Darwinism's failure as a predictive model XIII

Darwinism's Predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter

The only figure in Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species, showed how he envisioned species branching off of one another. Similar species have a relatively recent common ancestor and have had limited time to diverge from each other. This means that their genes should be similar. Entirely new genes, for instance, would not have enough time to evolve. As François Jacob explained in an influential paper from 1977, “The probability that a functional protein would appear de novo by random association of amino acids is practically zero.” (Jacob) Any newly created gene would have to arise from a duplication and modification of a pre-existing gene. (Zhou et. al.; Ohno) But such a new gene would retain significant similarity to its progenitor gene. Indeed, for decades evolutionists have cited minor genetic differences between similar species as a confirmation of this important prediction. (Berra, 20; Futuyma, 50; Johnson and Raven, 287; Jukes, 120; Mayr, 35)

 

But this prediction has been falsified as many unexpected genetic differences have been discovered amongst a wide range of allied species. (Pilcher) As much as a third of the genes in a given species may be unique, and even different variants within the same species have large numbers of genes unique to each variant. Different variants of the Escherichia coli bacteria, for instance, each have hundreds of unique genes. (Daubin and Ochman)

Significant genetic differences were also found between different fruit fly species. Thousands of genes showed up missing in many of the species, and some genes showed up in only a single species. (Levine et. al.) As one science writer put it, “an astonishing 12 per cent of recently evolved genes in fruit flies appear to have evolved from scratch.” (Le Page) These novel genes must have evolved over a few million years, a time period previously considered to allow only for minor genetic changes. (Begun et. al.; Chen et. al., 2007)

 

Initially some evolutionists thought these surprising results would be resolved when more genomes were analyzed. They predicted that similar copies of these genes would be found in other species. But instead each new genome has revealed yet more novel genes. (Curtis et. al.; Marsden et. al.; Pilcher)

 

Next evolutionists thought that these rapidly-evolving unique genes must not code for functional or important proteins. But again, many of the unique proteins were in fact found to play essential roles. (Chen, Zhang and Long 1010; Daubin and Ochman; Pilcher) As one researcher explained, “This goes against the textbooks, which say the genes encoding essential functions were created in ancient times.” (Pilcher)

References 

Begun, D., H. Lindfors, A. Kern, C. Jones. 2007. “Evidence for de novo evolution of testis-expressed genes in the Drosophila yakuba/Drosophila erecta clade.” Genetics 176:1131-1137.

 

Berra, Tim. 1990. Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

 

Chen, S., H. Cheng, D. Barbash, H. Yang. 2007. “Evolution of hydra, a recently evolved testis-expressed gene with nine alternative first exons in Drosophila melanogaster.” PLoS Genetics 3.

 

Chen, S., Y. Zhang, M. Long. 2010. “New Genes in Drosophila Quickly Become Essential.” Science 330:1682-1685.

 

Curtis, B., et. al. 2012. “Algal genomes reveal evolutionary mosaicism and the fate of nucleomorphs.” Nature 492:59-65.

 

Daubin, V., H. Ochman. 2004. “Bacterial genomes as new gene homes: The genealogy of ORFans in E. coli.” Genome Research 14:1036-1042.

 

Futuyma, Douglas. 1982. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. New York: Pantheon Books.

 

Jacob, François. 1977. “Evolution and tinkering.” Science 196:1161-1166.

 

Johnson, G., P. Raven. 2004. Biology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

 

Jukes, Thomas. 1983. “Molecular evidence for evolution” in: Scientists Confront Creationism, ed. Laurie Godfrey. New York: W. W. Norton.

 

Le Page, M. 2008. “Recipes for life: How genes evolve.” New Scientist, November 24.

 

Levine, M., C. Jones, A. Kern, H. Lindfors, D. Begun. 2006. “Novel genes derived from noncoding DNA in Drosophila melanogaster are frequently X-linked and exhibit testis-biased expression.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 9935-9939.

 

Marsden, R. et. al. 2006. “Comprehensive genome analysis of 203 genomes provides structural genomics with new insights into protein family space.” Nucleic Acids Research 34:1066-1080.

 

Mayr, Ernst. 2001. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books.

 

Ohno, Susumu. 1970. Evolution by Gene Duplication. Heidelberg: Springer.

 

Pilcher, Helen. 2013. “All Alone.” NewScientist January 19.

Zhou, Q., G. Zhang, Y. Zhang, et. al. 2008. “On the origin of new genes in Drosophila.” Genome Research 18:1446-1455.

The God hypothesis;a danger to real science?

Joana Xavier, Skepticism About Design, and a Fable About a Gray Parrot with an iPad 

Paul Nelson 

For years, co-workers and I have exchanged, and encouraged others to consult, this outstanding review article on systems biology and defining minimal cells. Read it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. In light of the article’s excellence, we began to follow the publications of the first author, Joana Xavier of University College London, a young origin-of-life researcher who has steadily pursued questions of central importance. 

Xavier’s strong track record, therefore, had us marching straight over to YouTube to watch her discussion with the maverick theoretician Perry Marshall ­— where she said this about Steve Meyer’s first book, Signature in the Cell (2009):

But about intelligent design. Let me tell you, Perry, I read Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer…And I must tell you, I found it one of the best books I’ve read, in terms of really putting the finger on the questions. 

That was her positive assessment, which she repeated a few moments later in the interview. But her take on ID itself? 

What I didn’t like was the final answer, of course…I think that we must have a more naturalistic answer to these processes. There must be. Otherwise, I’ll be out of a job.

An understandable response, which invites a closer look. 

Responding to Xavier’s Skepticism About Design 

Think in terms of tradeoffs. If design turns out to be true — let’s say, for the origin of life — then accepting the ID hypothesis as the best supported among the competitors does require one to stop chasing after other hypotheses, by definition naturalistic, which do not appeal to design. That’s the straight-up logic.

But if, like Dr. Xavier, one conceives of scientific explanation as employing only non-intelligent causes, grounded ultimately in undirected physics, design may look like a poor tradeoff at best, where the whole point of science is being surrendered for little or nothing in return. Not much of a deal.

Consider a fable, however, which I’ve told to co-workers and students over the past few years. The fable implicitly acknowledges that, for most scientists since Darwin’s time — especially for biologists — inferences to design may appear fantastically impossible, departing science proper for the wastelands of metaphysics or theology, surrendering the established goals of scientific inquiry in exchange for a self-administered job termination pink slip.

We need to think more deeply. Here’s the fable.

How Does the Strip Mall Financial Guy Do It? 

One day, on a hunch, you give five thousand dollars to a local investment advisor, whose modest office sits in a nearby strip mall. You tell him that 2 to 3 percent yields annually on your initial deposit would be fine.

But the return on your portfolio, year after year, is astonishing. You consistently beat the market by several percentage points, and the gains are bona fide. Real money. Despite unimpressive appearances, this strip mall financial advisor knows exactly where to put your cash.

Finally, your curiosity gets the better of you. You stop into the office, and insist that the advisor tell you his investment strategy.

Sheepishly, he agrees — but makes you promise not to tell anyone. “They won’t believe you,” he says, “and I’ll be ruined. This works, but God only knows why.”

The advisor leads you into a back room. There, perched opposite an iPad (showing equity and bond offerings), is a large gray parrot. From time to time, the parrot pecks at the iPad, and a server records the hits. “There,” says the advisor, “that’s how we do it.”

Then the parrot looks at you from his perch. Then the parrot looks at you from his perch.

“Now that you know the secret,” says the parrot, “are you going to give the money back?”

The Moral of the Fable 

Of course, parrots don’t make investment picks. But neither do little red hens harvest wheat and make bread,or tortoises and hares run foot races. The gray parrot and his iPad are a fable, after all. As such, the fable does have a point.

For most biologists, explaining by design isn’t so much wrong as it is a category error. With design, normal scientific theory evaluation criteria, such as testing by observation, seem to have disappeared altogether. For these biologists, without the familiar methods, it isn’t simply difficult to say if design is true or false, in any given case — it’s impossible. As my undergraduate philosophy of science teacher Carl Hempel used to say, the venture seems as hopeless as trying to take the square root of Abraham Lincoln.

In short, design inferences look impossible in a scientific context because the cause being invoked by design — a transcendent intelligence, irreducible to physics — is not, in principle, accessible to direct observation. Getting design to be scientifically fruitful, therefore, looks as unlikely as a gray parrot giving investment advice.

But direct observation is not the only path to empirical content. Philosopher of science Philip Kitcher, whom no one would mistake for a friend of ID, expressed this clearly forty years ago, in relation to what he called “creationism”: 

Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobserved particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended.

PHILIP KITCHER, ABUSING SCIENCE: THE CASE AGAINST CREATION (CAMBRIDGE MA: MIT PRESS, 1982), P. 125 

This outlook focuses on design as hypothesis formation, leading to novel consequences — not on using design as (for instance) a proof of God’s existence. 

Novel consequences that hold up under scrutiny represent scientific money in the bank. The ongoing ID 3.0 research effort, which continues to expand into new areas, intends to provide just that “money in the bank.” Unfortunately, to protect the (mostly younger) scientists, who are pursuing ID 3.0 projects, from career-destroying attacks by ID critics, the most interesting research needs to be kept, at least for the time being, under wraps. 

A Sizable Measure of Courage 

In that respect, using the gray parrot fable to respond to skepticism of design, such as expressed by Joana Xavier, requires at the moment a sizable measure of courage: namely, that the fruitful novel consequences — the money in the bank — will be forthcoming. In a sense strongly parallel to financial investment, risk is involved.

“But you guys haven’t proved God’s existence!”

Shrug. If that’s your worry, you’ll never get over it. If you have married yourself to naturalism, there is nothing anyone can do about that.

But be brave, and try a design hypothesis. William Harvey did. And no one is going to give back the reality that blood circulates. It’s money in the bank.

 

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model XII

 Darwinism's predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter 

Evolution expects the species to fall into a common descent pattern. Therefore a particular lineage should not have highly differentiated, unique and complex designs, when compared to neighboring species. But this has been increasingly found to be the case, so much so that this pattern now has its own name—lineage-specific biology.

 

For example, transcription factors are proteins that bind to DNA and regulate which genes are expressed. Yet despite the importance of these proteins, their DNA binding sites vary dramatically across different species. As one report explained, “It was widely assumed that, like the sequences of the genes themselves, these transcription factor binding sites would be highly conserved throughout evolution. However, this turns out not to be the case in mammals.” (Rewiring of gene regulation across 300 million years of evolution) Evolutionists were surprised when transcription factor binding sites were found to be not conserved between mice and men, (Kunarso et. al.) between various other vertebrates, and even between different species of yeast. So now evolution is believed to have performed a massive, lineage-specific “rewiring” of cellular regulatory networks. (Pennacchio and Visel) 

There are many more such examples of lineage-specific biology. Although flowers have four basic parts: sepals, petals, stamens and carpels, the daffodil’s trumpet is fundamentally different and must be an evolutionary “novelty.” (Oxford scientists say trumpets in daffodils are ‘new organ’) Out of the thousands of cockroach species, Saltoblattella montistabularis from South Africa is the only one that leaps. With its spring-loaded hind legs it accelerates at 23 g’s and out jumps even grass hoppers. (Picker, Colville and Burrows) An important immune system component, which is highly conserved across the vertebrates, is mysteriously absent in the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua. (Star, et. al.) The brown algae, Ectocarpus siliculosus, has unique enzymes for biosynthesis and other tasks. (Cock) And the algae Bigelowiella natans has ten thousand unique genes and highly complex gene splicing machinery never before seen in a unicellular organism. It is, as one evolutionist explained, “unprecedented and truly remarkable for a unicellular organism.” (Tiny algae shed light on photosynthesis as a dynamic property)

 

Another fascinating example of lineage-specific biology are the many peculiar morphological and molecular novelties found in disparate, unrelated unicellular protists. As one study concluded, “Both euglenozoans and alveolates have a reputation for ‘doing things their own way,’ which is to say that they have developed seemingly unique ways to build important cellular structures or carry out molecular tasks critical for their survival. Why such hotspots for the evolution of novel solutions to problems should exist in the tree of life is not entirely clear.” (Lukes, Leander and Keeling, 2009a) Or as one evolutionist exclaimed, “this is totally crazy.” (Lukes, Leander and Keeling, 2009b)

References 

Cock, J., et al. 2010. “The Ectocarpus genome and the independent evolution of multicellularity in brown algae.” Nature 465:617-621.

 

Kunarso G., et. al. 2010. “Transposable elements have rewired the core regulatory network of human embryonic stem cells.” Nature Genetics 42:631-634.

 

Lukes, J., B. Leander, P. Keeling. 2009. “Cascades of convergent evolution: the corresponding evolutionary histories of euglenozoans and dinoflagellates.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 Suppl 1:9963-9970.

 

Lukes, J., B. Leander, P. Keeling. 2009. “The corresponding evolutionary histories of euglenozoans and dinoflagellates: cascades of convergent evolution or accumulation of oddities?.” The National Academies. http://sackler.nasmediaonline.org/2009/darwin/julius_lukes/julius_lukes.html

 

“Oxford scientists say trumpets in daffodils are ‘new organ’.” 2011. BBC News February 28. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-12598054

 

Pennacchio, L., A. Visel. 2010. “Limits of sequence and functional conservation.” Nature Genetics 42:557-558.

 

Picker, M., J. Colville, M. Burrows. 2012. “A cockroach that jumps.” Biology Letters 8:390-392.

 

“Rewiring of gene regulation across 300 million years of evolution.” 2010. ScienceDaily April 12. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100409093211.htm

 

Star, B., et. al. 2011. “The genome sequence of Atlantic cod reveals a unique immune system.” Nature 477:207–210.

“Tiny algae shed light on photosynthesis as a dynamic property.” 2012. ScienceDaily November 28. http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2012/11/121128132253.htm

File under "well said." LXXXVII

 "Time goes, you say? Ah, no! Alas, Time stays, we go." 

Henry Austin Dobson.

The quest for straight answers rolls on.

Romans 10:9KJV"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that (the)God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." 

Who/what is THE God (grk.ho theos)who/which raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead?

 

Sons of the original firemaker?

Early Humans Were More Sophisticated than We Thought 

Denyse O'Leary 

Recent findings suggest that some things we take for granted in human civilizations are much older than thought. Now, these findings are provisional but they are worth looking at.

Some owl stones from 5,500 and 4,750 years ago may be children’s art 

But new research suggests the palm-sized plaques decorated in geometric patterns and with two engraved circles at the top might be the work of children.

Numbering in the thousands and made from slate, the owl-like objects — previously dated the stone objects to be between 5,500 and 4,750 years old — may be “the archaeological trace of playful and learning activities carried out by youngsters,” according to the team of Spanish researchers behind the new study…

They suggest kids would have been able to easily engrave slate using pointed tools made of flint, quartz, or copper, creating ‘body’ patterns that emulate the streaked plumage of owls, and the circles for eyes are unmistakably owl-like, casting an unwavering stare straight at the observer.

The “owliness” of the designs is comparable to the drawing skills of modern school children who depict owls in much the same way. 

CLARE WATSON, “THOUSANDS OF MYSTERIOUS ‘OWL’ STONES MAY BE THE WORK OF ANCIENT CHILDREN” AT SCIENCE ALERT (DECEMBER 7, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

The fact that the owl stones might have been made by children does not, the researchers suggest, rule out the possibility that they might have had a ritual significance. Evolutionary biologist Juan Negro and colleagues suggest, “young people might have paid homage to their elders by leaving objects they had made together as tributes to the deceased.” (Science Alert) 

So CrayolaTM didn’t invent the idea of children’s creativity.

Now, About Cooking … 70,000 Years Ago

Neanderthals were not just downing raw hunks of meat 70,000 years ago, as many of us have assumed:Researchers analyzed charred food remains at two locations — the Shanidar Cave in Iraq’s Zagros Mountains and the Franchthi Cave in Greece — to gain insight into how Neanderthals and early modern humans prepared food. They found evidence of cooking involving a variety of ingredients, processes and deliberate decisions…

The researchers’ analysis suggests that early modern humans and Neanderthals weren’t just consuming protein from animals; they had complex diets that consisted of a wide selection of plants and varied depending on location. They also used “a range of tricks to make their food more palatable” such as soaking and pounding, per a statement from the University of Liverpool… For example, wild nuts and grasses were often combined with pulses, like lentils, and wild mustard.” 

JACQUELYNE GERMAIN, “NEANDERTHALS COOKED SURPRISINGLY COMPLEX MEALS” AT SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 30, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

Let’s just say, the Neanderthals have gotten smarter as we have gotten to know them better.

Homo Naledi Used Fire, Say Researchers

Now let’s go waaay back to Homo naledi — first unearthed in 2015 in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. The remains of the 15 individuals date to between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. It turns out that they may have lit fires in their caves: 

Researchers have found remnants of small fireplaces and sooty wall and ceiling smudges in passages and chambers throughout South Africa’s Rising Star cave complex, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger announced in a December 1 lecture hosted by the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington, D.C.

“Signs of fire use are everywhere in this cave system,” said Berger, of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg…

Such behavior has not been attributed to H. naledi before, largely because of its small brain. But it’s now clear that a brain roughly one-third the size of human brains today still enabled H. naledi to achieve control of fire, Berger contends…

Meanwhile, expedition codirector and Wits paleoanthropologist Keneiloe Molopyane led excavations of a nearby cave chamber. There, the researchers uncovered two small fireplaces containing charred bits of wood, and burned bones of antelopes and other animals. Remains of a fireplace and nearby burned animal bones were then discovered in a more remote cave chamber where H. naledi fossils have been found, Berger said. 

BRUCE BOWER, “HOMO NALEDI MAY HAVE LIT FIRES IN UNDERGROUND CAVES AT LEAST 236,000 YEARS AGO” AT SCIENCE NEWS (DECEMBER 2, 2022) HERE’S THE LECTURE ANNOUNCEMENT. 

One hitch is that the charred wood, bones, etc. have yet to be dated, to see if they come from the same layers as the Homo naledi fossils. But there are currently no other known groups that could have made the fires. 

It’s interesting to note that the basics of human culture seem to undergo much less development than we think. The culture may appear at about the same time as the humans.

You may also wish to read: Why is Neanderthal art considered controversial? It makes sense that whenever humans started to wonder about life, we started to create art that helps us think about it. Science writer Michael Marshall reports that some researchers are accused of banning others from taking samples that would prove a Neanderthal was the artist.

 

Darwinism's flag has fallen?

 “Crazy Stuff’? Dave Farina on the Waiting Time Problem 

Günter Bechly 

I now conclude my lengthy response to YouTuber “Professor Dave” aka Dave Farina, who published a video (Farina 2022) attacking Stephen Meyer and intelligent design. I have responded minute by minute, tracking my comments with timecodes in square brackets. I regret the length of this series, which is justified only by the fact that Farina is a popular would-be science educator. The video is tedious and grating, and thus I am glad to be done with it. This is the seventh and final post in this series. Find the rest here, here, here, here, here, and here.

[TC 1:05:55] Last but not least, we definitely have to address another mathematical argument I currently happen to work and publish about (Hössjer et al. 2018, 2021, Bechly et al. in prep.), which is the waiting time problem that Farina calls “crazy stuff.”

The formulation “crazy stuff” of course implicitly suggests that this is a pseudo-problem invented by evil and stupid creationists. Farina mostly relies on a silly and embarrassingly incompetent “debunking” video by another YouTuber, who has not even understood the problem. Both chaps seem to be totally unaware that the waiting time problem has a long history and has been much discussed in mainstream science (especially population genetics) and even plays an important role in cancer research. 

Farina would have done better if he had talked with Harvard professor Martin Nowak, who is an evolutionary biologist and expert on the waiting time problem. Here are just a few references of renowned scientists publishing about this “crazy stuff”: Bodmer (1970), Karlin (1973), Christiansen et al. (1998), Schweinsberg (2008), Durrett et al. (2009), Behrens et al. (2012), and Chatterjee et al. (2014). It was not before Behe & Snoke (2004, 2005) and Behe (2007) that the waiting time problem was recognized as an argument for intelligent design. Durrett & Schmidt (2008) attempted to refute Behe but arrived at a prohibitive waiting time of 216 million years for a single coordinated mutation in human evolution, while only about 6 million years are available since the origin of the human lineage from a common ancestor with chimps. Behe arrived at 1015 years for such a mutation in humans (Behe 2007: 61) by translating empirical data of an actual waiting time for a coordinated mutation that conveyed chloroquine drug resistance in Malaria. He simply applied these empirical findings to humans, considering their much lower population size and much longer generation time. Durrett & Schmidt’s result was based on a mathematical model, which of course must make certain simplifications that can introduce errors. When such model calculations conflict with hard empirical data, we should trust the empirical data as pointing closer to the truth. Anyway, both numbers are prohibitive and refute the feasibility of a Darwinian mechanism of macroevolution. 

Four Alleged Problems 

[TC 1:07:23] Farina raises four alleged problems as objections against the waiting time argument:

First, he raises the dreadful objection that boils down to the “Texas sharpshooter fallacy” by saying that nature does not go for specific mutations as a target but is totally random. This argument fails because it presupposes the existence of many targets, which is contradicted by the rarity of function in the search space for proteins (see the work of Douglas Axe) and by the common phenomenon of convergence. The argument also fails to recognize that life cannot allow for periods of maladaptation only to descend a local peak of the fitness landscape to explore other ones. Instead, life has to further adapt to its local fitness peak, which requires specific solutions for specific problems. It’s not like any beneficial mutation will do. A stem whale would have no use for a mutation that would be beneficial for a stem bird, such as improving skeletal pneumaticity.

Second, he totally fails to grasp the concept of coordinated mutations by calling it meaningless. He thinks that every individual mutation can be selected for, which shows he didn’t get the point that in coordinated mutations each individual mutation is neutral and thus in principle cannot be selected for.

Third, he claims that the waiting time problem implies that mutations occur in a specific sequence, which is simply false.

Finally, he claims that the waiting time problem ignores recombination, which according to Farina “baselessly discounts the profound evolutionary benefit” and is “dramatically accelerating the accumulation of beneficial mutations.” This shows how unaware Farina is of the actual technical literature, because the influence of recombination on the waiting time problem has been studied by Christiansen et al. (1998), who have shown that: “Recombination lowers the waiting time until a new genotypic combination first appears, but the effect is SMALL [my emphasis] compared to that of the mutation rate and population size.”

[TC 1:08:25] Farina finally wonders how papers by ID proponents on the waiting time problem could somehow make it into peer-reviewed journals and shows our paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology (Hössjer et al. 2021). Well, that’s easy: because it is good peer-reviewed science, which something Farina has never achieved. 

Confused about Intelligent Design 

[TC 1:08:48] Farina briefly elaborates on mechanisms of speciation and mentions observed speciation events like the marbled crayfish as “another dirty secret that many creationists don’t like to acknowledge.” Of course, such evidence for speciation is completely irrelevant, because neither intelligent design proponents nor even young earth creationists dispute speciation. Nobody doubts that, say, a founder species of Darwin finches could potentially speciate into more than a dozen relatively similar species (or semi-species) on the Galápagos Islands. So what? Farina obviously is very much confused about ID theory.

[TC 1:09:32] Farina then implies that speciation (microevolution) extrapolated over long periods of time can explain the origin of biological novelty (macroevolution). This is not only contradicted by the waiting time problem, but also by another problem that I recently introduced with the so-called “species pair challenge” (Bechly 2022g, 2022h). There clearly are limits to what neo-Darwinian evolution can achieve. Thus, Darwinism is not wrong per se, but has a much narrower realm of applicability than has been thought.

[TC 1:10:14] Farina lists examples of genes that are conserved and shared by different clades of organisms as evidence for an evolutionary scenario rather than design. Again, he confuses evidence for common descent, which is happily granted, with evidence for an unguided process of transformation, which is virtually non-existent. He simply does not get it. 

[TC 1:11:13] Farina ends with the claim that the “concept of genetic information” as Meyer applies it “is so vague that it’s unusable” and that “there are no metrics for determining how much information any given sequence of DNA has.” This is nonsense. Very precise scientific measures for the information content of DNA have indeed been suggested already by Gatlin (1966) and by many other later studies (e.g., Rao et al. 1979, Schneider 1997, Dix et al. 2006, and Wills 2016).

[TC 1:12:03] Farina triumphantly concludes that he debunked Meyer’s two main arguments:

“1) Some lies about the Cambrian explosion means intelligent design is true.”

“2) I don’t understand genetics even a little bit so intelligent design is true.”

According to Farina, Meyer’s only strategy is: 

“Premise: a lie about science”

“Conclusion: God did it!”

That’s not a joke or an exaggeration. Go to his video and check that he literally makes these ridiculous claims. Of course, Meyer’s argumentation isn’t anything remotely similar to this ludicrous caricature nor did Farina successfully debunk anything. Also, Meyer explicitly and thoroughly rejects a “God of the gaps” argument from ignorance (Klinghoffer 2018 and this video), which is by far the most trite stereotype against ID that Farina could bring up [TC 1:13:15]. Luskin (2014) carefully goes through Meyer’s argument for design as presented in Darwin’s Doubt and shows precisely why it is not a “gaps”-based argument. Instead of debunking Meyer, Farina only showed that he is not shy about using the crudest of crude propaganda tactics.

There is one last point. Farina predicts that ID proponents will desperately respond to his hit piece that he is just an “unqualified uncredentialled loser.” He said it, I didn’t. But who am I to disagree? However, the fact that Farina lacks formal credentials is not his problem. I know tons of non-PhDs who can speak authoritatively on scientific issues. Farina isn’t one of them, and his rudeness does not add to his authority, as he seems to think. He rightfully deserves to be called out for his behavior as well as his sloppy work. He is not just an off-putting communicator but also bad at appreciating scientific controversies, an unfortunate combo for someone who wants to teach science to young people. 

References 

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Axe DD 2004. Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds. Journal of Molecular Biology 341(5), 1295–1315. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2004.06.058.

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Bakker RT 1980. Dinosaur heresy – dinosaur renaissance: why we need endothermic archosaurs for a comprehensive theory of bioenergetic evolution. pp. 351–462 in: Thomas RDK & Olson EC (eds). A Cold Look at the Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs. Westview Press, Boulder (CO), xxx+514 pp.

Balter M 2013. Authenticity of China’s Fabulous Fossils Gets New Scrutiny. Science 340(6137), 1153–1154. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.340.6137.1153.

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Axe DD 2004. Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds. Journal of Molecular Biology 341(5), 1295–1315. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2004.06.058.

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Balter M 2013. Authenticity of China’s Fabulous Fossils Gets New Scrutiny. Science 340(6137), 1153–1154. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.340.6137.1153.

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Bechly G 2018c. Why Dickinsonia Was Most Probably Not an Ediacaran Animal. Evolution NewsSeptember 27, 2018. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/why-dickinsonia-was-most-probably-not-an-ediacaran-animal/

Bechly G 2020a. Did Cloudinids Have the Guts to be Worms. Evolution News January 7, 2020. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/01/did-cloudinids-have-the-guts-to-be-worms/

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Bechly G 2020c. The Myth of Precambrian Sponges. Evolution News May 12, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/05/the-myth-of-precambrian-sponges/

Bechly G 2020d. The Demise of the Artifact Hypothesis. Evolution News July 6, 2020. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/07/demise-of-the-artifact-hypothesis-aggravates-the-problem-of-the-cambrian-explosion/Bechly G 2020e. Namacalathus, an Ediacaran Lophophorate Animal? Evolution News July 9, 2020. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/07/namacalathus-an-ediacaran-lophophorate-animal/

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Bechly G 2020g. Was Kimberella a Precambrian Mollusk? Evolution News September 3–21, 2020. [14 part article series] https://evolutionnews.org/2020/09/bechly-series-no-ancestors-for-cambrian-animals-darwins-doubt-remains/

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Bechly G 2022b. Fact-Checking “Professor Dave”: Is the Term “Darwinism” Really Used Only by “Creationists”? Evolution News May 27, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/05/fact-checking-professor-dave-is-the-term-darwinism-really-used-only-by-creationists/Bechly G 2022c. Examining “Professor Dave’s” Absurd Attack on Casey Luskin. Evolution News May 31, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/05/examining-professor-daves-absurd-attack-on-casey-luskin/

Bechly G 2022d. Fossil Friday: Turtles All the Way Down. Evolution News July 1, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/07/fossil-friday-turtles-all-the-way-down/

Bechly G 2022e. Fossil Friday: Dickinsonia, the Ediacaran Animal that Wasn’t. Evolution News July 29, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/07/fossil-friday-dickinsonia-the-ediacaran-animal-that-wasnt/

Bechly G 2022f. Fossil Friday: The Temporal Paradox of Early Birds. Evolution News August 19, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/08/fossil-friday-the-temporal-paradox-of-early-birds/

Bechly G 2022g. Species Pairs: A New Challenge to Darwinists. Evolution News April 25, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/04/species-pairs-a-new-challenge-to-darwinists/

Bechly G 2022h. Fact Check: Hawaiian Silverswords Fail the Species Pair Challenge. Evolution NewsMay 3, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/05/fact-check-hawaiian-silverswords-fail-the-species-pair-challenge/

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Chickens coming home to roost?

 Ukraine considers ban on Russian affiliated churches

Milton Quintanilla 

Ukrainian authorities recently called for a ban on churches within its borders that are affiliated with Russia.

As reported by Reuters, Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council asked the government to make a law banning churches that are possibly taking orders from Russia.

In an address last Thursday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy argued that pro-Russian influences are trying to "weaken Ukraine from within" as war rages on between Ukraine and Russia.

"We have to create conditions where no actors dependent on the aggressor state [Russia] will have an opportunity to manipulate Ukrainians and weaken Ukraine from within," Zelenskyy said. "We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul."

The security council also called for an investigation into alleged "subversive activities of Russian special services in the religious environment of Ukraine" and a call for sanctions against unspecified individuals.

Meanwhile, last Friday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) raided at least five parishes belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that had previously been linked to the Russian Orthodox Church.

A former diocese head was also served a notice of suspicion by authorities. The former leader is suspected of organizing a Pro-Moscow campaign with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Metropolitan Kliment, a spokesperson for the church, says his organization "has always acted within the framework of Ukrainian law."

"Therefore, the state of Ukraine does not have any legal grounds to put pressure on or repress our believers," he added.

According to The Christian Post, last month, authorities conducted searches at the Ivano-Frankivsk Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate and the Pochaiv Theological Seminary in Ternopil Oblast. The SBU claimed that pro-Russian materials were found in both locations.

In a message via Telegram, Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called authorities in Kyiv "Satanists" and "enemies of Christ and the Orthodox faith."

"This is how the whole Christian world should treat them," he continued.

Photo courtesy: Andriyko Podilnyk/Unsplash

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer. He is also the co-hosts of the For Your Soul podcast, which seeks to equip the church with biblical truth and sound doctrine. Visit his blog Blessed Are The Forgiven.

Revelation17:16KJV"And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire."

Death and taxes indeed.

Bioethics: In Canada, Medically Assisted Death Is a Solution for Poverty

Wesley J. Smith 

Death is increasingly seen as the answer to a variety of woes in Canada, with its euthanasia libertinism running truly amuck. This includes veterans being offered euthanasia for PTSD and a nursing home patient lethally injected because she did not want to be isolated during a COVID lockdown. There are also cases in which people ask to die because they can’t access prompt medical care from Canada’s socialized healthcare system, and one in which death was offered to a disabled woman rather than a stairs chair lift. 

A Culture of Abandonment

Now, a disabled man wants to die because he is afraid of falling into poverty. And at least one doctor has said yes. From the Daily Mail story: 

A Canadian pensioner seeking euthanasia because he fears homelessness has received approval from a doctor despite admitting poverty is a major factor in the decision to end his own life.

Les Landry, 65, told assessors for the procedure he ‘doesn’t want to die’ but has applied for medical assistance in dying (MAID) because he can’t afford to live comfortably.

Astonishingly, a doctor has given one of the two signatures required for Landry to end his own life, despite knowing that financial hardship — not illness — is a leading reason for the profound decision. 

Landry plans to go doctor-shopping to obtain the second MD approval:

 Landry is awaiting the decision of a second doctor who has assessed his eligibility. If that doctor rejects the application, Landry says he will simply ‘shop’ around for another who’s prepared to sign off on his death — something that’s allowed under Canada‘s assisted dying laws. 

Suicide by Zoom Call 

Note that this is allowed in U.S. assisted-suicide laws too. In fact, many assisted suicides are facilitated by doctors who have not treated the patient and only met them briefly for the purpose of obtaining the lethal prescription. These days, assisted suicide can even be obtained in a Zoom call.

The problem for Landry is that Canada won’t assist him to live with dignity. 

Landry uses a wheelchair and has several other disabilities that mean he is eligible for MAID, including epilepsy and diabetes. But until recently, he was able to live comfortably, sharing his modest home in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with his service dog.

Changes to his state benefits when he turned 65 in May meant his income was cut and he’s now left with around $120 per month after paying for medical bills and essentials.

Landry is also braced for a rent hike in January that could mean his benefits no longer cover the cost of essentials, placing him on the brink of homelessness.

In a series of interviews with DailyMail.com, he detailed his spiral into hardship and decision to pursue the ‘bizarre’ MAID application process that’s made ‘state-sanctioned suicide’ a viable solution to his struggles. 

I’m glad the media and many commentators are finally paying attention to the crass culture of abandonment to which assisted suicide and its advocacy logically leads. I just don’t know whether that increasingly clear consequence of “death with dignity” laws matters much anymore. 

What Colwell's rule actually states.

 Colwell's rule. 

Wikipedia 

"Colwell discovered that "Definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article ... a predicate nominative which precedes the verb cannot be translated as an indefinite or a 'qualitative' noun solely because of the absence of the article; if the CONTEXT suggests that the predicate is definite, it should be translated as a definite noun ... "

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model XI

 Darwinism's predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter 

Early in the twentieth century scientists studied blood immunity and how immune reaction could be used to compare species. The blood studies tended to produce results that parallel the more obvious indicators such as body plan. For example, humans were found to be more closely related to apes than to fish or rabbits. These findings were said to be strong confirmations of evolution. In 1923 H. H. Lane cited this evidence as supporting “the fact of evolution.” (Lane, 47) Later in the century these findings continued to be cited in support of evolution. (Berra, 19; Dodson and Dodson, 65)

 

But even by mid century contradictions to evolutionary expectations were becoming obvious in serological tests. As J.B.S.Haldane explained in 1949, “Now every species of mammal and bird so far investigated has shown quite a surprising biochemical diversity by serological tests. The antigens concerned seem to be proteins to which polysaccharides are attached.” (quoted in Gagneux and Varki)

 

Indeed these polysaccharides, or glycans, did not fulfill evolutionary expectations. As one paper explained, glycans show “remarkably discontinuous distribution across evolutionary lineages,” for they “occur in a discontinuous and puzzling distribution across evolutionary lineages.” (Bishop and Gagneux) These glycans can be (i) specific to a particular lineage, (i) similar in very distant lineages, (iii) and conspicuously absent from very restricted taxa only.

Here is how another paper described glycan findings: “There is also no clear explanation for the extreme complexity and diversity of glycans that can be found on a given glycoconjugate or cell type. Based on the limited information available about the scope and distribution of this diversity among taxonomic groups, it is difficult to see clear trends or patterns consistent with different evolutionary lineages.” (Gagneux and Varki) 

References 

Berra, Tim. 1990. Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

 

Bishop J., P. Gagneux. 2007. “Evolution of carbohydrate antigens--microbial forces shaping host glycomes?.” Glycobiology 17:23R-34R.

 

Dodson, Edward, Peter Dodson. 1976. Evolution: Process and Product. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company.

 

Gagneux, P., A. Varki. 1999. “Evolutionary considerations in relating oligosaccharide diversity to biological function.” Glycobiology 9:747-755.

Lane, H. 1923. Evolution and Christian Faith. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

It still looks like engineering because it still is II

Steve Laufmann: Is Biology Engineering? 

Evolution News 

On a classic ID the Future episode, systems engineer Steve Laufmann joins host Tod Butterfield to discuss an article he wrote for Evolution News in which he spotlights how biology is becoming increasingly engineering-centric. Laufmann describes how his work as a systems engineer relates to the red hot field of systems biology, the significance of the fact that “the value of the system as a whole is derived largely from the relationship of the parts,” and the extreme improbability of a well-engineered biological system of systems assembling by way of purely blind processes. Laufmann is author, with physician Howard Glicksman, of the groundbreaking new book, Your designed body 

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST OR LISTEN TO IT HERE

 

The Catholic reformatíon :a brief history.

 The Catholic reformatíon.

Wikipedia

The Counter-Reformation (Latin: Contrareformatio), also called the Catholic Reformation (Latin: Reformatio Catholica) or the Catholic Revival,[1] was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation. It began with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and largely ended with the conclusion of the European wars of religion in 1648.[citation needed] Initiated to address the effects of the Protestant Reformation,[citation needed] the Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort composed of apologetic and polemical documents and ecclesiastical configuration as decreed by the Council of Trent. The last of these included the efforts of Imperial Diets of the Holy Roman Empire, heresy trials and the Inquisition, anti-corruption efforts, spiritual movements, and the founding of new religious orders. Such policies had long-lasting effects in European history with exiles of Protestants continuing until the 1781 Patent of Toleration, although smaller expulsions took place in the 19th century.[2] 

Such reforms included the foundation of seminaries for the proper training of priests in the spiritual life and the theological traditions of the Church, the reform of religious life by returning orders to their spiritual foundations, and new spiritual movements focusing on the devotional life and a personal relationship with Christ, including the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality.[1] It also involved political activities that included the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa and Bombay-Bassein etc. A primary emphasis of the Counter-Reformation was a mission to reach parts of the world that had been colonized as predominantly Catholic and also try to reconvert nations such as Sweden and England that once were Catholic from the time of the Christianisation of Europe, but had been lost to the Reformation.[1] Various Counter-Reformation theologians focused only on defending doctrinal positions such as the sacraments and pious practices that were attacked by the Protestant reformers,[1] up to the Second Vatican Council in 1962–1965.[3]

Key events of the period include: the Council of Trent (1545–63); the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570), the codification of the uniform Roman Rite Mass (1570), and the Battle of Lepanto (1571), occurring during the pontificate of Pius V; the construction of the Gregorian observatory in Rome, the founding of the Gregorian University, the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and the Jesuit China mission of Matteo Ricci, all under Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585); the French Wars of Religion; the Long Turkish War and the execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600, under Pope Clement VIII; the birth of the Lyncean Academy of the Papal States, of which the main figure was Galileo Galilei (later put on trial); the final phases of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) during the pontificates of Urban VIII and Innocent X; and the formation of the last Holy League by Innocent XI during the Great Turkish War (1683–1699).[

The protestant reformation: a brief history.

Reformation 

Wikipedia 

The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation)[1] was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in particular to papal authority, arising from what were perceived to be errors, abuses, and discrepancies by the Catholic Church. The Reformation was the start of Protestantism and the split of the Western Church into Protestantism and what is now the Roman Catholic Church. It is also considered to be one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe.[2] 

Prior to Martin Luther, there were many earlier reform movements. Although the Reformation is usually considered to have started with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther in 1517, he was not excommunicated by Pope Leo X until January 1521. The Diet of Worms of May 1521 condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas.[3] The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. Luther survived after being declared an outlaw due to the protection of Elector Frederick the Wise. The initial movement in Germany diversified, and other reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin arose. In general, the Reformers argued that salvation in Christianity was a completed status based on faith in Jesus alone and not a process that requires good works, as in the Catholic view. Key events of the period include: Diet of Worms (1521), formation of the Lutheran Duchy of Prussia (1525), English Reformation (1529 onwards), the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Peace of Augsburg (1555), the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570), Edict of Nantes (1598) and Peace of Westphalia (1648). The Counter-Reformation, also called the Catholic Reformation or the Catholic Revival, was the period of Catholic reforms initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation.[4] The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars. 

Darwinism's failure as a predictive model X

 Darwinism's predictions 

In the 1960s molecular biologists learned how to analyze protein molecules and determine the sequence of amino acids that comprise a protein. It was then discovered that a given protein molecule varies somewhat from species to species. For example, hemoglobin, a blood protein, has similar function, overall size and structure in different species. But its amino acid sequence varies from species to species. Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling reasoned that if such sequence differences were the result of evolutionary change occurring over the history of life, then they could be used to estimate past speciation events—a notion that became known as the molecular clock. (Zuckerkandl and Pauling)

In later decades this concept of a molecular clock, relying on the assumption of a roughly constant rate of molecular evolution, became fundamental in evolutionary biology. (Thomas, et. al.) As the National Academy of Sciences explained, the molecular clock “determines evolutionary relationships among organisms, and it indicates the time in the past when species started to diverge from one another.” (Science and Creationism, 3) Indeed the molecular clock has been extolled as strong evidence for evolution and, in fact, a common sentiment has been that evolution was required to explain these evidences. As a leading molecular evolutionist wrote, the molecular clock is “only comprehensible within an evolutionary framework.” (Jukes, 119, emphasis in original)

The claim that the molecular clock can only be explained by evolution is, however, now a moot point as the mounting evidence shows that molecular differences often do not fit the expected pattern. The molecular clock which evolutionists had envisioned does not exist. The literature is full of instances where the molecular clock concept fails. For example, it was found early on that different types of proteins must evolve at very different rates if there is a molecular clock. For example the fibrinopeptide proteins in various species must have evolved more than five hundred times faster than the histone IV protein. Furthermore, it was found that the evolutionary rate of certain proteins must vary significantly over time, between different species, and between different lineages. (Thomas, et. al.; Andrews, 28)

The proteins relaxin, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and the glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH), for example, all contradict the molecular clock prediction. On the one hand, SOD unexpectedly shows much greater variation between similar types of fruit flies than it does between very different organisms such as animals and plants. On the other hand GPDH shows roughly the reverse trend for the same species. As one scientist concluded, GPDH and SOD taken together leave us “with no predictive power and no clock proper.” (Ayala)

Evolutionists are finding growing evidence that the purported rates of molecular evolution must vary considerably between species for a wide range of taxa, including mammals, arthropods, vascular plants, and even between closely related lineages. As one study concluded, “The false assumption of a molecular clock when reconstructing molecular phylogenies can result in incorrect topology and biased date estimation. … This study shows that there is significant rate variation in all phyla and most genes examined …” (Thomas, et. al.)

Evolutionists continue to use the molecular clock concept, but the many correction factors highlight the fact that the sequence data are being fit to the theory rather than the other way around. As one evolutionist warned, “It seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many in fact that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message.” (Schwabe) 

References 

Andrews, Peter. 1987. “Aspects of hominoid phylogeny” in Molecules and Morphology in Evolution, ed. Colin Patterson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ayala, F. 1999. “Molecular clock mirages.” BioEssays 21:71-75.

Jukes, Thomas. 1983. “Molecular evidence for evolution” in: Scientists Confront Creationism, ed. Laurie Godfrey. New York: W. W. Norton.

Schwabe, C. 1986. “On the validity of molecular evolution.” Trends in Biochemical Sciences 11:280-282.

Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences. 2d ed. 1999. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Thomas, J. A., J. J. Welch, M. Woolfit, L. Bromham. 2006. “There is no universal molecular clock for invertebrates, but rate variation does not scale with body size.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:7366-7371.

Zuckerkandl, E., L. Pauling. 1965. “Molecules as documents of evolutionary history.” J Theoretical Biology 8:357-366.

On the designed intelligence of cephalopods.

 MicroRNAs: A New Clue About Octopus Intelligence? 

Denyse O'Leary 

In general, the “intelligent” animals (apes, elephants, crows, whales, dogs, dolphins) are vertebrates, not invertebrates. There is one glaring exception: the cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish). They, like vertebrates, developed large, complex brains and unexpectedly sophisticated cognitive abilities.

When thinking about the puzzle, we sometimes fall victim to a sort of confusion: We reason that greater intelligence results from the fact that it “helps the octopus survive better.” Perhaps it does. But, while greater intelligence might help many life forms survive better, only a few develop it. In short, we need a “how” explanation here, not a “why” explanation. 

The Role of MicroRNAs 

A recent study from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine points to the possible role of microRNAs (miRNAs). MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression after genes have been transcribed. They are considered powerful regulators of activities like cell growth, differentiation, development, and death. Octopuses have 

… a massively expanded repertoire of microRNAs (miRNAs) in their neural tissue – reflecting similar developments that occurred in vertebrates. “So, this is what connects us to the octopus!” says Professor Nikolaus Rajewsky, Scientific Director of the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB), head of the Systems Biology of Gene Regulatory Elements Lab, and the paper’s last author. He explains that this finding probably means miRNAs play a fundamental role in the development of complex brains. 

MAX DELBRÜCK CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE IN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION, “WHAT OCTOPUS AND HUMAN BRAINS HAVE IN COMMON” AT EUREKALERT (NOVEMBER 25, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

That probably isn’t the whole story of intelligence but some features are very suggestive: 

The most interesting discovery was in fact the dramatic expansion of a well-known group of RNA genes, microRNAs. A total of 42 novel miRNA families were found — specifically in neural tissue and mostly in the brain. Given that these genes were conserved during cephalopod evolution, the team concludes they were clearly beneficial to the animals and are therefore functionally important…

“This is the third-largest expansion of microRNA families in the animal world, and the largest outside of vertebrates,” says lead author Grygoriy Zolotarov, MD, a Ukrainian scientist who interned in Rajewsky’s lab at MDC-BIMSB while finishing medical school in Prague, and later. “To give you an idea of the scale, oysters, which are also mollusks, have acquired just five new microRNA families since the last ancestors they shared with octopuses — while the octopuses have acquired 90!” Oysters, adds Zolotarov, aren’t exactly known for their intelligence. 

MAX DELBRÜCK CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE IN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION, “WHAT OCTOPUS AND HUMAN BRAINS HAVE IN COMMON” AT EUREKALERT (NOVEMBER 25, 2022) 

Ways Octopuses Are Smart but Weird 

Octopuses are unusual in that they have both a central brain and a nervous system that controls the tentacles that can act independently. The central brain is not at all like ours: 

The construction of the octopus eye itself is like our own, but that’s where the similarity ends. Behind the eye, the octopus’ brain is wildly different from mammalian brains in terms of architecture and design, yet it uses similar building blocks and accomplishes the same tasks…

For a team of neuroscientists in Oregon, understanding this invertebrate brain is both fascinating and informative. “The sensor is really similar, but the brain that’s processing the information is completely different,” explained Cris Niell, professor of biology and neuroscience at the University of Oregon. 

BRADLEY VAN PARIDON, “MAPPING THE OCTOPUS BRAIN” AT ADVANCED SCIENCE NEWS (NOVEMBER 22, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. 

How different? Much information doesn’t even go through the brain: 

Now, in a new study published on November 28 in Current Biology, Hale, William Rainey Harper Professor of Organismal Biology and Vice Provost at UChicago, and her colleagues have described something new and totally unexpected about the octopus nervous system: a structure by which the intramuscular nerve cords (INCs), which help the animal sense its arm movement, connect arms on the opposite sides of the animal. 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER, “UNIQUE FEATURES OF OCTOPUS CREATE ‘AN ENTIRELY NEW WAY OF DESIGNING A NERVOUS SYSTEM’” AT EUREKALERT (NOVEMBER 28, 2022) PAPER. 

And another study found that the octopus uses different neurotransmitters from vertebrates. 

A “Second Genesis”  

The octopus brain and nervous system has been called a “second genesis” of intelligence. That raises an interesting issue: If intelligence was a fluke when it was generated once, as some claim, what about finding it generated again in a different neurological format? When flukes repeat themselves, something else is usually going on. 

Note: This year, researchers spotted octopuses throwing things at each other: “Underwater cameras captured the cephalopods collecting shells, silt and algae with their arms and hurling them at one another by using jets of water from their siphon to propel the scraps. The researchers even observed the receiving octopuses ducking to avoid a hit.” (Scientific American, December 7, 2022) 

You may also wish to read: Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests. The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink what we believe to be the origin of intelligence. The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues.