Is the sun setting on scientific objectivity?

Science and the "Darkness of the West"

David Klinghoffer

Writing in the London Times, Melanie Phillips is on fire with a righteous indignation at the "dark ages," the eclipse of wisdom and integrity, into which science has fallen. She starts with climate change but is only warming up:

The problem of scientific integrity, however, goes far wider. Psychology, neuroscience, physics and other scientific areas have been convulsed by revelations of dodgy research.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, has written bleakly: "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."

One reason is that cash-strapped universities, competing for money and talent, exert huge pressure on academics to publish more and more to meet the box-ticking criteria set by grant-funding bodies. Corners are being cut and mistakes being made.

But whatever happened to peer-review, the supposed kitemark of scientific integrity produced by the collective judgment of other researchers? Well, that seems to have gone south too. In 1998 Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, sent an article containing eight deliberate mistakes to more than 200 of the BMJ's regular reviewers. Not one picked out all the mistakes. On average, they reported fewer than two; some did not spot any.

This reminds me of the PLOS ONE "Creator" censorship story. I was shocked by this statement from a spokesman for the journal:

This past year PLOS ONE published more than 28,000 articles that were handled by a community of more than 6,000 editors and 76,000 reviewers.

Twenty eight thousand articles? Six thousand editors? Seventy six thousand reviewers? Just one journal? That is absurd. The spokesman's point was that despite "quality control checks" the occasional error, like attributing the human hand to the "design" of a "Creator," should not be unexpected. But with such a volume of material being published, it's obvious that some interest beyond the enlightenment of the scientific community is being served. There's an industrial quality to the enterprise. Is anyone reading all this stuff? Reviewing it? Editing it? Seems not. Or is it more about satisfying metric expectations, "box-ticking criteria set by grant-funding bodies"?

Phillips:

The problem lies with research itself. The cornerstone of scientific authority rests on the notion that replicating an experiment will produce the same result. If replication fails, the research is deemed flawed. But failure to replicate is widespread. ...
A 2005 study by John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said the majority of published research findings were probably false.
At most, no more than about one in four findings from early-phase clinical trials would be true; epidemiological studies might have only a one in five chance of being true. "Empirical evidence on expert opinion", he wrote, "shows that it is extremely unreliable".

What lies behind it all? Simply the pressure facing scholars from the scientific-industrial-publishing complex? Not just that:

Underlying much of this disarray is surely the pressure to conform to an idea, whether political, commercial or ideological. Ideological fads produce financial and professional incentives to conform and punishment for dissent, whether loss of grant-funding or lack of advancement. As Professor Ioannidis observed: "For many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."

Deeper still:

Underlying this loss of scientific bearings is a closed intellectual circle. Scientists pose as secular priests. They alone, they claim, hold the keys to the universe. ...The resulting absence of openness and transparency is proving the scientists' undoing. In the words of Richard Horton, "science has taken a turn towards darkness". But science defines modernity. It is our gold standard of truth and reason. This is the darkness of the West too.


"Scientists pose as secular priests." True. Now go back and watch that excruciatingly stupid video from Bill Nye where the celebrity science educator dismisses philosophy in the most shallow, ignorant terms.

You can track what James Burnham called the "suicide of the West" in a number of areas of public life. The general culture is rife with barbarism. That's nothing you don't already know. But Philips is picking up on a little acknowledged truth. Confined by ideology and a "closed intellectual circle," science, far from being an exception to the trend of decline as some might say, is fully part of it.

On atheism's smugness; A rogue's view.

On empiricism and the fine-tuning argument for I.D.

It's design all the way down.

Intelligent Design in Dog Spit and in Rotten Wood
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

It’s not often you get a scientific paper about dog spit, but let’s see what we find in one that appeared in PLOS ONE this month:“Salivary proteomics of healthy dogs: An in-depth catalog” by Torres et al. Thank goodness scientists are willing to boldly go where few have gone before, like inside the dark cavern of a dog’s mouth. Their objective:

To provide an in-depth catalog of the salivary proteome and endogenous peptidome of healthy dogs, evaluate proteins and peptides with antimicrobial properties, and compare the most common salivary proteins and peptides between different breed phylogeny groups. [Emphasis added.]

Seven scientists decided to check the saliva from 36 dogs of 19 breeds. Using cotton swabs and collection kits, they carefully collected saliva from the gums of the dogs, including some of their own pets, after making sure the dogs were free of periodontal disease. They classified the breeds into four groups. Then they examined the saliva with state-of-the-art mass spectrometers. What they found was really quite astounding:

2,491 proteins and endogenous peptides were found in the saliva of healthy dogs with no periodontal disease. All dog phylogeny groups’ saliva was rich in proteins and peptides with antimicrobial functions. The ancient breeds group was distinct in that it contained unique proteins and was missing many proteins and peptides present in the other groups.

Thousands of proteins in dog spit! This is an order of magnitude more protein types than previous research estimated. Would you have expected so much complex specified information in a clear, sticky, unappetizing liquid? If we estimate an average of 250 amino acids per protein or peptide, three bases per amino acid codon, and four bits per DNA letter, that amounts to 7.5 megabits of CSI in dog spit! A friendly lick from your pet paints your face with intelligent design.

Each protein, you recall, is made of precise sequences of amino acids, all left-handed, representing translations of the DNA code. And as Jonathan Wells has made clear, the DNA code is only one code out of several cellular codes that guide the protein product from its initial transcription into the final translation and fold, and guide it to its place of function: in this case, the dog’s mouth. So 7.5 megabits is on the low side of the true CSI in dog saliva.

Furthermore, these proteins are there for a reason:

One of the most important functions of saliva is to protect the oral cavity and indirectly other organs against infections. In this study, 7 of the top 10 most abundant proteins have immune functions. Additionally, we identified 26 peptides and proteins (as well as some isoforms) that have been reported to have antimicrobial functions in human saliva; 4 of these were also in the top 10 most abundant in canine saliva. Six of the 26 proteins and peptides were not present in all four breed groups indicating the variability among individual dogs or dog breeds. There are likely many additional proteins and peptides with antimicrobial functions in the 2,491 identified in the study.

Needless to say, many of the proteins in saliva are also important for digestion, although dogs seem to wolf down their food without giving saliva much time to act. But as pet owners know, dogs salivate heavily. Those proteins guard the hatch with megabits of CSI. It’s a good thing they have all those antimicrobials and immune proteins handy, the way they pick up food off the floor and drink out of the toilet.

Saliva may also have behavioral functions involved in canine communication. Lest you think all that drooling shows friendship,  Live Science cautions, “Your dog may be licking its mouth because it thinks you’re a jerk.” But that’s a question for another time.

CSI in Rotten Wood

Turn over a rotting log, and you are likely to see some unlovable critters scampering away from the light, and find moist mushrooms sprouting from every crevice. It’s not the kind of thing you would want to drag into the house or choose for firewood. We can be thankful that organisms love this habitat, though, because they perform a vital function, breaking down wood for the next generation of plants.

Most of us are aware of the role of fungi in decomposing wood. What surprised researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research was how much of it there is in a rotting log. Once again, actual counts jumped by an order of magnitude over previous estimates:

So far, little research has been conducted on fungi that live on dead trees, although they are vital to the forest ecology by breaking down dead wood and completing the element cycle between plants and soil. Soil biologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have now discovered that the number of fungus species inhabiting dead trees is 12 times higher than previously thought.

You may recall Ann Gauger’s lignin challenge to evolution based on a BIO-Complexity  paper by Leisola, Pastinen, and Axe. Lignin is a tough molecule to digest, even though it is rich with energy. One would think many organisms would have evolved ways to exploit this food source, but only fungi have that ability. It’s striking that their function works for the good of the whole ecosystem. The Helmholtz Centre agrees:

Fungi that live on trees perform an important function in the forest ecosystem by breaking down dead wood. This is no easy feat, because wood is very resilient. It is held together by a biopolymer known as lignin, which together with cellulose and hemicellulose form the cell wall of woody plants and give the wood its stability. Fungi are able to break down the robust lignin and the flexible cellulose fibres by releasing enzymes that cause the polymers to degrade and become mineralised. As part of the ecosystem’s cycle, the leftover material becomes part of the humus layer, which gives the soil its stability and forms the substrate for a new generation of trees.

A photo shows how researchers measured fungi abundances. They observed 300 fallen trees from 11 species, including deciduous trees and conifers.

The trees included seven deciduous species such as beech, oak, poplar and ash and four coniferous species: spruce, Scots pine, Douglas fir and larch. Three years later they returned to see what kind of fungal communities had established themselves in the trunks. The results were astonishing: “The diversity of fungi living in the trees was an order of magnitude greater than previously thought,” says Dr Witoon Purahong, a soil ecologist based at UFZ in Halle and the first author of the study.

They couldn’t identify all the fungi, but estimated a total of 1,254 “operational taxonomic units” (unnamed species) per trunk. Surprisingly, the conifers, which in the evolutionary scheme are earlier and more primitive than deciduous trees, had the most fungal diversity. Another unexpected finding was that fungi are picky about their trees: “For example, oak and ash each harbour very specific communities [of] fungal species whose composition is very different from those found on other deciduous trees.” Even trees that have similar wood composition have distinct fungal communities.

They point to “millions of years of co-evolution between trees and wood-inhabiting fungi,” but then admit another conundrum. “What is fascinating, however, as Buscot adds, is that in some cases the specialisation of fungi on dead wood is greater than the one of symbiotic fungi on living plants.” Complexity seems to have arisen earlier.

Conclusion

These two research projects, unusual as they are, give valuable insights into working ecosystems (a dog’s mouth and a forest floor), that may lead to applications for human health and biodiversity conservation. Beyond that, though, you may sense the astonishment at finding more complexity than expected. Within each habitat investigated, science keeps finding vastly more complexity than simple mutation and selection could ever hope to produce. Furthermore, each protein, and each fungus, has a vital role to play in systems larger than themselves. Isn’t that what intelligent design science would have predicted?

Psam 33 American Standard Version.

1Rejoice in Jehovah, O ye righteous: Praise is comely for the upright.

2Give thanks unto Jehovah with the harp: Sing praises unto him with the psaltery of ten strings.

3Sing unto him a new song; Play skilfully with a loud noise.

4For the word of Jehovah is right; And all his work is done in faithfulness.

5He loveth righteousness and justice: The earth is full of the lovingkindness of Jehovah.

6By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

7He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap: He layeth up the deeps in store-houses.

8Let all the earth fear Jehovah: Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

9For he spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.

10Jehovah bringeth the counsel of the nations to nought; He maketh the thoughts of the peoples to be of no effect.

11The counsel of Jehovah standeth fast for ever, The thoughts of his heart to all generations.

12Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah, The people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.

13Jehovah looketh from heaven; He beholdeth all the sons of men;

14From the place of his habitation he looketh forth Upon all the inhabitants of the earth,

15He that fashioneth the hearts of them all, That considereth all their works.

16There is no king saved by the multitude of a host: A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.

17A horse is a vain thing for safety; Neither doth he deliver any by his great power.

18Behold, the eye of Jehovah is upon them that fear him, Upon them that hope in his lovingkindness;

19To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine.

20Our soul hath waited for Jehovah: He is our help and our shield.

21For our heart shall rejoice in him, Because we have trusted in his holy name.

22Let thy lovingkindness, O Jehovah, be upon us, According as we have hoped in thee.

On the empty tomb.

Primeval tech v. Darwinism again.

Driverless autos will be the death of civilisation?:Pros and cons.

Will the real definition of a 'species' please stand up?

The common Asian toad is actually three “species”
February 17, 2016 Posted by News under Genomics, speciation, News

A research project has tested the hypothesis that Asian common toad populations across Southeast Asia are genetically similar owing to their commensal nature and high dispersive ability. To the researchers’ surprise, three genetically divergent groups of toads were found, each in a different geographic area (mainland Southeast Asia, coastal Myanmar and the islands of Java and Sumatra).

The ranges of these three groups of toads were also found to have statistically different climates. This suggests that the toads may be adapting to local climatic conditions and evolving into separate species. Thus, toads of one group may not be able to disperse and persist within the range of another group because of climatic differences. More.

Of course, we would only know if they were evolving into separate species, as opposed to just well-adapted local variants, if they could no longer produce fertile offspring together .See, for example, the deflated tale of Darwin’s finches?

But every time one brings up the fact that the concept of speciation is groaning under the weight of sheer meaninglessness, Darwin’s followers write in to remind us that everyone knows that, but so what?

Funny, the old Brit toff called his book On the Origin of Species, but his follower say it doesn’t matter if the concept of species has more holes than a cheese grater.

See also: Rethink evolution for progress in science

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here’s the abstract:

The Asian common toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) is a human commensal species that occupies a wide variety of habitats across tropical Southeast Asia. We test the hypothesis that genetic variation in D. melanostictus is weakly associated with geography owing to natural and human-mediated dispersal facilitated by its commensal nature. Phylogenetic and population genetic analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence variation, and predictive species distribution modelling, unexpectedly recovered three distinct evolutionary lineages that differ genetically and ecologically, corresponding to the Asian mainland, coastal Myanmar and the Sundaic islands. The persistence of these three divergent lineages, despite ample opportunities for recent human-mediated and geological dispersal, suggests that D. melanostictus actually consists of multiple species, each having narrower geographical ranges and ecological niches, and higher conservation value, than is currently recognized. These findings also have implications for the invasion potential of this human commensal elsewhere, such as in its recently introduced ranges on the islands of Borneo, Sulawesi, Seram and Madagascar. (paywall) – Guinevere O. U. Wogan, Bryan L. Stuart, Djoko T. Iskandar, Jimmy A. McGuire. Deep genetic structure and ecological divergence in a widespread human commensal toad. Biology Letters, 2016; 12 (1): 20150807 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2015.0807

Vox populi is rarely vox dei?

The 1% have pulled up the ladder?:Pros and Cons

As 'just so' as it gets.

The Curious Incident of the Non-Rafting Foxes

David Klinghoffer 

Blink and you might miss this unexpected bit of common sense, embedded in a NY Times article on adorable dwarf foxes native to California's Channel Islands  ("Foxes That Endure Despite a Lack of Genetic Diversity")

. How did they get there? They were evidently ferried thousands of years ago by Native Americans, who seemed to regard them as totem animals. 

It's unlikely the foxes made the trip on their own; the islands are separated from the mainland by 12 to 70 miles of open ocean. Another clue pointing to human help: Native Americans painted foxes on rocks and gave them ceremonial burials. Foxes may have had a spiritual importance to them.

However the animals arrived on the Channel Islands, they adapted quickly. The oldest island fox fossils date back 7,000 years and show that they were small even then. [Emphasis added.]

Fine. Because otherwise how else could a fox make the passage? Just imagine: foxes rafting across 12 miles of ocean on their own, never mind 70 miles -- perhaps hitching a ride on a tree trunk or other matted vegetation torn from the ground in a violent storm. It's like something out of a kids' cartoon. That indeed sounds pretty "unlikely." Actually, "absurd" is more like it.

Now would you believe unaided animals journeying across oceans waters not for 12 or 70 but hundred of miles? Because the journal Nature tells us monkeys did it.  From the Washington Post:

Ancient primates may have traveled from South America to North America about 21 million years ago -- back when the continents were separated by 100 miles of water. The swashbuckling monkeys are reported in a study published Wednesday in Nature

"We never would've predicted they would've been here," lead author Jonathan Bloch of the Florida Museum of Natural History  told Nature.

Bloch and his colleagues identified seven monkey teeth encased in 21-million-year-old rocks in the Panama Canal Basin. The teeth, which belong to a previously undiscovered  capuchin-like  species they have dubbed Panamacebus transitus, represent the oldest evidence of monkeys on the North American continent -- and the first evidence of a mammal crossing the ocean that once separated it from South America.

They "never would've predicted" it because it sounds too unlikely. Yet "the idea of monkeys rafting around unintentionally on beds of vegetation isn't as crazy as it sounds."

No? It's not allowed to be "crazy" because after all, how did the monkeys get to South America to begin with? Against our will, because it's against common sense, we're once again forced to say by rafting:

[M]onkeys had to cross over from Africa. Most scientists believe that happened about 40 million years ago. The Atlantic Ocean would have been a bit narrower than it is now, because of the way the continents have shifted, but it still would have been quite the trip. The monkeys in question were probably carried off to sea on uprooted trees after some kind of storm or other natural disaster.

Ah yes, the theory of animal rafting by uprooted tree and violent storm. The distribution of animals across the globe is often brandished by Darwinists as evidence for common descent. But as  Casey Luskin has pointed here,  biogeography -- the study of that distribution -- in fact poses one of the toughest challenges for evolutionary theory. Monkeys are a case in point:

[O]ne of the most severe biogeographical puzzles for Darwinian theory is the origin of South American monkeys, called "platyrrhines." Based upon molecular and morphological evidence, New World platyrrhine monkeys are thought to be descended from African "Old World" or "catarrhine" monkeys. The fossil record shows that monkeys have lived in South America for about the past 30 million years. But plate tectonic history shows that Africa and South America split off from one another between 100 and 120 million years ago (mya), and that South America was an isolated island continent from about 80 - 3.5 mya. If South American monkeys split off from African monkeys around 30 mya, proponents of neo-Darwinism must somehow account for how they crossed hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers of open ocean to end up in South America.

This problem for evolutionary biologists has been recognized by numerous experts. A Harper Collins textbook on human evolution states: "The origin of platyrrhine monkeys puzzled paleontologists for decades. ... When and how did the monkeys get to South America?" Primatologists John G. Fleagle and Christopher C. Gilbert put it this way in a scientific volume on primate origins:

The most biogeographically challenging aspect of platyrrhine evolution concerns the origin of the entire clade. South America was an island continent throughout most of the Tertiary...and paleontologists have debated for much of this century how and where primates reached South America.

Primate specialist Walter Carl Hartwig is similarly blunt: "The platyrrhine origins issue incorporates several different questions. How did platyrrhines get to South America?" Such basic, vexing questions certainly don't lend credence to the NCSE's claims of "consistency between biogeographic and evolutionary patterns."

For those unfamiliar with the sort of arguments made by neo-Darwinian biogeographers, responses to these puzzles can be almost too incredible to believe. A Harper Collins textbook explains: "The 'rafting hypothesis' argues that monkeys evolved from prosimians once and only once in Africa, and ... made the water-logged trip to South America." And of course, there can't be just one seafaring monkey, or the monkey will soon die leaving no offspring. Thus, at least two monkeys (or perhaps a single pregnant monkey) must have made the rafting voyage.

Fleagle and Gilbert observe that the rafting hypothesis "raises a difficult biogeographical issue" because "South America is separated from Africa by a distance of at least 2600 km, making a phylogenetic and biogeographic link between the primate faunas of the two continents seem very unlikely." But they are wedded to an evolutionary paradigm, meaning that they are obligated to find such a "link" whether it is likely or not. They argue that in light of "[t]he absence of any anthropoids from North America, combined with the considerable morphological evidence of a South American-African connection with the rodent and primate faunas" that therefore "the rafting hypothesis is the most likely scenario for the biogeographic origin of platyrrines."

In other words, the "unlikely" rafting hypothesis is made "likely" only because we know common descent must be true.

To borrow a famous image from Sherlock Holmes, the instance with the Channel Island foxes is a case of the dog that didn't bark in the night. From  "The Adventure of the Silver Blaze,"centered on a race horse gone missing:

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

The dog didn't bark because it knew its owner. The foxes didn't raft because, under evolutionary theory, they didn't need to. Monkeys did raft, even across a whole wide ocean, because evolution required it. On other hand, if the theory needed foxes to do so, you can be sure they would obediently hop aboard. It should be the facts that drive startling conclusions, not the theory that's supposed to explain the facts. But with evolution the roles of fact and theory are often reversed. 

Animals do the most striking things, like sailing across oceans on their own, on demand. These are theory-driven "facts," not a fact-driven theory. The non-rafting foxes are the thing that gives the game away. They are, as Holmes says, the curious incident.

Dogs, by the way, like horses and foxes, are not thought to raft. Not yet!

A walk through the mind of a Titan.

On the price of beating swords into ploughshares

South Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses Face Stigma of Not Serving in Army:
By CHOE SANG-HUN

OCTOBER 3, 2015

SEOUL, South Korea — Since he was a teenager, Kim Min-hwan knew he would have to make a choice: abandon his religious convictions or go to prison.

Mr. Kim is a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who for decades have faced jail terms as conscientious objectors under South Korea’s Military Service Act. Since his release from prison in 2013, Mr. Kim has found the stigma too great to find a meaningful job, though he was a chemical engineering major. He spends his days volunteering at the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters south of Seoul.

“I was predestined to become a convict because I believed in the creator,” Mr. Kim, 31, said in an interview. “I want South Korea to recognize that there are other, nonmilitary ways for us to serve the community.”

Over the years, Jehovah’s Witnesses have filed a series of appeals asking the Constitutional Court to rule that the Military Service Act violates the constitutional right to freedom of conscience and religion. Hopes for an end to their travails rose in July, when the court held a public hearing on multiple appeals only four years after it had rejected similar petitions. The court is likely to rule on the matter before the end of the year.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were once dragged into military boot camps and stockades, where they were vilified as “commies” and “traitors” and even tortured and killed. Few spoke out for them in South Korea, where mainstream churches viewed them as a cult and people obsessed over threats from the North.In democratic South Korea today, young male Jehovah’s Witnesses no longer suffer brutal beatings. But 600 to 700 conscientious objectors are still sent to prison on average each year — nearly all of them Jehovah’s Witnesses. They account for more than 90 percent of all imprisoned conscientious objectors in the world, according to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the United Nations Human Rights Council and rights groups.

The two Koreas are technically still at war after a truce ended the Korean War in 1953, and tensions have increased under the new North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Many here argue that not punishing conscientious objectors would compromise South Korea’s ability to deter North Korea’s 1.1 million-strong military.

“North Korea remains a direct and present military threat,” Seo Kyu-young, a Defense Ministry legal counsel, said at a recent hearing at the Constitutional Court. “If we introduce alternative services, we would see a sharp rise in the number of people evading the draft under the pretext of conscience,” he said.

Acting on suggestions from both the Constitutional Court and the country’s National Human Rights Commission, the government announced plans in 2007 to introduce alternative service for conscientious objectors. But the conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak, who took office the following year, rejected them, citing a lack of national consensus.

For decades, the idea of alternatives to military training — serving as firefighters or in homeless shelters, for example — has been unspeakable in South Korea. The typical 21-month stint in the 650,000-member military has been billed as a “sacred duty” for all able-bodied men — and the price of freedom. When cabinet appointees face confirmation hearings, the first thing lawmakers investigate is whether they or their sons avoided military service.

Yet maintaining a conscript army has become more of a challenge. Postwar generations considered universal conscription an irritating interruption in their careers. They also grew disenchanted with recurring corruption, abuse and disciplinary problems in the military.

“South Korean men don’t want to serve in the military if they have a choice, so they get angry if others don’t while they have to,” said Park Yu-ho, 27, who refused to join the military partly as a protest against recent beating deaths in military camps and shooting rampages by abused soldiers.

Today, conscientious objectors are tried in civilian court and are usually given 18 months in prison. This year, they began to get some support from lower courts, where six of them were found not guilty even though their acquittals were appealed by prosecutors.The abuse of conscientious objectors was one of the worst and most ignored human rights violations under the military dictatorship of the 1970s. Conscript officials raided Jehovah’s Witness churches to haul away draft-age men. When they refused to take up arms, they were beaten “like punching bags,” according to the presidential commission on suspicious deaths in the military.

In its reports in 2008, the commission attributed the deaths of five Jehovah’s Witnesses between 1975 and 1985 to beatings and torture that were “routine” among boot camp instructors and military policemen handling conscientious objectors.

The reports, the first of their kind, described “barbarian acts that should never have happened in a civilized society” — including starvation, water torture, and solitary cells smaller than a telephone booth where Jehovah’s Witnesses were forced to stand for days without sleep.

An officer threatened to tie a Jehovah’s Witness to a pole and force him to have a blood infusion, the commission said. One Jehovah’s Witness, Jung Chun-guk, was drafted two more times after his release from prison and each time chose a prison term, serving a total of seven years and 10 months beginning in 1969.Hong Young-il, 49, who served two years in prison from 1990 to 1992, said a military interrogator once put a pistol to his forehead and pretended to execute him.

Much of the abuse took place in full view of other trainees at boot camps, a scene familiar to many who passed through them in the 1970s and ’80s. Even though corporal punishment was a common disciplinary tool in the army then, widespread bias against Jehovah’s Witnesses bolstered society’s silence about their persecution.

“A cellmate convicted of sexually molesting a 5-year-old child liked hectoring me over the importance of defending the country,” said Ryu Yong-beom, 60, a Jehovah’s Witness who served three years in prison in the 1970s.

The denigration of objectors as “commies” or “jongbuk” — North Korea followers — continues today. In a letter sent to a local newspaper in January, Kim Kyung-muk, a filmmaker and imprisoned conscientious objector, said that other convicts chastised him for “not being qualified to be a South Korean citizen.”

After prison, conscientious objectors see their job opportunities seriously limited, as the government and big companies discriminate against ex-convicts, especially those who avoided the draft.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee and Amnesty International have repeatedly urged South Korea to allow alternative service for conscientious objectors. The committee called their imprisonment a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which South Korea is a signatory.

South Korea interprets the covenant differently. Its Parliament has never acted on calls for alternative service from its National Human Rights Commission, citing, as President Lee’s government had, a lack of national consensus.

“This debate is a luxury we can’t afford as long as North Korea is there,” said Cho Myung-sik, 36, a veteran. “Besides, how are you going to tell genuine conscientious objectors from fakers if we introduce alternative services? How are you going to ensure fairness between them and those serving in the military?”

Some Jehovah’s Witnesses have emigrated to the United States to save their sons from imprisonment. Several South Korean conscientious objectors have recently won refugee status in Canada, France and Australia.

For Mr. Ryu and his wife, Jung Seon-hee, change has been too slow. She said her two brothers were beaten “half dead” in military jail in the 1980s. Her son was released last year after serving 15 months. In July, another son, Ryu Heung-sun, was sentenced to one and a half years.

“I had hoped that our suffering would end by my sons’ generation,” Ms. Jung said. “I am sad that this country remains so primitive, unable to show lenience to a minority like us.”

A clash of Titans. LXVII

Minors have no right to privacy?:Pros and cons.

Pakistan,frenemy of the west?:Pros and cons.

The book of Exodus:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

EXODUS, BOOK OF

The second scroll of the Pentateuch, also referred to as the Second Book of Moses. It came to be known in Hebrew as Shemohthʹ, “Names,” from its opening phrase, Weʼelʹleh shemohthʹ, “Now these are the names.” “Exodus” is the Latinized form of the Greek; this means “Going Forth; Departure,” that is, of the Israelites out of Egypt.

This book is an obvious continuation of Genesis, beginning with the expression “Now” (literally, “And”) and then relisting the names of the sons of Jacob that are taken from the more complete record at Genesis 46:8-27. Exodus was written in 1512 B.C.E., a year after the Israelites departed from Egypt and camped in the wilderness of Sinai. The book covers a period of 145 years, from Joseph’s death in 1657 B.C.E. to the construction of the tabernacle in 1512 B.C.E.

Writership. Moses’ writership of Exodus has never been questioned by the Jews. Egyptian expressions used are indicative of a writer contemporary with the times, and not of a Jew born later.

Accuracy, Truthfulness. On the part of the writer of Exodus “an intimate acquaintance with Ancient Egypt may be discerned. The position of the Egyptians with respect to foreigners—their separation from them, yet their allowance of them in their country, their special hatred of shepherds, the suspicion of strangers from Palestine as spies—their internal government, its settled character, the power of the King, the influence of the Priests, the great works, the employment of foreigners in their construction, the use of bricks, . . . and of bricks with straw in them, . . . the taskmasters, the embalming of dead bodies, the consequent importation of spices, . . . the violent mournings, . . . the fighting with horses and chariots . . .—these are a few out of the many points which might be noted marking an intimate knowledge of Egyptian manners and customs on the part of the author of the Pentateuch.”—The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records, by George Rawlinson, 1862, pp. 290, 291.

The account of Pharaoh’s daughter bathing in the Nile has been disputed (Ex 2:5), but Herodotus (II, 35) says (as ancient monuments also show) that in ancient Egypt the women were under no restraint. Also, the Egyptians believed a sovereign virtue existed in the Nile waters. At times Pharaoh went out to the river evidently for purposes of worship. It was here that he was met at least twice by Moses during the Ten Plagues.—Ex 7:15; 8:20.

As to absence of Egyptian monumental evidence of the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt, this is not surprising, in view of the fact that a study of the monuments there reveals that the Egyptians did not record matters uncomplimentary to themselves. However, an even more powerful testimony than stone monumental evidence is the living monument of the observance of the Passover by the Jews, who have commemorated the Exodus in this way throughout their entire history.

There is strong ground for accepting the historical accuracy and the general narrative as given in Exodus. According to Westcott and Hort, Jesus and the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures quote or refer to Exodus more than 100 times. The integrity of the writer Moses attests to the book’s authenticity. He points out with the greatest candor his own weaknesses, his hesitancy, and his mistakes, not attributing anything of the miracles, leadership, and organization to his own prowess, though he was acknowledged as great by the Egyptians and, in the main, much respected by Israel.—Ex 11:3; 3:10-12; 4:10-16.

The divine hand is revealed in Israel’s sojourn in Egypt and their Exodus. A better place could hardly be found for Israel’s rapid growth to a mighty nation. Had they remained in Canaan, they would have been subjected to much warfare with the Canaanite inhabitants, while in the territory of the first world power during the time of its zenith they were protected by its might. They lived in the best part of the land, which contributed to their health and fertility, as well as to their intellectual growth to some extent.

But their situation in Egypt was not ideal for moral and spiritual growth; neither was it suitable for their being made a nation under theocratic rule, with a sacrificing and teaching priesthood. Furthermore, God’s promise to give Abraham’s seed the land of Canaan had to be fulfilled, and God’s time for it had come. Israel was to be constituted a great nation, with Jehovah as its King. The book of Exodus relates Jehovah’s accomplishment of this purpose.—Ex 15:13-21.

Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the manuscripts found at the Dead Sea, 15 contain fragments of the book of Exodus. One fragment (4QExf) has been dated as from about 250 B.C.E. Two of the fragments, believed to date from the second or third century B.C.E., were written in ancient Hebrew characters that were in use before the Babylonian exile.

[Box on page 784]

HIGHLIGHTS OF EXODUS

The record of how Jehovah delivered Israel from oppressive slavery in Egypt and organized them into a theocratic nation

Written by Moses in 1512 B.C.E., about a year after Israel departed from Egypt

Israel experiences tyrannical slavery in Egypt (1:1–3:1)

By royal decree the Israelites are made to slave under tyranny; death at the time of birth is decreed for all their male offspring

Moses is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and so is spared from death, but he is taught by his own mother

Moses kills an oppressive Egyptian, flees to Midian, becomes shepherd there

Jehovah delivers Israel by the hand of Moses (3:2–15:21)

Moses is commissioned at burning bush as deliverer, to speak and act in the name of Jehovah

Returns to Egypt; with Aaron, he appears before Pharaoh, telling him that Jehovah has said to send Israel away to worship Him in the wilderness; Pharaoh refuses and increases oppression

Jehovah renews promise to deliver Israel and to give them the land of Canaan, thus deepening their appreciation for his name Jehovah

Ten Plagues, announced by Moses and Aaron, come upon Egypt; after the first three, only the Egyptians are plagued; during the tenth, all the firstborn males, both of Egyptians and of their animals, die, while Israel celebrates the Passover

Using a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, Jehovah leads Israel out of Egypt; he opens the Red Sea to permit them to cross over on dry land, then drowns Pharaoh and his army when they try to cross the seabed in pursuit

Jehovah organizes Israel as a theocratic nation (15:22–40:38)

Provision of drinkable water, as well as meat and manna, is made for Israel in the wilderness; in connection with provision of manna, Sabbath is instituted

At Jethro’s suggestion, Moses selects qualified men to serve as chiefs, helping with the work of judging

At Mount Sinai, Jehovah invites the nation to enter into covenant relationship with him; they voluntarily agree; Jehovah gives fear-inspiring display of his glory

Ten Commandments and other laws given through Moses set out Jehovah’s requirements for Israel

Law covenant made over blood of sacrificial animals; the people say, “All that Jehovah has spoken we are willing to do and be obedient”

Instructions are given by God on building the tabernacle and its furniture, as well as on making garments for the priests and on installing the priesthood

While Moses is on Mount Sinai, the people turn to worshiping a golden calf; Moses breaks the stone tablets given him by God; Levites prove loyal; about 3,000 idolaters are slain

Moses sees manifestation of Jehovah’s glory, hears God declare His name

With voluntary offerings of materials, the tabernacle and its furnishings are built; the tabernacle is set up on Nisan 1, 1512 B.C.E., and Jehovah manifests his approval

Pity the poor millenials?:Pros and Cons.

File under "Well said" LVIII

Life is neither good nor evil, but only a place for good and evil. Marcus Aurelius

Socrates 101

On falsifiability and the borders of science.

Evo-devo v. Darwin.

How Embryonic Development Bears on Evolution
Cornelius Hunter

In order for evolution to have occurred as the orthodox theory describes, the intricate embryonic development stages of species must have evolved. Indeed, the developmental pathways of the species would be crucial in such a process. If we are to believe the evolutionary claim that the species spontaneously arose, then untold embryonic development pathways must have somehow undergone massive change.

But while evolutionists expected the study of such evolution of development to yield great insight into the evolutionary process and history, it has underwhelmed. This shortcoming is well known, as exemplified in a 2015 paper, “The Comet Cometh: Evolving Developmental Systems“:

First, traditional comparative approaches to the evolution of development — whether focused on the morphological or on the molecular/genetic level — are reaching their limits in terms of explanatory power.

Except that this is an overstatement. To say that comparative approaches “are reaching their limits in terms of explanatory power” is to suggest that there was, at one time, some significant level of explanatory power provided. That would be a very optimistic interpretation of the data.

The paper continues:

The more we learn about the evolution of pattern-forming gene networks, or the ontogeny of complex morphological traits, the more it becomes clear that it is less than straightforward to conclude anything about evolutionary origins or dynamics based on such comparisons alone.

“Less than straightforward”? Let’s be clear — a more accurate descriptor would be “impossible.” In fact, the evidence does not reveal an evolutionary history, but rather is supported by the theory. Evolutionary theory does not follow the data, as Huxley prescribed, but rather the data follow the theory.

The paper continues:

On the one hand, homoplasy or convergent evolution abounds at all levels of investigation. One of the most lauded major insights of EvoDevo is that a common toolkit of genes and signaling pathways is reused over and over again to create a large diversity of different body plans, shapes, and organs.

Most lauded major insights? That would be the mother of all euphemisms. Evolutionists are always rationalizing devastating contradictions as teachable moments, and here we have yet another example. To cast the nonsensical finding of a “common toolkit” as a “major insight” is laughable.

This becomes clear as the paper continues:

Because of this, similarities in gene expression patterns or morphological structure often do not necessarily imply common ancestry, since they may as well reflect the frequent reuse of the same regulatory or morphogenetic modules.

Profound similarities “do not necessarily imply common ancestry.” We have now entered a Lewis Carroll world, as Elliott Sober would put it. The whole point of evolution was that such similarities revealed and mandated common descent. But now, we have the exact opposite, as similarities cannot be due to common descent, but must have arisen independently. And this is an “insight”? A fundamental prediction is demolished and evolutionists do not skip a beat. This is not science.

But it gets worse:

On the other hand, developmental system drift allows conserved networks to change considerably in terms of their component genes and regulatory interactions without changing the phenotypic outcomes such systems produce. This means that even functionally conserved regulatory networks can become unrecognizably divergent at the molecular and genetic level, especially across large evolutionary time spans.

We have now reached the height of absurdity. First, profound developmental similarities were found which could not be ascribed to common descent. Now we find that those developmental pathways which can (theoretically) be ascribed to common descent are profoundly different.

When will this bad dream end? The science contradicts the theory. Over. And over. And over. And over.

Some straight talk re: Human origins.

An Uncommonly Clear Discussion of Human Origins
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

It’s not often that you hear the problem of human origins and the fossil record stated as plainly and lucidly as biologist Ann Gauger does in a new ID the Future episode. Dr. Gauger is CSC Director of Science Communications, and she chatted with Sarah Chaffee about the new book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. Gauger explains that there’s a gap of about a million years between when Australopithecines seem to depart from the fossil record and when modern humans unambiguously appear – the latter at about 2 million year ago. What do you suppose happened there?

The purported transitional fossils in between are extremely scarce and fragmentary. Perhaps enough to fill a shoebox, as one scientist has estimated, they are what theistic evolutionists point to in demanding that we accept the standard evolutionary story. A helpful discussion – listen to the podcast or download it here.

Yet more on OOL science's RNA world narrative.

About That RNA World Hypothesis
Cornelius Hunter

Given its widespread popularity and acceptance you might not have realized that the so-called RNA World hypothesis suffers from some dramatic problems. At the top of the list is the rather awkward fact that there is no evidence for it. While skeptics have pointed this out for years, we now see evolutionists coming clean on this inconvenient truth as well. To wit, here is how Peter Wills and Charles Carter open their recent BioSystems  paper:

The RNA World is a widely-embraced hypothetical stage of molecular evolution, devoid of protein enzymes, in which all functional catalysts were ribozymes. Only one fact concerning the RNA World can be established by direct observation: if it ever existed, it ended without leaving any unambiguous trace of itself.

Even this is a bit of an understatement. Because without the prior assumption of evolution, which can and has underwritten a wide range of speculation, there is precisely zero reason to believe this wild hypothesis. No organisms have ever been discovered that demonstrate the RNA World hypothesis in action. Nor have scientists ever constructed any such organisms in their laboratories. This is not too surprising because no one has even produced anything remotely close to a detailed design of how such organisms could function.

Wills and Carter also point out negative evidences such as catalysis (RNA enzymes lack the ability to function over a wide range of temperatures) and the “impossible obstacles” to the hypothetical yet necessary transition from the RNA World to something resembling today’s extant cells. As Carter explains:

Such a rise from RNA to cell-based life would have required an out-of-the-blue appearance of an aaRS [aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase]-like protein that worked even better than its adapted RNA counterpart. That extremely unlikely event would have needed to happen not just once but multiple times — once for every amino acid in the existing gene-protein code. It just doesn’t make sense.

Indeed, it just doesn’t make sense. And yet in spite of these obvious problems, the RNA World has been a textbook staple, presented as a plausible and likely example of how early life evolved.