Friday, 17 March 2023

It's causal circularity all the way down?

Here’s That Paper on MicroRNAs in Brown Algae

MicroRNAs are small RNA gene products, typically consisting of 20-24 nucleotides, which help to regulate protein synthesis, for example by pausing or halting the ribosome translation process. Like the small drill bit which is inserted into the much larger drill tool, the small microRNAs are attached to a much larger molecular machine that performs the regulation. The microRNA role is to help the molecular machine recognize the correct RNA target. In other words, instead of the cell having to construct a large quantity of different molecular machines to perform the regulatory role on a large quantity of RNA targets, the cell can construct a more generic type of molecular machine, and then simply attach the instructions—the microRNA—as needed. This design approach requires the existence of these two entities: the big molecular machine and its little instruction set. Remove either entity, and this particular regulatory process isn’t going to happen. That does not fit the evolutionary narrative. According to evolution you need a slow, gradual buildup of designs, not all-or-none scenarios. But not surprisingly biology is chocked full of the latter, and so with evolution we must say that the different parts just happened to arise, perhaps serving some other roles, and then just luckily they worked fantastically together to achieve a new function. MicroRNAs are yet another finding that must be force-fit into evolutionary theory. But this irreducible complexity is only the beginning of the problem. With microRNAs, it only gets worse.

A completely different problem that microRNAs pose for evolutionary “theory” is that microRNAs do not fit the common descent pattern. As a recent Paper admitted:

There is no evidence of conservation of miRNAs between the phylogenetic groups, indicating that miRNA systems evolved independently in each lineage

Evolved independently?

In other words, microRNAs do not fit the evolution model. The evidence contradicts the theory. Of course one can always make up an explanation. In this case, we say that the microRNAs “evolved independently.”

There you go, problem solved.

But let’s be honest—this is not indicated by the evidence. When the paper states that there is no evidence of conservation of miRNAs between the phylogenetic groups, thus “indicating” that miRNA systems evolved independently, it is simply misrepresenting the science.

There is precisely zero scientific evidence that microRNAs “evolved independently.”

Zero.

That is not my opinion. That is not conjecture. That is scientific fact.

Evolutionists talk a lot about scientific “fact.” They insist evolution is a scientific “fact.” But let’s just be honest. What is a scientific fact here is not evolution, but rather the exact opposite. The “fact” is the microRNAs show “no evidence of conservation.”

That fact does not “indicate” evolution, it contradicts evolution.

Let’s just be honest. For once.

The paper finds yet another example of this failure in the microRNAs in brown algae. The study investigated the microRNAs in the species, Saccharina japonica, and compared them to previously investigated microRNAs, including those in a different brown algae species. Their findings were, as usual, “surprising.” The microRNAs in the two brown algae species were different.

Completely different.

There was not a single pair of microRNAs, between the two species, that showed any sign of statistically significant sequence similarity.

Interestingly, the microRNAs in the two species did generally share some structural and genomic features. So the evolutionists had to conclude that the microRNAs in the two species evolved from a common ancestor, but then their respective sequences evolved like crazy, leaving zero trace of sequence similarity.

This. Makes. No. Sense.

Here how the paper spun the results:

Surprisingly, none of the S. japonica miRNAs share significant sequence similarity with the Ectocarpus sp. miRNAs. However, the miRNA repertoires of the two species share a number of structural and genomic features indicating that they were generated by similar evolutionary processes and therefore probably evolved within the context of a common, ancestral miRNA system. This lack of sequence similarity suggests that miRNAs evolve rapidly in the brown algae (the two species are separated by ∼95 Myr of evolution). The sets of predicted targets of miRNAs in the two species were also very different suggesting that the divergence of the miRNAs may have had significant consequences for miRNA function.

“Probably evolved within the context of a common, ancestral miRNA system”? So what does “within the context” mean?

The answer is this is a meaningless cover phrase that masks the fact that the evidence contradicts the theory. It is evo-speak for “We don’t know what we’re talking about.” A more polite description is “hand-waving.”

A less polite, and more accurate description won’t be repeated here.

I will now consider the elephant in the room: Why is evolution being used to interpret the results in the first place? The theory is superfluous. It is redundant. It is vacuous. It is non-parsimonious. It is meaningless.

The theory does nothing to help us understand, interpret, elucidate, guide, or formulate meaningful predictions. Its only justification is itself.

We use the theory of evolution to interpret the results because the theory is true. And how do we know it is true? Because it is true?

The theory is self-referential. It is circular. It is famous for being famous.

It is a hold-over from the Epicureans of antiquity, the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, the rationalists of the seventeenth century, and the Darwinists today, and it has made a mockery of science.

Actual intelligence is non-computable?

On the impassible border between artificial intelligence and actual intelligence.

The Origin of Life v. Darwinism's Simple beginning.

Yet more on molecular biology and the edge of Darwinism

Our AI overlords to the rescue?

Prisoner of conscience?

Thursday, 16 March 2023

Another look at the thumb print of JEHOVAH.

Cosmic Fine-Tuning: A Look at the Implications

Evolution News

On a new episode of ID the Future host and geologist Casey Luskin continues his conversation with astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez about the many ways Earth’s place in the cosmos is fine-tuned for life. In this second half of their conversation, Gonzalez zooms out to discuss the galactic habitable zone and the cosmic habitable age. Luskin says that the combination of exquisite cosmic and local fine-tuning strongly suggests intelligent design, but he asks Gonzalez whether he thinks these telltale clues favor theism over deism? That is, does any of the evidence suggest a cosmic designer who is more than just the clockmaker God of the deists who, in the words of Stephen Dedalus, “remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails”? Gonzalez answers in the affirmative, but the reasons he offers for this conclusion may surprise you. Download the podcast or Listen to it here.

Charles Darwin :champion of abolitionism?

“Sacred Cause”? Reconsidering Charles Darwin as Abolitionist

Robert Schedinger

In 2009, noted Darwinian biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore published Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery, and the Quest for Human Origins. They argued the radical new thesis that Darwin’s species work was primarily motivated by an abolitionist desire to combat racist polygenist views of human origins and instead draw all humans together under the umbrella of common descent. This book has been both widely praised and widely criticized.

But agree with the thesis or not, many view the book as a premier example of historiographical research. The book contains 820 endnotes citing hundreds of primary sources, not the least of which are many hundreds of references to Darwin’s voluminous correspondence. One can always disagree with Desmond and Moore’s interpretation of the evidence, but one would be hard pressed to criticize them for not doing their homework.

Or So I Thought

I have been reading the Darwinian correspondence myself for several years and have never seen anything in Darwin’s letters that would seem to support Desmond and Moore’s thesis about the motivating factor for Darwin’s species work. However, given how deeply their book is rooted in primary source documentation, surely I must have missed something in my own reading. Curious to figure out what, I decided to undertake a careful re-reading of Darwin’s Sacred Cause, paying special attention to places where Desmond and Moore register Darwin’s views on slavery and race. I then checked the references they cite to document this new portrait of Darwin.

Shockingly, it turns out that these highly esteemed scholars play fast and loose with their sources and with basic tenets of historiographical research.

Therefore, I offer a series of posts here designed to lay out the evidence in detail. It is not merely that Desmond and Moore are selective in the sources they cite, filtering out only those which support their thesis. Many historians are selective. What I found in their historiography rises, instead, to a different level.

A Sweeping Statement

For example, let’s consider Desmond and Moore’s sweeping statement regarding the impact on Darwin of his encounters with indigenous peoples during the Beagle voyage:

Interestingly it was in Tierra del Fuego, perplexed and troubled by an alien race, that Darwin decided to spend his life studying natural science (97).

It sounds like Darwin’s scientific work was primarily motivated by anthropological concerns. Let’s check the sources. An endnote points us to Darwin’s autobiography (p. 26) and volume 1 of his correspondence (pp. 305, and 311-12. Desmond and Moore cite the correspondence by volume and page number, never by date and addressee of the letter).

In his autobiography, Darwin does indeed write:

I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego, thinking, (and I believe that I wrote home to the effect) that I could not employ my life better than in adding a little to natural science.

Darwin does say he contemplated a career in science while in Tierra del Fuego, but he gives no indication that it was due to being “perplexed and troubled by an alien race,” as Desmond and Moore indicate.

Volume 1 of the correspondence, page 305, reflects a March 1833 letter of Darwin to his sister Caroline written during the Beagle voyage. He makes several references to his growing love for geology, and his ability to withstand the difficulties of the voyage because of his increasing pleasure from natural history, but nothing about alien races. Pages 311-12 reflect a May 1833 letter to another sister, Catherine, in which Darwin says, referring to the numerous invertebrate animals in the intertropical ocean, “If it was not for these & still more for geology — I would in short time make a bolt across the Atlantic to good old Shropshire.”

These references clearly demonstrate that Darwin’s interest in a career in science was stoked by his natural history pursuits during the voyage. The idea that he was motivated by being “perplexed and troubled by an alien race” has no support in the sources that Desmond and Moore cite, a point that undercuts their entire thesis that combatting slavery was his sacred cause.

An Emigration Daydream

As another brief example, consider their story about how Darwin bought his children a copy of Mary Howitt’s book Our Cousins in Ohio, which painted a portrait of “an English family living as neighbors to liberated blacks, their children playing in the lush countryside only miles from the Slave States’ border” (238). Desmond and Moore claim that in response to this book, Darwin also harbored an emigration daydream in which he

plumped for the ‘middle States’ as ‘what I fancy most’ — New York, Pennsylvania, maybe even Ohio; free soil situated between New England’s snobbery and Lyell’s beloved south.

An accompanying endnote refers to volume 4 of the correspondence (p. 362). There we find Darwin writing to his cousin William Darwin Fox in October 1850. In noting that his eighth child was on the way, Darwin made the offhand comment:

I often speculate how wise it would be to start off to Australia, or what I fancy most the middle States of N. America.

He then quickly changes the subject to a question Fox asked about his pear tree.

No Connection at All

Darwin’s brief speculation about possibly moving to America is not connected at all to the difference between slave or free states and he makes no mention of Howitt’s book. But more problematic is Desmond and Moore’s gloss, “New York, Pennsylvania, maybe even Ohio; free soil situated between New England’s snobbery and Lyell’s beloved south.” Darwin neither said nor implied this. Desmond and Moore, with brief phrases actually quoted from the letter, give the impression that they are paraphrasing Darwin’s words. In reality, Darwin was simply concerned about finding economic opportunities for his many children and thought Australia or America might provide them.

These are just two of many examples of Desmond and Moore creating a portrait of Darwin as abolitionist that is poorly supported by their intimidating apparatus of primary source citations which are mostly irrelevant to their argument. Readers have a right to trust that the sources cited support the claims made in the text. But most readers will not check obscure references buried in over 800 endnotes at the back of the book. They haven’t met me!

In future posts, we will see many more illustrations of Desmond and Moore’s historiographical methodology, and how that bears on Darwin’s “sacred cause.”

Darwinism is the fittest? III

Peer-Reviewed Paper Cites Stephen Meyer to Critique Darwinian Evolution

Casey Luskin

In an article yesterday I noted that a peer-reviewed paper published last year in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, titled “Neo-Darwinism Must Mutate to survive,” offered potent probability arguments against the Darwinian evolution of a complex molecular pathway. These arguments, presented by authors Olen R. Brown and David A. Hullender, in many respects resemble intelligent design probability arguments.

Importantly, the authors seem aware that intelligent design offers similar arguments, and they appear to agree that these hold some merit:

Probability reasoning has been applied to the evolution alternative known as intelligent design by Elliott Sober who argued that ‘Darwinian gradualism’ and ‘random genetic drift’ are reasonable ‘evolutionary processes’ to overcome weaknesses in natural selection by survival of the fittest (Sober, 2007). We challenge these assumptions. Stephen Gould, and Niles Eldredge initiated a controversy described in the book Punctuated Equilibrium (Gould, 2007). Their proposal was widely ridiculed but the problem they addressed was real and continues today e survival of the fittest is not a satisfactory explanation for macroevolution.

Indeed, the authors cite Stephen Meyer’s 2013 book Darwin’s Doubt and his arguments about “the combinational problem of the Cambrian explosion”:

There is much published evidence that Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theories are probabilistically extremely improbable. Stephen Meyer in his book Darwin’s Doubt (S. C. Meyer, n.d.) has intelligently examined the meaning of the rapid expansion of life forms that appeared in what is known as the Cambrian explosion. Many life forms with essentially new body types appeared quickly and without precursors in the Burgess Shale discovered in Canada’s Kicking Horse Valley in British Columbia in the 1880s.

Mainstream biologists have maintained that up to 20 million years was provided during this ‘explosion’ which they maintain is adequate for the presumed process of change with selection to have accounted for Neo-Darwinian Evolution as typified in a critique of Meyer’s book published in 2013 in the New Yorker (Cook, n.d.). Myer also has spoken about the combinational problem of the Cambrian explosion, including: “… the mystery of how the neo-Darwinian mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation [emphasis added] could have given rise to all these fundamentally new forms of animal life.” (S. Meyer, n.d.).

In this perspective, we seek to promote a sea change in mainstream biology to follow the evidence. We do not propose that probability alone is a solution, but that it is a useful initiative for redirecting prior efforts that have too often been met, unfortunately, with a mental shrug and the statement ‘we are here’.

The authors seem to have appreciated Meyer’s message — namely that some factor other than standard evolutionary mechanisms is needed to produce life’s complex features.

Others Calling for New Models

The paper further notes that many sources are calling for new models of evolution, as it quotes Corning (2020) stating that there is no valid replacement paradigm for the Modern Synthesis:

Many theorists in recent years have been calling for evolutionary biology to move beyond the Modern Synthesis — the paradigm that has long provided the theoretical backbone for the discipline. Terms like ‘postmodern synthesis’, ‘integrative synthesis’, and ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ have been invoked by various critics in connection with the many recent developments that pose deep challenges — even contradictions — to the traditional model and underscore the need for an update, or makeover. However, none of these critics, to this author’s knowledge, has to date offered an explicit alternative that could provide a unifying theoretical paradigm for our vastly increased knowledge about living systems and the history of life on earth.

Similarly they quote Noble (2021)

[T]he illusions of the modern synthesis … something has gone deeply wrong in biology … [there is] the difficulty of trying to ‘break out of its attractive simplicity’ as it is still routinely taught in schools and universities … This is a serious and unnecessary situation that urgently needs rectifying … We have reached a critical turning point in evolutionary biology.

On the origin of life, the authors note that key problems are unsolved, quoting Mariscal et al. (2019) who offer a forceful critique of the state of the field of origin of life research:

[W]e provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory of life, (2) the distinctions between synthetic, historical, and universal projects in origins-of-life studies, issues with strategies for inferring the origins of life, such as (3) the nature of the first living entities (the “bottom up” approach) and (4) how to infer the nature of the last universal common ancestor (the “top down” approach), and (5) the status of origins of life as a science. Each of these debates influences the others. Although there are clusters of researchers that agree on some answers to these issues, each of these debates is still open.

Opposition from Mainstream Biology

They know these are serious challenges, that they are in for some tough sledding, and that their claims may not be well received. So the introduction to the paper contains a pre-emptive statement expressing their awareness of the “opposition” their claims will face:

The central thesis of this perspective is that reasonable scientific challenges to evolutionary theories, like other theories in science, should be explored. We focus on assessing the weaknesses of survival of the fittest, evaluating alternatives, and proposing new ideas. Mainstream biology remains opposed to any opposition to the central concepts of evolution.

It’s quite striking to see a mainstream scientific journal acknowledging that “Mainstream biology remains opposed to any opposition to the central concepts of evolution.” They further state that they “are critical of accepting without question Darwinian evolution and Neo-Darwinism including what is generally referred to as the modern synthesis”— the implication being that many accept it uncritically. But they haven’t given up on mainstream biology, and thus attempt to remind readers of the scientific virtues of humility and openness to new ideas:

[T]he Templeton Foundation on its website in January 2022 described the ‘Joy of being wrong’ and said that Saint Augustine called humility the foundation of all other virtues. “Psychologists and philosophers are working to tease apart the ways we respond to new ideas and information — and the possible benefits of intellectual humility … a mindset that guides our intellectual conduct … it involves recognizing and owning our intellectual limitations in the service of pursuing deeper knowledge, truth, and understanding.”

Again, I had not heard of these authors prior to the publication of this paper — but their courage and boldness inspire confidence that there are still people within the scientific community willing to follow the evidence where it leads.

Darwinism is the fittest? II

Peer-Reviewed Paper: “Neo-Darwinism Must Mutate to Survive”

Casey Luskin

A peer-reviewed paper published towards the end of last year in the Elsevier journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology has a provocative title: “Neo-Darwinism Must Mutate to survive ” The paper’s abstract opens with points that few would dispute:

Darwinian evolution is a nineteenth century descriptive concept that itself has evolved. Selection by survival of the fittest was a captivating idea. Microevolution was biologically and empirically verified by discovery of mutations.

However, there then comes a major “but”:

There has been limited progress to the modern synthesis. The central focus of this perspective is to provide evidence to document that selection based on survival of the fittest is insufficient for other than microevolution.

And according to authors Olen R. Brown and David A. Hullender, just what is the basis for saying this? It’s calculations showing that the likelihood of microevolutionary processes adding up to macroevolutionary changes is highly improbable:

Realistic probability calculations based on probabilities associated with microevolution are presented. However, macroevolution (required for all speciation events and the complexifications appearing in the Cambrian explosion) are shown to be probabilistically highly implausible (on the order of 10-50) when based on selection by survival of the fittest. We conclude that macroevolution via survival of the fittest is not salvageable by arguments for random genetic drift and other proposed mechanisms.

They go on to state, “We are critical, as previously explained, of the position that macroevolution is sufficiently explained by the processes useful for microevolution — in particular that mutations and survival of the fittest are adequate to the task,” and argue that “Microevolution does not explain speciation — only smaller changes.”

A Familiar Critique

Prior to the publication of this paper I was not familiar with these authors (though Olen R. Brown contributed an article to Evolution News while I was in South Africa completing my PhD). But clearly they share a critical perspective on neo-Darwinism that is very similar to that of the intelligent design community. Consider this striking passage:

Survival of the fittest is adequate to select for such changes (gains) which occur within one genome primarily by single fixed mutations (and perhaps sometimes by horizontal gene transfer). Macroevolution, however, requires major changes necessitating multiple changes that logically most frequently occur in multiple genomes. Therefore, the concept survival of the fittest is inadequate to conserve individual changes in multiple genomes where the individual changes generate no increased fitness. … Thus, survival of the fittest is illogical when proposed as adequate for selecting the origination of all complex, major, new body-types and metabolic functions because the multiple changes in multiple genomes that are required have intermediate stages without advantage; selection would not reasonably occur, and disadvantage or death would logically prevail.

What they are saying is that when some feature requires multiple changes before providing an increase in fitness, the changes cannot be produced by mutation and selection alone. Their subsequent comments, read carefully, almost sound like an implicit endorsement of intelligent design:

It is our perspective that the burden is too great for survival of the fittest to select evolutionary changes that accomplish all evolutionary novelty. Thus, evolution lacks a sufficient mechanism for multifactorial selections because a process that looks forward, is nonrandom, deterministic, or occurs by an unknown biological process, is required. The position of mainstream biologists regarding this aspect of evolution is that nature is always non-purposeful and, therefore, the proposed selection (process, force, tendency), could not possibly be natural (scientific). However, our perspective is that this is a supposition of necessity rather than an established principle. Logic demands that it be open to investigation. This first requires an openness to ideas and science must be open to new ideas.

They thus propose that evolution is only possible if it is “nonrandom, deterministic, or occurs by an unknown biological process” — something that some would reluctantly conclude “could not possibly be natural.” They continue:

Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species… : “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” Today, Darwin’s missing cases are abundant including each complex transition to a new body type, metabolic cycle, or metabolic chain. Multi-step processes are routinely required at every evolutionary step.

They then perform a probability calculation which shows that the likelihood of producing a necessary pathway would require such multi-step processes leading to probabilities below the plausibility bound they had previously set.

Origin of the Krebs Cycle

They use a case study of the origin of the Krebs cycle — a metabolic pathway involving 12 enzymes that is necessary for life. They believe that this is a useful test for evolution. They assume that the genome is “ripe” to produce each enzyme where a minimal number of mutations is needed for a gene to suddenly become functional. They therefore choose an incredibly generous value of 0.00001 as the probability that a given enzyme can be created by a single mutation.

They calculate the likelihood of producing all 12 enzymes needed to produce a selectable function as 10-51. They note this is below 10-50, a probability that was called “negligible” by Émile Borel, the French mathematician, who stated “this process of evolution involves certain properties of living matter that prevent us from asserting that the process was accomplished in accordance with the laws of chance.”

They also reject co-option and exaptation as possible explanations for the origin of the Krebs cycle:

The idea that the complete, functioning Krebs cycle arose by purloining each intermediate step from other uses (Meléndez-Hevia, 1996) lacks empirical support. The discoveries that genes can be switched on and off, that codes read forward and backward, gene duplication, and the homeobox, are helpful but inadequate to save evolutionary theory without modification.

In the end, producing a complex feature like the Krebs cycle is just too improbable because “Selection based on survival of the fittest, for anything beyond single mutational changes in a genome, is insufficient scientifically and biologically.” They conclude, “there is something besides mutations and survival of the fittest needed to explain evolution.”

The Junk DNA trope further exposed as Junk science.

More Jobs for “Junk” DNA

Paul Nelson

It turns out the mouse endogenous retrovirus L (MERVL) is essential for embryogenesis, according to a recently published article in Nature Genetics. From the Discussion

We provided functional evidence that transcriptional activation of MERVL is essential for progression of development in mouse preimplantation embryos. Depletion of MERVL transcripts results in embryonic lethality with profound defects in development and is associated with dysregulation of MERVL including their adjacent transcripts, and retaining two-cell-like transcriptome and chromatin state (Fig. 6i). These findings suggest the possibility that MERVL transcription in totipotent cells may act as a switch for the transition from totipotency to pluripotency and is responsible for the onset of differentiation and ontogeny.

For more, see “Transcription of MERVL retrotransposons is required for preimplantation embryo development” (open access).

Biology's lexicon and the design inference.

Mapping the Pleiotropic Network of Human Cells

Paul Nelson

If you think about how you use English words, you quickly realize that words are polyfunctional. “House,” for instance, can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective (“house music,” “house money,” etc.).

Thus, if you imagine eliminating the word “house” from your daily-use lexicon, a wide range of different propositions would be affected, many having no apparent semantic relation to each other.

Genes and proteins are remarkably similar to natural-language words in this polyfunctional respect. For many decades, “pleiotropy” has been the term describing the multiple-system consequences of genetic mutations to a single locus, where the functional consequences can be wide-ranging, and often surprising in their diversity.

For more on the subject, here is an open access article at Nature Genetics: “Network expansion of genetic associations defines a Pleiotropy map of human cell biology.”

Wednesday, 15 March 2023

The beast stirs?

Zelenskiy: Ukraine seeks 'spiritual independence', acts against church

Reuters

March 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine's punitive actions against a branch of the Orthodox church linked to Russia are part of a drive to achieve "spiritual independence," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday.

Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian leaders have accused the long-established Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of undermining Ukrainian unity and collaborating with Moscow.

Authorities ordered the church last Friday to leave its base in the 980-year-old Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, prompting Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill to ask Pope Francis and other religious leaders to help stop the crackdown.

"One more step towards strengthening our spiritual independence was taken this week," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, without referring directly to the order.

Ukrainians, he said, had reacted positively.

"We will continue this movement," he said. "We will not allow the terrorist state any opportunity to manipulate the spiritual life of our people, to destroy Ukrainian shrines - our Lavras - or to steal values from them."

Kirill has strongly supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In his appeal, he urged religious leaders and international organisations to "make every effort to prevent the forced closure of the monastery".

The Security Service of Ukraine has since October carried out searches at UOC churches, imposed sanctions on its bishops and financial backers, and opened criminal cases against dozens of clergymen.

Church officials say it and its millions of worshippers are victims of a witch-hunt.

Orthodoxy is the primary faith in Ukraine and the Moscow-linked church has been in competition for worshippers with an independent Orthodox Church, founded after the Soviet collapse in 1991 but only recognised by church hierarchy in 2018.

The independent church has been gaining in size and following since the invasion.

The Ukrainian culture ministry says the Moscow-linked church has until March 29 to leave the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex.

Ps. The Russian Church is complicit in the stripping of the rights of JEHOVAH'S servants in Russia so this could be viewed as a reaping of what they've sown.

Welcome to our world.

A financial pandemic? II

Pay their fair share?

Why good intentions are never enough.

Tuesday, 14 March 2023

Rules for aspiring titans.

Darwinism simple beginning is more than a phantom? Pros and cons.

Rise of the planet of the monkeys?

Monkey-Made “Tools” Cast Doubt on High Intelligence in Early Hominids

Casey Luskin

A new paper in Science Advances, titled “Wild macaques challenge the origin of intentional tool production,” is making headlines. Macaque monkeys from Lobi Bay, Thailand, have been observed “unintentionally” producing stone tools that are “almost indistinguishable” from some very old stone artifacts typically attributed to our supposed evolutionary ancestors. Gizmodo reports, “Uh-Oh: Monkeys Make Stone Flakes That Look a Lot Like Human Tools.” According to The Hill, “New study on monkeys using stone tools raises questions about evolution.” The reason for the “Uh-Oh” and the “questions” is that if living monkeys can produce tools resembling those supposedly produced by our intelligent hominid ancestors, then many tools currently ascribed to our purported ancestors may be no such thing. From Gizmodo:

Researchers studying macaques in one of Thailand’s national parks made a surprising discovery: While cracking nuts, the monkeys make stone flakes that look an awful lot like the flakes that scientists have attributed to ancient human. The finding means that some of the material held up as the earliest evidence of hominin tool use may have actually come from monkeys and not our ancestors.

The Hill elaborates:

The Thai monkeys produced stone artifacts “indistinguishable from what we see at the beginning of the [human] archeological record — what we see as the onset of being human,” said Lydia Luncz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a co-author on the study.

The monkeys — long-tailed macaques — seem to have made their artifacts by accident, not by design. But in many ways, that only makes the finding more disruptive.

[…]

Ancient humans used knapping to break apart rocks to create an incredibly flexible set of tools — the earliest forms of which cannot be distinguished from the ones macaques made by accident.

That points to a possibility that could throw a wrench into the established narrative, Luncz said: that “all the conoidal flakes we find in the archaeological record — deemed to be intentionally made — could be unintentional byproducts.”

Doubts About Our “Ancestors”

Similarly Inverse reports, “Because the macaques created stone flakes by accident, Luncz and colleagues wondered if some ancient primates may have done the same — creating objects that researchers today might interpret as intentional tools.” It continues:

For the new study, the researchers compared more than 1,000 stone flakes made by macaques to ancient flakes dating back 1.3 to 3.3 million years ago. Samples came from several excavated sites in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

Looking at the shape, size, and markings on each flake, the researchers determined that there were very few physical differences between the samples from today and those made by human ancestors from millions of years ago.

That leads the researchers to believe it’s possible that some ancient stone flakes may have been misinterpreted as intentionally-made tools, since the macaques make such similar ones without even trying.

“Given these similarities, it may be that some flakes and flaked stones from Plio-Pleistocene contexts are derived as a by-product of percussive behaviors and may be easily misidentified as intentional products,” they write.

“All of the Same Characteristics”

Just how similar are these “tools” to the stone tools we find in the archaeological record? The technical paper reports “morphological overlap between unintentionally produced (macaque) material and those interpreted as intentional (Oldowan and Lomekwian),” and concludes, “These results show that between 30 and 70% of an Oldowan assemblage can be replaced by macaque flakes before significantly changing the central tendency of the morphological and technological parameters of the original assemblage.” A press release from the authors of the technical paper states:

[M]any of these artefacts bear all of the same characteristics that are commonly used to identify intentionally made stone tools in some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa.

This evidence has apparently not been well received, as The Hill reports:

That idea remains controversial in the field, however.

“You will not believe the fights we had to fight,” Luncz said.

Even calling the macaque-produced stone flakes “artifacts” was controversial because some scientists felt it implied an overlap between tool use by Homo sapiens and other primates that wasn’t justified.

‘Artifacts,’ after all, shares its root with ‘art’ and ‘artifice’ — words that suggest intention, planning and humanity.

“People were not happy with monkeys being able to create those artifacts,” she added. “And somewhere in the records of macaque and early hominid tools, there must be a difference. But right now, the diagnostic criteria we’re using can’t find one.”

A Word of Caution

But the paper offers a potential way forward:

Our results suggest that larger, more elongated flakes, with high cutting edge–to–mass ratios and more platform preparation are attributes associated with intentional flake production. However, measures such as external platform angle and platform dimensions, flake scar frequency, flake scar directionality and cortical coverage on flakes, as well as exploitation strategies and number of exploited surfaces on flaked pieces do not differ between nut cracking and intentionally produced assemblages.

But the paper offers a caution at the end, noting that previously used criteria also turned out to wrongly infer “intentional” activity:

Previous studies have relied on the aforementioned co-occurring attributes to infer intentional hominin tool production. Building on previous studies of primate flaked stone assemblages, this study shows that these criteria now occur repeatedly within multiple phylogenetically and geographically diverse nonhuman primate lineages.

This study is a potential gamechanger. As they conclude, “The results of this study demonstrate that a fundamental reassessment of how we define and identify this uniquely hominin behavior in the archaeological record is still needed.” If current criteria for inferring intelligent tool production can be wrong, it raises the specter that future studies could show monkeys and apes are capable of “unintentionally” producing other complex tools still ascribed to our supposed hominid ancestors. This could mean that a sacred evolutionary icon — apelike species acting smart and making tools — could potentially be axed (pun intended!).

To make a long story short re: Darwinism's "simple beginning"

James Tour on why the OOL is the linchpin of the design argument.

How the giraffe got its neck? :with apologies to Rudyard Kipling.

Evolution’s Tall Tale — The Giraffe Neck

Jonathan Witt

The giraffe’s neck has long been a beloved icon of evolutionary theory. According to the story, one of the giraffe’s short-necked ancestors had a slightly longer neck, which helped him reach leaves the other animals on the savannah couldn’t. This gave him a survival advantage he passed on to his offspring. Or maybe the female giraffes really dug his slightly longer neck, giving him a reproductive advantage. Same result. He passed his slightly longer neck on to his offspring. Rinse and repeat a few thousand times, and voila, the lineage ends up with 600-pound, six-foot long giraffe necks.

But the devil is in the details. An article in the journal Nature frankly characterizes the evolution of the giraffe’s cartoonishly long neck as “a puzzle”:

There should be a good reason for the extraordinary length, because it causes hardship. A giraffe’s heart needs to pump blood 2 metres up to the head, which requires a high blood pressure and management to avoid fainting or stroke. “It’s beautifully adapted to this, but it’s a big cost,” says Rob Simmons, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who was not involved in the study.

One prevailing theory is that giraffes evolved longer necks to reach higher trees for food. “This is widely believed; it’s really entrenched,” says Simmons…. [But] research has shown that giraffes tend to eat from lower levels, and tall giraffes aren’t more likely to survive drought, when food competition is highest. Another idea is that giraffes evolved longer necks for sexual competition, with male giraffes engaging in violent neck-swinging fights and longer necks attracting mates…. [But] males don’t have longer necks than females.1

Fossil Phantasms

Fossils aren’t much help either. German geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig surveyed the literature on fossils and giraffe evolution and reports that there is an abundance of fossils from giraffes and creatures said to be either giraffe ancestors or closely related to those ancestors, but what remains stubbornly absent is a smooth series of transitional fossils from short-necked to long-necked. He writes:

No continuous series of fossil links leads to the Giraffa or Okapia. “The giraffe and the okapi of the Congo rain forest are considered as sister groups, the origins of which are still not known” (Devillers and Chaline 1993, p. 247). Similarly Starck (1995, p. 999) remarks: “The ancestry of Giraffidae is disputed.” Wesson (1991, pp. 238-239) agrees with these statements about giraffe fossils, as follows: “The evolving giraffe line left no middling branches on the way, and there is nothing, living or fossil, between the moderate neck of the okapi and the greatly elongated giraffe. The several varieties of giraffe are all about the same height.”

An okapi, keep in mind, is an extant even-toed ungulate that looks not dramatically different from a large deer. Between it and the giraffe there stretches a great morphological gulf.

There was a much-ballyhooed fossil find reported in 2015 purporting to bridge that great gulf. A Live Science article, “7-Million-Year-Old Fossils Show How the Giraffe Got Its Long Neck,” promised the moon, and the lead researcher, Nikos Solounias, was only slightly more restrained. “We actually have an animal whose neck is intermediate [in length] — it’s a real missing link,” he said. But as the evolutionists behind the study later concede, they don’t even think the creature, Samotherium major, is a direct ancestor of the giraffe.

Stretching the Truth

More fundamentally, as researchers learn more and more about giraffe physiology, it’s increasingly clear that hundreds, maybe even thousands, of genetic changes would be needed to arrive at a functioning giraffe; many of the changes would need to arrive simultaneously for the creature to survive; and such big-jump changes would need to occur numerous times over millions of years.

Yes, natural selection could jump in to preserve these coordinated mutation freak events if they ever occurred, but first the freak-event mutations would have to occur.

Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, famous for his many books defending atheism and evolutionary theory, characterizes the difference between a giraffe’s neck and that of its short-necked ancestor as relatively “slight.” Dawkins writes: “The giraffe’s neck has the same complicated arrangement of parts as the okapi (and presumably as the giraffe’s own short-necked ancestor). There is the same sequence of seven vertebrae [Lönnig contests this], each with its associated blood vessels, nerves, ligaments, and blocks of muscle. The difference is that each vertebra is a lot longer, and all its associated parts are stretched or spaced out in proportion.”2

So, how hard could it be to evolve?

Dawkins’s characterization is one a Darwin disciple could love, but never an attentive engineer, or any biologist with a working familiarity with giraffe physiology. As Lönnig puts it, Dawkins “simplifies the biological problems to a degree that is tolerable for evolutionary theory, but not realistic with regard to the biological facts.”

Giraffe Spectacular

Lönnig describes several things that must be either engineered or reengineered to arrive at a functional giraffe from a short-necked ancestor. First, giraffes, like cows and many other grazing animals, are ruminants, meaning they regurgitate a half-digested cud and chew on it before swallowing the food a second time, helping them digest tough fibrous grass and leaves. But to pull off this trick, a giraffe, with its neck as tall as a man, needs “a special muscular esophagus,” Lönnig explains. So that’s one reengineering challenge.

Lönnig gives so many more that there isn’t room for them all here. His book debunking giraffe evolution, The Evolution of the Long-Necked Giraffe, is dense and thorough. But he helpfully quotes Gordon Rattray Taylor, who concisely summarized several of the reengineering challenges in his book The Great Evolution Mystery:

Nineteenth-century observers assumed that the giraffe had only to develop a longer neck and legs to be able to reach the leaves which other animals could not. But in fact such growth created severe problems. The giraffe had to pump blood up about eight feet to its head. The solution it reached was to have a heart which beats faster than average and a high blood pressure. When the giraffe puts his head down to drink, he suffers a rush of blood to the head, so a special pressure-reducing mechanism, the rete mirabile, had to be provided to deal with this. However, much more intractable are the problems of breathing through an eight-foot tube. If a man tried to do so, he would die — not from lack of oxygen so much as poisoning by his own carbon dioxide. For the tube would fill with his expired, deoxygenated breath, and he would keep reinhaling it. Furthermore, one study group found that the blood in a giraffe’s legs would be under such pressure that it would force its way out of the capillaries. How was this being prevented? It turned out that the intercellular spaces are filled with fluid, also under pressure — which in turn necessitates the giraffe having a strong, impermeable skin. To all these changes one could add the need for new postural reflexes and for new strategies of escape from predators. It is evident that the giraffe’s long neck necessitated not just one mutation but many — and these perfectly coordinated.3

Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon cogently tease out the significance of all this:

In short, the giraffe represents not a mere collection of individual traits but a package of interrelated adaptations. It is put together according to an overall design that integrates all parts into a single pattern. Where did such an adaptational package come from? According to Darwinian theory, the giraffe evolved to its present form by the accumulation of individual, random changes preserved by natural selection. But it is difficult to explain how a random process could offer to natural selection an integrated package of adaptations, even over time. Random mutations might adequately explain change in a relatively isolated trait, such as color. But major changes, like the macroevolution of the giraffe from some other animal, would require an extensive suite of coordinated adaptations.4

A Lottery-Winning Fiend

This means that if we hold to the evolutionary story for the giraffe neck, we must go from believing that the giraffe lineage won a series of longshot lotteries over millions of years to believing that the various ancestors in the lineage each won numerous longshot lotteries simultaneously and managed to do this over and over.

To grasp the enormous difference, imagine that the President of the United States takes a winding summer trip through the American heartland and buys a state lottery ticket in each of those 45 states that has a state lottery. (Not all do.) Later that summer it emerges that every one of the lottery tickets the President bought was a jackpot winner. The President’s handlers attribute this to “dumb luck,” but you can bet that 45 state lottery commissioners will smell a rat and, if brave enough, launch an investigation. They will reasonably infer that all those wins were somehow gamed in the President’s favor — that is, were intelligently designed. There are long odds, and then there are odds so long, and so beneficial to someone, that reasonable people begin to look for other explanations.

In the giraffe’s case, a bit of reasoning goes a long way. Blind evolution doesn’t look ahead and coordinate a group of changes for some future advantage. It’s blind and must proceed by one small useful step at a time. No evolutionist, for instance, believes that a small number of mega-mutations turned a land mammal into a whale.

But what if loads of changes are needed simultaneously to successfully make a biological transition, or even just a significant step in a larger transition? We know of only type of cause with the demonstrated ability to meet such a challenge, and it isn’t dumb luck and natural selection. The engineering marvel that is the giraffe, long neck and all, was intelligently designed.

On humanity's privileged homeworld.

The Problem of Earth Privilege: It’s Getting Worse

Evolution News

On a new episode of ID the Future, astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, provides a rapid survey of some of the growing evidence that Earth is finely tuned in numerous ways to allow for life. He draws a helpful distinction between local fine-tuning and universal fine-tuning. And he tells us about the many extra-solar planets astronomers have discovered in recent years and how all that new data continues to undermine the misguided assumption (encouraged by the misnamed “Copernican Principle”) that Earth is just a humdrum planet. Far from it, Gonzalez argues. Download the podcast or listen to it here

The mind of a slave with the power of a king?

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Why we will always have the poor with us?

Monday, 13 March 2023

Yet more on separating artificial from actual intelligence.

Depths of Design: Moving Pixels

Nathan Jacobson

Editor’s note: This is Part II of a series. Look here for Part I. Cross-posted from Mind Matters News.

As with traditional art, computer animation has followed a similar trajectory toward realism. Early animations were as crude as rock carvings, limited as they were by relatively weak CPU’s, as yet undeveloped rendering engines, and a lack of digital artists. The monochromatic Space Invaders was endlessly playable, as were the whirling, 8-bit dervishes of Centipede and the bubble-gumless, three-dimensional spaces of Duke Nukem. But the graphics were a million pixels from virtual reality.

Now decades and countless iterations in, with enormous human capital and ingenuity invested in motion graphics and GPUs, the optics are indeed seductive, convincing, and engrossing. Head phones on and eyes glued to the screen, it’s easy to get lost in the sprawling world and epic narrative of Mass Effect, or to feel that you are attacking the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen with an M1 Garand rifle, your rag-tag squad assisting. With each iteration, game developers make strides in simulating the unique recoil of each gun model, the aural pattern of explosions near versus far, the game physics of spilt blood and bent grass underfoot, and the fraying edges of a soldier’s ribbon bars, specific to rank and nation.

Bravo! Charlie!

It’s amazing. It’s an adrenaline rush. And it’s all artifice. These animations are becoming ever more realistic, but not in the least bit more the kind of real thing which they represent.

In addition to cosmetic advances, motion capture technology has progressed by leaps and bounds. Painstaking attention to plotting our distinctive expressions and gaits has greatly increased the appearance of natural movement. Ever since Andy Serkis so convincingly gave life to Gollum, recordings of humans in motion have supplied the scaffolding for countless characters.

In animation … everything is fabricated. … Every moment. Every scratch and look. Everything is a discussion. There are no gifts. There are no happy accidents … It was useful having the live action performance reference. We’d pull them up in front of the animators and say, look at what’s happening here. Little twitches underneath the eyelid, little things that are involuntary became very important.

GORE VERBINSKI, “RANGO BEHIND THE SCENES: BREAKING THE RULES”

One of the joys as a viewer is having that dawning recognition of a familiar actor who has been reincarnated as Puss in Boots, Shrek the ogre, or Mator the tow truck. The idiosyncrasies and tics of the human originals are prized source material for the animators. So, Kristen Bell’s signature phrase — “Wait, what?” — and her habit of biting her lip is mirrored in Anna of Arendelle. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s brow wave personalizes Maui. Although these beloved characters are singing and dancing and joking along, like Mona Lisa, the image is a mirror image. It has no life of its own.

No Breaths, No Sacrifices

Though we are moved by these pixels on the screen, our digital allies and enemies breathe no breaths, make no sacrifices, feel no lonely deaths. Whether crying, dying, or respawning, they are as lifeless as a dead pixel and vacuous as a wireframe.

Because the textures that skin them and algorithms that animate them are more sophisticated, it is tempting to think that the ducking and evading Juvies, Pouncers, and Swarmaks of Gears of War are more intelligent than Pac Man’s nemeses: Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. One might think that whereas the ghosts that haunted Pac Man had a wisp of personality, the villainous grunts of a modern first-person shooter have a measure more. Surely, in some future game, they’ll reach self-realization. Game AI will continue on this trajectory and surpass human intelligence, just as Watson bested Kasparov. But the truth is, none of these avatars possess any inherent intelligence whatsoever. Every human instinct therein is an extension of a game developer’s forethought. The characters are thoughtless.

We’ve erected this elaborate system of gears and pulleys using electronic nodes. The number of these levers that we can fit on a circuit is mind boggling. At the push of a button and the tilt of a joystick, these systems are able to reenact remarkable routines that the human programmers have strung together. But as the less exhaustively routinized NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) in the game betray, if the programmer hasn’t yet written the routine, the character will be left kicking blindly into a wall.

A financial pandemic?

Iron vs. Bronze?

File under "well said." XCII

"There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."

George orwell

Photosynthesis and Darwinism's quest for a simple beginning

Brand new study on the evolution of photosynthesis.

Cornelius G Hunter

How exactly is evolution a fact when, as the number two science journal in the world put it, “How and when Cyanobacteria evolved the ability to produce oxygen through photosynthesis is poorly understood”? Or as evolutionist Robert Blankenship admitted, “The whole question of the origin of cyanobacteria has long been a mystery because they kind of just appeared out of the tree of life with this very advanced capability to do oxygenic photosynthesis without any apparent forebears.”

If the cyanobacteria that do photosynthesis “just appeared” with this “very advanced capability” and “without any apparent forebears,” and if how and when they evolved photosynthesis “is poorly understood,” then just how is it that evolutionists are so certain that evolution is a fact?

What am I missing here?

It is not as though photosynthesis is a tangential capability or a minor event in the so-called “evolutionary history” of life. As the leading science writer Charles Q. Choi put it, “One of the most pivotal moments in Earth’s history was the evolution of the photosynthetic life that suffused air with the oxygen on which virtually all complex life on the planet now depends.”

Nor is it as though photosynthesis is a simple capability, in no need of explanation for how it possibly could have arisen by random mutations. Anyone who has studied photosynthesis even superficially knows it is incredibly complex. And for those who have studied in greater detail, it only gets worse. The molecular machines and their exquisite, finely-tuned, functions are truly amazing. It doesn’t “just happen.”

Even evolutionists, who are always trying to explain how easy it would be for biology’s wonders to arise by happenstance, admit to the complexity of photosynthesis. As Blankenship put it, photosynthesis is a “very advanced capability.” Similarly, Woodward Fischer agreed that the evolution of photosynthesis would be “very challenging”:

It took a substantial unfolding of evolutionary time before oxygenic photosynthesis developed, perhaps because, as we know, it was a very challenging biochemistry to develop.

Nor is it as though the evidence we do have suggests any kind of a straightforward evolutionary development of photosynthesis.

If evolution is true, then we must fire up fresh rounds of evolution’s fake news, including incredible convergences and massive horizontal, or lateral, gene transfer and fusion. Round up the usual suspects:

The phylogenetic relationships of these prokaryotes suggest that the evolution of aerobic respiration likely occurred multiple times. This, along with evidence that the modern photosynthetic system apparently arose through the lateral gene transfer and fusion of two photosynthetic systems

This is absurd. Convergence, horizontal gene transfer, and fusion are all made up mechanisms to fix the problem that the scientific evidence contradicts evolutionary theory. This isn’t making sense.

But it gets worse.

Not only are evolutionists forced to draw from their army of phony explanatory mechanisms, but they are left with the proverbial “missing link.” The problem is, from where did the photosynthesis come? It couldn’t have come from the purported common ancestor via descent, and it “just appeared” with this “very advanced capability.” So evolutionists have to usher in their horizontal gene transfer story.

But from where?

From where did the incredible battery of genes—that would just happen to team up and create the all-time incredible capability of photosynthesis—come? Conveniently for evolutionists—and here’s one of the beauties of being an evolutionist—they can never know. Like Flew’s gardener, evolutionists are certain that some “missing link” organism somehow had photosynthesis up and running, or just happened to have the crucial genes just lying around, but we likely will never observe that organism because it has long since become extinct.

Oh how convenient. Some mysterious organism did it. We’ll never know just how photosynthesis evolved because the organism where it happened has long since gone extinct, billions of years ago. Since then, it just luckily passed the technology around for other organisms to have, such as the cyanobacteria. Choi and Fischer explain:

The fact that Oxyphotobacteria possess the complex apparatus for oxygenic photosynthesis while their closest relatives do not suggests that Oxyphotobacteria may have imported the genes for photosynthesis from another organism via a process known as lateral gene transfer. It remains a mystery what the source of these genes was, “and because it happened long ago, it's pretty likely that the group may actually have gone extinct,” Fischer said.

Can I be an evolutionist too?

Photosynthesis is crucial to life and incredibly complex, evolutionists haven’t a clue how it could have evolved, it doesn’t fit the evolutionary common descent model and “just appeared” without a hint of where it came from, evolutionists are forced to make up a long just-so story to try to explain it, their story can’t be falsified because the origin of photosynthesis has long since disappeared, and on top of all this, evolutionists insist their theory is a fact, beyond all reasonable doubt.

This is hilarious. It is like something out of a Monte Python skit. Evolution loses every battle, but manages to win the war because, after all, it’s right.

How the U.S went from king George to president George.

Sunday, 12 March 2023

Molecular biology and the edge of Darwinism.

Darwinism's metaphysics?

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Friday, 17 March 2023

Here’s That Paper on MicroRNAs in Brown Algae

Thursday, 16 March 2023

Cosmic Fine-Tuning: A Look at the Implications

“Sacred Cause”? Reconsidering Charles Darwin as Abolitionist

Peer-Reviewed Paper Cites Stephen Meyer to Critique Darwinian Evolution

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Tuesday, 14 March 2023

Monkey-Made “Tools” Cast Doubt on High Intelligence in Early Hominids

Evolution’s Tall Tale — The Giraffe Neck

The Problem of Earth Privilege: It’s Getting Worse

Monday, 13 March 2023

Depths of Design: Moving Pixels

Brand new study on the evolution of photosynthesis.

Sunday, 12 March 2023

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