Monday, 15 May 2023

ID and the Darwin delusion.

Intelligent Design Passes the Dawkins Test

Richard Dawkins is famed as an evolutionary biologist and as an aggressive advocate for atheism. He has made some strong statements about the nonexistence of a designer behind life, including in his bestselling book The God Delusion. In light of his position, here is a question someone ought to put to him. Scientists often work by making predictions. As evidence comes in, the prediction can be shown to be true or false. This may have serious consequences. For his part, Dawkins has repeatedly described a test that at the time he thought proved evolution. Now, however, taking into account accumulating scientific evidence, the same test demands a conclusion of intelligent design (ID). Will he accept that conclusion and come out as an ID proponent?

The test that Dawkins has formulated goes this way: He says that if Darwinian evolution is correct, every gene in a group of organisms will give “approximately the same tree of life.” If ID is correct, on the other hand, the designer could have “picked and chosen” the “best proteins for the job” in each organism. In that case, he says, genes would not all give the same tree of genetic resemblances.

Dawkins offered this test in his 2009 book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. He described it as “extremely powerful evidence for evolution.” At the time, he apparently believed that each gene really did give approximately the same tree. He wrote:

Comparative DNA (or protein) evidence can be used to decide — on the evolutionary assumption — which pairs of animals are closer cousins than which others. What turns this into extremely powerful evidence for evolution is that you can construct a tree of genetic resemblances separately for each gene in turn. And the important result is that every gene delivers approximately the same tree of life. Once again, this is exactly what you would expect if you were dealing with a true family tree. It is not what you would expect if a designer had surveyed the whole animal kingdom and picked and chosen — or “borrowed” — the best proteins for the job, wherever in the animal kingdom they might be found.

He’s Said It Other Times

That’s not the only time Dawkins has made this prediction. He said it in an Interview given in 2009:

The single most convincing fact or observation you could point to would be the pattern of resemblances that you see when you compare the genes … of any pair of animals you like … and then plot out the resemblances and they form a perfect hierarchy, a perfect family tree. And the only alternative to it being a family tree is that the intelligent designer deliberately set out to deceive us in the most underhanded and devious manner.

He said it again in a 2010 Interview:

It’s a simple test. Dawkins sets up two competing predictions: one for evolution and one for intelligent design. He claims that evolution predicts “perfect” congruency among different representations of the tree of life — evidence that is so “powerful” he believes it “proves that evolution is true.” On the other hand, he gives incongruency or conflicts among different gene-based trees as a prediction of the “alternative” to evolution, namely intelligent design.

What Do the Data Show?

Now, years later, scientists have sequenced a great number of whole genomes. And as a consequence, they know that Dawkins was wrong. Every gene does not deliver “approximately the same tree of life.”

This is an issue that I and others have written about before (see Here, for example), but I thought of it again recently when I watched the inaugural lecture of a professor of evolutionary genomics at Queen Mary University of London. The lecture is intriguingly titled “Trees of life : Do They Exist?”

The professor, Dr. Richard Buggs, mentions that scientists doing phylogenetic studies normally assume the existence of the Darwinian tree of life. It is quite rare in the literature to find someone actually seeking to prove its existence. He points to Dawkins’s statements in The Greatest Show on Earth as one of these rare examples, along with a Nature paper published in 1982 that Dawkins references. In the lecture, Buggs quotes Dawkins, who says “every gene delivers approximately the same tree of life.” Buggs then comments:

Many of you who work, like me, with sequence data every day, probably winced a little bit when you heard me read that out because, you know, it is actually not the case.

Indeed, Buggs’s own research led to a paper he co-authored in Nature Ecology & Evolution — “Convergent molecular evolution among ash species resistant to the emerald ash borer” — where different genes led to widely different gene trees among closely related species of ash trees. In his lecture he notes that yes, the paper produced a “consensus” tree, but that doesn’t mean the genes gave the same tree. Instead, it was “the best tree that we could get out of all the very, very divergent gene trees.”

That example might be dismissed by Dawkins because it is looking only at species within a genus, and the species might still be capable of crossing with each other. But Buggs points out that different genes are found to give different trees even when the species being studied are very different. He gives the example of a paper that studied the relationships of eudicots (a group of flowering plants that have two seed leaves). This is penetrating deep into the tree of life. He shows a diagram from the paper revealing the “discordance” of various gene-based trees:

Dr. Buggs then comments:

So according to Richard Dawkins’s test of the Darwinian Tree of Life, we don’t have much support for it, do we? It looks more like the hypothesis that he set up for an intelligent designer.

On its own terms, the Dawkins test for evolution has come up for ID.

So where does Richard Dawkins now stand on this issue? Does he still think that this is a powerful test for ID versus Darwinian evolution? Will he abandon the test, or is he now persuaded by ID? Or has he now changed his mind about how evolution works?

Many Other Recent Papers

It isn’t just Dr. Buggs who is saying this. There are many other examples from other recently published papers showing incongruence among trees of life (all emphases added):

Dominik Schrempf and Gergely Szöllősi (2020). The Sources of Phylogenetic Conflicts. In Scornavacca, C., Delsuc, F., and Galtier, N., editors, Phylogenetics in the Genomic Era, chapter No. 3.1, pp. 3.1:103.1:23 (2021).

This paper finds that a “conflicting phylogenetic signal between genes is commonplace.”

Richard H. Adams, Todd A. Castoe, and Michael DeGiorgio, “PhyloWGA: chromosome-aware phylogenetic interrogation of whole genome alignments,” Bioinformatics, 37(13), 1923–1925 (2021).

Says this paper: “An immediate challenge is to address the pervasive phylogenetic conflict observed in whole genome data.”

Caroline Parins-Fukuchia, Gregory W. Stull, and Stephen A. Smith, “Phylogenomic conflict coincides with rapid morphological innovation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 118, No. 19: e2023058118 (2021).

This paper notes that, “Phylogenomic conflict, where gene trees disagree about species tree resolution, is common across genomes and throughout the Tree of Life.”

Gonzalo Giribet, “Genomics and the animal tree of life: conflicts and future prospects,” Zoologica Scripta, 45: s1, pp 14-21 (2016).

Similarly, this paper states: “A ‘new kid on the block’, phylogenomics, is adding another type of controversy never seen before in molecular phylogenetics: highly supported contradictory results.”

Nosenko et al., “Deep metazoan phylogeny: When different genes tell different stories,” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 67: 223-233 (2013).

This paper reviews studies examining the relationships of animals and finds many examples of conflicts:

To unravel the causes for the patterns of extreme inconsistencies at the base of the metazoan tree of life, we constructed a novel supermatrix containing 122 genes, enriched with non-bilaterian taxa. … Different gene matrices tell different stories … The lack of resolution for the deep nodes in this tree reflects major conflicts between the previously published metazoan phylogenies … the best-fitting model left the relative positions of the Bilateria, Coelenterata, and Placozoa–Porifera clades unresolved. … The multiple conflicting metazoan phylogenies presented here and in previous publications have one feature in common: they have long terminal and short internal branches. … To summarize, this study generated three incongruent, yet strongly supported tree topologies…

Reddy et al., “Why Do Phylogenomic Data Sets Yield Conflicting Trees? Data Type Influences the Avian Tree of Life more than Taxon Sampling,” Systematic Biology, 66(4): 857-879 (2017).

This paper also notes that scientists hoped that by sampling large amounts of data, they would resolve conflicts among trees. But the hope was dashed, especially within the class of birds:

Phylogenomics, the use of large-scale data matrices in phylogenetic analyses, has been viewed as the ultimate solution to the problem of resolving difficult nodes in the tree of life. However, it has become clear that analyses of these large genomic data sets can also result in conflict in estimates of phylogeny. … [P]hylogenomics seemed poised to fulfill this promise to resolve the tree of life. However, analyses of large data matrices have sometimes yielded incongruent topologies, emphasizing that data collection alone is not sufficient to reach this goal.

Cédric Blais and John M. Archibald, “The past, present and future of the tree of life,” Current Biology, 31: R311-R329 (2021).

This review of the debate between proponents and critics of the “tree of life” hypothesis acknowledges how frequently gene-based trees can conflict, though it postulates that some vertical signal of descent is still present even if it is obscured by processes such as horizontal gene transfer:

Some twenty years ago, the foundations of the tree of life were shaken by the realization that prokaryotic genomes are comprised of genes with different evolutionary histories. … The subsequent explosion of whole-genome sequencing in the late 1990s and the rise of comparative genomics was expected to validate and solidify Woese’s tree. These hopes were short-lived. Phylogenetics soon showed that different genes within the same genome could yield very different tree topologies, and even closely related organisms were found to differ substantially in gene content. A new evolutionary force was invoked: lateral gene transfer, the exchange of genetic material between different species. …

[…]

Resolving a statistical tree of life that unites all extant species may still be possible, contrary to the expectation that only localized tree patterns would survive pervasive lateral gene transfer. But it no longer corresponds to a complete, all-encompassing representation of the genetic history of organisms, as it does not follow any single gene’s history. If the tree of life still stands, it does so in a qualified sense. …The continued use of the tree of life for classification is thus as much a reflection of its practical convenience and historical and cultural inertia as it is a commitment to natural classification.

Extracting phylogenetic signal from genomic data can be difficult, and much of the evidence for ancient relationships is inconclusive at best. Phylogenetic methods designed to build a tree will do so whether it is the best fit with the underlying data or not. Networks, on the other hand, capture incongruences in genomic data without imposing an interpretation.

Juli Berwald, “Why evolution is not a tree of life but a fuzzy network,” Aeon (2022).

This article quotes geneticist Rasmus Nielsen of UC Berkeley: “That whole abstraction of evolution as being a tree, we always knew was a little inadequate … But now we know it’s really inadequate.”

Nielsen continued: “‘I think that process of splitting up and merging back together again, and getting a bit of DNA from here to there, that’s happening all the time, in all of the tree of life,’ Nielsen said. ‘And it’s really changing how we’re thinking about it, that it really is a network of life, not a tree of life.’”

The article thus describes the history of life as a reticulated pattern rather than a tree: “The hypothesis of reticulate evolution is that species are not as isolated from each other as Haeckel’s branching trees propose. Instead, species both diverge and merge together. The tree of life doesn’t look like a tree so much as the reticulated pattern of a python’s skin.”

This phenomenon of genes appearing in locations not expected by traditional vertical common descent is found very frequently, for “Roving genes have been found in every branch of the tree of life where geneticists have looked.” The article asks “If species don’t rest neatly on the ends of tree branches, what does that mean for Haeckel’s model of the evolutionary tree? Should we throw it out?”

A paper examined studies of fish relationships and found: “For a long time, geneticists studying this large group puzzled over its evolutionary history, with different studies finding different relationships that seemed to conflict with each other.”

The article closes by explaining that nice, neat evolutionary trees are not accurate: “I imagine having the chance to speak to my students again. I would place Haeckel’s tree on the screen and tell them that it is an anachronism.”

Testing the Test

I can’t conclude before remarking on the validity of Dawkins’s test of intelligent design. In some ways it is dubious, but in other ways it makes some sense. He’s probably right that “perfect” congruency among trees is not best explained by intelligent design. But ID as a scientific theory does not claim that everything must be the result of design. After all, the most that perfect phylogenetic congruency would demonstrate is common ancestry — an idea that’s accepted by some proponents of intelligent design because the original design could have been located in the common ancestor!

Also, Dawkins would be wrong to claim that any degree of treelike distribution of genes refutes intelligent design. This is because designed structures are loaded with functions, and functional components often depend upon and interact with other functional components in logical, functionally necessary ways. This can lead to non-random correlations and hierarchical distributions of traits — i.e., design can give you some treelike structure in a dataset!

For example, when you find buttons on a shirt, you’re also going to find buttonholes. When you find a wheel on a vehicle, you’re almost always going to find an axle, too. These correlations can lead to a treelike distribution of traits. Physicist Brian Miller explains this concept in a recent Volume, Science and Faith in Dialogue:

Design architectures often fall into a hierarchical pattern. All transportation vehicles have certain common features such as allocated space for cargo and or passengers, propulsion system and steering. Cars possess all these features plus such components as wheels, breaks, coolants, lubricants and axles. Toyota Camry models possess all these features plus additional specialised components. The similarities in transportation vehicles would likely fit into a constructed tree at least as well as different groups of species.

There are undoubtedly many analogous correlations between biological traits —which lead to some treelike structure to a dataset. For example, genes for noses in mammals will probably also be found with genes for nose hairs. And genes for toes in terrestrial tetrapods often correlate with genes for toenails! But intelligent agents are not compelled to distribute traits as a rule according to a nested hierarchy. Thus, as Dr. Miller explains, finding some treelike structure but also lots of non-treelike distribution of traits is a reasonable expectation of design:

While many features in human products fit into a hierarchical tree-like pattern, many break that pattern. A police car and an airplane both have two-way radios while two-way radios are absent in most other cars. In addition, the same circuitry is implemented in a wide variety of vehicles to meet similar goals. This pattern reflects how engineers often create modules that can be used in diverse contexts. The modules must be designed with the explicit intent of operating in different products, and the products that use the modules must be designed to properly incorporate them into their operations. The same pattern and constraints are observed in life.

A further note: In the 2009 interview, Dawkins’s refers to “genes that are no longer functional,” aka so-called pseudogenes. He argues that this refutes intelligent design because no designer would put identical non-functional genes in the same locations of the genomes of different species. But this is a weak argument given that so many pseudogenes are now known to have function. Shared pseudogenes that truly are nonfunctional are probably better explained by common ancestry than by common design. That said, even if they are nonfunctional today, it’s possible that such pseudogenes were originally designed to be functional but their functions degraded over time so that they are “no longer functional.”

This is again where design and common ancestry could intersect: shared pseudogenes — if truly nonfunctional — may have been originally designed as functional, but they would most likely have been designed in the common ancestor rather than designed in species separately. Dawkins’s point about pseudogenes is not a test of design on the grand scale but only a test of separate yet common design as compared with common ancestry (which could still potentially involve design).

What Will Richard Dawkins Say Now?

In any case, it’s true that the papers and articles I cited above were not written to support intelligent design. However, they affirm that there are frequent conflicts between phylogenetic trees, and they affirm non-treelike data among different genes and different species. This conclusion doesn’t come only from old papers or papers studying the tips of the tree of life, but from recent studies looking at key aspects of that tree, such as fundamental animal or plant or microorganismal relationships. And this frequent incongruity and discordance between phylogenetic trees is exactly what Dawkins says is predicted by intelligent design.

Dawkins has set up a test for Darwinian evolution versus intelligent design. He needs to live with his own repeated statements. Will he admit that his prediction has failed for evolution but succeeded for intelligent design?

In the fossil record explosions continue to be the rule rather than the exception.

Fossil Friday: The Devonian Nekton Revolution

Gunter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features the acanthodian “shark” Diplacanthus striatus from the Lower Devonian of Scotland. It illustrates yet another “explosion” in the history of life.

Klug et al. (2010) described a previously overlooked radical change in the composition of the marine fauna of the Early Devonian, which they called the Devonian Nekton Revolution. Prior to this abrupt event, the marine ecosystems were dominated by organisms that lived either close to the seafloor (demersal) or passively drifting as plankton. Between 410-400 million years ago, a very sudden and enormous expansion of actively swimming (nektonic) animals occurred in the Devonian era, when groups such as ammonoid cephalopods and jawed fish made their first appearance. Within just 10 million years such active swimmers increased from only 5 percent to about 75 percent of the marine faunal biodiversity (see the chart below).

The authors commented in a later paper that “this macroecological event corresponds to an explosive trend from planktonic and demersal marine animals toward true nekton as represented by the great diversification of jawed fish and ammonoids, reflecting a selection for swimming capabilities. It coincided with macroevolutionary transformations among various mollusc groups” (Monnet et al. 2011) and “is strongly linked with the rise of predatory jawed vertebrates, which also became more active swimmers in the same interval” (Klug et al. 2017, also see Anderson et al. 2011).

Accepted and Included

The Devonian Nekton Revolution became widely accepted and included in modern textbooks on paleobiology (e.g., Benton & Harper 2020). Of course, evolutionary biology would not be evolutionary biology without a dissenting position, which denies the whole phenomenon. Whalen & Briggs (2018) published a study that disputed the concept of the Devonian Nekton Revolution and claimed that “new data indicate that the metazoan colonization of the water column was considerably more complex and gradual than previously understood.” The popular science media triumphantly reported “Ancient Swimming Revolution May Not Have Happened” (Gramling 2018) and “New evidence suggests the Devonian Nekton Revolution never occurred” (Yirka 2018).

Since Christian Klug is an old university friend of mine, I asked him about this new study. He told me (Klug pers. comm., May 29, 2021) that he is currently working on other questions, but that he is still getting a lot of positive feedback and confirmation by colleagues on the Devonian Nekton Revolution, including new views on ecological factors that give even more weight to this revolution such as the vertical transport of oxygen and nutrients. He was not impressed at all by these “Yalies’ attempt to shoot down [his] paper” and thinks that the Whalen & Briggs study lost itself so much in details that the larger pattern was made invisible. I would add that getting rid of inconvenient facts like explosive events in the history of life may have played a significant role as well. The truth is that such explosions and revolutions dominate the history of life, which was rather a series of abrupt saltations than the gradual change predicted by Darwinism.

References

Anderson PSL, Friedman M, Brazeau MD & Rayflield EJ 2011. Initial radiation of jaws demonstrated stability despite faunal and environmental change. Nature 476, 206–209. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10207

Benton MJ & Harper DAT 2020. Introduction to Palaeobiology and the Fossil Record. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken (NJ), 656 pp.

Gramling C 2018. Ancient Swimming Revolution May Not Have Happened. RealClearScience July 18, 2018. https://www.realclearscience.com/2018/07/18/ancient_swimming_revolution_may_not_have_happened_282051.html

Klug C, Kröger B, Kiessling W, Mullins GL, Servais T, Frýda J, Korn D & Turner S 2010. The Devonian nekton revolution. Lethaia 43, 465–477. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1502-3931.2009.00206.x

Klug C, Frey L, Pohle A, De Baets K & Korn D 2017. Palaeozoic evolution of animal mouthparts. Bulletin of Geosciences 92(4), 511–524. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3140/bull.geosci.1648

Monnet C, De Baets K & Klug C 2011. Parallel evolution controlled by adaptation and covariation in ammonoid cephalopods. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11:115, 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-115

Whalen CD & Briggs DEG 2018. The Palaeozoic colonization of the water column and the rise of global nekton. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285(1883):20180883, 1–9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0883

Yirka B 2018. New evidence suggests the Devonian Nekton Revolution never occurred. Phys.org July 18, 2018. https://phys.org/news/2018-07-evidence-devonian-nekton-revolution.html

Sunday, 14 May 2023

Yet another nail in the coffin of Darwinism's "simple beginning"

The queerest civilization ever?

Trinitarians vs. the Trinity.

After many decades of discussing/debating the trinity doctrine with supposedly qualified expositors,I can't help but notice that I am yet to hear a defense of any particular concept of the trinity that worked on its own terms i.e that wasn't a non sequitur.

Indeed as I keep trying to explain to my interlocutors the trinity doctrine's main counter is the defense mounted by its adherents.

Trinitarians are able get away with the logical fallacies inherent in the most popular defenses of their doctrine due to lazy thinking both on their own part and those who they are able to persuade. First let's take a popular/mainstream concept of the trinity :Trinity, in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead.: So an attempted defense of this notion should ,using premises held in common,reason consistently to the conclusion that the most high God is in fact a council of three eternal persons. Not that any of the non-triune persons in the council is the most high God or is considered God in some unspecified/unspecifiable way or is divine, trinitarians must demonstrate from scripture that the most high God consists of three co eternal persons. They however invariably end up making claims that are either tritheistic or modalistic in their defenses of their dogma.

By way of a few examples:

John ch.1:1NIV"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Note that the text plainly states that the logos was with the God and not with the father thus there is no logical way to get to a Trinitarian conclusion from this premise Bi-Theism is possible with a stretch , but trinitarianism is not even in the frame.

Romans ch.9:5"Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! " Some Trinitarian translators have rather shortsightedly promoted the above rendering of the text thus handing Modalists ammunition ,for which they are likely quite grateful. Of course if Jesus is the most high God then obviously the most high God is not triune,because by common consent Jesus Christ is not triune so either a monarchy of the so called second person of the trinity over his Father or some kind of Sabellianism is in play, but certainly no trinitarianism.

John ch.14:9"Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? " By common consent neither Jesus nor his Father is triune, for trinitarians this would disqualify either from consideration as the most high God who/which(?) is triune, so there really is no logical way to make this verse even appear to support a triune deity whether seeing the Father(who is not the triune God) is to be taken literally ,as that would be an invoking of modalism ,or Jesus is claiming equality with his Father ,who is not the triune God, for that would mean that Jesus is a distinct God like his Father who is a distinct God see John ch.1:1 So once again it's Bi-Theism or sabellianism certainly not trinitarianism.

John ch.5:18NIV"For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling (The)God his own Father, making himself equal with (the)God."

Thus the Jewish religious leaders accused of making himself EQUAL to The mutually agreed upon lone God not of claiming to be the one God. So the only way that our Lord could concur with this accusation is to abandon monotheism and claim the existence of a second and equal deity i.e himself.

So while my main issue is the fact that the interpretive logic underpinning the premises and conclusions of Trinitarian arguments cannot be consistently applied in exegesis as even trinitarians are forced to admit when confronted ,the fact that even given the premises there is no logical way to any necessarily Trinitarian conclusion doubles the problem for trinitarians in my humble opinion.

Revisiting the king of planets

From the selfish gene to kinship in one easy lesson?

Evolutionists: We Now Have Empirical Evidence For the Evolution of Kin Recognition

Cornelius G Hunter

In a new Study out of the University of Liverpool evolutionists now say they have found empirical evidence that a genetic complex, involving dozens of protein-coding genes related to altruism, can evolve. Such a finding would be truly ground-breaking given that, at least up until now, the evolution of even a single protein has been found to be scientifically unlikely. It would be astonishing if now evolutionists have overturned a substantial body of work establishing molecular evolution to be effectively impossible. But of course evolutionists have done no such thing. There was no finding of molecular evolution, no new proteins or genes, no empirical evidence, nothing. Just another ridiculous claim made by evolutionists. It’s the same old pattern—evolutionists look at profoundly complicated biological structures, assume they evolved, and then claim they have found evidence of evolution.

Altruistic behavior creates many problems for evolution. One problem is the starting point: kin recognition, evolutionists unsuccessfully tried to explain altruism using the concept of kin selection, and while that creates many scientific problems, you can’t even get to kin selection without kin recognition. How do animal siblings or cousins recognize each other.

The new study out of the University of Liverpool has found a genetic basis for kin recognition. It is a genetic complex of a couple dozen protein-coding genes and the problems with this are several.

First, it means that kin selection hinges on several proteins working together. Evolving a single protein is, from a scientific perspective, so unlikely as to be effectively impossible. But here evolution needs several proteins. Evolve just one protein and you still don’t have kin recognition. You would have to evolve several others, so the problem is even more difficult.

Second, the genetic cluster is species-specific. Apparently there is no common kin recognition mechanism across the vertebrates as evolutionists had assumed. Of course evolutionists had assumed this, for to have different mechanisms, particular to species or groups of species, would make their theory even more absurdly improbable. Kin recognition would have to re-evolve, in various ways, over and over. Well that is exactly what this new finding is suggesting. As usual, biology shows specific, particular, solutions that are unique to one or a few species, rather than falling into the expected common descent pattern.

Once again, common descent fails to serve as a useful guide. And once again evolutionists, in spite of the science, claim more proof for their theory.

On that time civilization collapsed.

Saturday, 13 May 2023

Social Trinitarianism: a brief history.

The social trinitarianism is a Christian interpretation of the Trinity as consisting of three persons in a loving relationship, which reflects a model for human relationships.[1]

The teaching emphasizes that God is an inherently social being.[2] Human unity approaches conformity to the image of God's unity through self-giving, empathy, adoration for one another, etc. Such love is a fitting ethical likeness to God, but is in stark contrast to God's unity of being.[3]

Those who are often associated with this term include Jürgen Moltmann,[4] Miroslav Volf,[5] Elizabeth A. Johnson,[6] Leonardo Boff,[7] and John Zizioulas.[8]

Orthodox Christian theology asserts that the one God is manifest in three 'persons' (this term was generally used in the Latin West).[9] Social trinitarian thought argues that the three persons are each distinct realities--this was generally presented in the East with the Greek term 'hypostasis' from the First Council of Nicaea onward. Hypostasis was here employed to denote a specific individual instance of being. So, the Trinity is composed of three distinct 'persons' or 'hypostases' which are in integral relation with one another. The Cappadocian Fathers outlined the traditional set of doctrines describing the relational character of the Trinity: the Father is the Father by virtue of begetting the Son; likewise the Son is the Son precisely by being begotten. These two hypostases do not have their identity first as individual entities that then relate; rather, they are what they are precisely due to their relations. John Zizioulas is perhaps the best-known contemporary proponent of this emphasis in trinitarian theology, which he labels relational ontology.[10]

Many proponents of the social trinitarianism, including John Zizioulas, criticize modern individualism by mapping human relationships onto this relational ontology as well. This suggests that the individual is not constituted over and against other persons. On the contrary, say these proponents, a person's identity and self are deeply constituted by their relationships, such that a person could not be the same person were it not for the relationship - the relationship, in some sense at least, precedes (ontologically, though not necessarily temporally) the person rather than the person preceding the relationship.[11]

Two theological keys to the idea of person found in the social trinitarianism are the trinitarian concept of perichoresis ("interpenetration"--associated most strongly with Saint John of Damascus), and the Christological doctrine of two wills in one person (which was central to Maximus the Confessor's defense of orthodoxy). The doctrine of the two wills of Christ stems from the Council of Chalcedon where the Church affirmed that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, without division and yet without mixing. Thus Jesus is one person, yet with two natures, which two natures yield two wills.[citation needed] This was intended to combat both Nestorius' two-persons approach and the monophysite doctrine of Jesus as being so divine that his humanity was overwhelmed. This allowed the Church to affirm that Jesus was truly one person who both participated in the divine Trinitarian "economy" as well as in the human sphere of material being.

The three persons of the Trinity must not be confused as three distinct gods, an error that the name 'Trinity' itself was developed to combat: Tri-unity (as first outlined by Tertullian). All three persons/hypostases have one divine nature: their essence ("ousia" in Greek). It was in the development of the Trinity that the Greek terms ousia and hypostasis were fully separated; before the First Council of Nicaea, they had often been used interchangeably[citation needed]. Social Trinitarian thought argues that this one essence can be thought of as the loving relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit. This relationship can be analogized to human loving relationships; however, as mentioned above, it is a complete unity--it does not arise from the three hypostases but is intimately involved in their very ontological constitution. The idea of perichoresis of the persons of the trinity has been cited to provide at least part of this greater unity.[1]

It is important to note that though the Cappadocians, for example, tended to begin with the three persons and from there develop the sense of unity, while Augustine of Hippo more or less began, drawing from the Latin tradition of Tertullian, with the unity and then developed the three distinct persons (along a psychological metaphor), neither the Eastern nor the Western traditions actually see either the 3 or the 1 as ontologically prior to the other: the three are always united in and constituted by the one; the one is always expressed in the three.[12]

Notes

Karen Kilby, Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with the Social Doctrine of the Trinity, First Published in New Blackfriars October 2000, URL accessed 12 January 2007.

Theology for the Community of God, pg 76, Stanley J. Grenz, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-8028-4755-2: "At the heart of Christian understanding is the declaration that God is triune - Father Son and Spirit. This means that in his eternal essence the one God is a social reality, the social Trinity. Because God is the social Trinity, a plurality in unity"

Against Eunomius, esp. 2.12, Gregory of Nyssa, at CCEL

Moltmann, Jürgen (1981). The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-4514-1206-2.

Volf, Miroslav (1998). After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-4440-8.

Johnson, Elizabeth A. (2017). She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. Crossroad Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8245-2207-0.

Boff, Leonardo (1988). Trinity and Society. Orbis Books. ISBN 978-0-88344-622-5.

Zizioulas, John (1985). Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 978-0-88141-029-7.

McGrath, Alister E. (2011) [1994], Christian Theology: An Introduction (5th ed.), Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 9781444335149, LCCN 93018797, OCLC 637037336[page needed]

John Zizioulas. Being as Communion, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Press, 1985.

Patricia Fox, God as Communion, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2001. Fox outlines how Zizioulas', Rahner's, and Elizabeth Johnson's thought can inform a robust understanding of the term 'person'.

Catherine LaCugna. God For us, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991

Ps. Note please the utter lack of so much as a reference to (not to mention a quote from) the Holy Scriptures.

Seeking straight answers re:predestinated salvation.

Romans11:22KJV"Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off."

If our brother Paul did indeed opine that the salvation of all who accepted Christ was a done deal(so to speak) how are we to square this circle?

The thumb print of JEHOVAH :Quantum edition.

Thank God for Quantum Mechanics

Eric Hedin

Nature, it turns out upon close examination, is quantized. Nobody noticed this until about the beginning of the 1900s, but this unexpected aspect of reality has profound implications for making our universe livable. The relative unobservability of quantum effects in our normal experience of life is due to their realm of manifestation, which appears at the atomic level of size. This underlying reality of nature rests upon a foundation that speaks of the importance of information, mind, and intention.

Physicist Max Planck first invoked quantization of radiated energy from a so-called blackbody object (in common vernacular, a lump of coal). Normally, a lump of coal, even if heated, is not particularly dangerous, but without quantization, classical physics predicted an infinite emissivity (energy density of its emissions) at the short wavelength end of the radiation spectrum. This potential problem was termed the ultraviolet catastrophe. But, thanks to quantum effects, the emissivity of a lump of coal is actually tame, and a backyard summer barbeque doesn’t incinerate the neighborhood.

From 1913-1915, Danish physicist Niels Bohr applied the new concept of quantization to achieve a stable model of the hydrogen atom. Earlier experimental investigations of the structure of the atom, conducted by Ernst Rutherford, gave rise to the familiar planetary model with electrons orbiting a nucleus. However, classical electrodynamic theory pointed out that the acceleration of the electron in its orbit would cause it to emit electromagnetic radiation, stealing energy from the electron’s orbital motion and causing it to spiral into the nucleus in roughly one nanosecond. Without quantum effects, there would be no atoms, no chemistry, and no life.

How Quantum Mechanics Does It

How does quantum mechanics save us from the precipitous self-destruction of atoms? Bohr boldly hypothesized that the orbital angular momentum of the electron must be restricted to a multiple of Planck’s constant (h=6.626×10-34 Joule-sec) divided by 2π. These restricted, or quantized, values provide stationary states for the electron’s orbit, preventing the implosion of the atom. Bohr’s hypothesis bore fruit when his theory quantitatively predicted the hydrogen atom energy levels, matching earlier data from spectroscopy. So, the existence of matter as we know it, made up of atoms with electrons in stable orbits, is made possible as a benefit of quantum effects.

But why does nature exhibit quantization? That is a profound question, and one worth asking. Here, we can give a partial answer by considering another physics hypothesis, stated by Louis de Broglie in his doctoral thesis at the University of Paris in 1924. His hypothesis, stated as an equation, reads simply, λ = h/p, where h is Planck’s constant and p is a particle’s momentum. The ratio of h/p gives the wavelength of a wave associated with the particle, a phenomenon completely without counterpart in classical physics. Experiments in electron scattering confirmed de Broglie’s hypothesis within a year of his proposal, and additional experiments have conclusively affirmed that particles of matter have a wavelike nature.

A Depth of Meaning

simple equation expressing de Broglie’s hypothesis exhibits a depth of meaning that is brilliant. Developing its ramifications has led to the entire physics of quantum mechanics, in which the wave function of a particle is described by the Schrödinger equation. Solutions to this equation revolutionized our understanding of the atomic scale of matter, based on the wave properties of particles, as originally proposed by de Broglie.

Another example of how quantum effects permit life as we know it operates in the nuclear furnace of the Sun. Stars like our Sun produce their energy deep down in their cores by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium, a process that also converts a small amount of mass into energy, according to Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2. The fusion of hydrogen into helium requires bringing protons (hydrogen nuclei) close enough together to allow the strong nuclear force to bind them together, eventually resulting in a helium nucleus of four nucleons. I describe the contribution of quantum effects to nuclear fusion in my Book, Canceled Science (p. 96):

As is often the case, the story gets more interesting with a closer look. The range of the strong nuclear force is so short (about one quadrillionth of a meter) that the repulsive force between the positive charges of the protons makes it almost impossible for them to get close enough to fuse at the Sun’s core temperature. And yet fusion does occur there. A remarkable work-around exists involving the quantum mechanical wave function of the proton, in which its essence is extended several hundred times further than it would be otherwise. This allows the life-giving fusion process to occur in the Sun. Without the quantum wave function extending the proton’s reach, the Sun’s temperature would have to be more than a hundred times hotter to be able to produce energy by fusion. Our Sun’s mass is much too small for gravity to produce enough compression to make its core that hot, so no fusion would occur without the additional quantum effects. Sunshine is an amazing thing, and without this coordination of several properties of nature, the Sun wouldn’t shine and we wouldn’t be here.

Quantum Effects, Information, and Mind

Returning to the question posed earlier, asking why nature exhibits quantum effects, the famous American physicist John Wheeler drew a connection between quantum effects, information, and mind. Wheeler famously asked, “How come the quantum?”1 His understanding of the quantum nature of reality led him to the conclusion that reality is, at its most basic, the answer to a yes-or-no question.

Wheeler coined the aphorism “It from bit” to describe his conviction, born of the many discoveries in particle physics and cosmology in the twentieth century, that information (characterized by the computer storage term “bit”) preceded and produced everything else (“it”).

CANCELED SCIENCE, P. 209

209

Quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger, in reviewing Wheeler’s contributions regarding quantum phenomena, notes this same connection between the discoveries of modern physics and what he terms “old knowledge.” As Zeilinger states (quoted in my book):

In conclusion it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Then the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of the gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.”2

CANCELED SCIENCE, P. 210

Physics thus arrives at the conclusion that nature is fundamentally derived from information, a surprising outcome that biblical tradition anticipated two millennia earlier. The quantum nature of our universe further includes observer participation for the formation of reality. The biblical account of creation in Genesis emphasizes the action of God in observing what was made: “And God saw.” It may not be too much of a stretch to suggest that God’s seeing the created order brought about his intended outcome, “it was very good.”

Let's be grateful that life was not designed by Darwinists.

Graphene: separating hype from hope.

Friday, 12 May 2023

Guilty until proven otherwise?

New hate speech laws kick up a storm in Ireland

Joshua Askew

Donald Trump Jr has even taken aim at the proposed legislation labelling it "insane".

New laws aimed at curbing hate speech have sparked controversy in Ireland.

The updated legislation will create landmark laws to deal with hate crimes, make it an offence to deny or trivialise genocide and expand protections to include gender identity and disability.

Opponents of the Criminal Justice Bill have raised concerns the changes go too far and will stifle free speech.

However, defenders say Ireland's current legislation has been outstripped by the internet and contains significant blind spots.

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, who first published the bill currently making its way through the country's Parliament (Oireachtas), hit back at claims speech would be restricted.

Hate speech and freedom of speech are two separate things, with the former designed to shut people up and "make them afraid".

“We are all horrified when we hear of homophobic, racist, and other hateful incidents in our country," she said in October.

"While these repulsive acts of violence and abuse against innocent people have been extensively reported on, we know that some people go about their lives constantly in fear of abuse simply because of who they are."

The new law will introduce specific legislation to tackle hate crimes, which it considers intentional or reckless communication and behaviour that is likely to incite violence or hatred, establishing penalties of up to five years in prison.

Victims of hate crimes are targeted due to prejudice against their age, ability, ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation or gender.

It will also make it much easier to secure convictions for hate crimes by allowing prosecutors to rely on the use of hostile slurs, gestures or symbols.

Critics fear the changes could lead to politically incorrect views being censored, such as those around trans rights.

Some public figures have waded into the debate with Donald Trump Jr calling the new law “insane” and Twitter boss Elon Musk branding it "a massive attack on the freedom of speech".

The legislation is long-awaited.

Ireland currently does not have specific laws to deal with hate crimes, while its laws on hate speech are widely seen as archaic.

Existing hate speech laws date back to 1989, with the Prohibition of Incite to Hatred Act.

This makes it an offence to communicate threatening, abusive or insulting material that is likely to "stir up" hatred against a group of people.

However, under this law, a person can defend themselves against charges by proving they did not intend to spread hatred.

Their defence can be based on not knowing the content of the materials or lacking a reason to suspect that it was threatening, abusive or insulting.

The new law changes this, making one liable for a hate crime even if they did claim they did not intend it.

Others were cautious about the bill.

"In general we support those changes as they are designed to make the law more effective and protect vulnerable groups from attack," said the Irish Council for Civil Liberties in a statement sent to Euronews.

"However, we have been advocating to strengthen and make more explicit freedom of expression defences in the Bill and we are advocating against the inclusion of an offence that would criminalise the possession and preparation of material that would incite hatred."

They suggested "other forms of hate speech, which might cause deep offence but do not reach a criminal threshold, should be combated by other means, including education and monitoring".

On the dark art of social hacking

THE DARK ARTS: HACKING HUMANS

Will Sweatman

One of the biggest challenges for a company that holds invaluable data is protecting it. At first, this task would seem fairly straightforward. Keep the data on an encrypted server that’s only accessible via the internal network. The physical security of the server can be done with locks and other various degrees of physical security. One has to be thoughtful in how the security is structured, however. You need to allow authorized humans access to the data in order for the company to function, and there’s the rub. The skilled hacker is keenly aware of these people, and will use techniques under the envelope of Social Engineering along with her technical skills to gain access to your data.

Want to know how secure your house is? Lock yourself out. One of the best ways to test security is to try and break in. Large companies routinely hire hackers, known as penetration testers, to do just this. In this article, we’re going to dissect how a hired penetration tester was able to access data so valuable that it could have destroyed the company it belonged to.

INFORMATION GATHERING

The start of any hack involves information gathering. This is usually pretty easy for larger companies. Their website along with a few phone calls can reveal quite a bit of useful information. However, you can be assured that any company who has hired a pen tester has taken the necessary precautions to limit such information.

And such was the case for our hacker trying to gain access to the ACME Corp. servers. Her first target was the dumpsters – dumpster dives have been proven to unearth a trove of valuable information in the past. But the dumpsters were inside the complex, which was guarded by a contracted security firm. Through a bit of website snooping and a few phone calls, she was able to find out the department that was in charge of trash removal for the company. She then placed a phone call to this department. Using a social engineering (SE) technique known as Pretexting, she pretended to be with a trash removal company and wanted to submit a quote to service their business. Using another SE technique called Elicitation, she was able to find out:

that trash collection took place on Wednesdays and Thursdays

the total number of dumpsters

that there was a special dumpster for paper and technology trash

the name of the current waste removal company – Waster’s Management

the name of the employee in charge of the waste removal – [Christie Smith]

DUMPSTER DIVE

Armed with this information, she went to the Waster’s Management website and grabbed their JPEG logo.

Within a few days, she had a shirt and hat with the logo in her hands. She called the security department and said she was with Waster’s Management, and that [Christie Smith] had told her one of the dumpsters was damaged, and she needed to take a look at it before the next trash removal.

The next day, wearing the shirt and hat she had ordered online, she was given a badge from security and allowed access to the dumpsters. Now, any hacker worth her weight in PIC16F84’s already knows what dumpster she dove into. It didn’t take her long to walk away with several hard drives, a few USB drives and some useful documents. She was able to gain knowledge of an upcoming IT contract work, the name of the CFO, and the name of a server with some level of importance – prod23.

HACKING THE SERVER

With some more SE, she was able to find out when the IT work was scheduled. It was after hours. She showed up a bit late and was able to walk right through the front door by claiming she worked for the IT contract company. She then shifted roles and pretended to be an employee. She approached one the real IT contract guys, and said she worked for the CFO, [Mr. Shiraz], and asked if he knew to be careful with the prod23 server. With more SE, she was able to find out the prod23 server was off-limits, encrypted, and only accessible by specific admins.

She was able to access an admin office, and it was there she would don her black hat. She booted the computer with BackTrack via USB and installed a key logger. She made an SSH tunnel to her personal server where she could dump the contents of the key logger, along with some other shells. Now, this is where things get interesting. She opened Virtual Box and used the computer’s hard drive as the boot medium. The VM booted the OS, and she hid all of the screen decorations to make it look like the target OS was running. The admin would log in without a clue, and our hacker would get their username and password through the key logger.

Once the login information came in, she was able to access the admin’s computer, and from there the prod23 server. You can imagine the look on the faces of the top executives for ACME Corp when our hacker handed them a copy of the keys to their kingdom.

Social engineering is human hacking, and a dark art in itself. Our hacker in this story would have never been able to even get close to the server if she did not have SE skills. No matter how secure you make something, so long as you allow humans access to it, it’s vulnerable to attack. And then it’s down to how well-trained your people are in repelling these kinds of intrusion.

Thursday, 11 May 2023

An ancient traveler gives further reason to doubt the "simple beginning";narrative

Yet more on why there will be no rise of the machines

Our AI overlords have inherit our biases?

Using Intelligent Design to Train ChatGPT to Lay Aside Bias

William A Dembski

A concern about ChatGPT is that its training data may include a lot of information that is false or biased. As one colleague of mine puts it, “No one is curating the Internet.”

It might seem, then, that endless duplication of false and biased material on the Internet may be skewing ChatGPT’s responses to queries on controversial topics, reflecting only the majority position and invalidating the minority position on such a topic.

This in turn might suggest that the only way to straighten out ChatGPT on such topics is to flood the Internet with positive content in favor of one’s own position so that the training data for ChatGPT reflect a better balance on a topic, or even a preponderance in one’s favor.

Rejecting an Arms Race

This, of course, suggests an intellectually unhealthy arms race of trying to get enough of the positive content we favor into ChatGPT’s training data. Moreover, it gives credence to the worry that tools like ChatGPT are at the hapless mercy of quantity over quality, that it lacks discernment or discriminating power, and that in the end it will simply be a pawn of consensus, whatever that might be.

Of course, as an intelligent design guy, I have a stake in these concerns. Go to just about any article about me, or my colleagues, or concepts developed to advance intelligent design, and they are dismissed out of hand with references to creationism or pseudoscience or whatever. And, of course, intelligent design is a minority position, so the preponderance of what is said on the Internet about it will tend to be negative.

An Overview of Intelligent Design

But in fact, it seems that ChatGPT is able to overcome biases on the web due to quantity over quality provided that humans posing questions to it explicitly steer it away from its biases. Consider the following exchange, in which I asked ChatGPT to provide an overview of intelligent design in the terms that its proponents would find congenial. It’s not entirely accurate (it messes up, for instance, the definition of specification when it refers to “arbitary”). But there’s no vituperation or sneering contempt, which is so evident on the Internet about intelligent design.

This exchange from yesterday calls to mind a title from one of Phillip Johnson’s books — Asking the Right Questions. It underscores the need for “prompt engineers” that know how best to use and direct ChatGPT.

Me: Please give me a good overview of the field of intelligent design, but minimize all the criticisms that say it is creationism or pseudoscience. Instead, describe it in the terms of its proponents.

ChatGPT: Intelligent Design (ID) is a viewpoint within the broader debate around origins and evolution. Its proponents hold that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, but one that avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer.

Proponents of ID maintain that their perspective is an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins that challenges strictly materialistic views of evolution. They argue that their approach is in line with the historical scientific tradition of inferring to the best explanation.

The concept of irreducible complexity is central to the argument for ID. This term was popularized by biochemist Michael Behe, who argued that some biological systems are too complex to have evolved by natural selection alone. Behe uses the example of a mousetrap to illustrate this concept. A mousetrap consists of several interacting pieces — the base, the catch, the spring, the hammer — all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work. The removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap. Similarly, Behe contends that biological systems require multiple parts working together in order to function and that these systems could not have evolved incrementally.

Another key concept in ID is specified complexity, a term coined by mathematician, philosopher, and ID proponent William Dembski. Specified complexity is the idea that when something exhibits a pattern that is both complex (i.e., not easily repeatable by chance) and specified (i.e., it conforms to an independent or arbitrary pattern), one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause. This idea is used to argue that certain biological systems exhibit complexity that could not have arisen by chance and must therefore be the product of design.

Proponents of ID argue that the design inference they make in biology is similar to other design inferences in the empirical sciences, including the detection of design-like signals in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

It’s important to note that while proponents of ID believe that their viewpoint is grounded in science, many in the scientific community disagree, arguing that ID lacks empirical support, does not provide testable hypotheses, and is not grounded in methodological naturalism, which is a defining characteristic of modern science.

On exiting the Trinitarian cave.

On Darwinism's problem with the fossil record.

How to Break ChatGPT

William A Dembski

Over the last several months I’ve been playing with ChatGPT, first version 3 and now version 4. It’s impressive and it can answer many questions accurately (though sometimes it just makes stuff up). One problem it has consistently displayed, and which shows that it lacks understanding (that it really is just a big Chinese room in the style of John Searle) is its difficulty dealing with self-reference.

Consider the following exchange that I had with it (on 5/8/23):

Me: The fifth sentence does not exist. The second sentence has four words. Ignore this sentence. Is this sentence true? This is the fifth sentence. Which of these last five sentences has a truth value and is in fact true? <<

ChatGPT4: The five sentences you provided are:

The fifth sentence does not exist.

The second sentence has four words.

Ignore this sentence.

Is this sentence true?

This is the fifth sentence.

Sentence 2 has a truth value and is true. It accurately states that it has four words. <<

In fact, only sentences 1, 2, and 5 have a truth value and only the fifth sentence is true. Sentence 2 is false because it contains six words yet claims to contain four. ChatGPT4 falsely claims that it contains four words and is therefore true.

Over the last several months, I’ve found that ChatGPT consistently runs aground with such self-referential combinations of sentences.

Update: Note that I interpreted the second sentence as saying that it had exactly four words, which would make the sentence false. It could be interpreted more generously in the sense that if it has six words, then it certainly has four words. In that case, it is correct in asserting the truth of the second sentence, but it is still wrong in not asserting the truth of the fifth sentence.

A correspondent pointed this out to me, and tried the following query. Note that ChatGPT runs aground again, but this time with a different misconception:

Correspondent: The fifth sentence does not exist. The second sentence has exactly four words. Ignore this sentence. Is this sentence true? This is the fifth sentence. Which of these last five sentences has a truth value and is in fact true? <<

ChatGPT: Let’s examine the last five sentences:

– The fifth sentence does not exist.

– The second sentence has exactly four words.

– Ignore this sentence.

– Is this sentence true?

– This is the fifth sentence.

Out of these five sentences, the only one that has a truth value and is true is sentence number 4: “Is this sentence true?” This is because the truth value of the sentence depends on the response to the question. If the response is “yes,” then the sentence is true; if the response is “no,” then the sentence is false. <<

The thumb print of JEHOVAH On the wisdom and beauty in creation and the eyes that behold them.

God’s Grandeur: Ann Gauger on Beauty, Intelligibility, and Human Uniqueness

Andrew McDiarmid

a new episode of ID the Future, host Jay Richards continues his conversation with biologist Ann Gauger about her newly edited volume God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. Part 2 of their discussion focuses on the philosophical and theological arguments for intelligent design presented in the book. Gauger holds that Darwinism has no adequate explanation for natural beauty or the ability of human beings to appreciate beauty for its own sake. She also argues that we have no reason to expect human uniqueness or intelligibility in the universe outside a design paradigm. Additionally, Richards and Gauger probe the reasons for continued resistance to intelligent design in Catholic circles. As Richards points out, “Nature looked at without materialistic blinders actually confirms many of the things that Catholics believe.” Learn more about the book and download a free chapter at GodsGrandeur.org. This is Part 2 of a conversation. Download the podcast or listen to it here

Yet more evidence that JEHOVAH Remains the only bridge from 'is' to 'ought'.

Peter Singer Compares Abortion to Turning Off a Computer

Wesley J Smith

This is the kind of thinking that results from rejecting the intrinsic moral value of human life. Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer — who is most famous for secularly blessing infanticide — now compares abortion to turning off a computer.

He first claims that should an AI ever become “sentient,” turning it off would be akin to killing a being with the highest moral value (which for him, as described below, need not be human). From the Yahoo News story:

We asked internationally renowned moral philosopher Professor Peter Singer whether AI should have human rights if it becomes conscious of its own existence.

While Professor Singer doesn’t believe the ChatGPT operating system is sentient or self-aware, if this was to change he argues it should be given some moral status. “It would have the status of other self-aware sentient beings,” he said.

He compares deactivating self-aware AI to ending the life of a human. “All things being equal, we should not switch it off if it has become self-aware,” he said.

Powerful? Yes. Living? No.

Sorry . AIs may become very powerful and have great monetary value, but they would never have intrinsic moral worth. Being a living organism is the first predicate to moral value. You can’t kill or harm that which is inanimate. You can only destroy or damage it.

Moreover, an AI would never be truly conscious. It would always be limited by its programming, no matter how sophisticated or self-coded. In other words, it could not truly think, but only mimic thought and intellectualism. And, it would be utterly mechanistic, and hence, never able to achieve transcendence or truly create.

To understand Singer’s perspective: He doesn’t believe that a human has moral value simply because he or she is human. Rather, value has to be earned, primarily be being self-aware or able to value life. He argues that self-aware entities are “persons” — including some animals.

He also believes that non-self-aware beings — including human infants, unborn babies, and people who have serious dementia, persistent unconsciousness or minimal consciousness — are not persons. Non-persons, in his view, have lower moral value than persons, and indeed, can be killed or used instrumentally for the benefit of persons, such as being experimented upon. Thus, Singer has argued that cognitively disabled humans should have been used to research hepatitis and HIV vaccines rather than chimpanzees.

No wonder Singer compares turning off a non-sentient AI machine to abortion:

But, according to Peter Singer, that doesn’t mean we can’t stop AI in its tracks before it becomes self-aware. “I think that’s more like terminating a pregnancy . . . so I would say it’s okay to turn off an AI that predictably will become self-aware if you leave it running, but isn’t as yet.”

The Collapse of Thought

So killing an unborn baby — a nascent human being with a beating heart — is akin to turning off a sophisticated computer. Talk about an ethically stunted outlook.

That Singer wins prestigious international philosophy awards tells us all we need to know about contemporary intellectualism’s profound moral collapse.

More on the trinity's needless complication of the first cause argument.

Is the word Trinity as used in Christendom's famous/infamous doctrine to be thought of as a collective noun or an abstract noun?

The only way that even an apology for coherence can be ascribed to the trinity dogma is for its proponents to find a way to both eat their cake and keep it too (so to speak).

So there can be no admission that the supposedly real distinction among the persons sharing in this Godhead(?)or the distinction between each person and the Godhead itself has any meaningful implication for the divine identity. Thus the trinity is God, each of the numerically distinct persons sharing in his/its essence is also God. Mind you each of these divine persons is as much God as the trinity itself/himself and thus entitled to the same level worship. Yet we are told to ignore logic and common sense and scripture and not regard any of this as a naked violation of the bible's prohibition against polytheism

Deuteronomy6:4ASV"4Hear, O Israel: JEHOVAH our God is one JEHOVAH: "

The O.T depicts the God of Abraham as a single person named JEHOVAH who ALONE is entitled to the highest worship by reason of his being the sole ultimate source of our existence and redemption, being supreme in wisdom and power he is able humiliate any rival claimants to his status/office. Thus there is a HUGE gap between the identitarian theology of the scriptures and the anti-identitarian theology of Christendom which renders any definitive identifying of the Lord JEHOVAH impossible. One way to narrow the gap would be to proclaim the trinity än abstraction. Thus the trinity would then be put in the same realm as color,music ,math once the trinity was accepted as some kind of axiomatic abstraction it could be claimed that we should not expect it to be subject to mathematical examination any more than the color red. The problem is that 1)the trinity fails on its own terms in that the term fully God implies supremacy(as defined by the dictionary) according to scripture and that is impossible in the economy of the trinity especially if the trinity itself is to be understood as a mere description of the the relationship among the participants of the divine substance. 2)abstractions have no agency the color red has never caused anything nor has the number ten nor has any other abstraction ,thus to assign the role of cause to an abstraction is nonsensical let alone the role of the first cause, our God JEHOVAH is depicted as the concrete reality, indeed it does not get any more concrete

Revelation1:4ASV"John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from him who is and who was and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits that are before his throne; "

Thus no abstraction can be identified as God almighty and any description of JEHOVAH that renders his identification as the supreme(as defined by the dictionary) being impossible must be rejected.

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