How is Christ prototokos.

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All [other] things have been created through him and for him. Also, he is before all [other] things and by means of him all [other] things were made to exists." (Col. 1:15-17, The New World Translation).

cornerst writes: Please note that this passage does not say Jesus was the "first created," but that He was the "first-born." The Bible doesn't use the Greek word for "first created (protoktizo), but firstborn (prototokos) of all creation.

Response: It should be noted that protoktizo was not in common use back in the first century, and would not be for a 100 to 200 years after Christ. Interestingly though, when this word was eventually used, it was used of Christ. John Patrick, in his Clement of Alexandria notes:

"Clement repeatedly identifies the Word with the Wisdom of God, and yet refers to Wisdom as the first-created of God; while in one passage he attaches the epithet "First-created," and in another "First-begotten," to the Word." p.103,104, note 6.
The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Volume 1 Faith, Trinity, Incarnation, by Harry Austryn Wolfson, 2nd Edition, Revised:
"Zahn casually remarks that Clement 'always makes a sharp distinction between the only uncreated God the Father and the Son or Logos who was begotten or created before the rest of creation.'...1. cf. Th. Zahn, "Supplementum Clementinium", (1884), 144, p. 204, 92 
"It is undoubtably with reference to this "coming forth" of the Logos prior to the creation of the world that Clement speaks of the Logos as "firstborn" [protogonos] and of wisdom, which he idtentified with the Logos, as the "first-created" [protoktistos]...30 Strom. VI, Ibid. V. 14., ibid. p 209
cornerst writes: The word "firstborn" refers to a position of pre-eminence rather than a time of birth. Rights and privileges were usually bestowed upon the child who was born first, but those rights did not always go to him. Manasseh was the first one born, but Jacob (Israel) blessed Ephraim instead of Manasseh and gave him the position of first-born (Gen. 48:13-22). In Jeremiah 31:9, God declares Ephraim to be His first-born, even though Manasseh was born first. 
The same is true with Jacob and Esau. Although Esau was the first one born, Jacob (whose name was change to Israel) received his brother's birthright and his father's blessing and became the first-born. The nation of Israel was named after him, and the Lord calls Israel His first-born (Ex. 4:22). Here again, first-born refers to rank and privilege. It means first in importance, not first in time. The nation of Israel was not the first-born of a woman and not even the first nation to exist. But God called it the first-born among all the nations. In the same way, Jesus is the first-born of all creation. 
The "first-born of the poor" (Isa. 14:30) means "the poorest of the poor." The "first-born of death" (Job 18:13) means Job's disease was the most terrible of diseases. The "first-born" of the kings means the highest of the kings of the earth (Ps. 89:27). David (v.20) was the last one born in his family, but was called the firstborn. The "first-born of the dead" (Col. 1:18, Rev. 1:5) means that Jesus is pre-eminent over death.
Response: But how many of us know that the word PRWTOTOKOS is not used in Greek LXX in Job 18:13 and Isaiah 14:30? Let us look for examples where it is used mostly followed by the genitive like "of": 
Verses used are from the English Translation of The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, 1844, 1851.

          LXX Genesis 4:4 And Abel also brought of the first born of his sheep 
          and of his fatlings, and God looked upon Abel and his gifts,

          LXX Genesis 25:13 And these are the names of the sons of Ismael, according 
          to the names of their generations. The firstborn of Ismael, Nabaioth, 
          and Kedar, and Nabdeel, and Massam,

          LXX Genesis 27:19 And Jacob said to his father, I, Esau thy 
          first-born, have done as thou toldest me; rise, sit, and eat of my 
          venison, that they soul may bless me.

          LXX Genesis 35:23 The sons of Lea, the first-born of Jacob; Ruben, 
          Symeon, Levi, Judas, Issachar, Zabulon.

          LXX Genesis 36:15 These are the chiefs of the son of Esau, even the sons of 
          Eliphas, the first-born of Esau; chief Thaeman, chief Omar, chief 
          Sophar, chief Kenez,

          LXX Genesis 38:6 And Judas took a wife for Er his first-born, whose 
          name was Thamar.

          LXX Genesis 38:7 And Er, the first-born of Judas, was wicked before 
          the Lord; and God killed him.

          LXX Genesis 46:8 And these are the names of the sons of Israel that went 
          into Egypt with their father Jacob-- Jacob and his sons. The first-born 
          of Jacob, Ruben.

          LXX Genesis 49:3 Ruben, thou art my first-born, thou my strength, and 
          the first of my children, hard to be endured, hard and self-willed.

          LXX Exodus 4:22 And thou shalt say to Pharao, These things saith the Lord, 
          Israel is my first-born.

          LXX Exodus 6:14 And these are the heads of the houses of their families: the 
          sons of Ruben the first-born of Israel; Enoch and Phallus, Asron, and 
          Charmi, this is the kindred of Ruben.

          LXX Exodus 11:5 And every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from 
          the first-born of Pharao that sits on the throne, even to the 
          first-born of the woman-servant that is by the mill, and to the 
          first-born of all cattle.

          LXX Exodus 12:29 And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord smote all the 
          first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharao that 
          sat on the throne, to the first-born of the captive-maid in the 
          dungeon, and the first-born of all cattle.

          LXX Exodus 13:13 Every offspring opening the womb of the ass thou shalt 
          change for a sheep; and if thou wilt not change it, thou shalt redeem it: 
          every first-born of man of thy sons shalt thou redeem.

          LXX Exodus 13:15 And when Pharao hardened his heart so as not to send us 
          away, he slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, both the first-born 
          of man and the first-born of beast; therefore do I sacrifice 
          every offspring that opens the womb, the males to the Lord, and every 
          first-born of my sons I will redeem.

          LXX Exodus 22:29 Thou shalt not keep back the first-fruits of thy threshing 
          floor and press. The first-born of thy sons thou shalt give to me.

          LXX Exodus 34:19 The males are mine, everything that opens the womb; every 
          first-born of oxen, and every first-born of sheep.

          LXX Exodus 34:20 And the first-born of an ass thou shalt redeem with 
          a sheep, and if thou wilt not redeem it thou shalt pay a price: every 
          first-born of thy sons shalt thou redeem: thou shalt not appear 
          before me empty.

          LXX Numbers 1:20 And the sons of Ruben the first-born of Israel 
          according to their kindreds, according to their divisions, according to the 
          houses of their families, according to the number of their names, according 
          to their heads, were-- all males from twenty years old and upward, every one 
          that went out with the host--

          LXX Numbers 3:40 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Count every 
          first-born male of the children of Israel from a month old and upwards, 
          and take the number by name.

          LXX Numbers 3:41 And thou shalt take the Levites for me-- I am the Lord-- 
          instead of all the first-born of the sons of Israel, and the cattle 
          of the Levites instead of all the first-born among the cattle of the 
          children of Israel.

          LXX Numbers 3:45 Take the Levites instead of all the first-born of the 
          sons of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle, 
          and the Levites shall be mine; I am the Lord.

          LXX Numbers 3:46 And for the ransoms of the two hundred and seventy-three 
          which exceed the Levites in number of the first-born of the sons of 
          Israel;

          LXX Numbers 3:50 He took the silver from the first-born of the sons of 
          Israel, a thousand three hundred and sixty-five shekels, according to 
          the holy shekel.

          LXX Numbers 8:16 For these are given to me for a present out of the midst of 
          the children of Israel: I have taken them to myself instead of all the 
          first-born of the sons of Israel that open every womb.

          LXX Numbers 8:17 For every first-born among the children of Israel is 
          mine, whether of man or beast: in the day in which I smote every 
          first-born in the land of Egypt, I sanctified them to myself.

          LXX Numbers 18:15 And every thing that opens the womb of all flesh, 
          whatsoever they bring to the Lord, whether man or beast, shall be thine: 
          only the first-born of men shall be surely redeemed, and thou shalt 
          redeem the first-born of unclean cattle.

          LXX Numbers 18:17 But thou shalt not redeem the first-born of calves 
          and the first-born of sheep and the first-born of goats; 
          they are holy: and thou shalt pour their blood upon the altar, and thou 
          shalt offer the fat as a burnt-offering for a smell of sweet savour to the 
          Lord.

          LXX Numbers 26:5 Ruben was the first-born of Israel: and the sons of 
          ruben, Enoch, and the family of Enoch; to Phallu belongs the family of the 
          Phalluites.

          LXX Deuteronomy 12:6 And ye shall carry thither your whole-burnt-offerings, 
          and your sacrifices, and your first-fruits, and your vowed-offerings, and 
          your freewill-offerings, and your offerings of thanksgiving, the 
          first-born of your herds, and of your flocks.

          LXX Deuteronomy 12:17 Thou shalt not be able to eat in thy cities the tithe 
          of thy corn, and of thy wine, and of thine oil, the first-born of thine 
          herd and of thy flock, and all your vows as many as ye shall have 
          vowed, and your thank-offerings, and the first-fruits of thine hands.

          LXX Deuteronomy 14:23 And thou shalt eat it in the place which the Lord thy 
          God shall choose to have his name called there; ye shall bring the tithe of 
          thy corn and of thy wine, and of thine oil, the first-born of thy herd 
          and of thy flock, that thou mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God 
          always.

          LXX Deuteronomy 15:19 Every first-born that shall be born among thy kine and 
          thy sheep, thou shalt sanctify the males to the Lord thy God; thou shalt not 
          work with thy first-born calf, and thou shalt not shear the first-born of 
          thy sheep.

          LXX Deuteronomy 33:17 His beauty is as the firstling of his bull, his 
          horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he shall thrust the nations at 
          once, even from the end of the earth: these are the ten thousands of 
          Ephraim, and these are the thousands of Manasse.

          LXX Joshua 6:26 And Joshua adjured them on that day before the Lord, saying, 
          Cursed be the man who shall build that city: he shall lay the foundation of 
          it in his first-born, and he shall set up the gates of it in his 
          youngest son. And so did Hozan of Baethel; he laid the foundation in Abiron 
          his first-born, and set up the gates of it in his youngest surviving son.

          LXX Joshua 17:1 And the borders of the tribe of the children of Manasse, 
          (for he was the first-born of Joseph) assigned to Machir the 
          firstborn of Manasse the father of Galaad, for he was a warrior, were 
          in the land of Galaad and of Basan.

          LXX 2 Samuel 3:2 And sons were born to David in Chebron: and his 
          first-born was Ammon the son of Achinoom the Jezraelitess.

          LXX 2 Samuel 13:21 And king David heard of all these things, and was very 
          angry; but he did not grieve the spirit of his son Amnon, because be loved 
          him, for he was his first-born.

          LXX 1 Kings 16:34 And in his days Achiel the Baethelite built Jericho; he 
          laid the foundation of it in Abiron his first-born, and he set up the 
          doors of it in Segub his younger son, according to the word of the Lord 
          which he spoke by Joshua the son of Naue.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 1:29 And these are their generations: the first-born of 
          Ismael, Nabaeoth, and Kedar, Nabdeel, Massam,

          LXX 1 Chronicles 2:3 The sons of Juda; Er, Aunan, Selom. These three were 
          born to him of the daughter of Sava the Chananitish woman: and Er, the 
          first-born of Juda, was wicked before the Lord, and he slew him.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 2:13 And Jessae begot his first-born Eliab, Aminadab 
          was the second, Samaa the third,

          LXX 1 Chronicles 2:25 And the sons of Jerameel the first-born of Esron 
          were, the first-born Ram, and Banaa, and Aram, and Asan his brother.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 2:27 And the sons of Ram the first-born of Jerameel 
          were Maas, and Jamin, and Acor.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 2:42 And the sons of Chaleb the brother of Jerameel were, 
          Marisa his first-born, he is the father of Ziph:-- and the sons of 
          Marisa the father of Chebron.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 2:50 These were the sons of Chaleb: the sons of Or the 
          first-born of Ephratha; Sobal the father of Cariathiarim,

          LXX 1 Chronicles 3:15 And the sons of Josia; the first-born Joanan, 
          the second Joakim, the third Sedekias, the fourth Salum.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 4:4 And Phanuel the father of Gedor, and Jazer the father 
          of Osan: these are the sons of Or, the first-born of Ephratha, the 
          father of Baethalaen.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 5:1 And the sons of Ruben the first-born of Israel 
          (for he was the first-born; but because of his going up to his father's 
          couch, his father gave his blessing to his son Joseph, even the son Israel; 
          and he was not reckoned as first-born;

          LXX 1 Chronicles 5:3 The sons of Ruben the first-born of Israel; 
          Enoch, and Phallus, Asrom, and Charmi.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 6:28 The sons of Samuel; the first-born Sani, and 
          Abia.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 8:1 Now Benjamin begot Bale his first-born, and 
          Asbel his second son, Aara the third, Noa the fourth,

          LXX 1 Chronicles 8:30 And her first-born son was Abdon, and Sur, and 
          Kis, and Baal, and Nadab, and Ner,

          LXX 1 Chronicles 8:38 And Esel had six sons, and these were their name; 
          Ezricam his first-born, and Ismael, and Saraia, and Abdia, and Anan, 
          and Asa: all these were the sons of Esel.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 8:39 And the sons of Asel his brother; AElam his 
          first-born, and Jas the second, and Eliphalet the third.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 9:5 And of the Selonites; Asaia his first-born, and 
          his sons.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 9:36 And his first-born son was Abdon, and he had 
          Sur, and Kis, and Baal, and Ner, and Nadab,

          LXX 1 Chronicles 9:44 And Esel had six sons, and these were their names; 
          Esricam his first-born, and Ismael, and Saraia, and Abdia, and Anan, 
          and Asa: these were the sons of Esel.

          LXX 1 Chronicles 26:6 And to Samaias his son were born the sons of his 
          first-born, chiefs over the house of their father, for they were mighty.

          LXX Nehemiah 10:36 the first-born of our sons, and of our 
          cattle, as it is written in the law, and the first-born of our herds 
          and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God, for the 
          priests that minister in the house of our God.

          LXX Psalm 135:8 Who smote the first-born of Egypt, both man and 
          beast.

          LXX Psalm 136:10 To him who smote Egypt with their first-born; for 
          his mercy endures for ever.

          LXX Jeremiah 31:9 (38:9) They went forth with weeping, and I will bring them 
          back with consolation, causing them to lodge by the channels of waters in a 
          straight way, and they shall not err in it: for I am become a father to 
          Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born.

          LXX Micah 6:7 Will the Lord accept thousands of rams, or ten thousands of 
          fat goats? should I give my first-born for ungodliness, the fruit of 
          my body for the sin of my soul?

As you can see there are many examples of the firstborn[PRWTOTOKOS] as a separate,  subordinate, and most of the time the actual FIRST BORN member of a family. 
It should be noted too,  that Jesus, unlike Ephraim, Jacob and Israel, was never GIVEN the title of "firstborn". He was simply spoken of as firstborn in the temporal sense in passages like the ones at Col. 1:15, 18, Heb. 1:6, Rev. 1:5 and Romans 8:29. 
When this changes, "the firstborn of" is used as part of a group. If it is "the firstborn of" Israel(Ex. 6:14), it is one of the sons of Israel, if it is "the firstborn of" Pharoah(Ex. 11:5) it is a member of the house of Pharoah, if it is "the firstborn of" beasts(Ex. 13:15) then it is an animal also. Why then should this rule be changed as it applies to "the firstborn of" creation? Obviously Jesus is a created being, as he was historically always thought to be the Wisdom of Proverbs. Is this a stretch?
"She [Wisdom] is God's associate in his works, and his agent in making all things (Prov 8:22-30; see also Jn 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2)." footnote at Wisdom 8:2-21 in the New Oxford Annotated Bible-NRSV 
"The doctrine of wisdom, thus outlined in the OT, will be resumed in the NT which will give it new and decisive completion by applying it to the person of Christ 
Jesus is referred to as Wisdom itself, the Wisdom of God, Mt 11:19 par.; Lk 11:49, cf. Mt 23:34-36; 1 Co 1:24-30; like Wisdom, he participates in the creation and preservation of the world, Col 1:16-17, and the protection of Israel, 1Co 10:4, cf. Ws 10:17seq. 
Finally, John in his prologue attributes the characteristics of creative Wisdom to the 
Word, and his gospel throughout represents Christ as the Wisdom of God. See Jn 6:35t. 
Hence, Christian tradition from St Justin onwards sees in the Wisdom of the OT the 
person of Christ himself." footnote New Jerusalem Bible at Prov 8.
Why is this damaging to Trinitarians? Because Wisdom was created!
"He created me from the beginning, before the world, and I shall never cease."Sirach24:9 
The Interpreter's Bible [p.830] says of Prov 8:22: "The verb QANAH may be translated either way. In view of the statements made in the following verses concerning wisdom, it would seem that the RSV translates correctly; cf. also the following quotations from Ecclesiasticus:
Wisdom was created before them all, 
And sound intelligence from eternity (Ecclus 1:4)

The Lord himself created her (Ecclus 1:9

Then the Creator of all gave me his command; 
And he who created me made my tent rest (Ecclus 24:8 AT)."

Also see Proverbs 8:22 NRSV, "The LORD created me at the beginning of his work."

"The LORD formed me as the first of his works, the beginning of 
his deeds of old." Smith&Goodspeed


cornerst writes:The New World Translation adds the word "other" four times, which is not in the Greek. They add to Scripture to make it look like Jesus was the first-created thing among God's creation. According to Jehovah's Witnesses, God created Jesus and then Jesus created all other things. This mistranslation of Col. 1:16-17 presents a problem for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Isaiah 44:24 says, "Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, 'I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself, and spreading out the earth all alone'". How is it possible for the LORD (Jehovah) to stretch out the heavens alone and yet Jesus, "the first created thing," be the one who did it? They can't both be true. Jesus is not the created, but the Creator (John 1:3,10, Heb. 1:10, Col. 1:16).

Response: Well let us see if John 1:3,10, Heb. 1:10, Col. 1:16 picture Jesus as the creator.

"And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands". Heb. 1:10 ASV 
In Hebrews 1:10-12 the apostle Paul uses a scripture earlier applied to Jehovah in Ps. 102. Does that make them the same person? No! For instance verse 8 says, "But of the Son [he saith,] 
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; And the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of thy kingdom." These words were earlier applied to King Solomon in Ps. 45:6 (see also 2Sam. 7:14). Is King Solomon  the same person as Jesus? No! Jesus is simply doing a work earlier prefigured by Solomon, also sharing some of the qualities of Solomon, such as wisdom. So when it comes to Jehovah in Ps. 102 the writer here attributes these qualities to Jesus Christ, because Jesus is the one whom God used in the work of creation and to whom he has now committed all authority "in heaven and on the earth." (Matt. 28:18; Col. 1:15-17) Jesus represents the God that no one has ever seen to us fully in all his qualities and actions.(John 1:18) 
Psalm 22, attributed to David, relates, partly in figurative language, some of the sufferings of Christ. (Compare Psalm 22:1 with Mark 15:34; also compare the entire psalm with the four gospel accounts of Jesus' trial and impalement.) Are Jesus and David the same person? No! A scripture in Matthew 2:15 applies to Jesus, but the earlier reference in Hosea 11:1 applies to Israel. Does than make them the same? No! There is a prophecy about Elijah in Malachi 4:5 that is applied to John the Baptist in Matthew 17:12,13; 11:14. Is John the Baptist really Elijah? No! They just did a similar work. I think you get the point. For more on this verse, click here.

"John 1:3 All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made 
that hath been made.  {1:10} He was in the world, and the world was made 
through him, and the world knew him not." ASV 
In looking at the Greek word here for "apart from" CWRIS, Thayer's Greek Lexicon says of its occurence in John 1:3 "without the intervention (participation or co-operation) of one." 
In this way, the Bible in Living English handles it superbly, "Everything was made by his agency." Jn 1:3 
Even Origen acknowledged this, "And the apostle Paul says in his epistle to the Hebrews: 'At the end of the days He spoke to us in his Son, whom He made heir of all things, 'through whom' also He made the ages, " showing us that God made the ages through His Son, the 'through whom' belonging, when the ages were made to the Only-begotten. Thus if all things were made, as in this passage also, THROUGH [DIA] the Logos, then they were not made by the Logos, but by a stronger and greater than He. And who else could this but the Father?" 
Origen's Commentary on John, ANF 10, Book 2, chap. 6, p. 328 
This scripture ties into the next one at Colossians 1:16. As we can see, the world was made "through him". We have already seen that Wisdom  was created, but he was also with him at creation. "When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I was beside him, like a master workman; And I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always." Prov. 8:29, 30 RSV 
  The bible tells us that the angels were there too:"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding....When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:4,7 ASV But as we can see from Proverbs, Wisdom/Jesus shared a special relationship with his God Jehovah. 
Col 1:16 "for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, 
things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and unto him" ASV 
Again we see that all things were "created thru him". This is only right, after all the Bible says: "For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, [himself] man, Christ Jesus." 1 Tim. 2:5 ASV Now a mediator cannot be the person he is mediating for. For instance Moses is also called a mediator at Gal. 3:19. Moses, like Jesus,  shared a special relationship with God. Both were even called by the respectful title "god", (Ex. 7:1; John 1:1) though Jesus is mightier than Moses. (Is. 9:6) 
But let us expand further. Let us look at Hebrews 1: 
"In the past God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways through the prophets, {1:2} but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son. He is the one through whom God created the universe." TEV 
In verse 1, God spoke. The prophets were intermediate agents (Greek: EN). 
God uses agents to carry out his will. 
In verse 2, God spoke, but just like the prophets,  the Son was an intermediate agent (Greek: EN). 
For example, Col 1:16 does not teach that Jesus is the almighty creator. Rather, it uses same Greek preposition EN which is used of the Son with an active source in the context (like the Father in vss. 12 and 13). The Father redeems "BY/IN/THROUGH" (Greek: EN) the Son. The Father creates "BY/IN/THROUGH" (Greek: EN) the Son. Since the Father creates "BY/IN/THROUGH" Son as agent, it is necessary that the creation of the Son was a special case. That is why Paul explicitly says that the Son is the "firstborn of" all creation ( PRWTOTOKOS), the "first-begotten of all creatures" Tyndale. Tyndale also refers to Jesus in Rev. 3:14 as the "beginning of the creatures of God."

In John 1:3 it is clear that agency is intended since DIA is used with a passive verb, or created "THROUGH" (not "by") the Word. That "through" is the clear meaning and not "by" is made explicitly clear by Paul when he said of the relationship between God and Christ in 1 Cor 8:5,6: "One God, the Father, out of (Greek: EK) whom all things are, and we unto him; and one lord, Jesus Christ "through" (Greek: DIA) whom all things are, and we through him. "

When you consider all the times that God and Christ Jesus are mentioned in Colossians, the  Spirit is mentioned a scant 2 times. Hardly a Trinity! "You simply simply cannot find the doctrine of the Trinity set out anywhere in the Bible. St Paul has the highest view of Jesus' role and person, but nowhere does he call him God. Nor does Jesus himself explicitly claim to be the second person of the Trinity, wholly equal to his heavenly Father." -- For Christ's Sake by Tom Harpur (Anglican Priest).

It should be noted that Trinitarians do not beleive that Jesus is the Father. They believe that the Father is God, and that the Son, Jesus, is equally God. Yet they are not the same, but at the same time they are not plural, but one. So when trinitarians say that Jesus is God, they don't really mean that. What they mean is that Jesus is God the Son, the second person of a consubstantial Trinity. A phrase that is never used in the Bible!

cornerst writes: The New World Translation adds the word "other" four times, which is not in the Greek.

Response: Now let's look at the insertion of the word "other" in the New World Translation at 
Colossians chapter 1. We are going to start of by looking at some other scriptures where this is 
done. 
Luke 21:29 
"Look at the fig tree, and all the trees." Revised Standard Version (RSV) 
"Think of the fig tree and all the other trees." Good News Bible (TEV) 
"Consider the fig tree and all the other trees." New American Bible(NAB)

Luke 11:42 
"and every herb." Revised Version(RV) 
"and of every [other] vegetables." NWT 
"and all the other herbs." TEV 
"and all other kinds of garden herbs." New International Version

In both these instances the word "other" was not in the original text, but translators felt a need 
to put it in there. Can they do that even without brackets? 
"A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other early Chrisitian Literature" by F. Blass and 
A. Debrunner states that it is not uncommon for the greek to omit the word "other". 
The book Theology and Bias in Bible Translations by Professor Rolf Furuli when talking about 
the word "other" in the Col. 1:16 in the NWT says, "This means that the brackets that NWT uses 
around OTHER may be removed, because the word OTHER is no addition or interpolation, but 
in a given context it is a legitimate part of PAS."

Have you ever noticed all those words in italics in the King James Version and the New American Standard Version? Those are words that are not in the original text, yet there are thousands of them.

Materialism's efforts to wave away evidence for fine tuning in the cosmos defy parody.

Cosmology Is Naturalism’s Playground. But Does the Fun Mask a Science Decline?
Denyse O'Leary

I have been thinking about how naturalism rots science  from the head down  — for example, by making it nearly impossible to have a rational discussion of the Big Bang or the apparent fine-tuning of our universe and our planet for life.

Oddly, the naturalist theories that attempt to account for these facts without design in nature do not necessarily require assessment against each other, as would be the case if they represented whole, complex schools of thought. They appear mostly to be churned up ad hoc. Reading current cosmology literature is an adventure. We are a long way from relativity, quantum mechanics, and finding the Higgs boson.

Cosmology has become an art form. Stylish essays are decked out with a very brief skirt of science. Frequent topics give some sense of the genre: For example, consider the claim that our universe is actually only two-dimensional but appears to be three-dimensional — a hologram.

We are told that it is a three-dimensional “mirage” of a collapsing star “in a universe profoundly different than our own.” Or perhaps an illusion born from information encoded elsewhere, on a “two-dimensional chip.” One source claims that there is substantial evidence for the holographic universe. From another source, we learn that the universe  “neither confirms nor denies its holographic nature.”

What are the stakes? The hologram universe is thought to account for the Big Bang, space, and time. That would just be another arcane controversy in science except that there is no clear, consistent trail of evidence for any of it. At least one effort to test the holograph universe came up with “no evidence of holographic noise.” Despite that, “New evidence for the strange idea that the universe is a hologram” is frequently aired. But, as with so much cosmology today, one wonders what role evidence really plays anyway. Would any evidence cause proponents to abandon the idea?

We see the same thing with the claim that our universe is a computer simulation created by aliens, taken seriously by well-known astrophysicist and science presenter Neil deGrasse Tyson and by theoretical physicist and Templeton winner  Martin Rees. Aliens? Joshua Rothman  explains at The New Yorker that, “The simulation argument is appealing, in part, because it gives atheists a way to talk about spirituality.” Notice how ideas that would have been slammed as religion suddenly became science as long as they can be grafted onto naturalism. Even if they make prominent science figures sound as if they are the people who think that NASA is hiding space aliens.

Then there is the notion of universes parallel to ours.  Or that we live in the past of a parallel universe, worth noting here along with the other more modest claims such as the hologram universe and the computer simulation universe. A Cosmos Magazine article invokes Darwinism in support of these parallel worlds: “Is this not all too absurd to take seriously? Not for the physicists, it seems. And as David Wallace points out in The Emergent Multiverse, our sense of absurdity evolved to help us scratch a living on the savannahs of Africa. The universe is not obliged to conform to it.”

So the standard of evidence has been reduced to that of Darwinism. Indeed, we are informed that we can believe in parallel universes if we would only discard a classic science principle like  Occam’s Razor  (that is, go with the simplest explanation).

Time does not fare much better. Maybe time is a  grand illusion or else it isn’t real or  all in our heads.  Or else we can change the past. Or else the future can shape the past. Or there is a mirror universe where time can move backward. Some philosophers of science do still defend the reality of time. That said, some prominent scientists argue that  the universe is conscious, a curious claim in an age where consciousness itself is considered to be an illusion. So is the universe the illusion of an illusion?

Those who still defend a reality-based view of science seem to be slowly losing ground. Overall, science is experiencing a massive invasion of post-fact.

There is a marked difference between the style of the literature that celebrates naturalism in and of itself and the more traditional excitement around, say, finding the Higgs boson. Theory now needs only a tangential relationship to the methods and tools of science. But then perhaps our expectations of science are changing. Possibly many no longer want information so much as they want attitudes  they can live with.

What strikes one is the fundamental unseriousness of it all. That would not necessarily matter. Unserious disciplines can often be ignored.

However, there is a looming, much more serious problem, which I hope to explore in more depth later: Efforts are underway to change the rules of science to accommodate theories that seem to have lost touch with evidence: For example, Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit notes at Not Even Wrong that the organizing committee for the 2015 Munich conference “Why Trust a Theory?” was chaired by a philosopher of science who, to oversimplify (in Woit’s view), thinks that the solution is to “change our understanding of the scientific method.”

Actually, it is not an oversimplification. That is exactly what we are being asked to do, in order to accommodate non-evidence-based theory. If this trend continues, science will become indistinguishable from literary fiction.

Note: The multiverse (ours is only one of an infinite number of universes) is the principal naturalist claim regarding the cosmos but it merits a separate discussion.

On "Stauros" according to the NWT

A Reply to: 
Jehovah Witnesses And The Symbol Of The Cross
The first step in understanding why this statement is made is to know that every where your Bible uses the word "cross," their Bible uses the word "stake." To confirm their position they will use partial quotes and references from scholars that seem to back up their claim that the Greek word stauros in the New Testament means "stake" or "pole" instead of its true meaning "cross." They also will say, "stauros" in both the classical Greek and Koine carries no thought of a "cross" made of two timbers, but instead it carries the notion of only an upright stake, a pale, pile, or pole.When the Greek lexicons are checked, however, one finds this is not the case.

Heinz: Are JW's using partial quotes? And do Greek Lexicons and dictionaries agree more with Mark's point of view? Let us take a look. "The Tau was the basis for what is now called the "cross" taken from the Latin "crux".  "The shape of the [two-beamed cross] had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ."—An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (London, 1962), W. E. Vine, p. 256. 
What is this? The Cross used among ancient pagan? Is there more? 
"It is strange, yet unquestionably a fact, that in ages long before the birth of Christ, and since then in lands untouched by the teaching of the Church, the Cross has been used as a sacred symbol. . . . The Greek Bacchus, the Tyrian Tammuz, the Chaldean Bel, and the Norse Odin, were all symbolized to their votaries by a cruciform device."—The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art (London, 1900), G. S. Tyack, p. 1.

The people of the ancient lands used the cross in worship, some, like the Egyptians used it in Phallus worship, or, worship of the male sex organ.  It was used as a symbol of fertility. "Various figures of crosses are found everywhere on Egyptian monuments and tombs, and are considered by many authorities as symbolical either of the phallus [a representation of the male sex organ] or of coition. . . . In Egyptian tombs the crux ansata [cross with a circle or handle on top] is found side by side with the phallus."—A Short History of Sex-Worship (London, 1940), H. Cutner, pp. 16, 17; see also The Non-Christian Cross, p. 183.

The Ancient Church by clergyman W.  D. Killen says, on page 316: "From the most remote antiquity the cross was venerated in Egypt and Syria; it was held in equal honour by the Buddhists of the East; and, what is still more extraordinary, when the Spaniards first visited America, the well-known sign was found among the objects of worship in the idol temples of Anahuac. It is also remarkable that, about the commencement of our era, the pagans were wont to make the sign of a cross upon the forehead in the celebration of some of their sacred mysteries."  The origin of the cross is indeed very pagan. 
So you see, the reason that JW's do not use the word bears heavily on its pagan origin. After all, "What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?" 2Cor 6:15 RSV

"They also will say, "stauros" in both the classical Greek and Koine carries no thought of a "cross" made of two timbers, but instead it carries the notion of only an upright stake, a pale, pile, or pole. 
When the Greek lexicons are checked, however, one finds this is not the case. "

We have already checked Vine's, but are there others? 
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Original Greek Words with their Precise Meanings for English 
Readers states: "STAUROS . . . denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such 
malefactors were nailed for execution." Similarly, the book The Non-Christian Cross observes: 
"There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, 
which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in 
the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros [pole or stake]; much less to the effect that 
it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross." 
Paul Wilhelm Schmidt, who was a professor at the University of Basel, in his work Die 
Geschichte Jesu (The History of Jesus), Vol. 2, Tübingen and Leipzig, 1904, pp. 386-394, made 
a detailed study of the Greek word stau·ros'. On p. 386 of his work he said: "staur¬V [stau·ros'] 
means every upright standing pale or tree trunk." 
New Bible Dictionary of 1985 under "Cross," page 253: "The Gk. word for 'cross' (stauros; verb 
stauroo . . . ) means primarily an upright stake or beam, and secondarily a stake used as an 
instrument for punishment and execution." 
W. E. Vine says on this subject: "STAUROS (staur¬V) denotes, primarily, an upright pale or 
stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroo, to 
fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two 
beamed cross." Greek scholar Vine then mentions the Chaldean origin of the two-piece cross 
and how it was adopted from the pagans by Christendom in the third century C.E. as a symbol of 
Christ's impalement.—Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1981, Vol. 
1, p. 256. 
The Latin dictionary by Lewis and Short gives as the basic meaning of crux "a tree, frame, or 
other wooden instruments of execution, on which criminals were impaled or hanged." 
The book Dual Heritage—The Bible and the British Museum states: "It may come as a shock to 
know that there is no word such as 'cross' in the Greek of the New Testament. The word 
translated 'cross' is always the Greek word [stau·ros'] meaning a 'stake' or 'upright pale.' The 
cross was not originally a Christian symbol; it is derived from Egypt and Constantine." 
See also Strongs and Young's Analytical Concordance.

The Watchtower Society not only claims that Christ did not die on a cross, they further state that there is no evidence that a cross with a crossbeam was ever even used by Romans during the first century. They claim the stake was "the then customary usage of this means of execution in the Orient." They maintain, "The evidence is, therefore, completely lacking that Jesus Christ was crucified on two pieces of timber placed at right angles...The passing of time and further archaeological discoveries will be certain to prove its [torture stake] correctness.

To further elucidate those that see this rejection of a 2-beamed stauros are not WT-born are the follwing references: 
"THE sign of the cross has been a symbol of great antiquity, present in nearly every known 
culture. Its meaning has eluded anthropologists, though its use in funerary art could well point to 
a defense against evil. On the other hand, the famous crux ansata of Egypt, depicted coming 
from the mouth, must refer to life or breath. The universal use of the sign of the cross makes 
more poignant the striking lack of crosses in early Christian remains, especially any specific 
reference to the event on Golgotha. Most scholars now agree that the cross, as an artistic 
reference to the passion event, cannot be found prior to the time of Constantine."—Ante 
Pacem—Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (1985), by Professor 
Graydon F. Snyder, page 27. 
"There was no use of the crucifix," says one historian of the early Christians, "and no material 
representation of the cross." History of the Christian Church, J. F. Hurst, Vol. I, p. 366.

We have strong Biblical basis for assuming a cross beam: 
NAS John 20:25 The other disciples therefore were saying to him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I shall see in His hands the imprint of the nails [plural], and put my finger into the place of the nails [plural], and put my hand into His side, I will not believe. 
You will notice in this passage the word "nails," this is in the plural suggesting each hand was nailed seperately to a cross beam. You might also notice in JW literature images of Jesus hanging on a cross with one (singular) nail through his wrist/hands.

The Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, by M'Clintock and Strong, comments: 
'Much time and trouble have been wasted in disputing as to whether three or four nails were used in fastening the Lord. Nonnus affirms that three only were used, in which he is followed by Gregory Nazianzen. The more general belief gives four nails, an opinion which is supported at much length and by curious arguments by Curtius. Others have carried the number of nails as high as fourteen.'-Volume II, page 580. 
Accounts of Jesus impalement/crucifixion like Matthew 27:35 give little evidence of the methods used. After Jesus' resurrection, Thomas said: "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and stick my finger into the print of the nails and stick my hand into his side, I will certainly not believe." (John 20:25) Because of this some have also concluded from John 20:25 that two nails were used, one through each hand. But does Thomas' use of the plural *nails* have to be understood that Jesus' hands were pierced by a separate nail? 
In Luke 24:39 the resurrected Jesus said: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself." This suggests that Christ's feet also were nailed. Since Thomas made no mention of nailprints in Jesus' feet, his use of the plural "nails" could have been a general reference to multiple nails used in piercing Jesus. 
Debate over such an insignificant detail should not be permitted to becloud the all-important truth that "we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son."-Romans 5:10. RSV

We must also remember too that the Cross was adopted as a "Christian" symbol (312 C.E.)  after it was adopted by Emperor Constantine, who continued to be a Sun-worshipper, and the cross was the symbol of the sun-god, Sol. 
January 13, 313 C.E. Constantine as pagan Pontifex Maximus publishes his famous edict of toleration in favor of the professed Christians and they are made eligible to public office. 
321 C.E. Sunday Dies Solis, the day of the sun-god, Sol, whose symbol is the cross, is made a day exempt from being judicial and its observance made a legal duty. 
325 C.E. Constantine becomes head of the eastern and western sections of the Roman Empire. He calls a religious council for settling the controversy over the Greek characters or "trinity," which threatens the unity of his empire. As pagan Pontifex Maximus, not yet baptized as a Christian, Constantine presides over the council...and the rest is the history of Christendom. 
 I think what JW's are driving at is the adoration of a symbol. I think you will agree that many use the figure of a cross a object of worship, and where that happens we are no better than the pagans who did the very same thing. The cross is a symbol of Christ's humiliation, but we are saved through his BLOOD that was shed that day. Let us envision it this way. If our Saviour was killed by a gun, would we be hanging that around our necks. It is too macabre to sprinkle blood on our shirts to commemorate this important event, and using the cross as a symbol of our affection in the Lord Jesus Christ is not necessary. After all, we are walking by faith, not by sight.



Addendum: Here is an interesting note from a recently released Bible:

"The Greek term signifies an upright stake on which criminal were executed, with no suggestion of a cross-beam. In the Latin versions the term 'crux' was used, but according to Livy of the 1st century B.C., the word meant no more than an upright stake; it was only later that crux came to mean a cross. Josephus relates how 2,000 were crucified at one time ('Antiquities' book 17; 10:10) hardly practicable if crosses had to be made for each one. There are Greek words which denote a cross, but none of these appear in the in any of the four gospel accounts of Jesus' execution. At Galatians 3:13 Paul refers to the instrument as 'a timber' (A.V. a tree) a reference to the upright stake on which bodies of criminals were hanged under the Mosaic Law (Deut 21:22), and which Jesus fulfilled by his death. 
Some have contended that the Romans did use crosses for execution at that time although Livy refutes this. Even if this were so, the Romans were also careful to observe local customs as fas as possible to avoid unnecessarily upsetting the populace, and so likely would have modified their method to conform to the Jewish practice. A rough upright stake would be in any case less trouble to produce than a hewn cross with a joint strong enough to bear the weight of a man. 
Christians are sometimes disturbed to learn that the cross, considered for centuries as a Christian symbol, had its origin long before Christ and was actually used in pagan mythology.It was the symbol of the god Tammuz, and Bacchus, and the Egyptian Osiris. It was worshipped by the Celtic druids and worn on necklaces by the Vestal Virgins of Rome...As the Greek text shows, Christ was not executed on a Cross, that symbol can be regarded for what it is, a pagan corruption of Christian worship introduced in the early centuries of our common era. Thus in harmony with 2 Cor 6:15 although long cherished, it is something that Christians should shun."
21st Century NT appendix 
Although (A.E. Knoch) uses "cross" in the text of the Concordant Literal Version, in the 
Keyword Concordance under "cross" he says, "an upright stake or pale, without any crosspiece, now, popularly, cross".  Under "crucify" he adds, "Drive a stake into the ground, fasten on a stake, impale, now popular usage, crucify, though there was no crosspiece".

On irreducibe complexity

The winged swarms v.Darwin.

Collective Motion Multiplies Design Requirements

Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

A memorable sequence from Illustra Media’s documentary Flight: The Genius of Birds examines the phenomenon of starling murmurations (see it  here)

When you consider the training required for six fighter pilots to fly in formation, it becomes all the more remarkable to watch half a million birds perform split-second maneuvers in close proximity to one another.

In the film, European scientists sought to understand the birds’ collective motion by plotting the positions over time of individuals and small groups of birds within the flock. Now in a new paper in PLOS ONE

, four UK scientists try a different approach. They monitored a flock of “citizen scientists” who volunteered to record observations of starling murmurations over a two-year period. Some 3,000 volunteers from 23 countries participated. The large data set, mostly gathered within the UK, allowed the researchers to address little-understood questions about this spectacular example of collective motion, such as seasonal activity, dependence on temperature, and whether or not predators affect the size or length of a murmuration. Here’s a quick summary of the findings:

Flock sizes increased from October to February, then declined.

Average duration was 26 minutes; longest ones were at the beginning of the season.

Cool temperatures weakly increased murmuration durations, but day length was more significant.

Predators were observed in only about 30 percent of the murmurations.

When predators were present, the birds tended to descend en masse to their roosts rather than disperse.

Based on the data, the authors believe that predator avoidance (the “safer together” hypothesis) is probably more in play than temperature (the “warmer together” hypothesis):

[O]ur findings suggest that the collective behaviour observed in starling murmurations is primarily an anti-predator adaptation rather than a way of attracting larger numbers of individuals to a roost for warmth. Suitable roosting sites attract large numbers of birds who would be vulnerable flying to the roost individually. Murmurating above the roosting site provides multiple advantages in terms of the dilution effect, increased vigilance leading to the detection effect and predator confusion. This model of murmuration relies on having a critical mass of birds arriving at more-or-less the same time to initiate the murmuration and further study of the behaviour of starlings at the start of the murmuration (and indeed, just before the start of the murmuration) would be valuable in unravelling how this behaviour develops from a relatively few number of individuals into a spectacular collective behaviour comprising potentially tens of thousands of individuals.

Discovering one reason for a behavior, however, does not negate other possibilities. Perhaps the birds sleep better after an energetic exercise program. Or, maybe it gives them pleasure somehow. Predator avoidance may just be a side benefit, since predators were not observed during most of the events. It seems overly costly to evolve this kind of elaborate flight behavior for predator avoidance when simpler options could do, such as camouflage or scattering. And why didn’t the predators evolve counter-measures, like engaging in attack murmurations of their own, dive-bombing the flock en masse in their roosts? Have hawks been fooled by the starlings’ trick for millions of years? For these and other reasons, evolutionary explanations fall short. The authors don’t even mention evolution or speculate about how the behavior arose.

One thing we can be sure of: performing split-second decisions in tight formation in 3-D without colliding doesn’t just happen. To do what these birds do takes precision flight hardware and software. We appreciate the effort of the researchers and the citizen scientists to gather all this data. It does provide new insight into a marvelous natural wonder. The most important questions, though, remain unanswered by those who restrict their explanations to methodological naturalism.

Collective behavior is seen throughout the animal kingdom: in swarming insects, shoaling fish, stampeding mammals, and flocking birds. The phenomenon is so interesting to the Human Frontiers Science Programme (supported by 15 countries including the United States) that it recently awarded $1 million to a team led by Dr. Alex Thornton to study it. News from the University of Exeter 

says, “The riddle of how these often vast numbers of individuals synchronize their movements so flawlessly as to behave almost as a single being has only recently begun to be unravelled.”

Thornton is particularly interested in how individual characteristics affect the group, since no two individuals are exactly alike. Even human “flocks” cross the divide between individual and group behavior, as seen in traffic flow and crowd dynamics (for example, doing “the wave” at a baseball game). For the next three years, Thornton’s team will study intelligent members of the crow family, jackdaws and rooks, which often flock together.

Dr Thornton added: “Although people may not realise it, the familiar sight of flocks of jackdaws and rooks that darken our winter skies is amongst the most complex aggregations of animals on Earth. By studying the movements of individual birds within flocks, and their interactions with one another, we will help to reveal how complex societies remain cohesive and make collective decisions.”

Large aquariums delight visitors with their displays that often include swarms of anchovies swimming like one giant organism, all turning on cue. A new paper in Science Advances

 (an open-access journal of the AAAS) seeks to understand “the effects of external cues on individual and collective behavior of shoaling fish.” What happens when you scare a school of fish, or attract them with food?

To date, experimental work has focused on collective behavior within a single, stable context. We examine the individual and collective behavior of a schooling fish species, the x-ray tetra (Pristella maxillaris), identifying their response to changes in context produced by food cues or conspecific alarm cues. Fish exposed to alarm cues show pronounced, broad-ranging changes of behavior, including reducing speed and predictability in their movements. Alarmed fish also alter their responses to other group members, including enacting a smaller zone of repulsion and increasing their frequency of observation of, and responsiveness to, near neighbors. Fish subject to food cues increased speed as a function of neighbor positions and reduced encounter frequency with near neighbors. Overall, changes in individual behavior and the interactions among individuals in response to external cues coincide with changes in group-level patterns, providing insight into the adaptability of behavior to changes in context and interrelationship between local interactions and global patterns in collective behavior.

Those reactions don’t sound surprising, since we humans can probably relate to watching our neighbors more closely when alarmed, or rushing past them to get free stuff. So again, while one appreciates the graphs and charts of relative speeds of the fish when they are subjected to external cues, the paper leaves the most interesting questions unaddressed: how could evolution equip fish with the hardware and software to respond quickly in coordinated fashion while swimming millimeters apart?

The authors mention “rules of interaction,” but who made the rules, and who enforces them? How did the fish learn the exceptions, when the rules become “context-dependent”? If every individual did not know the rules, frightened fish might make like the Midianites in the story from the Book of Judges, killing each other off in the confusion of the moment. Starlings appear to follow simple rules, but without reliable programming in each individual, the murmuration could turn into a demolition derby.

Fighter pilots mastering formation flight require many hours of sophisticated training in intelligently designed aircraft. From this fact, we can deduce that intelligence was involved in the origin of collective behavior in animals. Tellingly, this paper, like the other one, doesn’t get into evolution. It makes you wonder about that claim that nothing in biology makes sense without it.

Is OOL Science's road to LUCA really another bridge to nowhere?

Origin-of-Life Researcher Admits, It’s “A Long, Long Way to LUCA”
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

As David Klinghoffer noted briefly here already, a recent paper in Nature Reviews Chemistry, “Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning,” opens with a striking admission. In the article, British biochemist John Sutherland concedes the lack of progress in explaining a naturalistic origin of life. Let’s look at this in some more detail. Sutherland writes:

Understanding how life on Earth might have originated is the major goal of origins of life chemistry. To proceed from simple feedstock molecules and energy sources to a living system requires extensive synthesis and coordinated assembly to occur over numerous steps, which are governed only by environmental factors and inherent chemical reactivity. Demonstrating such a process in the laboratory would show how life can start from the inanimate. If the starting materials were irrefutably primordial and the end result happened to bear an uncanny resemblance to extant biology — for what turned out to be purely chemical reasons, albeit elegantly subtle ones — then it could be a recapitulation of the way that natural life originated. We are not yet close to achieving this end, but recent results suggest that we may have nearly finished the first phase: the beginning. [Emphasis added.]

(John D. Sutherland, “Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning,” Nature Reviews Chemistry, Vol. 1:12 (2017))

Here, Sutherland admits, as others have done, that scientists are nowhere near figuring out how life arose naturally. Later on in the paper he elaborates on just how far away they really are. More on this in a moment, but let’s quickly examine his claim that scientists are “nearly finished” explaining “the first phase” of the origin of life.

Most theorists think that the origin of life will ultimately be explained as a series of steps, including:

The creation of monomers via prebiotic synthesis

The formation of polymers from those monomers

The formation of a self-replicating molecule

The formation of cells to encapsulate those self-replicating molecules

Of course, there are many other steps along the way, but these are the main ones involved. The first two are thought to have involved pure chemistry — what one might call “necessity,” or things bound to happen given the deterministic laws of nature.

The last two steps are considered to be more a matter of contingency. That is, they things that did not have to happen and may have simply occurred due to lucky happenstance. This is because, as we’ll see, forming complex polymers (like RNA) — which scientists are still nowhere near explaining — provides no guarantee that you’ll generate the right sequences of nucleotides in those RNAs to yield a self-replicating molecule.

So what Sutherland claims we’re close to explaining is merely the first step: forming simple organic monomers via chemical reactions that were bound to happen under chemical processes on the early earth. Or were they?

We’ve reviewed Sutherland’s work here at Evolution News in the past. He and his team have focused on how to explain the origin of nucleotides under natural chemical conditions. His research produced some nucleotides. Whether it mimicked plausible conditions that might have existed naturally on the early earth is an entirely different question.

For example, in 2009 he co-authored a paper in Nature purporting to produce activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides under “prebiotically plausible conditions.” An evaluation of his paper showed the conditions weren’t so prebiotically plausible after all. After the New York Times praised Sutherland’s paper, Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer wrote a response noting that it “fail[s] to address the fundamental issue that has generated the longstanding impasse in the field: the problem of the origin of biological information.” Later, Meyer observed that “not only does this study not address the problem of getting nucleotide bases to arrange themselves into functionally specified sequences, but the extent to which it does succeed in producing biologically relevant chemical constituents of RNA actually illustrates the indispensable role of intelligence in generating such chemistry.”

In a subsequent post, Casey Luskin asked various pro-ID chemists to review Sutherland’s research. They concluded that Sutherland’s reactions required substantial intelligent intervention and would certainly never occur under blind and unguided natural conditions:

“The starting materials are ‘plausibly’ obtainable by abiotic means, but need to be kept isolated from one another until the right step, as Sutherland admits. One of the starting materials is a single mirror image for which there is no plausible way to get it that way abiotically. Then Sutherland ran these reactions as any organic chemist would, with pure materials under carefully controlled conditions. In general, he purified the desired products after each step, and adjusted the conditions (pH, temperature, etc.) to maximum advantage along the way. Not at all what one would expect from a lagoon of organic soup. He recognized that making of a lot of biologically problematic side products was inevitable, but found that UV light applied at the right time and for the right duration could destroy much (?) of the junk without too much damage to the desired material. Meaning, of course, that without great care little of the desired chemistry would plausibly occur. But it is more than enough for true believers in OOL to rejoice over, and, predictably, to way overstate in the press.”

“They used pH manipulation, phosphate buffers, and irradiation all at the correct times and amounts to achieve their goal, which was to produce ‘activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides.’ Indeed, they could have shortened their title by chopping off the last four words and sent the paper to the Journal of Organic Synthesis and had a good chance of getting it accepted as a novel synthetic route with full credit to themselves for their clever manipulations. Certainly the fingerprints of several intelligent chemists are all over this pathway if not their rather ham-fisted signatures.”

Senior origin-of-life researcher Robert Shapiro chimed in and criticized Sutherland’s work, saying: “Although as an exercise in chemistry this represents some very elegant work, this has nothing to do with the origin of life on Earth whatsoever….The chances that blind, undirected, inanimate chemistry would go out of its way in multiple steps and use of reagents in just the right sequence to form RNA is highly unlikely.” Meanwhile, a peer-reviewed paper in Accounts of Chemical Research took Sutherland and his team to task for using unrealistic, implausible pathways to generate the nucleotides:

Notwithstanding is merits, Sutherland’s approach is discounted by many in the bio-origins community. It is perhaps easy to see why. In their attempt to avoid the “water problem” for the glycosidic bond, Sutherland et al. drive themselves back into the “asphalt problem.” Their alternative synthesis requires human addition (at the right times) of high concentrations of two carbohydrates, glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde. These carbohydrates are too reactive to accumulate prebiotically, even with borate.

Reviewing Sutherland’s proposed route, Shapiro noted that it resembled a golfer, having played an 18 hole course, claiming that he had shown that the golf ball could have, through some combination of wind, rain, heating, cooling, dehydration, and ultraviolet irradiation played itself around the course without the golfer’s presence.

Perhaps recognizing this, Sutherland and his co-workers wrote, “Although the issue of temporally separated supplies of glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde remains a problem, a number of situations could have arisen that would result in the conditions of heating and progressive dehydration followed by cooling, rehydration and ultraviolet irradiation. Comparative assessment of these models is beyond the scope of this work.”

In Shapiro’s view, the need for “temporally separated supplies of glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde” is more than “a problem…beyond the scope” of this work. It is a fatal flaw.

(Stephen Benner, Hyo-Joong Kim, and Matthew A. Carrigan, “Asphalt, Water, and the Prebiotic Synthesis of Ribose, Ribonucleosides, and RNA,” Accounts of Chemical Research, Vol. 45:2025-2034 (2012))

Then, in 2015 Sutherland co-published a paper in Nature Chemistry purporting to create the precursors of pyrimidine nucleotides in a manner that also produced precursors to amino acids (which build proteins) and lipids. This led the journal Science to excitedly proclaim, “Researchers may have solved origin-of-life conundrum.” But the research had the same problems as before. Again Casey Luskin asked an ID-friendly biochemist to weigh in:

I read the article by Patel et al (2015) that appeared in Nature Chemistry. While it is full of fascinating chemistry, given all of the manipulation of pH, precursor mixes, temperature, metal co-ions, etc., it is beyond the pale to pretend that anything in this paper represents undirected pre-biotic chemistry. The only way this paper represents a solution to origin-of-life issues is for Patel et al. to be time travelers who manipulated the pre-biotic environment to produce the building blocks of life….To claim that the whole suite of “precursors of ribonucleotides, amino acids and lipids can all be derived by the reductive homologation of hydrogen cyanide and some of its derivatives” rests on how one defines what are plausible early Earth conditions. By admitting that the products vary depending upon reaction conditions and metallic co-ions, the idea of a one-pot synthesis is not viable in this scenario. They also stretch the concept of “plausibility” to a new extreme. While it is easy to imagine a series of pools of the appropriate conditions and with the appropriate precursor compounds all feeding into a single pool, it would be wrong to conclude that what we can imagine is science.

In short, from the prebiotic perspective, Sutherland’s research up to now has been implausible. This brings us to his new article in Nature Reviews Chemistry. He candidly discusses the gap between prebiotic chemistry, which happens without enzyme catalysts, and biological chemistry, which uses all kinds of biomolecules to regulate biochemistry:

Biology almost always relies on chemistry that does not proceed efficiently in the absence of catalysis, because this allows chemistry to be regulated by dialling various catalysts up or down. However, most prebiotic chemistry must proceed of its own accord, and this surely suggests that it must generally be different from the underlying chemistry used in biology….Nevertheless, despite the inevitable widespread differences between their individual reactions, prebiotic reaction networks ultimately have to transition into biochemical networks; hence, there must be some similarities between the two, if only at the level that practitioners of synthesis would view as strategic.

Sutherland thus views similarities between biological chemistry and blind, nonbiological (and possibly prebiotic) chemistry as hinting at how biological chemistry arose. As in his 2015 paper, in the 2017 review he outlines a scenario for generating the precursors of nucleotides, amino acids, and lipids. He seems aware that this scenario, requiring a long series of steps and the addition of chemical species at just the right stages, might not be convincing. He sums up his explanation as follows:

Remarkably, when these few reduction reactions are combined with several addition reactions and a dry-state phosphorylation (conditions for which were discovered nearly half a century ago but are still being rediscovered), a reaction network leading from hydrogen cyanide 2 (and a few of its derivatives) to the pyrimidine nucleotides, and to precursors to a dozen amino acids and glycerol phosphate lipids, can be defined. The reactions are all high yielding and lead to little else besides biomolecules or their precursors. It is not definitive proof that the building blocks of biology arose in this way, but it is compelling and indicates that the requirements for these reactions to take place should be used to constrain geochemical scenarios on the early Earth. A requirement for ultraviolet irradiation to generate hydrated electrons would rule out deep sea environments. This, along with strong bioenergetic and structural arguments, suggests that the idea that life originated at vents should, like the vents themselves, remain “In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” The chemistry places certain demands on the environment of the early Earth: for example, the high concentrations of certain species through evaporation of solutions. Supporters welcome these demands as constraints that help refine primitive Earth scenarios. Detractors view them as unacceptable but must surely then demonstrate that other scenarios can be equally productive.

Aside from the fact that Sutherland’s model refutes the ever-popular “hydrothermal vent” hypothesis for the origin of life, don’t miss the last sentence where he commits the “burden of proof” logical fallacy. This basically says that if you view his scenario as “unacceptable” then you can’t dismiss it unless you can produce a scenario that’s better or “equally productive.” This is obviously fallacious: the merits of his hypothesis do not fall or rise on the ability of a given critic to provide a more “productive” explanation. After all, what if the entire project — the attempt to produce biomolecules in the absence of living organisms under natural earthlike conditions — is impossible? If that’s the case, then all explanations of prebiotic synthesis are ultimately doomed to fail, including our “best” attempts. Perhaps the fact that he ends on this note hints that he knows his case isn’t really all that strong.

Indeed, he reassures skeptics, saying: “The resemblance to modern biochemistry might not be obvious to the non-chemist at first, but it is to those with chemical acuity.” That’s another logical fallacy for you — the “genetic fallacy,” which attacks people personally, in this instance for being “non-chemists,” rather than their arguments.

In any case, the scenario of prebiotic synthesis he outlines once again suffers from the problems that his earlier work did. As Robert Shapiro put it, it is “highly unlikely” that “blind, undirected, inanimate chemistry would go out of its way in multiple steps and use of reagents in just the right sequence to form RNA.”

Sutherland’s reference in his paper’s title to “the end of the beginning” means he thinks we’re near the end of explaining how simple biological monomers might have arisen on the early earth in the absence of living organisms. That is step (1) (“the beginning”) in the list above. However, if Shapiro and other critics are correct, then Sutherland is probably still pretty far from the end of the beginning. And even if Sutherland were correct, he admits just how far a full-fledged explanation for step (1) is from explaining the origin of life:

[T]he prebiotic synthesis of building blocks — to which we have devoted so much of our time — only corresponds to a small increase in the complexity of the system and to no increase in its aliveness (a humbling thought).

Figure 3 in his review paper illustrates the distance that origin-of-life theorists must traverse to explain the chemical origin of life and the origin of LUCA — the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms:

Note the box indicating “The current state of the field.” It’s pretty far down the road of things needing to be explained. Thus, even in Sutherland’s overly optimistic view, they haven’t begun to explain how these prebiotic monomers could combine to form larger polymers such as RNA and then begin to explore sequence-space. This is, in his own words,  “A long, long way to LUCA.”

But what if somehow Sutherland et al. could solve all of these problems and could thus produce RNAs via unguided chemical reactions? Benner et al. 2012 (quoted above) point out why this would likely be a dead end for origin-of-life research:

[C]urrent experiments suggest that RNA molecules that catalyze the degradation of RNA are more likely to emerge from a library of random RNA molecules than RNA molecules that catalyze the template-directed synthesis of RNA, especially given cofactors (e.g., Mg2+). This could, of course, be a serious (and possibly fatal) flaw to the RNA-first hypothesis for bio-origins.

That’s a major issue. Even if you can produce random RNA molecules, you’re much more likely to produce RNAs that degrade other RNAs than those that can replicate new ones. This goes back to Stephen Meyer’s original criticism of Sutherland’s work: without intelligence to generate information and properly order nucleotides, you are exceedingly unlikely to get the needed sequences to produce a living, self-replicating organism. Or to put it in Sutherland’s language, only input from an intelligence can allow you to cross the necessity-contingency boundary and produce something that approaches “aliveness,” much less something that is “fully alive.”

In fact, Sutherland seems aware that this is a problem for naturalistic models. As he writes:

However, this synthesis is necessary to put the system on the right path, and knowing the steps that have been taken can give some hints as to the nature of the steps that follow, at least up to a point: the necessity-contingency boundary when the synthesis of macromolecules from multiple monomers reaches the stage in which only a fraction of all possible sequence variants can be sampled owing to the number of possible permutations exceeding the number of molecules.

In other words, even if we explain how to generate lots of RNAs, how do we get the very unlikely sequences that yield living organisms? The answer is staring him and other origin-of-life theorists in the face, but most aren’t willing to see it: In all of our experience with the origin of complex and specified information, only intelligent design can generate the sequence-specific digital information necessary to cross the necessity-contingency boundary and generate a self-replicating living organism.

Proto life and the case for design