Instant animals.Just add hype.

Researchers Proclaim: Instant Animals by Chance

Evolution News & Views February 16, 2016 12:06 AM 

An old preacher wrote in his sermon notes, "Point weak; pound pulpit harder." That seems to happen, too, whenever a major new success for evolution is announced. A recent headline from the University of Oregon proclaimed, "A mutation, a protein combo, and life went multicellular." Sarah Kaplan at the Washington Post rose to the pulpit and began with a stirring invocation. "Startling new finding: 600 million years ago, a biological mishap changed everything."

How? Well, in the high-stakes game of evolution, mutations in DNA that get passed on can be like bad photocopies, but...

But if the flaw is wrong in exactly the right way, the incredible can happen: disease resistance, sharper eyesight, swifter feet, big brains, better beaks for Darwin's finches. [Emphasis added.]

Before we can catch our breath, Kaplan pounds the pulpit harder:

In a paper published in the open-access journal eLife this week, researchers say they have pinpointed what may well be one of evolution's greatest copy mess-ups yet: the mutation that allowed our ancient protozoa predecessors to evolve into complex, multi-cellular organisms....

Incredibly, in the world of evolutionary biology, all it took was one tiny tweak, one gene, and complex life as we know it was born.

Kaplan has not even reached the climax of her rhetoric, but before getting swept away by the performance, let's pause to look at the evidence. It comes from a paper in eLife by principal author Kenneth Prehoda at the University of Oregon who, with eight others, reported on the "Evolution of an ancient protein function involved in organized multicellularity in animals."

Basically, they claim that a single mutation "repurposed" an enzyme that made multicellularity possible. A common guanylate kinase enzyme (gk), used by all living things to regulate the supply of nucleotides for the genetic code, underwent a mutation that enabled it to learn a new function. The new GKPID enzyme, found primarily in animals and choanoflagellates, is important for cell adhesion and spindle orientation. The mutation gave it a new shape that enabled it to bind to a different ligand. Sometime later, GKPID found a new partner in Pins, a protein on the inner membrane that (with some helper enzymes) connects to both the spindle microtubule and the complex that receives signals from neighboring cells. Astrobiology Magazine explains why this appears significant:

In cells from a broad range of animal species, the spindle is rotated relative to surrounding cells by a protein scaffold known as the guanylate kinase protein interaction domain (GK-PID). It acts as a kind of molecular carabiner by binding to two different partner molecules: an 'anchor' protein on the inside of the cell membrane that indicates the position of adjacent cells and a motor protein that pulls on mitotic spindle filaments. Once hooked together by GK-PID, the motors pull the chromosomes toward the anchors, orienting new daughter cells in line with neighboring cells.

Prehoda gives the gist of the idea himself in a video clip:

It's a neat story; a random mutation at a critical juncture in the history of life opens up a world of possibilities for cells to work together. It's just what Darwin dreamed of: an unguided process, co-option, innovation, at the right place and the right time to create endless forms most beautiful. No wonder this story reverberated around the world in hyped headlines like Kaplan's. Pound the pulpit harder!

In the wild world of pre-complex life, this development was orders of magnitude better than Twitter for getting organisms organized. Every example of cells collaborating that has arisen since -- from the trilobites of 500 million years ago to the dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and you -- probably relied on it or some other similar mutation.

We'll have to add this one to the explanations for the Cambrian explosion. Mutation -- trilobites!

You can't blame Kaplan and other reporters for taking this supposition and running up the whole evolutionary tree with it. In Astrobiology Magazine's coverage, co-author Joe Thornton said, "That one ancient mutation yielded a wholly new molecular function, which helped set the stage for multicellular animals to eventually evolve." Indeed, Prehoda told the Oregon Register-Guard newspaper:

From a microbiology standpoint, Prehoda said, there's no argument about evolution. "You can make evolution happen on a rapid time scale in the lab," he said. "We've witnessed evolution. Evolution is just a fact, hands down."

Prehoda said this, incidentally, in response to "the ire of anti-evolutionists" when the story went viral. Reporter Diane Dietz says in her article, "University of Oregon researcher's paper on evolution stirs debate; he says the transformation of single-celled organisms to multi-celled creatures occurred more easily than many scientists believed." She continues:

A paper on evolutionary biology he and co-authors published this month on eLifeSciences, an electronic scholarly journal, was ground-breaking enough that scientists nationally took notice -- and so provocative that it became clickbait for opponents of evolutionary theory.

Those anti-evolutionists. All they've got is religion.

By contrast, the so-called intelligent design theory put forth by believers who say a divine entity created humans is based on the idea that organisms are so complex that they couldn't arise from the random, step-by-step process of evolution. As a result, Prehoda now finds his email box stuffed with missives from unhappy anti-evolutionists.

The writers' general message is: "You say we come from cells and monkeys, but we come from God," Prehoda said.

Obviously, that is not how ID advocates argue. Prehoda's story is so beset by scientific and logical flaws it doesn't need divine assistance to point it out. Ann Gauger gave a calm, scholarly critique of a similar claim about the origin of multicellularity last year, without any appeals to God, religion, or personal belief. Following her example:

The claim relies on circumstantial evidence.

It's a little hard to do "molecular time travel" when working with living cells, without presupposing evolutionary common ancestry.

If the guanylate kinase was co-opted to become GKPID, what about all the other things it connects to? Was everything co-opted from something else, including the Pins complex on the membrane, and the microtubules in the spindle complex? You can't push co-option too far, or else you end up borrowing from nothing.

It's nice that cells with GKPID can orient their spindles to neighboring cells, but that's a far cry from multicellularity. If one cell gets the mutation, it still doesn't have any goal to line up with its neighbor. Nothing interesting will happen (unless one presupposes that "evolution" will latch onto this new capability). Indeed, if all the choanoflagellates get the mutation, the best they could do is blindly point to neighboring cells in an unguided, chaotic manner.

The signal from the neighboring cell has to be interpreted. Nothing interesting will happen if the mutant hollers, "I've got my carabiner ready!" and the neighbor is deaf, or responds, "No comprendo."

Ann Gauger's critique of the previous such claim bears repeating: much, much more is involved. One of the "simplest" colonies of all, Volvox, has sexual reproduction, alternation of generations, inversion, digestive enzymes, gene regulation, specialized roles, and more.

The authors use loaded words like ancient and primitive copiously. These terms presuppose what they need to prove about evolution. There's nothing primitive about a choanoflagellate, with its genetic code, ribosomes, flagellum and all the complexities of a living cell.

Even if a guanylate kinase differs from GKPID by one mutation, they are both functional within complex systems and regulatory networks. Many other proteins are structurally similar but have different functions. Similarity does not prove ancestry.

If GKPID appeared by mutation, how did the rest of the cell know what to do with it? There has to be genetic coding and gene regulation. Unless the new function is encoded in harmony with the systems that regulate it, it will be treated as a defect and eliminated. To think it will immediately be useful smacks of Lamarckism.

10. The authors admit a "long time" gap between the mutation and the ability to link up to the Pins complex and the spindle orientation complex. Was this a "latent capacity" sitting around waiting to be utilized? "We agree that this is puzzling," they admit. "Because whatever we say here would be very speculative, we did not go into much detail on this point." Even more puzzling, the GKPID does not bind to the Pins complex in the same organism, but only to one from a fruit fly!

In a moment of epistemic modesty, the authors admit that their supposition doesn't really amount to much. It's a case of glittering generalities at best, sweetened with high hopes.

Our analyses do not establish a complete history of the spindle orientation complex. Many key steps remain to be reconstructed, including how and when the interaction between GKPID and KHC-73 evolved, the mechanisms by which Pins' acquired its linker and GoLoco sequences, and the relationship of these components to other molecular complexes and pathways involved in animal spindle orientation. Despite these knowledge gaps, our observations establish a broad overview of the history of the GKPID complex, provide a detailed mechanistic reconstruction of a key event, and point to the importance of reusing molecules -- and specific surfaces within them -- for fortuitous new purposes that have the potential to become biologically essential.

Unusual for a journal paper, this one includes the dialogue between the reviewers and the authors. The criticisms and responses are well worth reading. Despite the editors' interest in publishing this paper, they were clearly concerned about the authors' tendency to overstate their case.

Our major critique is that the broader interpretation is overstated in terms of the centrality of KHC73-DLG-PINS to spindle orientation in all animals and multicellularity in general, and in terms of external orientation being a unique novelty of animals. We also think that some clarification / caveats are needed regarding the experiments on positioning in Choanoflagellates. Finally, we think the manuscript would benefit from more discussion of some puzzling aspects of the co-evolution of GKPID and PINS (or lack thereof).

The editors charged "overstated" multiple times. Embarrassed, the authors confessed and repented somewhat:

We have modified the text in numerous ways to be more cautious on this point and to base our claims more solidly on what is known in the literature....

More generally, we have gone through the text and have changed our wording to dispel the impression that GKPID complex is the sole driver of spindle orientation in all animals and all cell types and to avoid the implication that the evolution of the GKPID complex explains all instances of spindle orientation in all animals.

Unfortunately, this confession didn't make it into Kaplan's sermon or into Prehoda's bombast, "We've witnessed evolution. Evolution is just a fact, hands down." Overstated? That's an understatement.

Yet more on cessationism Vs.continuationism.

by Tom Pennington

Pastor-Teacher, Countryside Bible Church, Southlake, Texas 

When Grace to You asked me to present the biblical case for cessationism at the Strange Fire conference last October, I was excited about the opportunity. Although I am a convinced cessationist and had addressed this issue with my own congregation, I spent several months studying the Scripture and reading the relevant literature on both sides of this contentious issue. But it wasn’t long before my initial euphoria turned to discouragement. 

The problem was not (as some continuationists argue) because there is insufficient biblical evidence for cessationism to preach on for an hour. My problem was the sheer extravagance of biblical material. I was faced with a difficult decision between equally tempting choices: to spend the hour I was given developing one argument or to present a brief summary of the primary arguments. Both choices were fraught with slippery slopes and gaping chasms. If I concentrated on one argument, the uninformed on both sides of the issue would race to the conclusion that cessationism is a tune with only one string and one note. But if I tried to cover all the main arguments, I would have to leave crucial points and counterpoints on the cutting-room floor, appearing to leave holes in an argument that has none. If you listened to my message at Strange Fire, you know that I eventually opted for the lesser of two evils—the second.   

In light of the difficulty of that decision, I have been fascinated by the responses to the biblical case I presented. Cessationists have written to say that the conference strengthened their confidence in the Scripture. I have heard from practicing charismatics who had been told there are no biblical arguments for cessationism but who were troubled by what they saw in their churches. In God’s providence they listened to Strange Fire, the truth they heard resonated with their hearts, and they have since left the charismatic movement for good.

Frankly, much of the online opposition has been all heat and no light. Some critiques have been so apparently self-defeating that they neither require nor deserve a reasoned response. Among the mostly gracious and careful responses to the case for cessationism, Andrew Wilson’s critique stands out. Several on both sides of the issue have suggested I respond to the issues he raised. So that is what I will do here.

Surprisingly, Wilson devotes the first half of his critique to defending the common arguments for continuationism that I mentioned in passing in my introduction.  First, he quotes the arguments as Tim Challies summarized them, and then he defends them. So I will quote Challies’s summaries and the key portions of Wilson’s critique.

(1) The New Testament doesn’t say they [miraculous gifts] have ceased. But then again, it doesn’t say that they won’t either.

Wilson responds:

The burden of proof is firmly on the shoulders of the one who would place a break at the end of the New Testament period, for the simple reason that, throughout Scripture, substantial changes in the way God communicates with people—and cessationism posits a substantial change . . . —are clearly communicated.

But there were, in fact, two huge changes at the end of the New Testament period—changes that even most charismatics (including Wilson) admit can be discerned from the New Testament but that are not clearly announced in one clarion passage. Those two changes are (1) the end of the unique apostolate and (2) the end of canonical revelation. When charismatics state their case against cessationism as Wilson does, they unintentionally also surrender the field to apostolic succession and ongoing canonical revelation.

(2) 1 Corinthians 13:10 - they [continuationists] say this means that only when Christ returns will the partial gifts of tongues and prophecies cease. This implies that the gifts continue. But this is an uncertain interpretation.

To this argument Wilson responds:

The charismatic case here [1 Corinthians 13:10] is immensely strong (and the overwhelming scholarly consensus in the commentaries would confirm this). For Paul, the imperfect (prophecy, tongues, knowledge) will cease at the arrival of the perfect (the return of Christ, when we shall see him face to face). Not much uncertainty there.

That is a case of both overstatement and misdirection. It is overstatement because a survey of commentaries will reveal as many as ten possible interpretations of what “the perfect” is. It is misdirection in that charismatics ignore that for most of church history this text was used primarily to argue against the continuation of the miraculous gifts. I freely admit that some cessationists have tried to make this text bear too much weight. But it is equally true that many charismatics, including Wilson in the quote above, try to make it bear too much weight in their defense. 

(3) The New Testament speaks only of the church age, and so, [continuationists] argue, the gifts that began the church age should continue throughout it. They say we artificially divide it between apostolic and post-apostolic eras. But they do this, too, by not believing that the apostolic office still continues.

Wilson writes:

Actually, a huge number of charismatics don’t believe this at all. Many believe, for reasons outlined in my recent article in JETS, that even in the New Testament period there were eyewitness apostles (the twelve, Paul, James) and people who never witnessed the resurrection but were referred to as apostles anyway (Apollos, very likely Barnabas, Silas, possibly Timothy, and so on), and that while the eyewitness category ceased with Paul, the other category didn’t.

Here, I confess, I was personally disappointed in Wilson. His comments reveal either that he just read the paraphrased version of my message on Tim Challies’s site or that he was careless—either of which is troubling in a person of his intelligence and education.

If he had listened to my complete message or read the transcript, he would have known that I acknowledged that most charismatics don’t believe there are eyewitness apostles today. That was my point. I specifically said that unless charismatics believe that there are apostles today at the same level as Peter and Paul—and most charismatics don’t—they also divide the church age. And they relegate at least apostleship solely to the apostolic era. They have become de facto cessationists—at least in part.

Positing a second tier of apostles as some do (which ignores any nontechnical, nontitular sense of the word apostolos in the New Testament) doesn’t change the point.  In fact, their protest proves the point. There was a marked difference between the apostolic and postapostolic eras. And by agreeing that the most significant mark of the age of the apostles—the men Jesus Himself appointed and called to be His official proxies—ceased, charismatics tacitly accept one of the key tenets of cessationism.

(4) 500 million professing Christians who claim charismatic experiences can’t all be wrong. But if we accept this, then logically we should accept the miracles attested to by one billion Catholics in the world.  The truth is that 500 million-plus people can be wrong.

Wilson responds:

This is not really a fair representation of any responsible charismatic argument. Of course billions of people can be wrong: billions of people do not believe the gospel, and virtually no charismatic would contest that. A fairer representation would be to say that, in order to explain the enormous number of miraculous experiences testified to by charismatics . . . a cessationist has to resort to an awful lot of accusations of fraud, deliberate deceit and delusion amongst some extremely level-headed, critical and theologically informed individuals.

My statement is not only a fair representation of responsible charismatic argument, it is a very common—albeit informal—argument of reputable charismatic authors and scholars, as well as laymen. To appeal as Wilson does to what he calls the “enormous number of miraculous experiences testified to by charismatics” only reinforces my point. We have to accuse more than a billion Roman Catholics of “fraud, deliberate deceit and delusion” to reject their “miracles,” yet that is exactly what the church has always done—and what I suspect Wilson himself does. If charismatics want to argue that sheer numbers lend credibility to their “miracles,” they have to own the weakness that comes with this argument.

After spending half of his critique on the arguments continuationists use to defend their position, to which I devoted less than five minutes, Wilson comes to the primary arguments I presented.

I began by defining cessationism. Cessationists believe it is neither the Spirit’s plan nor His normal pattern to distribute miraculous spiritual gifts to Christians and churches today as He did in the time of the apostles. Those gifts ceased being normative with the apostles. In Scripture we find at least seven arguments that the miraculous gifts have ceased. Again, since Wilson quotes Challies’s summary of my points, I will as well.

(1) The unique role of miracles.  There were only three primary periods in which God worked miracles through unique men. The first was with Moses; the second was during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha; the third was with Christ and his apostles.  The primary purpose of miracles has always been to establish the credibility of one who speaks the word of God—not just any teacher, but those who had been given direct words by God.

Wilson writes:

The crucial word here, which appears twice and is somewhat mysterious on both occasions, is “primary.” Where in the Bible does it say that the miracles of Moses, Elijah or Elisha are more “primary” than those of Joshua (opening the Jordan and stopping the sun in its tracks isn’t bad), or Samuel (who had the odd prophecy), or David or Solomon, or Isaiah, or Daniel, or for that matter any of the canonical prophets (who, by Pennington’s definition, are exercising miraculous gifts)?

First of all, the point is not about God’s working miracles directly—something He did as He chose in both Old and New Testament history. Instead, the focus was on those epochs in redemptive history when God chose to give men the capacity to work miracles. There is a difference between God’s giving Moses the capacity to perform miracles and God’s directly giving Samson superhuman strength. Samson used the strength God gave him, but he never performed a miracle. And prophecy is a miraculous gift because God miraculously reveals His truth to a man. But the prophet is not performing a miracle.

When you examine the biblical record, it is clear that there were three main time periods when there were miracle-working men. Again, Wilson apparently didn’t listen to my message or read the transcript, because the first period I mentioned was not that of Moses but that of “Moses and Joshua.” And although God performed miracles directly during the ministries of Samuel, David, Isaiah, and Daniel, where is the biblical evidence that they were given miracle-working power in the way Moses and Joshua or Elijah and Elisha were? Create a comprehensive list of miracles performed by men in Scripture—not those performed by God directly—and the resulting list will support the point. In thousands of years of human history, there were only about two hundred years in which God empowered men to work miracles. And even during those years, miracles were not common, everyday events.

Wilson adds:

Where does it say that the “primary” purpose of a miracle is always to establish the credibility of the one who speaks the word of God?  One might have thought the primary purpose of the exodus was to lead Israel out of slavery, and the primary purpose of the fall of Jericho was to defeat God’s enemies, and the primary purpose of the destruction of the Assyrians was to preserve Jerusalem, and so on. And even if the “primary” purpose of all miracles was authenticating a preacher, which cannot be shown, it would by no means indicate that this was the only purpose.

When God granted Moses—the first human miracle worker—the power to work miracles, He gave Moses only one reason: “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you” (Exodus 4:5). I provided a number of other examples throughout the Scripture to demonstrate that God’s primary purpose in giving men power to work miracles was to validate them as His messengers.  Of course, God used Moses’ miracles to free Israel from Egyptian bondage. But why did God give miracle-working capacity to Moses, rather than simply free the Israelites Himself? According to God’s own statement, it was to validate His messenger. At Sinai, no one doubted that Moses spoke for God. Look up the other references I cited and you will find exactly the same pattern.

(2) The end of the gift of apostleship. In two places in the New Testament Paul refers to the apostles as one of the gifts Christ gave his church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4).

Most Christians, including most evangelical charismatics, agree that there are no more apostles like the twelve or like Paul. So at least one New Testament gift—the gift of apostleship—has ceased. That means there is a significant difference in the work of the Spirit between the time of the apostles and today, because one of the most miraculous displays of the Spirit disappeared with the passing of the apostolic age. Once you agree that there are no apostles today at the same level with Peter and Paul, you have admitted there was a major change in the gifting of the Spirit between the Apostolic Age and the post-apostolic age. The one New Testament gift most frequently associated with miracles—the gift of apostleship—ceased.

Wilson responds:

This argument takes us nowhere: all agree that the eyewitness apostles have ceased, and all agree that (say) pastors and teachers have not ceased.  Only if we can show that all New Testament miracles, prophecies, tongues and healings came via apostles—which is patently not the case—would this hold any water at all.

Here, Wilson’s argument isn’t clear, but he seems to be relying on an article he wrote for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) in which he argues for a two-tier approach to apostleship.  He maintains that the Twelve, Paul, and several others were “eyewitness apostles,” and those have ceased. But there are lower level apostles who are the Spirit’s ongoing gift to the church. 

Wilson concludes his JETS article with this:

Within conservative evangelicalism, it has become commonplace to divide the apostolate into two, neat types. There are the Apostles (capital “A”) of Jesus Christ, comprising the twelve, James, Barnabas, possibly Silas, and then finally Paul: eyewitnesses of the resurrection, officers of the church, personally commissioned by Jesus, and with the capacity to write or authorise the scriptures, pioneer into new areas, lay foundations in churches, and exercise authority over them. Then there are the apostles (lower case “a”) of the churches, including Andronicus, Junia, Epaphroditus, the brothers of 2 Corinthians 8:23, and possibly Timothy: messengers that were sent out among the churches, but with no eyewitness appearances or commission from Jesus, and without the capacity to write Scripture, pioneer, lay foundations or exercise authority over churches.  On this view, although there is occasional debate (as to which category, say, Ephesians 4:11 should correspond to), it is theoretically possible to dig up every occurrence of the word apostolos and put it squarely into one of these two categories.

The view that Wilson rejects above is not merely the common view of “conservative evangelicalism.” It is the understanding of historic Christianity and even of many charismatic theologians. Wilson finishes his JETS article by saying that a possible reference to Apollos as an apostle in 1 Corinthians 4:9 (which the entire article argues for but never proves) “may . . . suggest that, according to Paul, although the appearances of the risen Jesus ceased with Paul’s encounter on the Damascus road, the apostoloi did not” (emphasis added). In other words, maybe there is another office in the church—Apostle, Second-Class—that continued after the death of the Paul and the twelve.

The weight of proving this novel idea falls on charismatics. Wilson’s conclusion that the best evidence he can muster “may suggest” a two-tiered apostolate is hardly enough to overturn two millennia of Spirit-enabled interpretation. The argument for cessationism based on the end of the gift of apostleship stands.

(3) The foundational nature of the New Testament apostles and prophets. The New Testament identifies the apostles and prophets as the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20-22). In the context, it is clear that Paul is referring here not to Old Testament prophets but to New Testament prophets. Once the apostles and prophets finished their role in laying the foundation of the church, their gifts were completed.

Wilson:

This [argument] runs aground on the sandbanks of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12-14 in particular, in which it is assumed that local churches experience prophecy in their meetings, yet without such prophecy serving as foundational for the church for all time, or being written down in the canon. Clearly, there is a foundational role for the apostles and prophets of whom Paul speaks in Ephesians (2:20; 3:6), but this in no way implies either that all prophecy has now ceased, or (obviously) that tongues or healings have now ceased.

Most charismatics admit that the New Testament “prophets of whom Paul speaks in Ephesians (Ephesians 2:20; 3:6)” play “a foundational role.”  But then without any clear scriptural support, they assume that the prophecy mentioned in Romans and 1 Corinthians must be lower level prophecies. However, if there are not two levels of prophecy—which remains unproven—then Ephesians 2 is definitive. Both the apostles and prophets were the foundation of the church, and their roles were never intended to last.

(4) The nature of the New Testament miraculous gifts. If the Spirit was still moving as he was in the first century, then you would expect that the gifts would be of the same type. Consider the speaking of tongues. At Pentecost, the languages spoken were already existing, understandable languages. The New Testament gift was speaking in a known language and dialect, not an ecstatic language like you see people speaking in today. Prophecies (which were then infallible) and healings are also different in character today from the NT period.

Wilson writes:

Again, this hits serious problems when it comes to 1 Corinthians 12-14, which scholars widely agree refers to ecstatic speech rather than known earthly languages, and to prophetic revelation which needs to be weighed or judged, rather than instantly being added to the infallible canon of scripture.

Contrary to what Wilson implies, there are many scholarly works and commentaries that do not support the view that 1 Corinthians 14 refers to ecstatic speech. But even more important is the analogy of Scripture. When Luke wrote the book of Acts, he knew what Paul had written six or seven years earlier in 1 Corinthians 14. Moreover, Luke knew what was actually happening in the church in Corinth. Yet without any caveat, Luke defines speaking in tongues as “we hear them speak in our own language” or our own dialect (Acts 2:7-8). 

Wilson:

To say, further, that healings are different in character is to beg the question: there are numerous testimonies out there (I have heard many personally) of blind eyes seeing, deaf ears opening, the lame walking and even the dead being raised, unless one prejudges the veracity of such testimonies by assuming cessationism (or, of course, naturalism).

It is important to remember that all Christians believe God can cause blind eyes to see, open deaf ears, and even cause the lame to walk again. But the key issue is whether God still distributes to people the miraculous ability to heal others. When it comes to the supposed modern miraculous gift of healing, there are always “testimonies out there” and those who believe them “have heard many personally.” But there are rarely firsthand accounts, and there is never verifiable evidence of the miraculous gift of healing—much less of the ability to raise the dead!

(5) The testimony of church history. The practice of apostolic gifts declines even during the lifetimes of the apostles. Even in the written books of the New Testament, the miraculous gifts are mentioned less as the date of their writing gets later. After the New Testament era, we see the miraculous gifts cease. John Chrysostom and Augustine speak of their ceasing.

Wilson:

There are two errors here. The first is that miracles are mentioned less in New Testament books that are written later; the book of Acts is certainly written after the books of 1 Thessalonians and James, and very probably after the other Paulines and Petrines, yet contains far more miracles (and John, among the latest books, has one or two miracles in it as well!).

I was not speaking of the working of miracles by the apostles (2 Corinthians 12:12) as Wilson seems to imply, but rather of the miraculous gifts given to individual Christians other than the apostles. When you trace the practice of the miraculous gifts by those other than the apostles against a time line of New Testament history and its letters, you will find that the miraculous gifts decline in their mention and use even during the apostolic period.

Wilson continues:

The second [error] is that we see the miraculous gifts cease after the New Testament; again, this begs the question by assuming that subsequent accounts of and responses to miraculous or prophetic activity, from the Didache and the Montanists onwards, are inaccurate or exaggerated. . . .  In any case, this sort of argument—that, since something gradually disappeared from the church over the course of the first two or three centuries, it must therefore be invalid—should strike any five sola Protestant as providing several hostages to fortune.”

Many scholars believe the original version of the Didache was probably written during the apostolic age, so it proves nothing about the continuation of the miraculous gifts after the time of the apostles. There are scattered reports of the miraculous throughout church history, but many of them are connected to groups and leaders whose doctrine was seriously aberrant in some way. And in spite of Tertullian’s connection to the Montanists, the church eventually spoke with one voice against them.

The consistent testimony of the church’s key leaders is that the miraculous and revelatory spiritual gifts ended with the Apostolic Age—they didn’t “gradually disappear” over several centuries. I provided a sampling of quotes from across church history as proof. John MacArthur cites many others in his book Strange Fire. The consistent testimony of the Christian church’s key leaders across church history poses a huge problem for our continuationist friends. As Sinclair Ferguson expressed it, continuationism provides no convincing theological explanation for the disappearance of certain gifts during most of church history.

(6) The sufficiency of Scripture. The Spirit speaks only in and through the inspired Word. He doesn’t call and direct his people through subjective messages and modern day bestsellers. His word is external to us and objective.

Wilson responds:

This is not so much an argument for cessationism as a restatement of it. Suffice it to say that James and Paul, to mention just two apostles, envisage Christians being given wisdom by God, experiencing the Spirit crying out “Abba!” in their hearts, and being given spontaneous revelation during church meetings, none of which conflict with their high view of the scriptures.”

I intentionally did not develop this point, because I knew Steve Lawson planned to address this issue in his message on sola Scriptura. You can listen to or read Steve’s excellent defense here. 

 (7) The New Testament governed the miraculous gifts. Whenever the New Testament gift of tongues was to be practiced, there were specific rules that were to be followed. There was to be order and structure, as well as an interpreter. Paul also lays down rules for prophets and prophecy. Tragically most charismatic practice today clearly disregards these commands. The result is not a work of the spirit but of the flesh.

Wilson writes:

I’m not qualified to comment on whether this is true of “most” charismatics, rather than “some,” but to the extent that this is true, I wholeheartedly agree with Pennington that miraculous gifts need to be governed and practiced wisely, in line with the New Testament. Clearly, however, this is not an argument against using charismatic gifts—it is an argument against using charismatic gifts badly.

To his credit, Wilson decries the unbiblical practice of the charismatic gifts. And I would agree that there are a few charismatic churches making valiant efforts at following Paul’s directives. But he is too well read and informed not to know that charismatics claim to be 500 million strong. Of that number, more than 125 million are Roman Catholics who have embraced a false gospel. And of the remaining number, even charismatic writers estimate that close to 40 percent of the 500 million are involved with the prosperity gospel (other estimates have the percentage as high as 90 percent). Add in the huge audiences watching charismatic television programs and services where the biblical directives are not followed, and far more than 50 percent of a movement that claims to be a work of the Spirit is either preaching a damning gospel or completely disregarding the Spirit’s clear New Testament commands regarding practice of the gifts. That is more than a few charismatics behaving badly. Instead, it demonstrates that the movement as a whole can claim neither the Scripture nor the Spirit.

Wilson concludes his critique: “I think that the cessationist position is biblically distorted, theologically confused and historically exaggerated.” Sadly, it is the charismatic position that is out of step with the Scripture, with historic theology, and with the key figures of evangelical church history. The biblical case for cessationism still stands.

If you want to read more on charismatic issues, see the brief bibliography below.

A Brief Bibliography of Books Arguing for Cessationism

John MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos.

John MacArthur, Strange Fire.

Samuel Waldron, To Be Continued?.

[Best brief work on the issue for laymen]

Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit.

[Best work on the role of the Holy Spirit, and a helpful defense of cessationism]

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.  Perspectives on Pentecost.

[Recommended]

B.B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles.

[Classic historical defense of the end of the miraculous but not a biblical defense; recommended]

Robert Reymond, What About Continuing Revelations and Miracles in the Presbyterian Church Today?

[Recommended; deals primarily with the gift of tongues but also addresses the issue of cessation; out of print]

Larry Pettigrew, The New Covenant Ministry of the Holy Spirit.

[Helpful work on the roles of the Spirit in the Old Testament & New Testament; section on cessation and tongues is helpful]

Walter Chantry, Signs of the Apostles.

[Helpful but a bit dated]

Robert Thomas, Understanding Spiritual Gifts.

[Great exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14]

Robert Gromacki, The Modern Tongues Movement.

R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit.

Arthur Johnson, Faith Misguided: Exposing the Dangers of Mysticism.

Graham Cole, He Who Gives Life: the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Patron saint of the long shot.

Natural Selection: Could It Be the Single Greatest Idea Ever Invented?
Denyse O'Leary 

Information, according to Darwin's idea (natural selection), can exist without intelligence. Nature produces intelligent designs, just because some life forms survive and others don't. That's it. That's all it takes. How odd that no one noticed.

A letter written by Darwin, the theory's originator, might fetch $90,000 at an upcoming auction. The Guardian explains:

The 19th-century naturalist and fervent letter writer had largely evaded this question since the publication of the book in 1859. The now classic text introduced his theory of natural selection, which demonstrated that species evolve through gene variation; it was a divisive proposition for Christian readers who believed that humans were made in God's image, distinct from other animals.

That distinction can prove relevant if one thinks civil liberties matter. Many of us live in countries where the invocation of a supreme being is a basis for civil liberties (though those liberties may not extend to mosquitoes).

Darwin's theory of evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) is a cultural icon, like the Big Bang, or e=mc2. One needn't know anything specific about any of these ideas. Indeed, media professionals can be passionately devoted to Darwinism without knowing anything about it at all.

That makes sense. Professed loyalty to Darwin is an admission to good parties. And Darwinism's relationship to modern warfare and eugenics is drowned out by cultural support. True, hillbillies thump the Bible against it, to the groans of the better educated. But what if...?

First, what exactly is Darwin's theory anyway, other than an invite to the approved parties?

Here it is: Information can be created without intelligence. That is, natural selection acting on random mutation explains the order of life we see all around us. What can't survive won't, and that explains how very complex life forms and structures -- including the human mind -- get built up.

True: Things that can't survive don't. But why would that fact alone drive nature to produce anything as simple as a kitten, let alone a math genius?

We've looked earlier at documented ways evolution can really happen -- if all we really want to know is how life forms can change over time. That said, I spent the last fifteen years trying to understand the cultural part. Darwinism isn't just about evolution as such. It is also a way of looking at life. It tries to explain life without assuming that there is any actual mind at all, dispensing with traditional philosophies and religions.

Humans are assumed to do what they do because they are guided by their instincts, in the same way that nature haphazardly produces a kitten or a math genius.

Ideas have consequences. Think of that when, for example, an elaborately coiffed person on prime time TV announces that she believes in evolution (by which she means Darwinism) when she probably has no better idea what it means than the existence of space aliens (of which she is also perfectly certain, on the same level of evidence). Then decide.

See the rest of the series to date at "Talk to the Fossils: Let's See What They Say Back."

The unholy trinity.

Trinity And Pagan Influence

Trinity And Pagan Influence

1. "The trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians .... Three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology." - Egyptian Religion.

2. "The Egyptians believed in a resurrection and future life, as well as in a state of rewards and punishments dependent on our conduct in this world. The judge of the dead was Osiris, who had been slain by Set, the representative of evil, and afterwards restored to life. His death was avenged by his son Horus, whom the Egyptians invoked as their "Redeemer." Osiris and Horus, along with Isis, formed a trinity, who were regarded as representing the sun-God under different forms." - Trinitarian scholar Dr. M.G. Easton; Easton's Bible Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publ.

3. "This triad of Abydos [Horus, Isis, and Osiris] is apparently much older than even the earliest records .... These 3 main gods were skillfully incorporated into the Great Ennead or State religion of Egypt .... particularly during the first 5 [3110-2342 B.C.] or 6 dynasties when the worship of this triad was prominent." - The Ancient Myths, A Mentor Book, Goodrich, p. 25, 1960.

4. Alexandria, Egypt, had even developed a trinity doctrine of its very own long before Christian times. It appears to have been a blend (not surprisingly) of Egyptian, Hindu, and Greek philosophy/mystery religions.

"This fusing of one god with another is called theocrasia, and nowhere was it more vigorously going on than in Alexandria. Only two peoples resisted it in this period: The Jews, who already had their faith in the one God of heaven and earth, Jehovah, and the Persians, who had a monotheistic sun worship [Mithras]. It was Ptolemy I [who died in 283 B. C.] who set up not only the Museum in Alexandria, but the Serapeum, devoted to the worship of a trinity of gods which represented the result of a process of theocrasia applied more particularly to the gods of Greece and Egypt [with a distinct Hindu flavor].

"This trinity consisted of the god Serapis (= Osiris + Apis), the goddess Isis (= Hathor, the cow-moon goddess), and the child-god Horus. In one way or another almost every god was identified with one or other of these three aspects of the one god, even the sun god Mithras of the Persians. and they were each other; THEY WERE THREE, BUT THEY WERE ALSO ONE." - The Outline of History, Wells, vol. 1, p. 307, 1956 ed.

5. The book The Symbolism of Hindu Gods and Rituals admits, regarding the ancient Hindu trinity that was taught centuries before the first Christians:
"Siva is one of the gods of the Trinity. He is said to be the god of destruction. The other two gods are Brahma, the god of creation and Vishnu, the god of maintenance.... To indicate that these three processes are one and the same the three gods are combined in one form." - Published by A. Parthasarathy, Bombay. (As quoted in ti-E, p. 12.)

6. The Encyclopedia Americana tells of the fully developed "Hindu Trinity" existing "from about 300 B. C.," p. 197, v. 14, 1957. Brahmana writings, probably from 800 B. C. or before, frequently include the Vedic triad concept. - Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed., v. 3, pp. 1014-1016, and 34, also see The Portable World Bible, The Viking Press, pp. 23, 25.

7. "Vishnu, Brahma, and Siva together form the trinity of the Hindu Religion. At one time these were distinct Hindu deities. Their rival claims for recognition were finally met by making them three forms of the one supreme god. This was, however, a creation of the priests and ecclesiastical students." - Encyclopedia Americana, 1957 ed., v. 28, p. 134.
  
8. "There is a tendency in [pagan] religious history for the gods to be grouped in threes .... Even in Christianity, the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost reflects the underlying tendency. In India, the great Triad included Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Shiva, the Destroyer. These represent the cycle of existence, just as the Babylonian triad of Anu, Enlil and Ea represent the materials of existence: air, water, earth." - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Ferm, p. 794, 1945.

9. Not only did the ancient Babylonians have the major trinity of Anu, Enlil, and Ea, but they worshiped more than one trinity of gods. - Babylonian Life and History, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, 1925 ed., pp. 146, 147.

10. "On the basis of  Pythagorean and gnostic theories, each number [in the Medieval Number Method] was assigned a root meaning and diversified representations.  Some root meanings were: 1 = UNITY OF GOD, ... 3 = TRINITY, extension of Godhead, ... 10 = extension of Unity, Perfect Completeness." - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Ferm, 1945, p. 755.

11. "... the doctrine of the Trinity was of gradual and comparatively late formation; that it had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian scriptures; that it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers."– p. 34, The Church of the First Three Centuries, Alvan Lamson, D.D. (see WT 15 Oct. 1978, p. 32.)

"All things are three, and thrice is all:  and let us use this number in the worship of the gods. For as the Pythagoreans say, everything and all things are bound by threes, for the end, the middle, and the beginning have this number in everything, and these compose the number of the trinity." - Aristotle, as quoted in Paganism in our Christianity, Arthur Weigall, p. 198, Putnam, NY.  (Weigall is quoting from On the Heavens, Bk I, ch. i., by Aristotle who died  322 B.C.)

So it appears that this "holy" number three used to "worship the gods" in unity came down from the extremely influential Pythagoras to the ancient Greek philosophy/mystery religions and even to Plato himself.

"NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM...appeared during the first century B. C. [the faithful Jews were still clinging to their faith in a single one-person God, Jehovah the Father] in Rome, whence it traveled to Alexandria (the sect's chief center) where it flourished until Neo-Platonism absorbed it in the 3rd century A. D."  - Encyclopedia Americana, p. 98, v. 20, 1982 ed.

12. Weigall relates many instances of the trinity concept in pre-Christian pagan religions and then states: "The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the idea to their own faith." And, "Jesus Christ never mentioned such a phenomenon, and nowhere in the New Testament does the word `trinity' appear. The idea was only adopted by the Church three hundred years after the death of our Lord; and the origin of the conception is entirely pagan." - The Paganism in our Christianity, pp. 197,198, Arthur Weigall.

13. "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by paganism. The pure Deism of the first Christians (who differed from their fellow Jews only in the belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah) was changed by the Church at Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief." - The History of Christianity, (Preface by Eckler).

14. "Christianity did not destroy Paganism; it adopted it .... From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, …. the adoration of the Mother and Child…." – p. 595, The Story of Civilization: vol. 3, Simon & Schuster Inc., by noted author and historian Will Durant.

15. The Trinity "is a corruption borrowed from the heathen religions, and ingrafted on the Christian faith." - A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge

16. "When Newton was made a fellow of the College, along with an agreement to embrace the Anglican faith, the Trinity fellowship also required ordination within 8 years. During his studies Newton had come to believe that the central doctrine of the church, the Holy and Undivided Trinity was a pagan corruption imposed on Christianity in the fourth century by Athanasius." -Sir Isaac Newton And The Ocean of Truth; "Theology and the word of God"

Posted by Elijah Daniels

Mammalian hearing v. Darwin.

Mammals Compute Sound Timing in the Microsecond Range
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

At a basic level, we all know that two ears give us the ability to detect the direction of a sound. Cover one ear, and it’s hard to tell. Uncover; we hear in stereo. But when you look into the physics of sound localization, the requirements are stringent.

Sound waves coming from the left hit your left eardrum only microseconds (millionths of a second) before they hit the right eardrum. Your ears must not only be able to capture that tiny difference in arrival time, but preserve the information through noisy channels on the way to the brain. And they must be able to do that continuously. Consider an ambulance siren moving left to right; the inter-aural time difference (ITD) is constantly changing. Your ears need to keep up with the microsecond-by-microsecond changes as they occur, without the prior information getting swamped by the new information.

Now consider being in an auditorium, listening to an orchestra with your eyes closed. You can tell where each instrument is located, even when they are playing together, just by the ITDs from each player. How amazing is that?

This can only work if the auditory system maintains the information all the way to the brain. The brain receives the timing differences after a delay: first, the eardrum converts pressure waves to membrane vibrations, which trigger mechanical movements of the middle ear bones (ossicles), which convert the mechanical motions into fluid waves in the cochlea, which converts the fluid waves to electrical impulses in the neurons. These things take time, but we’re still not there.

Each axon of each neuron has to cross synapses where the electrical information is converted to chemical information and back again in the next neuron. This is getting very complicated! There’s bound to be some noise in the transmission pathway. How can the ITD at the outer ear be maintained all the way to the brain through these multiple energy conversions?

Two neurobiologists from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, appreciating the problem of maintaining sound localization information, decided to run experiments on mice and gerbils. Think how much closer together those ears are than human ears! The smaller inter-aural distance compounds the problem, tightening the requirements even more. Under the news headline  “Auditory perception: where microseconds matter,” Drs. Grothe and Pecka announce what they found.

Gerbils (who depend on sound localization more than mice) use multiple mechanisms to maintain accurate ITD information in their sound transmission apparatus. The researchers explain the challenge:

In the mammalian auditory system, sound waves impinging on the tympanic membrane of the ear are transduced into electrical signals by sensory hair cells and transmitted via the auditory nerve to the brainstem. The spatial localization of sound sources, especially low-frequency sounds, presents the neuronal processing system with a daunting challenge, for it depends on resolving the difference between the arrival times of the acoustic stimulus at the two ears. The ear that is closer to the source receives the signal before the contralateral ear. But since this interval – referred to as the interaural timing difference (ITD) — is on the order of a few microseconds, its neuronal processing requires exceptional temporal precision. [Emphasis added.]

Grothe and Pecka, along with seven other colleagues, published the results of their research in an open-access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  (PNAS). They report “a specific combination of mechanisms, which plays a crucial role in ensuring that auditory neurons can measure ITDs with the required accuracy.”

Back in 2015, the team observed structural modifications of the myelin sheaths wrapping the auditory nerves. The axons of these neurons, they also noted, were particularly thick. Discontinuities in the sheaths, coupled with the axon thickness, seemed to turbo-charge the neurons “to enable rapid signal transmission.” That’s necessary for sound localization, but it’s not enough. If the synapses introduce additional varying delays, you’ll just get faulty information transmitted faster. There must be something else going on. Here’s what they found this time:

Before cells in the auditory brainstem can determine the ITD, the signals from both ears must first be transmitted to them via chemical synapses that connect them with the sensory neurons. Depending on the signal intensity, synapses themselves can introduce varying degrees of delay in signal transmission. The LMU team, however, has identified a pathway in which the synapses involved respond with a minimal and constant delay. “Indeed, the duration of the delay remains constant even when rates of activation are altered, and that is vital for the precise processing of interaural timing differences,” Benedikt Grothe explains.

Specifically, the team discovered “stable synaptic delays” in the transmission neurons by a unique mechanism previously unknown in other neural circuits. Without a unique “inhibitory pathway” described in the paper, synapse transmission times would vary under continuous excitation, wiping out the ITD information. (This can happen, for instance, as a result of changes in vesicle abundance needed to carry the neurotransmitter molecules across a synapse.)

Functionally, stable synaptic delays seem to represent a specific adaptation for faithful ITD processing, because it would prevent fluctuations in the relative timing of direct excitation and indirect inhibition for responses to onsets vs. ongoing sounds in the range of tens to hundreds of microseconds. Such fluctuations may be negligible for most neuronal computations, but not for microsecond ITD processing of low-frequency sounds.

We now know the challenge; something needs to keep these synapses in a consistent readiness state, so that the crossing time delays are constant. One method might be buffering, so that enough vesicles are always at the ready. That’s one mechanism they observed, but not the only one. The solution also involves computation. There are two bodies at the receiving end, named the LSO and the MSO, that share information. The LSO deals with sound levels, and is less stringent about timing. The MSO, however, requires precise time information to calculate ITDs. By comparing one another’s inputs, the LSO and MSO can “detect coincidences between inputs from the two ears.” The authors note another “striking shared structural feature is the contralateral inhibitory pathway that is specialized for speed and reliability.”

That’s still not all. Two other structures upstream from the MSO are involved, but they cannot inhibit too much, or they, too, will introduce noise. So they, too, are finely tuned:

Recently we showed that the inhibitory pathway conquers this challenge via a two- to threefold thicker axon diameter of GBCs [globular bushy cells] compared with the spherical bushy cells, which comprise the excitatory input. Moreover, we revealed the presence of a dramatic decrease of internode length toward the terminal region in both fiber classes.

The details of these specializations need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that multiple mechanisms ensure that ITD information is preserved from eardrum to brain: structural properties of axon diameter and sheathing patterns, buffering of vesicles, and computation of differences between inputs received at the auditory cortex. No other part of the body requires this level of timing precision, and no other circuit achieves it.

For a real-world application of this need for precision, consider the echolocating bat. This creature darts about in the air, making sudden turns every second, listening to echoes from its high-frequency chirps. Research at Johns Hopkins finds that bats respond to a noisy environment by turning up the volume. We humans do that, too, but bats do it in 30 milliseconds: 10 times faster than the blink of an eye! That means that these little flying mammals, with ears much closer together than ours, are able to respond to the sound location information calculated from their ITDs extremely fast, while simultaneously operating their wings in a constantly changing auditory environment.

Our brief look into the complexity of auditory localization in mammals provides a good example of not only Behe’s irreducible complexity, but also what Douglas Axe calls functional coherence, “the hierarchical arrangement of parts needed for anything to produce high-level function — each part contributing in a coordinated way to the whole” (Undeniable, p. 144). None of these parts (MSO, myelin, synapses) perform sound localization individually, but collectively, they do.

We could explore the hierarchy further by looking more closely at how molecular machines within the neuron cells participate in the “functional whole” of sound localization. Taking the wide-angle view, we see how all the lower levels in the hierarchy contribute to the bat’s amazing ability to catch food on the wing. Functional coherence is not just beyond the reach of chance (Axe, p. 160), it provides positive evidence for intelligent design. In all our uniform human experience, only minds are capable of engineering complex, hierarchical systems exhibiting functional coherence. The complexity of this one circuit — sound localization — makes that loud and clear.

Good luck with that.

Falsify Intelligent Design? Try Simulating the Cambrian Explosion Digitally
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Want to falsify the theory of intelligent design? Here’s one way.

Show with a convincing computer simulation – no cheating allowed — that the infusion of biological information in the Cambrian explosion could occur absent the intervention of a guiding intelligence: artificial life in a variety as we see in the Cambrian event, but without design.

Researchers have tried, in multiple cases, as Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics author Winston Ewert tells biologist Ray Bohlin on a new episode of ID the Future. But each time, the simulations hit a “complexity barrier,” as the scientists themselves concede, and fail. It’s a fascinating conversation. Listen to it here, or download it here.

Ewert calls it “the mystery of the missing digital Cambrian explosion,” observing that “something is missing from all of the different artificial life simulations.” There’s a secret ingredient, and guess what that is? Intelligent design.