Sunday, 2 April 2023

When it's cruel to be "kind"

Freeing Captured Orca Could Be Cruel

One of my favorite stories in The Little Prince has to do with a fox that the Little Prince tames. When the time comes for the Little Prince to leave him, the fox is very sad. Why? “Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

More than 50 years ago, an orca juvenile was separated from its pod, captured, and sent to the Miami Seaquarium. She has lived her entire life there.

Now, after years of protest pressure, Tokitae — aka Lolita — is to be freed. From the New York times story:

The killer whale Lolita, which has entertained generations of visitors with colossal leaps and sloppy belly flops that splashed crowds at the Miami Seaquarium, will be returning to her native waters after more than 50 years in captivity, the owner of the marine life aquarium and Miami-Dade County officials said.

The plan to release the orca — also known as Tokitae — is the result of a “binding agreement” among The Dolphin Company, which operates the Seaquarium, Miami-Dade County and animal rights advocates, the company said. The move comes after an outcry from those who complained for years that an animal from the ocean should not be kept in a small tank.

Is this really a kindness? The Seaquarium is the only home Tokitae knows. As the story notes, she can’t fish anymore and will have to be trained to fend for herself. She could starve if training in that regard does not go well. Moreover, orcas are social animals. Lolita could end up alone, not part of a pod, perhaps an object of predation because of her advanced age. (An orca’s life span tops out at about 50 years.)

I understand the motive, but this could be a case of ideology trumping actual animal welfare. And I can’t help thinking of the Little Prince’s fox.

Darwin's theory of devolution?

Michael Behe on Why Lenski’s Experiments Show Devolution, Not Evolution

Evolution News

On a classic episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe reviews the well-known Long Term Evolution Experiment at Michigan State, where evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski’s team was initially excited to see what they thought was a new species of E. coli forming in their flasks. As Behe has written here at Evolution News, one flask of E. coli in Lenski’s experiment evolved the ability to metabolize (“eat”) citrate in the presence of oxygen. But along with it came multiple mutations breaking genes, degrading genetic information, and ultimately increasing the bacteria’s death rates. It all goes to support Behe’s thesis in his book Darwin devolves : evolution is good at creating niche advantages by breaking things; it isn’t good at building fundamentally novel forms, the very thing the grand narrative of modern evolutionary theory purports that it does. Download the podcast or listen to it Here

Saturday, 1 April 2023

Reductive materialists are still trying to have their cake and eat it too.

Dangerous Skating: Kauffman, Jaeger, and Roli on the Need for a New Teleology

Paul Nelson

Here is a fascinating article: “How Organisms Come to Know the World: Fundamental Limits on Artificial General Intelligence,” by Andrea Roli, Johannes Jaeger, and Stuart A. Kauffman, writing in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Notice how closely the authors skate to a robust teleology:

Our insights put rather stringent limitations on what traditional mechanistic science and engineering can understand and achieve when it comes to agency and evolutionary innovation. This affects the study of any kind of agential system — in computer science, biology, and the social sciences — including higher-level systems that contain agents, such as ecosystems or the economy. In these areas of investigation, any purely formal approach will remain forever incomplete. This has important repercussions for the philosophy of science: the basic problem is that, with respect to coming to know the world, once we have carved it into a finite set of categories, we can no longer see beyond those categories. The grounding of meaning in real objects is outside any predefined formal ontology. The evolution of scientific knowledge itself is entailed by no law. It cannot be formalized…What would such a meta-mechanistic science look like? This is not entirely clear yet. Its methods and concepts are only now being elaborated…But one thing seems certain: it will be a science that takes agency seriously. It will allow the kind of teleological behavior that is rooted in the self-referential closure of organization in living systems.

All three authors insist on their naturalistic bona fides. That’s understandable. Openly breaking with naturalism can get one dispatched to the gulag of intelligent design. For most scholars, that is a one-way trip to academic Siberia.

So, to use a musical metaphor, I simply enjoy this trio’s lyrical melody, and ignore the “Just naturalism!” squawks when they occur.

For sale: immortal evil?

Pre-Order Immortality Now! (It’s Only 8 Years Away, Apparently)

Evolution News

Ray Kurzweil, former Google engineer, thinks that humanity is a mere “eight years away” from achieving immortality. No, he’s not a spiritual leader predicting the eschaton. He’s not telling you to seek union with God and achieve immortality the old-fashioned way. He thinks we’ll be able to live forever via age-reversing “nanobots.” These “tiny robots” will correct damaged cells and make us immune to disease, thus leading to radically increased human longevity. Stacy Liberatore writes at the Daily Mail,

Now the former Google engineer believes technology is set to become so powerful it will help humans live forever, in what is known as the singularity.

Singularity is a theoretical point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution, LifeBoat reports. Kurzweil, an author who describes himself as a futurist, predicted that technological singularity would happen by 2045, with AI passing a valid Turing test in 2029. It is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. He said that machines are already making us more intelligent and connecting them to our neocortex will help people think more smartly. Contrary to the fears of some, he believes that implanting computers in our brains will improve us. ‘We’re going to get more neocortex, we’re going to be funnier, we’re going to be better at music. We’re going to be sexier’, he said. ‘We’re really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.’

STACY LIBERATORE, HUMANS WILL ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY IN EIGHT YEARS, SAYS FORMER GOOGLE ENGINEER | DAILY MAIL ONLINE

Efforts to increase biological longevity (if not total immortality) are funded at places like Altos Labs, which both Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are involved in. Peter Biles covered Altos Labs and similar operatives in this piece here, and considered the following questions: Who could afford the technology? Are the futurists delusional in thinking we can actually achieve immortality?

On a more philosophical note, greater length of physical life doesn’t solve the more fundamental, existential questions of meaning and purpose that we all have as human beings. Would living forever in a utopian technological society really be as great as the transhumanists insist?

PS.What technology's evangelists never seem to take into account is that given the tragedy of the human condition technological advancements are just as likely to empower criminality and tyranny as beneficence . For example if the proponents of the technological singularity are to be taken seriously, soon we would not merely have to worry about criminal syndicates hacking our machines but hacking us.

Friday, 31 March 2023

Explosions are the rule in the fossil record?

Fossil Friday: The Triassic Explosion of Marine Reptiles

Gunter Bechly

Last week I reported about the abrupt origin of ichthyosaurs in the Early Triassic. However, ichthyosaurs are not the only marine reptiles that appeared abruptly in the Early Triassic. Actually, there are 15 (!) different families of marine reptiles that appear as if out of nowhere in Triassic deposits, while none of them or any putative precursors are known from the preceding Permian period. All aquatic reptiles from the Permian (McMenamin 2019), such as mesosaurs, are clearly unrelated (Laurin & Piñeiro 2017, MacDougall et al. 2018).

The new marine reptile groups appearing in the Triassic include, for example, plesiosaurs, placodonts (like the featured Psephoderma), nothosaurs, thalattosaurs, hupehsuchians, nasorostrians, ichthyopterygians, pleurosaurids, and enigmatic forms like Atopodentatus as well as marine turtles and marine crocodiles (thalattosuchians) (Motani 2009). Twitchett & Foster (2012: fig. 5) showed that these 15 families appeared within 9 million years “from obscure origins in the Early Triassic.” It is not like we Darwin critics make this stuff up. We just look at all the evidence and draw our conclusions from conflicting data that Darwinists prefer to ignore or explain away with ever more ad hoc hypotheses.

References

Laurin M & Piñeiro GH 2017. A Reassessment of the Taxonomic Position of Mesosaurs, and a Surprising Phylogeny of Early Amniotes. Frontiers in Earth Science 5:88, 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2017.00088

MacDougall MJ, Modesto SP, Brocklehurst N, Verriere A, Reisz RR & Fröbisch J 2018. Response: A Reassessment of the Taxonomic Position of Mesosaurs, and a Surprising Phylogeny of Early Amniotes. Frontiers in Earth Science 6:99, 1–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2018.00099

McMenamin M 2019. Permian Aquatic Reptiles. PaleoXiv July 11, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31233/osf.io/wb6h7

Motani R 2009. The Evolution of Marine Reptiles. Evolution: Education and Outreach 2, 224–235. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-009-0139-y

Twitchett RJ & Foster WJ 2012. Post-Permian Radiation. eLS 2012, 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/

Thursday, 30 March 2023

And that's Ms.Great salt lake to you.

Let’s Declare the Great Salt Lake a Person?

Wesley J Smith

The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat.

The concept has now been advocated in a major opinion piece in the New York Times. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is shrinking — a legitimate problem worthy of focused concern and remediation. Utah native and Harvard Divinity School’s writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams — who focuses on “the spiritual implications of climate change” — makes a strong case that the lake is in trouble.

A Conservationist Approach

Her proposed remedies reflect a proper conservationist approach worthy of being debated:

Scientists tell us the lake needs an additional one million acre-feet per year to reverse its decline, increasing average stream flow to about 2.5 million acre-feet per year. A gradual refilling would begin. Two-thirds of the natural flow going into the lake is currently being diverted: 80 percent of that diversion by agriculture, 10 percent by industries and 10 percent by municipalities. Water conservation provides a map for how to live within our means. We can create water banks and budgets where we know how much water we have and how much water we spend. Public and private green turf can be retired.

If only Williams had stopped there. Alas, she plunges into environmental radicalism, urging that the Great Salt Lake be declared a person and granted rights. She quotes ecologist Ben Abbott to the effect that the lake owns its water:

“If we believe in the Western water doctrine of ‘first in time, first in rights,’ then the water law of prior appropriation says these water rights originally belonged to her as a sovereign body,” said Mr. Abbott.

Nature-Worship Mysticism

Please. This is nature-worship mysticism. The Great Salt Lake is a geological feature. It is not a living being. It is not sentient. It cannot own anything.

Nor should it be granted human-style rights. But don’t tell that to Williams:

The Rights of Nature is now a global movement granting personhood to rivers, mountains and forests. In Ecuador, they have granted constitutional rights to Pachamama, Earth Mother.

In the United States, Lake Erie was granted personhood in 2019, allowing citizens to sue on behalf of the lake. Although this right was invalidated by a federal judge, this is the new frontier of granting legal status to a living world. Why not grant personhood rights to Great Salt Lake, which in 2021 was voted “Utahn of the Year” in The Salt Lake Tribune? This is not a radical but a rational response to an increasingly wounded Earth.

Wrong. It is radical. And it is profoundly subversive of Western civilizational values:

Nature rights violates human exceptionalism: Human exceptionalism appeals to our exclusive capacity for moral agency. Only human beings have duties, one of which is to be responsible stewards of the environment and to leave a verdant world to those who come after us. That duty is expressed by conservation efforts and proper environmental regulations. In contrast, nature-rights ideology rejects the traditional hierarchy of life. In rightists’ view, humans are no more important than any other species or life form and, it increasingly seems, even non-animate features of the natural world. Those approaches — conservation versus rights — are profoundly different and would have equally divergent consequences.

Nature rights devalues the vibrancy of rights: Granting rights to nature means that everything is potentially a rights-bearer. If everything has rights, one could say that nothing really does. At best, nature rights would devalue the concept in much the same way that wild inflation destroys the worth of currency. Indeed, if a squirrel or mushroom and all other earthly entities somehow possess rights, the vibrancy of rights withers.

Nature rights would be incapable of nuanced enforcement: A conservation approach allows the natural world to be harnessed for human benefit, mediated by our responsibilities to engage in proper environmental policies and practices. In contrast, nature rights would have all the nuance of handcuffs that could never be unlocked. Under such a regime, nuanced husbandry practices would yield to the “right” of “nature” to “exist and persist.” The human benefit from our use of the natural world would, at most, receive mere equal consideration to the impacted aspect of nature’s rights — and this would be true no matter how dynamic and otherwise thriving the potentially impacted aspects of nature might be.

Nature rights is unnecessary to proper environmental protection: We can provide robust safeguards for the environment without the subversion of granting rights outside the human realm. Yellowstone National Park, for example, is one of the great wonders of the world. It has been splendidly protected since 1872 (when it was made a national park) and in a manner that has protected its pristine beauty and allowed people to enjoy its incredible marvels — without declaring Old Faithful a “person” entitled to enforceable rights.

Consequences of the Rights Approach

When we dig to the intellectual core of the movement, we find that the controversy isn’t about “rights” at all. Rather, we are having an epochal debate about the scope, nature, and extent of our responsibilities toward the natural world. The rights approach would impose such extreme duties on us we would hurt ourselves.

So, by all means, act to protect the Great Salt Lake. But turn it into a “person” with enforceable rights? Absolutely not!

Hideki Tojo : a brief history.

Resistance is futile?

Thomas Sowell in his own words.

Darwin vs. Darwinism?

Darwin’s Top 10 Arguments Against His Own Theory

Herman Bouma

In a recent article Here I referred to my canceled presentation at the annual conference of the National Science Teaching Association. My topic was to be, “The Top 10 Scientific Arguments Against Darwin’s Theory — According to Darwin Himself.” What are those top ten arguments? Let’s take a look.

Charles Darwin took seriously objections to his theory that had been raised by many of the most eminent naturalists of his day. In The Origin of Species he considered in detail 37 of them. Darwin acknowledged that there were “a crowd of difficulties” with his theory and stated, “Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to the theory.” (p. 158) (All citations are to Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: NAL Penguin Inc., 1958).)

Based on Darwin’s discussion in The Origin of Species, it is reasonable to conclude that he considered the arguments set forth below to be the top ten scientific arguments against his theory. These arguments relate to Darwin’s proposed mechanism for evolution, i.e., the application of natural selection to randomly produced variations. (Note: With respect to the origin of life, Darwin theorized in The Origin of Species that the very first forms of life (at most, eight to ten forms) were produced by the Creator. He did not consider any arguments against this part of his theory and apparently none were raised by the naturalists of his day, most of whom subscribed to a theory of design.)

Darwin’s thoughtful consideration of the scientific arguments against his theory is consistent with his hope for the future: “I look with confidence to the future, — to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.” (p. 444)

1. The Complexity of Eyes

Darwin states, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” (p. 168)

2. Existence of Similar Organs in Remotely Allied Species

Darwin considers the electric organs of species of fish that are remotely allied and also the luminous organs of insects “belonging to widely different families.” He states that the latter “offer, under our present state of ignorance, a difficulty almost exactly parallel with that of the electric organs.” (p. 176)

Darwin admits the difficulty under his theory “of an organ, apparently the same, arising in several remotely allied species.” (p. 176)

3.Existence of Different Organs for the Same Function in Closely Allied Species

Darwin considers two genera of orchid, the Coryanthes and the Catasetum. He explains in detail the ingenious “contrivance” that the Coryanthes uses for pollination. He then turns to the Catasetum, which is “closely allied” to the Coryanthes, and states that the construction of the flower in the Catasetum “is widely different, though serving the same end.” (p. 180)

Darwin admits that it is common throughout nature for the same end to be gained by the most diversified means, “even sometimes in the case of closely-related beings.” (p. 178)

4. Parts with Little Importance

Darwin states, “I have sometimes felt great difficulty in understanding the origin or formation of parts of little importance; almost as great, though of a very different kind, as in the case of the most perfect and complex organs.” (p. 181) He mentions the tail of the giraffe as an example of a part with little apparent importance. He states that it looks like “an artificially constructed fly-flapper” and “[it] seems at first incredible that this could have been adapted for its present purpose by successive slight modifications, each better and better fitted, for so trifling an object as to drive away flies.” (p. 181)

5. Complex Instincts

Darwin acknowledges, “Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.” (p. 228)

Darwin states, “He must be a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a [honeycomb], so beautifully adapted to its end, without enthusiastic admiration. We hear from mathematicians that bees have practically solved a recondite problem, and have made their cells of the proper shape to hold the greatest possible amount of honey, with the least possible consumption of precious wax in their construction. It has been remarked that a skilful workman … would find it very difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is effected by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive.” (pp. 242-243)

6. Neuter Ants and Their Different Castes

With respect to neuter ants, Darwin states it is “one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory … for these neuters often differ widely in instinct and in structure from both the males and fertile females, … yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate their kind.” (p. 250)

Darwin goes on to state, “But we have not as yet touched on the acme of the difficulty; namely, the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes.” (p. 253) He acknowledges, “It will indeed be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well-established facts at once annihilate the theory.” (p. 253)

7. The Eyes of the Flat-Fish

During its early youth the body of the flat-fish is symmetrical with one eye on each side. However, as the body matures, one eye “begins to glide slowly round the head” to the other side. (pp. 209-210) This is beneficial because the adult flat-fish spends most of its time lying on its side on the bottom of the ocean.

Darwin agrees that his theory of natural selection cannot account for this feature. He states that it “may be attributed to the habit, no doubt beneficial to the individual and to the species, of endeavouring to look upwards with both eyes, whilst resting on one side at the bottom.” (p. 211) Thus, it “may be attributed almost wholly to continued use, together with inheritance.” (pp. 222-223)

8. Absence of Transitional Forms in the Fossil Record

With respect to the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, Darwin states that under his theory, “…as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.” (p. 287) Darwin admits that “though we do find many links — we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms by the finest graduated steps.” (pp. 335-336)

He states, “That the geological record is imperfect all will admit; but that it is imperfect to the degree required by our theory, few will be inclined to admit.” (p. 431) He also acknowledges, “He who rejects this view of the imperfection of the geological record, will rightly reject the whole theory.” (p. 336)

9. Absence of Transitional Forms Even Within Particular Geological Formations

With respect to the absence of transitional forms even within particular geological formations, Darwin states, “[I]t cannot be doubted that the geological record, viewed as a whole, is extremely imperfect; but if we confine our attention to any one formation, it becomes much more difficult to understand why we do not therein find closely graduated varieties between the allied species which lived at its commencement and at its close.” (p. 298)

He confesses, “But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory.” (pp. 304-305)

10. Sudden Appearance of New Forms of Life

Darwin states, “The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several paleontologists — for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick — as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species.” (p. 305)

He goes on to state, “There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks,” i.e., the Cambrian strata. (p. 308) “To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits … prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” (p. 309) Darwin concludes, “The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.” (p. 310)

Wednesday, 29 March 2023

File under "well said." XCIV

"he fondly imagined people to be intelligent enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race."

George Schuyler

The other Wilberforce?

Robert Shedinger: Darwin’s Sacred Cause Is “Historical Fiction”

Evolution News

On a new episode of ID the Future, science-and-religion scholar Robert Shedinger makes the case that a well-known historical work about Charles Darwin, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, is deeply misleading. The book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore holds that Darwin was significantly motivated in his scientific work by abolitionist sentiments; and Shedinger says, not so fast. He had spent considerable time reading Darwin’s correspondence and had seen no evidence supporting this thesis, so he reread Darwin’s Sacred Cause, this time tracking down all the key citations the book offered as evidence, and a pattern soon emerged. The sources the authors cite didn’t actually support their thesis. Some were totally irrelevant. Some were cited completely out of context. In other cases, the authors gave the impression that Darwin said something when the comment they attributed to him was stitched together from multiple correspondences and the constituent comments were often about something else altogether. Shedinger says he realized that this biography that looked to be so well documented amounted to “historical fiction.” The effect of the book is to misrepresent Darwin in such a way as to make those who reject Darwinism appear to be opposing a saintly anti-abolitionist.

While Darwin did hold anti-slavery sentiments, they didn’t drive his science and he himself was anything but free from racism. In fact, his case for human evolution partly rested on deeply demeaning racist attitudes toward indigenous peoples. For more on this, see historian Richard Weikart’s book Darwinian Racism.

Also in this episode, Shedinger tells host Michael Keas about how he went from a scholar fully persuaded of Darwinian theory to a skeptic of modern evolutionary theory, attracted to the theory of intelligent design. Shedinger lays out his case against Darwinism in his recent Book The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms. Download the podcast or listen to it Here

Yet another clash of titans.

Copying the original engineer?

Engineering Brings Life and Vice Versa

David Coppedge

I came across an uplifting video about a life-saving invention that encapsulates several running themes about intelligent design. If you can, take 22 minutes to watch this video by Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer. I assure you it will be well worth your time.

The story is uplifting on many levels. How wonderful is it to see former enemies from a major genocide in 1994 having learned how to live together in peace 30 years later? How inspiring is it to see one near victim of that slaughter starting in poverty to become a Harvard engineer and inventor in a company that is saving lives? How beautiful is it to see smiling children mastering soccer with a makeshift ball? How gratifying to prove naysayers wrong, and to show the fruit of well-tested engineering being put to beneficial use in the poorest parts of the world? I was very impressed by this story.

There was one brief statement I will criticize, but otherwise this video made my day, especially since I have relatives in Africa on a medical mission who may soon benefit from this amazing technology. Whether or not you like drones or believe this type of delivery system will change shopping in America (I can see lawyers rubbing their hands), the way the invention is working in Africa right now cannot help but impress. This is the power of ethical intelligent design in action. Let’s look at some lessons from this story.

Biomimetics

The heroes of the story are the birds. They were already masters of takeoff, landing, and pinpoint navigation. An owl was the inspiration for the Zipline drone’s whisper-quiet propeller system. A hummingbird inspired their miniaturized and silent flight control. As I like to say, if the engineers can get their drones to lay eggs and hatch babies with the software and hardware already included, that can grow larger while maintaining function, and power themselves from the environment by ingesting worms, they will really have something to brag about. Bravo to the birds that once again inspired inventors from the Wright Brothers to the high-tech engineers of NASA and Zipline.

Trial and Error with Thinking

As Rober shows, Abdul and his crew had to try and fail many times. They succeeded through the failures and made progress because they applied their minds to problem solving. By thinking, and learning the principles of how things work, elucidated by great minds of the past, they could bring parts together to achieve a goal that first existed only in the mind’s eye. They could envision a concept, experiment, and test possibilities, making progress toward the goal by learning from their failures.

Darwinians tell us that is how natural selection works, but think about it. (In passing, note that thinking also requires a mind.) If nature is mindless and aimless, with no foresight, could it invent a Zipline delivery system, much less a bird as they claim happened? A fundamental ID principle first clearly enunciated by Michael Behe is that irreducibly complex systems defeat the Darwinian mechanism and give positive evidence for intelligent design. We see that in this story implicitly.

Altruistic Design

Another thing the Darwinians continue to teach (examples here and here) is that altruism evolved by natural selection. Indeed, they attribute every noble ideal in human society to this blind, aimless, purposeless “mechanism” that works in bacteria similarly to how (they say) it works in human societies. With their evolutionary game theory models, they divide up members of a population into cooperators and cheaters whose actions are genetically determined by the mechanism, not by morality or by human exceptionalism. But doesn’t this quote from the video knock the air out of that explanation? Rober shows battle scars from the Rwandan genocide, then says,

As horrific as that ways, it galvanized the country to a period of healing and solidarity as a single Rwandan people instead of divisive ethnic groups. For instance, on the last Saturday of the month, literally everyone spends the day picking up trash and volunteering in their local communities. And that’s one of the reasons you hardly see litter anywhere…. There was just a pervasive optimism everywhere. Everyone was moving with a purpose everywhere we went, not just working hard, but working smart with the resources on hand…

For over a decade, attending school up to age 16 has been both mandatory and free. And when you combine that with leapfrogging to new technologies like drone delivery, in the last decade their economy has been growing at four times the rate of the U.S. economy, while their violent crime rate has been 15 times less than the U.S.

Who can say with a straight face that these Rwandan people, recovering from a devastating civil war, are just pawns of evolutionary game theory? Who can say that Abdul, after his near escape from terror that took his family, is no better than a germ cooperating with other bacteria? To even suggest such a notion is to defeat it. That word purpose stands out as anti-Darwinian as anything in the whole video.

This calls for an occasion to promote the new Book Darwin Comes to Africa by Olufemi Oluniyi, who recounts the abominations wrought by the European imperialists who were mostly ardent believers in Social Darwinism. Would Darwinists today draw no distinctions between the altruistic, cooperative black Africans of Rwanda, whose behavior serves as a model for Westerners, than the colony of gorillas Mark Rober visited next in the video? Perish the racist thought. Westerners could learn some lessons from the morals of these friendly people who turned evil into good, and from Abdul whose noble soul did not take the evolutionary route of retaliation for his own personal fitness but instead is today saving the lives of distant people he hasn’t even met.

Teaching Design

Rober bypasses academia at one point. He shares his vision of getting children to build things and learn by doing, realizing that “thinking like an engineer” means breaking things to figure out what works and what doesn’t. How many of the happy children he shows trying to solve simple problems, like getting a ping pong ball to bounce into a boot, will be likely to end up Darwinists? The harder the problem, the more the student will learn that things don’t just happen. Teaching engineering at an early age may prove to be the antidote to Darwinism for the next generation

The Flaw

OK, so what is the lone criticism I have of the video? It’s a throwaway line when Rober claims that “with owls, there’s an evolutionary pressure to be as quiet as possible” as he shows an owl flying imperceptibly past a line of microphones. What can possibly be meant by “evolutionary pressure”? The Darwinist imagines that adaptations are caused by an organism’s surroundings. The Darwinist believes that innovations that are engineering marvels, like powered flight, can emerge this way. For those who maintain that environments have such power, consider a simple illustration. The desert pupfish in Nevada have faced environmental pressure from increasing salinity as their habitats dry up, and now survive high salt concentrations that would kill other fish. Isn’t that “evolutionary pressure” forcing them to adapt? There are several problems with this explanation.

For one thing, a chance mutation that helps a lone pupfish survive increasing salt is not going to aid the individual, but only its offspring. Standard neo-Darwinism teaches that the beneficial mutation needs to occur in the germline, not in somatic cells. Even if epigenetic benefits can be inherited, as has been shown more recently, they cannot happen gradually by random mutations, but involve rewiring of complex genetic circuits. Second, the neo-Darwinian explanation transfers the cause of adaptation to the environment instead of locating it in the organism. This borders on vitalism or personification, as if the environment is pressuring the organism in certain adaptive directions. The environment is mindless; it cannot care what happens. Extinction is a perfectly valid option, as the fossil record shows. Third and most important, the pupfish can only adapt if there is built-in engineering for adaptation prior to need. This presupposes an ability to sense the change, reprogram itself, and alter its own responses. Intelligent design for robustness in changing environments matches what engineers do when they build in redundancy and fail-safe mechanisms, as shown in the video. The owl that flies silently was not “pressured” by “evolution” to adapt its wing feathers. The cause of the adaptation was internal to the owl. That required foresight, not a randomly changing environment.

Enough on that minor flaw in the video. Everything else was spectacularly encouraging for ID advocates. By the way, signups are being taken for the next CELS event (Conference on Engineering in Living Systems) in Texas this June 3-10. Read about it here.

The Uplift

For an upbeat summary, Rober’s ending comment bears repeating.

Here you have Abdul, who bears a scar on his head from the same machete that killed his entire family as a child, not only using his engineering knowledge to save the lives of his people, but more importantly, to inspire the next generation of problem solvers to dream even bigger. It’s the type of thing that leaves you feeling a little bit of that contagious Rwandan optimism for the future and the incredible potential of us mere humans.

Human exceptionalism is real; it is part of our own experience and of human history. We thrive best when using our minds and morals unselfishly to solve problems for the improvement of our world.

AI = the death of art?

File under "well said." XCIII

"We always plan too much and think too little.We resent a call to and hate unfamiliar argument that does not tally with what we already believe or would like to believe."

Joseph Schumpeter.

Just smarter apes?

But, But, But … We’re 98% Similar to the Chimp!

Cornelius G Hunter

Transposable elements just don’t make sense. These so-called “jumping genes” are segments of junk DNA that insert themselves at random in our genomes. That is the evolutionary interpretation of these genetic units, but how and why do they move about, and why don’t they wreak havoc on the genome? The answers to these questions, which have been emerging in recent years, is that transposable elements are exquisite, finely-tuned, highly-functional molecular machines that contradict evolutionary expectations. Evolutionists have a long, failed history of presumed disutility—after all, the world arose by chance, surely it doesn’t work very well—and transposable elements are just one more example of this failed prediction. But the junk-to-hero story is only one of three ways that transposable elements utterly demolish evolutionary theory. The other two prongs in this Darwin-destroying triad are serendipity and pattern.

By serendipity, I am referring to the rather awkward findings, which are undeniable at this point, that if evolution is true, then it must have come about by highly complex, non adaptive, mechanisms. From diploid genetics to horizontal gene transfer, alternate gene splicing, genetic regulation, epigenetics, mechanisms that cause adaptive mutations, and transposable elements, evolution must have bumbled along by luckily constructing fantastically complex mechanisms. Those mechanisms would provide no immediate adaptive value, yet somehow would persist and become vital agents in evolutionary history. Simply put, evolution must have created evolution in a most unlikely (astronomically unlikely) set of circumstances. That’s serendipity, not science, and transposable elements heaps more fuel onto the fire.

By pattern, I am referring to another set of awkward findings, again undeniable, that the pattern of structures observed across the species consistently contradicts evolution’s predictions. One of those contradictions are the enormous differences found in otherwise allied species.

All three of these contradictions—disutility, serendipity, and pattern—are on display this week in new, systematic study of transposable elements out of Didier Trono’s lab in Switzerland. The study details the interactions between transposable elements and a class of proteins. The findings indicate the complexity and interdependency of these molecular mechanisms. As the press release admits:

Long considered as junk DNA, transposable elements are now recognized as influencing the expression of genes. … the extent of this regulation and how it is harnessed were so far unknown. EPFL scientists have now taken the first extensive look at a family of ~350 human proteins, showing that they establish a complex interplay with transposable elements … KZFPs can convert transposable elements in exquisitely fine-tuned regulatory platforms that influence the expression of genes, which likely takes place at all stages of development and in all human tissues. … It is a highly combinatorial and versatile system … As a field, epigenetics has come into prominence in recent years, revealing a previously unimagined complexity and elegance in genetics.

Not exactly junk DNA. And of course all of this would require large amounts of serendipity. For evolutionists are now forced to say that transposable elements would have to have played a, err, key role in evolution itself. Evolution would have had to have constructed this highly specific, detailed, system including hundreds of proteins and genetic elements, with hundreds of specific interactions, providing no immediate benefit. As Trono explains:

The vast majority of KZFPs binds to specific motifs in transposable elements. For each KZFP we were able to assign one subset of transposable elements, and also found that one transposable element can often interact with several KZFPs.

Finally, all of this contradicts the expected common descent pattern. This failure has become so common we now have non evolutionary terminology, such as “species-specific” and “lineage-specific.” The paper uses the term “species-restricted”:

KZFPs partner with transposable elements to build a largely species-restricted layer of epigenetic regulation

Species-restricted? In other words, the designs we are discovering in biology are unique to particular species. This is precisely the opposite of what evolution expects. Note also the teleological language (which as usual is evident in the infinitive form): The proteins “partner” with the transposable elements “to build” a largely “species-restricted” layer of epigenetic regulation. This is a classic example of evolution’s absurd creation story language.

The contradictory pattern was, of course, unsuspected. As Trono explains:

KZFPs contribute to make human biology unique. Together with their genomic targets, they likely influence every single event in human physiology and pathology, and do so by being largely species-specific -- the general system exists in many vertebrates, but most of its components are different in each case. … This paper lifts the lid off something that had been largely unsuspected: the tremendous species-specific dimension of human gene regulation.

Yes, it was largely unsuspected. For what these findings reveal is a tremendous species-specific dimension of human gene regulation. In other words, we would need proteins and genetic elements to evolve, via independent and yet interdependent, random mutations, to construct an entirely new set of genetic regulation instructions. This is astronomically unlikely, no matter how many millions of years are available. From a scientific perspective, these findings demolish evolution.

Tuesday, 28 March 2023

The salt of the earth

On the father of the bomb.

The pale horse on the rampage.

AI's moral deficit?

Robert J. Mark on AI’s Glaring Errors

Evolution News

Robert J. Marks contributed a piece at The Daily Caller this week on artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, and the manifold problems of new AI systems like Google’s Bard and older ones such as Amazon’s Alexa. Dr. Marks directs Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center and is author of the recent DI Press Book Non-Computable You. Despite the confidence in new AI coming from Big Tech executives, it makes quite glaring mistakes, although Marks believes AI has its genuine uses and benefits. Snapchat’s chatbot “My AI” gave advice about how to hide the smell of pot and alcohol to someone posing as a disgruntled teenager. Microsoft’s Bing bot professed its love for a tech journalist. A Google app made egregiously racist errors. ChatGPT is also politically biased despite claiming neutrality.

Marks writes,

Many warn of the future dangers of artificial intelligence. Many envision AI becoming conscious and, like SkyNet in theTerminator franchise, taking over the world (This, by the way, will never happen). But make no mistake. LLMs are incredible for what they do right. I have used ChatGPT many times. But user beware. Don’t trust what an LLM says, be aware of its biases and be ready for the occasional outlandish response.

ROBERT MARKS, MARKS: FROM POLITICAL BIAS TO OUTLANDISH DARES, HERE’S WHY ROBOTS CANNOT REPLACE US | THE DAILY CALLER

Marks encourages readers to try out ChatGPT and come to their own conclusions. Be sure to read the rest of his article Here

And yet even more primeval tech Vs Darwinism.

A Power Grid in Muscle Cells Has Profound Design Implications

David Coppedge

A finding announced in Nature represents a blockbuster for intelligent design. We knew about ATP synthase — that rotary engine that uses proton flow to create “batteries” of energy-packed ATP molecules. Those motors in the mitochondria are arranged along folds (cristae) in the mitochondrial membranes to maximize their output.

But researchers have learned that the mitochondria themselves are connected by electrical wires in a vast intracellular network. This allows us to see another level in the hierarchy of design in the cell.

The findings are of revolutionary significance. Skeletal muscle cells were known to have many mitochondria, but it was not clear how the products of ATP production, called metabolites, became distributed throughout the cell. Many assumed it was by diffusion, or simple spreading out of molecules from regions of high concentration to areas of low concentration. The truth is far more exciting. Research News from the National Institutes of Health explains:

A new study overturns longstanding scientific ideas regarding how energy is distributed within muscles for powering movement. Scientists are reporting the first clear evidence that muscle cells distribute energy primarily by the rapid conduction of electrical charges through a vast, interconnected network of mitochondria — the cell’s “powerhouse” — in a way that resembles the wire grid that distributes power throughout a city. The study offers an unprecedented, detailed look at the distribution system that rapidly provides energy throughout the cell where it is needed for muscle contraction.

Introducing the “Mitochondrial Reticulum”

Diffusion is too slow for a fast-acting muscle cell. Electricity, though, is fast. The same proton-motive force that powers ATP synthase is conducted along cellular wires, the researchers found. You’ve heard of the endoplasmic reticulum. They’re calling this one the “mitochondrial reticulum” — a conductive pathway for energy distribution. The Editor’s Summary of the paper puts it this way:

How is energy distributed within the cell? In the skeletal muscle, energy distribution has been proposed to occur through metabolite-facilitated diffusion, although genetic evidence has raised questions about the importance of this mode of distribution. Using various forms of high-resolution microscopy, Robert Balaban and colleagues explore whether the mitochondria themselves — as well as actually generating the energy — also have a role in its distribution. They find that they do, by forming a conductive pathway throughout the cell in the form of a proton-motive force. Throughout this network, the mitochondrial protein localization seems to be varied, allowing optimized generation and utilization of the mitochondrial membrane potential. This energy distribution network, which depends on conduction rather than diffusion, is potentially extremely rapid, thereby enabling muscle to respond almost instantaneously to new energy demands.

Not only is the system extremely fast, it is well organized. The Abstract states:

Within this reticulum, we find proteins associated with mitochondrial proton-motive force production preferentially in the cell periphery and proteins that use the proton-motive force for ATP production in the cell interior near contractile and transport ATPases. Furthermore, we show a rapid, coordinated depolarization of the membrane potential component of the proton-motive force throughout the cell in response to spatially controlled uncoupling of the cell interior. We propose that membrane potential conduction via the mitochondrial reticulum is the dominant pathway for skeletal muscle energy distribution.

The mitochondrial reticulum was known before, but scientists had not previously seen that it conducts electricity. The potential of this discovery to shed light on muscular dystrophy, heart disease, and other disorders is apparent.

The images in the paper even look like a power grid. More:

For the current experiments, the NIH scientists collaborated in a detailed study of the mitochondria structure, biochemical composition, and function in mouse skeletal muscle cells. The researchers used 3D electron microscopy as well as super-resolution optical imaging techniques to show that most of the mitochondria form highly connected networks in a way that resembles electrical transmission lines in a municipal power grid.

A Case of Design Prediction

It’s clear why this is a superior design to diffusion. Strenuous exercise can raise the power demands of a muscle cell by 100-fold. “Researchers have suspected that a faster, more efficient energy pathway might exist but have found little proof of its

existence — until now,” we read. That’s a case of design prediction!

Robert Balaban of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a co-leader of the team, tells more about how well-optimized the organization of this power grid is.

The study provides unprecedented images of how these mitochondria are arranged in muscle. “Structurally, the mitochondria are arranged in such a way that permits the flow of potential energy in the form of the mitochondrial membrane voltage throughout the cell to power ATP production and subsequent muscle contraction, or movement,” Dr. Balaban explained. Mitochondria located on the edges of the muscle cell near blood vessels and oxygen supply are optimized for generating the mitochondrial membrane voltage, while the interconnected mitochondria deep in the muscle are optimized for using the voltage to produce ATP, Balaban added.

This implies another level in the design hierarchy: not only is the power grid well organized inside the cell, but the cells are organized in the muscle tissues for the optimum utilization of the power where it is needed most.

Implications for Intelligent Design

The implications of this spectacular discovery for intelligent design are profound. To see why, we must remember that muscles first appear in the Cambrian explosion. Many of the Cambrian phyla that burst on the scene had muscles for contraction (jellyfish), crawling (worms), fin movement (Anomalocaris and Metaspriggina, the vertebrate fish), and coordinated action of jointed appendages (trilobites and other arthropods). Most of the Cambrian animals used muscles in various ways. Muscles are but one of many new cell types that appear suddenly, fully functional, across multiple phyla in the early Cambrian.

As Stephen Meyer emphasizes in Darwin’s Doubt, these new cell types are arranged in a hierarchy: tissues, organs, systems — and ultimately, integrated body plans. This hierarchical arrangement of complex parts for unified function challenges all undirected mechanisms such as natural selection. It takes foresight — a plan for a functional goal and the means to achieve it — to bring parts together into a hierarchical arrangement that works. The film Darwin’s Dilemma illustrates this point as well. In our uniform experience, Meyer argues, the only cause capable of doing that is intelligence.

Now we can extend this hierarchical thinking into the arrangement inside one new cell type in a Cambrian animal: a muscle cell. That optimal hierarchical arrangement, furthermore, extends downward into the intracellular environment and upward into the tissue in which the cell resides. It’s hierarchy all the way down.

Secular humanism's Homer?

Rescuing Evolutionary Theory from Darwinian Mythology

Evolution News

On a new episode of ID the Future, historian of science Michael Keas begins a two-part conversation with Robert Shedinger, the Wilford A. Johnson Chair of Biblical Studies and Professor of Religion at Luther College and author most recently of The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion. Shedinger reports on the contrast between Darwin’s private view of his theory of natural selection and the public view as detailed in his published work. Shedinger also notes the deficiency in evidence for Darwin’s proposal, despite claims to the contrary from his followers and evangelizers today. Download the podcast or listen to it Here

Monday, 27 March 2023

The science acknowledges the thumb print of JEHOVAH?

Scientific Paper Argues Antarctic Icefish “Designed to Utilize Hemoglobinless Blood”

Casey Luskin

As Emily Reeves has Mentioned, a peer-reviewed paper in BIO-Complexity published tackles the question of the origin of how certain fish species live in extremely cold Antarctic waters. Titled “The Cardiovascular System of Antarctic Icefish Appears to Have Been Designed to Utilize Hemoglobinless Blood,” and authored by medical researcher Gregory Sloop, the paper argues that, “The circulatory system of Antarctic icefish may have been Designed to prevent high blood viscosity at low temperatures by taking advantage of the increased solubility of oxygen at low temperatures, allowing use of hemoglobin-free blood.” He argues that this complex system “could not have evolved via a series of gradual steps” because:

The hemoglobinless phenotype requires simultaneous customization of the heart, vasculature, and blood, including its viscosity. Simultaneous, coordinated acquisition of multiple unique features, as required by the absence of hemoglobin, is inconsistent with Darwinian evolution, which postulates that species develop by small, incremental changes over time.

More Cold, More Viscous

When liquids become cold they tend to become more viscous. Sloop observes, however, that “the viscosity of icefish blood at its native temperature, approximately 0°C, is very similar to that of human blood at 37°C.” Fish that lives in very cold waters, such as Antarctic icefish, must therefore solve a problem: How are they able to pump blood through their bodies at such low temperatures?

One way Antarctic icefish solve the problem is by having no erythrocytes (red blood cells) in their blood. So how do they deliver oxygen throughout their bodies? Some believe it’s due to nitrous oxide (NO) dissolved in the bloodstream, which actually causes hypoxia in icefish tissues. But Sloop maintains that it is thanks to “a customized cardiovascular system [rather] than a conventional one that was pressed into service when a mutation caused the loss of hemoglobin expression.” Some of these “cardiovascular customizations” include:

Solubility of O2 increases with lower temperature, allowing the blood to carry more O2 at such a low temperature.

Increased cardiac output.

A special “high-output, low resistance circulation” where “trunk skeletal muscle capillaries are two to three times greater in diameter than those of typical teleosts, reducing vascular resistance” and “Icefish retinas are more densely vascularized than those of red-blooded notothenioids, increasing O2 delivery to this metabolically active tissue.”

This larger cardiac output and special vasculature require “a blood volume two to four times greater than that of red-blooded fish” which “in turn requires a customized heart that is heavier and has a larger stroke volume than that of red-blooded notothenioids.” As a result “stroke volume of the icefish heart is 6 to 15 times greater than in other teleosts.”

To sustain this larger heart, special heart contractile cells called “cardiomyocytes” are in the icefish “relatively large and contain a relatively large number of mitochondria.” Indeed, in one icefish species the percent of cardiomyocytes devoted to mitochondria are “the highest in any teleost and higher than in any vertebrate except for the Etruscan shrew.”

Special kidneys to accommodate the low-pressure blood circulation.

Special “corpuscle” blood cells unique to icefish which convert carbon dioxide and water into carbonic acid.

An “Example of Teleology in Biology”

The effect of all of these special features is to allow Antarctic icefish to have lower hematocrits (the percent volume used by red cells in the blood), which lowers blood viscosity, making it easier for the fish’s heart to pump blood under such cold conditions. Sloop concludes:

The customized icefish heart, vasculature, and blood form a system with mutually dependent parts. … The hemoglobinless phenotype requires simultaneous, coordinated acquisition of multiple unique features. This is difficult to explain with Darwinian evolution, which postulates that species develop by small, incremental changes over long periods. … Multiple customized components are necessary to utilize hemoglobinless blood. Actualizing the design for the icefish cardiovascular system requires each customized component to be in place simultaneously. This is more innovation than can be accomplished by random mutation as postulated in Darwinian evolution.

Sloop offers this potent observation: “Proponents of intelligent design see customizations to decrease blood viscosity as examples of teleology in biology.”

Sunday, 26 March 2023

On the danger of science as master rather than servant.

Aeschliman on Three Great Authors Critiquing Scientism

Evolution News

On a classic episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid concludes a two-part conversation with Michael D. Aeschliman, author of the revised and expanded The restoration of man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism. Here Aeschliman places Lewis among a strong line of thinkers critiquing scientism. These include the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who showed that scientific knowledge on its own could never be sufficient for being fully human, as well as the theologian and physicist Stanley L. Jaki, who brilliantly integrated science and theology. Aeschliman’s list also includes the great English author Jonathan Swift, whose satirical work skewered the illusions of scientific reductionism. Download the podcast or listen to it Here