On atheism's creation myth.

Daniel Dennett and Secular Creationism
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

“This,” says an article in  The New Yorker  profiling materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett, “to a first approximation, is the secular story of our creation.” Here it is:

Four billion years ago, Earth was a lifeless place. Nothing struggled, thought, or wanted. Slowly, that changed. Seawater leached chemicals from rocks; near thermal vents, those chemicals jostled and combined. Some hit upon the trick of making copies of themselves that, in turn, made more copies. The replicating chains were caught in oily bubbles, which protected them and made replication easier; eventually, they began to venture out into the open sea. A new level of order had been achieved on Earth. Life had begun.

The tree of life grew, its branches stretching toward complexity. Organisms developed systems, subsystems, and sub-subsystems, layered in ever-deepening regression. They used these systems to anticipate their future and to change it. When they looked within, some found that they had selves—constellations of memories, ideas, and purposes that emerged from the systems inside. They experienced being alive and had thoughts about that experience. They developed language and used it to know themselves; they began to ask how they had been made.

Life, Dennett thinks, “created itself, not in a miraculous, instantaneous whoosh, but slowly, slowly.” So it’s not a matter of a “miracle” exactly, but you might say, and some have put it this way, a “near miracle.”

On such “near miracles” and the origin of life:

Israeli philosopher of science Iris Fry has written very insightfully about the concept. She argues that the “near miracle” position, widely held in evolutionary theory (e.g., by Crick, Mayr, Dawkins, Monod), amounts to what she calls a kind of secular creationism. Note the language in The New Yorker that comes close to acknowledging this. In fact, she goes further, contending that “near miracle” actually implies creationism, and renders impossible any empirical study of the origin of life.

When someone says, “The origin of life was a near-miracle,” or words to that effect, what they mean is this:

Well, abiogenesis happened, somehow, but I haven’t a clue how, and the evidence points away from a discoverable natural process or pathway. BUT IT WASN’T INTELLIGENT DESIGN. And I reject out of hand any argument or evidence that suggests otherwise.


Such a position shuts down scientific inquiry absolutely. For more, see Fry’s paper, “Are the Different Hypotheses on the Emergence of Life as Different as They Seem?” in Biology & Philosophy 10 (1995), pp. 389-417.

Thunder lizards get their family album tweaked.

Dinosaur Phylogeny Gets a “Radical Shakeup,” Requiring Convergent Evolution
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

A paper in Nature, “A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution,” presents fresh ideas about dinosaur relationships that reveal the extent to which dinosaur traits are not distributed in a treelike pattern. One news article calls this a “radical shakeup of the dinosaur family tree” because it would overturn a century of evolutionary thinking about dinosaurs:

The analysis, which has already sparked controversy in the academic world, suggests that the two basic groups into which dinosaurs have been classified for more than a century need a fundamental rethink. If proved correct, the revised version of the family tree would overthrow some of the most basic assumptions about this chapter of evolutionary history, including what the common ancestor of all dinosaurs looked like and where it came from.

The basic issue is this: For the past hundred years, dinosaurs were classified into two primary groupings. Dinosaurs within Ornithischia, which have hips like a bird, and dinosuars within Saurischia, with hips like a lizard. Before you read any further, don’t presume that these old divisions foreshadow the now-popular theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs: the theropod dinosaurs, the group from which birds supposedly evolved, belong to the “lizard-hipped” Saurischia and are not “bird-hipped”! This obviously bothered some proponents of the bird-to-dino hypothesis.

The new scheme aims to fix this annoying problem. Under the new classification, theropods are now grouped with dinos that used to be within the bird-hipped Ornithischia, such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops. This new designation, “Ornithoscelida,” is supposed to create a fundamental group of dinosaurs that is less hostile to the dino-to-bird theory.

The grouping of course pleases longtime dino-to-bird advocates like Kevin Padian, president of the National Center for Science Education. He defends the classification in a News & Views article in Nature, stating that “their results cannot be dismissed as simply a different opinion or speculation.”

Indeed, The Guardian reports that people are already using this new classification scheme to imagine feathered dinosaurs where they don’t exist — on totally non-feathered types of dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Triceratops! Consider these comments by the study’s lead author, Cambridge University graduate student Matthew Baron:

The findings also support the possibility that dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops, traditionally portrayed as tank-like armoured beasts, may have been feathered.

[…]

“Maybe we did have fluffy Triceratops and fluffy Stegosaurus,” said Baron. “It could be that the feathers would have been poking out between the scales, it could have been a beautiful fluffy colourful plumage … or scales covered in downy feathers. It’s possible.”

Such unwarranted speculation hints at what agendas may truly be driving this new classification scheme.

In any case, the official reason for the new view of dinosaurs is that it better explains the distribution of traits among various dinosaur species. For example, the technical paper explains that the old Ornithischia/Saurischia division required convergent evolution to clarify the hand anatomy of early dinosaurs — a problem the authors claim to solve:

Recent studies have led to a general consensus that the earliest dinosaurs were relatively small and bipedal, and this idea finds further support within our hypothesis, as both basal sauropodomorphs and basal ornithoscelidans are small bipeds. Manus anatomy in many early dinosaurs also appears to be very similar, with supinated, non-weight-bearing, ‘grasping’ hands appearing in basal saurischians such as Herrerasaurus and basal ornithoscelidans such as Heterodontosaurus and Eoraptor. As pointed out in several previous studies, these similarities were often considered to represent convergences given the supposedly distant relationship between taxa such as Heterodontosaurus and Herrerasaurus. Within our new framework, the supinated, grasping hands seen in some early taxa are interpreted as the primitive dinosaurian condition.

But solving one problem sometimes creates another, and it does so here. By reorganizing major parts of the dinosaur tree, evolutionary paleontologists are now confronted with the prospect of rampant convergent evolution among traits found in various carnivorous dinosaurs as required by their new phylogeny. The technical paper in Nature explains these difficulties:

This new tree topology requires redefinition and rediagnosis of Dinosauria and the subsidiary dinosaurian clades. In addition, it forces re-evaluations of early dinosaur cladogenesis and character evolution, suggests that hypercarnivory was acquired independently in herrerasaurids and theropods, and offers an explanation for many of the anatomical features previously regarded as notable convergences between theropods and early ornithischians. … Herrerasauridae is recovered as the sister clade to Sauropodomorpha, suggesting that some of the theropod-like features of their anatomy have evolved independently of those found in theropods. This is most likely a direct result of their fully carnivorous feeding strategy; in our hypothesis a fully carnivorous feeding strategy is not recovered as the plesiomorphic condition for Dinosauria and we are forced to interpret some of the anatomical similarities between herrerasaurids and theropods as convergences. The convergent evolution of hypercarnivore morphology within Dinosauria raises interesting questions about the drivers of early dinosaur evolution. For example, did a dentition composed exclusively of sharp, recurved and serrated teeth, such as those that are present in representatives from both of these clades, evolve independently of each other? The earliest representatives of each of the major dinosaur clades often possess at least some recurved, serrated teeth, most commonly as part of a heterodont dentition. However, no known members of Sauropodomorpha or Ornithischia exhibit dentitions that are exclusively composed of recurved, serrated teeth, nor does the early theropod Eoraptor. Hence, it seems probable, within our new framework, that at least some of the recurved, serrated teeth that make up the dentition of derived theropods and herrerasaurids have convergently adopted this morphology. Furthermore, the rostral extension of the dentary tooth row appears also to be convergent between theropods and herrerasaurids; in members of both clades, the dentary tooth row extends to the rostral tip of the dentary.

And then of course there is the fact that lizard-hipped dinosaurs are now separated into two different groups. Presumably that also would require convergent evolution.

Convergent evolution is a problem for Darwinian evolution because it means that biological similarity does not necessarily result from inheritance from a common ancestor. This undermines the basic logic used to construct phylogenetic trees, and casts into doubt the entire project of tree-construction.

The reality is that no matter what classification scheme you use, a dinosaur tree is going to require convergent evolution. This is because key dinosaur traits are not distributed in a tree-like manner.

Because of the convergent evolution it requires, the new hypothesis has already proven controversial. As Nature News reports:

Hans-Dieter Sues, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, says the study should stoke discussion. “But I caution against totally reorganizing the dinosaur family tree just yet,” he says. For one thing, palaeontologists’ analyses of relations among species are keenly sensitive to which species are considered, as well as which and how many anatomical features are included, he says.

The discovery of new dinosaur species or more complete specimens of those already known might also drive future analyses back toward more currently accepted arrangements of dinosaur lineages, Sues says.

What’s fascinating is that this whole kerfuffle was started by the discovery of a new species of dinosaur named Saltopus elginensis. But when you consider the poor quality of this fossil, it casts more doubt on the proposal, as The Guardian, again, explains:

Langer argues that, while Saltopus might be statistically a good candidate for a common ancestor, given the patchy nature of the fossil it is a poor choice. Rather than attempting to identify the true ancestor of all dinosaurs – which can never be known — scientists’ aim is to find an animal that is a decent approximation of the general form and traits displayed by that ancestor we know must have existed.

The fossil, found in a Lossiemouth quarry, comprises a pair of legs, some hip bones, and vertebrae, all of which have been badly squashed.

“It looks like a chicken carcass after a Sunday roast,” Baron acknowledges.

The Guardian finds scientists who are skeptical of the new proposal:

As anticipated, the conclusions have been met with robust criticism from some rival scientists, including Max Langer, a respected palaeontologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

“There’s nothing special about this guy,” he said. “Saltopus is the right place in terms of evolution but you have much better fossils that would be better candidates for such a dinosaur precursor.

[…]

Vinther, whose background is in mollusc research, said that unlike most dinosaur scientists he was not invested in any particular result, but added: “I’ve heard a bit of murmuring already from people who are not too thrilled about this hypothesis.”


Given the controversy that’s already brewing, it seems likely that over time critics will adduce further reasons to doubt this new dinosaur classification scheme.

File under "well said" XLVIII

A clever person knows what to say; A wise person knows when to say it.

    Anonymous 

While the rest of the world looks the other way.

Why the idolising of higher ed may be blinding us to the path to true success.

On Darwin v. Mendel.

Geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig on Darwinism and Gregor Mendel’s “Sleeping Beauty”
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Gregor Mendel is, of course, the father of the science of genetics. In a new peer-reviewed paper, “Mendel’s Paper on the Laws of Heredity (1866): Solving the Enigma of the Most Famous ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in Science,” geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig asks why Mendel’s theory of heredity, developed in the 19th century, was initially rejected or ignored by many other scientists. Writing in the journal eLS, Dr. Lönnig concludes that it’s because at that time, the scientific community was completely enamored with Darwinian evolution and unwilling to consider ideas that did not fit with Darwin’s models of evolution and inheritance.

Darwinism cast a shadow over the study of heredity. As Lönnig puts it:

His [Mendel’s] analysis, discernment and exposition of the laws of heredity as well as his views on evolution diametrically defied and contradicted the ideas and convictions of Darwin and his followers.… [T]he basic reason for the neglect of the laws of heredity was essentially this: To imply something like a static definition of the species by constant hereditary elements right into a momentous process vigorously favouring the Darwinian revolution (continuous evolution by natural selection without any teleology intimately combined with the inheritance of acquired characteristics, to underscore the latter, often forgotten point once more) was met — although usually silently — with skepticism, deliberate ignorance and strong opposition.

In other words, if you implied as Mendel did that species were static, you were doing that at a time when science “vigorously” favored Darwinism. That is why Mendel’s ideas met with skepticism and opposition. More:

And there is no doubt concerning Darwin’s overwhelming victory in the battle for the scientific minds in the nineteenth century, so much so that Mendel’s performance before the Natural History Society of Brünn was even met with “scornful laughter”….

Lönnig quotes Italian biologist Giuseppe Sermonti who concurs with this explanation: “What really happened was that Mendel ruled out almost all the forces that Darwin had invoked to explain evolution.”

Mendel’s theory of inheritance produces “all-or-nothing traits.” Lönnig explains that this conflicted with Darwin’s ideas about gradual evolution:

[P]erhaps even more important, Mendel’s discoveries cast doubt on another definitely decisive and essential part of Darwin’s theory: continuous evolution, for which Darwin had postulated “infinitesimally small inherited variations,” “steps not greater than those separating fine varieties” and “insensibly fine steps,” “for natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest and slowest steps.”

According to Lönnig, “[I]n Mendel’s view, endless evolution was neither probable for cultivated plants nor for species in the wild.”

What does the phrase “sleeping beauty” refer to in Lönnig’s title? In a science context, it means an idea or publication that lies dormant for decades, “asleep,” until being rediscovered and winning deserved acclaim and acceptance. From an article on this fascinating subject:

The most famous case of a “sleeping beauty” was that of Gregor Mendel’s seminal study on plant genetics that received widespread recognition 31 years after its publication. “Sleeping beauties” led to Nobel prizes (Herman Staudinger, Nobel in Chemistry 1953; Peyton Rous, Nobel in Chemistry 1966). They usually reflect premature discoveries that the scientific community was not ready to recognize when published. Some suppose that this has to do with most scientists’ tendency to adhere to their established paradigms.


The paradigm in this case was Darwin’s theory. In impeding the emergence of genetics, Darwinian evolution was a science stopper, and not for the first time.

Are the differences between political Islam and democracy irreconcilable?:Pros and cons.

Free speech;Who needs it?:Pros and cons.

Not their finest hour.

A product of Darwinian processes.

Cancer Research Delivers Stark Reminder to Evolutionists
David Klinghoffer 

New research revises the most common understanding of cancer and its causes, while also serving as a telling reminder to evolutionists. From  Science News:

Random mutations play large role in cancer, study finds

Researchers have identified new enemies in the war on cancer: ones that are already inside cells and that no one can avoid.

Random mistakes made as stem cells divide  are responsible for about two-thirds of the mutations in cancer cells, researchers from Johns Hopkins University report in the March 24 Science. Across all cancer types, environment and lifestyle factors, such as smoking and obesity, contribute 29 percent of cancer mutations, and 5 percent are inherited.

That finding challenges the common wisdom that cancer is the product of heredity and the environment. “There’s a third cause and this cause of mutations is a major cause,” says cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein.

…

To attribute so many cancer mutations to chance seems to negate public health messages, [biological physicist Bartlomiej Waclaw of the University of Edinburgh] says, and some people may find the calculation that 66 percent of cancer-associated mutations are unavoidable disturbing because they spend a lot of time trying to prevent cancer. “It’s important to consider the randomness, or bad luck, that comes with cellular division,” he says.

Darwinian theory attributes the most wonderful creativity to the power of random mutations (sifted by natural selection). Orthodox evolutionists believe that such mutations are the very fuel of innovation, producing exquisite function and complexity, all the wonders of life. This research tells us what we already know, not merely believe: typos, mistakes, and the like are a source of disorder, disfunction, and death.


When it comes to explaining major biological novelties, the evolutionary story is a matter of extrapolation and imagination. Biologic Institute molecular biologist Douglas Axe tweets: “Cancer is what random mutations really can produce.”

Examining yet another challenge to life's no free lunch law.

Breaking Sticks
Winston Ewert December 5, 2015 5:30 AM

This is the fourth and final post in a series in which I have examined criticisms from Joe Felsenstein (University of Washington geneticist) and Tom English (Oklahoma City computer scientist) in response to two arguments for intelligent design: specified complexity and conservation of information. Look here for Parts 1, 2, and 3.

A large portion of post by Tom English, "The Law of Conservation of Information is defunct," is devoted to an example of conservation of information involving broken sticks. He argues that we can obtain active information without any bias in the initial process. Since active information is a measurement of bias in a system, this would mean that our use of active information was fundamentally broken.

English's process involves sticks that are broken into six pieces randomly. The sticks are six meters long (English does not give units, so I picked meters). The average length of a broken stick will be one meter. However the process is such that some pieces will end up much longer than other pieces.

English claims to compute the active information of these outcomes:

Suppose that the length of the 3rd segment of the broken stick is 2. Then the evolutionary process is biased in favor of outcome 3 by a factor of 2. ... These biases are what Dembski et al. refer to as active information.

This calculation is absolutely not active information. Active information is defined as being the logarithm of relative probabilities. English can be forgiven for skipping the logarithm, but using the observed length of a stick instead of a probability is nonsensical. If English wishes to criticize active information, he should actually follow the definitions of active information.

Let's consider another scenario, which may be what English is getting at. I have two coins. One is weighted so that 99 percent of the time it lands on heads. The other is weighted so that 99 percent of the time it lands on tails. If I pick a coin at random and flip it once, the result is actually fair despite the use of biased coins. Both heads and tails are equally likely. However, if I flip the coin 100 times, the sequence will be either mostly heads or mostly tails.

Suppose I observe the process of flipping 100 coins, and see that 99 are heads. Then following something like English's logic, I could argue that the probability of heads is 99 percent, and thus calculate positive active information. But this would be incorrect. Estimating the probabilities this way would only be valid for independent events. In this case, the events are all dependent due to sharing the same biased coins.

Let's compare the confused attempt to establish these probabilities with the logic I argued for in the case of birds:

Clearly, some configurations of matter are birds. However, almost all configurations of matter are not birds. If one were to pick randomly from all possible configurations of matter, the probability of obtaining a bird would be infinitesimally small. It is almost impossible to obtain a bird by random sampling uniformly from all configurations of matter.

Note that I am not saying the frequency of birds observed in biology can somehow represent an estimate of the probability of birds. It is in fact a reductio ad absurdum that implicitly invokes specified complexity. If birds were no more probable than any other configuration of matter, the total probability of birds would be miniscule. In the terminology of specified complexity, they would be highly complex. This in itself would not be a problem, but since birds constitute a specification, their presence gives us good reason to reject that the idea that birds are no more likely than any other configuration of matter. For birds to have arisen in the universe, they must be probable enough that they would no longer constitute a large amount of specified complexity. That's why I can argue that birds must be more probable than random chance.

English's attempt to dismantle conservation of information fails. It is based on a confused interpretation of how to compute active information. He does not compute probability, nor provide any justification for treating the length of a stick as a probability. Even if I consider a related scenario that has probabilities, anything like his technique is invalid for estimating probability. The method we use for arguing that the probability is higher is entirely different from the caricature presented by English.

Conclusion

English and Felsenstein have been engaged in knocking down straw men. Felsenstein attacks a version of specified complexity that Dembski never articulated. He misrepresents the actual idea promoted by Dembski as being pointlessly circular. Both critics misrepresent conservation of information as a simplistic argument that only intelligence can produce active information. They misrepresent us as claiming that Darwinian evolution is only as good as a random guess, despite the explicit published demonstration that repeated queries are a source of active information. English misrepresents our reasons for thinking that birds are more probable than a random configuration of matter. Their arguments are valid objections to these straw men, but our actual arguments lie elsewhere.

What, then, would be necessary to demonstrate that we are wrong? As I've argued, conservation of information shows that evolution requires a source of active information. We have not proven that such a source must be teleological. Nevertheless, we've argued that the sources present in available models of evolution are indeed teleological. Our argument would be refuted by the demonstration of a model with a source that is both non-teleological and provides sufficient active information to account for biological complexity.

Felsenstein hints at trying to do this when he talks about the weakness of long-range physics interactions. He thinks that by invoking these interactions he can obtain "quite possibly all" of the necessary active information to account for complexity in biology.

Some, quite possibly all, of Dembski and Marks's "active information" is present as soon as we have genotypes that have different fitnesses, and genotypes whose phenotypes are determined using the ordinary laws of physics.

However, when discussing the amount of active information that he can obtain from his assumption, he can only go as far as:

[T]he ordinary laws of physics, with their weakness of long-range interactions, lead to fitness surfaces much smoother than white-noise fitness surfaces.

Arguing that the weakness of long-range interactions produces sufficient active information to explain complexity in biology because it outperforms random search is like arguing that I can outrun a jet because I move much faster than a snail. However, if Felsenstein could demonstrate that the weakness of long-range physics interactions, or something equivalently non-teleological, could account for the active information in biology, it would dismantle the argument we have made. Furthermore, it would be a massive contribution to the fields of computational intelligence and evolutionary biology.


I cannot prove that Felsenstein cannot do this. I can point to past attempts, which all incorporated teleological decisions. They all show the effect of having been designed. My prediction is that you cannot build a working model of Darwinian evolution without invoking teleology. Felsenstein, English, or anyone else is invited to attempt to falsify my prediction.

Reviewing peer review.

Fleming's discovery of penicillin couldn't get published today. That's a huge problem

Updated by Julia Belluz on December 14, 2015, 7:00 a.m. ET


After toiling away for months on revisions for a single academic paper, Columbia University economist Chris Blattman started wondering about the direction of his work.

He had submitted the paper in question to one of the top economics journals earlier this year. In return, he had gotten back nearly 30 pages of single-space comments from peer reviewers (experts in the field who provide feedback on a scientific manuscript). It had taken two or three days a week over three months to address them all.

So Blattman asked himself some simple but profound questions: Was all this work on a single study really worth it? Was it best to spend months revising one study — or could that time have been better spent on publishing multiple smaller studies? He wrote about the conundrum on his blog:

Some days my field feels like an arms race to make each experiment more thorough and technically impressive, with more and more attention to formal theories, structural models, pre-analysis plans, and (most recently) multiple hypothesis testing. The list goes on. In part we push because want to do better work. Plus, how else to get published in the best places and earn the respect of your peers?

It seems to me that all of this is pushing social scientists to produce better quality experiments and more accurate answers. But it’s also raising the size and cost and time of any one experiment.

Over the phone, Blattman explained to me that in the age of "big data," high-quality scientific journals are increasingly pushing for large-scale, comprehensive studies, usually involving hundreds or thousands of participants. And he's now questioning whether a course correction is needed.

Though he can't prove it yet, he suspects social science has made a trade-off: Big, time-consuming studies are coming at the cost of smaller and cheaper studies that, taken together, may be just as valuable and perhaps more applicable (or what researchers call "generalizable") to more people and places.

Do we need more "small" science?

Over in Switzerland, Alzheimer's researcher Lawrence Rajendran has been asking himself a similar question: Should science be smaller again? Rajendran, who heads a laboratory at the University of Zurich, recently founded a journal called Matters. Set to launch in early 2016, the journal aims to publish "the true unit of science" — the observation.

Rajendran notes that Alexander Fleming’s simple observation that penicillin mold seemed to kill off bacteria in his petri dish could never be published today, even though it led to the discovery of lifesaving antibiotics. That's because today's journals want lots of data and positive results that fit into an overarching narrative (what Rajendran calls "storytelling") before they'll publish a given study.

"You would have to solve the structure of penicillin or find the mechanism of action," he added.

But research is complex, and scientific findings may not fit into a neat story — at least not right away. So Rajendran and the staff at Matters hope scientists will be able to share insights in this journal that they may not been able to publish otherwise. He also thinks that if researchers have a place to explore preliminary observations, they may not feel as much pressure to exaggerate their findings in order to add all-important publications to their CVs.

Smaller isn't always better

Science has many structural problems to grapple with right now: The peer review system doesn't function all that well, many studies are poorly designed so their answers are unreliable, and replications of experiments are difficult to execute and very often fail. Researchers have estimated that about $200 billion — or about 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on poorly designed and redundant studies.

A big part of the reason science funders started emphasizing large-scale studies is because they were trying to avoid common problems with smaller studies: The results aren't statistically significant, and the sample sizes may be too tiny and therefore unrepresentative.


It's not clear that emphasizing smaller-scale studies and observations will solve these problems. In fact, publishing more observations may just add to the noise. But as Rajendran says, it's very possible that important insights are being lost in the push toward large-scale science. "Science can be small, big, cure diseases," he said. "It can just be curiosity-driven. Academic journals shouldn't block the communication of small scientific observations."

The global brotherhood of Jehovah's servants rallies.

MARCH 21, 2017
RUSSIA

Jehovah’s Witnesses Mobilize Global Response to Threat of Ban in Russia

NEW YORK—Threatened with an imminent ban on their worship in Russia, Jehovah’s Witnesses are responding with a direct appeal to Kremlin and Supreme Court officials for relief through a global letter-writing campaign. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses is inviting the over 8,000,000 Witnesses worldwide to participate.

On March 15, 2017, Russia’s Ministry of Justice filed a claim with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to label the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia as extremist and liquidate it. The claim also seeks to ban the activities of the Administrative Center. If the Supreme Court upholds this claim, the Witnesses’ national headquarters near St. Petersburg will be shut down. Subsequently, some 400 registered Local Religious Organizations would be liquidated, outlawing the services of over 2,300 congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. The branch property, as well as places of worship used by Witnesses throughout the country, could be seized by the State. Additionally, individual Jehovah’s Witnesses would become subject to criminal prosecution for merely carrying out their worship activities. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the claim on April 5.

“The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses wants to heighten attention to this critical situation,” states David A. Semonian, a spokesman at the Witnesses’ world headquarters. “Prosecuting non-violent, law-abiding citizens as if they were terrorists is clearly a misapplication of anti-extremist laws. Such prosecution is based on completely false grounds.”

The Witnesses’ global campaign is not without precedent. Nearly 20 years ago, Witnesses wrote to defend their fellow worshippers in Russia in response to a smear campaign by some members of the government in power at the time. Additionally, Witnesses have initiated past letter-writing campaigns to motivate government officials to end persecution of Witnesses in other countries, including Jordan, Korea, and Malawi.


“Reading the Bible, singing, and praying with fellow worshippers is clearly not criminal,” adds Mr. Semonian. “We hope that our global letter-writing campaign will motivate Russian officials to stop this unjustifiable action against our fellow worshippers.”

Media Contacts:

International: David A. Semonian, Office of Public Information, +1-845-524-3000


Russia: Yaroslav Sivulskiy, +7-812-702-2691

Addresses

 President of Russia
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
23 Ilyinka Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation
103132

 Prime Minister of Russia
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev
2 Krasnopresnenskaya Naberezhnaya
Moscow
Russian Federation
103274


 Prosecutor General
Yury Yakovlevich Chayka
Prosecutor General’s Office of the
Russian Federation
15A Bolshaya Dmitrovka Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation
GSP-3
125993

 Minister of Justice
Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov
Ministry of Justice of the Russian
Federation
14 Zhitnaya Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation
GSP-1
119991


 Minister of Foreign Affairs
Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Russian Federation
32/34 Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square
Moscow
Russian Federation
119200

 The Chairman of the Supreme
Court
Viacheslav Mikhailovich Lebedev
Supreme Court of Russian Federation
15 Povarskaya Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation

121069

Predators:the plough of God

Re:Darwinian theology.

Flip-Sides of the Warfare Thesis
Cornelius Hunter

Empirical observations of the world don’t suggest that it arose by natural law and chance events. But that is what evolutionists believe, and so it is always interesting to see where they are coming from. What underlying beliefs or influences drive one to the age-old position of Epicureanism? Why would one believe the world arose by randomly swerving atoms, or randomly mutating genomes?

Dennis Venema, co-author of Adam and the Genome, a new book promoting evolution, makes his influences clear from the very first sentence:

Like many evangelicals, I (Dennis) grew up in an environment that was suspicious of science in general, and openly hostile to evolution in particular.

That speaks volumes. Venema is a Fellow of Biology with BioLogos. As he recounts, he is a refugee from creationism and what I call the flip-side of the Warfare Thesis. The Warfare Thesis holds that religion, and Christianity in particular, often conflicts with and opposes scientific advances. It can be traced at least as far back as Voltaire with his 18th-century mythical retelling of the Galileo Affair. Many later contributors embellished and established the myth that was eventually labeled the “Warfare Thesis.”

While the Warfare Thesis can be found in the evolution literature, creationists have their own version. In this reverse, or flip-side, the idea is that evolutionists are just atheists, pushed to believe in a naturalistic origins because of the rejection of God. To be sure, atheism today has been aided and abetted by evolution’s popularity. But from Epicureanism to Darwinism to neo-Darwinism and beyond, it is theism, not a-theism, that is doing the heavy lifting.

Why did Richard Bentley charge Thomas Burnet (an Anglican cleric who appealed to Scripture in his popular 17th-century cosmogony) with atheism? Burnet was indeed a latitudinarian, but hardly an atheist. Why did Charles Hodge charge Darwin’s new theory as atheism in disguise? Darwin was hardly a mainline Christian but, like Burnet, his 1859 tome on evolution was chock-full of theological discussion and claims about the Creator. Darwin’s strong arguments were based on theism, not a-theism.

These are the A-side and B-side of the Warfare Thesis. As Venema explains, he was taught that evolution was “pushed by atheists,” that Darwin and his theory “were evil,” and their mere utterance was tantamount to cursing, “and not mildly.” Evolution “was bad,” and “Science and God’s actions, at least in this case, were placed in opposition to each other.”

This flip-side of the Warfare Thesis sets its adherents up for a fall. One simply is in no position to comprehend the deep theology at work in Epicurean and evolutionary thought. Darwin presented his arguments with a patina of scientific jargon, and that formed the template for the genre. Consider this gem from Chapter 6 of the Origin:

Thus, we can hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose or of the frigate-bird are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe that the similar bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore-leg of the horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures to inheritance.

One can read through such passages and almost conclude that Darwin is merely presenting empirical scientific reasoning and conclusions. And so it is with today’s evolutionary reasoning, such as this typical textbook example:

If the 11 species had independent origins, there is no reason why their [traits] should be correlated.

It all sounds so scientific. But of course it is not. This is the great deception of evolutionary thought. And those under the influence of the B-side of the Warfare Thesis — believing for certain that evolutionists are nothing more than atheist rascals — lack the tools and knowledge to reckon with it. Venema never had a chance. It was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Unfortunately his story is all too common.

Venema also discusses another important factor in his thinking, and again, it is all too common. Evolutionists tend to place great value on theories. To be sure, theories are extremely important in science. But for centuries, we have seen an unhealthy, undue, emphasis on theories above the importance of following the data. Better to have a theory that doesn’t work very well than to have no theory at all (and no, creationism is not a theory).

Venema makes clear that this way of thinking was an important influence for him. At an early age he found biology to be a “dreadful bore compared with physics and chemistry.” Physics and chemistry were appealing because they were about principles. Biology “seemed to have no organizing principle behind it, whereas the others did.” Indeed, chemistry and physics had “underlying principles that gave order and cohesion to a body of facts.”

With this foundation, Venema was an evolutionist waiting to happen.


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/flip-sides-of-the-warfare-thesis/#sthash.advQ4kED.dpuf

Engineering logic v. Darwinian logic.

New Skull-Hole Study Is No Evidence for Evolution
Jonathan Witt

A Science Daily headline exclaims, “Human skull evolved along with two-legged walking, study confirms.” Actually, the study confirmed no such thing. The headline is a pro-evolution gloss unwarranted by the findings.

They were reporting the publication of a scholarly paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. The paper itself waits until the first sentence of the Abstract to start overselling the evolutionary implications: “A more anteriorly positioned foramen magnum evolved in concert with bipedalism at least four times within Mammalia.” The paper doesn’t so much fail to show this; it never seriously attempts to do so. Its aims are elsewhere.

The study looked at various bipedal mammals, compared them to some quadruped relatives, and found that the foramen magnum — the hole for the spinal column in the base of the skull — tends to sit farther forward on the bipeds.

The findings aren’t revolutionary. They confirm a longstanding view. But if they hold up, they will give fossil hunters an improved diagnostic for deciding if a mammalian fossil skull was from a biped.

That’s interesting and useful, but it’s not evidence of evolution. That is the case for multiple reasons.

Engineering Logic vs. Darwinian Illogic

Having the foramen magnum closer to the front of the skull’s base makes good engineering sense in the case of mammalian bipeds. The features, in other words, appear to come as a matched set for good design reasons.

The matched set finding isn’t weird-world engineering either. The matched set phenomenon is commonplace in engineering. Bicycles have one kind of axle and four-wheeled vehicles another. On a car or wagon, those long axle shafts and the four-wheel architecture appear together because they make engineering sense.

There are also good engineering reasons to doubt the Darwinian evolution of quadruped to biped. Vast oceans of reduced fitness lie between a well-integrated quadruped design and a well-integrated biped design. Ann Gauger goes into some detail about this on pages 21-25 of Science and Human Origins. Here, suffice to say that evolving one tiny step at a time from quadruped to biped — gradually re-engineering all the numerous integrated details by random mutations — would force our aspiring quadruped to spend many generations distinctly less fit than he was before.

That’s a problem for evolution because natural selection doesn’t back less functional cripples generation after generation for the mere hope of a glorious upright and striding biped somewhere in the distant future. Natural selection is all about the here and now.

Finally, the study doesn’t describe a finely graded series of fossils moving from quadruped to various intermediates to bipeds. The study is all about the two distinct groups — biped and quadruped.

As for the misleading claims that the study confirms evolution, there is a quick fix at least for the opening words of the Science Daily article. The fix involves a deletion of information rather than the creation of new information (fitting since Darwinism’s verified success stories involve loss of biological information).

In this case, just cut the first three words, thus: “The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull — a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and the University of Texas at Austin.”


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/new-skull-hole-study-is-no-evidence-for-evolution/#sthash.ixVBdtYZ.dpuf

Yet more on high quality ignorance.

Asking the Right Questions: My Visit to Brown University and MIT -
Brian Miller

This past week I had the privilege of speaking at Brown University and MIT about the evidence for design in nature. I covered the topics of fine-tuning in the laws of physics, the thermodynamics of the origin of life, and biological information. I was deeply impressed by the students at both schools, particularly in their responses to my presentations.

Several of the participants had never heard the evidence for design, so they were visibly struck by its weight and the enormity of its implications. The questions were particularly thoughtful, sincere, and relevant. They were also very common in such discussions, so I thought I would address each of them.

In relation to the fine-tuning of the universe, two issues came up, as they almost always do.

Question: If the laws of physics were different, could not some other type of life have evolved in those alternative conditions?

Response: Many of the laws of physics have to be fantastically fine-tuned for a diversity of atoms to appear in sufficient abundance for any type of life. For instance, if the masses of the protons and neutrons were not just right, we would not have any of the atoms, such as carbon, needed for any type of life. Or, if gravity were not correctly set, planets would never have formed. Without planets, no type of life would have been possible.

Question: Does not the fact that we are here to observe the universe mean that the universe had to have the needed parameters for life to exist? Moreover, if a multiverse exists consisting of an infinite number of universes, we could simply have had the good fortune of ending up in the universe with the required properties.

Response: To better understand the questions, imagine the cousin of a state lottery commissioner winning the lottery twenty years in a row. The police then visit the commissioner and accuse him of wrongdoing, since the odds of a given person winning that many times is so fantastically low. The commissioner responds that we could be living in a multiverse with countless numbers of lotteries happening on planets in different universes at the same time. We just happen to live in the right universe where his cousin won so many times. In addition, if he had not won that often, we would not be having this conversation. Clearly, the police would not be satisfied with that explanation. In the same way, the fact that so many parameters are correct for the specific goal of supporting intelligent life points to design. Moreover, every theory proposed to justify the multiverse has itself to be fine-tuned to generate the correct variety of universes. The fine-tuning cannot be escaped.

In the portion of my presentations dealing with the origin of life, I addressed the fact that nature always tends towards high entropy (disorder) and low energy. However, life is both low entropy (highly ordered) and high energy. No natural process would ever take the basic building blocks of life and form a cell, since nature would have to move in the opposite direction from how it always proceeds. In response, I received another standard question.

Question: Cannot a system move from higher to lower entropy locally, if the surrounding environment increases in entropy to compensate for the local change?

Response: A system can only move to lower entropy if the process is exothermic, which means it gives off heat. In that case, the heat that enters the surrounding environment increases the entropy more than the local entropy decreases. However, the formation of a cell corresponds to a decrease in entropy, and in endothermic processes, heat is absorbed. Therefore, both the local system and the surrounding environment go to lower entropy, which is physically impossible.

In the last part of my talk I discussed how the information in the cell points to intelligent design. I received this common question.

Question: Do people not naturally tend to misidentify design in nature, such as seeing a bunny in a cloud? Might we similarly be mistaken in identifying design in the cell?

Response: People might misidentify design, when the evidence is ambiguous. However, when they see a pattern such as Mount Rushmore, they are always correct in inferring design. The amount of information in the simplest possible cell demonstrates the specificity and the level of intentionality seen in Mount Rushmore, not a cloud bunny. Therefore, the conclusion of design is equally valid.

The students commented that they very much enjoyed the discussion, since they never hear the design perspective. And the vast majority wished to stay connected with the sponsoring groups for future conversations. If only all academics could learn to ask the right questions and demonstrate such open mindedness and such a desire for truth.


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/asking-the-right-questions-my-visit-to-brown-university-and-mit/#sthash.Vdue0JHu.dpuf

Yet another Darwinian just so story?

New Skull-Hole Study Is No Evidence for Evolution
Jonathan Witt

A Science Daily headline exclaims, “Human skull evolved along with two-legged walking, study confirms.” Actually, the study confirmed no such thing. The headline is a pro-evolution gloss unwarranted by the findings.

They were reporting the publication of a scholarly paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. The paper itself waits until the first sentence of the Abstract to start overselling the evolutionary implications: “A more anteriorly positioned foramen magnum evolved in concert with bipedalism at least four times within Mammalia.” The paper doesn’t so much fail to show this; it never seriously attempts to do so. Its aims are elsewhere.

The study looked at various bipedal mammals, compared them to some quadruped relatives, and found that the foramen magnum — the hole for the spinal column in the base of the skull — tends to sit farther forward on the bipeds.

The findings aren’t revolutionary. They confirm a longstanding view. But if they hold up, they will give fossil hunters an improved diagnostic for deciding if a mammalian fossil skull was from a biped.

That’s interesting and useful, but it’s not evidence of evolution. That is the case for multiple reasons.

Engineering Logic vs. Darwinian Illogic

Having the foramen magnum closer to the front of the skull’s base makes good engineering sense in the case of mammalian bipeds. The features, in other words, appear to come as a matched set for good design reasons.

The matched set finding isn’t weird-world engineering either. The matched set phenomenon is commonplace in engineering. Bicycles have one kind of axle and four-wheeled vehicles another. On a car or wagon, those long axle shafts and the four-wheel architecture appear together because they make engineering sense.

There are also good engineering reasons to doubt the Darwinian evolution of quadruped to biped. Vast oceans of reduced fitness lie between a well-integrated quadruped design and a well-integrated biped design. Ann Gauger goes into some detail about this on pages 21-25 of Science and Human Origins. Here, suffice to say that evolving one tiny step at a time from quadruped to biped — gradually re-engineering all the numerous integrated details by random mutations — would force our aspiring quadruped to spend many generations distinctly less fit than he was before.

That’s a problem for evolution because natural selection doesn’t back less functional cripples generation after generation for the mere hope of a glorious upright and striding biped somewhere in the distant future. Natural selection is all about the here and now.

Finally, the study doesn’t describe a finely graded series of fossils moving from quadruped to various intermediates to bipeds. The study is all about the two distinct groups — biped and quadruped.

As for the misleading claims that the study confirms evolution, there is a quick fix at least for the opening words of the Science Daily article. The fix involves a deletion of information rather than the creation of new information (fitting since Darwinism’s verified success stories involve loss of biological information).

In this case, just cut the first three words, thus: “The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull — a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and the University of Texas at Austin.”


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/new-skull-hole-study-is-no-evidence-for-evolution/#sthash.ASXxSbbq.dpuf