in calories. By responding to this urge the body activates the gastrointestinal system, the effector that actually does something about the situation. The process of digestion begins as soon as food enters the mouth. Its presence, along with its taste and smell, are detected by the nervous system, which stimulates the release of saliva from glands in the mouth. Saliva is a fluid that contains many different chemicals that not only help oral and dental health, but also the swallowing of food. Saliva also contains digestive enzymes, like amylase and lipase, which are the first enzymes to start working on the complex molecules that have been ingested. Amylase breaks the chemical bonds between sugar molecules, like glucose, that are joined together in large carbohydrate molecules, like starch. And lipase breaks the chemical bonds between molecules, like fatty acids and glycerol that are joined together in large fat molecules.

As the contents of the mouth mixes with saliva, it is mashed by the teeth and the tongue, formed into a small mushy lump called a bolus, and moved back toward the throat (pharynx). Up until this point everything the body has done, bringing in food and drink, chewing, and moving it into the pharynx, has been voluntary. But once the bolus reaches the pharynx, the body must automatically take control to be sure that it goes into the esophagus and not the lungs. Sensors in the pharynx detect the bolus and send information to the brain where it is integrated. The brain then initiates the swallow reflex by sending out nerve messages that cause coordinated muscle contraction to propel the bolus into the esophagus. The esophagus is a muscular passageway that propels the bolus in a wave-like movement, called peristalsis, down through the chest cavity toward the stomach that is located within the abdomen.

Anyone who has ever had something "go down the wrong tube" can attest to the extremely sensitive cough reflex that prevents accidental aspiration (inhalation). If enough food or water goes down the trachea toward the lungs, instead of the esophagus, this can quickly lead to respiratory failure. So, merely trying to explain how all of the above parts came together, as evolutionary biologists claim to do, without explaining how coordinated swallowing developed, is not sufficient to explain the systems development. After all, once the bolus goes over the precipice of the pharynx and by the power of gravity and muscular action moves downward, there is only so much time available for the body to react.

While looking in a mirror, if you gently place your fingers on the front of your neck just below the jaw and swallow a few times, you will see and feel the tissue in the neck move up and down. What you are feeling and seeing are the upper parts of your respiratory system being moved up and out of the way so the airway can be protected from what is being sent down into your esophagus. This requires about twenty-five different pairs of muscles under the direction of the swallow center in the brain, and is carried out in about a second, usually a thousand times a day.


Because some people with neuromuscular conditions (like brainstem stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease) have problems with swallowing, they are at high risk for aspiration. Clearly, for our earliest ancestors to survive would have required them to have had all of the right parts working in a coordinated fashion. But we have only shown how the body is able to safely move what it eats and drinks from the mouth to the esophagus. What then? Next time we will look at what happens within the stomach and beyond to complete digestion and allow for the absorption of the nutrients the body needs to live, grow, and work properly.

The Watchtower Society's Commentary on Conscience.

CONSCIENCE:

The word is translated from the Greek sy·neiʹde·sis, which is drawn from syn (with) and eiʹde·sis (knowledge) and thus means co-knowledge, or knowledge with oneself. Conscience is a capacity to look at oneself and render judgment about oneself, bear witness to oneself. The apostle Paul expresses the operation of his conscience in this manner: “My conscience bears witness with me in holy spirit.”—Ro 9:1.

Conscience is inherent in man, having been made part of him by God. It is an inward realization or sense of right and wrong that excuses or accuses one. Hence, conscience judges. It also can be trained by the thoughts and acts, convictions and rules that are implanted in a person’s mind by study and experience. Based on these things, it makes a comparison with the course of action being taken or contemplated. Then it sounds a warning when the rules and the course conflict, unless the conscience is “seared,” made unfeeling by continued violations of its warnings. Conscience can be a moral safety device, in that it imparts pleasure and inflicts pain for one’s own good and bad conduct.

From the very start, man has had a conscience. Adam and Eve manifested this as soon as they broke God’s law and hid themselves. (Ge 3:8) In Romans 2:14, 15 we read: “For whenever people of the nations that do not have law do by nature the things of the law, these people, although not having law, are a law to themselves. They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them and, between their own thoughts, they are being accused or even excused.” Thus it can be seen that conscience has not been wiped out even among non-Christians. This is because all mankind descended from Adam and Eve, in whom conscience was inherent. Many laws of the nations are in harmony with a Christian’s conscience, yet such nations and lawmakers may not have been influenced by Christianity at all. The laws were according to the leadings of their own consciences. All persons have the faculty of conscience, and it is to this that the life course and preaching of Christians appeal.—2Co 4:2.

Conscience must be enlightened; if not, it can mislead. It is an unsafe guide if it has not been trained in right standards, according to the truth. Its development can be wrongly influenced by local environment, customs, worship, and habits. It might judge matters as being right or wrong by these incorrect standards or values. An example of this is shown in John 16:2, where Jesus foretold that men would even kill God’s servants, thinking that they were doing Him a service. Saul (later Paul the apostle) actually went out with murderous intent against Christ’s disciples, believing he was zealously serving God. (Ac 9:1; Ga 1:13-16) The Jews were seriously misled into fighting against God because of lack of appreciation of God’s Word. (Ro 10:2, 3; Ho 4:1-3; Ac 5:39, 40) Only a conscience properly trained by God’s Word can correctly assess and set matters of life thoroughly straight. (2Ti 3:16; Heb 4:12) A Christian must have a stable, right standard—God’s standard.

Good Conscience. One must approach Jehovah with a cleansed conscience. (Heb 10:22) A Christian must constantly strive for an honest conscience in all things. (Heb 13:18) When Paul stated: “I am exercising myself continually to have a consciousness of committing no offense against God and men” (Ac 24:16), he meant that he continually steered and corrected his course of life according to God’s Word and Christ’s teachings, for he knew that in the final analysis God, and not his own conscience, would be his ultimate judge. (1Co 4:4) Following a Bible-trained conscience may result in persecution, but Peter comfortingly counsels: “For if someone, because of conscience toward God, bears up under grievous things and suffers unjustly, this is an agreeable thing.” (1Pe 2:19) A Christian must “hold a good conscience” in the face of opposition.—1Pe 3:16.

The Law with its animal sacrifices could not so perfect a person as regards his conscience that he could consider himself free from guilt; however, through the application of Christ’s ransom to those having faith, a person’s conscience can be cleansed. (Heb 9:9, 14) Peter indicates that those who receive salvation have to have this good, clean, right conscience.—1Pe 3:21.

Consideration for Consciences of Others. In view of the fact that in order to make proper evaluations a conscience must be fully and accurately trained in God’s Word, an untrained conscience may be weak. That is, it may be easily and unwisely suppressed, or the person may become offended by the actions or words of others, even in instances where no wrongdoing may exist. Paul gave examples of this in connection with eating, drinking, and the judging of certain days as above others. (Ro 14:1-23; 1Co 8:1-13) The Christian with knowledge and whose conscience is trained is commanded to give consideration and allowance to the one with a weak conscience, not using all his freedom or insisting on all his personal “rights” or always doing just as he pleases. (Ro 15:1) One who wounds the weak conscience of a fellow Christian is “sinning against Christ.” (1Co 8:12) On the other hand, Paul implies that while he would not want to do something by which the weak brother would be offended, thereby causing him to judge Paul, the weak one should likewise consider his brother, striving for maturity by getting more knowledge and training so that his conscience will not be easily offended, causing him to view others wrongly.—1Co 10:29, 30; Ro 14:10.


Bad Conscience. The conscience can be so abused that it no longer is clean and sensitive. When that happens it cannot sound out warnings or give safe guidance. (Tit 1:15) Man’s conduct is then controlled by fear of exposure and punishment rather than by a good conscience. (Ro 13:5) Paul’s reference to a conscience that is marked as with a branding iron indicates that it would be like seared flesh that is covered over with scar tissue and void of nerve endings and, therefore, without sense of feeling. (1Ti 4:2) Persons with such a conscience cannot sense right or wrong. They do not appreciate the freedom God grants them and, rebelling, become slaves to a bad conscience. It is easy to defile one’s conscience. A Christian’s aim should be as shown in Acts 23:1: “Brothers, I have behaved before God with a perfectly clear conscience down to this day.”

File under "well said" XXI

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,

The menace of 'settled science' III.

New and Old Eugenics United by Rejecting Human Exceptionalism:
Wesley J. Smith February 20, 2016 3:27 AM

Buck v. Bell was one of the most pernicious Supreme Court decisions ever written. Authored by the odious social Darwinist Oliver Wendell Holmes, the 1927 8-1 ruling permitted an innocent woman named Carrie Buck to be involuntarily sterilized.

There is a book about the case just out, Imbeciles, the title taken from Holmes's infamous statement in the ruling: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough." The issue is discussed by Charles Lane in the Washington Post:

At its peak, in the years before, during, and just after World War I, the pseudo-science of "eugenics" was a national fad, almost a mania. Advocates were not only or even especially right wing; state sterilization laws emerged first in the North and West, and many progressives embraced "racial hygiene" along with pure food and drug laws or urban sanitation.

Lane makes a big mistake. The "right wing" was not the driving force behind eugenics. Progressives were, and those in the ruling class.

Indeed, the progressive elite and ruling class of the era almost unanimously and enthusiastically embraced the pernicious notion with authoritarian zeal that human beings could be invidiously divided between the so-called "fit" and "unfit."​ Think Theodore Roosevelt. Think Margaret Sanger. Think even -- good grief! -- Helen Keller. Think the Carnegie Institution that funded the evil Charles Davenport at Cold Spring Harbor. Think George Bernard Shaw.

Eugenics was also that era's scientific consensus. Those who opposed it were branded as anti-progress, perhaps even anti-science.

We see similar agendas at work today; in the sex selection and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis practiced in the assisted reproductive industry; transhumanism's push for developing "post-human" genetic enhancement technologies, eugenic abortion of fetuses testing positive for Down syndrome and dwarfism, the push for infanticide of babies born with disabilities, among other supposedly progressive causes.

These "new eugenics" ideas will end up as tyrannical as the original version was. Here's why: All eugenics, new and old, spring from the same toxic well -- the denial of human exceptionalism and of the intrinsic and equal dignity of each and every one of us. Once that dark vision is embraced, the weak come into mortal danger.


The best book I have read on eugenics is War Against the Weak, by Edwin Black.

Pre Darwinian design.

Is It a "Pumpjack"? An "Unsewing" Machine? In Search of the Right Metaphor for a New Molecular Wonder:
Evolution News & Views February 19, 2016 12:11 PM

Never presume that the list of molecular machines in the cell is exhausted by the bacterial flagellum, kinesin, and ATP synthase. Those are just three that we have animated thus far. There are so many thousands of machines in living cells, we don't stand a chance of running out of examples to talk about. Here's a new one: the "eukaryotic replicative CMG helicase." Call it CMG helicase for short (the -ase suffix indicates that it operates on a helix, namely the DNA double helix).

Of the many kinds of helicase enzymes that operate on nucleic acids, this one is important right before cell division, when the cell must replicate all of its genetic code. Since DNA consists of two strands, something needs to break them apart so that spare nucleotides can pair up with each side, producing two strands. That's the job of CMG helicase. You could also compare it to a sewing machine, but an "unsewing" machine would be more accurate. As it passes by, it unzips the DNA strand with a unique rocking mechanism.

Research from Stony Brook University describes how it works. The authors' preferred metaphor is a "pumpjack" like those machines that rock up and down as they pump oil out of a well. New close-up images of the helicase showed that it takes on two shapes as it moves down the DNA:

Using computer software to sort out the images revealed that the helicase has two distinct conformations -- one with components stacked in a compact way, and one where part of the structure is tilted relative to a more "fixed" base.

The atomic-level view allowed the scientists to map out the locations of the individual amino acids that make up the helicase complex in each conformation. Then, combining those maps with existing biochemical knowledge, they came up with a mechanism for how the helicase works.

"One part binds and releases energy from a molecule called ATP. It converts the chemical energy into a mechanical force that changes the shape of the helicase," Li said. After kicking out the spent ATP, the helicase complex goes back to its original shape so a new ATP molecule can come in and start the process again.

"It looks and operates similar to an old style pumpjack oil rig, with one part of the protein complex forming a stable platform, and another part rocking back and forth," Li said. Each rocking motion could nudge the DNA strands apart and move the helicase along the double helix in a linear fashion, he suggested. [Emphasis added.]

They also liken the action to an inchworm. To each his own. Since pumpjacks don't go anywhere, and inchworms move but don't change anything, probably a sewing machine analogy is more appropriate. Video clips in the article show how the enzyme moves along the helix, rocking as it goes.

As the helicase moves along, it interacts with other parts similarly to how a sewing machine interacts with the thread, the needle, and the cloth. Notice the complexity described in the paper in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

The CMG helicase is composed of Cdc45, Mcm2-7 and GINS. Here we report the structure of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae [yeast] CMG, determined by cryo-EM at a resolution of 3.7-4.8 Å. The structure reveals that GINS and Cdc45 scaffold the N tier of the helicase while enabling motion of the AAA+ C tier. CMG exists in two alternating conformations, compact and extended, thus suggesting that the helicase moves like an inchworm. The N-terminal regions of Mcm2-7, braced by Cdc45-GINS, form a rigid platform upon which the AAA+ C domains make longitudinal motions, nodding up and down like an oil-rig pumpjack attached to a stable platform. The Mcm ring is remodeled in CMG relative to the inactive Mcm2-7 double hexamer. The Mcm5 winged-helix domain is inserted into the central channel, thus blocking entry of double-stranded DNA and supporting a steric-exclusion DNA-unwinding model.

The Stony Brook research team studied this molecular machine in yeast cells, but all eukaryotes rely on it, including humans. Is it important? You bet. More:

"DNA replication is a major source of errors that can lead to cancer," explained Li, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology at Stony Brook University, a scientist at Brookhaven Lab, and lead author of the paper. "The entire genome -- all 46 chromosomes -- gets replicated every few hours in dividing human cells," Li said, "so studying the details of how this process works may help us understand how errors occur."

Fortunately, errors are very rare. Lee Spetner in his book Not by Chance says that because of molecular proofreading, the error rate is one in a hundred billion. That's "like one error in fifty million pages of typescript," he says. "Fifty million pages are the lifetime output of about a hundred professional typists" (p. 39).

Yet the machinery is much more rapid than the best typist. It rocks! -- not like the slow, lumbering mechanism of the oil pumpjack, but at blinding speed. Jonathan M. wrote here at Evolution News that DNA replication works at 749 bases per second with an error rate of 10-7 to 10-8. Yet the cell performs this feat in just hours, trillions of times in your body. Nor does it work alone. All the other machines in the DNA replication factory keep up with it, bringing in nucleotides, proofreading them, and fastening the new helices together.

There are other helicases that have inspired machine analogies:

The torque wrench that repairs DNA

The train engine that exposes a broken section of track

The oscillator that pulls bacteriophage DNA strands apart like a rotary engine

The jackhammer zipper that opens up double-stranded RNA

What's fundamentally important for philosophy of biology is that these really are machines. They may not look like man-made machines, but they fit the definition. They use energy to perform work in a highly detailed and specific manner. These are not your normal chemical reactions, where molecules simply bump into each other and exchange electrons. These machines have precise shapes with moving parts. They operate on other structures. And most importantly, their parts and functions are dictated by coded instructions. It's phenomenal that those instructions code for the creation of machines that come back to work on the coded instructions, making sure they are intact and error-free. How cool is that?

Think about these machines at work in your own body right now. Somewhere in your brain, a cell is dividing. That cell needs to continue operating while its DNA is being replicated at about 750 bases per second. Multiple CMG helicases have to know where to unzip the DNA without interrupting genes that other machines are transcribing. Machines keep track of what parts are done and what parts remain to be done. Other machines check for errors in the copies. Machines supervise the operation, setting checkpoints that don't let cell division proceed until all requirements are met.


This is all happening while the cell is at work. It's mind-boggling. Could humans duplicate every part of a factory while it is in full operation? Could they duplicate every thread in a suit of clothes while it is being worn? Word pictures fail to capture the complexity of such things. They don't just indicate design; they scream design.

A clash of Titans. IX

Reason and commonsense in retreat on the Russian front.

Russian Customs Officials Seize Shipments of Bibles and Bible Literature:

Over the past year, Russian authorities have taken another step in restricting religious freedom by refusing to allow Bibles published by Jehovah’s Witnesses to be imported. The Witnesses were astounded to learn that the Vyborg Customs Office claimed that the Bibles may contain signs of “extremism.” This has broad implications not only for the Witnesses but also for Russian citizens who consider the Bible to be a sacred text and integral to their faith.

Alarming Allegations Against the Bible

On July 13, 2015, Russian customs officials in the border city of Vyborg stopped a shipment of 2,013 Russian-language copies of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. * The authorities confiscated three of the Bibles, sent them to an “expert” to determine whether they contained “extremist” language, and impounded the rest of the Bibles. Customs officials initiated an administrative case in August against the Finland branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses (as the carrier of the literature into Russia).

Earlier, on May 5, 2015, customs authorities seized a shipment of religious literature that contained Ossetian-language Bibles published by Jehovah’s Witnesses. This has had a profound impact on Ossetian-speaking Christians in Russia because the New World Translation is currently the only complete Bible translation in the Ossetian language.

Although Russian officials have misapplied Russia’s Federal Law on Counteracting Extremist Activity to publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses before, this marks the first time authorities have alleged that a translation of the Bible could be linked to extremism. * If the courts declare these Bibles to be extremist, they will be banned from distribution in Russia.

Unlawful Blocking of Other Publications

Some of the literature denied import
In addition to blocking the importation of Bibles, customs officials have unlawfully blocked shipments of the Witnesses’ religious literature since March 2015. * Officials have followed the same procedure each time they seize a shipment. They first perform an unlawful search to obtain sample publications for an “expert study,” * and then the prosecutor’s office initiates proceedings to declare the publications extremist. Complicated legal battles are inevitable, since nearly every shipment will require litigation in administrative and arbitration courts.

In an attempt to release one of the shipments, Jehovah’s Witnesses presented the customs authorities with positive court decisions, expert studies, and other documentation showing that the government has already declared these publications to be nonextremist. Yet, customs officials ignored the evidence and seized the shipment.

The blocking of the Witnesses’ print publications comes amid fresh restrictions on access to their electronic publications. On July 21, 2015, Russia became the only nation in the world to ban jw.org—the official website of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Internet providers throughout Russia have blocked access to the site, and anyone in Russia who promotes the website faces administrative or criminal charges.

The ban severely impedes the Witnesses’ ability to obtain religious publications in electronic form, a loss particularly felt among Jehovah’s Witnesses who are deaf or blind. Since Bible education is fundamental to the Witnesses’ religious services, restricting access to their literature interferes with their worship.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Ask That Reason Prevail

Russian courts have dismissed or overturned previous attempts to ban other texts that are considered sacred. In 2011, a Russian court in Tomsk dismissed a claim to ban an edition of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. In 2013, an appeal court overturned a decision that had declared a translation of the Koran to be extremist.

Jehovah’s Witnesses hope that Russian courts will reject the absurd claim made by the customs authorities that a translation of the Bible is extremist and order the release of the Bibles and other religious literature published by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Time Line of Seized Shipments
March 1, 2015
Customs officials stop a shipment of literature and illegally confiscate copies of the publications.
May 4, 2015
Authorities stop a shipment intended for Russia. They later search the load and confiscate several items—including Ossetian-language Bibles—to investigate whether these contain signs of “extremism.”
May 28, 2015
Court assigns an institution in St. Petersburg to conduct an “expert study” of the items in the March 1, 2015, shipment.
June 2015
Customs officials stop two shipments at the border in Vyborg.
July 13, 2015
Customs officials stop a shipment containing only Russian-language Bibles.
August 13, 2015
Vyborg customs officials rule to seize all 2,013 Bibles in the July 13 shipment, claiming that they may contain signs of “extremism.” Officials initiate an administrative case against the Finland branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
September 1, 2015
In a hearing regarding the May 4 shipment of Ossetian-language Bibles and other literature, the judge denies the Witnesses’ motions and prevents their attorneys from presenting concluding arguments.
October 30, 2015
The Vyborg City Court rules that customs officials unlawfully searched the May 4 shipment.
November 17, 2015

Court holds a hearing regarding the July 13 shipment of Bibles and adjourns.

The royal society declares the codes in living cells literal?

Is the Royal Society Finally Catching Up with Our Own Upright Biped?:
February 16, 2016 Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design

For some time now Upright Biped has been arguing that information cannot be reduced to chemistry, and last year he started his own website to further his key idea that when information is translated by cellular machinery, it organizes inanimate matter (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc) into all the living things on earth.  See biosemiosis.org  Essentially, UB says all of life is an artifact created by the manipulation of chemicals according to the information embedded in the cell.

Now comes the March 2016 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society with a special issue on DNA as Information.  The table of contents is here.

We would like to draw special attention to the article What is Information by Marcello Barbieri.  The abstract (but for the English spellings) could have been written by UB:

Molecular biology is based on two great discoveries: the first is that genes carry hereditary information in the form of linear sequences of nucleotides; the second is that in protein synthesis a sequence of nucleotides is translated into a sequence of amino acids, a process that amounts to a transfer of information from genes to proteins. These discoveries have shown that theinformation of genes and proteins is the specific linear order of their sequences. This is a clear definition of information and there is no doubt that it reflects an experimental reality. What is not clear, however, is the ontological status of information, and the result is that today we have two conflicting paradigms in biology. One is the ‘chemical paradigm’, the idea that ‘life is chemistry’, or, more precisely, that ‘life is an extremely complex form of chemistry’. The other is the ‘information paradigm’, the view that chemistry is not enough, that ‘life is chemistry plus information’. This implies that there is an ontological difference between information and chemistry, a difference which is often expressed by saying that information-based processes like heredity and natural selection simply do not exist in the world of chemistry. Against this conclusion, the supporters of the chemical paradigm have argued that the concept of information is only a linguistic metaphor, a word that summarizes the result of countless underlying chemical reactions. The supporters of the information paradigm insist that information is a real and fundamental component of the living world, but have not been able toprove this point. As a result, the chemical view has not been abandoned and the two paradigms both coexist today. Here, it is shown that a solution to the ontological problem of information does exist. It comes from the idea that life is artefact-making, that genes and proteins are molecular artefacts manufactured by molecular machines and that artefacts necessarily require sequences and coding rules in addition to the quantities of physics and chemistry. More precisely, it is shown that the production of artefacts requires new observables that are referred to as nominable entities because they can be described only by naming their components in their natural order. From an ontological point of view, in conclusion, information is a nominable entity, a fundamental but not-computable observable.



And then there is The Meaning of Biological Information by Eugene Koonin.  Abstract:


Biological information encoded in genomes is fundamentally different from and effectively orthogonal to Shannon entropy. The biologically relevant concept of information has to do with ‘meaning’, i.e. encoding various biological functions with various degree of evolutionary conservation. Apart from direct experimentation, the meaning, or biological information content, can be extracted and quantified from alignments of homologous nucleotide or amino acid sequences but generally not from a single sequence, using appropriately modified information theoretical formulae. For short, information encoded in genomes is defined vertically but not horizontally. Informally but substantially, biological information density seems to be equivalent to ‘meaning’ of genomic sequences that spans the entire range from sharply defined, universal meaning to effective meaninglessness. Large fractions of genomes, up to 90% in some plants, belong within the domain of fuzzy meaning. The sequences with fuzzy meaning can be recruited for various functions, with the meaning subsequently fixed, and also could perform generic functional roles that do not require sequence conservation. Biological meaning is continuously transferred between the genomes of selfish elements and hosts in the process of their coevolution. Thus, in order to adequately describe genome function and evolution, the concepts of information theory have to be adapted to incorporate the notion of meaning that is central to biology.