Microbiology v. Darwinism.

Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology
Casey Luskin 

The evolution of antibiotic resistance is typically the result of small changes allowing for survival in a microbe or other organism under special circumstances where the organism faces extremely strong selection pressure due to the presence of some antibiotic drug. In other cases, it is the result of the transfer of pre-existing antibiotic resistance genes from one microbe to another, and the selection of such microbes in an environment containing antibiotics. Even in the first example, evolution does not produce a truly new function. In fact the change produced often makes the microbe less fit when the antibiotic is removed--it reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution.

Fitness costs are real, and biological realities like fitness cost and other limits to evolution play a vital role in shaping strategies used to combat antibiotic resistance, antiviral resistance, and pesticide resistance. In fact, were it not for the existence of fitness cost, in many cases antibiotic resistant bacteria would proliferate and resistant strains would soon replace non-resistant strains. Because of fitness costs, resistant strains are outcompeted by non-resistant bacteria once selection pressure is relaxed, allowing doctors to combat antibiotic resistance through various drug usage strategies.

Yet under the approach adopted by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in its critique of Explore Evolution (EE)[1], organisms are treated as if they are nearly infinitely-plastic; evolution is viewed as if it can do anything. If the NCSE were right--which thankfully it isn't--then medical researchers would have little hope in the fight against antibiotic resistant microbes.

Not only is the NCSE's mindset challenged by the evidence [4], but if it were true, the implications for medicine would be drastic: If biological realities like fitness cost and other limits to evolution did not exist, it would be pointless for medical doctors to try to combat antibiotic resistance or antiviral drug resistance, because evolution could always produce an adaptation such that bacteria would become resistant without incurring a fitness cost. Thankfully, Explore Evolution informs students about the realities of limits to bacterial evolution that give doctors and scientists empirically-based hope in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

The NCSE wrongly implies that fitness costs are a minor issue for those trying to fight antibiotic resistance and other forms of resistance, stating, "Mutations do not necessarily impair a protein's normal functioning nor impose a fitness cost." After complaining that "Explore Evolution ... says mutations do confer resistance but with a 'fitness cost,'" the NCSE then claims that "Explore Evolution significantly misrepresents how antibiotic resistance arises in this description." Unfortunately, it appears that the NCSE misunderstands both EE and the importance of fitness costs to evolutionary biologists.

Many scientific papers discuss the stark reality of fitness costs, supporting the emphasis that EE places on this topic. In fact, one paper cited by the NCSE acknowledges that the reality of fitness costs is vital to help scientists predict whether resistance will spread: "biological cost of resistance might be a more relevant predictor of the risk for resistance development." [5] Another paper published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry found that "[t]he topic of fitness costs is a central theme in evolutionary biology" because "fitness costs constrain the evolution of resistance to environmental stress." [6] Yet another paper observed that "[i]t is generally established that drug resistance mutations reduce viral fitness." [7] Regarding the specific case of antibiotic resistance, one study in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy observed that "[t]he biological fitness cost of antibiotic resistance is a key parameter in determining the rate of appearance and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria." [8] Indeed, science journals are replete with documented examples of fitness costs, as the following selections amply demonstrate:

An article published in the journal Genetics in 2007 by Marciano et al. titled "A Fitness Cost Associated With the Antibiotic Resistance Enzyme SME-1 β -Lactamase" found that blaSME-1 β-lactamase gene, which confers antibiotic resistance to the use of carbapenems, has a fitness cost associated with mutations in its signal sequence. Only by artificially swapping the gene's signal sequence with the signal sequence from a different gene could this fitness cost be alleviated; there was no natural evolutionary elimination of this fitness cost. The article found that identifying this fitness cost barrier to evolution helped them prevent the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria: "The identification of a SME-1-mediated fitness cost allows the direct application of genetic techniques that have been utilized to understand structural features of β-lactamase function and evolution." See David C. Marciano, Omid Y. Karkouti and Timothy Palzkill, "A Fitness Cost Associated With the Antibiotic Resistance Enzyme SME-1 β-Lactamase," Genetics, Vol. 176: 2381--2392 (August, 2007).
A paper in BiomedCentral's journal Evolutionary Biology titled "Acetylcholinesterase alterations reveal the fitness cost of mutations conferring insecticide resistance" found that some insects exposed to insecticides which target acetylcholinesterase, an important enzyme involved in the nervous system of insects, evolve resistance that comes only at a fitness cost. According to the article, "Our findings suggest that the alteration of activity and stability of acetylcholinesterase are at the origin of the fitness cost associated with mutations providing resistance." As the paper put it, "higher the number of [resistance-conferring] mutations, the lower the stability of the mutant" enzyme. When seeking mutations that compensated for loss of stability in the mutant enzymes, the study found that "no mutation increased the stability of the enzyme, all combinations resulted in proteins still less stable." In other words, there was a clear fitness cost faced by insecticide-resistant mutant insects. See David C. Marciano, Omid Y. Karkouti and Timothy Palzkill, "A Fitness Cost Associated With the Antibiotic Resistance Enzyme SME-1 β-Lactamase," Genetics, Vol. 176: 2381--2392 (August, 2007).
A paper in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, titled "Nitrofurantoin resistance mechanism and fitness cost in Escherichia coli," observes the reality of fitness cost, stating: "The biological fitness cost of antibiotic resistance is a key parameter in determining the rate of appearance and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria." The paper found that because of the fitness cost associated with E. coli that are resistant to Nitrofurantoin, "even though resistant mutants will appear in the bacterial population in the bladder, they will be unable to become enriched and establish an infection because of their impaired growth at these therapeutic antibiotic concentrations." The article further observes, "Resistance to antibiotics is most often accompanied by a biological cost, observed as a decrease in fitness, i.e. a reduced growth rate or virulence." Ironically, the paper cited by this study to bolster this claim--a claim that corroborates EE's statements about fitness cost--is Andersson (2006) [see below], the same paper that the NCSE cites to back its claim that "not all mutations produce fitness costs!" It seems that research scientists have interpreted Andersson (2006) differently than the NCSE. See Linus Sandegren, Anton Lindqvist, Gunnar Kahlmeter, and Dan I. Andersson, "Nitrofurantoin resistance mechanism and fitness cost in Escherichia coli," Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Vol. 62, 495--503 (2008).
Andersson (2006) explicitly observes that fitness cost is important to understanding whether resistant populations will persist after selection is relaxed:
A key parameter influencing the rate and trajectory of the evolution of antibiotic resistance is the fitness cost of resistance. Recent studies have demonstrated that antibiotic resistance, whether caused by target alteration or by other mechanisms, generally confers a reduction in fitness expressed as reduced growth, virulence or transmission. These findings imply that resistance might be reversible, provided antibiotic use is reduced. However, several processes act to stabilize resistance, including compensatory evolution where the fitness cost is ameliorated by additional mutation without loss of resistance, the rare occurrence of cost-free resistance mechanisms and genetic linkage or co-selection between the resistance markers and other selected markers. Conceivably we can use this knowledge to rationally choose and design targets and drugs where the costs of resistance are the highest, and where the likelihood of compensation is the lowest.
Thus, Andersson (2006) observes that "cost-free resistance mechanisms" are "rare" and that fitness cost is a very common phenomenon, stating that antibiotic resistance "generally confers a reduction in fitness." EE thus properly discusses this common phenomenon, and Andersson (2006) actually bolsters the points of EE. We find it unfortunate that the NCSE has misused this paper in its attempt to downplay the importance and reality of fitness costs. Additionally, Andersson (2006) states, "A rational antibiotic design strategy is therefore to identify targets for which the resistance mechanism has the most negative effect on fitness." This is a good strategy, but it would be pointless if bacteria didn't face evolutionary limits and could essentially always evolve to avoid fitness costs, as the NCSE implies. Again, we see that fitness cost is a real phenomenon and is vitally important to understand as microbiologists seek to slow the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. EE is justified in discussing it. See Dan I Andersson, "The biological cost of mutational antibiotic resistance: any practical conclusions?," Current Opinion in Microbiology, Vol. 9:461--465 (2006).

Many similar examples could be cited. Given the scientific literature, how can the NCSE seriously maintain that fitness cost is not an important issue in microbiology or that EE is mistaken by highlighting its importance to evolutionary processes? The NCSE asserts that EE "significantly misrepresents how antibiotic resistance arises" when EE states that "[e]xperiments show that once antibiotics are removed from the environment, the original (non-resistant) strain 'out-competes' the resistant strain, which dies off within a few generations." But studies like those discussed here directly corroborate this claim of EE. And the existence of fitness costs are vital to helping biologists to fight antibiotic resistance, antiviral resistance, and pesticide resistance. For the sake of medical progress, thank goodness the NCSE is wrong.

[Note: This post was adapted from Antibiotic Resistance Revisited, a response to the NCSE, which was originally co-authored with Explore Evolution co-author Ralph Seelke, Professor of Biology at University of Wisconsin-Superior.]

References Cited
[1] National Center for Science Education. 2008. Section on "Bacteria" in the NCSE critique of Explore Evolution. Available at http://ncseweb.org/creationism/analysis/bacteria as of January 16, 2009.

[4] See R. Seelke and S. Ebnet. "An unexpectedly low evolutionary potential for a trpA 49V,D60N double mutant In Escherichia coli.," Presented at the 107th Annual Meeting, Abstract R-055, American Society for Microbiology, Toronto, Canada, May 21-25, 2007; R. P. Mortlock (ed.), Microorganisms as Model Systems for Studying Evolution (Plenum Press, New York, 1984). Note: This book contains seven examples of situations in which evolution fails to produce a new function.

[5] Dan I Andersson, "The biological cost of mutational antibiotic resistance: any practical conclusions?," Current Opinion in Microbiology, Vol. 9:461--465 (2006).

[6] Lingtian Xie and Paul L. Klerks, "Fitness costs constrain the evolution of resistance to environmental stress in populations," Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Vol. 23(6):1499--1503 (2004).

[7] M. Cong, D.E. Bennett, W, Heneine and J.G. García-Lerma, "Fitness Cost of Drug Resistance Mutations is Relative and is Modulated by Other Resistance Mutations: Implications for Persistance of Transmitted Resistance," Antiviral Therapy, Vol. 10, Suppl 1:S169 (June 7-11, 2005).


[8] Linus Sandegren, Anton Lindqvist, Gunnar Kahlmeter, and Dan I. Andersson, "Nitrofurantoin resistance mechanism and fitness cost in Escherichia coli," Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Vol. 62, 495--503 (2008).

A fossil link goes belly up.

Ida's Critics Demolish Claims That Fossil Is Human Evolutionary Link
Casey Luskin

Remember Ida? The fossil hailed as the "eighth wonder of the world" whose "impact on the world of palaeontology" would be like "an asteroid falling down to Earth"? She was promised to be "the link that connects us directly with the rest of the animal kingdom." She was touted on a History Channel / BBC documentary, but then there was the bust. Well, Ida's critics have now gotten around to publishing technical articles critiquing the hyped view promoted to the public last year. A recent news release at the University of Texas, "Recently Analyzed Fossil Was Not Human Ancestor As Claimed, Anthropologists Say," explains:
A fossil that was celebrated last year as a possible "missing link" between humans and early primates is actually a forebearer of modern-day lemurs and lorises, according to two papers by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, Duke University and the University of Chicago.
In an article now available online in the Journal of Human Evolution, four scientists present evidence that the 47-million-year-old Darwinius masillae is not a haplorhine primate like humans, apes and monkeys, as the 2009 research claimed.

They also note that the article on Darwinius published last year in the journal PLoS ONE ignores two decades of published research showing that similar fossils are actually strepsirrhines, the primate group that includes lemurs and lorises.

"Many lines of evidence indicate that Darwinius has nothing at all to do with human evolution," says Chris Kirk, associate professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. "Every year, scientists describe new fossils that contribute to our understanding of primate evolution. What's amazing about Darwinius is, despite the fact that it's nearly complete, it tells us very little that we didn't already know from fossils of closely related species."

The big question now is, will BBC and The History Channel publish documentaries retracting their prior claims about Ida's importance as a "human ancestor," or will they leave the public with the impression that Ida is a "missing link"? Perhaps they might publish a documentary about the scientific community's tendency to overhype fossils as part of a crusade for Darwin? I'm a huge fan of The History Channel (or at least I used to be when they focused on real history instead of broadcasting UFO / "2012" material), but I'm not holding my breath.

A lack of evidence proves Darwinism?

Smithsonian's New Human Origins Exhibit Targets Students Who Doubt Darwinism
Casey Luskin

The Smithsonian has a new human origins exhibit, "What does it mean to be human?" specially targeted at swaying student visitors who might doubt Darwinian evolution.

The most amusing part of the exhibit proudly explains that evolution predicted we'd lack evidence for evolution; that's how we know it's true!

That's right, this is how the nation's most prestigious natural history museum presents evolution: evolution predicts that evolution is supported both when we do and when we don't find confirming fossil evidence. Consider the following from the educator's guide:

Misconception: Gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution.
Response: Science actually predicts gaps in the fossil record. Many species leave no fossils at all, and the environmental conditions for forming good fossils are not common. The chance of any individual organism becoming fossilized is incredibly small. Nevertheless, new fossils are constantly being discovered. These include many transitional fossils--e.g., intermediary fossils between birds and dinosaurs, and between humans and our primate ancestors. Our lack of knowledge about certain parts of the fossil record does not disprove evolution.

Did you get that? Ignoring the fact that transitional fossils are often missing even among taxa whose records are very complete, now Darwin's defenders argue that their theory "predicts gaps in the fossil record." How convenient!

(Now I fully understand the evolutionary explanation as to why transitional fossils are purportedly missing, and I've written on it extensively in the past, so if you want a critique, go there.)

What's ironic, however, is that if you ask the question How Do We Know Humans Evolved? the answer you're given is, "Fossils like the ones shown in our Human Fossils Gallery provide evidence that modern humans evolved from earlier humans." So whether you find fossils or you don't, that's evidence for evolution.

And some of the "transitional" fossils listed in the gallery are quite dubious.

Ardipithecus ramidus is offered as an alleged "a human-African ape common ancestor," yet the exhibit doesn't disclose that when "Ardi" was first discovered it was reportedly "crushed to smithereens" such that it resembled "Irish stew."

The exhibit also touts Sahelanthropus tchadensis as the "oldest fossil human," even though this species is known from only one skull and a few jaw fragments, which some paleoanthropologists have suggested might have belonged to a female gorilla.

But the exhibit gives no evidence of dissent from the official party line, such as an admission from Ernst Mayr in 2004 that "[t]he earliest fossils of Homo, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus, are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap," and therefore we're in a position of "[n]ot having any fossils that can serve as missing links."

I guess according to the Smithsonian's exhibit, this large, unbridged gap is just more evidence for evolution.

Darwinism's just so stories are almost as substantive as kipling's

Brangelina Fever Gets Its Own Darwinian Just-So Story
Jonathan Witt

Darwinists love just-so stories. Why are cheetahs fast? Because natural selection preferred the slightly faster cheetah ancestors, thanks to the fast cats being able to catch more prey and impress the lady cats. Why are turtles slow? Well, maybe being fast was a waste of energy, so turtle evolution at some point wandered down an evolutionary alley committed to a defensive strategy that, et cetera, et cetera.

Why are chimps clever? Because being clever gave their ancestors a survival advantage over their stupider cousins. Got a dimwitted species? No problem for Darwinism. Those animals didn't need cleverness in their ecological niche. Bigger brains would just have been a waste of calories.

The Maestro of Magic -- Natural Selection -- and His Sexy Assistant

Any attribute that makes a creature faster, smarter, stronger, stealthier, sturdier, more efficient -- there's a Darwinian just-so story waiting in the wings involving an animal hero, usually some poor duffer getting squeezed out in the competition for food or safety or conjugal warmth, and often as not, some damsel in either heat or distress who needs a hero almost as much as Bonnie Tyler does.

What about all those zany things on the nature shows so impractical that natural selection would never vote them on to the next round of mother nature's great big unmerciful game of Jeopardy? Well then, Darwinism has just the little beauty you're looking for. That's right, folks, sexual selection -- natural selection's winsome, whimsical, and wondrous assistant. Sexual selection is where, say, peahens prefer the peacocks with the bigger tail feathers, never mind how impractical those tails might become for running and flying. Presto! Peacocks have evolved whimsically enormous peacock tails.

Together, natural and sexual selection can whip up a just-so story for any biological marvel you want to throw at them.

The Monkey Business Behind Brangelina Fever

But wait. There's more. Enter movie star couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Angela Chen of The Verge tackles the vexing question of why so many of us give a rip about the Hollywood soap opera that is Brangelina. A big part of her answer, of course: evolution. You see, "our brains adapted long ago to be deeply interested in the beautiful and famous among us, says Daniel Kruger, a psychologist at the University of Michigan."

Chen then summarizes a Duke University study where they showed four monkeys a series of pictures of other monkeys they knew:

Each time they looked at a picture, they received a certain amount of cherry juice. They got more juice for looking at pictures of lower-status monkeys and less juice for pictures of the alpha monkeys. The monkeys loved the juice, and yet were willing to sacrifice it for a glimpse at the alphas. They were transfixed by their power.
Why? "In prehistoric times, our ancestors lived in societies of around 200 people and it was important to know what everyone was up to," Chen explains. "You had to know who you could trust, who was strong, and who could teach you how to be like them. All this could help you get ahead."

We keep tabs on the rich and famous, Chen continues, "because they might reveal the secrets to success. On some level, our brains really do believe that stars are just like us and that lessons from millionaires can improve our own sad lives."

Evolutionary psychologist Frank McAndrew seconds all this. "People who didn't care what people were up to just didn't do very well. We're the descendants of the ones who gossiped, so we're programmed to pay attention to people who are socially important."

What about that brilliant mathematician or inventor or artist too busy discovering, inventing, or creating things to bother with gossip or the latest Brangelina dustup? He's descended from, what -- the dummies at the edge of the camp playing Dungeons & Dragons?

Darwinism is Like a Party Balloon -- Highly Flexible, and Mostly Empty

The Wall Street Journal story on the monkey experiment quotes Paul Glimcher, associate professor of neural science and psychology at New York University:

"All primates living in complex societies have evolved this drive to study what's around them," Dr. Glimcher explained. "People are willing to pay money to look at pictures of high-ranking human primates. When you fork out $3" for a celebrity gossip magazine, "you're doing exactly what the monkeys are doing."
Ain't evolution grand! Probably explains our love of bananas, too. What about the banana haters in our midst, you say? They, of course, are descended from a now extinct subspecies of banana-hating monkeys.

I kid, I kid. The point is that Darwinian just-so stories are so flexible they're able to explain almost any zoological phenomenon and its opposite.

The other problem: Except in some cases of microevolutionary adaptation, these Darwinian just-so stories explain things hardly any better than a Rudyard Kipling tale about how the leopard got his spots or the camel his hump. All of the truly creative action in these Darwinian stories -- that is, the long train of genetic mutations necessary to gradually build the oh-so-helpful pair of wings or the way-cool set of gills or claws or fingers -- generally takes place off stage, out of the spotlight and far away from the paparazzi.


That's bad show business, and bad science.

The Watchtower Society's commentary on "Kindness"

KINDNESS:
The quality or state of taking an active interest in the welfare of others; friendly and helpful acts or favors. The principal word for “kindness” in the Christian Greek Scriptures is khre·stoʹtes. Jehovah God takes the lead and is the best example of one showing kindness in so many ways toward others, even toward the unthankful and wicked, encouraging them to repentance. (Lu 6:35; Ro 2:4; 11:22; Tit 3:4, 5) Christians, in turn, under the kindly yoke of Christ (Mt 11:30), are urged to clothe themselves with kindness (Col 3:12; Eph 4:32) and to develop the fruitage of God’s spirit, which includes kindness. (Ga 5:22) In this way they recommend themselves as God’s ministers. (2Co 6:4-6) “Love is . . . kind.”—1Co 13:4.

“Kindness” (or, reasonableness; literally, yieldingness; Gr., e·pi·ei·kiʹa) is an outstanding characteristic of Christ Jesus. (2Co 10:1, ftn) Paul was treated with unusual “human kindness” (literally, affection for mankind; Gr., phi·lan·thro·piʹa) by the inhabitants of Malta.—Ac 28:2, ftn.

Loving-Kindness of God. As in the Christian Greek Scriptures so also in the Hebrew Scriptures, frequent mention is made of kindness. The Hebrew word cheʹsedh, when used in reference to kindness, occurs 245 times. The related verb cha·sadhʹ means “act in loyalty (or, loving-kindness)” and carries with it more than just the thought of tender regard or kindness stemming from love, though it includes such traits. (Ps 18:25, ftn) Cheʹsedh is kindness that lovingly attaches itself to an object until its purpose in connection with that object is realized. According to the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, cheʹsedh “is active, social, and enduring. . . . [Cheʹsedh] always designates not just a human attitude, but also the act that emerges from this attitude. It is an act that preserves or promotes life. It is intervention on behalf of someone suffering misfortune or distress. It is demonstration of friendship or piety. It pursues what is good and not what is evil.” (Edited by G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren, 1986, Vol. 5, p. 51) Hence, cheʹsedh is more comprehensively rendered “loving-kindness,” or, because of the fidelity, solidarity, and proved loyalty associated with it, an alternate translation would be “loyal love.” In the plural number it may be rendered “loving-kindnesses,” “acts of loyal love,” “full loving-kindness,” or “full loyal love.”—Ps 25:6, ftn; Isa 55:3, ftn.

Loving-kindness is a precious quality of Jehovah God in which he delights, and it is manifest in all his dealings with his servants. (Ps 36:7; 62:12; Mic 7:18) Were this not the case, they would have perished long ago. (La 3:22) Thus, Moses could plead in behalf of rebellious Israel, both on the basis of Jehovah’s great name and because He is a God of loving-kindness.—Nu 14:13-19.

The Scriptures show that Jehovah’s loving-kindness, or loyal love, is displayed in a variety of ways and under different circumstances—in acts of deliverance and preservation (Ps 6:4; 119:88, 159), as a safeguard and protection (Ps 40:11; 61:7; 143:12), and as a factor bringing relief from troubles (Ru 1:8; 2:20; Ps 31:16, 21). Because of it one may be recovered from sin (Ps 25:7), sustained, and upheld. (Ps 94:18; 117:2) By it God’s chosen ones are assisted. (Ps 44:26) God’s loving-kindness was magnified in the cases of Lot (Ge 19:18-22), Abraham (Mic 7:20), and Joseph (Ge 39:21). It was also acknowledged in the choice of a wife for Isaac.—Ge 24:12-14, 27.

With the development of the nation of Israel and thereafter, Jehovah’s loving-kindness in connection with his covenant continued to be magnified. (Ex 15:13; De 7:12) This was true in David’s case (2Sa 7:15; 1Ki 3:6; Ps 18:50), as it was also with Ezra and those with him (Ezr 7:28; 9:9), and likewise with “thousands” of others (Ex 34:7; Jer 32:18). In support of the kingdom covenant with David, Jehovah continued to express his loving-kindness even after Jesus died, for He resurrected this “loyal one” in fulfillment of the prophecy: “I will give you people the loving-kindnesses to David that are faithful.”—Ps 16:10; Ac 13:34; Isa 55:3.

It is this loving-kindness on the part of Jehovah that draws individuals to him. (Jer 31:3) They trust in it (Ps 13:5; 52:8), hope in it (Ps 33:18, 22), pray for it (Ps 51:1; 85:7; 90:14; 109:26; 119:41), and are comforted by it (Ps 119:76). They also give thanks to Jehovah for his loving-kindness (Ps 107:8, 15, 21, 31), they bless and praise him for it (Ps 66:20; 115:1; 138:2), and they talk to others about it (Ps 92:2). Like David, they should never try to hide it (Ps 40:10), for it is good (Ps 69:16; 109:21) and it is a great source of rejoicing. (Ps 31:7) Certainly this divine loving-kindness is like a pleasant pathway in which to walk.—Ps 25:10.

In other Bible texts the overflowing abundance of God’s loving-kindness (Ps 5:7; 69:13; Jon 4:2), its greatness (Nu 14:19), and its permanence (1Ki 8:23) are emphasized. It is as high as the heavens (Ps 36:5; 57:10; 103:11; 108:4), fills the earth (Ps 33:5; 119:64), and is extended to a thousand generations (De 7:9) and “to time indefinite” (1Ch 16:34, 41; Ps 89:2; Isa 54:8, 10; Jer 33:11). In Psalm 136 all 26 verses repeat the phrase, ‘Jehovah’s loving-kindness is to time indefinite.’

Often this wonderful characteristic of Jehovah, his loving-kindness, is associated with other magnificent qualities—God’s mercy, graciousness, truth, forgiveness, righteousness, peace, judgment, and justice.—Ex 34:6; Ne 9:17; Ps 85:10; 89:14; Jer 9:24.

Loving-Kindness of Man. From the above it is apparent that those wishing to have God’s approval must “love kindness” and “carry on with one another loving-kindness and mercies.” (Mic 6:8; Zec 7:9) As the proverb says, “The desirable thing in earthling man is his loving-kindness,” and it brings him rich rewards. (Pr 19:22; 11:17) God remembered and was pleased with the loving-kindness shown during Israel’s youth. (Jer 2:2) But when it became “like the morning clouds and like the dew that early goes away,” Jehovah was not pleased, for “in loving-kindness I have taken delight, and not in sacrifice,” he says. (Ho 6:4, 6) Lacking loving-kindness, Israel was reproved, the reproof itself actually being a loving-kindness on God’s part. (Ho 4:1; Ps 141:5) Israel was also advised to return to God by demonstrating loving-kindness and justice. (Ho 12:6) Such traits should be manifest at all times if one is to find favor in the sight of God and man.—Job 6:14; Pr 3:3, 4.

Instances in the Bible are numerous where individuals showed loving-kindness toward others. Sarah, for example, showed such loyal love toward her husband when they were in enemy territory, protecting him by saying he was her brother. (Ge 20:13) Jacob asked Joseph to exercise the same toward him by promising not to bury him in Egypt. (Ge 47:29; 50:12, 13) Rahab requested that the Israelites show her loving-kindness by preserving her household alive, even as she had similarly treated the Israelite spies. (Jos 2:12, 13) Boaz commended Ruth for exercising it (Ru 3:10), and Jonathan asked David to show it toward him and his household.—1Sa 20:14, 15; 2Sa 9:3-7.

The motives and circumstances that prompt persons to show kindness or loving-kindness vary a great deal. Incidental acts of kindness may reflect customary hospitality or a tendency toward warmheartedness, yet may not necessarily indicate godliness. (Compare Ac 27:1, 3; 28:1, 2.) In the case of a certain man belonging to the city of Bethel, the kindness offered him really was in payment for favors expected of him in return. (Jg 1:22-25) At other times acts of loving-kindness were requested of recipients of past favors, perhaps because of the dire circumstances of the petitioner. (Ge 40:12-15) But sometimes persons failed to pay such debts of loving-kindness. (Ge 40:23; Jg 8:35) As the proverb shows, a multitude of men will proclaim their loving-kindness, but few are faithful to carry it out. (Pr 20:6) Saul and David both remembered the loving-kindness that others had shown (1Sa 15:6, 7; 2Sa 2:5, 6), and it seems that the kings of Israel gained some sort of reputation for loving-kindness (1Ki 20:31), perhaps in comparison with the pagan rulers. However, on one occasion David’s display of loving-kindness was rebuffed through a misinterpretation of the motives behind it.—2Sa 10:2-4.

Law, Paul says, was not made for righteous persons but for bad people, who, among other things, are lacking in loving-kindness. (1Ti 1:9) The Greek word a·noʹsi·os, here rendered “lacking loving-kindness,” also has the sense of “disloyal.”—2Ti 3:2.

Undeserved Kindness. The Greek word khaʹris occurs more than 150 times in the Greek Scriptures and is rendered in a variety of ways, depending on the context. In all instances the central idea of khaʹris is preserved—that which is agreeable (1Pe 2:19, 20) and winsome. (Lu 4:22) By extension, in some instances it refers to a kind gift (1Co 16:3; 2Co 8:19) or the kind manner of the giving. (2Co 8:4, 6) At other times it has reference to the credit, gratitude, or thankfulness that an especially kind act calls forth.—Lu 6:32-34; Ro 6:17; 1Co 10:30; 15:57; 2Co 2:14; 8:16; 9:15; 1Ti 1:12; 2Ti 1:3.

On the other hand, in the great majority of occurrences, khaʹris is rendered “grace” by most English Bible translators. The word “grace,” however, with some 14 different meanings does not convey to most readers the ideas contained in the Greek word. To illustrate: In John 1:14, where the King James Version says “the Word was made flesh . . . full of grace and truth,” what is meant? Does it mean “gracefulness,” or “favor,” or what?

Scholar R. C. Trench, in Synonyms of the New Testament, says khaʹris implies “a favour freely done, without claim or expectation of return—the word being thus predisposed to receive its new emphasis [as given it in the Christian writings] . . . , to set forth the entire and absolute freeness of the loving-kindness of God to men. Thus Aristotle, defining [khaʹris], lays the whole stress on this very point, that it is conferred freely, with no expectation of return, and finding its only motive in the bounty and free-heartedness of the giver.” (London, 1961, p. 158) Joseph H. Thayer in his lexicon says: “The word [khaʹris] contains the idea of kindness which bestows upon one what he has not deserved . . . the N. T. writers use [khaʹris] pre-eminently of that kindness by which God bestows favors even upon the ill-deserving, and grants to sinners the pardon of their offences, and bids them accept of eternal salvation through Christ.” (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 1889, p. 666) Khaʹris is closely related to another Greek word, khaʹri·sma, concerning which William Barclay’s New Testament Wordbook (1956, p. 29) says: “The whole basic idea of the word [khaʹri·sma] is that of a free and undeserved gift, of something given to a man unearned and unmerited.”—Compare 2Co 1:11, Int.

When khaʹris is used in the above sense, in reference to kindness bestowed on one who does not deserve it, as is true with the kindnesses extended by Jehovah, “undeserved kindness” is a very good English equivalent for the Greek expression.—Ac 15:40; 18:27; 1Pe 4:10; 5:10, 12.

A worker is entitled to what he has worked for, his pay; he expects his wages as a right, as a debt owed him, and payment of it is no gift or special undeserved kindness. (Ro 4:4) But for sinners condemned to death (and we are all born as such) to be released from that condemnation and to be declared righteous, this is indeed kindness that is totally undeserved. (Ro 3:23, 24; 5:17) If it is argued that those born under the Law covenant arrangement were under a greater condemnation to death, because such covenant showed them up as sinners, then it should be remembered that greater undeserved kindness was extended to the Jews in that salvation was first offered to them.—Ro 5:20, 21; 1:16.

This special manifestation of undeserved kindness on God’s part toward mankind in general was the release by ransom from condemnation through the blood of Jehovah’s beloved Son, Christ Jesus. (Eph 1:7; 2:4-7) By means of this undeserved kindness God brings salvation to all sorts of men (Tit 2:11), something that the prophets had spoken about. (1Pe 1:10) Paul’s reasoning and argument, therefore, is sound: “Now if it is by undeserved kindness, it is no longer due to works; otherwise, the undeserved kindness no longer proves to be undeserved kindness.”—Ro 11:6.

Paul, more than any other writer, mentioned God’s undeserved kindness—more than 90 times in his 14 letters. He mentions the undeserved kindness of God or of Jesus in the opening salutation of all his letters with the exception of Hebrews, and in the closing remarks of each letter, without exception, he again speaks of it. Other Bible writers make similar reference in the opening and closing of their writings.—1Pe 1:2; 2Pe 1:2; 3:18; 2Jo 3; Re 1:4; 22:21.

Paul had every reason for emphasizing Jehovah’s undeserved kindness, for he had formerly been “a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent man.” “Nevertheless,” he explains, “I was shown mercy, because I was ignorant and acted with a lack of faith. But the undeserved kindness of our Lord abounded exceedingly along with faith and love that is in connection with Christ Jesus.” (1Ti 1:13, 14; 1Co 15:10) Paul did not spurn such undeserved kindness, as some have foolishly done (Jude 4), but he gladly accepted it with thanksgiving and urged others also who accept it ‘not to miss its purpose.’—Ac 20:24; Ga 2:21; 2Co 6:1.

Darwinism explains Everything (except when it doesn't)

Evolution Arguments Are Not Holding Water

Being an evolutionist means never having to say you’re sorry. Just look at Richard Dawkins who will say pretty much anything at any time, no matter how much it contradicts science or just plain logic. If he ever gets into trouble he can always lapse back into a rant about those creationist rascals and the audience will automatically erupt with applause. And so arguing evolution with an evolutionist is a lot like the Monty Python argument skit. They will pull out all manner of canards, misdirections, and fallacies, depending on their mood at the moment. One common example is the use of normal science as confirmatory evidence.

As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, science sometimes operates in paradigms. Scientific research on a particular problem can embrace a type of solution, or paradigm. The research tries to elaborate on and refine the paradigm, but otherwise does not question the paradigm. Paradigms provide a stable framework, within which concepts and terminology can be developed to support scientific thinking.

But because the paradigm is taken for granted and assumed from the start, the research conclusions do not generally confirm or prove the paradigm. The research work develops and critically examines concepts within the paradigm, but not the paradigm itself. Kuhn called the research work done with a paradigm normal science.

Evolutionary theory very much works this way. Normal science, within the evolution paradigm, takes it for granted that the world evolved—that everything arose from strictly naturalistic, chance events. That is, that the world arose spontaneously. Therefore in evolutionary research, the evidence is interpreted according to evolution. You could say the evidence is theory-laden.

A typical evolutionary research study goes as follows: Given that X evolved, here is how X probably evolved. All of this is at odds with the empirical evidence, and so the results inevitably lack all kinds of detail normally required in science, and include all kinds of improbable events normally unacceptable in science. It is a kind of storytelling underwritten by the paradigm.

This evolutionary normal science formula has produced a tremendous volume of literature, ranging from journal papers to popular works. And, one of the favorite lines of argumentation, when evolution is rightly questioned, is to point to this “mountain” of evidence. A simple internet search can usually be counted on to produce dozens of papers advertising “The Evolution of Echolocation in Bats” or whatever wonder the skeptic has in mind as problematic for evolution.

Of course, if anyone were ever actually to read the produced papers (and usually the evolutionist presenting the paper has not), that person would find a marked absence of any actual scientific description of how echolocation, or whatever, actually did, in fact, evolve.

Normal science is used inappropriately as confirmatory evidence. When we explained, for example, that epigenetics in plants contradicts evolution, an evolutionist caustically responded with a paper subtitled: “The Evolution of a Complex Epigenetic Pathway in Flowering Plants.”

And did that paper actually explain “The Evolution of a Complex Epigenetic Pathway in Flowering Plants”?

No. The paper presupposed “The Evolution of a Complex Epigenetic Pathway in Flowering Plants.” As we explained, the paper presents several dubious “findings” of how epigenetics evolved which, in fact, are not supported by the science and instead are completely beholden to the assumption that evolution is true.

The paper’s highly unlikely scenarios of how evolution occurred are underwritten and mandated by the a priori assumption that (drumroll), evolution occurred.

And when we pointed this out, the evolutionist next retorted:

In the same way NASA and ESA assume the Earth is a globe and not flat every time they launch a satellite into orbit. What were those dumb space scientists and engineers thinking using assumptions??

Which brings us back to Monte Python and the argument skit. There’s always another canard. After inappropriately using normal science as confirmatory evidence, and having the fallacy explained in no uncertain terms, the evolutionist effortlessly switches over to the next available fallacy: riding the coattails of science.

The analogy between the age-old Epicurean claims that the world spontaneously arose, and space flight, is of course absurd and pathetic. It reveals how silly is evolutionary thought. But like the Monte Python skit, evolutionists will always have another argument.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Posted by Cornelius Hunter 

File under "Well said" XXXVI

"Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws." 
John Adams

Manifest destiny a global problem?:pros and cons.

A clash of Titans. XXX

The mark of the beast II

The Ethical Menace of "Bioethics" Grows
Wesley J. Smith 

Bioethics discourse aims to change the practice of medicine and the thrust of public policy -- usually not for the better. As I have been noting, the field increasingly targets the right of doctors to refuse to perform an abortion, euthanize patients, or perform other procedures or issue prescriptions that violate their religious beliefs.

Recently I discussed a "consensus statement" on this issue in Practical Ethics, published by Oxford. Now, two internationally influential bioethicists -- Jualian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk -- join forces to advocate that society legally coerce doctors to kill.

First, they deconstruct medical professionalism itself by reducing the practice of medicine to the status of mere technocratic order-taking. From "Doctors Have No Right to Refuse Medical Assistance in Dying, Abortion or Contraception":

It is clear that the scope of professional practice is ultimately determined by society, and that it is bound to evolve over time. That is true not only for the question of what kinds of services must be provided, it is also true for conscientious objection itself...

Note that the bioethicists state that a service "must be provided." They use contraception as their primary example, but as the title demonstrates, they don't differentiate between preventing new life from being conceived and active life-taking actions in the medical context:

If a service a doctor is requested to perform is a medical practice, is legal, consistent with distributive justice, requested by the patient or their appointed surrogate, and is plausibly in their interests, the doctor must ensure the patient has access to it. It is then irrelevant how defensible the doctors own moral take on the patient's actions is.

Please understand that the bioethicists advocate elevating life-taking practices (where legal) such as euthanasia from what I call "mere legality," meaning it can be done if a doctor is willing, into a positive right -- meaning the doctor must do it. Hence, since the patient has a right to be killed, society and the medical profession have the duty to coerce all doctors into participating in a medical culture of death.

Ironically, the bioethicists actually concede that such actions are not really practicing medicine, properly understood:

[T]here is no reason why only doctors could competently provide, for example, contraception, abortion, or assisted dying services.

Would anyone assert that a non-doctor should be able to diagnose cancer or perform an appendectomy? This is a Jack Kevorkian meme. He wanted what he called "lay executioners" to operate out of euthanasia clinics. In California, to make sure no woman is ever delayed from having her fetus killed, certified nurse practitioners can already perform terminations.

The ultimate goal is to keep all pro-life, Hippocratic Oath-respecting, orthodox Catholic or otherwise traditionally religious believers out of the practices of medicine (and, I would add, nursing too):

If you don't believe contraception or sterilisation [or abortion and euthanasia] are part of the modern practice of medicine, don't become a GP...

Even if there were a strong calling to medicine or to a particular field within medicine, people are still free to decline the call and do something else with their lives. If they were not free to make that choice, due to the strength of the call, it is questionable that their decision to join the medical profession was truly an autonomous choice in the first place.


This is a proposed tyranny. If these bioethicists' views prevail, in order to become an MD, you will have to be willing to kill. That would be the end of medicine as a true profession. For anyone interested in my views about how a proper medical conscience protection law could be framed, see here.

Darwinian mysticism re:cancer.

Niwrad: The cancer of Darwinism
Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design

Our valued contributor Niwrad send in this post, on recent claims that cancer disproves ID:

—

Evolutionism is systematic negation of reality and inversion of truth. So we must be prepared to listen to ever more unbelievable things from evolutionists. Here I will examine an example that seems particularly meaningful.

Cancer has universally been considered to be biological degeneration. Something in the cellular machinery goes wrong, a proliferation of defective cells grows, leading to a destructive dynamic in the diseased organism. It all starts in the genome, so cancer is an issue of bio-informatics, of programming. In fact, we learned recently that “Microsoft will ‘solve’ cancer within 10 years by ‘reprogramming’ diseased cells.”

Conceptually, bugs that start the cancer appear in the genomic program. Microsoft will try to fix them in the same way as it routinely fixes bugs in Windows or Office. This is fully an intelligent design scenario: A hardware-software system is designed, software shows malfunctions, the programmer patches the programs. It happens every day in the software industry.

Well. But there is Dr. Swamidass, who describes the situation in a different, somehow inverted way. He really reaches a new level of genius in the construction of absurdity! He writes:

If (1) evolutionary genetic tools correctly infer the progress and history of cancer, (2) cancer regularly innovates with proteins of novel function, (3) regularly exhibits convergence at a molecular level, and (4) all the mathematical of machinery of neutral theory works so well, THEN what magically prevents all these things from being true at the species level? This all cannot be true for cancer, but false for evolution. That is the real inconvenience [for intelligent design theory] here. […]

Put another way, if many ID arguments in molecular biology were true, then cancer as we know it would be mathematically impossible, or regularly require the direct intervention of God to initiate and be sustained. […] This casts serious doubt on the ID arguments from molecular biology.

Note how in (2) he tries to invert the truth: Cancer becomes something constructive, it “innovates”, it creates “novel function”. In (1)(3)(4) he in short says that cancer “evolves”, because it behaves according to evolutionary theory. That said he asks “What prevents all these things from being true at the species level?”; that is: cancer is constructive, cancer evolves, cancer happens, then origin of species by evolution is true; corollary: intelligent design is false. Bingo!

Here is how Swamidass succeeds in transforming a destructive process into a constructive system, and — in the same time — a proof of evolution and disproof of ID. Brilliant!

Unfortunately for his thesis, an avalanche also “evolves” like cancer, produces a “proliferation”, grows in size and destructive power, but never creates new buildings. Analogously, cancer cannot be an example of how evolution creates new species.

Moreover, if it were true that evolutionary theory describes cancer and cancer is not a producer of organization, then we can correctly deduce that evolutionary theory doesn’t explain the origin of species (eminently a form of organization). But Swamidass very carefully hides this deduction, which alone would destroy his argument.

He continues: “If many ID arguments in molecular biology were true, then cancer as we know it would be mathematically impossible”. To understand the absurdity of this affirmation, let’s translate it into informatics jargon (the field where Microsoft hopes to impact biology): “If ID arguments in informatics were true, then bugs would be mathematically impossible”.

Bugs mathematically impossible? in what world does Swamidass live?

All this shows how an evolutionist tries to mystify reality and use contrary evidences to promote Darwinian ideas. They are masters in inverting the truth. Somehow Swamidass reminds me of l Monod who wrote:

Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution [progress] as an expression of the second law in the biosphere.

Monod said exactly the opposite of the truth: the impossibility of evolution is an expression of the second law in the biosphere. After all, Monod and Swamidass share the same kind of error. The former says that entropy causes evolution, the latter says that genetic entropy (cancer) illustrates evolution and disproves ID. Birds of a feather flock together.


—

Why Dawkins's weasel is of no help to Darwinian apologists

Richard Dawkins's Weasel Program Is Bad in Ways You Never Dreamed
Jonathan Witt

Editor's note: Dr. Witt is cordially welcomed back to the pages of Evolution News after a too long sabbatical. He is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, and co-author of Intelligent Design Uncensored and  A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature.

You may have heard of evolutionist Richard Dawkins's computer program designed to illustrate that evolution can accomplish amazing things. And you may have heard some good critiques of this program and of its later, more sophisticated cousins. I want to quickly summarize those critiques and then describe another way Dawkins's argument fails, a failure mostly overlooked but highly significant.

Dawkins's program is well-known enough that it has its own Wikipedia entry and nickname: "the weasel program." The program "evolves" a string of gibberish letters into a line from Hamlet: "Methinks it is like a weasel."

Dawkins was inspired by the old saw that if you put some monkeys in front of a bunch of typewriters and have them bang away long enough, eventually one of them will reproduce a Shakespearian poem purely by chance. In truth, the odds of that happening are actually so long that whole galaxies would burn out before we got a Shakespearian sonnet out of one of those poor creatures. And to Dawkins's credit, he understands this.

Dawkins uses his computer simulation not to argue for the powers of brute chance but to show that evolution can do the job far more quickly because evolution isn't purely random in the way a monkey banging away on a typewriter is. It is guided by natural selection.

However, if you have read critiques of the weasel program, you know Dawkins's evolution simulation still has a couple of major limitations to it.

The Two Most Obvious Problems

First, on its evolutionary journey from gibberish to the line from Shakespeare, the program passes through and builds from utterly dysfunctional intermediates. That's a problem because the Darwinian process of natural selection tends to eliminate dysfunctional offspring.

Second, the computer simulation has been programmed to aim for a particular distant goal -- the weasel line from Hamlet. That's a problem because Darwinian evolution doesn't work toward particular distant goals. It isn't mindful but mindless, not seeing but blind.

Dawkins conceded all this in The Blind Watchmaker:

Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective "breeding," the mutant "progeny" phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success.

But Dawkins waves off these shortcoming by saying the little program is merely for illustrative purposes and suggesting that more sophisticated programs will be designed soon enough that properly mimic natural selection while still illustrating how wonderfully productive the evolutionary process can be.

Three decades later, we're still waiting. Various attempts at more sophisticated simulations have been rolled out, often to much fanfare. But as others have shown, those simulations vastly underestimate how easy it is for an evolutionary pathway to avoid dysfunctional intermediates, or the simulations have unrealistically enormous probabilistic resources, or they smuggle in a distant goal for the program to chase. These more sophisticated simulations may do a better job of disguising these problems than did the weasel program, but the problems remain.

Something Else Is Rotten in the State of Dawkins's Weasel Argument

That's all background to what I really want to talk about. There's another serious problem with Dawkins's weasel argument, one that has everything to do with his overdeveloped love of reductionism. Dawkins, the same reductionist who refers to humans as DNA "survival machines," takes a similarly reductive approach to Shakespeare's Hamlet, causing him to miss a delicious irony

To see what I'm talking about, we need a bit more context. Ben Wiker and I spend several pages on this in our book A Meaningful World. What follows is a briefer explanation.

The weasel line comes in Act 3, Scene 2 of the play, in a conversation between Prince Hamlet and Polonius, the king's chief adviser:

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.

Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.

Hamlet: Or like a whale?

Polonius: Very like a whale.

Before quoting that passage, Dawkins has fun at the expense of all those benighted religious folks who believe in things like an intelligent designer, though he is shrewd enough to come at the whole thing sideways.

"Sometimes clouds, through the random kneading and carving of the winds, come to look like familiar objects," he writes. "There is a much published photograph taken by the pilot of a small aeroplane of what looks a bit like the face of Jesus, staring out of the sky. We have all seen clouds that reminded us of something."

Translation -- Hint, hint: Seeing the handiwork of God in nature is almost as silly as imagining that a cloud that resembles Jesus was actually designed to look like Jesus.

Dawkins then introduces the Hamlet/Polonius passage, saying the two men are just commenting on the curious, passing resemblances. But the mention of the Jesus cloud, and the wider context in The Blind Watchmaker, aimed at debunking those religious folks who see design in nature where none exists, suggests the unstated purpose of his selecting this particular scene out of all the scenes and lines written by Shakespeare. That is, seeing design in nature is as misguided as seeing design in the interesting shape of a cloud.

The irony is that, understood in its context, the Hamlet passage is better suited to illustrate exactly the opposite: that is, the tendency of some people to mistake an intelligent cause for a purely natural one. To see this, we need more context than Dawkins provides.

A Death Intelligently Designed

At the beginning of the play we learn that King Hamlet has recently died and that the king's brother, Claudius, has managed to seize the throne before young Prince Hamlet could return home from university. Claudius also married the widowed queen, Hamlet's mom, within a couple of months of the funeral. Hamlet doesn't think much of his uncle Claudius, and he's depressed about his father's death and his mother's speedy remarriage.

Prince Hamlet, though, doesn't know the half of it at this early stage of the play. He eventually discovers that Claudius poisoned King Hamlet in order to usurp the throne and take the man's wife. King Hamlet, in other words, didn't simply die of old age. He was murdered.

What did old King Hamlet's chief adviser, Polonius, do in all this? While he fancies himself a man of penetrating insight, Polonius remains oblivious of any wrongdoing and quickly aligns himself with the new King Claudius. Polonius also orders his beautiful daughter, Ophelia, to keep away from Prince Hamlet, assuming Hamlet is just toying with her affections and has no intention of marrying so far beneath him.

So Hamlet dislikes Polonius on two grounds: Polonius has cut Hamlet off from the woman he loves, and Polonius is a clueless court toady who imagines he's wise and courageous.

In the scene quoted above, the two men actually are only pretending to think the clouds look like particular animals. Some cinematic versions emphasize this by staging the scene inside the palace so that the men aren't even gazing at actual clouds. So what's going on?

Hamlet is acting nuts, acting as if he is "seeing things." But there is method to his madness. He's using the cover of madness to poke fun at Polonius for being such a clueless yes-man. First, Hamlet gets Polonius to agree that the "cloud" looks like a camel, then a weasel, then a whale. Hamlet is revealing that the sycophantic Polonius will agree to almost anything a royal tells him.

Put yourself in Hamlet's place. He desperately needs Polonius's help in proving King Claudius's guilt, but Polonius is too busy toadying up to the new king to harbor any suspicions of the man. Polonius sees what he wants to see and ignores what is convenient for him to ignore.

The whole scene and the wider tension between the two men, in other words, actually involves Polonius's refusal to see intelligent design where it actually exists -- namely, in the designed death, the murder, of old King Hamlet. Polonius attributes the old king's death to purely blind, material causes when in fact the king's death was intelligently designed -- that is, foul play.

Richard Dawkins Is Polonius

One parallel to the origins science debate, then, is that Richard Dawkins is a modern day Polonius: He ignores the evidence of intelligent design that should be abundantly clear to him.


And the moral, if we're willing to draw a line so far afield from the original play to our present context: Don't be Richard Dawkins. Don't mistake an intelligent cause for a natural one. Don't miss the wider context: the evidence that not only living cells but our living planet, our solar system, and the laws and constants of physics and chemistry are all finely tuned to allow for living things such as camels and weasels and whales -- and, to marvel at it all, scientists and poets alike

On the origin of biological information.

Peer-Reviewed Paper Investigating Origin of Information Endorses Irreducible Complexity and Intelligent Design
Casey Luskin 

A peer-reviewed paper, "Information and Entropy -- Top-Down or Bottom-Up Development in Living Systems?," by University of Leeds professor Andy McIntosh in the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics expressly endorses intelligent design (ID) via an exploration of a key question in ID thinking:

The ultimate question in origins must be: Can information increase in a purely materialistic or naturalistic way? It is not satisfactory to simply assume that information has to have arisen in this way. The alternative of original design must be allowed and all options examined carefully.
A professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory, McIntosh is well acquainted with the workings of machinery. His argument is essentially twofold:

(1) First, he defines the term "machine" (a device which locally raises the free energy) and observes that the cell is full of machines. Such machines pose a challenge to neo-Darwinian evolution due to their irreducibly complex nature. 
(2) Second, he argues that the information in living systems (similar to computer software) uses such machines and in fact requires machines to operate (what good is a program without a computer to run it?). An example is the genome sitting on the DNA molecule. From a thermodynamics perspective, the only way to make sense of this situation is to understand that the information is non-material and constrains the thermodynamics so that the local matter and energy are in a non-equilibrium state.
McIntosh addresses the objection that, thermodynamically speaking, highly organized low entropy structures can be formed at the expense of an increase in entropy elsewhere in the universe. However, he notes that this argument fails when applied to the origin of biological information:

whilst this argument works for structures such as snowflakes that are formed by natural forces, it does not work for genetic information because the information system is composed of machinery which requires precise and non-spontaneous raised free energy levels - and crystals like snowflakes have zero free energy as the phase transition occurs.
McIntosh then tackles the predominant reductionist view of biological information which "regards the coding and language of DNA as essentially a phenomenon of the physics and chemistry of the nucleotides themselves." He argues that this classical view is wrong, for "biological structures contain coded instructions which ... are not defined by the matter and energy of the molecules carrying this information."

According to McIntosh, Shannon information is not a good measure of biological information since it is "largely not relevant to functional information at the phenotype level." In his view, "[t]o consider biological information as simply a 'by product' of natural selective forces operating on random mutations is not only counter-intuitive, but scientifically wrong." According to McIntosh, one major reason for this is "the irreducibly complex nature of the machinery involved in creating the DNA/mRNA/ ribosome/amino acid/protein/DNA-polymerase connections." He continues:

All of these functioning parts are needed to make the basic forms of living cells to work. ... This, it may be argued, is a repeat of the irreducible complexity argument of Behe [67], and many think that that debate has been settled by the work of Pallen and Matzke [68] where an attempt to explain the origin of the bacterial flagellum rotary motor as a development of the Type 3 secretory system has been made. However, this argument is not robust simply because it is evident that there are features of both mechanisms which are clearly not within the genetic framework of the other. That is, the evidence, far from pointing to one being the ancestor of the other, actually points to them both being irreducibly complex. In the view of the author this argument is still a very powerful one.
Further citing Signature in the Cell, McIntosh states:

What is evident is that the initial information content in DNA and living proteins rather than being small must in fact be large, and is in fact vital for any process to work to begin with. The issue of functional complexity and information is considered exhaustively by Meyer [93, 94] who argues that the neo-Darwinist model cannot explain all the appearances of design in biology.
So how do biological systems achieve their highly ordered, low-entropy states? McIntosh's argument is complementary to that of Stephen Meyer's, but it takes a more thermodynamic approach. According to McIntosh, information is what allows biological systems to attain their high degrees of order:

the presence of information is the cause of lowered logical entropy in a given system, rather than the consequence. In living systems the principle is always that the information is transcendent to, but using raised free energy chemical bonding sites
McIntosh solves the problem of the origin of information by arguing that it must arise in a "top-down" fashion which requires the input of intelligence:

[T]here is a perfectly consistent view which is a top-down approach where biological information already present in the phenotypic creature (and not emergent as claimed in the traditional bottom-up approach) constrains the system of matter and energy constituting the living entity to follow intricate non-equilibrium chemical pathways. These pathways whilst obeying all the laws of thermodynamics are constantly supporting the coded software which is present within ... Without the addition of outside intelligence, raw matter and energy will not produce auto organization and machinery. This latter assertion is actually repeatedly borne out by experimental observation - new machinery requires intelligence. And intelligence in biological systems is from the non-material instructions of DNA.
This thinking can be applied to DNA: since "the basic coding is the cause (and thus reflects an initial purpose) rather than the consequence, [the top-down approach] gives a much better paradigm for understanding the molecular machinery which is now consistent with known thermodynamic principles." McIntosh explains that the low-entropy state of biological systems is the result of the workings of machines, which must be built by intelligence:

It has often been asserted that the logical entropy of a non-isolated system could reduce, and thereby new information could occur at the expense of increasing entropy elsewhere, and without the involvement of intelligence. In this paper, we have sought to refute this claim on the basis that this is not a sufficient condition to achieve a rise in local order. One always needs a machine in place to make use of an influx of new energy and a new machine inevitably involves the systematic raising of free energies for such machines to work. Intelligence is a pre-requisite.
He concludes his paper with an express endorsement of intelligent design: "the implication of this paper is that it supports the so-called intelligent design thesis - that an intelligent designer is needed to put the information into the biological system."


I have no doubt that the editors of International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics will take much heat for publishing this paper. Even though they make it clear that "[t]he reader should not assume that the Journal or the reviewers agree with the conclusions of the paper," they should be commended for their courage in publishing it it and calling it a "a valuable contribution that challenges the conventional vision that systems can design and organise themselves." They write, "The Journal hopes that the paper will promote the exchange of ideas in this important topic" -- showing that there is hope for true academic freedom on the debate over ID in some corners of the scientific community.

Protein folds V. Darwin.