And still yet more on the fossil record's antiDarwinian bias.

Fossil Friday: Ludodactylus and the Origin of Pterosaurs

Günter Bechly 

This Fossil Friday I want to show you a very well-preserved skull of a giant pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation, which is about 115 million years old. I could photograph this specimen at a German trader’s collection in 2008, unfortunately only with a poor camera in low resolution. This fossil most likely belongs to the ornithocheirid species Ludodactylus sibbicki, which is otherwise only known from the holotype specimen (Frey et al. 2003, Unwin & Martill 2007). The holotype lacked the distal portion of the head crest, so that this yet undescribed specimen, which is here figured for the first time ever, finally shows how this crest really was shaped. The skull is 53.5 cm long and the estimated wing span of this species was up to 4 meters (Unwin & Martill 2007). These animals probably fed on fish on the open sea, similar to living albatrosses.

Pterosaurs had a unique construction of their wings, which were mainly supported by an enormously enlarged fourth finger. This is very different from the construction of the wings in bats and birds. Pterosaurs appear abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record of the Upper Triassic (Norian), about 227–208 million years ago, with eopterosaurs like Preondactylus and Carniadactylus. Pterosaurs are believed to be relatives to Late Triassic “reptiles” like Lagerpetidae (Ezcurra et al. 2020, Kammer et al. 2020, Baron 2021), and the enigmatic Scleromochlus (Benton 1999,  Bennett 2020, Foffa et al. 2022). However, those reptiles fail to show even the slightest adaptations for gliding or flying, or any trace of incipient pterosaur wings. Even the relationship of these fossils is highly disputed, e.g., with Bennet (2020) in his extensive study strongly rejecting any closer relationship of Scleromochlus with pterosaurs, while Foffa et al. (2022) strongly affirms it, which was celebrated in the media as “Scottish fossil revealed to be pterodactyl ancestor” (Gill 2022).

A Lack of Transitional Fossils

Outside of Darwinian fantasy land, we indeed lack any transitional fossils that would document an assumed gradual evolutionary development of characteristic pterosaur wings. In my view this strongly suggests that the transition happened very quickly as an abrupt saltation rather than mediated by hundreds of transitional species, for which there is not a shred of empirical evidence. Such saltations could not be explained by an unguided neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations, but would require a massive infusion of new genetic and epigenetic information from outside the system. Therefore, the abrupt origin of pterosaurs clearly points to intelligent design as the best explanation. 

References 

Baron MG 2021. The origin of Pterosaurs. Earth-Science Reviews.221: 103777, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103777

Bennett SC 2020. Reassessment of the Triassic archosauriform Scleromochlus taylori: neither runner nor biped, but hopper. PeerJ 8: e8418, 1–77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8418

Benton MJ 1999. Scleromochlus taylori and the origin of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 354(1388), 1423–1446. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1999.0489

Ezcurra MD, Nesbitt SJ & Bronzati M et al. 2020. Enigmatic dinosaur precursors bridge the gap to the origin of Pterosauria. Nature 588(7838), 445–449. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3011-4

Foffa D, Dunne EM & Nesbitt SJ et al. 2022. Scleromochlus and the early evolution of Pterosauromorpha. Nature 610(7931), 313–318. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05284-x

Frey E, Martill DM & Buchy M-C 2003. A new crested ornithocheirid from the Lower Cretaceous of northeastern Brazil and the unusual death of an unusual pterosaur. pp. 55–63 in: Buffetaut E & Mazin J-M (eds). Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs. Geological Society of London – Special Publications. Vol. 217. [Google Books]

Gill V 2022. Scottish fossil revealed to be pterodactyl ancestor. BBC News October 6, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63146271

Kammerer CF, Nesbitt SJ, Flynn JJ, Ranivoharimanana L & Wyss AR 2020. A tiny ornithodiran archosaur from the Triassic of Madagascar and the role of miniaturization in dinosaur and pterosaur ancestry. PNAS 117(30), 17932–17936. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916631117

Unwin DW & Martill DM 2007. Pterosaurs of the Crato Formation. pp 475–524 in: Martill DM, Bechly G & Loveridge RF (eds). The Crato Fossil Beds of Brazil: Window into an Ancient World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK), xvi+625 pp.

   

 

Coptic John Ch.1 vrs.1-18 and eisegesis.

Coptic John 1:1-18 

Eisegesis refers to interpreting a text by reading into it one's own ideas, or other ideas foreign to the text itself. Some apologists continue in a futile attempt to do that with Coptic John 1:1c.

For example, it is claimed that the indefinite ou.noute of Coptic John 1:1c should be translated as 'the one and only God,' because the indefinite article denotes unity, not 'a god.' As a "proof," 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 are quoted, where ou.noute n.ouwt is usually rendered as "one God."

But that is erroneous eisegesis. It is a blatant attempt to read philosophical dogma into Coptic grammar. The Coptic indefinite article ou does not of itself 'denote unity.' It simply means "a" when bound with a common or count Coptic noun like noute, "god." The Coptic text of the New Testament contains hundreds of examples that prove this. (For example, see Coptic Acts 28:6, where the anarthrous Greek theos is rendered by ou.noute in Sahidic (Sahidica) and ou.nouti in the Coptic Bohairic version. Horner and Greek-based English versions including the KJV render this as "a god.")

Further, it is not the Coptic indefinite article ou that means "one," but the bound idiom ou______n.ouwt. This idiom literally means "a single, an only," and is used in Coptic to denote "one," adjectivally: "one god," "one man," "one spirit," etc. (For example, see Coptic Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 6:16, 17)

Therefore, ou.noute n.ouwt simply means "one god." It is the context, not the grammar, of 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 that mandates the translation "one God" because the specific and definite reference in those verses is p.eiwt, "the Father," whom the Lord Jesus identifies as p.noute m.me m.mauaa.F , "the true God alone" (John 17:3 Horner), "the only true God."

Neither the grammar nor meaning of Coptic 1 Corinthians 8:6 or Ephesians 4:6 is the same as Coptic John 1:1c, so those verses cannot be used to exegete Coptic John 1:1c. Whereas ou.noute n.ouwt means a single god, i.e, "one god" or "one God" (in context, with reference to the Father), the fact remains that ou.noute means "a god." It does not mean some philosophical unity that calls for translating it as 'the one and only God.'

It would be far more honest to read Coptic John 1:1c for what it says, instead of trying to import foreign concepts into it.

And what Coptic John 1:1c clearly says is "the Word was a god." Or, if you prefer, "the Word was divine." But definitely not, "the Word was God."

Memra 

Ps. Personally I would grant these eisegetes their contention that John1:1c is stating that the son is one God, just as 1Corinthians 8:6 is stating that the Father is one God, so that I could then have it explained to me just how this rendering helps trinitarians' case.

 

The origin of Man and the design debate IV

 The Human Fossil Record Lacks Intermediaries 

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the fourth post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here.

If  humans evolved from ape-like creatures, what were the transitional species between the ape-like hominins discussed earlier in this series and the truly human-like members of the Homo genus found in the fossil record? There aren’t any good candidates. 

The Demise of Homo habilis 

Many have cited Homo habilis (literally “handy man”) as a tool-using species that was a transitional “link” between the australopithecines and Homo.1 But its association with tools is doubtful and appears driven mainly by evolutionary considerations Anthropologist Ian Tattersall calls it “a wastebasket taxon, little more than a convenient recipient.2 for a motley assortment of hominin fossils.”3 Ignoring these difficulties and assuming habilis was a real species, chronology precludes it from being ancestral to Homo: habiline remains postdate the earliest fossil evidence of the genus Homo.4

Morphological analyses further confirm that habilis makes an unlikely “intermediate” between Australopithecus and Homo — and show habilis doesn’t even belong in Homo. An authoritative review in Science by Bernard Wood and Mark Collard found that habilis differs from Homo in terms of body size, shape, mode of locomotion, jaws and teeth, developmental patterns, and brain size, and should be reclassified within Australopithecus.5 A study by Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer and Robert D. Martin in the Journal of Human Evolution found the skeleton of habilis was more similar to living apes than were other australopithecines like Lucy.6 They conclude, “It is difficult to accept an evolutionary sequence in which Homo habilis, with less human-like locomotor adaptations, is intermediate between Australopithecus afaren[s]is…and fully bipedal Homo erectus.”7 Alan Walker and Pat Shipman similarly called habilis “more apelike than Lucy” and remarked, “Rather than representing an intermediate between Lucy and humans, [habilis] looked very much like an intermediate between the ancestral chimp-like condition and Lucy.”8 Hartwig-Scherer explains that habilis “displays much stronger similarities to African ape limb proportions” than Lucy — results she calls “unexpected in view of previous accounts of Homo habilis as a link between australopithecines and humans.”9 

The Link Resurrected? 

The news media might be heavily biased toward evolution, but at least it is predictable. Whenever a new hominin fossil is discovered, reporters seize the opportunity to push human evolution. Thus it was no surprise when news outlets buzzed about the latest “human ancestor” after a new species, Homo naledi, was unveiled in 2015. 

CNN declared, “Homo naledi: New Species of Human Ancestor Discovered in South Africa.”10 The Daily Mail reported, “Scientists Discover Skull of New Human Ancestor Homo Naledi.”11 PBS pronounced, “Trove of Fossils from a Long-Lost Human Ancestor.”12 And so on.

The find is striking because it represents probably the largest cache of hominin bones — many hundreds — ever found. In a field where a single scrap of jaw ignites the community, this is a big deal. But do we know that Homo naledi is a human ancestor, as news outlets declared? Dig into the details, and the answer again is no.

The primary claim about Homo naledi is that it was a “transitional form” or “mosaic” — a small-brained, upright-walking hominin with a trunk similar to the australopithecines, but with human-like hands and feet. But the technical material shows that even some of those supposedly human-like traits have unique features:

The hands showed “a unique combination of anatomy”13 including “unique first metacarpal morphology,”14and long, curved fingers that suggest naledi was, unlike humans, well-suited for “climbing and suspension.”15

Its foot “differs from modern humans in having more curved proximal pedal phalanges, and features suggestive of a reduced medial longitudinal arch,” giving it an overall “unique locomotor repertoire.”16 The foot shows, again, that unlike humans, it was “likely comfortable climbing trees.”17

The technical papers also reveal “unique features in the femur and tibia” — making a hindlimb that “differs from those of all other known hominins.”18 As for the head, “Cranial morphology of H. naledi is unique…”19 Sound familiar? Whatever it was, overall naledi appears quite unique. 

Indeed, the discoverers of naledi called it “a unique mosaic previously unknown in the human fossil record.”20Such terminology should raise a red flag. In the parlance of evolutionary biology, “mosaic” usually means a fossil has a suite of traits that are difficult to fit into the standard evolutionary tree. That is the case here.

In 2010, some of the same scientists who discovered and promoted naledi — a team led by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand — were promoting a different hominin species, Australopithecus sediba, as the intermediate du jure between the australopithecines and Homo. However, sediba and naledi differ in important ways that make them unlikely partners in an evolutionary lineage. Specifically, sediba (classified within Australopithecus) had an advanced “Homo-like pelvis,”21 “surprisingly human teeth,”22 and a “human-like” lower trunk,23 whereas naledi — placed within Homo — bears an “australopith-like” and “primitive” pelvis,24 “primitive” teeth, and a “primitive or australopith-like trunk.”25 An australopithecine with apparently advanced Homo-like features seems a poor candidate to evolve into a member of Homo with primitive australopith-like versions of those same features. Thus, although both sediba and naledi have been said to be a human ancestor — by some of the same people, no less — evolutionarily speaking, traits are evolving in the wrong direction. As one news outlet put it: “Each [sediba and naledi] has different sets of australopith-like and human-like traits that can’t be easily reconciled on the same family tree.”26 

Problems with Chronology and Morphology 

In  any case, sediba cannot be ancestral to Homo because, like habilis, it postdates the origin of our genus and has the wrong morphology.27 Based upon fossil chronology, a 2019 study found that the likelihood that sediba is a human ancestor is less than 0.001.28 Commenting on sediba, Harvard’s Daniel Lieberman said, “The origins of the genus Homoremain as murky as ever,”29 and Donald Johanson remarked, “The transition to Homo continues to be almost totally confusing.”30

Another dubious claim about naledi is that it intentionally buried its dead — a testimony to its supposedly human-like intellect. Burying dead in the cave where it was found would require shimmying through a steep, narrow crevice while dragging a body a long distance in the dark — a physically challenging task for any hominin of any level of intelligence. For many reasons, multiple scientists — including two of Berger’s colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand — dispute the intentional burial hypothesis.31 Alison Brooks of George Washington University observed that claims of intentional burial are “so far out there that they really need a higher standard of proof.”32

But the deathblow to claims for Homo naledi as an ancestral or transitional fossil is its age. When first published, naledi‘s promoters suggested, on the basis of evolutionary considerations rather than geological evidence, that it lived 2–3 million years ago. But at that time the fossils hadn’t been dated geologically. Carol Ward of the University of Missouri warned, “Without dates, the fossils reveal almost nothing about hominin evolution.”33 This didn’t stop paleoanthropologists from speculating, predicting that naledi lived 2–3 million years ago and “represents an intermediate between Australopithecus and Homo erectus.”34 In 2017, Homo naledi‘s remains were dated to the “surprisingly” and “startlingly young” age of 236,000–335,000 years35 — an order of magnitude younger than the age predicted by evolutionary considerations, and far too young to be ancestral to our species. Anthropologist James Kidder candidly admitted, “Nearly everyone in the scientific community thought that the date of the Homo naledi fossils, when calculated, would fall within the same general time period as other primitive early Homo remains. We were wrong.”36

Many cautioned against the hype over naledi,37 and its trajectory resembles other hominins for which hyped claims of transitional or ancestral status eventually failed. When evaluating media claims of the newest human ancestor, a dose of healthy skepticism is warranted. 

Notes 

1)See Alan Walker and Pat Shipman, Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996), 133.

2)Jeffrey Schwartz and Ian Tattersall, “Defining the Genus Homo,” Science 349 (August 28, 2015), 931-932.

3)Ian Tattersall, “The Many Faces of Homo habilis,” Evolutionary Anthropology 1 (1992), 33-37.

4)See F. Spoor et al., “Implications of New Early Homo Fossils from Ileret, East of Lake Turkana, Kenya,” Nature 448 (August 9, 2007), 688-691; Seth Borenstein, “Fossils Paint Messy Picture of Human Origins,” NBC News (August 8, 2007), https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20178936 (accessed October 26, 2020).

5)Wood and Collard, “The Human Genus”; see also Mark Collard and Bernard Wood, “Defining the Genus Homo,” in Handbook of Paleoanthropology, 2107-2144.

6)Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer and Robert Martin, “Was ‘Lucy’ More Human than Her ‘Child’? Observations on Early Hominid Postcranial Skeletons,” Journal of Human Evolution 21 (1991), 439-449.

7)Hartwig-Scherer and Martin, “Was ‘Lucy’ More Human than Her ‘Child’?”

8)Walker and Shipman, Wisdom of the Bones, 132, 130.

9)Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer, “Apes or Ancestors?” Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design, ed. William A. Dembski (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 226.

10)David McKenzie and Hamilton Wende, “Homo naledi: New Species of Human Ancestor Discovered in South Africa,” CNN (September 10, 2015), http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/africa/homo-naledi-human-relative-species/ (accessed October 26, 2020).

11)Rachel Reilly, “Is This the First Human? Extraordinary Find in a South African Cave Suggests Man May Be Up to 2.8 Million Years Old,” Daily Mail(September 10, 2015), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3228991/New-species-ancient-human-discovered-Fossilised-remains-15-bodies-unearthed-South-African-cave.html (accessed October 26, 2020). 

12)Trove of Fossils from a Long-Lost Human Ancestor Is Greatest Find in Decades,” PBS Newshour (September 10, 2015), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-family (accessed October 26, 2020).

13)University of the Witwatersrand, “The Hand and Foot of Homo naledi,” ScienceDaily (October 6, 2015), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151006123631.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

14)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa,” eLife 4 (2015), e09560.

15)Tracy Kivell et al., “The Hand of Homo naledi,” Nature Communications 6 (October 6, 2015), 8431.

16)W.E.H. Harcourt-Smith et al., “The Foot of Homo naledi,” Nature Communications 6 (October 6, 2015), 8432.

17)American Museum of Natural History, “Foot Fossils of Human Relative Illustrate Evolutionary ‘Messiness’ of Bipedal Walking,” ScienceDaily(October 6, 2015), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151006131938.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

18)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo.”

19)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo.”

20)Harcourt-Smith et al., “The Foot of Homo naledi.”

21)Kate Wong, “First of Our Kind,” Scientific American (November 1, 2012), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-of-our-kind-2012-12-07/ (accessed October 26, 2020). See also Brandon Bryn, “Australopithecus sediba May Have Paved the Way for Homo,” AAAS News (September 8, 2011), http://www.aaas.org/news/science-australopithecus-sediba-may-have-paved-way-homo (accessed October 26, 2020).

22)Ann Gibbons, “A Human Smile and Funny Walk for Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340 (April 12, 2013), 132-133. See also Nadia Ramlagan, “Human Evolution Takes a Twist with Australopithecus sediba,” AAAS News (April 11, 2013), http://www.aaas.org/news/science-human-evolution-takes-twist-australopithecus-sediba (accessed October 26, 2020). 

23)Peter Schmid et al., “Mosaic Morphology in the Thorax of Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340 (April 12, 2013), 1234598; Charles Choi, “Humanity’s Closest Ancestor Was Pigeon-Toed, Research Reveals,” LiveScience (April 11, 2013), https://www.livescience.com/28656-closest-human-ancestor-was-pigeon-toed.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

24)Caroline Vansickle et al., “Primitive Pelvic Features in a New Species of Homo,” The 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 2016, http://meeting.physanth.org/program/2016/session39/vansickle-2016-primitive-pelvic-features-in-a-new-species-of-homo.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

25)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo.”

26)Ed Yong, “6 Tiny Cavers, 15 Odd Skeletons, and 1 Amazing New Species of Ancient Human,” The Atlantic (September 10, 2015), http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/ (accessed October 26, 2020).

27)Andrew Du and Zeresenay Alemseged, “Temporal evidence shows Australopithecus sediba is unlikely to be the ancestor of Homo,” Science Advances5 (May 8, 2019), eaav9038; Tim White, “Five’s a Crowd in Our Family Tree,” Current Biology 23 (February 4, 2013), R112-R115; William Kimbel, “Hesitation on Hominin History,” Nature 497 (May 30, 2013), 573-574; Gibbons, “Human Smile and Funny Walk for Australopithecus sediba”; Gibbons, “Who Was Homo habilis?” Science 332 (June 17, 2011), 1370-1371; Nicholas Wade, “New Fossils May Redraw Human Ancestry,” New York Times (September 8, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/science/09fossils.html (accessed October 26, 2020); John Noble Wilford, “Some Prehumans Feasted on Bark instead of Grasses,” New York Times (June 27, 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/science/australopithecus-sediba-preferred-forest-foods-fossil-teeth-suggest.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

28)Du and Alemseged, “Temporal evidence shows Australopithecus sediba is unlikely to be the ancestor of Homo.” 

29)Carl Zimmer, “Yet Another ‘Missing Link,’” Slate (April 8, 2010), http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/04/yet_another_missing_link.single.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

30)Michael Balter, “Candidate Human Ancestor from South Africa Sparks Praise and Debate,” Science 328 (April 9, 2010), 154-155.

31)See Kate Wong, “Debate Erupts over Strange New Human Species,” Scientific American (April 8, 2016), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-erupts-over-strange-new-human-species/ (accessed October 26, 2020); Tanya Farber, “Professor’s Claims Rattle Naledi’s bones,” Sunday Times (April 24, 2016), http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/04/24/Professors-claims-rattle-Naledis-bones (accessed October 26, 2020); Aurore Val, “Deliberate Body Disposal by Hominins in the Dinaledi Chamber, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa?,” Journal of Human Evolution 96 (2016), 145-148.

32)Kate Wong, “Mysterious New Human Species Emerges from Heap of Fossils,” Scientific American (September 10, 2015), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mysterious-new-human-species-emerges-from-heap-of-fossils/ (accessed October 26, 2020). 

33)Quoted in Yong, “6 Tiny Cavers.” 

34)University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, “Ancient ancestor of humans with tiny brain discovered,” ScienceDaily (September 10, 2015), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150910084610.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

35)University of the Witwatersrand, “Homo naledi’s surprisingly young age opens up more questions on where we come from,” ScienceDaily (May 9, 2017), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170509083554.htm (accessed October 26, 2020). See also Dirks et al., “The age of Homo naledi and associated sediments in the Rising Star Cave, South Africa,” eLife 6 (2017), e24231.

36)James Kidder, “What Homo Naledi Means for the Study of Human Evolution,” BioLogos (May 30, 2017), http://biologos.org/blogs/guest/what-homo-naledi-means-for-the-study-of-human-evolution (accessed October 26, 2020).

37)See Chris Stringer, “Human Evolution: The Many Mysteries of Homo naledi,” eLife 4 (2015), e10627; Daniel Curnoe, “What About Homo naledi’s Geologic Age?,” Phys.org (September 15, 2015), http://phys.org/news/2015-09-opinion-homo-naledi-geologic-age.html (accessed October 26, 2020). 

The origin of Man and the design debate. III

Australopithecines and Retroactive Confessions of Ignorance 

Casey Luskin  

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the third post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here. 

Many paleoanthropologists believe that the later hominins called australopithecines were upright-walking and ancestral to our genus Homo. Dig into the details, however, and ask basic questions like Who?, Where?, and When?, and there is much controversy. As one paper noted, “there is little consensus on which species of Australopithecus is the closest to Homo,”1 if any. Even the origin of genus Australopithecus itself is unclear.

Retroactive Confessions of Ignorance 

In 2006, National Geographic ran a story titled “Fossil Find Is Missing Link in Human Evolution, Scientists Say,”2 reporting the discovery of what the Associated Press called “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.”3 The fossils, belonging to species Australopithecus anamensis, were said to link Ardipithecus to its supposed australopithecine descendants. 

What exactly was found? According to the technical paper, the claims were based upon canine teeth of intermediate “masticatory robusticity.”4 If a few teeth of intermediate size and shape make “the most complete chain of human evolution so far,” then the evidence for human evolution must be indeed quite modest.

Besides learning to distrust media hype, there is another lesson here. Accompanying the praise of this “missing link” were retroactive confessions of ignorance. That’s where evolutionists acknowledge a severe gap in their model only after thinking they have found evidence to plug that gap. Thus, the technical paper reporting these teeth admitted, “Until recently, the origins of Australopithecus were obscured by a sparse fossil record” and noted, “The origin of Australopithecus, the genus widely interpreted as ancestral to Homo, is a central problem in human evolutionary studies.”5

Evolutionists who retroactively confess ignorance risk that the evidence that supposedly filled the gap may not prove very convincing. This seems to be the case here, where a couple of teeth were all that stood between an unsolved “central problem in human evolutionary studies” — the origin of australopithecines — and “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.” Moreover, we’re left with admissions that the origin of australopithecines is “obscured.” 

Australopithecines Are like Apes 

and curved fingers, relatively long arms, and funnel-shaped chest.”8 It further reported “good evidence” from Lucy’s hand-bones that her species “‘knuckle-walked,’ as chimps and gorillas do.”9 A New Scientist article adds that Lucy appears well-adapted for climbing, since “Everything about her skeleton, from fingertips to toes, suggests that Lucy and her sisters retain several traits that would be very suitable for climbing in trees.”10 Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin argue that A. afarensis and other australopithecines “almost certainly were not adapted to a striding gait and running, as humans are.”11 They recount paleontologist Peter Schmid’s striking surprise upon realizing Lucy’s nonhuman qualities: “What you see in Australopithecus is not what you’d want in an efficient bipedal running animal.”12

As for Lucy’s pelvis, many claim it indicates bipedal locomotion, but Johanson and his team reported it was “badly crushed” with “distortion” and “cracking” when first discovered.13 These problems led one paper to propose Lucy’s pelvis appears “different from other australopithecines and so close to the human condition” due to “error in the reconstruction…creating a very ‘human-like’ sacral plane.”14 Another paper concluded that a lack of clear fossil data prevents paleoanthropologists from making firm conclusions about Lucy’s mode of locomotion: “The available data at present are open to widely different interpretations.”15 

More Differences from Humans 

Other studies confirm australopithecine differences from humans, and similarities with apes. Their inner ear canals — responsible for balance and related to locomotion — are different from Homo but similar to great apes.16 Traits like their ape-like developmental patterns17 and ape-like ability for prehensile grasping by their toes18 led a Nature reviewer to say that “ecologically they [australopithecines] may still be considered as apes.”19 Another analysis in Nature found the australopithecine skeleton shows “a mosaic of features unique to themselves and features bearing some resemblances to those of the orangutan,” and concluded that “the possibility that any of the australopithecines is a direct part of human ancestry recedes.”20 A 2007 paper reported “[g]orilla-like anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis mandibles,” which was “unexpected,” and “cast[s] doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor.”21

Paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello states that when it comes to locomotion, “[a]ustralopithecines are like apes, and the Homo group are like humans. Something major occurred when Homo evolved, and it wasn’t just in the brain.”22 The “something major” was the abrupt appearance of the human-like body plan — without direct evolutionary precursors in the fossil record. 

Notes 

1)Henry McHenry and Katherine Coffing, “Australopithecus to Homo: Transformations in Body and Mind,” Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (2000), 125-146.

2)John Roach, “Fossil Find Is Missing Link in Human Evolution, Scientists Say,” National Geographic News (April 13, 2006), https://web.archive.org/web/20060423155712/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0413_060413_evolution.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

3)Seth Borenstein, “Fossil Discovery Fills Gap in Human Evolution,” NBC News (April 12, 2006), https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna12286206 (accessed October 26, 2020). 

4)See Tim White et al., “Asa Issie, Aramis, and the Origin of Australopithecus,” Nature 440 (April 13, 2006), 883-889.

5)White et al., “Asa Issie, Aramis, and the Origin of Australopithecus.”

6)Bernard Wood, “Evolution of the Australopithecines,” The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, eds. Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 231-240.

7)Wood, “Evolution of the Australopithecines.”

8)Mark Collard and Leslie Aiello, “From Forelimbs to Two Legs,” Nature 404 (March 23, 2000), 339-340.

9)Collard and Aiello, “From Forelimbs to Two Legs.” See also Brian Richmond and David Strait, “Evidence That Humans Evolved from a Knuckle-Walking Ancestor,” Nature 404 (March 23, 2000), 382-385.

10)Jeremy Cherfas, “Trees Have Made Man Upright,” New Scientist 97 (January 20, 1983), 172-177. 

11)Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (New York: Anchor, 1993), 195.

12)Leakey and Lewin, Origins Reconsidered, 193-194.

13)Donald Johanson et al., “Morphology of the Pliocene Partial Hominid Skeleton (A.L. 288-1) From the Hadar Formation, Ethiopia,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 57 (1982), 403-451.

14)François Marchal, “A New Morphometric Analysis of the Hominid Pelvic Bone,” Journal of Human Evolution 38 (March 2000), 347-365.

15)M.M. Abitbol, “Lateral View of Australopithecus afarensis: Primitive Aspects of Bipedal Positional Behavior in the Earliest Hominids,” Journal of Human Evolution 28 (March 1995), 211-229 (internal citations removed).

16)Fred Spoor et al., “Implications of Early Hominid Labyrinthine Morphology for Evolution of Human Bipedal Locomotion,” Nature 369 (June 23, 1994), 645-648.

17)Timothy Bromage and M. Christopher Dean, “Re-Evaluation of the Age at Death of Immature Fossil Hominids,” Nature 317 (October 10, 1985), 525-527.

18)Ronald Clarke and Phillip Tobias, “Sterkfontein Member 2 Foot Bones of the Oldest South African Hominid,” Science 269 (July 28, 1995), 521-524.

19)Peter Andrews, “Ecological Apes and Ancestors,” Nature 376 (August 17, 1995), 555-556.

20)C.E. Oxnard, “The Place of the Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt?” Nature 258 (December 4, 1975), 389-395. 

21)Yoel Rak, Avishag Ginzburg, and Eli Geffen, “Gorilla-Like Anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis Mandibles Suggests Au. afarensis Link to Robust Australopiths,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (April 17, 2007), 6568-6572.

22)Leslie Aiello, quoted in Leakey and Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human, 196. See also Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, “The Human Genus,” Science 284 (April 2, 1999), 65-71. 

 

Phillipians2:5,6 and the trinity.

 Phillipians2:5,6NASB"5Have this attitude [e]in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be [f]grasped," 

Some claim that this proves that the apostolic church had already accepted the trinity or at the very very least that Jesus was the God of the bible in some way. 

 

 Some questions I always have to ask about so called trinitarian proof texts are, why the coyness?  If Jesus is the only true God,why don't the bible writers simply say it in plain language ? After all there was (is)never any debate as to Godhood of the God and Father of Jesus . The scriptures are quite clear that the God of Jesus is the most high God.

John10:29NASB"My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; ..." 

Note the God of Jesus is Greater than ALL (not many,not most) 

Acts3:13NASB"13The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His [d]servant Jesus,..." 

JEHOVAH is God and Lord of Jesus and the nation of Israel stated in so many words. 

Does it ever bother trinitarians that in contrast to such straightforward declarations re: the supremacy of the God and Father of Jesus , we always have to indulge in these farfetched contrivances in order to extract some vague similitude of their dogma from the Holy Scriptures.  So let us now prayerfully let the bible speak for itself re:phillipians2:5,6. We(Christians) are first urged to have the same attitude that Christ always has. What attitude is that? To consider ourselves equal to our God? If he is equal to God he is not bound by law to obey God. Thus his obedience would not be a matter of righteousness. He would remain righteous whether he cooperated with God or not.  Thus his cooperating with his God would be considered a favor with no legal merit accruing to him. And of course if he acquired no legal merit for himself he could impute none to us. Surely this is the opposite of the point the writer is trying to make. The word rendered existed in the passage is 'huparchon' some have attempted to suggest that this means that Christ has always existed in the (Morphe) form of JEHOVAH. According to strong's 'huparchon' means 

"From hupo and archomai; to begin under (quietly)" 

 Unsurprisingly then this word is NEVER used of JEHOVAH in either the Greek new testament or the Greek  old testament. 

It is however used of Man.

1Corinthians11:7NKJV"7For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is (Huparchon)the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man." 

Thus the use of the word 'Huparchon' suggest the inverse of what some trinitarian apologists claim it does. 

Some have also desperately attempted to conscript the word 'morphe' rendered form in the NASB. Thus they claim that 'morphe' means that he possessed the very nature of the supreme being and thus was the supreme being or in some kind of mystical union with the supreme being. 

Strong's 3444" Perhaps from the base of meros (through the idea of adjustment of parts); shape; figuratively, nature -- form." 

Thus being in the 'morphe' of the God (not merely the Father) does not make one identical to the God,indeed it seems trite to point out that the God existed in the form of the God. 

   Isaiah44:13NASB" craftsman of wood extends a measuring line; he outlines it with a marker. He works it with carving knives and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form(Morphe) of a man, like the beauty of mankind, so that it may sit in a house. " 

  Obviously the prophet was not suggesting that this artesan's carvings possessed the very nature of a man. Surely if he possessed such capabilities he would claim Godhood for himself. 

Thus yet another farfetched attempt by Trinitarians to read their absurdity into the scriptures fails

Physics: better at describing than explaining reality?

 Can Physics Account for Our Whole Reality? 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

If only we could reduce the world to an equation — preferably one that is solvable — many think we would understand life better.

University of Durham philosopher Nancy Cartwright takes issue with that, arguing that the universe is “beautifully dappled, and requires a dappled science to explain it.” She is the author, most recently, of A Philosopher Looks at Science (Cambridge University Press, 2022). And she says,

If physics is to have total dominion, she must not only help out with chemical bonding, signal transmission in neurons, the flow of petrol in a carburettor, and the like. She must be able in principle to entirely take over the disciplines that usually study these things, to explain and predict the rise in teenage pregnancies, the current level of inflation, the Protestant Reformation, and the fate of migrants crossing the channel. Plus, she must be able to get me off the hook for shouting at my daughter: after all, I was just obeying the laws of physics.

NANCY CARTWRIGHT, “PHYSICS CAN’T DEAL WITH REALITY’S COMPLEXITY” AT IAI. NEWS (OCTOBER 17, 2022) 

Now that She Mentions It 

Pop psychology has indeed featured many theories that tie together disparate phenomena like inflation, the Reformation, and shouting at loved ones. It’s comparatively easy to link very complex events to one another if we are allowed to choose any link we wish. Some might link Hurricane Ian with municipal elections in Vancouver and with high-starch diets in Texas. It takes creativity but many people have plenty of that. 

Physics sets itself a harder goal: showing the numbers (serious numbers, not pop stats) and a rigorous theory behind them. That necessarily means leaving out a great deal, assuming that what is omitted is subsumed in the theory. But is it? 

The idea of physics as queen of all that happens has powerful implications about just what the world we live in must be like. It must be a world made up entirely of the basic entities of physics — fundamental particles, curved space-time and the like — entities that have only the mathematical features that physics equations describe, features that often have no names of their own other than the names of the mathematical objects that are supposed to represent them, like the “quantum state vector” and the “metric tensor” of general relativity. The world has to be that way since these are the kinds of features that physics can rule.

NANCY CARTWRIGHT, “PHYSICS CAN’T DEAL WITH REALITY’S COMPLEXITY” AT IAI. NEWS (OCTOBER 17, 2022) 

The World We Live In 

Cartwright offers an alternative approach: 

Instead of supposing that physics must be queen of all we survey, I recommend we construct our image of what an ultimate science might be like on the basis of what current science is like when it is most successful, from putting people on the moon to devising and carrying out a plan for the complete evacuation of the Royal Marsden Hospital (which took just 28 minutes when called into play by a gigantic fire, 2 January 2008)… This is a world in which irritability, generosity and social exclusion can affect what happens just as gravity and electromagnetic repulsion can.

NANCY CARTWRIGHT, “PHYSICS CAN’T DEAL WITH REALITY’S COMPLEXITY” AT IAI. NEWS (OCTOBER 17, 2022) 

As she says, that’s the world we actually live in, a world of many tiny, intersecting worlds where causes can include anything from fundamental physics to social psychology.

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

Ps. That's the problem with reductionist physicalism (and reductionist spiritualism) it presumes that describing =explaining and that explaining = explaining away.

Why Christendom remains Christ's archenemy.

 How the Russian Orthodox Church is Helping Drive Putin’s War in Ukraine 

BY GERALDINE FAGAN APRIL 15, 2022 7:00 AM EDT

Fagan is the author of Believing in Russia—Religious Policy after Communism 

To Vladimir Putin, Orthodox Christianity is a tool for asserting Moscow’s rights over sovereign Ukraine. In his February televised address announcing the recent invasion of Ukraine, he argued the inhabitants of that “ancient Russian land” were Orthodox from time immemorial, and now faced persecution from an illegitimate regime in Kyiv.

Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most tangible cultural bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The gilded domes of Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves and St. Sophia Cathedral have beckoned pilgrims from across both lands for nigh on a thousand years. 

With religious rhetoric, Putin taps into a long tradition that imagines a Greater Russia extending across present-day Ukraine and Belarus, in a combined territory known as Holy Rus’. Nostalgic for empire, this sees the spiritual unity of the three nations as key to Russia’s earthly power as an exceptional civilization. Encouraged by Putin’s “special operation,” Russian Orthodox nationalists are excitedly recalling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk fortold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”

Putin is not the first modern Moscow ruler to co-opt this idea in seeking to consolidate secular power. During the darkest hours of World War Two, Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church—having almost bled it dry—and replaced the communist Internationale with a new national anthem. Its lyrics asserted that the Soviet Union was “unbreakable, welded together forever by Great Rus’.”

Around 2007 the Kremlin further advanced the allied concept of Russky Mir, or the Russian World, initially a soft power project aimed at promoting Russian culture worldwide and likened by Patriarch Kirill to the British Commonwealth. Putin, however—unsettled by mass protests against his authoritarian regime in 2011-12 as well as those that toppled his vassal in Ukraine in 2013-14—has since twisted both Holy Rus’ and the Russian World to serve a more violent agenda.

Outsized emphasis now goes to Russia’s tradition of warrior saints. It was by remarkable coincidence, Putin told thousands of flag-waving supporters at a recent Moscow stadium rally, that the military operation in Ukraine commenced on the birthday of Saint Theodore Ushakov, an eighteenth-century Russian naval commander famed for never losing a single battle. “He once said, ‘This threat will serve to glorify Russia,’” Putin enthused. “That was the case then, is now, and ever shall be! 

Cast aside is an alternative Christian holy tradition of defiant passive resistance, exemplified by the first saints to be canonized in medieval Rus’, the Kyiv princes Boris and Gleb, who accepted martyrdom at the hands of their brother. “They gave up without a fight,” Putin once remarked in disgust. “This cannot be an example for us.” With the attack on Kyiv’s current ruler, even small acts of Christian pacifism by Russians are quashed. A remote village priest was fined hundreds of dollars for publicly refusing to support the war and thus “call black—white, evil—good.” A young woman was detained outside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral for holding up a simple sign bearing the biblical commandment, “Thou shallt not kill.”  

In this Putin can count on the backing of a body of jingoistic opinion now dominating the Church hierarchy. Flanked by medal-laden Defense Minister Shoigu at the 2020 consecration of a cavernous black and green military cathedral, Patriarch Kirill prayed that Russia’s armed forces would never suffer defeat. This March, on the very same spot where Pussy Riot made their infamous protest against cozy Church-Kremlin ties a decade ago, the Patriarch presented an icon to the head of Russia’s National Guard—the same unit now reportedly suffering heavy losses in Ukraine—in the hope that this would “inspire new recruits taking their oath.” 

Kirill is not an outlier in his support for the war, as no senior cleric inside Russia has expressed dissent. “Everything the president does is right,” one archbishop told local news agency Regnum in late March. “Speaking as a monarchist, I would personally place a crown upon Putin’s head if God granted the opportunity.” Similar fervor is found among respected Moscow parish priests. “Russian peacekeepers are conducting a special operation in order to hold Nuremberg trials against the whole of Europe,” one preached during a recent sermon, as he denied reports of civilian casualties. “What is the West able to produce? Only ISIS and ne

To Vladimir Putin, Orthodox Christianity is a tool for asserting Moscow’s rights over sovereign Ukraine. In his February televised address announcing the recent invasion of Ukraine, he argued the inhabitants of that “ancient Russian land” were Orthodox from time immemorial, and now faced persecution from an illegitimate regime in Kyiv.

Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most tangible cultural bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The gilded domes of Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves and St. Sophia Cathedral have beckoned pilgrims from across both lands for nigh on a thousand years

With religious rhetoric, Putin taps into a long tradition that imagines a Greater Russia extending across present-day Ukraine and Belarus, in a combined territory known as Holy Rus’. Nostalgic for empire, this sees the spiritual unity of the three nations as key to Russia’s earthly power as an exceptional civilization. Encouraged by Putin’s “special operation,” Russian Orthodox nationalists are excitedly recalling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk fortold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”

Putin is not the first modern Moscow ruler to co-opt this idea in seeking to consolidate secular power. During the darkest hours of World War Two, Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church—having almost bled it dry—and replaced the communist Internationale with a new national anthem. Its lyrics asserted that the Soviet Union was “unbreakable, welded together forever by Great Rus’.”

Around 2007 the Kremlin further advanced the allied concept of Russky Mir, or the Russian World, initially a soft power project aimed at promoting Russian culture worldwide and likened by Patriarch Kirill to the British Commonwealth. Putin, however—unsettled by mass protests against his authoritarian regime in 2011-12 as well as those that toppled his vassal in Ukraine in 2013-14—has since twisted both Holy Rus’ and the Russian World to serve a more violent agenda.

Outsized emphasis now goes to Russia’s tradition of warrior saints. It was by remarkable coincidence, Putin told thousands of flag-waving supporters at a recent Moscow stadium rally, that the military operation in Ukraine commenced on the birthday of Saint Theodore Ushakov, an eighteenth-century Russian naval commander famed for never losing a single battle. “He once said, ‘This threat will serve to glorify Russia,’” Putin enthused. “That was the case then, is now, and ever shall be!”

Cast aside is an alternative Christian holy tradition of defiant passive resistance, exemplified by the first saints to be canonized in medieval Rus’, the Kyiv princes Boris and Gleb, who accepted martyrdom at the hands of their brother. “They gave up without a fight,” Putin once remarked in disgust. “This cannot be an example for us.” With the attack on Kyiv’s current ruler, even small acts of Christian pacifism by Russians are quashed. A remote village priest was fined hundreds of dollars for publicly refusing to support the war and thus “call black—white, evil—good.” A young woman was detained outside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral for holding up a simple sign bearing the biblical commandment, “Thou shallt not kill"

In this Putin can count on the backing of a body of jingoistic opinion now dominating the Church hierarchy. Flanked by medal-laden Defense Minister Shoigu at the 2020 consecration of a cavernous black and green military cathedral, Patriarch Kirill prayed that Russia’s armed forces would never suffer defeat. This March, on the very same spot where Pussy Riot made their infamous protest against cozy Church-Kremlin ties a decade ago, the Patriarch presented an icon to the head of Russia’s National Guard—the same unit now reportedly suffering heavy losses in Ukraine—in the hope that this would “inspire new recruits taking their oath.”

Kirill is not an outlier in his support for the war, as no senior cleric inside Russia has expressed dissent. “Everything the president does is right,” one archbishop told local news agency Regnum in late March. “Speaking as a monarchist, I would personally place a crown upon Putin’s head if God granted the opportunity.” Similar fervor is found among respected Moscow parish priests. “Russian peacekeepers are conducting a special operation in order to hold Nuremberg trials against the whole of Europe,” one preached during a recent sermon, as he denied reports of civilian casualties. “What is the West able to produce? Only ISIS and neofascism.”

This priest concluded his sermon with the hope that Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Georgia would be reunited with Russia, in addition to Ukraine. But if Putin is looking to burnish his legacy as gatherer of historical Russian lands, there is a problem. The inhabitants of Ukraine are not interested in being “liberated” by his operation to “de-Nazify” their country. “The Russian World has arrived!” one woman shouted sarcastically as she filmed invading troops facing off against a crowd of angry locals just 20 miles from Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia. “We are not waiting for you, so get out of here!” Within hours of the first missile strikes on February 24, even the the Orthodox Church in Ukraine that is under the Patriarch of Moscow turned indignantly to Putin. “We ask that you stop this fratricidal war immediately,” 

Metropolitan Onuphry implored. “Such a war has justification before neither God nor man.” 

Putin’s is thus a spiritual, as well as military, misadventure. Similar to Stalin’s pivot at the lowest point in World War Two, his reliance upon the Orthodox Church over the last decade smacks of desperation. It hardly stems from personal commitment to the faith: while projected as a believer from the beginning of his presidency, for more than a decade Putin largely rebuffed the Church’s policy goals—such as mandatory classes on Orthodoxy in public schools—until his need for autocratic symbolism prevailed after his return to the presidency in 2011-12. Throughout his rule he has consistently spoken and behaved at odds with normative Orthodox Christian behavior, such as by claiming that choice of faith is unimportant since all religious categories are human invention, or when awkwardly greeting Patriarch Kirill with the gestures reserved for venerating a sacred relic or icon.

Bellicose rhetoric from Orthodox clerics does resonate with some devout Russians, but this is a narrow swath of the population. While a 2019 national poll found that over 60 percent of Russians older than 25 identify as Orthodox, those attentive to institutional Church life—such as by attending Easter worship services—amount to only a few percent. The same poll found a precipitous drop in those identifying as Orthodox among the 18-24 age group—just 23 percent. 

This contrasts starkly with Ukraine, where a quarter of the population attends Easter services and a majority of 18-24 year-olds define as believers. Swift and total alienation of millions of Ukrainian Orthodox is a colossal price for Patriarch Kirill to pay for loyalty to Putin, Ukraine being where a third of his parishes and monasteries are located. The Patriarch’s international standing is also shot, as Orthodox abroad not gagged by the Kremlin’s new ban on criticism of the Russian armed forces have condemned the war—including Kirill’s own bishops in Estonia and Lithuania—along with Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead of a Russian World, the Moscow Patriarch may soon find his authority stopping at the borders of the Russian Federation.

The Church’s dwindling reach thus means that Putin cannot use it to restore the age-old dream of an expanded Holy Rus’. Approaching 70, however, Russia’s president has no long-term ambition to consolidate Orthodox spirituality—only his personal grip on power for however many more years God grants him. 

Ps. My one problem with this article is the singling out of the Russian church. The fact is that while giving lip service to peace the churches of Christendom have given support(much of it active support) to both sides of this fratricidal stupidity.

The thumb print of JEHOVAH : Geography edition.

 Luskin: The Intelligent Design of Earth for Life 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

On a new episode of ID the Future geologist Casey Luskin explains how Earth contains many intricate geological processes required for life. He argues that, taken together, these point to intelligent design rather than dumb luck. This episode is the first half of a talk Dr. Luskin presented at the 2022 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. Download the podcast or listen to it here. 

The origin of Man and the design debate II

 The Standard Story of Human Evolution: A Critical Look 

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the second post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here.

Despite disagreements, there is a standard story of human evolution that is retold in countless textbooks, news media articles, and documentaries. Indeed, virtually all the scientists I am citing here accept some evolutionary account of human origins, albeit flawed. 

Starting with the early hominins and moving through the australopithecines, and then into the genus Homo, I will review the fossil evidence and assess whether it supports this standard account of human evolution. As we shall see, the evidence — or lack thereof — often contradicts this evolutionary story. 

Early Hominins 

In 2015, two leading paleoanthropologists reviewed the fossil evidence regarding human evolution in a prestigious scientific volume titled Macroevolution. They acknowledged the “dearth of unambiguous evidence for ancestor-descendant lineages,” and admitted,  

[T]he evolutionary sequence for the majority of hominin lineages is unknown. Most hominin taxa, particularly early hominins, have no obvious ancestors, and in most cases ancestor-descendant sequences (fossil time series) cannot be reliably constructed.1 

Nevertheless, numerous theories have been promoted about early hominins and their ancestral relationships to humans. 

Sahelanthropus tchadensis: The Toumai Skull 

Although Sahelanthropus tchadensis (also known as the Toumai skull) is known only from one skull and some jaw fragments, it has been called the oldest-known hominin on the human line. When first published, articles in the journal Nature called it “the earliest known hominid ancestor”2 and “close to the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees”;3 as of 2020, the Smithsonian Institution still called it “one of the oldest known species in the human family tree.”4

But not everyone agrees. Brigitte Senut, of the Natural History Museum in Paris, called Toumai “the skull of a female gorilla,”5 and co-wrote in Nature that “Sahelanthropus was an ape,” not bipedal, and that many features “link the specimen with chimpanzees, gorillas or both, to the exclusion of hominids.”6 In 2020, nearly two decades after the fossil was first reported, the debate was seemingly settled when the femur of Sahelanthropus was finally described, confirming that it was a quadruped with a chimp-like body plan.7 This evidence forced the researchers to suggest that if Sahelanthropus were a human ancestor, then that would mean bipedality is no longer a necessary qualification for status as a hominid8 — an unorthodox view that would wreak havoc with the primate tree. More likely is the view of Madelaine Böhme at the University of Tübingen in Germany: “itʼs more similar to a chimp than to any other hominin,”9 meaning, as another commentator put it, Sahelanthropus “was not a hominin, and thus was not the earliest known human ancestor.”10 

Precious Little Orrorin tugenensis 

Orrorin, which means “original man” in a Kenyan language, was a chimpanzee-sized primate known only from “an assortment of bone fragments,”11 including pieces of the arm, thigh, lower jaw, and some teeth. When it was initially discovered, the New York Times declared, “Fossils May Be Earliest Human Link,”12 and reported that Orrorin “may be the earliest known ancestor of the human family.”13 Nature responded to such hype by warning that the “excitement needs to be tempered with caution in assessing the claim of a six-million-year-old direct ancestor of modern humans.”14

That seems like wise advice. Paleoanthropologists initially claimed Orrorin’s femur indicates bipedal locomotion “appropriate for a population standing at the dawn of the human lineage,”15 but a later Yale University Press commentary admitted, “All in all, there is currently precious little evidence bearing on how Orrorin moved.”16 

Ardipithecus ramidus: Irish Stew or Breakthrough of the Year? 

reconstructions weren’t satisfied that the fossil was a bipedal human ancestor. Primatologist Esteban Sarmiento concluded in Science that “[a]ll of the Ar. ramidus bipedal characters cited also serve the mechanical requisites of quadrupedality, and in the case of Ar. ramidus foot-segment proportions, find their closest functional analog to those of gorillas, a terrestrial or semiterrestrial quadruped and not a facultative or habitual biped.”25 Bernard Wood questioned whether Ardi’s postcranial skeleton qualified it as a hominin,26 and co-wrote in Nature that if “Ardipithecus is assumed to be a hominin,” then it had “remarkably high levels of homoplasy [similarity] among extant great apes.”27 A 2021 study found that Ardi’s hands were well-suited for climbing and swinging in trees, and for knuckle-walking, giving it a chimp-like mode of locomotion.28 In other words, Ardi had ape-like characteristics which, if we set aside the preferences of Ardi’s promoters, should imply a closer relationship to apes than to humans. As the authors of the Nature article stated, Ardi’s “being a human ancestor is by no means the simplest, or most parsimonious explanation.”29Sarmiento even observed that Ardi had characteristics different from both humans and African apes, such as its unfused jaw joint, which ought to remove her far from human ancestry.30

Whatever Ardi was, everyone agrees the fossils was initially badly crushed and needed extensive reconstruction. No doubt this debate will continue, but are we obligated to accept the “human ancestor” position promoted by Ardi’s discoverers in the media? Sarmiento doesn’t think so. According Time magazine, he “regards the hype around Ardi to have been overblown.”31 

Notes 

1) Bernard Wood and Mark Grabowski, “Macroevolution in and around the Hominin Clade,” Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, and Evidence, eds. Serrelli Emanuele and Nathalie Gontier (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2015), 347-376.

2)Michel Brunet et al., “Sahelanthropus or ‘Sahelpithecus’?,” Nature 419 (October 10, 2002), 582.

3)Michel Brunet et al., “A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa,” Nature 418 (July 11, 2002), 145-151. See also Michel Brunet et al., “New material of the earliest hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad,” Nature 434 (April 7, 2005), 752-755. 

4)Smithsonian Natural Museum of Natural History, “Sahelanthropus tchadensis,” https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/sahelanthropus-tchadensis (accessed November 30, 2020).

5)“Skull Find Sparks Controversy,” BBC News (July 12, 2002), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2125244.stm (accessed October 26, 2020).

6)Milford Wolpoff et al., “Sahelanthropus or ‘Sahelpithecus’?” Nature 419 (October 10, 2002), 581-582.

7)Roberto Macchiarelli et al., “Nature and relationships of Sahelanthropus tchadensis,” Journal of Human Evolution 149 (2020), 102898.

8)Macchiarelli et al., “Nature and relationships of Sahelanthropus tchadensis.”

9)Madelaine Böhme, quoted in Michael Marshall, “Our supposed earliest human relative may have walked on four legs,” New Scientist (November 18, 2020), https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833093-600-our-supposed-earliest-human-relative-may-have-walked-on-four-legs/ (accessed November 30, 2020).

10)Bob Yirka, “Study of partial left femur suggests Sahelanthropus tchadensis was not a hominin after all,” Phys.org (November 24, 2020), https://phys.org/news/2020-11-partial-left-femur-sahelanthropus-tchadensis.html (accessed November 30, 2020 

11)Potts and Sloan, What Does It Mean to Be Human?, 38.

12)John Noble Wilford, “Fossils May Be Earliest Human Link,” New York Times (July 12, 2001), http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/12/world/fossils-may-be-earliest-human-link.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

13)John Noble Wilford, “On the Trail of a Few More Ancestors,” New York Times (April 8, 2001), http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/on-the-trail-of-a-few-more-ancestors.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

14)Leslie Aiello and Mark Collard, “Our Newest Oldest Ancestor?” Nature 410 (March 29, 2001), 526-527.

15)K. Galik et al., “External and Internal Morphology of the BAR 1002’00 Orrorin tugenensis Femur,” Science 305 (September 3, 2004), 1450-1453.

16)Sarmiento, Sawyer, and Milner, The Last Human, 35.

17)Tim White, quoted in Ann Gibbons, “In Search of the First Hominids,” Science 295 (February 15, 2002), 1214-1219.

18)Jennifer Viegas, “‘Ardi,’ Oldest Human Ancestor, Unveiled,” Discovery News (October 1, 2009), https://web.archive.org/web/20110613073934/http://news.discovery.com/history/ardi-human-ancestor.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

19)Randolph Schmid, “World’s Oldest Human-Linked Skeleton Found,” NBC News (October 1, 2009), https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna33110809 (accessed October 26, 2020). 

20(Ann Gibbons, “Breakthrough of the Year: Ardipithecus ramidus,” Science 326 (December 18, 2009), 1598-1599. 

21)Gibbons, “New Kind of Ancestor,” 36-40.

22)White, quoted in Gibbons, “In Search of the First Hominids,” 1214-1219, 1215-1216.

23)Michael Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “Ardi Is a New Piece for the Evolution Puzzle,” Time (October 1, 2009), http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1927289,00.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

24)Gibbons, “New Kind of Ancestor,” 36-40, 39.

25)Esteban Sarmiento, “Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus,” Science 328 (May 28, 2010), 1105b.

26)Gibbons, “New Kind of Ancestor,” 36-40.

27)Bernard Wood and Terry Harrison, “The Evolutionary Context of the First Hominins,” Nature 470 (February 17, 2011), 347-352.

28)Thomas C. Prang, Kristen Ramirez, Mark Grabowski, and Scott A. Williams, “Ardipithecus hand provides evidence that humans and chimpanzees evolved from an ancestor with suspensory adaptations,” Science Advances 7 (February 24, 2021), eabf2474.

29)New York University, “Fossils may look like human bones: Biological anthropologists question claims for human ancestry,” ScienceDaily (February 16, 2011), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110216132034.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

30)See Eben Harrell, “Ardi: The Human Ancestor Who Wasn’t?,” Time (May 27, 2010), http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1992115,00.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

31)Harrell, “Ardi: The Human Ancestor Who Wasn’t?” 

Why I continue to maintain that the trinity causes brain damage: Latin edition.

"Among those who actually think about such matters, the two most popular understandings of the doctrine of the Trinity are Latin Trinitarianism (LT) and Social Trinitarianism (ST). According to LT, God is essentially one being who subsists in three distinct persons. Each person of the Trinity is numerically identical to God, but numerically distinct from the other two persons. As I’ve argued elsewhere (and so have others) this conception of the Trinity is mysterious to the point of paradox," professor James N Anderson. 

Now let us think carefully about what the learned professor is asking us to believe,with no more support than the imagination of himself and like-minded academics, we are told that the one God whom the Bible tells us is the most high God see Psalms 83 and is the only God entitled to Man's devotion/loyalty see Deuteronomy ch.6 vrs.4,5 is a being 'who'(not which) subsists in three persons each of whom is numerically identical to the same being despite their each subsisting in one person. So really we are talking about four people, a quadrinity ,if you will ,who, despite the demands of elementary school arithmetic, are actually the same person as the one God. At least social Trinitarians understood ,that if the Essence shared in common by the divine persons in their trinity was himself a person, they could no longer claim that their Godhead was a trinity ,and that claiming that each member of the trinity was identical to the trinity would compound the absurdity of the doctrine they were already requiring their congregants to give credence. 

Thus Latin Trinitarians could not even clear the abysmally low bar set by social trinitarians. Once more the rock of stumbling for Trinitarians (both Latin and social) is the claim that each equal and distinct member of their trinity is Fully God. JEHOVAH has no equals according to scripture and common sense ,JEHOVAH is necessary i.e cannot be substituted, JEHOVAH is immutable (in the dictionary sense). The call to the worship of the only true God JEHOVAH is a call to sanity re:our religion.

File under "Well said." LXXXIII

"Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children." 

Jacques Mallet du Pan.

File under "well said". LXXXII

 "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." 

Jesus Christ as quoted by his disciple and friend at John ch.3 vrs.19 of the king James version of the holy bible.

The origin of Man and the design debate

Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution? Let’s Consider the Technical Literature 

Casey Luskin

 Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a new series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the first post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here. 

Evolutionists commonly tell the public that the fossil evidence for the Darwinian evolution of our species, Homo sapiens, from ape-like creatures is incontrovertible. In 2009, Southern Methodist University anthropology professor Ronald Wetherington testified before the Texas State Board of Education that human evolution has “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in the world. No gaps. No lack of transitional fossils…So when people talk about the lack of transitional fossils or gaps in the fossil record, it absolutely is not true. And it is not true specifically for our own species.”1 According to Wetherington, human origins show “a nice clean example of what Darwin thought was a gradualistic evolutionary change.” But does the fossil record support such claims? Digging into the technical literature reveals a starkly different story. 

Far from supplying “a nice clean example” of “gradualistic evolutionary change” that has “no gaps” or “no lack of transitional fossils,” the record shows a dramatic discontinuity between ape-like and human-like forms. Human-like fossils appear abruptly in the record, without clear evolutionary precursors, contradicting Darwinian expectations. The fossil record does not show that humans evolved from ape-like precursors. 

The Fragmented Field of Paleoanthropology 

The discipline of paleoanthropology studies the fossil remains of ancient hominins and hominids. Paleoanthropologists face many daunting challenges in their quest to explain human evolution from this hypothetical human/ape common ancestor. Their field is fragmented in multiple senses, making it difficult to confirm evolutionary accounts of human origins.

First, the fossil record is fragmented, and long periods of time exist for which there are few hominin fossils. So “fragmentary and disconnected” is the data, according to Harvard zoologist Richard Lewontin, that “[d]espite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor.”2 

The Specimens Themselves 

A second challenge is the fragmented nature of the fossil specimens themselves. Typical hominid fossils consist of mere bone scraps, making it difficult to form definitive conclusions about their morphology, behavior, and relationships. As Stephen Jay Gould commented: “Most hominid fossils, even though they serve as a basis for endless speculation and elaborate storytelling, are fragments of jaws and scraps of skulls.”3

Flesh reconstructions of extinct hominins are likewise subjective. They often attempt to diminish the intellectual abilities of humans and overstate those of apes. One high school textbook4 caricatures Neanderthals as intellectually primitive even though they exhibited intelligence and culture, and casts Homo erectus as a bungling, stooped form — even though its skeleton is extremely similar to that of modern humans. Conversely, the same textbook portrays an australopithecine (which, in reality, had a chimp-sized brain) with gleams of human-like intelligence and emotion — a common tactic in illustrated books on human origins.5 The words of the famed physical anthropologist Earnest Hooton from Harvard University remain valid: “alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little, if any, scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public.”6 

The Problem of Sparse Data 

Third, the field itself is fragmented. The sparse nature of the data, combined with the desire to make confident assertions about human evolution, often betrays objectivity and leads to sharp disagreements.7 After interviewing paleoanthropologists for a documentary, PBS NOVA producer Mark Davis recounted that “[e]ach Neanderthal expert thought the last one I talked to was an idiot, if not an actual Neanderthal.”8

Even the most established and confidently promoted evolutionary models of human origins are based on limited evidence. Nature editor Henry Gee conceded that the “[f]ossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations.”9 

Notes 

1)Ronald Wetherington, testimony before Texas State Board of Education (January 21, 2009). Original recording on file with author, SBOECommtFullJan2109B5.mp3, time index 1:52:00-1:52:44.

2)Richard Lewontin, Human Diversity (New York: Scientific American Library, 1995), 163.

3)Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (New York: Norton, 1980), 126.

4)See Alton Biggs et al., National Geographic Society, Biology: The Dynamics of Life (New York: Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2000), 442-443.

5)Biggs et al., Biology: The Dynamics of Life; Esteban E. Sarmiento, Gary J. Sawyer, and Richard Milner, The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Richard Potts and Christopher Sloan, What Does It Mean to Be Human? (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2010); Carl Zimmer, Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins (Toronto, Canada: Madison Press, 2005).

6)Earnest Albert Hooton, Up from the Ape, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 329.

7)Paige Williams, “Digging for Glory,” The New Yorker (June 27, 2016), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/lee-berger-digs-for-bones-and-glory (accessed October 26, 2020); Donald Johanson and Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

8)Mark Davis, “Into the Fray: The Producer’s Story,” PBS NOVA Online (February 2002), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/producer.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

9)Henry Gee, “Return to the Planet of the Apes,” Nature 412 (July 12, 2001), 131-132

.

A bare bones case for design?

 Bone Growth Demonstrates Irreducible Complexity and Hierarchical Control 

David Coppedge 

Picture a linear bone growing. Say it’s a leg bone, with attachment points for muscles and tendons along its length. Picture one such protrusion located a third of the way from one end. If the bone grows only at one end, the protuberance will migrate from its 1/3 position, causing problems for the tissues that need to attach there. If the bone grows at both ends, the same problem can occur. 

How does the bone “know” to keep its structures at proper ratios along its length as it grows? That problem was investigated by a team of Israeli scientists publishing in PLOS Biology. 

Although bidirectional elongation is a universal mechanism for bone growth, it nevertheless introduces a major challenge to bone morphogenesis. A fundamental characteristic of the unique morphology of each long bone is a set of protrusions of varying shapes and sizes, which are scattered along the exterior of the bone and thus break its morphological symmetry. These superstructures, known as bone ridges, tuberosities, condyles, etc., are necessary for the attachment of tendons and ligament as well as for articulation. To perform these functions they are located at specific positions along the bone. Bone superstructures emerge during early skeletogenesis. During growth, bones elongate extensively by advancement of the two growth plates away from the superstructures. It is therefore expected that during elongation, superstructures would remain at their original position near the center of the bone. Nevertheless, the end result is proper spreading of superstructures along the mature bone, which clearly implies the existence of a morphogenetic mechanism that corrects their locations. 

Surprised by the Implications 

Bones end up with the right ratios, in other words, but how do they get that way? The team wanted to know if bone growth is isometric (“same-measure”) or allometric (“other-measure”). If isometric, the bone’s ratios should be maintained during growth. If allometric, the ratios should converge on the proper position at the end of growth. They were surprised at the result and the implications: 

Strikingly, analysis revealed that the relative position of all superstructures along the bone is highly preserved during more than a 5-fold increase in length, indicating isometric scaling. It has been suggested that during development, bone superstructures are continuously reconstructed and relocated along the shaft, a process known as drift. Surprisingly, our results showed that most superstructures did not drift at all. Instead, we identified a novel mechanism for bone scaling, whereby each bone exhibits a specific and unique balance between proximal and distal growth rates, which accurately maintains the relative position of its superstructures. Moreover, we show mathematically that this mechanism minimizes the cumulative drift of all superstructures, thereby optimizing the scaling process. Our study reveals a general mechanism for the scaling of developing bones. More broadly, these findings suggest an evolutionary mechanism that facilitates variability in bone morphology by controlling the activity of individual epiphyseal plates. 

It’s strange to see “evolutionary” and “mechanism” juxtaposed, since the former means blind and unguided, but the latter means organized for a purpose. Indeed, there is a purposeful function going on in bone growth: to keep the bone’s ratios to its superstructures constant. The mechanism required to achieve it implies that both of the growth plates have to “talk” to each other and continually adjust their growth rates so that the structures do not drift.  

But That’s Not Enough 

The structures have to drift a little, because otherwise they would grow closer to the center as the ends elongate. Drift is achieved by a structure dissolving bone on the inner side and re-growing it on the outer side. In this way, the ratios between them are maintained from earliest embryonic stages through adulthood.

The level of control required to achieve isometric growth implies irreducible complexity and hierarchical control. Apparently the controls are different in different parts of the body. They point, for instance, to earlier findings that “forelimb bones tend to grow away from the elbow joint, whereas bones in hind limbs tend to grow toward the knee joint.” Even though they are evolutionists, they admit there’s no evidence this mechanism evolved. 

These findings and ours clearly imply the existence of additional mechanisms that control the specific activity of each growth plate. Interestingly, some of these works were performed on other model animals such as rat, pig, rabbit, chick, and humans, suggesting that asymmetric growth of long bones is evolutionarily conserved across species. 

Can their concluding summary be incorporated into a neo-Darwinian mechanism involving blind process of mutation and selection? Put yourselves in their shoes and try to imagine a way to Darwinize the findings: 

In this work, we uncover the isometric nature of longitudinal scaling of long bones during growth. Using a newly developed algorithm, we recover for the first time, to our knowledge, the morphogenetic sequence of developing long bones from early embryonic stages to maturity. These data enabled us to provide accurate assessments of both the specific activity of the different growth plates and the drifting patterns of symmetry-breaking elements along the bone shaft. Based on these analyses, we conclude that longitudinal growth patterns in each bone are adjusted to preserve isometry. The constant tendency of the growth balance to protect element positionsstrongly suggest that symmetry-breaking elements are involved in the mechanism that regulates the differential activity of growth plates. 

There’s design hidden in their passive verbs; “patterns … are adjusted“; “symmetry-breaking elements are involved in the mechanism that regulates” the activity. But how could a mutation to the growth plate at one end of a bone affect the regulation of a growth plate at the other end? How could a mutation that causes symmetry-breaking in the drift of one structure affect the coordinated outcome of the other structures? And how could mere chance orchestrate all the dynamic elements at play in the growth of a bone and its superstructures to end up with a functional adult bone, with all its muscles, tendons, and ligaments attached at the right places, so that the leg or arm actually works? When Haeckel drew those embryos, he had no idea what he was oversimplifying! 

No Bones About It 

In a companion article in PLOS Biology, (“Make No Bones About It: Long Bones Scale Isometrically”), science writer Caitlin Sedwick mentions another interesting finding: 

Unexpectedly, the authors’ analysis showed that, while a few elements do drift, the rest do not. In fact, the researchers found that for each bone, a transverse plane can be drawn at the location where the ratio of the plane’s distance to either end equals the ratio of growth rates at the respective ends (Fig 1, top panel). This “fixed plane” always falls nearby the non-drifting elements, and only the elements that are significantly distantfrom this plane show evidence of drift. However, the location of the fixed plane, and therefore an element’s relationship to it — which predicts the amount of drift needed to maintain the element’s relative position on the bone — will shift during development if the ratio of growth rates at the ends change. 

The “fixed plane” is, therefore, another element that must also be under regulatory control. The two growth plates and the fixed plane are regulated together to minimize drift and optimize the energy needed to maintain isometric scaling.

What seems obvious here is an overarching design plan that operates with top-level control. The process needs to foresee a desired end point, and coordinate all the activities at multiple levels, from the body plan down to the cellular machines, to achieve it. Such mechanisms can be programmed to work autonomously, but are inaccessible to natural processes lacking foresight.