The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or the American War of Independence, was initiated by delegates from thirteen American colonies of British America in Congress against Great Britain over their objection to Parliament's taxation policies and lack of colonial representation. From their founding in the 1600s, the colonies were largely left to govern themselves. The cost of victory in the 1754 to 1763 French and Indian War and the 1756 to 1763 Seven Years' War left the British government deeply in debt; the colonies, where the war was fought, equipped and populated the British forces there at the cost of millions of their own funds. The Stamp Act and Townshend Acts provoked colonial opposition and unrest, leading to the 1770 Boston Massacre and 1773 Boston Tea Party. When Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts in spring 1774 upon Massachusetts, twelve colonies sent delegates to the First Continental Congress (September 5 – October 26, 1774) to draft a Petition to the King and organize a boycott of British goods.
the bible,truth,God's kingdom,Jehovah God,New World,Jehovah's Witnesses,God's church,Christianity,apologetics,spirituality.
Tuesday, 7 September 2021
The American revolution: a brief history.
Monday, 6 September 2021
On the pursuit of happiness.
Sunday, 5 September 2021
And still yet more primeval tech v. Darwin.
Hierarchical Systems in Biology — DNA Packaging
- Walter Myers III
Late last year Discovery Institute Research Coordinator Brian Miller asked me about hierarchical systems in biological organisms and how they relate to computer systems. I hadn’t thought much about it previously. However, that question has gnawed at me over the past few months and there are a couple of interesting cases I have been pondering where I believe there is hierarchical structure in nature that intersects with programmatic constructs.
The first is the overall organization of biological organisms: how they appear to have a layered approach where structures not only build on top of lower ones, but also within those layers there is composition of various parts that work in concert with other parts. For example, in any complex multicellular animal, cells comprise the smallest unit, then you have groupings of cells into structures such as organs, and then these organs are composed to give rise to the full, working organism. Beyond that, there is the thinking part of an organism that seems to defy being reduced to its physical constituents. I will stop there, but that is grist for a future post.
Hierarchical Nature of DNA
The second case I have been thinking about for some time, which is my subject here, is the hierarchical nature of the helical DNA molecule within the cell that carries the genetic instructions to build proteins that perform the work of the cell. It is truly remarkable to see 1) how such a large volume of information can be packed into so little space with its “supercoiled” architecture, 2) the degree to which this information is compressed and packaged within the nucleus of the cell, and 3) how it can be precisely unpackaged where needed to access the instructions for any new protein the cell needs for continued operation. As we will see, it is the chromosome that represents the highest order of DNA compression and organization, containing an organism’s entire genetic content, counted in the number of chromosome pairs. For example, humans have 23 chromosome pairs with one of each of the 23 pairs contributed by the parents, totaling 46 chromosomes.
Advanced life forms, such as humans, dogs, and whales, have what are called eukaryotic cells. Eukaryotic cells, unlike prokaryotic cells such as bacteria, contain a nucleus that stores and protects the genetic material, DNA, which is “condensed” (i.e., packaged) into chromosomes. To get an idea of just how condensed DNA is, inside each and every one of the 30 to 40 trillion cells (excluding bacteria and reproductive cells) that make up a human, if you were to stretch the 3 billion base pairs of DNA end to end, its length would be about two meters. Yet when fully packaged inside the nucleus of a cell (generally during cell division), the 3 billion base pairs in each cell fit into a space just 6 microns (.000006 meters) across. The nucleus itself is about 10 microns (.00001 meters) in diameter, providing ample room for DNA to be unpackaged as needed, as in between cell division chromosomes generally exist in a more diffused state in essential regions to enable faster access for replication or transcription. This is somewhat like the concept of memory caching in computer systems to speed up programs by avoiding slower disk reads for frequently used data. Generally, if a gene is completely packed away, then it will most likely not be expressed (i.e., transcribed and translated into a protein). This makes sense because each of the different cell types in an organism (e.g., muscle, skin, endothelial, nerve, etc.) requires only a small subset of the full set of available proteins coded in the genome.
Carefully and Ingeniously
So how do you package one meter of information content into a space 1/100,000 that size? Very carefully and quite ingeniously. The storage of DNA is very much like hierarchical file systems on Windows and Linux desktop computers compressed into a .zip file. In the same manner that there are folders within folders within folders in a desktop computer, with the actual files at the terminal level, individual genes within a DNA molecule are equivalent to “files” that in this case specify the building of a protein needed for the cell to function. DNA packaging is far more complex, however, with several levels of packaging into a highly compressed and compact structure called chromatin. Essentially, there are three orders of DNA packaging: the first order is the nucleosome, the second order is the solenoid fiber, and the third order is the scaffold loop chromatids chromosome. The diagram below demonstrates the levels of packaging.
The first level of packaging of DNA is where the double-stranded DNA is wrapped around spools of histone, a family of positively charged proteins that function primarily in packaging DNA, to form nucleosomes, creating the appearance of “beads” on a string. The nucleosomes themselves are then coiled into a 10 nm (10 billionths of a meter) fiber. Each nucleosome “core” consists of eight histone molecules. The nucleosomes are then further folded into the second order supercoiled solenoid fiber, which is 30 nm in width. The third order is the forming of looped domains of solenoid fibers that average 300 nm in width which are then further compressed down to 250 nm to form chromatin fiber. The chromatin fibers are further folded into 700 nm chromatids, and finally we have the highest order of structure that forms the characteristic shape of a chromosome which is 1400 nm in width as seen above. Thus, the general order of packaging is:
DNA → nucleosome → solenoid → chromatin fiber → chromatid → chromosome
A “Chicken and Egg” Problem
It is hard to fathom that such a highly complex, hierarchical mechanism of information storage on a microscopic scale could come about purely by chance, which more importantly demonstrates a clear case of the classic “chicken and egg” problem. This complex, highly orchestrated packaging model, coordinated by the machinery of enzymes (topoisomerases) and various types of histones that are proteins themselves coded in DNA, must have come prior to DNA and prior to the random variation mechanism of evolution itself. The DNA packaging model is programmed with the knowledge of what regions of the chromosome to keep tightly supercoiled and what regions to keep more loosely packed to aid in DNA transcription. Moreover, if a region needed for transcription is supercoiled, it will unwind that region and compensate for the unwinding with a compensating supercoil in a prior region. Thus, there is an astounding process of coordination taking place within the process of transcribing DNA.
Interestingly, there are companies that recognize the genius of DNA and its packaging model who are investigating using DNA molecules as a means of creating molecular-level archival data storage to solve the problem of an ever-increasing amount of digital data that is surpassing the amount of physical storage available using modern magnetic and optical media. For example, tech giant Microsoft is currently engaged in this research, noting the following on their website: “Using DNA to archive data is an attractive possibility because it is extremely dense (up to about 1 exabyte per cubic millimeter) and durable (half-life of over 500 years).” When one considers the fact that the world’s finest software engineers look to the DNA packaging topology to dramatically increase storage capability by orders of magnitude, it is reasonable to conclude that the packaging and processing of DNA is the product of a purposeful designer with a degree of engineering knowledge simply unmatched by humans.
Who then is this God and Father who is above all?
Ephesians4:6 NASB "one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all."
Seeking a straight answer from Darwinists.
Can someone outline for me a stepwise Darwinian style model of the emergence of sexual reproduction. Bearing in mind that any trial that does not succeed on its first attempt effectively resets the experiment to zero.
Lee Kuan Yew: an overview.
Lee Kuan Yew (born Harry Lee Kuan Yew; 16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015), often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean statesman and lawyer who served as Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990, and is recognised as the nation's founding father. He was one of the founders of the People's Action Party, which has ruled the country continuously since independence.
Lee was born in Singapore during British colonial rule, which was part of the Straits Settlements. He attained top grades in his early education, gaining a scholarship and admission to Raffles College. During the Japanese occupation, Lee worked in private enterprises and as an administration service officer for the propaganda office. After the war, Lee initially attended the London School of Economics, but transferred to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, graduating with starred-first-class honours in law in 1947. He became a barrister of the Middle Temple in 1950 and returned to Singapore, and began campaigning for Britain to relinquish its colonial rule.
Lee co-founded the People's Action Party in 1954 and won his first seat in the Tanjong Pagar division in the 1955 election. He became the de facto opposition leader in the legislature to chief ministers David Marshall and Lim Yew Hock. Lee led his party to its first electoral victory in the 1959 election, and was appointed as the state's first prime minister. To attain complete self-rule from Britain, Lee campaigned for a merger with other former British territories in a national referendum to form Malaysia in 1963. Racial strife and ideological differences led to Singapore's separation from the federation to become a sovereign city-state in 1965.
With overwhelming parliamentary control at every election, Lee oversaw Singapore's transformation into a developed country with a high-income economy within a single generation. In the process, he forged a system of meritocratic, highly effective and anti-corrupt government and civil service. Lee eschewed populist policies in favour of long-term social and economic planning. He championed meritocracy and multiracialism as governing principles, making English the lingua franca to integrate its immigrant society and to facilitate trade with the world, whilst mandating bilingualism in schools to preserve students' mother tongue and ethnic identity. Lee stepped down as prime minister in 1990, but remained in the Cabinet under his successors, holding the appointments of senior minister until 2004, then minister mentor until 2011. He died of pneumonia on 23 March 2015, aged 91. In a week of national mourning, about 1.7 million Singaporean residents as well as world leaders paid tribute to him at his lying-in-state at Parliament House and community tribute sites.
Lee has often been considered as a highly oppressive dictator and a stalwart supporter of the so-called Asian values, which espouses constant obedience to the government or face severe consequences such as caning and even the death penalty. Lee's rule was often criticised by observers from the liberal democracies of the West in response. Critics had also accused him of severely curtailing press freedoms, limits on public protests, restricting labour movements from strike action, and bringing defamation lawsuits any political opponents in his way.
Thursday, 2 September 2021
The Multiverse: a brief history.
Multiple universes have been hypothesized in cosmology, physics, astronomy, religion, philosophy, transpersonal psychology, music, and all kinds of literature, particularly in science fiction, comic books and fantasy. In these contexts, parallel universes are also called "alternate universes", "quantum universes", "interpenetrating dimensions", "parallel universes", "parallel dimensions", "parallel worlds", "parallel realities", "quantum realities", "alternate realities", "alternate timelines", "alternate dimensions" and "dimensional planes".
The physics community has debated the various multiverse theories over time. Prominent physicists are divided about whether any other universes exist outside of our own.
Some physicists say the multiverse is not a legitimate topic of scientific inquiry. Concerns have been raised about whether attempts to exempt the multiverse from experimental verification could erode public confidence in science and ultimately damage the study of fundamental physics. Some have argued that the multiverse is a philosophical notion rather than a scientific hypothesis because it cannot be empirically falsified. The ability to disprove a theory by means of scientific experiment has always been part of the accepted scientific method. Paul Steinhardt has famously argued that no experiment can rule out a theory if the theory provides for all possible outcomes.
In 2007, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg suggested that if the multiverse existed, "the hope of finding a rational explanation for the precise values of quark masses and other constants of the standard model that we observe in our Big Bang is doomed, for their values would be an accident of the particular part of the multiverse in which we live."
File under "well said" LXXVII.
“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
George Orwell
Storytelling masquerading as science (again).
Evolutionary Imagination and Belief Drive False Claims of a “Four-Legged Whale”
The media are currently abuzz with claims of a newly discovered fossil from Egypt: a “four-legged whale.” Here are some prominent headlines:
- NPR: “Scientists Discover Fossil Of A 4-Legged Whale With A Raptor-Like Eating Style”
- Newsweek: “Scientists have found the fossil of a deadly 4-legged whale that had a jackal-like head and lived both on land and in the sea”
- New York Post: “Fossil of previously unknown four-legged whale found in Egypt”
- BBC: “New species of ancient four-legged whale discovered in Egypt”
And so on. The headlines are accompanied by an artist’s depiction of what was supposedly found. See above. The image is attributed to one of the co-authors of the technical paper, geologist Robert W. Boessenecker.
“That’s Right, Folks”
The NPR story warns:
We regret to inform you that your nightmares are about to get worse.
A team led by Egyptian scientists have dug up a 43 million-year-old fossil in the Sahara Desert in Egypt of a now-extinct amphibious four-legged whale.
That’s right, folks — a whale with legs.
The problem with these claims? That’s right folks — they didn’t find any of the fossil’s legs. Everything you just read about this fossil is the product of imagination. In fact, if you check the technical paper you’ll learn that they found very little of the fossil at all. Figure 1 from the paper, which can be seen online here, shows the bones that were discovered shaded in red. Zoom in and look at the drawing in the middle. You may notice, as I said, a curious absence of red-shaded leg bones.
Also absent: the pelvis, the vast majority of ribs and vertebrae, and the front portion of the snout. Undoubtedly the organism had these bones, but to call this a “whale with legs,” or to unequivocally depict it as some species transitional between terrestrial mammals and whales (as seen above), is to impose a huge amount of evolutionary imagination on the situation.
Was It a Whale?
Consistent with all of this, the paper notes in the abstract that what they did find was “a partial skeleton,” later stating, “The new species is based on a partial skeleton.” A complete description of the bones is provided later in the paper as follows:
an associated partial skeleton of a single individual including the cranium, the right mandible, incomplete left mandible, isolated teeth, the fifth cervical, and the sixth thoracic vertebrae and ribs. The holotype is the only known specimen.
Perhaps this organism had four legs. Perhaps it had flippers. Perhaps it was closely related to whales. Perhaps it has nothing to do with whales. No one really knows. The simple fact of the matter is that we know hardly anything about this creature because, again, so very little of it was found. Forcing this species into an evolutionary paradigm to fit preconceived ideas about cetacean evolution, and promulgating headlines about a “four-legged whale,” is beyond belief. Actually, I take that back. Belief — belief in an evolutionary paradigm — is the thing that’s driving these headlines.
Imagination. Belief. That’s putting it politely, which I insist upon doing. We all have imaginations, and we all have beliefs. So in that sense this is understandable. But if I weren’t so polite, a variety of other terms could be used to describe telling the public this fossil represents a “four-legged whale.”
Is it any wonder that people don’t trust overhyped evolutionary claims made by the media, or by some scientists?
So what you're saying is...
Christendom's emissaries keep trying to persuade me that their conclusions are the orthodoxy,while mine are heretical but I can't help noticing the mental contortions necessary to hold on to this 'orthodoxy' of theirs. For instance during a debate that I was recently watching between a member of the Lds church and a pair of protestants (Calvinists to be specific), one of the protestants ( displaying an astounding lack of self-awareness) attempted to use psalm90:2 as a defeater to the lds claim that God was once a man. Every time I try to use the same verse to establish permanent divinity of Jehovah with Christendom's representatives it is casually brushed aside. They would recognise the incongruity of worshiping a god that emerged from his own creation when the ancient pagans do it. But of course when they in effect to the very same thing,well,that's different. They chide the Muslim and lds for worshiping a deity that is like a man in outward appearance while inviting them to worship a god who is a man in actuality not merely appearance. The polytheist's pantheon of specialised interdependent deities is deemed a clear violation of occam's razor as an explanation of the origin of man and the universe, while a triad of self-existent interchangeable divine persons is not and on and on.
Monday, 30 August 2021
Why reductive spiritualism is as false as reductive materialism.
If this supposed immortal soul spoken of by Christendom's theologians and philosophers truly exists, obviously no change (positive or negative) to the body ought to affect consciousness one way or the other. If this soul can retain memories,full (even improved) awareness of its surroundings after the death of the body. Then logically nothing less than death should be able to impair consciousness to any degree. Yet some are using the fact that mere injury or trauma to the body never produces a complete cessation of brain activity or awareness to argue that the soul is totally distinct from the body (if true this renders the body superfluous).
Do subhuman mammals have minds?
If so, does this not indicate that they are souls?
Are these souls separate from their bodies?
Can't the same argument from partial consciousness be used to argue that subhuman mammals possess immortal souls?
If brain and mind are independent of each other how can the brain's neural activity prove or disprove the existence of an immortal soul?
Some make much of that tiny minority of (so called)near death experiences where certain memories of the survivor have been apparently verified. If my only acquaintance with a certain city is having been on an airliner that flew over said city (let's call it a near city experience) I would hardly qualify as a reliable informant re:this city, would I?
What I do find interesting about these accounts is their physicality. Ask yourself would an amorphous spirit possess stereoscopic vision complete with blindside,would its vision depend on light at all, would such concepts as up,above down,below,right,left be useful to such a being. These accounts bear the stamp of our cognitive limits as physical beings.
The extrapolation that full cessation of consciousness would proceed from the destruction of the body seems the more natural one.
On recurring themes in trinitarian apologetics.
In my discussions with trinitarians I've noticed certain frequently recurring themes in this post I would like to review four of the most popular ones:
1)"It's all an unfathomable mystery" Usually our protagonist would say something like:well of course you can't form a coherent concept of God if you could he wouldn't be God,he wouldn't be transcendent:This particular defense leaves me wondering why trinitarian apologists bother after all how could anyone possibly form any coherent argument in support of an incoherent idea.
If we can't evaluate your doctrine with the standard tools of scripture,logic and commonsense how can we separate truth from error to begin with.
Given the scriptures' stern warning against Idolatry/false worship 1John5:21 it seems only fair that the creator should grant his intelligent creation the capacity to clearly identify him i.e the ability to form a coherent concept of his true self/nature.
Jesus Christ suggested that the creator had in fact done so John4:22,8:54 Jesus Christ and his fellow 1st century Jews had both an accurate and coherent concept of the object of their devotion.
2)"Problem?What problem?" This time our protagonist would go in the other direction and insist that the trinity doctrine is not a morass of incoherence and self-contradiction and what's more he can prove it.Why should the worship of Christendom's trinity not be regarded as an exercise in polytheism when said trinity is said to be composed of three distinct persons each of whom is said to be "God"not to mention that the trinity itself is distinct from any of its constituents and is also called "God" by standard arithmetic that should add up to four Gods shouldn't it?Well you see,explain our trinitarian friends,When we say that each constituent of the trinity is "God" we are using that term as an adjective meaning something like "divine""Godlike" not as a noun,which would be the case if we use the the word with regard to the trinity as a whole.This causes me to wonder about peter's statement at Matthew16:16"Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” "The living God" is clearly a reference to the supreme divinity not the Father according to the aforementioned logic the Father though divine/Godlike is not the supreme God according to trinitarians (At least if they wish to take their reasoning to its logical end) So Jesus must according to trinitarian logic be the Son of the Trinity which is said to include himself Does this make Jesus one third of his heavenly Father or one of his heavenly Fathers.
Commonsense demands that we abandon this particular instance of trinitarian logic as impractical and the Holy Scriptures concur At John8:54 Jesus clearly identifies his God and Father as the God Of Israel("God"is definitely a count noun in this passage of Scripture) So,as tends to be the case,the Holy Scriptures refuse to play along with trinitarians and their special pleading.
3)A unipersonal God cannot be love per John4:8
The Word "Love" in this passage is a rendering of the Greek word "agape" Our protagonists may say something like "Agape" cannot be felt in regard or expressed to oneself only others as "agape" means principled and unselfish kindness.So from this they deduce that God must be three persons.Now if,as trinitarians claim,The trinity is in fact a single being or life wouldn't that mean that the three constitute a single self and we haven't solved our conundrum.
If we accept trinitarian reasoning as fact then the only way out is for God to share love with (a) distinct God(s)/Goddess(es)from eternity.
Again the scriptures rain on trinitarians parade at mark12:31 Jesus lists the Command to 'Agape' one's neighbor as oneself as the second greatest command in the law.So according to the Lord not only can one validly possess 'agape' for oneself one should possess 'agape' for oneself 'agape' of self is to be the model for agape of other.
4)Jesus has some of Jehovah's titles he must be Jehovah.The problem with this logic is of course that it is Jesus specific trinitarians are not prepared to consistently employ this principle throughout the scriptures.or they would be faced with an ever expanding Godhead.The Prophet Moses for instance is declared to be God by Jehovah himself Exodus7:1
to name one of several instances where Jehovah's exalted servants heavenly and earthly are shown speaking and acting as if they're Jehovah himself and in turn being honored as if they're Jehovah himself See also Judges13:21,22,Exodus3:2-6,Acts7:53.
One can refer to these as zombie themes they have been debunked so many times in so many different fora and yet they keep walking like the undead.