Friday, 1 April 2022

A brain than can know/A world that can be known and the design debate.

How Does the Intelligibility of Nature Point to Design?

Bruce Gordon

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) famously remarked that “the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility…[t]he fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” Similarly, the mathematical physicist Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) opined that “[t]he miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”

As these remarks highlight, the intelligibility of the universe to the human mind requires explanation in two respects. The first is ontological: Why is nature ordered in such a way that it can be understood? The second is epistemological: Why is the human mind able to gain understanding of the natural order? In the past, these questions did not provoke the puzzlement they do today. Let’s get some historical perspective on the rise of modern science and the current milieu before we examine why a metaphysically naturalistic worldview provides no good answers to these questions, and why theism, which understands the universe as the product of intelligent design, is the only metaphysical context in which the existence and intelligibility of nature has an explanation.

Historical Perspective

For science to be possible, there must be order present in nature, and it has to be discoverable by the human mind. But why should either of these conditions be met? Historically, while there were temporary manifestations of systematic research into nature in ancient Greece and early Islam, and isolated discoveries elsewhere, the seeds of modern science first came to concentrated and sustained fruition in Western culture before its methodologies and achievements were disseminated throughout the world.

This lasting and world-changing development emerged in the context of the Judeo-Christian worldview that permeated medieval Europe. What drove it was a deeply entrenched society-wide conception of the universe as the free and rational creation of God’s mind so that human beings, as rational creatures made in God’s image, were capable of searching out and understanding a divinely ordered reality. The freedom of God’s creative will meant that this order could not be abstractly deduced ― it had to be discovered through observation and experiment ― but God’s stable and faithful character guaranteed it had a rational structure that diligent study could reveal. This theological foundation gave solid answers to ontological and epistemological questions concerning the intelligibility of the universe, but as the quotes from Einstein and Wigner make clear, this foundation had been lost by the middle of the 20th century. Why?

Efficient and Material Causes

Some see it as the outworking of the 17th-century mechanical philosophy that sought to explain all natural phenomena in terms of material contact mechanisms. On this view, mechanical philosophy conceptually reduced scientific causality to efficient and material causes, purging Aristotelian notions of formal and final causality from science. This is perhaps plausible methodologically, but not metaphysically. The conception of mechanism in the mechanical philosophy retained formal causes in their design and final causes in the purpose they were created to serve. The break with Aristotle arose from the fact that, in the conception of the theistic and deistic mechanical philosophers, design and purpose were transcendently imposed rather than immanently active, so the search for scientific explanations turned to the intelligent implementation of efficient material mechanisms. The purge of any sense of design and purpose from the “scientific” conception of nature is due to the late-19th-century rise of Darwinian philosophy, which sees the mechanisms of nature as brute facts and the course of their development as completely blind and purposeless.

Under the Aegis of Naturalism

It is Darwinism, so conceived, that renders the existence of mathematically describable regularities in nature and their intelligibility to the human mind (itself conceived as the accidental result of blind processes) as such a surprise, for it assumes naturalism ― the self-contained character of nature and the denial of supernaturalism ― as the context for science. Under the aegis of naturalism, there can be no expectation that nature is regular in a way that allows presently operative causes to be projected into the past to explain the current state of the universe or into the future to predict its development. The absence of any sufficient cause to explain why nature exists leaves the philosophical naturalist with no reason to think that what does exist should be ordered, or that any order he finds should be projectable into the past or the future.

By denying transcendence and defaulting to a conception of the universe as a closed and ultimately arbitrary system of causes and effects, naturalism makes science the uncanny enterprise on which Einstein and Wigner remarked. On the other hand, the Judeo-Christian worldview recognizes that nature exists and is regular not because it is closed to divine activity, but because (and only because) divine causality is operative. It is only because nature is a creation and thus not a closed system of causes and effects that it exists in the first place and exhibits the regular order that makes science possible. God’s existence and action is not an obstacle to science; it’s what makes it possible.

Thursday, 31 March 2022

A house divided II

The power of the media industrial complex?

Design Inference: Stone Structures Were Intelligently Arranged, Though We Don’t Know by Whom

David Coppedge

We don’t know who made them. We don’t know how they were made. We don’t know what purpose they served. But we know they were intentionally made by mindful individuals. At least, Live Science never questions the design inference about strange stone structures in Middle Eastern deserts that are shaped like wheels, triangles, and long lines (see the photo gallery).

Why Is Design the Obvious Inference?

There are hundreds of these structures. They extend over much of the Middle East: Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

The “works of the old men” include wheels, which often have spokes radiating out from the center, kites (stone structures used for funnelling and killing animals), pendants (lines of stone cairns) and meandering walls, which are mysterious structures that meander across the landscape for up to several hundred feet.
The works “demonstrate specific geometric patterns and extend from a few tens of meters up to several kilometers, evoking parallels to the well-known system of geometric lines of Nazca, Peru,” wrote an archaeological team in a paper published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science. (Peru’s Nazca Lines date to between 200 B.C. and A.D. 500.). [Emphasis added.]

World War I pilots readily inferred they were man-made. Bedouins call them the “works of the old men,” but apparently do not know who the “old men” were. It’s not clear what they were used for. The wheels might have been for forecasting seasons, since they tend to be aligned northwest to southeast to match sunrise at the winter solstice. But why the triangles? And the hundreds of “gates” with their long parallel lines? Who would make large structures that can’t be seen readily from ground level?

Why people in prehistoric times would build wheel-shaped structures that can’t be seen well from the ground remains a mystery. No balloon or glider technologies existed at that time. Additionally, researchers say that climbing to a higher elevation to view them was probably not possible, at least not in most cases.

Older than the Nazca Lines

New research using optically stimulated luminescence on the stones has produced dates of about 8,500 years for a couple of the structures. That makes them older than the Nazca lines. Were they burial structures? Signals to their gods? Animal traps?

Other points of interest aside, the mystery serves to illustrate the logic of the design inference. These structures demonstrate that it’s not necessary to know (1) the identity of the designer, (2) the motivation or purpose of the designer, or (3) the function of the design. It’s also not necessary to know when they were made, or how.

To make the design inference robust, however, it’s important not to jump to conclusions. There are similar shapes in nature that are not considered designed. In fact, there are vast areas of circular shapes in the Namibian desert that have defied explanation for years (see Science Daily).

Desert fairy circles are considered one of nature’s greatest mysteries because no one knows how they form. Different from mushroom rings, these fairy circles are large barren patches of earth ringed by short grass dotting the desert like craters on the moon or big freckles. Several groups are racing to figure out this bizarre phenomenon.

Geometric structures made by animals — like circular shells of diatoms, bird nests, or honeycombs — we do not attribute to the work of sentient beings. These are built instinctively for reproduction, feeding, or other life necessities. Intelligent agents like humans can organize natural materials for necessities, too, but have the free will to make things for other purposes — “gratuitous” purposes like art, conceptual communication, or ritual. Crows and chimps can make crude tools, but humans can make tools to make other tools. Animals make tools to eat. Humans make tools to explore outer space and email currency across the globe.

The Line Gets Fuzzy

Admittedly those are extreme examples. The line can get fuzzy in the middle. So how do we infer design for the geoglyphs in Jordan, but not the fairy circles in Namibia or the intricate circles in diatom shells? Here is where the Design Filter comes in:

Can the geoglyphs be explained by chance? No; stones do not randomly collect into triangles, wheels with spokes, and parallel lines due to unguided causes like storms or earthquakes. Circular craters can emerge by chance, due to meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions, but they do not look like these, and there is no evidence of shocked minerals or lava present.
Can they be explained by natural law? Natural forces can produce spirals like galaxies and hurricanes. They do not typically produce spoked wheels or triangles (see this earlier article at Evolution News). A bent-over blade of grass could trace out a circle as the wind shifts direction, like a compass. Snowflakes can produce a semblance of spoked wheels, but we know about the atomic forces that cause water to crystallize in hexagonal shapes. Nothing like that works on the scale of kilometers to arrange stones that way, especially aligning them with sunrise at winter solstice.
Is there a specification? Yes; we see an independent specification of the solstice that could guide a sentient being to choose to arrange stones with that preferred orientation. We also understand the human mind’s attraction for geometry and mathematics.

More Intuitive than Robust

To be sure, the design inference for these structures is more intuitive than robust. It’s conceivable that scientists may find a combination of natural laws and chance that generates these structures in that part of the world; unlikely, but possible. And since we don’t know of any clear purpose for the structures, our third test (specification) is weaker than one might like. Despite these caveats, the design inference is pretty sound. Nobody from the Bedouins to the pilots is questioning it. Compare this case to earlier archaeological mysteries that are more dubious.

Evolutionists try to explain the human mind as the product of chance and natural law, claiming it is the product of natural selection. The human mind is like animal design, they will say, simply more of the same. What’s the answer to that? Just turn it around. Such a position implies that the scientist’s propensity to speculate about evolution is also a product of natural selection. So if the evolutionists’ position is the result of blind, unguided processes, and if mental activity is an illusion, then reason evaporates; they have no way of knowing anything is true. John West’s book The Magician’s Twin sheds further light on this “argument from reason.”

Meanwhile, design advocates think that animals and their designs pass the design filter, too. Their bodies, behaviors, and instincts are the products of genetic instructions, making them act in a programmed way. We reasonably infer that their origins are the result of an intelligent cause.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2015.

Back to the old if a tree falls and no one hears question.

Lukas Ruegger: Homology and Phylogenetics Topple Darwin’s Tree

David Klinghoffer

I like that the new video series from ID explainer Lukas Ruegger, Basics of Intelligent Design Biology, is being released week by week rather than, as could have been the case, as one longer video. This way, the “drip, drip, drip” effect comes into play: Episodes 1 through 3 successively narrowed some available escape routes for Darwin’s troubled theory. In a brief manner that’s like an alternative and much more accurate version of Khan Academy’s science-challenged treatment of the subject, Ruegger showed why the fossil record offers poor evidence for evolution. (See here, here, and here.)

Perhaps with that distressing reality in mind, Richard Dawkins and others have said that the case for Darwinian evolution is perfectly sound even without fossils. Evolutionists, instead, have all the evidence they need in genes and morphology to draw the one true tree of life. In Episode 4, which is out today, Lukas asks, “Do Homology and Phylogenetics REALLY Support Darwin’s Tree of Life?” The problem is that the “trees” thus sketched are full of fundamental, mutual contradictions. Even if universal common ancestry is true, there seemingly is no drawable “true tree.” As Lukas says, “Those who study homology simply assume evolution to be true, but they’ve never actually demonstrated that the ancestral evolutionary relationships between different organisms are real.”

And, “If the hard facts of paleontology oppose the notion of there being a tree of life, and if that supposed tree of life cannot be independently established by genetic homologies, well, what evidence for Darwin’s tree of life are we left with?” The answer that Khan Academy doesn’t want you to hear is: Not much.

Tuesday, 29 March 2022

A house divided.

If your religion meddles in politics don't be surprised when politicians meddle in your religion.

The kingdom of Kush.

More evolved=Brainier?

Researchers Ask — Serious Question — Do Crabs Have Emotions?

Denyse O'Leary

At one time, the question of whether crabs or squid had emotions would seem ridiculous. Dogs and cats have emotions but squid and crabs don’t. Right? But in recent decades, it has become evident that there is no straightforward evolutionary path to “smartness.” What about the ability to experience pain or emotion as a dog or cat would?

“A London School of Economics (LSE) report commissioned by the U.K. government found there is strong enough evidence to conclude that decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs are sentient,” says York University Professor and philosopher Kristin Andrews, the York Research Chair in Animal Minds, who is working with the LSE team.
Andrews co-wrote an article published today in the journal Science, “The question of animal emotions,” with Professor Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, which discusses the ethical and policy issues around animals being considered sentient.
YORK UNIVERSITY, “DO OCTOPUSES, SQUID AND CRABS HAVE EMOTIONS?” AT SCIENCE DAILY (MARCH 24, 2022)

Unexpected Ethical Issues

The view that exothermic (coldblooded) and invertebrate animals might have feelings raises ethical issues, says Kristin Andrews, author of How to Study Animal Minds (Cambridge, 2020):

“If they can no longer be considered immune to felt pain, invertebrate experiences will need to become part of our species’ moral landscape,” she says. “But pain is just one morally relevant emotion. Invertebrates such as octopuses may experience other emotions such as curiosity in exploration, affection for individuals, or excitement in anticipation of a future reward.”
YORK UNIVERSITY, “DO OCTOPUSES, SQUID AND CRABS HAVE EMOTIONS?” AT SCIENCE DAILY (MARCH 24, 2022)

But It Gets Complex

Researchers have been working on this question and the results are mixed. Some invertebrates, like octopuses show evidence of emotion and intelligence, roughly the same as lab rats. Others, like the octopus’s shelly distant cousin, the nautilus, just don’t check out that way.

Some researchers think that a shell reduces the need for intelligence so the octopus became more intelligent, relative to the nautilus, as a result of losing its shell. Others disagree. The problem is, they say, the octopus would need to increase in intelligence 275 million years ago, before losing its shell. Otherwise, it would simply have been eaten to extinction. But in that case, what was the driver for intelligence? In any event, shelly crabs and lobsters also show unexpected intelligence.

The practical question is, can the seafood industry continue to ignore the possibility that their catches feel pain?

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Alas there are no good guys.

Monday, 28 March 2022

Darwin:Prophet of eugenics?

Before the Third Reich: America’s Darwinist Eugenics Crusade

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

On a classic episode of ID the Future, John West, managing director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, explains the Darwinian basis for getting rid of the “unfit.” One way this manifested itself in the 20th century was the eugenics movement’s disturbing push for compulsory sterilization, right here in the United States. One of the most famous such instances was Carrie Buck (to the left in the picture above), sterilized as “feeble minded” despite going on to live a normal productive life. Her case went to the Supreme Court, where the court, in a 1927 opinion written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., ruled against Buck. She was sterilized five months later. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Listen in to learn about prominent scientists who supported these efforts, and the disturbing facts about how far they advanced toward making their ideas a reality. You’ll also learn about some of the religious leaders, Catholic and evangelical, who opposed them. To dig deeper, get West’s book Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science. And to explore the connection between Darwinism and Hitler’s racist ideas and goals, see the new book from historian Richard Weikart, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism.

Proof that Jesus of Nazareth was God on earth?

John13:16KJV"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him."

John15:26KJV" But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: "

Here (according to some) is irrefutable evidence that our Lord was in fact JEHOVAH on earth. The argument goes something like this If Jesus is indeed the sender of the Spirit(God the Holy Spirit) he must be at least as great(greater?) and thus must be God. Question begging much? The purveyors of this leap of logic don't seem to think so.

Psalm83:18KJV"That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth."

If this spirit,that is being sent, is a person who has an equal(to say nothing of a superior) then he is not the JEHOVAH of the bible and thus we have the collapse of a very important part of the argument.

John16:7KJV"Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you."

So while he is on earth he has no authority to dispatch this spirit ,whatever your view of the Spirit is, thus he is not God on earth.

John14:16KJV"And I will PRAY the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;"

Note that even after being restored to superhuman Glory he needs to petition his God and Father for the spirit,he has no innate authority to direct the spirit ,even the scripture at John15:26 quoted by the purveyors of the argument admit that this spirit John15:26KJV".. proceedeth from the FATHER..."

Luke12:10KJV"And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven. "

Thus who is greater than whom here if we take the view that the Spirit is a distinct person.

John14:28KJV"Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. "

John10:29KJV"My Father, which gave them me, is greater than ALL(not most); and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand."

Thus the Father's Spirit gives the greatest and most irrefutable testimony of him and he will not forgive any contradiction of its plain testimony.

Brainy; defined?

Are Birds Really Smarter than Reptiles?

Denyse O'Leary

It used to be: Dog vs. cat, Who’s smarter? Now it’s Bird vs. reptile: Who’s smarter? Experts on the fascinating world of animal intelligence are locked in a debate over whether number of neurons or brain volume indicates intelligence (cognitive capacity):

In previous work, [Pavel] Němec and colleagues showed that birds have high neuronal densities. “They basically compensate, with these densely packed neurons, [for] the fact that they have relatively small brains in absolute terms, but they have just as many neurons as mammals,” he says. But they didn’t know whether that was true of reptiles as well. In the new study, the researchers found that reptiles have very low neuronal densities, with an average neuron number 20 times lower than that of birds or mammals of similar body size.
SOPHIE FESSL, “REPTILES ARE THE REAL BIRD BRAINS” AT THE SCIENTIST (MARCH 22, 2022)

A Simple Measurement

So that measure would favor the birds. But some don’t want number of neurons to simply replace brain size as a simple measurement:

Barbara Finlay, a cognitive neuroscientist at Cornell University who was not involved in this study, says that the researchers present a “useful piece of information,” particularly basic data long missing about reptiles. However, she questions whether neuron numbers — or any other single factor — in isolation can really be a proxy for computational power. “Counting up numbers does not equal cognition,” she tells The Scientist.
Additional information about the brain’s morphology and connectivity, as well as the way different types of neurons are packed into a brain region, would improve brain power estimates, Finlay says. “Brain mass has many aspects that anchor its computing power. Since neurons vary widely in size and synaptic density across structures and species, the number of synapses, the organization of single regions, the overall network structure of the brain and brain energy consumption are all important,” she adds in an email to The Scientist.
SOPHIE FESSL, “REPTILES ARE THE REAL BIRD BRAINS” AT THE SCIENTIST (MARCH 22, 2022)

It’s true that brain size is not a very good measurement. Lemurs with brains 1/200 the size of chimps’ pass same IQ test. And even lizards can be smart.

Might There Be Another Way of Looking at It?

From recent reports about bird smarts in the science literature, here’s the standard reptiles must beat or match:

Some birds can recognize faces, which is not thought to be common in the bird world.

Some penguins match the vocal calls of fellow penguins to their faces or other aspects of their physical appearance, making them the first birds besides crows known to have this double-sense recognition ability.
CHRISTA LESTÉ-LASSERRE, “PENGUINS HAVE RARE ABILITY TO RECOGNISE EACH OTHER’S FACES AND VOICES” AT NEW SCIENTIST (OCTOBER 12, 2021); THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

We don’t know for sure that the African penguin’s ability is rare. It hasn’t been studied much.

Many birds learn their parents’ calls while they are still in their eggs:

Over a decade ago, behavioral ecologist Diane Colombelli-Négrel was wiring superb fairy wrens’ nests to record the birds’ sounds when she noticed something odd. Mother fairy wrens sang while incubating their eggs, even though it would have made more sense to keep quiet to avoid attracting predators…
For birds such as superb fairy wrens (Malurus cyaneus) that perfect their songs with parental tutoring, it was thought that sound perception began well after hatching. But when it became obvious that mother birds were intentionally singing to their eggs, “we knew we were on to something,” says avian ecologist Sonia Kleindorfer of the University of Vienna.
LESLEY EVANS OGDEN, “SOME BIRDS LEARN TO RECOGNIZE CALLS WHILE STILL IN THEIR EGGS” AT SCIENCE NEWS (SEPTEMBER 16, 2021)

Apparently, the unhatched wrens learn a “vocal password” from their mother that helps distinguish them later from parasitic cuckoo nestlings. Four other species of birds were also found to communicate with their unhatched offspring. Human babies also recognize their mothers’ voices while they are still in the womb, which may also help with bonding later.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Saturday, 26 March 2022

The (re)birth(?) of Greece.

The real victors?

Darwinism and the rise of the expertocracy.

Darwinism and Scientific Totalitarianism: John West’s Darwin Day in America

Kenneth Feucht

I have been reviewing Darwin Day in America: How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, by Discovery Institute Vice President John West. See my post from yesterday, “Darwinism and the ‘So What?’ Question.”

In the following section of the book, Dr. West considers a subject near and dear to me as a surgical oncologist, and that is life and death. He covers abortion and pre-birth issues, but also euthanasia, various forms of assisted suicide, and every moment in between birth and death. In my work, I was surrounded by the possibility of death on a daily basis. In an ethical context, the prolongation of the dying process can be as evil as its acceleration. As a physician, I found it easy to identify those colleagues who had a low view of human life, with their callous disregard for the patient as a person. In the academic setting, the unnecessary prolongation of life in order to support the effectiveness of an experimental treatment plan, or perhaps in order to improve hospital statistics, or to increase federal reimbursements, was the norm and not the exception.

The Beginning of Life

It seems bewildering that there would be perplexity as to when human life begins. No one is uncertain about that in the breeding of a racehorse or in the gestation of an embryo belonging to an endangered species. So, what’s different about the human embryo? What is so difficult about recognizing the beginning of a human life, such that the pundits of this age have excused the slaughter of the unborn, and even of the born, as Dr. West documents? There is trouble only when an ideological fog inhibits the cerebral function of the Darwinist. If humans really are nothing more than the product of chance events in the primordial slime, then perhaps it doesn’t matter how we treat each other.

It’s odd that so many Darwinists demean humanity even as they aver that humans represent the pinnacle of evolution, given the “evolution” of speech, superior intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity. In a “nature rights” perspective, these are all to be trashed in order to spare the lower forms of evolution, whether animals or plants. Stranger is the fact that only humans are sentient and able to appreciate the lower forms of beings on our planet. Beauty does not exist in the mind of an endangered yellow-legged frog as he glances at a flower-covered meadow, or foliose lichen growing on the side of a tree that overlooks a majestic mountain scene.

The Law of the Jungle

The chapter on death is a difficult and troubling one. West presents and discusses the Shiavo and Cruzan cases. These are two exceptional cases, both of which were mismanaged (in my estimation), and neither of which should set a precedent for medical ethics. The main point that West tries to drive home is that the personal worth of the individuals, Shiavo and Cruzan, was devalued by those who thought that the termination of life was the most viable option for their care. Does this mean that virtually every effort must be extended in order to prolong life? I mentioned above that the prolongation of death can be as immoral as the prolongation of life. In addition, the patient’s quality of life becomes a confounding issue that muddies any discussion. Respect for life remains of utmost importance. However, in a world where the survival of the fittest selects out who shall live, the law of the jungle (West’s term) prevails. Financial, social, personal, and other concerns are judged to be more important than the life of the patient.

The Rise of Totalitarian Science

In his conclusion, West offers a succinct and well-written summary of his thesis, including a defense of the theory of intelligent design. It would have been the best chapter in his book had he not added a later addendum.

The afterword, on “Totalitarian Science,” published in 2015, shows John West as a prophet of things to come. We now see “science” wielded in defense of any sort of nonsense and untruth imaginable. In my years as a doctoral student in the cell biology laboratory, I heard many lectures on integrity in research. This was because the notable academies of science were finding evidence of a troubling trend toward fraud.

This was in the 1980s, and the situation is much worse today. It’s a perfect example of Darwinism in the performance of science. The publish or perish mentality among academics is simply another form of survival of the “fittest.” Before the Enlightenment, theology was known as the Queen of the Sciences. Rather than being in competition with science, theology was understood as the foundation for all science. Indeed, science did quite well as long as there was understood to be a theological basis for it. With theology stripped from its place at that foundation, we must not be surprised that the house of science is crumbling around us.

West wrote this afterword before the Covid crisis, in which the name of “science” has been tossed about as a support for any sort of government oppression. Meanwhile, the mega-media complex aggressively strips the population of free speech, all in the cause of defending the edicts of those who call themselves scientists. West was able to see all of this coming a few years before it happened. Yet prophets most often go without honor, and I don’t expect West to get the acclaim that he deserves. If he did, his book would be on the New York Times bestseller list.

Darwinism where the rubber meets the road.

Darwinism and the “So What?” Question: John West’s Darwin Day in America

Kenneth Feucht

Many books have been written about scientific problems with the theory of evolution. Neo-Darwinism, as the leading construct of evolutionary theory, has its fierce supporters as well as its opponents. Few topics have the capability of generating heated conversations and of turning friends into foes. Few people, though, ever ask the “So what?” question. How does Darwinist thinking affect the man on the street? Or is Darwinism simply a neutral scientific doctrine? How does Darwinism influence what we do once you or I wake up in the morning?

At first glance, it might seem that whether we believe in evolution as a purely material, unguided process should make no difference to values or morality. Yet, in his 2007 book Darwin Day in America: How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, Discovery Institute’s John West looks at the question more deeply and shows otherwise. In a nearly encyclopedic manner, he documents the numerous impacts Darwinism has had in the public square. It has had a distinctively destructive effect on our society. Dr. West provides a plethora of examples in each chapter of how Darwinism has changed the courts, the schools, the medical establishment, the conduct of the scientific community, and, indeed, the man on the street.

A War of Worldviews

As the book shows, Darwinism is a Weltanschauung at war with the Judeo-Christian theistic system on which Western civilization and scientific inquiry are based. Many of Dr. West’s examples were unknown to me, and will be news to many other readers. In a skillful and scholarly fashion, he unearths the contest between faith and “science,” while providing references for any claims that he makes. The book is divided into sections, with each oriented around a specific theme. I’ll be as brief as possible in this two-part review.

I took a psychology class in college and wrote a book review and rebuttal to B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity. I got an “A” on that paper, and still have it in my files. This was back in the day when colleges (I attended the hyper-liberal Portland State University) still had free speech. Looking back on this paper recently, I noted that I had used what John West calls the “nothing buttery” argument, and could not remember where I picked up that phrase since I did not provide references in my paper. It was thus with great surprise that I noted the title of the first chapter of Darwin Day in America, “Nothing Buttery.” Thankfully, Dr. West referenced the book that is the source of the phrase, a book I had first read between high school and college. It is A Clockwork Image: A Christian Perspective on Science, by Donald MacKay.

Nothing buttery is when a “scientist” makes the preposterous (and impossible to prove) claim that the world is “nothing but” what we can detect and observe through science. Truly, it is science-of-the-gaps thinking which forces a pseudo-scientific explanation on the entirety of the world. So much of what we see and know is unprovable and so much more is simply unknowable, yet advocates of nothing buttery use science to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Out of this nothing-buttery scientific materialism, there emerged the Darwinist Weltanschauung that is currently deconstructing our society. West, in a subsequent chapter, gives a brief and instructive summary of the rise of Darwinism as a picture of reality.

Crime and Punishment

In the next section of the book, he addresses the themes of crime and punishment. When Dostoevsky wrote his masterpiece Crime and Punishment, there was still a Christian Weltanschauung, and the novelist knew that his readership would comprehend the sense of guilt after committing murder. If written today, his book probably would not pass muster with critics, though Woody Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors could still play on the residual Judeo-Christian worldview of 30-plus years ago. Through a number of examples, West shows how the Darwinian mindset removes responsibility for crime, or turns the criminal into nothing more than a victim of mental illness. Rather than punishment or restitution, rehabilitation becomes the recommended treatment. “Science” is claimed as the guiding beacon for the new management of criminal offenses. However, it strains the imagination to see how injustice and recidivism reflect a scientific approach.

On our journey through the dismal night of Darwinian conceptions, West turns next to wealth and poverty. This section covers big finance, eugenics (and though only indirectly mentioned, critical race theory), utopianism, advertising, architecture, and more. All have been heavily influence by a materialistic worldview deriving from Darwinism. West offers multiple examples, and I believe that he succeeds in his argument.

As Leaky as a Colander

The section on how Darwinism has affected education is fascinating. The establishment does NOT want you to know how campus free speech has been stifled, and this is especially true in the context of teaching students, or not teaching them, about the controversy that still exists about Darwinian theory. Though it is a theory as leaky as a colander, educators feel that to admit problems with the theory would be troubling to young people, who might then even dare consider intelligent design as an alternative. How horrid that would be! On the other hand, sex education and the new thinking on sex, including any sexual deviancy under the sun, is permissible, should we be in reality functional blobs generated by a few accidents in the primordial slime.

Next, “Darwinism and Scientific Totalitarianism.”

OOL science makes another sale?

Yale’s Steven Novella Falls for Origin-of-Life Hype

Brian Miller

Earlier this week, I described how the University of Tokyo greatly overstated the research results of a team of their origin-of-life scientists. The exaggerated claims have been spreading across the Internet. For example, Yale neurologist Steven Novella repeated the same misinformation:

Researchers at the University of Tokyo published a study in Nature Communications in which they establish that an RNA system can spontaneously evolve complexity. …This RNA network had the critical components of evolutions — able to generate new information, greater complexity, and new variation. Further there was a differential survival of those molecules better able to function in the network in order to self-replicate. This is, in short, evolution. Give it a few billion years and you might have something interesting.

Promoting the Secular Creation Narrative

Novella is a prominent atheist who jumped at the chance to promote the secular creation narrative of life’s origin. In his blog post, he even included a figure from an article published in the journal Cell depicting the RNA world hypothesis. The diagram includes a long RNA chain folded into an enzyme-like structure (aka ribozyme) that can perform biologically relevant functions such as replicating RNA templates. The diagram depicts the journey of the ribozyme and neighboring peptides into modern cellular machinery.

However, Novella’s depiction of the experiment is completely inaccurate. The RNAs did not fold into ribozymes that replicated other RNAs or directly performed any other function. Instead, the investigators supplied all the cellular machinery to manufacture proteins. They also supplied the “host” RNA that encoded the information to generate proteins that replicated RNA templates. The “translation-coupled RNA replication (TcRR) system” did not generate anything truly novel or grow in biologically relevant complexity. The RNAs solely acquired mutations that altered the translated replicase’s efficiency and accuracy.

Predicting the Future

Novella suggests that the system could over billions of years produce “something interesting.” But one does not need to guess its fate if it were transported back in time to the early earth. The researchers in a 2013 Nature Communications article describe exactly where the system heads if left on its own:

Translation coupling increases the complexity of the replication scheme; therefore, the TcRR system becomes vulnerable to selfish or parasitic RNAs, which are continuously generated from genomic RNA by the deletion of the internal replicase-encoding region, while retaining the terminal region for replicase recognition. These small RNAs are selfish and parasitic in that they do not produce replicase but replicate rapidly because of their small size (typically 222 nucleotides), utilizing the already existing replicase, until genome replication is competitively inhibited (parasitic RNA replication in Fig. 1a).

The purported increase in complexity corresponds to the production of nonfunctional RNAs that provide no benefit to a developing cell. Instead, they eventually shut down host RNA replication. The researchers could only sustain replication by separating the host and parasitic RNAs into their own microscale compartments. The isolation required a highly sophisticated experimental protocol that would have had no parallel on the early earth. In an ancient environment, any RNA replication system would have quickly crashed, and the RNA and proteins would have irreversibly degraded into simpler molecules (here, here).

The Deep Irony

The irony of Novella’s pollyannish description of the research is that he is a host of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. He described the purpose of the podcast as follows:

…we challenge the audience to pick out the fake science news item from the real science news item. …But we deal with the paranormal or conspiracy theories, or health fraud, consumer protection type of issues. And our goal is to give our listeners the tools to look at science in the news, science in society and have some way of navigating through all of the claims and all of the hype and basically have the tools to figure things out for themselves more than anything else.

If Novella had consistently applied his hype-detection tools to the press release from the University of Tokyo, he would have described the research in dramatically different terms.

True disciples of the true Christ and war.

1John3-11,12KJV"For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous."

The Lord JEHOVAH is not accepting any excuses for violating this clear prohibition including(but not limited to) "I was just following orders"

Thursday, 24 March 2022

On the origin of life and the design debate.

The Origin of Life and the Information Enigma

Stephen C. Meyer

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from a chapter in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. We are presenting Dr. Meyer’s chapter as a series, in which this is the second post. Find the full series so far here.

As I noted, Darwin attempted to explain the origin of new living forms starting from simpler preexisting forms of life. Nevertheless, his theory of evolution by natural selection did not attempt to explain the origin of life — the origin of the simplest living cell — in the first place. Yet there now is compelling evidence of intelligent design in the inner recesses of even the simplest living one-celled organisms. Moreover, a key feature of living cells — one that Darwin knew nothing about — has made the intelligent design of life scientifically detectable.

In 1953, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions — the information — for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive.

A Famous Hypothesis

Francis Crick later developed this idea with his famous “sequence hypothesis,” according to which the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. Just as letters of the English alphabet may convey a particular message depending on their arrangement, so too do certain sequences of chemical bases along the spine of a DNA molecule convey precise instructions for building proteins. The arrangement of the chemical characters determines the function of the sequence as a whole. Thus, the DNA molecule has the same property of “sequence specificity” that characterizes codes and language.

Moreover, DNA sequences do not just possess information in the strictly mathematical sense described by pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon. Shannon related the amount of information in a sequence of symbols to the improbability of the sequence (and the reduction of uncertainty associated with it). But DNA base sequences do not just exhibit a mathematically measurable degree of improbability. Instead, DNA contains information in the richer and more ordinary dictionary sense of alternative sequences or arrangements of characters that produce a specific effect. DNA base sequences convey instructions. They perform functions and produce specific effects. Thus, they not only possess “Shannon information,” but also what has been called specified or functional information.

The Genetic Code

Like the precisely arranged zeros and ones in a computer program, the chemical bases in DNA convey instructions by virtue of their specificarrangement — and in accord with an independent symbol convention known as the genetic code. Thus, biologist Richard Dawkins notes that “the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.”¹ Similarly, Bill Gates observes that “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”² Biotechnologist Leroy Hood likewise describes the information in DNA as “digital code.”³

After the early 1960s, further discoveries revealed that the digital information in DNA and RNA is only part of a complex information processing system — an advanced form of nanotechnology that both mirrors and exceeds our own in its complexity, design logic, and information-storage density.

Where did the information in the cell come from? And how did the cell’s complex information processing system arise? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary origin-of-life research. Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed. And, as I show in extensive detail in my book Signature in the Cell, no theory of undirected chemical evolution explains the origin of the information needed to build the first living cell.⁴

Too Much Information

Why? There is simply too much information in the cell to be explained by chance alone. And attempts to explain the origin of information as the consequence of prebiotic natural selection acting on random changes inevitably presuppose precisely what needs explaining — namely, reams of preexisting genetic information. The information in DNA also defies explanation by reference to the laws of chemistry. Saying otherwise is like saying a newspaper headline might arise from the chemical attraction between ink and paper. Clearly something more is at work.

Yet the scientists who infer intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes — chance, laws, or their combination — have failed to explain the origin of the information and information-processing systems in cells. Instead, we think intelligent design is detectable in living systems because we know from experience that systems possessing large amounts of such information invariably arise from intelligent causes. The information on a computer screen can be traced back to a user or programmer. The information in a newspaper ultimately came from a writer — from a mind. As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”⁵

Information and Prior Intelligence

This connection between information and prior intelligence enables us to detect or infer intelligent activity even from unobservable sources in the distant past. Archeologists infer ancient scribes from hieroglyphic inscriptions. SETI’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence presupposes that information embedded in electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source. Radio astronomers have not found any such signal from distant star systems. But closer to home, molecular biologists have discovered information in the cell, suggesting — by the same logic that underwrites the SETI program and ordinary scientific reasoning about other informational artifacts — an intelligent source.

DNA functions like a software program and contains specified information just as software does. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that specified information — whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal — always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of such information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring (or detecting) that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA, even if we weren’t there to observe the system coming into existence.

Next, “The Logic of Design Detection.”

Notes

Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic, 1995), 17.
Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (New York: Viking, 1995), 188.
Leroy Hood and David Galas, “The digital code of DNA,” Nature 421 (2003), 444-448.
Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2009), 173-323.
Henry Quastler, The Emergence of Biological Organization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 16.

back to the future for the WWW?

Democracy put in protective custody?

Rehabilitation continues to elude OOL science.

Fact Check: Did University of Tokyo Researchers Explain the Origin of Life?

Brian Miller

The University of Tokyo offers a press release lauding research by a team of their scientists that purportedly helps explain the origin of life. The lead investigators recently published their experimental results in Nature Communications in an article titled “Evolutionary transition from a single RNA replicator to a multiple replicator network.” They summarize the research as follows:

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have for the first time been able to create an RNA molecule that replicates, diversifies and develops complexity, following Darwinian evolution. This has provided the first empirical evidence that simple biological molecules can lead to the emergence of complex lifelike systems.

They then quote the lead investigators:

The team was truly excited by what it saw. “We found that the single RNA species evolved into a complex replication system: a replicator network comprising five types of RNAs with diverse interactions, supporting the plausibility of a long-envisioned evolutionary transition scenario,” said [Ryo] Mizuuchi.

The research paper itself avers, “These results support the capability of molecular replicators to spontaneously develop complexity through Darwinian evolution, a critical step for the emergence of life.”

If the scientists had accomplished such an astonishing feat, the team leads would almost certainly receive a Nobel Prize. So, did they accomplish it? Unfortunately, these claims do not even remotely resemble the reported experimental results.

The Actual Experiment

The investigators started with a 2125 nucleotide “host” RNA borrowed from a Qb virus. The host RNA encodes the amino acid sequence for one of the proteins in a complex called a Qb replicase. The replicase transcribes RNA meaning it uses RNA templates to create complementary RNA strands. The investigators also borrowed all the molecular machinery from modern cells required for translating RNA into proteins. The inventory of supplied translational components includes dozens of enzymes, 46 tRNAs, and ribosomes.

The team encapsulated this “translation-coupled RNA replication (TcRR) system” in a cell-like compartment composed of a water-in-oil emulsion. The entire system had to be contained in a microscopic volume to ensure interaction between the translated replicase and the host RNA.

The investigators implemented a meticulously orchestrated experimental protocol to drive RNA replication and protein translation for hundreds of cycles. The replicase transcribed the host RNA to create complementary strands. The replicase also transcribed the complementary strands to create copies of the host RNA. The translation system used the host RNA to manufacture the protein required to create the replicase. Transcription and translation were performed entirely by the supplied molecular machinery.

During each round of replication, mutations altered the host RNA sequence, creating multiple variants. In addition, some replication events deleted regions that encoded the information for the replicase. The resulting RNA strands could no longer translate into replicases, so they were labeled parasitic RNAs since they performed no function.

Over time, different host variants dominated the population, and they generated replicases that preferentially transcribed specific host variants and nonfunctional RNAs. In addition, the lengths of dominant nonfunctional RNAs changed with increasing replication cycles. The investigators mapped the relative efficiencies between different host variants replicating each other and between host variants replicating parasites. They described how this “replication network” changed with time.

The Implications of the Results

What did the research team accomplish? The answer is nothing of significance. The investigators provided the machinery required to externally drive replication. The RNAs did not replicate either themselves or each other. Nor did they directly perform any biologically relevant function. The acquired mutations solely tweaked the translated replicases to perform their pre-existent function with different speeds on different host variants and nonfunctional RNAs, or they disabled the replicases. Only the numbers of variant RNAs and the speed of replication changed. The functional complexity of the system did not increase, and nothing novel emerged.

The experiment has no relevance to what could have transpired on the early earth (here, here, here). RNAs hundreds of nucleotides in length could not have formed. Even if they did, the probability that their sequences encoded a functional replicase is infinitesimal. And none of the components required for protein translation existed before the appearance of autonomous cells.

An evolving RNA network could not have emerged even if the earth contained vast quantities of RNAs encoding replicases and numerous copies of all the required translational components. Replication and translation could only have initiated if the RNA, replicase, and the translational machinery migrated into a microscopic cellular container. The possibility of such a fortuitous occurrence is beyond remote.

An Alternative Version

The writer of the press release is not fully to blame for greatly exaggerating the research results. As we saw, the authors of the original technical article overstated their accomplishments and the significance of their work. The writer simply amplified the exaggerated claims and couched the study in the context of the secular creation narrative of life’s origin.

If the writer fully understood the research and prioritized scientific accuracy, the summary would have read more like the following:

Researchers further demonstrated the implausibility of life originating through undirected processes. Their experiment reinforces the conclusion that any form of molecular replication requires the highly sophisticated machinery that only exists in living cells. And the origin of any cellular component requires externally imparted information. The study also further discredits the claim that Darwinian evolution could have assisted life’s origin by showing that random mutations at best only slightly modify preexistent functions in proteins. Nothing novel ever emerges, and complexity never significantly increases.

Tuesday, 15 March 2022

The rise (and fall?) of the iron lady.

How the reds stole the bomb.

The fall of Rome II?

Let them eat cake?

Yet another fail for Christendom?

Lamarck's revenge? II

Paper Provides More Evidence that Mutations Aren’t Random

Casey Luskin

Earlier this year we covered a paper in Nature which found that mutations in the Arabidopsis genome were not occurring randomly. As that paper noted, “The random occurrence of mutations with respect to their consequences is an axiom upon which much of biology and evolutionary theory rests.” Yet the findings of the paper overturned these basic principles of modern evolutionary biology. Now another paper, this one published in Genome Research by biologists from Israel and Ghana, reports similar findings about the non-random nature of mutations.

Mutation in Response to Need

A news release from the University of Haifa pulls no punches about the implications: “Groundbreaking study uncovers first evidence of long-term directionality in the origination of human mutation, fundamentally challenging Neo-Darwinism.” They report:

A new study by a team of researchers from Israel and Ghana has brought the first evidence of nonrandom mutation in human genes, challenging a core assumption at the heart of evolutionary theory by showing a long-term directional mutational response to environmental pressure. Using a novel method, researchers led by Professor Adi Livnat from the University of Haifa showed that the rate of generation of the HbS mutation, which protects against malaria, is higher in people from Africa, where malaria is endemic, than in people from Europe, where it is not. “For over a century, the leading theory of evolution has been based on random mutations. The results show that the HbS mutation is not generated at random but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance,” said Prof. Livnat. Unlike other findings on mutation origination, this mutation-specific response to a specific environmental pressure cannot be explained by traditional theories. “We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations,” said Livnat. [Emphasis added.]

If they are correct, then some groups of humans have evolved the ability to produce necessary mutations to lead to certain beneficial adaptations more frequently than those humans who lived in environments where those adaptations wouldn’t have been helpful. This suggests that mutations do not necessarily happen without regard to the needs of organisms — which, as they put it, “fundamentally challeng[es] Neo-Darwinism.”

“From the Hawk’s Sharp Eye to the Human Cardiovascular System”

Or does it? After all, they seem to propose that the ability to preferentially produce favorable mutations itself is an adaptation that arose by (presumably) unguided evolutionary mechanisms:

Ever since Darwin we have known that life arose by evolution. But how, exactly, does evolution — in all its grandeur, mystery and complexity — happen? For the past century scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident to the genome and that natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, favors beneficial accidents. The accumulation of these presumed genetic accidents under natural selection over the millennia leads in turn to adaptations, from the hawk’s sharp eye to the human cardiovascular system. … “Mutations defy traditional thinking. The results suggest that complex information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures,” said Prof. Livnat.

But how did this preferential tendency to produce useful mutations itself arise? Most materialists will say that it arose by chance mutations that became fixed in populations because they were beneficial to organisms. So you’re back to a neo-Darwinian view of mutations after all — random mutations produce beneficial traits even if neo-Darwinian mechanisms sometimes produce non-random biases towards beneficial mutations.

A Vague Lamarckian Fashion

But is that the only explanation for the origin of such mutational biases? Could not intelligent design also explain the presence of mutational spectra that spike where there may be a benefit for an organism? Would that not be a good design strategy to build into living organisms? The technical paper ignores such possibilities — preferring to say that “epigenetic” mechanisms exist which allow these preferences to evolve in a vague long-term Lamarckian fashion. From the news release:

While widely held in the scientific community, this view has always left open fundamental questions, such as the problem of complexity. Can the sequential accumulation of small random changes, each beneficial on its own, lead within the timespan available to the evolution of such astonishingly complex and impressive adaptations as we see around us in nature, such as eyes, brains or wings, where complementary parts interweave into a complex whole? However, the only alternative at the fundamental level conceived of up until now consisted of variants of Lamarckism — the idea that organisms can somehow respond directly to their immediate environments with beneficial genetic change. Since Lamarckism has not worked in general, the notion of random mutation remained the prevailing view. … Previous studies, motivated by Lamarckism, only tested for an immediate mutational response to environmental pressures. “Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all, but not in the way previously conceived. We must study the internal information and how it affects mutation, as it opens the door to evolution being a far bigger process than previously conceived,” Livnat concluded.

These researchers have done innovative research to investigate rates of “de novo mutations — mutations that arise ‘out of the blue’ in offspring without being inherited from either parent.” Their findings are extremely important: mutations aren’t random and may occur in patterns that are designed to benefit an organism. How did this arise? Epigenetics may be the direct mechanism, but how did those epigenetic mechanisms arise? Their origin has obvious design implications. But if your only alternative to neo-Darwinism is Lamarckism or some hazy materialistic model of evolution, then you are going to miss the viable possibility of intelligent design.

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