And yet even more on why the OOL Remains the keystone of the design argument.

 All Living Systems Must Process Energy, Store and Utilize Information, and Replicate 

Walter Bradley

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin on the question, “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” This is the second entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the recent book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Find the full series so far here.  

Aristotle posited the idea of spontaneous generation of life from nonliving matter, or abiogenesis, that held sway for two millennia. But in 1859, Louis Pasteur showed persuasively — with a clever set of experiments — that what appeared to be life springing forth from nonliving matter was actually life emerging from exceedingly small living organisms, not lifeless matter. Pasteur’s experiments were widely seen as having settled the question of whether life could only come from preexisting living matter, a process called biogenesis. In 1864, Pasteur triumphantly predicted to the science faculty at the Sorbonne in Paris, “Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.”1 Pasteur’s view remained dominant for almost a century. 

In 1924, after sixty years of virtual silence since Pasteur’s experiments, the Russian biochemist Alexander Ivanovich Oparin proposed that the complex molecular arrangements and associated functions of living systems evolved from simpler molecules that preexisted on the lifeless, primitive Earth. With this bold speculation, a recognizably modern hypothesis of how life might have arisen, Oparin reopened the discussion of abiogenesis.2 

A Rationalist Biologist 

In 1929, the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane published a paper in the Rationalist Annual speculating on what initial conditions might be most favorable for a naturalistic origin of life.3 He imagined an early Earth atmosphere rich in gases that was acted upon by lightning that caused chemical reactions to produce various building blocks for life — such as sugars and simple amino acids. In Haldane’s view, these molecules might become sufficiently concentrated in oceans, or more likely in lakes and ponds, such that they could chemically react to form long polymer chains that today we know are the key components in living cells (i.e., protein, DNA, and RNA).4 In 1944, the noted quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger observed that living systems are characterized by highly ordered, aperiodic structures that survive by continually utilizing (chemical or radiant) energy from their surroundings.5 In 1952, Harold C. Urey proposed that the Earth’s early atmosphere was rich in hydrogen, ammonia, and methane—chemicals that both provided the elemental building blocks and the energy to facilitate the chemical reactions necessary to make primary biopolymers, the chemical building blocks of life.6 

Many Additional Steps 

The review above outlines early theories about generating the building blocks of life on Earth. But many additional steps would be needed for the origin of life to occur, which are sketched in the figure below.7 In our next post in this series, these various steps in a hypothetical origin-of-life scenario will be reviewed so that you can judge for yourself whether current theories are plausible. 

 

Figure: Major steps involved in the origin of life. All prebiotic evolutionary scenarios contain many hypothetical steps. Credit: Casey Luskin, modified with permission after Committee for Integrity in Science Education, Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy: A View from the American Scientific Affiliation (Ipswich, MA: American Scientific Affiliation, 1986), 31.  

 First, though, it is vital to define the problem. As noted already, all living systems (1) process energy, (2) store information, and (3) replicate. In nature, these processes are performed primarily by molecules from three families of large biopolymers: proteins, DNA, and RNA. The mystery of how life began is essentially the mystery of how these three types of biopolymers formed and congregated within a cell with a barrier made of lipids as a self-replicating system. 

Notes 

1)R. L. Devonshire, The Life of Pasteur, translated R. Vallery-Radot (New York: Doubleday, 1920), 109.

2)Alexander I. Oparin, Proiskhozhdenie Zhizni (Moscow, Russia: Izd. Moskovski Rabochii, 1924), translated as Origin of Life by S. Morgulis (New York: Macmillan, 1938).

3)J. B. S. Haldane, “Origin of Life,” Rationalist Annual 148 (1929), 3-10. For a discussion of Haldane’s views, see Stéphane Tirard, “J.B.S. Haldane and the origin of life,” Journal of Genetics 96 (November 2017), 735-739.

4)Y. D. Bernal, “The Physical Basis of Life,” paper presented before British Physical Society in 1949, found in The Physical Basis of Life (London, UK: Routledge, 1951).

5)Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1944).

6)Harold C. Urey, The Planets: Their Origin and Development (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952).

And yet more on why the OOL remains the keystone of the design argument.

Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means? 

Walter Bradley

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin on the question, “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” This is the first entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the recent book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Find the full series so far here.

Major scientific magazines and journals often feature articles on the “Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Science”1 — and the origin of life is almost always on that list, sometimes as the number one mystery.2 In this and coming posts we will explore key challenges to a natural, chemical origin of life. We’ll examine the formation of the essential functional polymers of life — proteins, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and RNA (ribonucleic acid). How might these extraordinarily complex molecules have formed in oceans, lakes, or ponds from simple, naturally occurring molecular building blocks like sugars and amino acids? What is life? How does it operate? Could life originate by strictly natural means? 

Three Scientific Discoveries 

Darwin’s theory of evolution and the development of the second law of thermodynamics by Boltzmann and Gibbs are two of the three major scientific discoveries of the 19th century. Maxwell’s field equations for electricity and magnetism are the third. The second law of thermodynamics has had a unifying effect in the physical sciences much like the theory of evolution has had in the life sciences. What is intriguing is that the predictions of one seem to contradict the predictions of the other. The grand story of evolution teaches that living systems have generally moved from simpler to more complex over time.3 The second law of thermodynamics teaches just the opposite, a progression from order to disorder, from complexity to simplicity in the physical universe. Your garden and your house, left to themselves, go from order to disorder. But you can restore the order if you do the necessary work. In the winter, when it is cold, the interior of your house will gradually drop in temperature toward the outside temperature. But a gas heater can reverse this process by converting the chemical energy in natural gas into thermal energy in the house.  

True Everywhere in Life 

This simple analogy illustrates what is true of all living systems: they can only live by having access to energy and a means of converting this energy into the alternative forms of energy or work required to oppose the pull toward thermodynamic equilibrium, from complexity to simplicity. Living systems are much more complex than nonliving systems. Like a lawnmower with gasoline as a source of energy and an engine to convert that energy into movement of a blade to cut the grass, living systems must have access to sources of energy and systems to convert the energy into the needs of plants and animals. Nonliving objects in nature exist without any complex functional systems or any energy flow requirements. They are generally made of simple crystalline or amorphous materials. A picture of my (Walter Bradley’s) backyard (at the top of this article) shows a region in the foreground that is completely shaded by a large oak tree; it receives no sunlight, and consequently, has no grass. Adjacent to this shadowy, bare section is a region where sunlight is present about 50 percent of the daytime and consequently has a beautiful, grassy cover. The second law of thermodynamics is a law of nature (like gravity, everyone is subject to it). Living plants and animals can survive only with energy flowing through their systems. Nonliving objects such as mountains, rocks, sand, rivers, and soil have no need for energy flow, nor do they have the complexity to utilize energy toward some goal.  

To Utilize and Store Energy 

To summarize, plants can utilize solar energy to levitate above thermodynamic equilibrium. Nonliving objects such as mountains, oceans, rocks, sand, and soil have no need for such complexity; they do not store chemical energy like plants do; nor can they process solar or other forms of energy. Living matter is much more complex (e.g., RNA, DNA, protein, etc.), needing as it does to be able to utilize and store available energy from the sun or from the consumption of plants and animals.  

Notes 

1)See for example Ronak Gupta, “The 7 biggest unsolved mysteries in science,” Digit (May 26, 2015), https://www.digit.in/features/general/7-greatest-unsolved-problems-in-science-26132.html (accessed November 18, 2020).

2)See for example Philip Ball, “10 Unsolved Mysteries in Chemistry,” Scientific American (October 2011), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/10-unsolved-mysteries/ (accessed November 18, 2020).

3)Technically the official line from neo-Darwinian evolutionists is that evolution knows nothing of “progress” and does not necessarily move from “simple to more complex.” Nonetheless, it is also true that the grand arc of the evolutionary story moves from simpler organisms toward more complex ones. In this evolutionary story, biological and organic systems began with a single self-replicating molecule and ended up at us. Evolutionary theorists sometimes try to trivialize this clear progression by calling it “bouncing off the lower wall of complexity,” but it cannot be denied that their story entails a march towards greater complexity. See for example Stephen Jay Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York: Three Rivers, 1996). 

 

Bomb thrower Michael Behe holds court.

Behe Answers Best Objections to Irreducible Complexity 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

 

On a new episode of ID the Future Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe addresses what Philosophy for the People host Pat Flynn considers some of the best objections to Behe’s central intelligent design argument. As far back as the 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box, Behe has argued that certain features in biology are irreducibly complex. That is, they require numerous essential parts, each carefully fitted to its task and integrated with the other parts, in order for the molecular machine or system to function at all. Two examples are the bacterial flagellum motor and the blood clotting cascade. Such systems are, in Behe’s words, irreducibly complex and could not have arisen through any blind and gradual evolution process. The better explanation for their origin: intelligent design. Since Darwin’s Black Box became a bestseller a generation ago, Behe has attracted opponents in places high and low. Following the philosopher Alvin Plantinga, Flynn says that some of the attacks on Behe have been hysterical, but some have been more thoughtful. Flynn focuses the discussion on what he regards as some of the more substantive and interesting objections, beginning with one from a noted philosopher who is partly sympathetic to Behe’s work, Plantinga himself. Behe gamely responds. Download the podcast or listen to it here. 

  To see Behe’s responses to common and key objections collected in a single book book, get your copy of his newest book, A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics. 

A steal of a deal?

 Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel Sells “Something from Nothing”: I’m Not Buying 

Rob Sheldon 

Ethan Siegel explains how “70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing”:

Whoever said, “You can’t get something from nothing” must never have learned quantum physics. As long as you have empty space — the ultimate in physical nothingness — simply manipulating it in the right way will inevitably cause something to emerge. Collide two particles in the abyss of empty space, and sometimes additional particle-antiparticle pairs emerge. Take a meson and try to rip the quark away from the antiquark, and a new set of particle-antiparticle pairs will get pulled out of the empty space between them. And in theory, a strong enough electromagnetic field can rip particles and antiparticles out of the vacuum itself, even without any initial particles or antiparticles at all.

Previously, it was thought that the highest particle energies of all would be needed to produce these effects: the kind only obtainable at high-energy particle physics experiments or in extreme astrophysical environments. But in early 2022, strong enough electric fields were created in a simple laboratory setup leveraging the unique properties of graphene, enabling the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs from nothing at all. The prediction that this should be possible is 70 years old: dating back to one of the founders of quantum field theory, Julian Schwinger. The Schwinger effect is now verified, and teaches us how the Universe truly makes something from nothing.

You can read the rest at Big Think. According to his bio, Siegel is a “science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges.” He has become quite adept at blogging on physics from the “establishment position.” Part of his appeal is always backing up the status quo, which in today’s world means the mainstream media, Nature editorials, and the like. And regarding the origin of the universe, the status quo position is “anything but God.” So naturally Ethan is going to offer the Lawrence Krauss gimmick of selling “a universe from nothing.” 

Changes to the Dictionary 

In order to push this, he has to make some pretty big changes to our normal dictionary definition of what “nothing” means, just as Krauss did and got ridiculed for it. The new item is graphene. Supposedly graphene is so marvelous that it makes particles out of electric fields. But need I point out that graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms? And the “holes” are actually displacements of carbon atoms? So we are making waves out of carbon atoms and calling this “something from nothing.” Really?

Here’s an example of that thinking we used to joke about. The joke is: Photons don’t exist. They are really just the absence of darkons. A flashlight is sucking up darkons, and that’s why you think it has a ray of light going out. Don’t believe me? Then test it out by cutting open a dead battery from the flashlight. Sure enough, it is black, just as you’d expect if it was full of darkons. Which is why it was dead of course.

That joke employs the same sort of logic that Ethan is using. 

Matter and Energy 

What about particle physics and mesons and all that? It is true that E = mc2, so we can make matter out of energy, and vice versa, energy from matter. We’ve done this ever since the uranium atom was split in 1939 by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, and the pieces weighed less than the uranium atom did. For the forces that hold the uranium atom together are pretty strong and therefore massive. But mind you, the fields are massive, and it is simply a trick of physics to approximate these forces and fields with subatomic particles. What you are doing is modifying potentials and calling these modifications “particles.” You aren’t making particles; you are manipulating fields.

Ethan is saying we can put those forces to work in a graphene sheet, whereas it’s a lot harder to work with uranium nuclei. True, but that is just saying, “If I make my sheet ring by hitting it with a hammer, I’m making phonons from nothing.” It isn’t nothing, it’s a sheet of graphene. If you want to call waves of atoms moving “particles,” then what you are really doing is making a press release out of nothing.  

The Casimir Force 

And now a comment about the Casimir force, also invoked by Ethan. It is the go-to field for wacky YouTube cranks. When you hold two conductors close to each other, they attract with a 1/R5 attraction that Hendrik Casimir attributed to “virtual particles” appearing out of the vacuum in between the plates. 

First of all, virtual particles are just a math trick to truncate an infinite sum which describes the field. So, they are virtual in more ways than one. Secondly, there’s a perfectly valid way to describe this attraction without invoking virtual particles: random motion of electrons in one plate set up transient dipole fields that induce transient dipole fields in the other plate, so the attraction is a dipole-dipole interaction maintained by thermal instabilities. 

I had a colleague who owned a business etching silicon into miniature optical components. An inventor came to him with a design for using the Casimir force to do work. They constructed an etched silicon perpetual motion machine based on this force. Guess what? It didn’t work. And he is a smart man. 

Another theoretical physicist also looked for virtual particles affecting starlight. Stars (and our sun) emit correlated light, but the kiloparsecs of space should produce enough collisional virtual particles to decohere it. So, he looked for decoherence. Nope, not there either. So no, I think that invoking the Casimir effect is proof that you don’t understand thermodynamics and have too great a confidence in the existence of “virtual particles.”

On the mortal soul and the doctrine of Christ ransom.

 Mark12:30 NIV"Love the Lord your God... with all your MIND...’" 

Christendom's falsehoods render the above cited scriptural admonition impossible. These not only promote wrong(i.e unscriptural) beliefs but they also impede clear thinking. Having recently addressed the brain eating absurdities of Christendom's doctrines of the trinity and the hypostatic union, I would now like to examine the way in which Christendom's reductionist spiritualism makes a mockery of the biblical doctrine of Christ substitutionary atonement, as it's name suggest the atonement provides a legal basis for our Justification by the Lord JEHOVAH by having the human son of (the) God endure the sentence of the eternal loss of his human life in our stead. The prophet Isaiah frames it this way.

Isaiah53:8KJV"8He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken." 

Note please that death was sufficient to fulfill the legal requirement for Christ substitutionary atonement, there was no need for any reductionist spirit soul to endure eternal conscious torment subsequent to it's separation from a reductionist material form, which of course would be absolutely distinct from the self which would have been charged with sin, if the penalty for sin is eternal conscious torment of an immortal spirit soul distinct from the body it merely inhabits ,then clearly Christ temporary separation from the physical form that merely housed his true self would have no redemptive value to mankind.

John 8:58 and the supremacy of the Father.

 Trinitarians and Modalists would often trot out John 8:58(in a matter of fact way) as evidence for their respective (and opposing) doctrines. By way of a reminder the KJV renders the verse: "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." Now mind you, a mere four verses earlier Jesus declares :"Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God:"  thus Trinitarians affected by logic ought to be wondering ,why if he and his Father are equal in every way, would being glorified by his Father make a difference and Modalists whose brains had not yet been devoured by the absurdity that is their dogma would wonder why the glory of their God seems to fluctuate from mode to mode. 

Nevertheless one might sincerely wonder what in John 8 verse 58 would qualify as evidence that the one God of the bible consists of three persons and that the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed one of these three persons. Well according to proponents this view the Greek 'ego eimi' rendered 'I am' in many translations is supposedly a title for almighty God. Now ,let us suppose that there is some substance to this claim (spoiler alert; there isn't) how does one sensibly extrapolate the necessary implication of a triune deity from this fact or for that matter that the Lord Jesus is a mode of the supreme  being? Jesus is not the first Messiah of almighty God to share titles held by God.

Exodus7:1KJV"1And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." 

Here Moses is called Theos/Elohim by the Lord JEHOVAH himself, as I have repeatedly demonstrated there is more trinitarian style evidence for Moses' Godhood than Jesus' Godhood. But from where did this notion that 'ego eimi' is a divine title originate. Supposedly from it's use at exodus3:14. The trouble is that if one examines the Septuagint version ,which would have been the text available to Jesus' contemporaries, one would note that 'ego eimi' is not used as a title. In fact in response to Moses' inquiry re:JEHOVAH'S  name God responds "ego eimi' ho on" i.e "I am the being" and at Exodus 3:14c is instructed to tell the Israelites that "ho on" i.e the being had sent him. Clearly none of this is a declaration of a name or title but a statement of intent re:the captive condition of his people. Despite appearances he was the real God not the idols of the Egyptians and he was about to demonstrate that beyond all reasonable doubt. 

As for the name by which he is to be invoked in prayer and otherwise :

Exodus3:15ASV"And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, JEHOVAH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. " The same name by which their ancestors invoked him. Even if one wanted to make reach that a divine title was being declared, " ho on" would be this title not "ego eimi" . Interestingly at revelation 1:4 and 1:8 the God and Father of Jesus is indeed referred to as " ho on" in the Greek text.

19th Century philosophy v. 21st century science?

 If Darwin Visited the 21st Century 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

On a classic ID the Future episode, hear another chapter from Nickell John Romjue’s fascinating book I, Charles Darwin. Follow along as Darwin, on his visit to the 21st century, learns about DNA and the other amazing discoveries of molecular biology that have occurred since he developed his theory, as well as discoveries in physics and cosmology, which have our time-traveling Darwin reconsidering some of his earlier conclusions. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Part 1 of the audio series is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. To learn more and to purchase the book, visit www.icharlesdarwin.com. 

Paganism hiding in plain sight.

 One thing that doctrines that are required by authority (other than logic and scripture that is) tend to have in common,is a slipperiness  re:definitions. For instance Trinitarians assure non trinitarian Christians that despite what our eyes and ears fairly scream to us, their doctrine does not represent a reversion to polytheism. 

Thus despite claiming that each of the three persons(/beings?) Constituting their compound deity is "fully God" the listener/reader would be mistaken should he then come to perfectly logical conclusion that the trinity is composed of three Gods. It all begs the question what does being fully God entail? Can one be fully God ,in the scriptural sense ,without being a God? For instance when the scriptures say : 

1Corinthians8:4NIV"So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is NO God but ONE.”" 

To whom (or what?) are they referring? Can anyone (or anything?) other than this one be sensibly said to be "fully God" ,is it not plain that the designation fully God is exclusive to this one ,denoting as it does, supremacy?

Against the 'hypostatic union'

While the doctrine of the trinity remains comfortably settled atop the heap of brain eating nonsense to which one must subscribe if one wishes to be considered Christian by Christendom's gate keepers, the dogma of the hypostatic union would be a close second ,and lest I be accused of misrepresentation etc., here is the definition of the doctrine from our friends at Zondervan in their own words: Hypostatic union is how Christians explain the relationship between Jesus’ divine nature, his human nature, and his being. It means that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Jesus has all of the characteristics that are true of a person, and all of the characteristics that are true of a divine being. Both natures fully exist in one person. 

It's interesting that Zondervan in their definition refer to Jesus as a divine being and speak as though his being a divine being and a person is some how remarkable or necessarily implies that his kenosis left him with a superhuman nature which was inscrutably included in his fully human nature. What about his God and Father is he not also a person does that mean that he also shared in the hypostatic union. And if Jesus' is a divine being in his own right. Does that mean that the trinity is in fact constituted of three Gods 

According to webster's a God is :

God : a being or object that is worshipped as having more than natural attributes and powers. 

Another definition of God is the supreme being. Is Jesus in fact the supreme being ,and if so how could it also be true of the supreme being that: Hebrews2:9KJV"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels..." only a creature could be lower than angels or be subject to death.

This is how we know that Christendom's doctrines are nonsense ,they require the ignoring of the obvious meaning of words. If one is supreme one can have no peers and most definitely no superiors. 

They also require the most cringe inducing mental gymnastic re:clear scriptures e.g:

Numbers23:19KJV"19God is not(NEVER) a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent..." 

Hosea11:9KJV"I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am(EVER) God, and not(NEVER) man..."  

On teleology in science.

Defining the “Science of Purpose”

Stephen J. Iacoboni 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Dr. Iacobini as a new contributor to Evolution News. 

Does the idea of “purpose” have a place in science? Can there really be a science of “purpose”? Has anyone previously tried to describe such a concept? And what might that entail? 

Since the subject matter itself is at the very least novel in the scientific context, questions like these are unavoidable. The “science of purpose” is new to the analytic framework, and is thus obliged to make the case for its claim to validity. 

Purpose in a Framework 

Let’s agree to accept an inarguable definition of science, and see if purpose can be accommodated within that framework. Here is a straightforward and broadly accepted definition of science. It is “the observation of natural phenomena in order to discern recognizable patterns that can be described in a cause/effect relationship, so that a model of that relationship can be developed that provides at the very least a qualitative generalization that applies to those observed natural phenomena. At the quantitative level, such a generalization must be tested to make verifiable predictions regarding the behavior of such phenomena.”

I don’t think that one can easily find an exception to this definition. Science, especially biology, has historically been a descriptive, qualitative exercise. Almost all of the “laws of science,” which apply to the quantitative portion of the definition, are limited to the realm of chemistry and physics. 

The science of purpose can be readily subsumed within the qualitative/descriptive definition. But beyond that, a modeling relation allows for quantitative analysis as well.

Let’s continue with a further definition. What is purpose? I define it as: “the achievement of a predetermined outcome to fulfill a desired goal.” Notice that this definition entails two concepts rarely employed in science: intentionality and the future tense. 

An Endless List 

Yet, with just a little reflection, one realizes that it is straightforward to compile an endless list of examples in nature that exhibit purpose. Bees gather honey, birds build nests for their young, salmon migrate to feed and mate, snakes lay in ambush for their prey, plant stems bend toward the light, gymnosperms spray pollen to reproduce, prairie dogs dig burrows to hide from predators, wolves hunt in packs to improve their predatory success, ruminants travel in herds to resist predation. That would be the taxonomy of purpose, understood in much the same way that anatomists began to understand physiology two centuries ago. 

It was the discovery of the similarity of the anatomy between different classes and phyla of organisms that allowed for biology as a descriptive and qualitative science to progress. In much the same way, one quickly realizes the unity of several discrete purposes that govern and unify the biosphere.

Those purposes include procurement of food, shelter, a suitable environment, mating, protection of offspring, and more. These are all readily definable purposes that define almost all of biota. Purpose at these descriptive levels is undeniable, demonstrable, and easily contained within a generalizable model of organism. Yes, in short, purpose has a place in science. 

 

More on the rise of the expertocracy.

Another Prestigious Science Journal Conflates Science with Politics and Pushes for Technocracy 

Wesley J. Smith 

Last month I criticized the prestigious journal Science for pushing ideology and attacking the Supreme Court’s rulings — as if its authors’ and editors’ subjective beliefs and policy preferences are the same thing as supporting objective science.

Not to be outdone in conflating politics with “science,” the British journal Nature — perhaps the world’s most respected “scientific” publication — has similarly attacked SCOTUS based on the wrongheaded idea that policy preferences are somehow synonymous with good science. From “Inside the Supreme Court’s War on Science,” by Nature’s U.S. correspondent Jeff Tollefson: 

In late June, the US Supreme Court issued a trio of landmark decisions that repealed the right to abortion, loosened gun restrictions and curtailed climate regulations. Although the decisions differed in rationale, they share a distinct trait: all three dismissed substantial evidence about how the court’s rulings would affect public health and safety. It is a troubling trend that many scientists fear could undermine the role of scientific evidence in shaping public policy. Now, as the court prepares to consider a landmark case on electoral policies, many worry about the future of American democracy itself. 

 

Issues such as abortion, gun regulations, and yes, even what to do about climate change are not matters that can be determined objectively by science. Instead, they involve many different disciplines and possible approaches that policy-makers have to balance. For example, whether abortion should be permitted through the ninth month of pregnancy, as much of the pro-choice movement wants, or strictly curtailed, as many on the pro-life side want, or something in between, is a question based primarily on issues of morality, ideology, philosophy, ethics, and religion. Science per se cannot answer the question.  

Science and the Administrative State 

Tollefson seems particularly troubled by the Supreme Court’s recent rulings impeding the growth of the administrative state: 

In September 2021, the court tossed out a moratorium on housing evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic that had been issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And in January, the justices rejected a mask mandate for major employers issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But the conservative majority went one step further in West Virginia v. EPA, and laid out a new legal test: the ‘major questions’ doctrine, which posits that agencies need explicit permission from Congress when implementing major rules. 

Please. The regulation imposed to prevent evictions was not a scientific question and, moreover, was clearly beyond the CDC’s jurisdiction. Neither was the West Virginia ruling, which in my subjective opinion — which is as valid as any scientist’s on a nonscientific question — upholds democracy by requiring Congress to explicitly delegate policy-making power to executive-branch bureaucrats. 

Science and Technocracy 

But that kind of democratic oversight is precisely what Tollefson objects to. He — and presumably Nature‘s editors — want a system of rule by experts, e.g., technocracy: 

The problem, says Blake Emerson, who studies administrative law at the University of California, Los Angeles, is that the civil service is precisely where science enters government. That’s by design: Congress does not have the expertise or the political capacity to craft detailed regulations, so lawmakers pass broadly worded laws that are often intentionally vague, leaving the details up to the experts. Now, those experts are at risk of getting squeezed from both sides — being stripped of authority and becoming more vulnerable to the whims of elected officials. 

Yes, heaven forbid that elected officials interfere with the policy preferences that unelected “experts” want to impose on society. Good grief.

Tollefson then wanders into the question of state gerrymandering, again not an issue of scientific concern. And like the Science article referenced above, he voices support for stacking the Court to increase the likelihood that SCOTUS will issue decisions more to his political liking.

If anything is a “war on science,” it is publishing ideological articles like this in what is supposed to be a science journal — a trend that seems particularly infectious among establishment medical and scientific outlets. By pushing rank political advocacy that would have been perfectly appropriate in The Nation or Politico — as if the issues discussed were scientific matters — Nature has undermined trust in its objectivity as an important institution furthering the dispassionate search for truth. 

File under well said LXXXI

 Every nation gets the government it deserves. 

Joseph de Maistre 

Ps. Generally speaking. 

And still yet even more primeval tech v. Darwin.

 RuvAB: Another Elegant Molecular Motor Visualized 

David Coppedge 

Admirers of molecular machines will love RuvAB. This machine looks like something out of a CAD/CAM project, but it’s found in bacteria. And it plays an essential role in maintaining this “primitive” microbe’s genomic integrity. 

A picture is worth a thousand words. Before we talk about it, look at the 30-second animation of RuvAB modeled by scientists at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), a research center of the Helmholtz Association in Hamburg, Germany.

That’s an eye-popping example of irreducible complexity if there ever was one. Are those gears, rotors, and clutches operating in a detailed sequence of moving parts? The scientists must have thought so; a graphic in the press release portrays the operation as a set of twenty gears operating on DNA strands, with the caption, “Artistic representation of the Holliday junction and the RuvB motors.” 

A Minor Correction 

One little correction to the animation should be noted. They show it in slow motion. The actual movements are “very fast and highly dynamic,” they say — so much so that they “provided the … motor with a slower burning fuel which allowed us to capture the biochemical reactions as they occur.” They took “over ten million images” of the motor in action.  

Using the high-performance computing facility at DESY, the scientists were then able to put all the puzzle pieces together to generate a high-resolution movie detailing how the RuvAB complex functions on the molecular scale.  

Is this molecular machine important? 

DNA recombination is one of the most fundamental biological processes in living organisms. It is the process by which chromosomes “swap” DNA either to generate genetic diversity, by creating new offspring, or to maintain genetic integrity, by repairing breaks in existing chromosomes. During DNA recombination, four DNA arms separate from their double-helix formations and join together at an intersection known as a Holliday junction. Here the DNA arms exchange strands in a process called active branch migration. 

RuvA is the stator and RuvB is the motor. The two form the “RuvAB branch migration complex” that handles DNA recombination and repair. 

The essential energy needed for this branch migration to occur comes from a molecular machinery that scientists have tagged as the RuvAB branch migration complex. This complex assembles around the Holliday junction and is made of two motors labelled RuvB AAA+ ATPases, that fuel the reaction, and a RuvA stator. The research team has now provided an intricate blueprint that explains how the RuvB AAA+ motors work under the regulation of the RuvA protein to perform synchronized DNA movement. 

The AAA+ family of molecular machines deserves attention from ID researchers, because they move things in elaborate ways and take part in diverse cellular activities (see another example reported here in 2019). 

AAA+ motors are often used in other biological systems, such as protein transport, therefore this detailed model of the RuvB AAA+ motor can be used as a blueprint for similar molecular motors. “We understand how the motor works and now we can put this motor into another system with some minor adaptations,” explains Marlovits. “We are essentially presenting core principles for AAA+ motors.” 

More detail is given in an open-access paper in Nature by Wald et al. , “Mechanism of AAA+ ATPase-mediated RuvAB–Holliday junction branch migration.” 

Coordinated motions in a converter formed by DNA-disengaged RuvB subunits stimulate hydrolysis and nucleotide exchange. Immobilization of the converter enables RuvB to convert the ATP-contained energy into a lever motion, which generates the pulling force driving the branch migration. We show that RuvB motors rotate together with the DNA substrate, which, together with a progressing nucleotide cycle, forms the mechanistic basis for DNA recombination by continuous branch migration. 

A Feast for the Eyes 

The figures in the paper are worth feasting your eyes on. Hmmm; I wonder why they didn’t say anything about how it evolved? Look for the word “mutation” and you will find that “mutational studies markedly compromised branch migration activity, and mutation of trans-Glu128 resulted in a bacterial growth defect.”

Here is another biological wonder that needs little verbiage to convince readers of intelligent design. It certainly spoke to the researchers: 

“We were able to visualize seven distinct states of the motor and demonstrate how the interconnected elements work together in a cyclical manner,” explains Wald. “We also demonstrated that the RuvB motor converts energy into a lever motion which generates the force that drives branch migration. We were amazed by the discovery that the motors use a basic lever mechanism to move the DNA substrate. Overall, the sequential mechanism, coordination and force generation manner of the RuvAB motor share conceptual similarities with combustion engines.” 

I would love to see this motor star in an expanded animation documentary with dramatic music. 

Politics poisons everything.

 Here is Wikipedia's impartial introduction to their article re: signature in the cell author Stephen Meyer: 

Stephen C. Meyer: (/ˈmaɪ.ər/; born 1958) is an American author and former educator. He is an advocate of the pseudoscience of intelligent design and helped found the Center for Science and Culture  

Just one example sort of thing that has led me to conclude that politics causes  brain damage.

The design debate down under.

 Report from Australia: Sharing Design Evidence Down Under 

Thomas E. Woodward 

Timing is everything! In late June, while I packed for my July/August speaking tour of Queensland, Australia, science writer Stephen Buranyi dropped an 11-page bombshell in London on the failures of Darwinism. Buranyi’s article appeared in The Guardian under the title, “Do We Need a New Theory of Evolution?” 

Bingo! This brilliantly written exposé on dissent in biology, which Evolution News covered here, became the perfect lead-in for my twenty Aussie lectures, as I teamed up with my Trinity College colleague John Lingelbach. 

Following the Evidence 

Our theme was “A Designed Cosmos? Follow the Evidence,” and the tour included two days of talks at Griffith University and a day speaking at Emmanuel College in the Gold Coast area, with five hundred in attendance. We summarized the evidence for design from cosmic fine-tuning, DNA’s sophisticated codes, and exquisitely integrated molecular machines. We discussed new fossil findings that have expanded the Cambrian Explosion, and we detailed how the origin of the first life through a “mindless Darwinian process” is an idea pummeled today even by many secular academicians. 

One student at Griffith University was amazed at “how atheists are beginning to reject natural selection as an insufficient explanation for the diversity of life.” He found the lecture series “an exciting experience to share at our overly secularized university.” 

Science, C. S. Lewis, and Pizza 

Twice, we combined the evidence of science with insights from C. S. Lewis, who in his writings articulated a substantial series of clues about God. This lively group, seen here in Southport, “ate up the clues” and then feasted on pizza! 

Finally, we partnered with the website DNA and Beyond to equip 25 high schools across Queensland with sets of DNA models that display the high-tech worlds of genetics and epigenetics, including genes’ elegant on/off switches.  

Forty six theological questions I'd love to get a straight answer To:

   1)Genesis2:7KJV"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."    

If the human soul is by definition alive (indeed immortal) why was it necessary to describe it as living?

2) Genesis3:15 KJV "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Who is this woman that (with Jehovah's blessing) wages war against the deceiver of men and angels?

3)If the seed of above mentioned woman is God why would it be wrong to call her the mother of God?

4) Where are the expressions God the son and God the spirit located in the scriptures?

5) Why is the God the Father never ever referred to as the father of God in scripture( After all the Son is always referred to as the Son of God/the Spirit as the spirit of God)?

6) john8:50"And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth." If our lord taught his disciples that he is in fact Almighty God how could he truthfully claim to not be seeking his own glory?

7) John14:1KJV "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me" If Jesus is indeed the almighty God how are we to make sense of the above cited scripture?

8) From our catholic friends comes the following: if Jesus is truly God and Mary is his mother then Mary is the mother of God;Makes complete sense to me what specific objection could any trinitarian or modalists/oneness advocate possibly have against this reasoning?

9)Acts17:30NASB "“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,"

Those who had their sins overlooked by reason of their involuntary ignorance are they in heaven?

10)If it is possible to get to heaven by being ignorant why then would a loving God command that the Gospel be preached?

11) How could the loss of Jesus flesh for parts of three days possibly be a fit substitute for eternal conscious torment?

12) In as much as the Father is a spirit and is holy and his son is a spirit and is holy and their angels are spirits and are holy how could it be sensible to identify the third person of a supposed holy trinity of such holy spirits as simply the holy spirit?

13) John14;19NASB "“After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also." Why do many of Christendom's theologians insist that Christ will return in the same flesh which he was supposed to have sacrificed for our sins to literally be seen by all the world?

14) John3:17 NASB"“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."

 John5:22NASB "Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgement to the Son,"

 Will the Son of God Judge the world or not?

15)Do aborted infants go to heaven?

16)If all aborted infants go heaven would that not falsify Jesus'statement at John3:3

17) At John3:3 Jesus indicates that to attain a heavenly resurrection one must be "born from above" in as much as john1:12 links this new birth to acceptance of the gospel should we not then conclude that the door to heaven was closed to all who died prior to Christ's death and resurrection?

18) To all who insists that it is impossible for someone in a saved condition to lose their salvation:Were Satan,Adam and Eve in a saved or unsaved condition when created by God?

19)If all are destined for a place in heaven regardless of belief or conduct why must the gospel be preached first?

20) Hebrews11:39,40 "And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect." If we are all going to end up in heaven How is what God promised anointed Christians better than the reward the ancient worthies mentioned in Hebrews ch.11 received?

21) Revelation20:6NASB "Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years."

 Revelation5:9,10DBT "And they sing a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open its seals; because thou hast been slain, and hast redeemed to God, by thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, 10and made them to our God kings and priests; and they shall reign over the earth." If the earth is to be devoid of human life,as many insists, during the millennium over whom are these ruling as kings and to whom are they ministering as priest?

22) Revelation21:4"and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” Would this not be a false prophecy if in fact the vast majority of humankind is destined to suffer eternally by divine decree?

23) If only those who share in the first resurrection (see rev 20:6) go on to receive eternal life how could it be said that 'death' is the last enemy defeated by Christ? (see 1Corinthians15:26)

24)In as much as Christendom's theologians invoke Occam's razor as their reason for rejecting polytheism,in what way can a triune Godhead in which one member is fully human be considered a simpler explanation than the position of unitarian Christians that the God and Father of our lord is the only true God ?See John17:3

25) For argument sake let us go along with the notion that only a multipersonal deity could fulfil 1John4:8 can someone please provide a scriptural reason for limiting the number of persons constituting this godhead to three?

26) To those who deny the historicity of the man Jesus Christ.Why did the enemies of Christianity wait for eighteen centuries to raise what should have been their very first objection?

27) Galations1:1 HCSB "Paul,a an apostle — not from men or by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Fatherb who raised Him from the dead"

Does the above cited scripture not suggest that Christ was raised to a superhuman life rather than having his human life restored?

28) If the human soul is indestructible and distinct from the body why do drugs,bodily fatigue and physical injuries affect consciousness?

29) Revelation14:1 KJV"And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads" If the holy spirit is a person who is equally God as Jesus' Father why is his name not also on the foreheads of these servants of Jehovah?

30) Can anyone show from scripture the personal name of the holy spirit? 

31) John17:3NASB "“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. " How can the God and Father of Jesus be the only true God if there are two others who are God in the same sense and to the same degree?

32) Matthew 11:11NASB"Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" Does the above cited scripture not indicate that John the baptizer and all the faithful who died prior to him will not be in heaven?

33) How could the loss of Christ body for parts of three days be equated with eternal conscious torment? Isaiah53:5 NASB"But He was pierced through for our transgressions,

            He was crushed for our iniquities;

            The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,

            And by His scourging we are healed."

34) 1Corinthians8:6 NASB"yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him." Christendom's theologians claim that the Father is not a distinct God merely a distinct person,does not the above cited text not contradict that assertion?

35) Matthew10:28 NASB"“Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. " According to the above quoted scripture Jehovah God will do to his enemies What those enemies can merely do to his followers' bodies.Can Christendom's theologians please tell us who among Jehovah's enemies can inflict eternal torment on our bodies?

36) For those trinitarian apologists who insists that every God mentioned in the bible must either be a member of the trinity or a false god where would you place the prophet Moses member of the Christendom's Godhead or false god see exodus7:1

37) Luke23:43NASB"And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”" Now in as much as Christendom's translators insist that Christ meant that he would go to paradise immediately upon dying as a substitute for sinners,how can it be logically denied that the penalty for sin must be a translation to paradise upon death,in which case why would sinners need a ramsom?

38) Revelation20:1-3NASB"Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 2And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time." For post millenialists when was Satan rendered incapable of deceiving the nations.

39)When do post millenialists believe that Satan would again be allowed to deceive the nations.

40) Luke11:18NASB "“If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. "

Revelation 12:3NASB"Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems."

Revelation12:9NASB"And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him."

If Jesus' being called God or even Jehovah is sufficient to establish as true that he is a member of a polypersonal God how can anyone deny that the above quoted scriptures must mean that Satan is part of polypersonal Devil/Devilhead?

41) Several men other than Jesus of nazareth are mentioned in scripture as having the name Jesus/Joshua as a personal name See Exodus17:9,1Samuel 6:14,colossians4:11. If the name 'Jesus' is the personal name of the most high God how can any creature be permitted use it as a personal name?

42) For those who claim that Jesus Christ is the only true God:Hebrews2:3,4 "how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?e It was first spoken by the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.f 4At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles, and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to His will.g" How can God's testimony be considered additional to Jesus's

43) Can anyone direct me to that passage of scripture that says that the virtuous dead go to heaven?

44) Why is it that though trinitarians and modalists denounce each other's doctrine as unscriptural they nevertheless use the very same prooftext in there apologetics?

45) In as much as the Jehovah is repeatedly call the God the Father (Theon Patros) in scripture Why is Jesus NEVER referred to as God the Son ?

46) Revelation20:6 NASB "Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. " 

 If the human soul is truly immortal why the need to restore it to life?

It takes an engineer to know an engineer?

 Burgess: Claims of “Poor Design” in Skeletal Joints Are Based on Critics’ Lack of Training in Engineering 

Brian Miller 

As an engineering professor at Bristol University and Cambridge, Stuart Burgess has researched biomechanics for nearly thirty years. He is one of the leading engineers in the UK. Earlier this year, he presented a talk at the Westminster Conference on Science and Faith titled, “Why Human Skeletal Joints Are Masterpieces of Human Engineering: And a Rebuttal to the ‘Bad Design’ Arguments.” He demonstrated that human skeletal joints are marvels of engineering and optimally designed. In particular, he refuted claims by biologist Nathan Lents, in his book Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, that the wrist and ankle contain useless bones.  

The Abuse of Science 

Burgess’s lecture confronts one of the most common abuses of science aimed at suppressing the evidence for design in biology. Atheists such as Lents have grossly misrepresented the scientific evidence related to biological systems to claim that life often displays clumsy and incompetent engineering. Most of the examples of allegedly poor design listed by Lents, or in other books such as The Language of God, were known to be false when the books were written or have since been discredited. Such disinformation resulting from sloppy scholarship has derailed the faith of religious adherents and robbed atheists and agnostics of the opportunity to pursue belief in a Creator.

In relation to wrists and ankles, Lents makes the follower assertions in his book:          

“The small area that is just the wrist itself has eight fully formed and distinct bones tucked in there like a pile of rocks — which is about how useful they are to anyone.” (p. 28)

“We have examples of superbly designed joints in our bodies; the shoulder and hip joints come to mind. Not the wrist, though. No sane engineer would design a joint with so many individual moving parts. It clutters up the space and restricts the range of motion.” (p. 28)

“The human ankle suffers from the same clutter of bones that we find in the wrist. The ankle contains seven bones, most of them pointless.” (p. 29)

Yet none of these claims has any basis. 

The Optimality of Skeletal Joints 

Dr. Burgess demonstrated how Lents’s assertion that the wrist and foot joints are poorly designed results from Lents’s lack of training in engineering. He did not recognize that living systems must meet multiple competing constraints. Burgess analyzed the joints’ different motions and functions. He then demonstrated how the wrists and ankles are exquisitely designed to optimally achieve a diversity of functions in a wide variety of environments.

As one example, Lents failed to understand the engineering principles behind the four bones adjacent to the toe bones. He claimed that a better design would have been to replace these bones with a single composite bone. The key error is that the multiple bones provide far greater load bearing strength. 

In a previous lecture, Burgess also addressed false claims about allegedly poor design in the human knee joint, while in the technical literature he detailed the optimality of the knee (here, here). Many have argued that the ease with which the knee’s anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears reflects poor design resulting from humans’ evolutionary past. This conclusion fails to recognize a key design principle: engineers often deliberately construct the least critical components in a complex system to fail first. 

The bumper of a car, for example, is designed to crumple long before the passenger compartment since the former is far more expendable. Similarly, a person can still walk with a torn ACL, but serious trauma to other knee tissues and bones could permanently cripple the individual. The initial failure of the ACL could prevent much more severe damage. In addition, the rate at which ACLs tear is lower than the rate at which bones such as the femur fracture (here, here). Claims about the ACL’s flimsy design are clearly misguided.  

The Central Lesson 

Burgess could have spoken for many more hours about false claims of poor design in such structures as the wiring of the retina, the human appendix, and wisdom teeth. He could have provided countless examples of biology demonstrating the pinnacle of engineering brilliance. 

Yet the two examples he presented were sufficient to drive home a clear lesson. Evolutionary assumptions consistently lead biologists to falsely claim that features in life reflect incompetent engineering, and those assumptions bias them to undervalue biological systems’ ingenuity and optimality. One hopes that the consistent track record of falsely identifying poor design will result in researchers’ applying greater caution in the future before questioning the wisdom of a feature in life that they do not initially fully understand. 

   

Have you accepted the multiverse as your Lord and savior?

 Is the Multiverse Science or Religion? 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

Some science controversies arise in disputes over findings. The current flap over the James Webb Space Telescope data, for one. Others sound like clashes over philosophy — claims about the multiverse (countless universes out there) are a good example.

Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder takes on the multiverse in in her new book, Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions (2022). She also addresses the topic concisely — and wittily — in a short video and a blog post at Back(Re)Action. She looks at three popular multiverse models: Many Worlds, Eternal Inflation, and String Theory Landscape. 

“Maybe We Will Never Know”

Here’s her take on Eternal Inflation:

We don’t know how our universe began and maybe we will never know. We just talked about this the other week. But according to a presently popular idea called “inflation,” our universe was created from a quantum fluctuation of a field called the “inflaton”. This field supposedly fills an infinitely large space and our universe was created from only a tiny patch of that, the patch where the fluctuation happened.

But the field keeps on fluctuating, so there are infinitely many other universes fluctuating into existence. This universe-creation goes on forever, which is why it’s called eternal inflation. Eternal inflation, by the way lasts forever into the future, but still requires a beginning in the past, so it doesn’t do away with the Big Bang issue.

In Eternal Inflation, the other universes may contain the same matter as ours, but in slightly different arrangements, so there may be copies of you in them. In some versions you became a professional ballet dancer. In some you won a Nobel Prize. In yet another one another you are a professional ballet dancer who won a Nobel Prize and dated Elon Musk. And they’re all as real as this one.

Where did this inflaton field go that allegedly created our universe? Well, physicists say it has fallen apart into the particles that we observe now, so it’s gone and that’s why we can’t measure it. Yeah, that is a little sketchy. 

SABINE HOSSENFELDER, “THE MULTIVERSE: SCIENCE, RELIGION, OR PSEUDOSCIENCE?” AT BACKRE(ACTION) (SEPTEMBER 10, 2022) 

Don’t miss her take on Many Worlds and the String Theory Landscape, especially if you wish to experience “elephants in the room which you coincidentally can’t see” — oh, and getting married to Elon Musk (but maybe only in that universe). On a serious note, she later addresses specific claims from physicists who defend the idea.

The concept of a multiverse arises from an alternative interpretation of the movement of elementary particles in quantum mechanics — alternative, that is, to the more widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation. In the Copenhagen interpretation, if the particle goes left rather than right, the universe just updates. In the alternative Many Worlds interpretation, a new universe is created in which the particle goes right. There are other versions but that’s the best known.

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

Darwin's design Inference?

 Charles Darwin’s Freudian Slip 

Robert F. Shedinger 

Last April, I wrote a post for Evolution News about the reception of Darwin’s book dealing with fertilization methods in orchids. Darwin, rather than following up the Origin of Species with the publication of his big book on species, which was three-quarters complete, instead turned to botanical concerns and published his orchid monograph in 1862. Darwin confessed to Asa Gray that his orchid book would serve as a “flank movement on the enemy.” 

Darwin clearly hoped that readers of the orchid book would be so overwhelmed with the variety of contrivances (his word) found in orchids to assure fertilization by insects that they would marvel at the power of natural selection to produce them. I argued previously that the orchid book was Darwin’s stealth attempt to provide the evidence of natural selection missing from the Origin, which was a mere abstract of his theory, and missing from the big book, which he never published.

A Grand Intelligent Designer

Darwin’s strategy, however, failed miserably. When reviews of the orchid book appeared in the British press, reviewers almost unanimously hailed it as one of the great books of natural theology. The amazing variety of contrivances by which orchids assure their fertilization by insects testified, in the opinion of these reviewers, to the existence of a grand intelligent designer. 

M. J. Berkeley, for example, in the London Review, opined:

Most certainly, so far from justifying anyone in considering the author as heretofore as a heathen man or an heretic for the annunciation of his theory, the whole series of the Bridgewater Treatises will not afford so striking a set of arguments in favour of natural theology as those which he has displayed. 

The Bridgewater Treatises, of course, were a series of writings commissioned by Francis Henry Egerton, the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, designed to demonstrate the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in creation. One would think that Darwin would be livid at someone comparing his orchid book to the Bridgewater Treatises. I thought so myself until I did additional research. 

A Surprising Discovery 

I recently discovered a letter by Darwin that I had originally overlooked. When writing up his orchid research, Darwin initially planned to publish it as a paper in the Linnean. But it became too long for a journal article, so he decided to publish it as a book instead. In September 1861, Darwin contacted his publisher, John Murray, to gauge Murray’s interest in potentially publishing this technical monograph on orchids. Darwin wrote: 

Will you have the kindness to give me your opinion, which I shall implicitly follow. — I have just finished a very long paper for Linnean Society and yesterday for the first time it occurred to me that possibly it might be worth publishing separately, which would save me trouble and delay. — The facts are new & have been collected during 20 years & strike me as curious. Like a Bridgewater Treatise the chief object is to show the perfection of the many contrivances in Orchids. 

Darwin could hardly complain about others comparing his orchid book to the Bridgewater Treatises when he himself had done the very same thing (though not publicly)! 

When one considers Darwin’s use of the word “contrivances” in his orchid book, the very word William Paley had used throughout his Natural Theology, and his own comparing of his orchid book to a Bridgewater Treatise in his letter to Murray, it looks like Darwin was as impressed as everyone else by the amazing ingenuity in orchids and could not ignore the evidence for design. 

If Sigmund Freud were alive today, he might well say that Darwin slipped!

File under "Well said" LXXX.

Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.

Euripides 

Ps.ecclesiastes7:13NIV"Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?"

The journey from is to ought without a bridge?

 Atheists Who Scold Us on Morality Unwittingly Acknowledge God’s Existence 

Michael Egnor 

Biologist P. Z. Myers detests challenges to his atheism based on the reality of Objective Moral Law:

There is a common line of attack Christians use in debates with atheists, and I genuinely detest it. It’s to ask the question, “where do your morals come from?” I detest it because it is not a sincere question at all — they don’t care about your answer, they’re just trying to get you to say that you do not accept the authority of a deity, so that they can then declare that you are an evil person because you do not derive your morals from the same source they do, and therefore you are amoral. It is, of course, false to declare that someone with a different morality than yours is amoral, but that doesn’t stop those sleazebags. 

Actually, Christians don’t ask, “Where do your morals come from?” in order to call atheists evil. We do it to point out that objective morality is powerful evidence for God’s existence. 

Subjective and Objective 

How so? From our human perspective, moral law can have two origins — subjective and objective.

Subjective moral law is based on human opinion. It may just be one man’s opinion, or it may be the collective opinion of a group of people. If our standards are wholly subjective, dislike of strawberry ice cream and dislike of genocide are not qualitatively different. The dislike is just human opinion.

Objective moral law, by contrast, is outside of human opinion. It is something that we humans discover. We do not create it. Thus, objective moral law exists beyond mere human opinion.

Now a distinction emerges. Personal preferences (e.g., about ice cream) are qualitatively different from personal opinions about genocide — we oppose genocide because it is objectively wrong, not just because it is not quite to our taste.

Of course, if a value judgement prevails over other human value judgements, there must be Someone whose opinion is Objective Moral Law. There must be a Law-Giver.

Please note that this argument is ontological, not epistemological. It is not an argument about how well we can know what the Moral Law is. It is an argument that Objective Moral Law exists, regardless of how well we can or do know it.

Change my mind.

AntiJW  bigots: You're in a cult!

Me: aren't we all?

Ps. Are all cults created equal?

The thumb print of JEHOVAH :hummingbird edition.

 A Closer Look at Hummingbird Tongue Design 

David Coppedge 

One of the memorable moments in Illustra Media’s documentary Flight: The Genius of Birds is the hummingbird tongue animation (see it below). The unique nectar-trapping mechanism of unfurling flaps (lamellae) on supporting rods that automatically fold over to seal in the nectar was discovered by two biologists at the University of Connecticut (see the paper in PNAS). This was cutting-edge science, because most biologists previously had assumed the tongue worked by simple capillary action. 

The two biologists have continued their work since then, filming hummingbirds in the wild. Along with a mechanical engineer who is an expert in fluid mechanics, they published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that should increase our admiration for the design of this structure. It’s not only a nectar trap; the hummingbird tongue is a micropump!

News from UConn Today includes a video clip (below) of the tongue in action. The new findings debunk the notion that capillary action called “wicking” draws nectar up the tongue. 

Rico-Guevara explains that a hummingbird’s tongue, which can be stuck out about the same length as its beak, is tipped with two long skinny tubes, or grooves. Rather than wicking, he says, the nectar is drawn into the tongue by the elastic expansion of the grooves after they are squeezed flat by the beak.

The tongue structure is collapsed during the time it crosses the space between the bill tip and the nectar pool, but once the tip contacts the nectar surface, the supply of fluid allows the collapsed groove to gradually recover to a relaxed cylindrical shape as the nectar fills it.

When the hummingbird squeezes nectar off its tongue during protrusion, it is collapsing the grooves and loading elastic energy into the groove walls. That energy subsequently facilitates the pumping of more nectar. 

In Concert with the Lamellae 

This pumping action apparently works in concert with the lamellae (flaps) shown in the Illustra film. The cylinders are in a flattened shape when they enter the nectar. Having been compressed by the beak, they store elastic energy that makes them rapidly expand in the fluid as they unfurl. This expansion helps to pump the fluid into the cylindrical cavity upward from the lamellae. That way, more nectar can be delivered into the bird’s mouth.

Figure 1 shows the beak in cross-section from a CT scan. It looks beautifully designed to squeeze the tongue’s cylinders during protrusion, with the lower bill fitting into spaces in the upper bill that spread laterally to flatten the tongue as it exits the bill tip. This design probably also squeezes the previous load of nectar into the mouth at the same time. “After complete loading, the grooves filled with nectar were brought back inside the bill and squeezed for the next cycle, all in less than a tenth of a second,” they observe. The caption for Figure 1 explains how these two mechanisms (pumping and trapping) work together: 

The hummingbird tongue fills with nectar even when only the tip is immersed. (a) Hummingbirds can drink from flowers with corollas longer than their bills by extending their bifurcated, longitudinally grooved tongues to reach the nectar. During protrusion, the tongue is compressed as it passes through the bill tip, which results in a collapsed configuration of the grooves (cross-section). (b) Upon reaching the nectar, the tongue tips fringed with lamellae roll open and spread apart, but some of the grooved portions of the tongue will never contact the nectar pool. For the grooves to fill with nectar, they must return to their uncompressed, cylindrical configuration. 

Why doesn’t the collapsed tongue rebound immediately after it leaves the beak and enters the air? That would result in open tubes that would need to fill by capillary action when they enter the nectar. But capillary action is much slower than the observed filling. Apparently the tongue material is designed to expand upon contact with the nectar. “After contacting the surface, the grooves expanded and filled completely with nectar,” they found. 

Birds in the Wild 

All hummingbirds have this mechanism. They filmed 32 wild birds, representing 18 species (in 7 of the 9 main hummingbird clades), with a high-speed camera in natural wild habitats, undergoing hundreds of feeding cycles — all with the same results. This allowed them to falsify the “century-old paradigm” of the capillary hypothesis and shed new light on this rapid, dynamic process. 

All observed licks followed the same pattern: tongue thickness was stable during protrusion of the tongue, and rapidly increased after the tongue tips contacted the nectar… After complete loading, the grooves filled with nectar were brought back inside the bill and squeezed for the next cycle, all in less than a tenth of a second. 

Capillary action could not have filled the cylinders this rapidly. In addition, no meniscus (diagnostic of capillarity) was observed to form in any of the 96 video sessions. The pumping action, by contrast, fills the entire tongue in just 14 milliseconds. Here’s how it works, according to their new model: 

We suggest that while squeezing nectar off the tongue during protrusion, the bird is collapsing the grooves and loading elastic energy into the groove walls that will be subsequently used to pump nectar into the grooves. The collapsed configuration is conserved during the trip of the tongue across the space between the bill tip to the nectar pool. Once the tongue tips contact the nectar surface, the supply of fluid allows the collapsed groove to gradually recover to a relaxed cylindrical shape until the nectar has filled it completely; hereafter, we refer to this previously undocumented mechanism as ‘expansive filling’. 

Flattened and Sealed 

The tongue stays flattened and sealed, in short, until it hits the nectar pool. Then, inside the fluid, the tongue’s twin cylinders rapidly expand, pumping nectar up into the tongue as it darts into the flower at speeds of a meter per second. As the tongue is withdrawn, the lamellae then seal the cylinder tightly shut for delivery into the bird’s mouth. This is a wonderful dual mechanism that results in much more efficient food capture in far less time. 

Fluid trapping is the predominant process by which hummingbirds achieve nectar collection at small bill tip-to-nectar distances, wherein tongue grooves are wholly immersed in nectar, or when the nectar is found in very thin layers. Expansive filling accounts for nectar uptake by the portions of a hummingbird’s tongue that remain outside the nectar pool. The relative contributions of the two synergistic mechanisms(fluid trapping and expansive filling) to the rate and volume of nectar ultimately ingested are determined by the distance from the bill tip to the nectar surface during the licking process. 

In other words, these two “synergistic mechanisms” give the hummingbird the biggest possible nectar bang for the buck, regardless of how deep the nectar pool is. The new model explains how the tongue can fill up even in a short flower. Since hummingbirds already “have remarkably high metabolic rates, amazing speed and superb aeronautic control,” it is essential they get the optimum return on investment of feeding energy.  

All these traits result from the ability of hummingbirds to feed on nectar efficiently enough to fuel an extreme lifestyle out of a sparse, but energetically dense, resource. Therefore, the way in which they feed on nectar determines the peaks and span of their performance, and thus their behaviour (and evolutionary trajectory), across a range of environmental axes. 

How Did Evolution Contribute? 

But did evolutionary theory contribute anything to this study? The authors speculate briefly about “co-evolution” of flowers and their pollinators, but do not offer any “trajectory” by which a bird could evolve either of these mechanisms from ancestors lacking them. How useful is it to offer up evidence-free promissory notes like this? 

The new explanation of the mechanics of nectar uptake we provide here suggests that physical constraints are the main determinants of the relationship between pollinator type and nectar concentration, and can guide us through alternative hypotheses of hummingbird-flower coevolution. 

By contrast, they save their best lines for what might be termed (though not by the authors) intelligent design. The paper begins: 

Pumping is a vital natural process, imitated by humans for thousands of years. We demonstrate that a hitherto undocumented mechanism of fluid transport pumps nectar onto the hummingbird tongue. 

This implies a seamless connection between human design and biological design. They conclude on the design theme: 

Our discovery of this elastic tongue micropump could inspire applications, and the study of flow, in elastic-walled (flexible) tubes in both biological and artificial systems. 

You see, not only does a design focus inspire study of biological systems, it leads to better designed applications. Everyone can agree on this: hummingbirds are inspiring!