Byzantium:A brief history.

Byzantium (/bɪˈzæntiəm, -ʃəm/) or Byzantion (Greek: Βυζάντιον) was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name Byzantion and its Latinization Byzantium continued to be used as a name of Constantinople sporadically and to varying degrees during the thousand year existence of the Byzantine Empire.^[1][2] Byzantium was colonized by Greeks from Megara in the 7th century BC and remained primarily Greek-speaking until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in AD 1453.^[3]

 

Etymology

The etymology of Byzantium is unknown. It has been suggested that the name is of Thracian origin.^[4] It may be derived from the Thracian personal name Byzas which means "he-goat".^[5][6] Ancient Greek legend refers to the Greek king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder of the city.^[7] The name Lygos for the city, which likely corresponds to an earlier Thracian settlement,^[4] is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History.^[8]

Byzántios, plural Byzántioi (Ancient Greek: Βυζάντιος, Βυζάντιοι, Latin: Byzantius; adjective the same) referred to Byzantion's inhabitants, also used as an ethnonym for the people of the city and as a family name.^[5] In the Middle Ages, Byzántion was also a synecdoche for the eastern Roman Empire. (An ellipsis of Medieval Greek: Βυζάντιον κράτος, romanized: Byzántion krátos).^[5] Byzantinós (Medieval Greek: Βυζαντινός, Latin: Byzantinus) denoted an inhabitant of the empire.^[5] The Anglicization of Latin Byzantinus yielded "Byzantine", with 15th and 16th century forms including Byzantin, Bizantin(e), Bezantin(e), and Bysantin as well as Byzantian and Bizantian.^[9]

The name Byzantius and Byzantinus were applied from the 9th century to gold Byzantine coinage, reflected in the French besant (d'or), Italian bisante, and English besant, byzant, or bezant.^[5] The English usage, derived from Old French besan (pl. besanz), and relating to the coin, dates from the 12th century.^[10]

Later, the name Byzantium became common in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. As a term for the east Roman state as a whole, Byzantium was introduced by the historian Hieronymus Wolf only in 1555, a century after the last remnants of the empire, whose inhabitants continued to refer to their polity as the Roman Empire (Medieval Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, romanized: Basileía tōn Rhōmaíōn, lit. 'empire of the Romans'), had ceased to exist.^[11]

Other places were historically known as Byzántion (Βυζάντιον) – a city in Libya mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium and another on the western coast of India referred to by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea; in both cases the names were probably adaptations of names in local languages.^[5] Faustus of Byzantium was from a city of that name in Cilicia.^[5]

  History

 

The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. Tradition says that Byzas of Megara (a city-state near Athens) founded the city when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. The date is usually given as 667 BC on the authority of Herodotus, who states the city was founded 17 years after Chalcedon. Eusebius, who wrote almost 800 years later, dates the founding of Chalcedon to 685/4 BC, but he also dates the founding of Byzantium to 656 BC (or a few years earlier depending on the edition). Herodotus' dating was later favored by Constantine the Great, who celebrated Byzantium's 1000th anniversary between the years 333 and 334.^[12]

Byzanitium was mainly a trading city due to its location at the Black Sea's only entrance. Byzantium later conquered Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus on the Asiatic side.

The city was taken by the Persian Empire at the time of the Scythian campaign (513 BC) of King Darius I (r. 522–486 BC), and was added to the administrative province of Skudra.^[13] Though Achaemenid control of the city was never as stable as compared to other cities in Thrace, it was considered, alongside Sestos, to be one of the foremost Achaemenid ports on the European coast of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont.^[13]

Byzantium was besieged by Greek forces during the Peloponnesian War. As part of Sparta's strategy for cutting off grain supplies to Athens during their siege of Athens, Sparta took control of the city in 411 BC, to bring the Athenians into submission. The Athenian military later retook the city in 408 BC, when the Spartans had withdrawn following their settlement.^[14]

After siding with Pescennius Niger against the victorious Septimius Severus, the city was besieged by Roman forces and suffered extensive damage in AD 196.^[15] Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus, now emperor, and quickly regained its previous prosperity. It was bound to Perinthus during the period of Septimius Severus.^{[citation needed]} The strategic and highly defensible (due to being surrounded by water on almost all sides) location of Byzantium attracted Roman Emperor Constantine I who, in AD 330, refounded it as an imperial residence inspired by Rome itself, known as Nova Roma. Later the city was called Constantinople (Greek Κωνσταντινούπολις, Konstantinoupolis, "city of Constantine").

This combination of imperialism and location would affect Constantinople's role as the nexus between the continents of Europe and Asia. It was a commercial, cultural, and diplomatic centre and for centuries formed the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which decorated the city with numerous monuments, some still standing today. With its strategic position, Constantinople controlled the major trade routes between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. On May 29, 1453, the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, and again became the capital of a powerful state, the Ottoman Empire. The Turks called the city "Istanbul" (although it was not officially renamed until 1930); the name derives from "eis-ten-polin" (Greek: "to-the-city"). To this day it remains the largest and most populous city in Turkey, although Ankara is now the national capital.

Emblem

 

By the late Hellenistic or early Roman period (1st century BC), the star and crescent motif was associated to some degree with Byzantium; even though it became more widely used as the royal emblem of Mithradates VI Eupator (who for a time incorporated the city into his empire).^[16]

Some Byzantine coins of the 1st century BC and later show the head of Artemis with bow and quiver, and feature a crescent with what appears to be an eight-rayed star on the reverse. According to accounts which vary in some of the details, in 340 BC the Byzantines and their allies the Athenians were under siege by the troops of Philip of Macedon. On a particularly dark and wet night Philip attempted a surprise attack but was thwarted by the appearance of a bright light in the sky. This light is occasionally described by subsequent interpreters as a meteor, sometimes as the moon, and some accounts also mention the barking of dogs. However, the original accounts mention only a bright light in the sky, without specifying the moon.^[a][b] To commemorate the event the Byzantines erected a statue of Hecate lampadephoros (light-bearer or bringer). This story survived in the works of Hesychius of Miletus, who in all probability lived in the time of Justinian I. His works survive only in fragments preserved in Photius and the tenth century lexicographer Suidas. The tale is also related by Stephanus of Byzantium, and Eustathius.

Devotion to Hecate was especially favored by the Byzantines for her aid in having protected them from the incursions of Philip of Macedon. Her symbols were the crescent and star, and the walls of her city were her provenance.^[19]

It is unclear precisely how the symbol Hecate/Artemis, one of many goddesses^[c] would have been transferred to the city itself, but it seems likely to have been an effect of being credited with the intervention against Philip and the subsequent honors. This was a common process in ancient Greece, as in Athens where the city was named after Athena in honor of such an intervention in time of war.

Cities in the Roman Empire often continued to issue their own coinage. "Of the many themes that were used on local coinage, celestial and astral symbols often appeared, mostly stars or crescent moons."^[21] The wide variety of these issues, and the varying explanations for the significance of the star and crescent on Roman coinage precludes their discussion here. It is, however, apparent that by the time of the Romans, coins featuring a star or crescent in some combination were not at all rare.

People

 

• Homerus, tragedian, lived in the early 3rd century BC
• Philo, engineer, lived c. 280 BC–c. 220 BC
• Epigenes of Byzantium, astrologer, lived in the 3rd–2nd century BC
• Aristophanes of Byzantium, a scholar who flourished in Alexandria, 3rd–2nd century BC
• Myro, a Hellenistic female poet

See also

 

• Constantinople, which details the history of the city before 1453
  • Fall of Constantinople (Turkish conquest of 1453)
• Istanbul, which details the history of the city from 1453 on, and describes the modern city
• Sarayburnu, which is the geographic location of ancient Byzantium
• Timeline of Istanbul history

Notes

1. 
   

3. "In 324 Byzantium had a number of operative cults to traditional gods and goddesses tied to its very foundation eight hundred years before. Rhea, called "the mother of the gods" by Zosimus, had a well-ensconced cult in Byzantium from its very foundation. [...] Devotion to Hecate was especially favored by the Byzantines [...] Constantine would also have found Artemis-Selene and Aphrodite along with the banished Apollo Zeuxippus on the Acropolis in the old Greek section of the city. Other gods mentioned in the sources are Athena, Hera, Zeus, Hermes, and Demeter and Kore. Even evidence of Isis and Serapis appears from the Roman era on coins during the reign of Caracalla and from inscriptions." ^[20]

References

1. 
   

21. Molnar, Michael R. (1999). The Star of Bethlehem. Rutgers University Press. p. 48.

Sources

• Balcer, Jack Martin (1990). "BYZANTIUM". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Volume IV/6: Burial II–Calendars II. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 599–600. ISBN 978-0-71009-129-1.
• Harris, Jonathan, Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium (Hambledon/Continuum, London, 2007). ISBN 978-1-84725-179-4
• Jeffreys, Elizabeth and Michael, and Moffatt, Ann, Byzantine Papers: Proceedings of the First Australian Byzantine Studies Conference, Canberra, 17–19 May 1978 (Australian National University, Canberra, 1979).
• Istanbul Historical Information – Istanbul Informative Guide To The City. Retrieved January 6, 2005.
• The Useful Information about Istanbul Archived 2007-03-15 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved January 6, 2005.
• The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford University Press, 1991) ISBN 0-19-504652-8
• Yeats, William Butler, "Sailing to Byzantium",

"In 340 BC, however, the Byzantines, with the aid of the Athenians, withstood a siege successfully, an occurrence the more remarkable as they were attacked by the greatest general of the age, Philip of Macedon. In the course of this beleaguerment, it is related, on a certain wet and moonless night the enemy attempted a surprise, but were foiled by reason of a bright light which, appearing suddenly in the heavens, startled all the dogs in the town and thus roused the garrison to a sense of their danger. To commemorate this timely phenomenon, which was attributed to Hecate, they erected a public statue to that goddess [...]"^[17]

"If any goddess had a connection with the walls in Constantinople, it was Hecate. Hecate had a cult in Byzantium from the time of its founding. Like Byzas in one legend, she had her origins in Thrace. Since Hecate was the guardian of "liminal places," in Byzantium small temples in her honor were placed close to the gates of the city. Hecate's importance to Byzantium was above all as deity of protection. When Philip of Macedon was about to attack the city, according to the legend she alerted the townspeople with her ever-present torches, and with her pack of dogs, which served as her constant companions. Her mythic qualities thenceforth forever entered the fabric of Byzantine history. A statue known as the 'Lampadephoros' was erected on the hill above the Bosphorous to commemorate Hecate's defensive aid."^[18]

Speake, Jennifer (2003). Literature of Travel and Exploration: A to F. p. 160. ISBN 9781579584252.

Kazhdan, A. P.; Epstein, Ann Wharton (February 1990). Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. University of California Press. p. 1. ISBN 9780520069626. Byzantion term remained used for constantinople.

The Rise of the Greeks. Orion Publishing Group. 2012. p. 22. ISBN 978-1780222752.

Janin, Raymond (1964). Constantinople byzantine: dévelopment urbain et répertoire topographique (in French). Paris: Institut Français d'Études Byzantines. pp. 10–11.

Georgacas, Demetrius John (1947). "The Names of Constantinople". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 78: 347–67. doi:10.2307/283503. JSTOR 283503.

Georgacas, Demetrius John (1947). "The Names of Constantinople". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 78: 347–367. doi:10.2307/283503. ISSN 0065-9711. JSTOR 283503.

Room, Adrian (2006). Placenames of the World: Origins and Meanings of the Names for 6,600 Countries, Cities, Territories, Natural Features, and Historic Sites (2nd ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2248-7.

Pliny, IV, xi

"Byzantine, adj. and n.". Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online.

"bezant | byzant, n.". Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online. ISBN 9780198611868.

Kazhdan, Alexander P. (1991). "Byzantium". The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195046526.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6.

Ramsköld, Lars (2018). "The silver emissions of Constantine I from Constantinopolis, and the celebration of the millennium of Byzantion in 333/334 CE". Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte. 68: 145–198.

Balcer 1990, pp. 599–600.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 302

Daily Life in Ancient and Modern Istanbul Robert Bator, Chris Rothero p. 8

Traver, Andrew G. (2002) [2001]. From Polis to Empire, the Ancient World, C. 800 B.C.-A.D. 500: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 257. ISBN 9780313309427.

Holmes, William Gordon (2003). The Age of Justinian and Theodora. p. 5–6.

Limberis, Vasiliki (1994). Divine Heiress. Routledge. p. 126–127.

Limberis 1994, pp. 15.

Limberis 1994, p. 16.

The dominion of mathematics and the design debate.

Unexplained — Maybe Unexplainable — Numbers Control the Universe

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

 

In Carl Sagan’s Contact, the extraterrestrials embedded a message in the irrational number pi (the circumference of a circle divided by its radius). But some other numbers are critical to the structure of our universe too — and why they are critical does not make obvious sense.

• Perhaps the most fundamental and mysterious one is the fine structure constant of the universe:

A seemingly harmless, random number with no units or dimensions has cropped up in so many places in physics and seems to control one of the most fundamental interactions in the universe.

Its name is the fine-structure constant, and it’s a measure of the strength of the interaction between charged particles and the electromagnetic force. The current estimate of the fine-structure constant is 0.007 297 352 5693, with an uncertainty of 11 on the last two digits. The number is easier to remember by its inverse, approximately 1/137.

If it had any other value, life as we know it would be impossible. And yet we have no idea where it comes from. 

PAUL SUTTER, “LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT THIS HIGHLY UNUSUAL NUMBER” AT SPACE.COM (MARCH 24, 2022)

Many famous scientists have reflected on 1/137:

The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) famously thought so, saying there is a number that all theoretical physicists of worth should “worry about”. He called it “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”…

What’s special about alpha is that it’s regarded as the best example of a pure number, one that doesn’t need units. It actually combines three of nature’s fundamental constants – the speed of light, the electric charge carried by one electron, and the Planck’s constant, as explains physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies to Cosmos magazine. Appearing at the intersection of such key areas of physics as relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics is what gives 1/137 its allure. 

PAUL RATNER, “WHY THE NUMBER 137 IS ONE OF THE GREATEST MYSTERIES IN PHYSICS” AT BIG THINK (OCTOBER 31, 2018)

First Question to the Devil

Nobelist Wolfgang Pauli (1945) is said to have remarked, “When I die, my first question to the devil will be: What is the meaning of the fine structure constant?” At any rate, he thought about it a great deal during his life.

University of Nottingham physics professor Laurence Eaves thinks the number 1/137 would be good for starting communication with intelligent aliens as they would be likely to know about it and to realize they were dealing with other intelligent entities.

• Here’s another thought-provoking number. Consider the irrational number known as phi (ϕ) or the Golden Ratio. Jordan Ellenberg author of Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else (2021):

Among the mysteries of the irrationals, one number holds a special place: the so-called golden ratio. The golden ratio’s value is about 1.618 (but not exactly 1.618, since then it would be the ratio 1,618/1,000, and therefore not irrational) and it’s also referred to by the Greek letter φ, which is pronounced “fee” if you’re a mathematician and “fie” if you are in a fraternity. If you want an exact description, the golden ratio can be expressed as (1/2)(1+√5.)

JORDAN ELLENBERG, “THE MOST IRRATIONAL NUMBER” AT SLATE (JUNE 8, 2021)

The “Divine Proportion”

We find this number everywhere too:

The golden ratio is sometimes called the “divine proportion,” because of its frequency in the natural world. The number of petals on a flower, for instance, will often be a Fibonacci number. The seeds of sunflowers and pine cones twist in opposing spirals of Fibonacci numbers. Even the sides of an unpeeled banana will usually be a Fibonacci number — and the number of ridges on a peeled banana will usually be a larger Fibonacci number.

RESOURCE LIBRARY, “THE GOLDEN RATIO” AT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

• Then there is pi (π), which (outside of Carl Sagan’s novel and film) burbles on forever without forming a pattern, yet it is fundamental in nature too.

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

 

 

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.

 

 

A house divided II

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Recommended reading:

 Anyone seeking a more balanced treatment of the subject of new religious movements than the thinly veiled bigotry that often passes for analysis on the web.

can easily do worse than procuring a copy of James R. Lewis' "Cults in America"

As is only to be expected I do not agree with all of the author's conclusions but I do appreciate his attempt to treat the subject in a balanced way.

The power of the media industrial complex?

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More on why I.D is already mainstream

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

 

A house divided.

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

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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.

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.

 

 

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"