On distinguishing between God's personal name and His official titles: the Watchtower society's commentary..

 Wol.Jw.org

In its articles on JEHOVAH, The Imperial Bible-Dictionary nicely illustrates the difference between ʼElo·himʹ (God) and JEHOVAH. Of the name JEHOVAH, it says: “It is everywhere a proper name, denoting the personal God and him only; whereas Elohim partakes more of the character of a common noun, denoting usually, indeed, but not necessarily nor uniformly, the Supreme. . . . The Hebrew may say the Elohim, the true God, in opposition to all false gods; but he never says the JEHOVAH, for JEHOVAH is the name of the true God only. He says again and again my God . . . ; but never my JEHOVAH, for when he says my God, he means JEHOVAH. He speaks of the God of Israel, but never of the JEHOVAH of Israel, for there is no other JEHOVAH. He speaks of the living God, but never of the living JEHOVAH, for he cannot conceive of JEHOVAH as other than living.”​—Edited by P. Fairbairn, London, 1874, Vol. I, p. 856.

The same is true of the Greek term for God, The·osʹ. It was applied alike to the true God and to such pagan gods as Zeus and Hermes (Roman Jupiter and Mercury). (Compare Ac 14:11-15.) Presenting the true situation are Paul’s words at 1 Corinthians 8:4-6: “For even though there are those who are called ‘gods,’ whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ there is actually to us one God the Father, out of whom all things are, and we for him.” The belief in numerous gods, which makes essential that the true God be distinguished from such, has continued even into this 21st century.

Paul’s reference to “God the Father” does not mean that the true God’s name is “Father,” for the designation “father” applies as well to every human male parent and describes men in other relationships. (Ro 4:11, 16; 1Co 4:15) The Messiah is given the title “Eternal Father.” (Isa 9:6) Jesus called Satan the “father” of certain murderous opposers. (Joh 8:44) The term was also applied to gods of the nations, the Greek god Zeus being represented as the great father god in Homeric poetry. That “God the Father” has a name, one that is distinct from his Son’s name, is shown in numerous texts. (Mt 28:19; Re 3:12; 14:1) Paul knew the personal name of God, JEHOVAH, as found in the creation account in Genesis, from which Paul quoted in his writings. That name, JEHOVAH, distinguishes “God the Father” (compare Isa 64:8), thereby blocking any attempt at merging or blending his identity and person with that of any other to whom the title “god” or “father” may be applied.

The war of the titans rolls on.

 

On the future of AI

 

Mark's gospel teaches that Jesus is the most high God? : Pros and Cons.

 

A molecular biologist's journey to the dark side

 

Australia's ancient kingdom of the terrible lizard.

 

Resurrection of a dead body or a dead soul

 

Many are looking forward to the hope of a resurrection from the dead.The Abrahamic religions Judaism,Christianity and Islam all mention a resurrection from the dead at the end of the age.The confusion here though lies in the fact that most of the religious authorities in this bracket also teach that there is an immortal soul that survives the death of the body,so it begs the question if the soul(the real man) is immortal how can there be a resurrection.To counter this obvious difficulty the claim is made that the bible is speaking of a resurrection of the body not of the soul(the person),now my question is if the body is merely clothing for the soul how can we speak of its dying,for it was never truly alive,it was merely animated by the person,in the same way that our clothing is moved by our bodies as we work,play etc.,thus never having lived it cannot die and never having died it cannot be resurrected only reconstituted.

So the idea of man's being an immortal spirit soul trapped in a physical body is simply incompatible with the idea of a resurrection.But in as much as proponents of this theory appeal to the bible for support let us see what the bible has to has to say on the matter,is the person actually resurrected or merely clothed with the reconstituted remains of his former body.

2Corinthians5:1NASB"For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down,we have a building from God,a house NOT made with hands,eternal in the heavens."
Note carefully this scriptural description of the resurrection.The remains of the earthly tent(body) are not to be reassembled it is to be replaced by the heavenly tent(body).So then it is the soul or person that is to be reconstituted with a new body,not the remains of the corpse.
Consider also 

revelation20:4NASB"Then I saw thrones,and they sat on them,and judgment was given to them.And I saw the SOULS of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God,and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image...and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years."

Note it is the souls of the faithful that are spoken of as coming to life a thing that,would be impossible if these souls were immortal.

1Corinthians15:36NASB"You fool!That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies." 

Now that ought to be self-evident.If the soul/person is an immortal spirit clothe with matter which it animates with its life,then neither the soul nor the matter which clothes it can be spoken of as dying and thus neither the soul nor the matter which clothes it can be resurrected.
Those who don't go beyond what is written,1Corinthians4:6,never have to wrestle with such contradictions.The scriptures are quite clear the human soul is mortal Ezekiel18:4 and immortality is gift from Jehovah through our lord and saviour Jesus Christ 2Timothy1:10

Scientists' ruminations on ruminants' EQ

 Researchers: Goats Can Read Basic Human Emotions

Denyse O Leary

Readers may wonder at first whether this research was worth doing, but hang on. It turns out that goats can understand basic human emotions by voice alone, according to University of Hong Kong research, co-led by Prof Alan McElligott at City University of Hong Kong and Dr. Marianne Mason of London’s University of Roehampton:

In the experiment, goats listened to a series of voice playbacks expressing either a positive (happy) or a negative (angry) valence during the habituation phase, i.e., when the goat becomes accustomed to the human voice and valence, so they would respond less as the phase progressed. The recording was then switched from a positive to a negative valence (or vice versa) before being reversed.

“We predicted that if goats could discriminate emotional content conveyed in the human voice, they would dishabituate, looking faster and for longer towards the source of the sound, following the first shift in valence,” said Dr. Marianne Mason, University of Roehampton, UK.

MICHAEL GIBB, CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, “RESEARCH SHOWS GOATS CAN TELL IF YOU ARE HAPPY OR ANGRY BY YOUR VOICE ALONE,” PHYS.ORG. THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS

When the emotional valence changed, 75 percent of the goats looked at the speaker for a longer time. That suggested that the goats had indeed sensed a change in emotional content.

Dogs, Horses, Livestock

Dogs and horses are well known to be sensitive to human emotions but, it can be argued, that is why humans form close relationships with them. What about livestock — animal species that we work with, and maybe live with, but are less likely to bond with? If they also can sense human emotions, that fact should be factored into their care, the researchers argue:

 the results are essential for adding to our understanding of animal behaviour, welfare and emotional experiences, especially since goats and other livestock will hear the human voice in their daily lives. Negatively valenced voices, like angry ones, may cause fear in animals. In contrast, positive ones may be perceived as calming and may even encourage animals to approach and help with human-animal bonding. 

CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, “BY YOUR VOICE ALONE”

Reason and Moral Choice

It shouldn’t be very surprising if a wide range of animals can understand the most basic human emotional states, like contentedness vs. anger or maybe fear. After all, those are precisely the elements of the mind that we all share. What animals don’t understand are reason and moral choice, the elements we don’t share. The goat may sense that the human is angry but she does not think “I wonder if he is angry because the price of feed has gone up?” or “It’s not morally right for him to go around shouting at everyone like that! It’s not our fault if the feed price went up!” She responds to simple emotion because that is what she understands. In the same way, humans can understand, and even study, the animal emotions we share.

Interestingly, this distinction plays a role in arguments about the immortality of the soul. As philosopher Edward Feser writes, “ … it is because human beings are rational animals that our souls can survive the deaths of our bodies, since … rational or intellectual powers are essentially incorporeal.” The underlying assumption is that abstractions, ideas, and moral principles are immaterial (incorporeal); thus the aspect of our minds that apprehends them must be too. The basic emotions that we share with animals are, on that view, more rooted in physical nature.

One outcome of this view, of course, is that, as Christof Koch has complained, it meant that no dogs, including his beloved Purzel, go to heaven. However, C. S. Lewis had thought of a possible way around that problem. For more on that story, see “Do Any Dogs Go to Heaven? If So, Why?”

Ps. With all due respect to Mr. Feser,his comments perfectly illustrate how false religious ideas like reductive spiritualism short circuit clear thinking . Obviously emotions like joy,and anger are as immaterial as our moral sense. So to claim that the ability to experience/comprehend emotion is not as much evidence of a reductive spirit soul(if indeed there is such a thing) as possessing a moral sense is arbitrary. Another consideration is that at the beginning of our lives our moral sense is probably on the same level as a dog's or a cat's, is this evidence that this supposed reductive spirit soul is absent at that stage of development.

Why the big deal about JEHOVAH'S Name.: The Watchtower Society's Commentary.

 

Questions From Readers

How did the article “Let Your Name Be Sanctified” in The Watchtower of June 2020 clarify our belief regarding Jehovah’s name and his sovereignty?

Wol.JW.org

In that article, we learned that there is really just one issue facing all intelligent creation: the sanctification of Jehovah’s great name. The issue of sovereignty​—that is, Jehovah’s way of ruling is best—​is a facet of the one great issue. Likewise, the issue of human integrity is another facet of that one great issue.

Why do we now emphasize that the greatest issue centers on Jehovah’s name and sanctifying it? Let us examine three reasons.

First, Satan attacked Jehovah’s name, or reputation, in the garden of Eden. Satan’s sly question to Eve implied that Jehovah was an ungenerous God who placed unreasonable restrictions on His subjects. Then Satan directly contradicted Jehovah’s words, in effect calling God a liar. So he slandered Jehovah’s name. He became “the Devil,” which means “slanderer.” (John 8:44) Because Eve believed Satan’s lies, she disobeyed God, rebelling against his sovereignty. (Gen. 3:1-6) To this day, Satan slanders God’s name, spreading lies about Jehovah as a Person. Those who believe such lies are more likely to disobey Jehovah. So to God’s people, the slander against Jehovah’s holy name is the ultimate injustice. It is the root cause of all the misery and wickedness in the world.

Second, for the good of all creation, Jehovah is determined to vindicate his name, clearing it of all reproach. That is of the utmost importance to Jehovah. He thus says: “I will certainly sanctify my great name.” (Ezek. 36:23) And Jesus made clear what should be a top priority in the prayers of all faithful servants of Jehovah when he said: “Let your name be sanctified.” (Matt. 6:9) The Bible again and again emphasizes the importance of glorifying Jehovah’s name. Consider just a few examples: “Give Jehovah the glory due his name.” (1 Chron. 16:29; Ps. 96:8) “Sing praises to his glorious name.” (Ps. 66:2) “I will glorify your name forever.” (Ps. 86:12) One of the times that Jehovah himself spoke from heaven occurred at the temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus said: “Father, glorify your name.” Jehovah, in turn, answered: “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”​—John 12:28.a

Third, Jehovah’s long-range purpose is connected to his name, or reputation. Consider: After the final test that follows the Thousand Year Reign of Christ, what next? Will intelligent creation continue to be divided over the great issue, the sanctification of Jehovah’s name? To help us answer that question, let us recall the two related facets​—human integrity and universal sovereignty. Will humans who have proved faithful continue to face the challenge of keeping their integrity? No. They will be perfect and fully tested. Everlasting life will lie ahead of them. Will universal sovereignty continue to be a focus of discussion, even division, among intelligent creation? No. The rightfulness and supremacy of Jehovah’s way of ruling will be established for all time. What, though, about Jehovah’s name?

Jehovah’s name will by then be completely sanctified, completely free of slander. However, it will continue to draw the attention of all faithful ones in heaven and on earth. Why? Because they will see Jehovah continue to do amazing things. Consider: Because Jesus will humbly turn all rulership over to Jehovah, God will “be all things to everyone.” (1 Cor. 15:28) After that, humans on earth will delight in “the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Rom. 8:21) And Jehovah will completely fulfill his long-range purpose to bring all intelligent creation in heaven and on earth together as one great, united family.​—Eph. 1:10.

How will those developments affect Jehovah’s family in heaven and on earth? It stands to reason that we will feel a need​—an ardent desire—​to keep praising Jehovah’s beautiful name. The psalmist David was inspired to write: “May Jehovah God be praised . . . May his glorious name be praised forever.” (Ps. 72:18, 19) For all eternity, we will continue to find new and thrilling reasons to do that.

After all, Jehovah’s name represents everything about him. Mainly, then, his name reminds us of his love. (1 John 4:8) We will always remember that Jehovah created us out of love, that he provided the ransom sacrifice out of love, and that he demonstrated the righteousness of his way of ruling out of love. But we will continue to see how Jehovah showers his creation with his love. For all eternity, we will be moved to draw closer to him as our Father and to sing praises to his glorious name.​—Ps. 73:28.

The Bible also shows that Jehovah acts “for the sake of his name.” For example, he leads his people, helps them, rescues them, forgives them, and preserves them alive​—all for the sake of his great name, Jehovah.​—Ps. 23:3; 31:3; 79:9; 106:8; 143:11.

The Watchtower Society's commentary on the envisioned beast of bible prophecy.

Beasts, symbolic

Wol.JW.org

From time immemorial, mankind has observed the characteristics and habits of animals and has applied them in a figurative or symbolic sense to persons, peoples, governments, and organizations. The Bible makes good use of this effective means of illustration. Examples pertaining to the figurative use of the qualities residing in an animal, or suggested by its characteristics, are listed in the accompanying charts.

Beasts as Symbols of Governments. Certain major world powers of history appear directly in the Biblical record, and all of these, as well as other nations, have used animals as symbols of their governments. In Egypt, the serpent figured prominently, the uraeus, the sacred asp, appearing on the headdress of the Pharaohs. However, Egypt was also represented by the bull, as was Assyria. Medo-Persia used the eagle (the shields of the Medes bore the golden eagle; the Persians bore an eagle fixed to the end of a lance). Athens was designated by the owl; Rome, the eagle; Great Britain is designated by the lion; the United States, the eagle. From the most remote times China has been symbolized by the dragon. Well known is the German “two-headed eagle.”

The Wild Beasts of Daniel and of Revelation. That the beasts described in these books represent political kingdoms or governments, exercising rulership and authority, is clearly stated. (Da 7:6, 12, 23; 8:20-22; Re 16:10; 17:3, 9-12) A consideration of the Biblical passages reveals that, while these political ‘wild beasts’ vary in symbolic form, yet all have certain characteristics in common. All are shown as standing in opposition to God’s rule by the Messianic Kingdom over mankind. They are also depicted as in opposition to God’s “holy ones,” his covenant people, first the Jewish nation, then the Christian congregation. Those specifically named (Medo-Persia and Greece) were major world powers, and the great size attributed to the others or the description of their actions indicates that these too were not minor kingdoms. (It may be noted that subordinate kingdoms are symbolized by horns in some cases.) All the beasts are represented as very aggressive, seeking the dominant position over the nations or peoples within the reach of their power.​—Compare Da 7:17, 18, 21; 8:9-11, 23, 24; Re 13:4-7, 15; 17:12-14.

Many commentators endeavor to limit the fulfillment of the visions of the beasts in the book of Daniel so that it does not extend beyond the time when Jesus Christ was on the earth, at which time the Roman Empire was the dominant power. The prophecies themselves, however, make plain that they extend beyond that time. The final forms of the beasts are shown as reaching down to the ‘arrival of the definite time for God’s holy ones to take possession of the kingdom’ in “the appointed time of the end.” Then the Messiah destroys such beastly opposition for all time. (Da 7:21-27; 8:19-25; compare also Re 17:13, 14; 19:19, 20.) It may be noted that Christ Jesus expressly foretold that opposition to the Messianic Kingdom would continue into the time of the end, so that his disciples then preaching that Kingdom would be “objects of hatred by all the nations.” (Mt 24:3, 9-14) This obviously does not allow for any nation, particularly world powers, to be excluded from possible identification with the final forms or expressions of the symbolic wild beasts.

Daniel’s vision of the beasts out of the sea. After Egypt and Assyria had finished their respective periods of dominance, and toward the close of the Babylonian Empire, Jehovah God gave Daniel a vision of “four huge beasts” coming up out of the vast sea. (Da 7:1-3) Isaiah 57:20 likens persons alienated from God to the sea, saying: “But the wicked are like the sea that is being tossed, when it is unable to calm down, the waters of which keep tossing up seaweed and mire.”​—See also Re 17:15.

Bible commentators regularly link this vision with that of the colossal image in the second chapter of Daniel. As a comparison of chapters 2 and 7 shows, there are definite similarities. The colossal image had four principal parts or sections, to compare with the four beasts. The metals of the image began with the most precious, gold, and became successively inferior, while the beasts began with the majestic lion. In both visions the fourth part, or “kingdom,” receives particular consideration, shows the greatest complexity of form, introduces new elements, and continues down till the time when divine judgment is executed upon it for standing in opposition to God’s rule.

Briefly the four beasts were: a lion, first having eagle’s wings, then losing them and taking on human qualities; a bear (a less majestic and more ponderous creature than the lion), devouring much flesh; a leopard with four wings (adding to its great speed) and four heads; and a fourth wild beast not corresponding to any actual animal, unusually strong, with large iron teeth, ten horns, and another horn developing with eyes and “a mouth speaking grandiose things.” Much of the chapter relates to the fourth beast and its unusual horn. While each beast was “different from the others,” this was especially true of the fourth one.​—Da 7:3-8, 11, 12, 15-26.

In the last quarter of the seventh century B.C.E., Babylon became the dominant power in the Middle East. The Babylonian kingdom swiftly extended its domain over Syria and Palestine, overthrowing the kingdom of Judah with its line of Davidic rulers who sat on the glorious throne of Jehovah in Jerusalem. (1Ch 29:23) It may be observed that, when warning Judah of its impending fall to Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah likened the future conqueror to ‘a lion going up out of a thicket.’ (Jer 4:5-7; compare 50:17.) After the fall of Jerusalem, Jeremiah said that Babylon’s forces had been “swifter than the eagles” in their pursuit of the Judeans. (La 4:19) History shows that Babylon’s expansion, at one time reaching as far as Egypt, before long came to a halt, and in the latter part of the empire, Babylon’s rulers showed little of the earlier aggressiveness.

Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian kingdom, with its heartland in the hills to the east of the plains of Mesopotamia. The Medo-Persian Empire was quite different from the Semitic Babylonian Empire, being the first Japhetic (or Aryan) power to gain the dominant position in the Middle East. The Jews, though allowed to return to Judah, continued as a subject people under the Medo-Persian yoke. (Ne 9:36, 37) This empire showed an even greater appetite for territory than had the Babylonian, extending its domain from “India to Ethiopia.”​—Es 1:1.

Medo-Persia’s domination was ended by the lightning conquest of the Grecian forces headed by Alexander the Great. In a few short years he built up an empire that embraced parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This was the first European-based power to hold such a position. After Alexander’s death his generals struggled for control of the empire, four of them eventually gaining the rulership of different sections. Palestine was fought over by the rival Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms.

The Grecian Empire was eventually taken over completely by Rome. The Roman Empire surpassed all the preceding empires not only in the extent of its domain (covering the entire Mediterranean area and in time reaching to the British Isles) but also in the efficiency of its military machine and the firmness of its application of Roman law to the provinces of its far-flung empire. Rome, of course, was the political instrument used to execute the Messiah, Christ Jesus, as well as to persecute the early Christian congregation. The empire extended for nearly a thousand years thereafter in different forms but eventually broke up into various nations, with Britain finally gaining the dominant position.

Historian H. G. Wells makes the following interesting observations on the distinctiveness of the Roman Empire: “Now this new Roman power which arose to dominate the western world in the second and first centuries B.C. was in several respects a different thing from any of the great empires that had hitherto prevailed in the civilised world. It was not at first a monarchy, and it was not the creation of any one great conqueror. . . . It was the first republican empire that escaped extinction and went on to fresh developments. . . . Its population was less strongly Hamitic and Semitic than that of any preceding empire. . . . It was so far a new pattern in history, it was an expanded Aryan republic. . . . It was always changing. It never attained to any fixity. In a sense the [administrative] experiment failed. In a sense the experiment remains unfinished, and Europe and America to-day are still working out the riddles of world-wide statecraft first confronted by the Roman people.”​—The Pocket History of the World, 1943, pp. 149-151.

The ram and the male goat. In the vision Daniel received two years later (Da 8:1), the powers represented by the two symbolic beasts involved are clearly named. The kingdom of Medo-Persia is here pictured as a male sheep (a ram) having two horns, the taller horn coming up afterward. History shows that the Medes first were the stronger, and the Persians thereafter gained the ascendancy, though both peoples remained united in a dual power. A he-goat, moving very fast across the earth, symbolized the world power of Greece. (Da 8:3-8, 20, 21) The prophetic vision shows that the goat’s “great horn” located between its eyes, representing the first king, was broken “as soon as it became mighty,” and four kingdoms resulted, though of inferior strength. (Da 8:5, 8, 21, 22) The rapid conquest of the Medo-Persian Empire by Alexander has already been commented on, as well as the division of his kingdom among four of his generals.

It is worthy of mention here that the same nation or its rulers may be represented by different animal symbols in different prophecies. Thus, the kings of Assyria and Babylon are represented by lions at Jeremiah 50:17, while at Ezekiel 17:3-17 the rulers of Babylon and Egypt are pictured by great eagles. Ezekiel elsewhere likens Egypt’s Pharaoh to a “great sea monster” lying in the Nile canals. (Eze 29:3) Hence the fact that Medo-Persia and Greece are represented by certain symbolisms in Daniel chapter 8 does not eliminate the possibility of their being represented by other symbolisms in the earlier vision (Da 7) nor in subsequent prophecies.

The seven-headed wild beast out of the sea. In the vision had by the apostle John and recorded at Revelation 13, a seven-headed, ten-horned wild beast comes up out of the sea, leopardlike, yet with feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. It is thus a composite form of several of the symbols appearing in Daniel’s vision of the four beasts. The dragon, identified at Revelation 12:9 as Satan the Devil, gives the beast its authority and power. (Re 13:1, 2) This beast’s seven heads (bearing ten horns) distinguish it from the one-headed beasts of Daniel’s vision. Seven (and ten) are commonly acknowledged as Biblical symbols of completeness. (See NUMBER, NUMERAL.) This is corroborated by the extent of this beast’s domain, for it exercises authority, not over one nation or a group of nations, but “over every tribe and people and tongue and nation.” (Re 13:7, 8; compare 16:13, 14.) Noting these factors, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible comments: “The first of these beasts [of Re 13] combines in itself the joint characteristics of the four beasts of Daniel’s vision . . . Accordingly, this first beast represents the combined forces of all political rule opposed to God in the world.”​—Edited by G. Buttrick, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 369.

Two-horned beast. Then John saw a beast out of the earth with two horns like those of a harmless lamb, yet speaking as a dragon, exercising the full authority of the first wild beast, just described. It directs making an image of the globally ruling seven-headed beast, putting all persons under compulsion to accept its “mark.”​—Re 13:11-17.

It may be recalled that the two-horned ram of Daniel chapter 8 represented a dual power, Medo-Persia. Of course, that power had long since disappeared by the apostle John’s day, and his vision was of things yet future. (Re 1:1) Other dual powers have existed since John’s day, but among these the historical association of Britain and the United States is particularly notable and of long duration.

The other notable characteristic of the two-horned beast, its speaking like a dragon, recalls the “mouth speaking grandiose things” on the outstanding horn of the fourth beast of Daniel 7 (vss 8, 20-26); while its ‘misleading’ earth’s inhabitants compares with the deception practiced by the ‘fierce king’ described at Daniel 8:23-25.​—Re 13:11, 14.

The scarlet-colored wild beast. At Revelation 17 the apostle records his vision of a scarlet-colored beast with seven heads and ten horns, mounted by the symbolic woman “Babylon the Great.” This beast thus resembles, or is in the image of, the first beast of Revelation 13 but is distinct because of its scarlet color and the fact that no crowns are seen on its ten horns. Beholding the beast, John is told that five of the seven kings represented by the seven heads had already fallen, while one existed at that time, and the seventh was yet to come. The scarlet-colored beast itself is an eighth king but springs from or is a product of the previous seven. The “ten kings” represented by the ten horns exist and exercise authority in association with the scarlet beast for a short time. Warring against the Lamb, Jesus Christ, and those with him, they go down in defeat.​—Re 17:3-5, 9-14.

Some scholars would apply this vision to pagan Rome, and the seven heads to seven emperors of Rome, followed by an eighth emperor. They disagree, however, as to which emperors should be included. The Bible itself does not mention more than three Roman emperors by name, with a fourth (Nero) being mentioned under the title of “Caesar.” Other scholars understand the “heads” or “kings” to represent world powers, as in the book of Daniel. It is noteworthy that the Bible does name five world powers in the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece, while the Greek Scriptures name a sixth, Rome, ruling in John’s day. While this would leave the seventh ‘king’ unnamed, the fact that it had not yet appeared when John recorded the Revelation would allow for such anonymity. The eighth king, the symbolic scarlet beast, in some way unites in itself these seven heads while at the same time springing from them.

JEHOVAH Continues to school the wannabes.

 Artificial General Intelligence: Machines vs. Organisms

William Dembski

In this series about Artificial General Intelligence, it may seem that I’m picking too much on Ray Kurzweil. But he and I have been crossing paths for a long time. He and I, over the last few years, have frequented the same Seattle area tech conference, COSM, where we both speak, albeit on opposite sides about the question of artificial intelligence. He and I also took sharply divergent positions on the Stanford campus back in 2003 at the Accelerating Change Conference, a transhumanist event organized by John Smart. Yet our first encounter goes back to 1998, at one of George Gilder’s Telecosm conferences.

From “Intelligent” to “Spiritual”

At Telecosm in 1998, I moderated a discussion where the focus was on Ray Kurzweil’s then forthcoming book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, which at the time was in press. Previously, Kurzweil had written The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990). By substituting “spiritual” for “intelligent,” he was clearly taking an even more radical line about the future of artificial intelligence. In his presentation for the discussion, he described how machines were poised to match and then exceed human cognition, a theme he has hammered on ever since. For Kurzweil, it is inevitable that machines will match and then exceed us: Moore’s Law guarantees that machines will attain the needed computational power to simulate our brains, after which the challenge will be for us to keep pace with machines, a challenge at which he sees us as destined to fail because wetware, in his view, cannot match hardware. Our only recourse to survive successfully will thus be to upload ourselves digitally. 

Kurzweil’s respondents at the Telecosm discussion were John Searle, Thomas Ray, and Michael Denton, and they were all to varying degrees critical of his strong AI view, or what we would now call his AGI view. Searle rehearsed his Chinese Room thought experiment to argue that computers don’t/can’t actually understand anything, an argument that remains persuasive and applies to recent chatbots, such as ChatGPT. But the most interesting response to Kurzweil came, in my view, from Denton. He offered an argument about the complexity and richness of individual neurons, pointing out how inadequate our understanding of them is and how even more inadequate our ability is to computationally model them. At the end of the discussion, however, Kurzweil’s confidence in the glowing prospects for strong AI’s (AGI’s) future remained undiminished. And indeed, they remain undiminished to this day. The entire exchange, suitably expanded and elaborated, appeared in Jay Richard’s edited collection Are We Spiritual Machines?

Denton’s Powerful Argument

I want here to focus on Denton’s argument, because it remains relevant and powerful. Kurzweil is a technophile in that he regards building and inventing technology, and above all machines, as the greatest thing humans do. But he’s also a technobigot in that he regards people of the past, who operated with minimal technology, as vastly inferior and less intelligent than we are. He ignores how much such people were able to accomplish through sheer ingenuity given how little they had to work with. He thus minimizes the genius of a Homer, the exploration of the Pacific by South Sea Islanders, or the knowledge of herbs and roots of indigenous peoples captured in oral traditions, etc. For examples of the towering intelligence of non-technological people, I encourage readers to check out Robert Greene’s Mastery. 

Taken with the power and prospects of artificial intelligence, Kurzweil thinks that ChatGPT will soon write better prose and poetry than we do. Moreover, by simulating our human bodies, medical science will, according to him, be able to develop new drugs and procedures without having to experiment on our human bodies. He seems unconcerned that such simulations may miss anything crucial about ourselves and thus lead to medical procedures and drugs that backfire, doing more harm than good. Kurzweil offered such blithe assurances about AGI at the 2023 COSM conference.

Whole organisms and even individual cells are nonlinear dynamical systems, and there’s no evidence that computers are able to adequately simulate them. Even single neurons, which for Kurzweil and Marvin Minsky make up a computer made of meat (i.e., the brain), are beyond the simulating powers of any computers we know or can envision. A given neuron will soon enough behave unpredictably and inconsistently with any machine. Central to Denton’s argument against Kurzweil’s strong AI (AGI) view back in 1998 was the primacy of the organism over the machine. Denton’s argument remains persuasive. Rather than paraphrase that argument, I’ll use Denton’s own words (from his essay “Organism and Machine” in Jay Richards, ed., Are We Spiritual Machines: Ray Kurzweil vs. The Critics of Strong A.I.):

Living things possess abilities that are still without any significant analogue in any machine which has yet been constructed. These abilities have been seen since classical times as indicative of a fundamental division between the [organismal] and mechanical modes of being. 

To begin with, every living system replicates itself, yet no machine possesses this capacity even to the slightest degree… Every second countless trillions of living systems from bacterial cells to elephants replicate themselves on the surface of our planet. And since life’s origin, endless life forms have effortlessly copied themselves on unimaginable numbers of occasions.

Living things possess the ability to change themselves from one form into another. For instance, during development the descendants of the egg cell transform themselves from undifferentiated unspecialized cells into [widely different cells, some with] long tentacles like miniature medusae some hundred thousand times longer than the main body of the cell… 

To grasp just how fantastic [these abilities of living things] are and just how far they transcend anything in the realm of the mechanical, imagine our artifacts endowed with the ability to copy themselves and … “morph” themselves into different forms. Imagine televisions and computers that duplicate themselves effortlessly and which can also “morph” themselves into quite different types of machines [such as into a microwave or helicopter]. We are so familiar with the capabilities of life that we take them for granted, failing to see their truly extraordinary character. 

Even the less spectacular self-reorganizing and self-regenerating capacities of living things … should leave the observer awestruck. Phenomena such as … the regeneration of the limb of a newt, the growth of a complete polyp, or a complex protzoan from tiny fragments of the intact animal are … without analogue in the realm of mechanism…

Imagine a jumbo jet, a computer, or indeed any machine ever conceived, from the fantastic star ships of science fiction to the equally fantastic speculations of nanotechnology, being chopped up randomly into small fragments. Then imagine every one of the fragments so produced (no two fragments will ever be the same) assembling itself into a perfect but miniaturized copy of the machine from which it originated — a tiny toy-sized jumbo jet from a random section of the wing — and you have some conception of the self-regenerating capabilities of certain microorganisms… It is an achievement of transcending brilliance, which goes beyond the wildest dreams of mechanism. 

Between Organism and Mechanism 

The lesson that Denton drew from this sharp divergence between organism and mechanism is that the quest for full Artificial General Intelligence faces profound conceptual and practical challenges. The inherent capacity of living things to replicate, transform, self-organize, and regenerate in ways that transcend purely mechanical processes underscores a fundamental divide between the organic and the artificial. 

Organisms demonstrate a level of complexity and adaptability that no machine or artificial system shows any signs of emulating. The extraordinary characteristics of life recounted by Denton suggest that full AGI, capable of the holistic and versatile intelligence seen in living organisms, will remain an elusive goal, if not a practical impossibility. We therefore have no compelling reason to think that the pinnacle of intelligence is poised to shift from the organismal to the artificial, especially given the fantastic capabilities that organisms are known to exhibit and that machines show no signs of ever exhibiting. 

At the top of the list of such fantastic capabilities is human consciousness. If AGI is truly going to match and ultimately exceed humans in every respect (if we really are just computational devices, or computers made of meat), then AGI will need to exhibit consciousness. Yet how can consciousness reside in a computational device, which consists of finitely many states, each state being binary, assuming a value of 0 or 1? Consciousness is a reflective awareness of one’s identity, existence, sensations, perceptions, emotions, ethics, valuations, thoughts, and circumstances (Sitz im Leben). But how can the shuffling of zeros and ones produce such a full inner life of self-awareness, subjective experience, and emotional complexity?

This Is Not a New Question

In pre-computer days, it was posed as whether and how a mechanical device composed of material parts could think. The philosopher Gottfried Leibniz raised doubts that such mechanical devices could think at all with his thought experiment of a mill (in his 1714 Monadology). He imagined a giant mill and asked where exactly thought would reside in the workings of its gears and other moving parts. As he saw it, there would be an unbridgeable gap between the mill’s mechanical operation and its ability to think and produce consciousness. He saw this thought experiment as showing that matter could not be converted into mind.

More recently, philosopher John Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought experiment (in “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” 1980) highlighted the divide between mechanical processes and the subjective experience of consciousness. In Searle’s Chinese Room, a person translates Chinese by mechanically applying rules to items in a large database. The person’s success in translating Chinese follows simply from faithfully following the rules and thus requires no understanding of Chinese. This thought experiment illustrates that processing information does not equate to comprehending it. 

For me personally, the most compelling thought experiment for discounting that computation is capable of consciousness is simply to consider a Turing machine. A Turing machine can represent any computation. It includes two things: (1) a tape consisting of squares filled with zeros and ones, or bits (for more than two possibilities in each square, put more than one bit per square, but keep the number of bits per square fixed); and (2) a read-write head that moves along the squares and alters or leaves unchanged the bits in each square. The read-write head alternates among a fixed number of states according to transition rules that depend on the other states and where the head is on the tape, changing or leaving unchanged the present square and then moving left or right one square. 

So Here’s the Question

Where is consciousness in this reading and writing of bits? As a reductio ad absurdum of this thought experiment, I imagine a world with an unlimited number of doors. Doors can be open or closed. An unlimited number of people live in houses with these doors. Let closing a door correspond to zero, opening it to one. As these doors open and close, they could be executing an algorithm. And if humans are computers, then such an algorithm could be us. And yet, to think that the joint opening and closing of doors could, if the doors were only opened and closed in the right way, achieve consciousness, such as sharing a glass of wine with your beloved while overlooking a Venetian veranda, seems bonkers. Such thought experiments suggest a fundamental divide between the operations of a machine and the conscious understanding inherent in human intelligence.

One last thought in this vein: Neuroscientific research further complicates the picture. The brain is increasingly showing itself to be not just a complex information processor but an organ characterized by endogenous activity — spontaneous, internally driven behaviors independent of external stimuli. This perspective portrays the brain as an active seeker of information, as is intrinsic to organic systems. Such spontaneous behavior, found across all of life, from cells to entire organisms, raises doubts about the capacity of machines produce these intricate, self-directed processes.

Ancient humans remain just as human according to the fossil record

 Fossil Friday: New Evidence for the Human Nature of Neanderthals

Gunter Bechly

The reconstruction of Neanderthal appearance and behavior has quite a checkered history. After an initial controversy over whether the fossils really represent ancient humans or just malformed modern humans, Neanderthals were described in 1864 as distinct hominin species, Homo neanderthalensis. For a long time they were considered as brutish cavemen with a club and almost gorilla-like appearance. Then the scientific opinion shifted and Neanderthals were more and more recognized as human-like and even as geniuses of the ice age (Husemann 2005, Finlayson 2019), based on an avalanche of new evidence for complex human behavior (Nowell 2023, Vernimmen 2023). We now know that Neanderthals used fire (Angelucci et al. 2023), buried their dead (Balzeau et al. 2020, Dockdrill 2020), created stone circles (Jaubert et al. 2016, Callaway 2016) and bone tools (Soressi et al. 2013), made jewellery from eagle talons (Radovčić et al. 2015, Rodríguez-Hidalgo et al. 2019) and used feathers as body decoration (Peresani et al. 2011, Finlayson et al. 2012), made cave art with paintings and engravings (Rodríguez-Vidal et al. 2014, Hoffmann et al. 2018a, Marquet et al. 2023), played music with bone flutes (Turk et al. 2018), used ochre as pigment (Roebroeks et al. 2012, Hoffmann et al. 2018b) and sophisticated fibre technology (Hardy et al. 2020), produced flour from processed plants (Mariotti Lippi et al. 2023), dived for seafood (Villa et al. 2020), cooked food and self-medicated with herbal painkillers and antibiotics (Hardy et al. 2012, Weyrich et al. 2017), and even produced glue from birch bark with a complex chemical procedure (Blessing & Schmidt 2021, Schmidt et al. 2023).

New Anatomic Data

But it is not just new evidence for Neanderthal behavior that overturned our previous crude image of Neanderthals as dumb brutes, but also new anatomic data. Contrary to earlier beliefs, more recent studies have demonstrated a fully upright posture with typical human spinal curvature called lordosis (Haeusler et al. 2019). The latter authors concluded that ”after more than a century of alternative views, it should be apparent that there is nothing in Neandertal pelvic or vertebral morphology that rejects their possession of spinal curvatures well within the ranges of variation of healthy recent humans.” There even exists compelling new evidence for hearing and speech capacities (Conde-Valverde et al. 2021), which “demonstrates that the Neanderthals possessed a communication system that was as complex and efficient as modern human speech” (Starr 2021).

Correlated with this fundamental rethinking of Neanderthals (Nowell 2023) in terms of their anatomy, culture, and mental capabilities, their classification has also changed over time. At first they were considered as a different species, Homo neanderthalensis, then they were just considered as a subspecies of modern humans, Homo sapiens, and since the late 1990s again as “an unambiguously demarcated morphospecies” (Tattersall & Schwartz 2006; also see Harvati et al. 2004, Márquez et al. 2014, and Wynn et al. 2016). The new field of paleogenomics brought insight into their DNA (Green et al. 2010), which was considered as sufficiently dissimilar to warrant a separate species status again (Clarke 2016), even though there was also evidence for hybridization and genetic admixture with modern humans (Meneganzin & Bernardi 2023). Paleogeneticist and Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo (2014) called the controversy of the species status of Neanderthals as unresolvable, because of the arbitrariness and fuzziness of species concepts (also see Meneganzin & Bernardi 2023, Nowell 2023, and Stringer 2023). The controversy still continues as is evident from a recent article titled “Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species?” (Heidt 2023), which discusses the fact that “scientists have been vollying the question back and forth for more than a century”. Nowell (2023) wrote: “From their initial discovery until today, Neandertals have shifted between “being recognized as human or being pushed to the constitutive outside of humanness,” what Drell (2000, p. 15) describes as “the oscillating dichotomy of Same and Other.”

Of course, the undeniable evidence for significant and common genetic admixture (Kuhlwilm et al. 2016, Villanea & Schraiber 2019, Callaway 2021), which makes up 1-4 percent of the modern human genome (Reilly et al. 2022), would suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans shared a common gene pool and belonged to the same biospecies. Even the skeptic and ID opponent Michael Shermer (2010) agreed in an article for Scientific American that the genomic evidence suggests that our Neanderthal brethren were not a separate species. Strong reproductive isolation barriers that limited the amount of introgression were proposed by Overmann & Coolidge (2013), but many experts remain

unconvinced. Paleoanthropologist Bence Viola from the University of Toronto said (quoted in Vernimmen 2023): “Homo sapiens clearly recognized Neanderthals as mating partners, which suggests they thought of them as humans — maybe ‘the weird guys living behind the mountains,’ but still, fellow humans.”

But what do we make of the anatomical differences between Neanderthals and modern humans? Don’t they support a separate species status? Actually, this would not follow even if the differences lay outside the range of variability of modern humans, because that is also the case in many other subspecies of living animals. However, some human populations such as Australian aboriginals indeed share with archaic humans like Neanderthals a robust skull with pronounced brow ridges, which lead Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Huxley (in Lyell 1863), to compare them with Neanderthals. Of course this also had some typical Darwinist racist connotations. Just like Neanderthals, native Australians were considered primitive and inferior. Nevertheless, the similarities are real and have been confirmed by modern anatomical studies (e.g., Wolpoff & Caspari 1996), which concluded that “the interpretation of Neanderthals as a different species is very unlikely.” Anatomical and cognitive differences between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans were also affirmed by Wynn et al. (2016), who nevertheless emphatically rejected labeling these differences as implying inferiority or superiority. More recent research even suggests that the characteristic skull features may rather be based on phenotypic plasticity than an evolutionary heritage from ape-like ancestors (Curnoe 2011).

Why So Much Debate?

So, why is there still so much debate and controversy about the species status of Neanderthals? Well, what is at stake is not just some esoteric species problem in the scientific ivory tower of a few paleoanthropologists, but the very question of human nature and human uniqueness, thus what it even means to be human. The recognition of Neanderthals as a distinct species would make the uncanny valley a bit shallower, as Peeters & Zwart (2020) put it, and would challenge “longstanding ideas about the uniqueness of our species” (Seghers 2018). A so-called multiple species model was proposed for the origin of behavioral modernity (Moro Abadía & González Morales 2010). Even mainstream evolutionary biologists recognize that this is a “politically charged context” (Nowell 2023), and thus certainly subject to bias when you approach this question from either a Darwinist viewpoint of modern materialist and atheist science, or from the Judeo-Christian viewpoint of human exceptionalism, where humans are made in the image of God.

In my humble opinion, the evidence for symbolic thinking, language, and genetic admixture clearly suggests that Neanderthals belong to our very own species. They were no inhabitants of the uncanny valley of objects that just resemble humans (think of Sophia the robot or CGI characters), but they are fully human and should again be classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. The latest technical literature shows that such a view is well rooted in up-to-date mainstream science. McCrae (2023) concluded, in an article titled “Neanderthals might not be the separate species we always thought,” that even though “it’s unlikely we’ll finally see the classification of Homo neanderthalensis fade into obscurity any time soon. … Still, as more sibling than cousin, it seems the poor old Neanderthal deserves to sit right by our side in the Homo sapien[s] family portrait.”

References

Angelucci DE, Nabais M & Zilhão 2023. Formation processes, fire use, and patterns of human occupation across the Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 5a-5b) of Gruta da Oliveira (Almonda karst system, Torres Novas, Portugal). PLoS ONE 18(10): e0292075, 1–51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292075

Balzeau A, Turq A, Talamo S et al. 2020. Pluridisciplinary evidence for burial for the La Ferrassie 8 Neandertal child. Scientific Reports 10: 21230, 1–10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77611-z

Blessing MA & Schmidt P 2021. On the efficiency of Palaeolithic birch tar making. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 38: 103096, 1–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103096

Callaway E 2016. Neanderthals built cave structures — and no one knows why. Nature News May 25, 2016. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19975

Callaway E 2021. Oldest Human DNA Reveals Recent Neanderthal Mixing. Nature 592, 339. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00916-0

Clarke JLA 2016. Neanderthals: Species or Subspecies? Diversipede 2(1), 24–31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29173/comp47

Conde-Valverde M, Martínez I, Quam RM et al. 2021. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had similar auditory and speech capacities. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5(5), 609–615. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01391-6

Curnoe D 2011. A 150-Year Conundrum: Cranial Robusticity and Its Bearing on the Origin of Aboriginal Australians. International Journal of Evolutionary Biology 2011: 632484, 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4061/2011/632484

Dockdrill P 2020. Child’s Bones Buried 40,000 Years Ago Solve a Longstanding Neanderthal Mystery. ScienceAlert December 10, 2020. https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-neanderthal-mystery-solved-by-a-child-s-bones-from-40-000-years-ago

Finlayson C 2019. The smart Neanderthal. Oxford University Press, Oxford (UK), 240 pp. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-smart-neanderthal-9780198797524

Finlayson C, Brown K, Blasco R et al. 2012. Birds of a Feather: Neanderthal Exploitation of Raptors and Corvids. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45927, 1–9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045927

Green RE, Krause J, Briggs AW et al. 2010. A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome. Science 328(5979), 710–722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1188021

Hardy K, Buckley S, Collins MJ et al. 2012. Neanderthal medics? Evidence for food, cooking, and medicinal plants entrapped in dental calculus. Naturwissenschaften 99, 617–626. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0942-0

Hardy BL, Moncel M-H, Kerfant C, Lebon M, Bellot-Gurlet L & Mélard N 2020. Direct evidence of Neanderthal fibre technology and its cognitive and behavioral implications. Scientific Reports 10: 4889, 1–9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61839-w

Haeusler M, Trinkaus E, Fornai C & Frater N 2019. Morphology, pathology, and the vertebral posture of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neandertal. PNAS 116(11), 4923–4927. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820745116

Harvati K, Frost SR & McNulty KP 2004. Neanderthal taxonomy reconsidered: Implications of 3D primate models of intra- and interspecific differences. PNAS 101(5), 1147–1152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0308085100

Heidt A 2023. Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species? LiveScience December 23, 2023. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/are-neanderthals-and-homo-sapiens-the-same-species?

Hoffmann DL, Standish CD, Garciá-Diez M et al. 2018a. U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art. Science 359(6378), 912–915. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap7778

Hoffmann DL, Angelucci DE, Villaverde V, Zapata J & Zilhão J 2018b. Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals 115,000 years ago. Science Advances 4(2): eaar5255, 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aar5255

Husemann D 2005. Die Neandertaler. Genies der Eiszeit. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. (DE), 263 pp. [In German]

Jaubert J, Verheyden S, Genty D et al. 2016. Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France. Nature 534, 111–114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18291

Kuhlwilm M, Gronau I, Hubisz M et al. 2016. Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals. Nature 530, 429–433. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16544

Lyell C 1863. The Antiquity of Man. Dent and Sons, London (UK), 518 pp.

Mariotti Lippi M, Aranguren B, Arrighi S et al. 2023. New evidence of plant food processing in Italy before 40ka. Quaternary Science Reviews 312(6236): 108161, 1–10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108161

Marquet J-C, Freiesleben TH, Thomsen KJ et al. 2023. The earliest unambiguous Neanderthal engravings on cave walls: La Roche-Cotard, Loire Valley, France. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0286568, 1–53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286568

Márquez S, Pagano AS, Delson E, Lawson W & Laitman JT 2014. The Nasal Complex of Neanderthals: An Entry Portal to their Place in Human Ancestry. The Anatomical Record 297: 2121–2137. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.23040McCrae M 2023. Neanderthals Might Not Be The Separate Species We Always Thought. ScienceAlert October 22, 2023. https://www.sciencealert.com/neanderthals-might-not-be-the-separate-species-we-always-thought

Meneganzin A & Bernardi M 2023. Were Neanderthals and Homo sapiens ‘good species’? Quaternary Science Reviews 303: 107975, 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.107975

Moro Abadía O & González Morales MR 2010. Redefining Neanderthals and art: an alternative interpretation of the multiple species model for the origin of behavioural modernity. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 29(3), 229–243. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.2010.00346.x

Nowell A 2023. Rethinking Neandertals. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 52, 151–170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-052621-024752

Overmann KA & Coolidge FL 2013. Human species and mating systems: Neandertal– Homo sapiens reproductive isolation and the archaeological and fossil records. Journal of Anthropological Sciences 91, 91–110. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24344097/

Pääbo S 2014. Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes. Basic Books, New York (NY), p. 237.Peeters S & Zwart H 2020. Neanderthals as familiar strangers and the human spark: how the “golden years” of Neanderthal research reopen the question of human uniqueness. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42: 33, 1–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00327-w

Peresani M, Fiore I, Gala M, Romandini M & Tagliacozzo A 2011. Late Neandertals and the intentional removal of feathers as evidenced from bird bone taphonomy at Fumane Cave 44 ky B.P., Italy. PNAS 108(10), 3888–3893. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1016212108

Radovčić D, Sršen AO, Radovčić J & Frayer DW 2015. Evidence for Neandertal Jewelry: Modified White-Tailed Eagle Claws at Krapina. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0119802, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119802

Reilly PF, Tjahjadi A, Miller SL, Akey JM & Tucci S 2022. The contribution of Neanderthal introgression to modern human traits. Current Biology 32(18), R970–R983. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.027

Rodríguez-Hidalgo A, Morales JI, Cebrià A et al. 2019. The Châtelperronian Neanderthals of Cova Foradada (Calafell, Spain) used imperial eagle phalanges for symbolic purposes. Science Advances 5(11): eaax1984, 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax1984

Rodríguez-Vidal J, d’ Errico F, Pacheco FG et al. (2014). A rock engraving made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar. PNAS 111(37), 13301–13306. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1411529111

Roebroeks W, Sier MJ, Kellberg Nielsen T, de Loecker D, Parés JM, Arps CES & Mücher HJ 2012. Use of red ochre by early Neandertals. PNAS 109(6), 1889–1894. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112261109

Schmidt P, Koch TJ, Blessing MA, Karakostis FA, Harvati K, Dresely V & Charrié-Duhaut A 2023. Production method of the Königsaue birch tar documents cumulative culture in Neanderthals. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 15: 84, 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01789-2Seghers E 2018. A Tale of Two Species: The Origins of Art and the Neanderthal Challenge. Evolutionary Studies and Imaginative Culture 2(2), 83–102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.2.2.94

Shermer M 2010. Our Neandertal Brethren: Why They Were Not a Separate Species. Scientific American 303(2), 34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0810-34

Soressi M, McPherron SP, Lenoir M et al. 2013. Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe. PNAS 110(35), 14186–14190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1302730110

Starr M 2021. In a Momentous Discovery, Scientists Show Neanderthals Could Produce Human-Like Speech. ScienceAlert March 1, 2021. https://www.sciencealert.com/neanderthals-could-both-hear-and-produce-human-like-speech

Stringer C 2023. Are Neanderthals the same species as us? Natural History Museum 2023. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-neanderthals-same-species-as-us.html

Tattersall I & Schwartz JH 2006. The distinctiveness and systematic context of Homo neanderthalensis. pp. 9–22 in: Hublin J-J, Harvati K & Harrison T (eds). Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht (NL), xiv+332 pp. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-5121-0_2

Turk M, Turk I, Dimkaroski L, Blackwell BAB, Horusitzky FZ, Otte M, Bastiani G & Korat L 2018. The Mousterian Musical Instrument from the Divje babe I cave (Slovenia): Arguments on the Material Evidence for Neanderthal Musical Behaviour. L’Anthropologie 122(4), 679–706. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anthro.2018.10.001

Vernimmen T 2023. Neanderthals: More knowable now than ever. Knowable Magazine November 28, 2023. https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2023/new-finds-about-neanderthal-brains-and-behaviorVilla P, Soriano S, Pollarolo L, Smriglio C, Gaeta M, d’Orazio M, Conforti J & Tozzi C 2020. Neandertals on the beach: Use of marine resources at Grotta dei Moscerini (Latium, Italy). PLoS ONE 15(1): e0226690, 1–35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0226690

Villanea FA & Schraiber JG 2019. Multiple episodes of interbreeding between Neanderthal and modern humans. Nature Ecology & Evolution 3, 39–44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0735-8

Weyrich LS, Duchene S, Soubrier J et al. 2017. Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus. Nature 544(7650), 357–361. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21674

Wolpoff M & Caspari R 1996. An Unparalleled Parallelism. Anthropologie 34(3), 215–223. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44601502

Wynn T, Overmann KA & Coolidge FL 2016. The false dichotomy: a refutation of the Neandertal indistinguishability claim. Journal of Anthropological Sciences 94, 201–361. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21674

Paul Sutter and the madness of multiverse?

 From Astrophysicist Paul Sutter — Multiverse Madness

Casey Luskin

Yesterday I commented on a fantastic article by astrophysicist Paul Sutter at Universe Today on “The Improbable Origins of Life on Earth.” Sutter now has a follow-up article there, “The Seeming Impossibility of Life,” which provides additional insights into the complexity of life — though I don’t agree with his attempts to dodge the design inference for fine-tuning of the universe. We’ll get to that in a moment. He starts by rightly marveling at the “complexity of the human brain” which he calls “remarkable”:

We are, to put it bluntly, remarkable. There is nothing in this cosmos that even begins to approach anything resembling the complexity of the human brain. There is no other world that we have discovered, within our solar system or without, that can support the dizzying array of chemical reactions that we call life, let alone consciousness.

No doubt life on Earth has impressive characteristics. But is life on this planet unique? Sutter thinks it probably is:

Sure, with enough planets around enough stars within enough galaxies, life is probably bound to happen one way or another, but it appears that life only happened here, once, billions of years ago, when it didn’t appear — or was snuffed out — even in our own solar backyard.

It’s no accident that Earth is home to the only known life in the universe. That’s because our planet appears to be special. Sutter recognizes this as well:

Even our planet is special. Take a look at the other planets of the solar system. If doesn’t matter if you’re using a backyard telescope or the latest NASA robotic gear, the answer is always the same. While every planet looks and acts (and probably smells) different from all the rest, they all share one thing in common: they’re dead.

Lifeless. Uninhabitable. Inhospitable. Barren balls of cold rock. Barren balls of molten rock. Barren balls of exceedingly hot rock buried under thick layers of atmosphere. Barren.

Doubting Fine-Tuning

So Earth is especially suited for life. But what about our universe? Sutter recounts the argument that the fine-tuning of the universe shows “divine intervention” — but then he goes on to disagree with it. Here’s how he frames the pro-fine-tuning position: 

Some argue that the way the universe is constructed is a little too particular. That if any one small thing were to change, from the speed of light to the amount of atomic matter assembled during the big bang, life as we know it would be outright impossible. Perhaps some other form of intelligence could rise up in that strange cosmos, shuddering at the impossible thought of creatures anchored to a planet and swimming in its water oceans. Perhaps not. Either way, it appears that our universe is especially tuned for the appearance of life as we know it, indicating either divine intervention or some conspiracy of physics too far beyond our comprehension to grasp.

But this is where I would have my first major disagreement with Sutter. Here’s how he responds to the design argument: 

To that line of thinking I have this response. We have but one universe for us to study; it is all we’ve had and all that ever will be. As peculiar as this universe of ours appears, we cannot access or interrogate other possibilities. We do not know how special or generic this cosmos is, the same way you could not measure the probability of the Queen of Diamonds appearing in your hand if you did not know the contents of the full deck. That stark reality does not rule out divinity or exotic physics, but it also does not demand them. If you wish to believe in either of those, I will not begrudge you.

This Seems Like a Dodge

Ironically, the rebuttal to Sutter’s skepticism is found in a comment he himself makes: “We have but one universe for us to study”. That’s right — and that’s why Sutter is wrong to dismiss the possibility that we can know our universe is fine-tuned: Science is based upon studying what we know. We know our universe exists, and we know that its laws are fine-tuned to allow life to exist. We know these facts to be true, and thus we can take them into account when asking whether our universe exhibits design. 

Sutter wants to avoid this conclusion through an analogy to a deck of cards. He argues that determining the probability of selecting a particular card requires knowing something about the deck of cards from which it came. That’s fair, but he then claims that if we can’t know anything about the “deck of cards” from which our universe came, then we can’t know whether it’s probable or improbable. For example, maybe that “deck” only includes universes fine-tuned for life (but then we’d have to ask why?), or maybe that “deck” is so large that it is likely that at least one “card” (i.e., one universe) would have the right parameters needed for life — just by chance. The latter argument is essentially the multiverse hypothesis. 

Sure, perhaps we don’t know that there isn’t a multiverse where untold numbers of other universes out there lack the right physics for life. But we shouldn’t assume that this is a realistic possibility that prevents us from making inferences to design based upon what we do know exists. If we can’t infer design from the fine-tuning of the universe, there may be other dangerous implications for science. 

A Hypothetical Cancer Cluster

In the past I’ve argued that “multiverse thinking” destroys scientific logic. My argument involves a hypothetical “cancer cluster” in a town with a chemical plant.

Imagine that 100 percent of an entire town of 10,000 people got cancer within one year — a cancer cluster. It turns out the chemical plant in the town produces carcinogenic chemicals, so the townspeople sue the chemical plant. 

During the trial, the townspeople hire scientists as expert witnesses who testify that the odds of this occurring just by chance are 1 in 1010,000. Under normal scientific reasoning, they argue, such low odds establish that chance cannot be the explanation, and that there must be some physical agent causing cancer in the town. In this case, the best explanation is that chemicals from the chemical plant caused the cancer. 

The chemical plant has a lot of money, and they hire a wily defense attorney who invokes the multiverse defense, saying: 

Yes, 1 in 1010,000 is a very low probability. But there could be 1010,000 universes out there in the multiverse, and our universe just happens to be the unlucky one where this unlikely cancer cluster arose — purely by chance! You can’t say there aren’t 1010,000 universes out there, right? That means you can’t conclude that my client’s chemical plant had anything to do with this — the whole thing could have happened as a chance occurrence!

Should the jury trust the scientists and conclude the cancer cluster is highly improbable and caused by chemical plant, or should they trust the lawyer and invent 1010,000 universes where this kind of cancer cluster becomes probable enough to happen by chance? 

The shady attorney deflects criticism saying: “You can’t say there aren’t 1010,000 universes out there, right?” Right — but that’s the point. There’s no way to test the multiverse, and science should not seriously consider untestable theories. Multiverse thinking makes it impossible to rule out chance, which essentially eliminates the basis for drawing many scientific conclusions. What we have before us is a cancer cluster and a chemical plant, and that’s enough to make a sound scientific conclusion. 

What We Have Before Us

In the same way, Sutter doesn’t argue that there is necessarily a multiverse. Rather, he argues that if we can’t know that there isn’t a multiverse then we can’t draw a conclusion of design. This isn’t all that different from the shady attorney who says, “You can’t say there aren’t 1010,000 universes out there, right?” But as the hypothetical cancer cluster shows, we could extend multiverse logic and appeals to unknown causes to destroy virtually any scientific conclusion. But that’s not how science works. What we have before us is a universe that is, to all appearances, finely tuned for life. That’s data, and that’s enough to draw a sound scientific conclusion: design. 

Once we allow the unknown or the unknowable to prevent us from making inferences to design that are justified based upon what we know, we’ve let philosophy — or personal preference — influence our science. 

Again, science doesn’t deal in speculations about what might exist. Science deals in what we know. And based upon what we know, our universe appears “a little too peculiar,” as Sutter puts it. We don’t know that there’s a multiverse because we can’t observe it. But we do observe that our universe exists, and we do observe that our universe has special properties that allow life to exist. We can conclude those properties point to design.

Britain's really bad year?