Megalodon eats Darwin's lunch?

Fossil Friday: Megalodon and Intelligent Design in Sharks.

Günter Bechly 

This week’s Fossil Friday features the tooth of a megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon (often you can still find the obsolete genus name Carcharocles). These fossil teeth are 3-7 million years old and were found at Morgan River in South Carolina, which is a famous locality for megalodon teeth. These fierce transoceanic superpredators (Herraiz et al. 2020, Cooper et al. 2022) had a worldwide distribution in the Miocene and Pliocene periods about 2.3-3.6 million years ago and could reach a size of more than 15 meters (Shimada 2019). This makes them three times larger than the biggest specimens of the famous great white shark, which reaches lengths of “only” 5-6 meters.

Megalodon was a specialized apex predator and fed mainly on large baleen whales. It was not closely related to the great white but rather to the mako shark, which means that the common reconstruction as superlarge great white is likely inaccurate (Cooper et al. 2020). New evidence suggests that outcompeting of the juveniles by adults of their smaller cousins may have played a role in their extinction (Boessenecker et al. 2019, Herraiz et al. 2020, McCormack et al. 2022). Nevertheless, tabloid journalists love to speculate that megalodon might still be around (e.g., O’Toole 2022), which of course is total nonsense.

Megalodon was a specialized apex predator and fed mainly on large baleen whales. It was not closely related to the great white but rather to the mako shark, which means that the common reconstruction as superlarge great white is likely inaccurate (Cooper et al. 2020). New evidence suggests that outcompeting of the juveniles by adults of their smaller cousins may have played a role in their extinction (Boessenecker et al. 2019, Herraiz et al. 2020, McCormack et al. 2022). Nevertheless, tabloid journalists love to speculate that megalodon might still be around (e.g., O’Toole 2022), which of course is total nonsense.

Sharks (and/or stem chondrichthyans) appear very early in the history of vertebrate animals about 455 million years ago (Sansom & Smith 1996, Sansom et al. 2012, Davis 2020). Many fossil sharks are only known from their teeth, because these teeth are replaced in their revolver-like jaws and therefore often make it to the sea floor, where they can become embedded in sediments. Unfortunately, our knowledge of megalodon rests mostly on the giant teeth as well, with the exception of a single vertebral column and a chondrocranium (Cooper et al. 2022).

Sharks possess many remarkable biological features, of which some clearly point to intelligent design, such as their complex olfactory and electromagnetic sense organs. The latter are situated on and around their snouts and are called ampullae of Lorenzini (Bellono et al. 2017, Weiler 2017). The discovery of this electromagnetic sense by Adrianus Kalmjin is a fascinating story (Shiffman 2022). A recent study revealed further secrets, such as the fact that sharks only use these organs to find prey, while the related skates and rays also use them for electric communication (Weiler 2018). For more information on evidence for intelligent design in marine organisms like sharks and whales, I highly recommend the Illustra Media documentary Living Waters (Evolution News 2016).

References

Bellono N, Leitch D & Julius D 2017. Molecular basis of ancestral vertebrate electroreception. Nature 543, 391–396. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21401.

Boessenecker RW, Ehret DJ, Long DJ, Churchill M, Martin E & Boessenecker SJ 2019. The Early Pliocene extinction of the mega-toothed shark Otodus megalodon: a view from the eastern North Pacific. PeerJ 7:e6088, 1–47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6088.

Cooper JA, Pimiento C, Ferrón HG & Benton MJ 2020. Body dimensions of the extinct giant shark Otodus megalodon: a 2D reconstruction. Scientific Reports 10:14596, 1–9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71387-y.

Cooper JA, Hutchinson JR, Bernvi DC, Cliff G, Wilson RP, Dicken ML, Menzel J, Wroe S, Pirlo J & Pimiento C 2022. The extinct shark Otodus megalodon was a transoceanic superpredator: Inferences from 3D modeling. Science Advances 8(33), 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm9424.

Davis J 2020. Shark evolution: a 450 million year timeline. NHM Website. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/shark-evolution-a-450-million-year-timeline.html

Evolution News 2016. Shark Knows with Its Nose Where It Goes in the Dark. Evolution News January 12, 2016. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/01/shark_knows_wit/

Herraiz JL, Ribé J, Botella H, Martínez-Pérez C & Ferrón HG 2020. Use of nursery areas by the extinct megatooth shark Otodus megalodon (Chondrichthyes: Lamniformes). Biology Letters 16(11):20200746, 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0746.

McCormack J, Griffiths ML, Kim SL et al. 2022. Trophic position of Otodus megalodon and great white sharks through time revealed by zinc isotopes. Nature Communications 13:2980, 1–10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30528-9.

O’Toole S 2022. Terrifying sighting of huge shark sparks debate about if megalodons still exist. Mirror May 14, 2022. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/terrifying-sighting-huge-shark-sparks-26921012

Sansom IJ & Smith MM & Smith MP 1996. Scales of thelodont and shark-like fishes from the Ordovician of Colorado. Nature 379(6566), 628–630. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/379628a0.

Sansom IJ, Davies NS, Coates MI, Nicoll RS & Ritchie A 2012. Chondrichthyan-like scales from the Middle Ordovician of Australia. Palaeontology 55(2), 243–247.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2012.01127.x.

Shiffman DS 2022. The Discovery of the Shark’s Electric Sense. American Scientist 110(3), 152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1511/2022.110.3.152.

Shimada K 2019. The size of the megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon (Lamniformes: Otodontidae), revisited. Historical Biology 33(7), 904–911. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2019.1666840.

Weiler N 2017. Study Shows How Skates, Rays and Sharks Sense Electrical Fields. UCSF March 6, 2017. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/03/405996/study-shows-how-skates-rays-and-sharks-sense-electrical-fields

Weiler N 2018. Electric ‘Sixth Sense’ Evolved Differently in Sharks and Skates. UCSF May 31, 2018. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/05/410601/electric-sixth-sense-evolved-differently-sharks-and-skates.

Young's literal translation: a brief history.

 Young's Literal Translation 

Young's Literal Translation (YLT) is a translation of the Bible into English, published in 1862. The translation was made by Robert Young, compiler of Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament. Young used the Textus Receptus (TR) and the Masoretic Text (MT) as the basis for his translation. He wrote in the preface to the first edition, "It has been no part of the Translator's plan to attempt to form a New Hebrew or Greek Text—he has therefore somewhat rigidly adhered to the received ones."[1] Young produced a "Revised Version" of his translation in 1887, but he stuck with the Received Text. He wrote in the preface to the Revised Edition, "The Greek Text followed is that generally recognized as the 'Received Text,' not because it is thought perfect, but because the department of Translation is quite distinct from that of textual criticism, and few are qualified for both. If the original text be altered by a translator, (except he give his reasons for and against each emendation,) the reader is left in uncertainty whether the translation given is to be considered as that of the old or of the new reading."[1] A new Revised Edition was released ten years after Robert Young's death on October 14, 1888. The 1898 version was based on the TR, easily confirmed by the word "bathe" in Revelation 1:5 and the word "again" in Revelation 20:5. The "Publishers' Note to the Third Edition" explains, "The work has been subjected to a fresh revision, making no alteration on the principles on which the Translation proceeds, but endeavouring to make it as nearly perfect in point of accuracy on its present lines as possible."[1] 

Full name

1st ed.: The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Covenants, Literally and Idiomatically Translated out of the Original Languages 3rd ed.: The Holy Bible, Consisting of the Old and New Covenants, Translated According to the Letter and Idioms of the Original Languages.

Abbreviation

YLT

Complete Bible

published

1862

Translation type

literal

Copyright

Public domain

The New World translation: a brief history.

 New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures 

The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. The New Testament portion was released in 1950,[8][9] as The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, with the complete Bible released in 1961;[10][11] it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses.[12][13] Though it is not the first Bible to be published by the group, it is their first original translation of ancient Biblical Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Old Aramaic biblical texts.[14] As of March 2, 2020, the Watch Tower Society has published more than 220 million copies of the New World Translation in whole or in part in 200 languages.[6][1] Though commentators have said a scholarly effort went into the translation, critics have described it as biased.[15]

The American standard bible: a brief history.

 American Standard Version 

The American Standard Version (ASV), officially Revised Version, Standard American Edition, is a Bible translation into English that was completed in 1901 with the publication of the revision of the Old Testament. The revised New Testament had been released in 1900. It was previously known by its full name, but soon came to have other names, such as the American Revised Version, the American Standard Revision, the American Standard Revised Bible, and the American Standard Edition.

Full name

Revised Version, Standard American Edition

Abbreviation

ASV

OT published

1901

NT published

1900

Online as

American Standard Version at Wikisource

Derived from

English Revised Version 1881–1885

Textual basis

NT: Westcott and Hort 1881 and Tregelles 1857, (Reproduced in a single, continuous, form in Palmer 1881). OT: Masoretic Text with some Septuagint influence).

Translation type

Formal equivalence

Reading level

High school

Version revision

1929 (copyright renewal)

Copyright

Copyright expired

Religious affiliation

Protestant inter-denominational 

The King James Version: a brief history.

 King James Version 

The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB)[a] and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I.[b][c] The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of what Protestants consider the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.[2][ The title page to the 1611 first edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible by Cornelis Boel shows the Apostles Peter and Paul seated centrally above the central text, which is flanked by Moses and Aaron. In the four corners sit Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the traditionally attributed authors of the four gospels, with their symbolic animals. The rest of the Apostles (with Judas facing away) stand around Peter and Paul. At the very top is the Tetragrammaton "יְהֹוָה" written with Hebrew diacritics.

Abbreviation

KJV, KJB, or AV

Complete Bible

published

1611

Online as

King James Version at Wikisource

Textual basis

OT: Masoretic Text, some LXX and Vulgate influence.

NT: Textus Receptus, similar to the Byzantine text-type; some readings derived from the Vulgate.

Apocrypha: Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate.

Translation type

Formal Equivalence

Copyright

Public domain due to age, publication restrictions in the United Kingdom

(See Copyright status)The KJV was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker, who both held the post of the King's Printer, and was the third translation into English language approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1568).[4] In Geneva, Switzerland, the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible of 1560[5] from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.

In January 1604, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans,[6] a faction of the Church of England.[7]

James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.[8] The translation was done by 6 panels of translators (47 men in all, most of whom were leading biblical scholars in England) who had the work divided up between them: the Old Testament was entrusted to three panels, the New Testament to two, and the Apocrypha to one.[9] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings (but not for the Psalter, which substantially retained Coverdale's Great Bible version), and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament.[10]

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.

Dissent does not equal hate.

 Galatians4:16NIV"Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?" 

No law or constitution can keep a nation or civilisation free in the absence of a culture of liberty, i.e social contract that tolerates dissent even passionate dissent. Any society where it has become the default position that dissent from ones opinion equals animus against ones person is well along on the road to anarchy/tyranny.

James ch.4 King James Version

 

Bible > KJV > James 4

◄ James 4 ►

King James Bible 

1From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. 5Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? 6But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

Drawing Near to God

7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

11Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. 12There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

Do Not Boast about Tomorrow

13Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. 17Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

The bible's counsel in this age of rage.

 Ecclesiastes 7:9NIV"Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools." 

Even when anger is justified ,it can be a tool of Satan and his henchmen. That is why we are warned in scripture ,

James1:20NIV"because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires." 

As for JEHOVAH'S servants or sincere truth seekers we have been forewarned, as to what to expect from this civilization whose prince is the Father of lies, see John8:44,John14:30 

Matthew 10:25NIV"It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!"

Our Lord counseled us aquire the wisdom of a serpent even as we maintain the blamelessness of a dove, see Matthew 10:16 ,we can safely add the hide of a rhinoceros to the list of qualities needed to maintain our integrity.

Remember: James4:4NIV"You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."

 

Pope Pius XII and Hitler.

 Vatican documents show secret back channel between Pope Pius XII and Hitler

Jun 7, 2022 6:35 PM EDT 

A series of recently opened Vatican archives are shedding new light on the relationship between Pope Pius XII and Hitler as he led Nazi Germany during World War II. A new book takes a deeper look at these revelations. Historian David Kertzer, author of “The Pope At War: The Secret History of Pope Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler,” joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.

Read the Full Transcript

Judy Woodruff:

A series of recently opened Vatican archives are shedding new light on the relationship between Pope Pius XII and Adolf Hitler as he led Nazi Germany during World War II.

Amna Nawaz looks at what we are learning and how it changes our thinking about the Vatican during that time.

Amna Nawaz:

Judy, in 2020, the Vatican released millions of documents on Pope Pius XII that were previously hidden from public view. These include transcripts of negotiations between the pope and Nazis.

A new book published today takes a deeper look at these revelations. 

Historian David Kertzer is the author of that book. It's called "The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler."

And he joins me now.

David Kertzer, welcome to the "NewsHour." Thank you for being here.

So a lot of folks know previous versions of history around Pius XII went one of two ways, right? He was either called Hitler's pope and an antisemite, or the story was that he did everything in his power to save as many Jewish people as he could during the war. 

After reviewing the documents, what's your understanding?

David Kertzer, Author, "The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler": Well, I think neither one is really accurate. They're both extremes.

The fact is, Pius XII was afraid of, certainly in the first years of the war, that the Nazis were going to win. And so he felt he had to plan for a Europe that was going to be under Nazi control with their pal Mussolini helping out.

So his main concerns in those earlier years, say '39 to '42, was to protect the church in a time when it would — Europe could be under Nazi control. It wasn't that he loved the Nazis, much less Hitler, but this was his thinking. 

Amna Nawaz:

Well, what does that mean, when you say protect the church?

For example, we mentioned these — these meetings that we now know happen between the pope and a personal envoy of Hitler. What did we learn about those? What were those talks like? 

David Kertzer:

Well, probably the most shocking finding from these newly opened Vatican archives that just opened two years ago, after 50 years of pressure and interest in being able to see what they contain, is that, within weeks of Pius XII being elected pope — he is elected in early 1939 — Hitler saw an opportunity and decided to send a personal envoy, who himself is a rather colorful character.

It's the great-grandson of Queen Victoria of England, a Nazi prince, who is married to the daughter of the king of Italy. And he would begin to shuttle back and forth between Hitler and the pope over the next two years, engaged in secret negotiations. We didn't know about these until just now. 

Amna Nawaz:

David, when it comes down to what Pope Pius XII did or didn't do, in terms of saving Jewish lives, you tell the story about one October night in 1943 in Rome.

What happened then? 

David Kertzer:

Well, on October 16, 1943, the S.S. had lists of all the Jews in Rome, and went door to door and tried to arrest all of Rome's Jews, thousands of them.

They found about 1,260 arrested them, brought them to a military college just outside the walls of the Vatican, and held them there for two days. What we now learn from these recently opened archives is that the Vatican worked very hard to show that some of them had been baptized and therefore shouldn't be considered Jews, from the point of view of the church, and, therefore, should not be he shipped off to Auschwitz with the rest of them.

And, in fact, about 250 of those who were originally rounded up were freed before, two days later, they were put on a train, 1,007 of them, of whom I think about 16 would be — would survive. And most, in fact, a week later on arrival at Auschwitz were immediately put to death.

The pope did send his cardinal secretary of state to meet with the German ambassador to the Holy See to say, do you really need to go through this? Can you do something about this? But the ambassador told the cardinal secretary of state, this has been ordered by the highest level, namely, Hitler, and you really don't want me to protest on your behalf, do you?

And the cardinal secretary of state basically said, no, I'm not insisting on any protest. 

Amna Nawaz:

Dave, I'm curious.

I know, previously, the Vatican has come forward when previous allegations were made similar to this about Pope Pius XII. Have they responded in any way to your book or to the reporting that's in this book? 

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Vatican documents show secret back channel between Pope Pius XII and Hitler

Jun 7, 2022 6:35 PM EDT

Transcript

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A series of recently opened Vatican archives are shedding new light on the relationship between Pope Pius XII and Hitler as he led Nazi Germany during World War II. A new book takes a deeper look at these revelations. Historian David Kertzer, author of “The Pope At War: The Secret History of Pope Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler,” joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.

Read the Full Transcript

Judy Woodruff:

A series of recently opened Vatican archives are shedding new light on the relationship between Pope Pius XII and Adolf Hitler as he led Nazi Germany during World War II.

Amna Nawaz looks at what we are learning and how it changes our thinking about the Vatican during that time.

Amna Nawaz:

Judy, in 2020, the Vatican released millions of documents on Pope Pius XII that were previously hidden from public view. These include transcripts of negotiations between the pope and Nazis.

A new book published today takes a deeper look at these revelations.

Historian David Kertzer is the author of that book. It's called "The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler."

And he joins me now.

David Kertzer, welcome to the "NewsHour." Thank you for being here.

So a lot of folks know previous versions of history around Pius XII went one of two ways, right? He was either called Hitler's pope and an antisemite, or the story was that he did everything in his power to save as many Jewish people as he could during the war.

After reviewing the documents, what's your understanding?

David Kertzer, Author, "The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler": Well, I think neither one is really accurate. They're both extremes.

The fact is, Pius XII was afraid of, certainly in the first years of the war, that the Nazis were going to win. And so he felt he had to plan for a Europe that was going to be under Nazi control with their pal Mussolini helping out.

So his main concerns in those earlier years, say '39 to '42, was to protect the church in a time when it would — Europe could be under Nazi control. It wasn't that he loved the Nazis, much less Hitler, but this was his thinking.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, what does that mean, when you say protect the church?

For example, we mentioned these — these meetings that we now know happen between the pope and a personal envoy of Hitler. What did we learn about those? What were those talks like?

David Kertzer:

Well, probably the most shocking finding from these newly opened Vatican archives that just opened two years ago, after 50 years of pressure and interest in being able to see what they contain, is that, within weeks of Pius XII being elected pope — he is elected in early 1939 — Hitler saw an opportunity and decided to send a personal envoy, who himself is a rather colorful character.

It's the great-grandson of Queen Victoria of England, a Nazi prince, who is married to the daughter of the king of Italy. And he would begin to shuttle back and forth between Hitler and the pope over the next two years, engaged in secret negotiations. We didn't know about these until just now.

Amna Nawaz:

David, when it comes down to what Pope Pius XII did or didn't do, in terms of saving Jewish lives, you tell the story about one October night in 1943 in Rome.

What happened then?

David Kertzer:

Well, on October 16, 1943, the S.S. had lists of all the Jews in Rome, and went door to door and tried to arrest all of Rome's Jews, thousands of them.

They found about 1,260 arrested them, brought them to a military college just outside the walls of the Vatican, and held them there for two days. What we now learn from these recently opened archives is that the Vatican worked very hard to show that some of them had been baptized and therefore shouldn't be considered Jews, from the point of view of the church, and, therefore, should not be he shipped off to Auschwitz with the rest of them.

And, in fact, about 250 of those who were originally rounded up were freed before, two days later, they were put on a train, 1,007 of them, of whom I think about 16 would be — would survive. And most, in fact, a week later on arrival at Auschwitz were immediately put to death.

The pope did send his cardinal secretary of state to meet with the German ambassador to the Holy See to say, do you really need to go through this? Can you do something about this? But the ambassador told the cardinal secretary of state, this has been ordered by the highest level, namely, Hitler, and you really don't want me to protest on your behalf, do you?

And the cardinal secretary of state basically said, no, I'm not insisting on any protest.

Amna Nawaz:

Dave, I'm curious.

I know, previously, the Vatican has come forward when previous allegations were made similar to this about Pope Pius XII. Have they responded in any way to your book or to the reporting that's in this book?

David Kertzer:

Well, unfortunately — I mean, other national Roman Catholic Churches, for example, in France and in Germany have come to terms with this history.

And part of the history is how it was that, in the middle of the 20th century, the — millions of Jews could be massacred, little children, old people, by people who thought of themselves as Christian, more or less half of them Roman Catholics, but also Protestants, of course.

And in other countries, in Germany and France, the clergy has come to terms or begun to come to terms with it. But the Vatican has not. The Vatican released a statement in, I think, 1998, we remember, in which they said the — their own demonization of the Jews had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust.

So this is — I think my book is probably not entirely appreciated by many in the Vatican, although there are those in the Vatican when I worked in the archives who had whispered to me they're happy that this is finally coming out. 

Amna Nawaz:

What about how we view, all these years later, the role of Pope Pius XII's leadership of the church, I mean, especially with his — there being a push for his sainthood, right? How should we look at that when you step back? 

David Kertzer:

Yes, so the popes have tried to beatify and canonize, make Pius XII a saint. He is a hero of the right wing or the conservatives in the church, who see the church as having gone wrong after his death with the Second Vatican Council under his successor, John XXIII.

I wish that — first of all, I wish they'd read this book, but I also wish they'd be willing to consider this history anew. But I'm afraid, for those — those really don't have an open mind, and it's unlikely that it will change their mind. So I think the drive to make a saint of Pius XII will continue. 

Amna Nawaz:

That is historian David Kertzer, author of the new book "The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler."

David Kertzer, thank you so much. 

David Kertzer:

Thank you.

Darwin, Wallace and class.

 Why Darwin Eclipsed Wallace: Darwin and the English Class System 

Neil Thomas 

The theory of natural selection was the co-discovery of two men, but by the mid 1860s one of its progenitors began to reject his own theory, scarcely more than a half decade after first announcing it to the world. Towards the end of his life Alfred Russel Wallace would resolve the conceptual confusion surrounding the curious “half-and-half” dualism which initially prompted him to claim that it was only mankind’s mental faculties which had been designed, natural selection having fashioned our bodies. That improbable thesis was later to be replaced by his contention that the totality of (wo)man — body and mind — had arisen from what today would be called intelligent design, and, moreover, that the same applied to the whole sentient universe. This was indeed a root-and-branch “apostasy” from his prior convictions.

Why have people not registered this rejection of the theory by its co-author more strongly? Why is it Charles Darwin’s view which has persisted while Wallace’s has been airbrushed out of history? Predictably, the quintessentially English subject of class has been invoked to answer this question. Sociologists of science often point to the fact that the progress of scientific ideas advances in part as a form of social process, and Darwin, unlike the impoverished and socially less well-placed Wallace, was fortunate to have an upper-middle-class support group to promulgate his ideas. 

How convincing is this thesis as an explanation for Darwin’s greater success? I have argued elsewhere that the major role in the acceptance of Darwinism depended not so much on social factors but on the truly seismic changes in attitudes to religion experienced by all classes of society by the middle of the 19th century. But this does not mean that social factors played no part at all. How might those factors be characterized?

With a Little Help from His Friends

There are indications that Darwin over time gained something of the de facto status of a cult leader (in an unexceptionably benign sense). There cannot be many natural scientists who have inspired a follower to write a fulsome, 50-page poem in their memory, but after Darwin’s death in 1882 this is precisely what occurred. A younger acolyte, the naturalist George Romanes (pictured above), venerated Darwin so greatly — “this side idolatry” seems the entirely appropriate phrase — that he chose this form of laudation for a commemorative poem titled with lapidary simplicity, “Charles Darwin: A Memorial Poem.”1 There is ample evidence in Darwin’s voluminous correspondence with both indigenous and overseas scholars —continued without interruption even when chronic illness kept him house-bound — and in the “pilgrimages” to Down House he inspired from his old boys’ network of former college friends and tutors, that he had an enviable gift for friendship, even to the point of being able to inspire forms of fraternal love.

Only on the assumption of such personal magnetism can we understand such things as his limitlessly supportive inner circle meeting regularly to discuss matters of personal and professional interest with him. The severe-looking photographs of the bearded patriarch that have come down to us clearly give few hints of the sheer charisma he must have projected to inspire such admiration and affection. Romanes’s poem, which set off the high honour already accorded to Darwin in his burial in the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey, near to Sir Isaac Newton, might have suggested to some an aura close to sanctity or at the very least a symbolic assumption into a form of scientific empyrean. 

The Darwin Circle: A Small World

To those acquainted with modern Britain, a place which frowns on nepotism and cronyism (at least officially), and which has opened itself up to meritocratic selection procedures and the importation of foreign talent, it is rather surprising that the same cast of characters keep popping up again and again in the drama of Darwin’s life.2 Clergyman and botanist Professor John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861)3 would regularly hold soirées at his home, attended by Darwin and Darwin’s Cambridge tutors, William Whewell and Adam Sedgwick, the latter having been Darwin’s companion on a number of geological field trips when Darwin was younger and in better health. Henslow’s daughter was later to marry one of Darwin’s closest friends, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. It was Henslow who recommended Darwin for the Beagle expedition in the early 1830s and again Henslow who chaired the famous Oxford debate in 1860 where Bishop Wilberforce squared off against Darwin’s “bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley. Despite his reservations about Darwin’s ideas, Henslow’s avuncular relationship with Darwin bade him always do his best to protect Darwin from harsh criticism.4 The same was the case with Adam Sedgwick. Sedgwick disagreed with Darwin’s ideas in the Origin so radically that, far more in sorrow than in anger, he once described Darwin’s ideas in a confidential letter to palaeontologist Richard Owen as being at one and the same time saddening and risible. For him, his erstwhile protégé was “a teacher of error instead of the apostle of truth.”5 Notwithstanding these reservations, he remained on commendably friendly terms with Darwin for the remainder of his life.The recipient of this amount of indulgence from his friends clearly had every reason to feel secure in the knowledge that he commanded a supportive in-group whose loyalty he could depend on absolutely. So it was that in 1856, at a hush-hush meeting at Down House convened by Darwin, he took soundings with Hooker and Huxley as to how best to proceed with his heretofore secret ideas concerning evolution. Huxley, despite the fact that he had condemned ideas similar to those of Darwin when they had been presented in Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), and that he would never reconcile himself with Darwin’s special theory of natural selection, immediately volunteered to defend Darwin’s ideas, being more than willing to take Darwin’s corner against the high authority of Richard Owen. In the words of Iain McCalman, alluding to the fact that so many of Darwin’s intimates were part of an old sea-dog confraternity who had made voyages of scientific discovery of their own, Huxley had come aboard and “joined Darwin’s fleet.”6 Huxley might have been, in Peter Bowler’s phrase, a “pseudo-Darwinian” (that is, a believer in evolution but not natural selection), yet he would not hear a word said against Darwinism in any of its facets.There is no getting away from the socially parochial aspect of English life at this time. The same names recur in the Darwin story simply because debate about matters of high import at the time were debated and largely decided by an “upper crust” of ex “public”7 school boys and Oxbridge graduates. These persons would typically not even meet, let alone converse with members of “lower” social classes (except in trading transactions) because it was tacitly accepted that it was only the views of the social elite which counted.

Tomorrow, “Why Darwin Eclipsed Wallace: Darwin Comes to America. 

Ps. Ecclesiates9:16KJV"Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard."

Resistance is futile.

Ecclesiastes7:13KJV"Consider the work of God;

For who can make straight what He has made crooked?"

Here is the expositor's commentary on this passage: ); once let him see that the thing is crooked, and was meant to be crooked, and he will accept and adapt himself to it, instead of wearying himself in futile attempts to make, or to think, it straight.:  Now consider our Lord words at John17:9KJV"I pray for them: I pray NOT for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine." And also Jeremiah7:16KJV"Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will NOT hear thee."  It is waste of time and resources to attempt to save any nation or civilization rejected by The Lord JEHOVAH. Individuals who humble themselves and prove to be of a different spirit to their contemporaries may be shown mercy. But their is truly no straightening of what the Lord JEHOVAH has decreed crooked.

The prosecutor's fallacy: a brief history.

 Prosecutor's fallacy 

The prosecutor's fallacy is a fallacy of statistical reasoning involving a test for an occurrence, such as a DNA match. A positive result in the test may paradoxically be more likely to be an erroneous result than an actual occurrence, even if the test is very accurate. The fallacy is named because it is typically used by a prosecutor to exaggerate the probability of a criminal defendant's guilt. The fallacy can be used to support other claims as well – including the innocence of a defendant. 

A simple example illustrating the prosecutor's fallacy. (The hypothesis is the possibility that the defendant is guilty, whereas the evidence found refers to a positive test result, such as a DNA or blood type match.) Although the probability that evidence is found on the real culprit may be quite high (in this case, two-fifths, or 40%), the probability that a certain individual is guilty given that said evidence was found in him is unrelated to the former, and will often be much smaller (in this example, only two-eighths, or 25%). For instance, if a perpetrator were known to have the same blood type as a given defendant and 10% of the population to share that blood type, then one version of the prosecutor's fallacy would be to claim that, on that basis alone, the probability that the defendant is guilty is 90%. However, this conclusion is only close to correct if the defendant was selected as the main suspect based on robust evidence discovered prior to the blood test and unrelated to it (the blood match may then be an "unexpected coincidence"). Otherwise, the reasoning presented is flawed, as it overlooks the high prior probability (that is, prior to the blood test) that he is a random innocent person. Assume, for instance, that 1000 people live in the town where the murder occurred. This means that 100 people live there who have the perpetrator's blood type; therefore, the true probability that the defendant is guilty – based on the fact that his blood type matches that of the killer – is only 1%, far less than the 90% argued by the prosecutor. 

At its heart, therefore, the fallacy involves assuming that the prior probability of a random match is equal to the probability that the defendant is innocent. When using it, a prosecutor questioning an expert witness may ask: "The odds of finding this evidence on an innocent man are so small that the jury can safely disregard the possibility that this defendant is innocent, correct?"[1] The claim assumes that the probability that evidence is found on an innocent man is the same as the probability that a man is innocent given that evidence was found on him, which is not true. Whilst the former is usually small (approximately 10% in the previous example) due to good forensic evidence procedures, the latter (99% in that example) does not directly relate to it and will often be much higher, since, in fact, it depends on the likely quite high prior odds of the defendant being a random innocent person. 

Mathematically, the fallacy results from misunderstanding the concept of a conditional probability, which is defined as the probability that an event A occurs given that event B is known – or assumed – to have occurred, and it is written as P(A|B). The error is based on assuming that P(A|B) = P(B|A), where A represents the event of finding evidence on the defendant, and B the event that the defendant is innocent. But this equality is not true: in fact, although P(A|B) is usually very small, P(B|A) may still be much higher. 

 

And still yet more on why primeval tech is the bane of Darwinism.

 Yes, a “Host of Machines” Are at Work in the Cell 

David Coppedge 

Much as we love the old standbys (the flagellum, cilium, ATP synthase, etc.), we should never assume that the case for intelligent design is restricted to those iconic favorites. In 2002, Jed Macosko claimed in Unlocking the Mystery of Life that there are “a host of machines” at work in the cell — as many as there are functions that the body has to perform. Each machine is a marvel of engineering and precision. Let’s visit a few more of them.Another Topoisomerase

Discovery Institute’s recent animation of a Type 2 topoisomerase dazzled us with its ability to accurately cut DNA and stitch it back together to fix twisted loops that could send a genome into a tailspin. The family of topoisomerase machines, though, includes six types just as amazing. Topoisomerase 3β (abbreviated TOP3B) received an ovation this month from Yang et al. in Nature Communications. This one “regulates R-loop dynamics and mRNA translation, which are critical for genome stability, neurodevelopment and normal aging.” TOP3B is a Type 1 topoisomerase that repairs one strand of DNA (see below for a simple video demonstration). The details are more complex than shown, as this excerpt from the paper demonstrates:

As a Type IA topoisomerase, TOP3B acts by general acid-base catalysis to break and rejoin single-stranded DNA. Passage of a second DNA strand through the transient break permits dissipation of hypernegative DNA supercoiling and catenation/knotting. Additionally, hsTOP3B was recently demonstrated as the human RNA topoisomerase, required for normal neurodevelopment and proposed to be a potential anti-viral target upon RNA virus infection. Here we elucidate the biochemical mechanisms of human TOP3B. We delineate the roles of divalent metal ions, and of a conserved Lysine residue (K10) in the differential catalysis of DNA and RNA. We also demonstrate that three regulatory factors fine-tune the catalytic performance of TOP3B: the TOP3B C-terminal tail, its protein partner TDRD3, and the sequence of its DNA/RNA substrates.One other surprise is worth noting: the need for metal ions to cut the nucleic acids: “addition of Mg2+ and to a greater extent Mn2+ stimulated DNA binding and cleavage by TOP3B.” Is it fair to say that this machine has metal cutting blades?

Another Dart Gun 

We’ve learned about the Type 3 Secretion System and the Type 4 Secretion System in bacteria that shoot molecules outside their membranes, but there’s another we haven’t considered for a while: Type 6. An Evolution News article in 2015 discussed its firing mechanism. Now, Lin Lin and colleagues at the University of Basel, Switzerland, have published an open-access paper in the EMBO Journal describing T6SS assembly. The machine looks like a cannon or bazooka in the figures. Remarkably, this “large nanomachine that can deliver toxins directly across membranes of proximal target cells” appears to assemble rapidly on contact when the bacterium encounters a rival in “interbacterial competition.”We identified a class of diverse, previously uncharacterized, periplasmic proteins required for this dynamic localization of T6SS to cell–cell contact (TslA). This precise localization is also dependent on the outer membrane porin OmpA. Our analysis links transmembrane communication to accurate timing and localization of T6SS assembly as well as uncovers a pathway allowing bacterial cells to respond to cell–cell contact during interbacterial competition.

This implies that the components are stored locally throughout the inner membrane to avoid the cost of maintaining an arsenal all over the cell. It also implies contact sensors to activate the assembly — which the authors found.In this work, we reveal a mechanism of localization of a complex nanomachine in response to contact with another cell. Such precise positioning likely requires temporal and spatial coordination of many regulatory proteins at the membrane. Since many T6SS accessory proteins remain uncharacterized, we propose that some of these proteins might be required for spatiotemporal regulation of T6SS assembly. We expect that additional mechanisms of dynamic localization of T6SS will be identified in more bacteria and shown to play an important role in their pathogenesis or ecology.

The authors use strategic mission terms like “attack” in their belief that the T6SS “likely evolved to allow efficient killing of target cells.” But we shouldn’t take the warfare motif too seriously. They’re just bacteria. Maybe the colony is programmed to regulate its surroundings this way. They expect that higher resolution imaging will “unravel additional intricate mechanisms of T6SS targeting.”Nitrogenase Black Box

One of the most important enzymes in all nature, nitrogenase has defied analysis. This multi-part machine with metals in its core is the only enzyme that can split the tough triple bonds of atmospheric nitrogen. The enzyme is only found in bacteria that form symbiotic relationships with the roots of some plants. Biophysicists have tried for years to open the black box of nitrogenase, but its conformational changes are fleeting and difficult to capture. 

Reduced forms of nitrogen are essential for the biosynthesis of amino acids and nucleic acids as well as the production of fertilizers and many commodity chemicals. As the only enzyme capable of nitrogen fixation, nitrogenase catalyzes the eight-electron reduction of atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and protons (H+) into ammonia(NH3) and hydrogen (H2) (Fig. 1A). Nitrogenase is a two-component enzyme, which, in its most common form, consists of the iron protein FeP (a γ2 homodimer) and the molybdenum-iron protein MoFeP (an α2β2 heterotetramer) (Fig. 1B) (4, 5). Nitrogenase is distinct from most redox enzymes in its requirement for adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis to enable the successive transfer of electrons and protons for substrate reduction. 

As stated, this machine can precisely break and re-join single strands of DNA to untie knots. Like its Type 2 counterpart that can cut and splice two strands at a time, TOP3B works in a “three-step strategy — DNA cleavage, strand passage, DNA rejoining.” It requires three fine-tuned regulatory cofactors to work. And it is required for normal neurodevelopment. Hannah L. Rutledge at UC San Diego (Science) used cryo-electron microscopy and abundant ATP to capture a few more frames in the “movie” of this remarkable and unique machine. Based on the states they were able to capture, they think they see how the game is being played:

Given the asymmetry between the FeMoco’s in the two αβ halves, it is tempting to propose a “ping-pong”–type mechanism in which the cofactors proceed through each of the eight catalytic steps in an alternating fashion. This scenario would assign a dual role to FeP: (i) to deliver an electron to one αβ subunit of MoFeP and (ii) to suppress FeP binding to the opposite αβ subunit while priming it for catalytic transformations through long-distance activation of electron, H+, and/or substrate access pathways to the distal FeMoco. Establishing whether such a mechanism is operative will require future studies, but our current work illustrates that it is possible to characterize nitrogenase under turnover conditions by cryo-EM at near-atomic resolution, representing a critical step toward understanding the mechanism of this enigmatic enzyme in full structural detail.

When that day comes, it could revolutionize agriculture. An article from Tsinghua University Press (Phys.org) says that “major breakthroughs are still badly needed” to replace the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process which “is disrupting the planet’s nitrogen cycle, warming the globe, and potentially risking the health of millions.” Imitating the way cells do it might allow scientists to fix nitrogen at ambient temperatures. Nitrogenase is a molecular machine to watch! 

Rubisco Geometry

Another vital enzyme for the biosphere is Rubisco, which fixes carbon for conversion to sugars. Emily Reeves wrote about how it works last year, so readers are referred to that article for background. A new open-access paper in Nature Communications by Lauren Ann Metskas et al. adds some interesting details about its geometry: it forms a lattice inside tiny geometric domes. 

This arrangement preserves freedom of motion and accessibility around the Rubisco active site and the binding sites for two other carboxysome proteins, CsoSCA (a carbonic anhydrase) and the disordered CsoS2, even at Rubisco concentrations exceeding 800 μM. This characterization of Rubisco cargo inside the α-carboxysome provides insight into the balance between order and disorder in microcompartment organization.The research team points out that many prokaryotes segregate their machines into microcompartments like this, contrary to earlier assumptions that the enzymes just float around in the interior. Like the cell’s outer membrane, a proteinaceous shell “selectively restricts passage of key intermediates and improves on-target catalysis.” 

Interest in “microcompartment bioengineering” has grown in recent years, the authors say. The paper shows electron micrographs of some of these remarkable geometric compartments with the Rubisco enzymes neatly packed inside but “surprisingly” not in contact with the shell. “The six-fold lattice may therefore be a packing mechanism to preserve function at concentrations that could otherwise crystallize or sterically impede function.” That makes design sense.

Microcompartment bioengineering is a growing field, and this polymerization-based mechanism for efficient, functional, and controlled packing of enzymes may be useful for future discovery and designs in both CBs [carboxysomes] and other microcompartments.Once again, observation and expectation of design from an engineering perspective is proving fruitful in opening the black boxes of the cell and peering at the watch-like moving parts inside. The future looks bright for nanobiotechnology, and with it, increases in global human flourishing. Intelligent design is proving to be “useful for future discovery and designs.” 

Closer to a theory of devolution

 Michael Behe: Evolution, Devolution, Design 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSc

A new ID the Future episode features three recent Evolution News essays by Lehigh University biology professor and Darwin Devolves author Michael Behe, as read by host Andrew McDiarmid. In the first, nothing shows the feebleness of Darwinism quite so much as breathless stories about new results that turn out to be much ado about nothing. In this case, it’s some recent speculation about the rise of “lactase persistence” in many human adults. Then it’s onto malaria, much beloved of evolutionists, not for its lethality but as a demonstration of evolution in action. But Behe dissects the latest news story on the topic to show that the touted malaria evolution is, once again, malaria gnawing off the proverbial leg to achieve a niche advantage — that is, mere devolution. It’s akin, Behe says, to the rise of tuskless elephants in Africa, where having the devolutionary mutation that leaves an elephant tuskless renders the creature of no interest to elephant-slaying ivory poachers, thereby improving its chances of survival. In the third essay Behe makes a case for his favorite way of concisely describing what we detect when we detect intelligent design in biology.Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Knowing the truth v. Possessing the truth /being possessed by the truth.

 Luke8:4-8NIV"4While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: 5“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. 6Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

When he said this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” 

Luke8:11-15NIV"11“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. 12Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. 13Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. 14The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 15But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop."

The call of Christ is a call to arms.

Matthew 10:34NIV"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

But having made common cause with JEHOVAH and his Son how does one avoid becoming numbered among the casualties on this battlefield. Obviously knowing the truth or knowing JEHOVAH is not enough.

James2:19NIV"You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

So what then?

James4:8NIV"Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." 

The trouble is ,that like every other truly worthwhile achievement this kind of transformative intimacy with the Lord JEHOVAH requires disciplined effort. Note also that an outward change is not the primary objective ,for this change must affect the examiner of hearts himself.

1Thessalonians2:4NIV"On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts."

We leave off the transactional way of thinking that marked our initial relationship with JEHOVAH and with his unfailing help adopt a more devotional mindset. Our Lord has shown us the way to wage victorious spiritual warfare.

John16:33NIV"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”" his intimate relationship with his God JEHOVAH is our model.

The Lord JEHOVAH and numbers.

 Deuteronomy7:7NIV"The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples."

Matthew22:14NIV"For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Luke6:26NIV"Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets."

Matthew7:14NIV"But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Matthew7:21-23NIV"“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

Matthew5-11,12NIV"“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Judges7:2NIV"2The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ "

The Lord JEHOVAH is a majority all by himself thus unsurprisingly his view of numbers is very different from that of mere men.

The Lord JEHOVAH vs. all flags.

Only when mankind is governed by a ruler who needs nothing from it (including it's consent) will there be liberty and justice for all.

 1JEHOVAH hath reigned, The earth is joyful, many isles rejoice.

2Cloud and darkness [are] round about Him, Righteousness and judgment the basis of His throne.

Charles Darwin and the tower of Babel.

 Language: Darwin’s Eternal Mystery

Neil Thomas. 

In a previous contribution I expressed regret that the modern age did not have an outstanding satirist willing to take on overblown scientific pretensions of the stature of the early 19th-century satirical novelist Thomas Love Peacock. I recalled the magnificent quatrain he chose as the preface for his first novel, Headlong Hall (1816), which, although it was meant to lampoon ideas like phrenology belonging to his own age, would seem to fit the post-Darwinian era all too well: 

All philosophers, who find

Some favourite system to their mind

In every point to make it fit,

Will force all nature to submit.1

One can only speculate what Peacock (1785-1866) in his prime might have made of Darwin. His second novel, Melincourt (1817), featured an ape standing for Parliament under the name of Sir Oran Haut-ton, a spoof on the 18th-century speculation of the Scottish jurist Lord Monboddo (James Burnet) on the simian ancestry of mankind. But since the eccentric Monboddo’s ideas were commonly taken to be an elaborate joke born of intellectual diablerie, Peacock could not advance far beyond the slapstick element of his conceit to explore the deeper, metaphysical implications of Monboddo’s idea.

Enter Tom Wolfe

When I lamented the absence of such a writer as Peacock in the 21st century it must have temporarily slipped my mind that we do have a writer of a standing fully equal to that of Peacock in the shape of Bonfire of the Vanities author Tom Wolfe. In Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech (2016),2 published just two years before the author’s death, Wolfe took time out from his creative writing to focus on the everlasting crux of the origin of the human speech facility. It is a mystery which has puzzled humanity at least since the time of Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century and, as Wolfe points out with some humorous relish,3 the roots of the language facility remain as unknown now as they did when Herder wrote his Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache (On the Origin of Language) in 1772.

Neither Herder nor later Darwin, as Wolfe points out, could find one shred of evidence that human speech had evolved from animals. This was particularly galling to Darwin since his whole life was essentially a quest for the secrets of creation or, as Wolfe phrases it in more mordant tones, “Darwin had fallen, without realizing it, into the trap of cosmogonism, the compulsion to find the ever-elusive Theory of Everything, an idea or narrative that reveals everything in the world to be part of a single and suddenly clear pattern.” (p. 20)

Western and Native American Cosmogonies

In reviewing that fruitless human quest for explanations about origins, Wolfe appends an overview of native American cosmogonies, finding the Apache version of the creation of the whole firmament by a scorpion to be but a more colorful and imaginative version of “the currently solemnly accepted — i.e., ‘scientific’ — Big Bang theory, which with a straight face tells us how something, i.e. the whole world, was created out of nothing.” (p. 22)

Wolfe surely has a point. The current understanding of the universe’s origin — subject of course to no other, more convincing theory being advanced in my or your lifetime — is that about 15 billion years ago all mass and energy were compacted together but (for reasons equally unknown and doubtless forever unknowable) simply proceeded to inflate. Cosmologists, who are remarkably honest about their inability to illuminate the sheer unintelligibility of the cosmos (sometimes, it strikes me, even taking a perverse, mock- masochistic delight in the way it seems to cast out curve-balls in the way of human understanding4), concede that this originary event occurred “just like that” ­— without discernible rhyme or reason (that we or they can know of).

It can scarcely be denied that the Big Bang theory, despite its widespread acceptance by the scientific community and by the public at large (albeit passively), remains irredeemably problematic in logical terms: how can something come from nothing? It seems that the primal ka-boom lies quite beyond our conceptual bounds. Or, with reference to the older steady-state theory, how could something always have been there? The human mind at this point inevitably experiences what Chomsky once called “cognitive closure” — complete bafflement. We are left in the unenviable position of neither alternative making sense to us, both Big Bang and Steady State paradigms being equally overweighted by logic-defying anomalies.

The Big Bang theory is perhaps the more problematic of the two. To accept the proposition that an unregulated, chance explosion/expansion produced our terrestrial order is rather like buying into that old canard that the multiple volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary could have been produced by an explosion in an ink shop. If on the other hand the explosion had been very precisely calibrated (somehow, by a higher power unknown) in order to deliberately retrieve order from seeming chaos, then that premeditated deliberation would in good logic demand a designing originator, and this would make the Big Bang a story of creation in the fullest sense.5 That conclusion of course would tip us into the theological realm of discourse in quest of a logical explanation to cover the totality of known facts. For the idea of the whole universe-in-embryo compressed into the space of a single subatomic particle would count in most people’s book as a full-on miracle, barely if at all distinguishable from the Bible’s creation ex nihilo, and it is little wonder that advances in modern science have sometimes been read as confirmation of the Biblical account contained in Genesis.6 They have at the very least done nothing to disprove the Biblical narrative.

Science and Educated Guesswork

What is striking about Wolfe’s analysis is the intellectual equivalence he perceives between such narratives as George Lemaître’s Big Bang, Darwin’s “abiogenetic” theory of life emerging from chemical reactions in a small warm pond, and what he sees as broadly corresponding native American versions. All such theories are “educated guesses,” with minor differences to be explained by the shibboleths of modern science vis-à-vis the more uninhibited speculations of native peoples. So for instance “in the Navajo cosmogony the agent of change was alive. It was the Locust. In Darwin’s cosmogony it had to be scientifically inanimate [to escape charges of animism]. Locust was renamed Evolution…. Like every other cosmogony, Darwin’s was a serious and sincere story meant to satisfy man’s endless curiosity about where he came from and how he came to be so different from the animals around him. But it was still a story. It was not evidence. In short, it was sincere, but sheer, literature.” (p. 27)

“Literature” then, not science, Wolfe concludes — all the more so since evolutionary theory flunks all five commonly acknowledged tests for a valid scientific hypothesis:

Observability

Ability to be replicated

Capacity for Popperian falsification

Can scientists make predictions from it?

Does it illuminate other puzzling areas of science?

Wolfe remarks apropos of those five criteria: “In the case of Evolution… well…no…no…no…no… and no. In other words, there was no scientific way to test it.” (p. 27)

Ape and (Wo)man

In fact, Wolfe suggests with devastating bathos that what moved Darwin to postulate ape ancestry for humankind had nothing to do with science, but rather his visit to London Zoo in 1838 and his observations there of the facial and postural movements of the female orangutan, “Jenny,” sometimes sentimentally decked out in women’s clothing by her keepers.  Such were the rather skewed perceptions which informed Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) and which, Wolfe reasons, will have lain behind the accumulated excesses and improbabilities of that much later, Darwin-inspired discipline which took off in the 1970s, calling itself first sociobiology before tactically rebranding itself evolutionary psychology.7

With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the morphological link between ape and (wo)man becomes on closer inspection much less straightforward than it might at first appear, as is shown pre-eminently in the different language competences of apes and humans. To establish a convincing evolution of ape to human it would be necessary to establish that simians could over time have increased their communicative vocabularies so as to transform inarticulate emotional cries into specific vocal symbols. But this in turn brings up the closely related problem of how to explain the rapid mentalprocessing on which articulate speech depends. Without the simultaneous co-adaptation of the simian brain, how could the facility of speech, which depends on the interdependent agency of the brain in tandem with the specialised organs of vocal articulation, have developed by the essentially aleatory processes of natural selection? In order to prove that connection, one would have to be able to point to a precise physiological/neurological pathway of development, which nobody has yet been able to establish.8

Driving Darwin Crazy

How humankind gained its monopoly on language was a puzzle apt to drive Darwin crazy, writes Wolfe, and his co-discover Alfred Russel Wallace to one of the biggest U-turns in recorded history when he came to renounce his own theory of natural selection tout court.  By contrast, notes Wolfe, “a cosmogonist like Darwin couldn’t let it go at that. Speech had to have some animal genealogy…had to fit into his Theory of Everything.” Hence there emerged, concludes Wolfe, “Darwin’s real tour de force of literary imagination, the Descent of Man.” (p. 65) Here he had the licence to develop his Kipling-esque just-so stories (this allegation was made by the late Stephen Jay Gould, to the predictable displeasure of many colleagues). Darwin’s imaginative forays certainly ran counter to the more sober professional counsels of the day. The Philological Society of London in 1872 imposed a form of moratorium on research into language’s origin in 1872 and had been preceded by the Linguistic Society of Paris which actually banned speculation on this subject in 1866.

Bringing the story up to date, Wolfe points out that Noam Chomsky, who for decades thought that he had cracked the language problem by his postulation of a language “organ” situated in the brain, finally threw in the towel and admitted defeat. And as Wolfe somewhat impishly points out, if Chomsky, who had never accepted the development of language by successive evolutionary adaptations, and was now recanting his “organ” theory, then this inevitably had large implications: “Chomsky made it clear he was elevating linguistics to the altitude of Plato’s transcendent eternal universals… He was relocating the field [of inquiry] to Olympus.” (p. 89)

This meant in plain English that he was all but conceding language might have been “God-given” which, in Richard Lewontin’s old phrase, could be construed as the heresy of “allowing a divine foot in the door.”

The Zero-Sum Game

As Wolfe documents, a whole host of “certified geniuses” have failed to crack the human language problem, and this must count as a blow to Darwinian ideas of evolution. For Darwin’s theory is essentially a zero-sum game — if it fails to explain one of its aspects, it flunks the lot. For instance, if you do not prove that life originated by the chemical fluke of abiogenesis, then you cannot coherently argue that “natural selection” went to work on a “creation,” which you have not even proved to have occurred in the way you describe. The well-known Miller-Urey experiment in 1953, designed to spark life in a test tube, was not ultimately successful. Its implicit promise was to be able to extend Darwin’s timeline back to the pre-organic formation of the first cell of life, and so establish the fundamental point of departure for the mechanism of natural selection to go to work on. This would also of course have delivered a stunning victory for the materialist position. In the event, though, it succeeded only in dealing a disabling body blow to materialist notions by its failure to discredit the theistic position.

Without a traceable abiogenetic moment, Darwin’s entire theory of evolution via natural selection fails: as matters stand, the bare emergence of living cells remains an unsolved mystery, let alone the claimed corollary of that mysterious and suspiciously unexplained cellular “complexification” said to follow from it and to have occasioned in future time the fabled development from microbes to (wo)man. In fact, the most significant finding of Miller and Urey appears to have been a presumptive indication of a supra-natural etiology for the cellular system — an inference to theistic creation or theistic evolution which was of course the very obverse of the result both scientists were seeking. 

Hence the attempt to discuss the subject of how the process of selection by Nature began to operate whilst not even broaching the question of how Nature itself arose in the first place must count as a major evasion and as a failure of Darwinian theory as a whole. Which is why Wolfe concludes his study with remarks which call into question the whole neo-Darwinian narrative: “To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrara marble evolved into Michelangelo’s David.” (p. 169) We should be grateful to Wolfe for his single foray into the area of evolutionary speculation, deserving, I would add, of the kind of readership numbers which he was able to command for his creative works.

References

The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock, edited by J. B. Priestley (London: Pan, 1967), p. xvix.

Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016).

The 20th century’s premier linguist, Noam Chomsky, never backed the idea of language being an evolutionary “adaptation” and latterly even forsook his own theory of there being a language “organ” in the brain. In later years Chomsky retreated to a position of stoic bafflement in the face of the inexplicable. See Wolfe, pp. 3-6. 

I am thinking for instance of the television cosmologist Hakeem Oluseyi (distinguished research professor at the Florida Institute of Technology) whose TV persona contrives not to take either himself or the theories of sundry colleagues overly seriously.

And of course it does come perilously close to the Genesis account, because according to the originating father of the Big Bang theory, the Catholic priest Georges Lemaître, the present exponential expansion of the universe could, by our reversing the process, be traced all the way back to the putative cosmic microdot, the primeval atom. 

See Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999), pp. 253-257.

Wolfe refers to Darwin’s own words in the peroration to his Origin of Species as a kind of “smoking gun” linking Darwin with sociobiology: “In the distant future I  see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power of gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” (p. 44)

The explanation Darwin advanced in The Descent of Man for his alleged perfectly orchestrated co-adaptation was entirely speculative, as for instance when he muses on where we humans might have got our superior IQ and articulacy from: “The mental powers of some earlier progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use; but we may confidently believe  that the continued use and advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind itself, by enabling and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought.”

NEIL THOMAS

Neil Thomas is a Reader Emeritus in the University of Durham, England and a longtime member of the British Rationalist Association. He studied Classical Studies and European Languages at the universities of Oxford, Munich and Cardiff before taking up his post in the German section of the School of European Languages and Literatures at Durham University in 1976. There his teaching involved a broad spectrum of specialisms including Germanic philology, medieval literature, the literature and philosophy of the Enlightenment and modern German history and literature. He also taught modules on the propagandist use of the German language used both by the Nazis and by the functionaries of the old German Democratic Republic. He published over 40 articles in a number of refereed journals and a half dozen single-authored books, the last of which were Reading the Nibelungenlied (1995), Diu Crone and the Medieval Arthurian Cycle (2002) and Wirnt von Gravenberg's 'Wigalois'. Intertextuality and Interpretation (2005). He also edited a number of volumes including Myth and its Legacy in European Literature (1996) and German Studies at the Millennium (1999). He was the British Brach President of the International Arthurian Society (2002-5) and remains a member of a number of learned societies.