The driver of modern alchemy.

So, What Really Drives Origin-of-Life Research?

Denyse O'Leary

 

 

Whether a field is considered "science" or "pseudoscience" now often depends principally on its relationship to naturalist ideology, not on whether it advances our understanding. What exactly have speculations about the multiverse contributed to science, for example? Today, in fact, evidence-based and reality-based thinking are seen not as tools or guides but as obstacles to the quest to make the multiverse real, at least in our minds -- possibly the only place it ever can be real.

Origin-of-life research provides another classic illustration. Our survey of the field has turned up crowds of conflicting theories churning a largely disputed fact base. Crowds of conflicting theories is a bad sign in itself; when a science is advancing our knowledge, disagreements becomes sharper perhaps, but narrower. OOL research offers occasional new understandings here and there -- and so did the practice of alchemy. That is because, happily, we can often learn something even when on the wrong track. But until we are on the right track, we cannot develop a large, organized program of evidence-based knowledge.

Sometimes, we refuse to admit we are on the wrong track because of a heavy emotional investment. Just such an investment drives current OOL research: the need to disprove design. As cosmologist Paul Davies explains,

Many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled. There seems to be two reasons for their unease. Firstly, they feel it opens the door to religious fundamentalists and their god-of-the-gaps pseudo-explanations. Secondly, they worry that a frank admission of ignorance will undermine funding, especially for the search for life in space.¹

Well, continuing failure can undermine funding too.

The alchemists slowly began to change their goals: They began to meet nature on her own terms. What they then learned about the elements and their real interrelationships proved far more valuable than what they had given up, though the nature of their choice prevented any such prior knowledge.

What if origin-of-life researchers did something similar? Quit looking for the hidden law or the magic zap. If it is design, fine, how does the design work? For the record, there can be design without creation. Philosopher of science Del Ratzsch offers,

For instance, suppose that we finally discover that life can arise spontaneously but only under exactly one set of conditions. One must begin with 4003.6 gallons of eight specific, absolutely pure chemicals, exactly proportioned down to the molecule. The mixture must then be sealed into a large, light green Tupperware container with one sterile copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Do that, and life develops spontaneously by natural means (catalyzed by the precise surface characteristics of "Sgt. Pepper"). Its development, subsequent reproductions and characteristics are completely according to normal natural laws. And life in this case was not directly specially created. But those initial conditions involve interjection of deliberate intent and design with a vengeance.²

For now, life goes on. A decade ago, Harvard University announced that it was spending a million dollars annually to find the origin of life. Their hope was succinctly expressed by Harvard chemist David Liu, "that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events."

Carl Woese and Gunter Wachterhauser have been more realistic and less sanguine:

In one sense the origin of life problem today remains what it was in the time of Darwin -- one of the great unsolved riddles of science. Yet we have made progress. Through theoretical scrutiny and experimental effort since the nineteen-twenties many of the early naive assumptions have fallen or are falling aside -- and there now exist alternative theories. In short, while we do not have a solution, we now have an inkling of the magnitude of the problem.

And Stanley Miller, of the Miller-Urey experiment? He too has gone on record saying, "Origin of life has turned out to be much more difficult than I, and most other people, envisioned." with science writer Dennis Horgan adding in 2011, "Pssst! Don't tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began." These are the kinds of things people say when they have spent a great deal of time, energy, and money with no discernible result. It is depressing indeed if a major concern is, "What will the creationists say?"

Some advocate a complete rethink. Others offer more guesses. Still others, mindful of their heritage, inform us that "Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas About the Origin of Life." As if anyone should care much at this point whether a man who was prudent enough to step around the mess ages ago had advanced ideas about it or not.

If all the mutually contradictory, sketchily supported theses offered over the last 150 years are naturalism's best efforts, then surely this is the most reasonable conclusion: There is no convincing, perhaps no believable, scientifc evidence for a merely natural origin of life. Can information theory help us here, as it can with evidence-based cosmology?

References:

(1) Paul Davies, The Origin of Life (London: Penguin Books, 2003), p. xxiv.

(2) Del Ratzsch, "Design, Chance & Theistic Evolution," in William A. Dembski, ed., Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 291

 

More storytelling.

Did life begin on Mars and then travel to Earth for its blossoming?

A long-debated and often-dismissed theory known as "panspermia" got new life in the past week, as two scientists separately proposed that early Earth lacked some chemicals essential to forming life, while early Mars likely had them.

First came Steven Benner, an iconoclastic and highly regarded origins-of-life chemist with the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology in Gainesville, Florida.

Last week, during a keynote talk at the Goldschmidt conference for geochemists in Florence, Italy, Benner said that two elements that allow the precursors of life to form were almost certainly unavailable on early Earth but were likely present on early Mars.

"Basically, we went looking on Mars because the origins-of-life options on Earth just aren't looking very good," Benner said.

One of the stumbling blocks to life starting on Earth is the fact that water is almost universally accepted as necessary for the onset of life. Yet RNA—which many consider to be the earliest expression of genetic replication and another essential precursor to life as we know it—falls apart if you try to build it in water.

What keeps that from happening, Benner has found over years of study, is the presence of a form of the element boron. While geologists say boron was too scarce on early Earth to support any widespread creation of RNA, it was seemingly more abundant on early Mars. One sign of its presence on the red planet is that at least one meteorite has delivered some Martian boron to Earth.

Benner has also found in his lab that if a form of the element molybdenum is added to the mix, the boron-steadied compounds are rearranged to form a stable version of ribose—the "R" in RNA.

Again, the element was far more available on early Mars than early Earth. (See "Naked Science: Finding the Origin of Life.")

So the question arises: Did RNA on Mars lead to actual DNA-based life? And did those lifeforms then travel to Earth on rocks kicked up when a meteorite struck Mars?

"The Phosphate Problem"

A few days after Benner's talk on August 29, a paper appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience that made a similar argument about phosphorus compounds, which form the backbone of RNA, DNA, and proteins.

While phosphates were present on early Earth, said lead author Christopher Adcock of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, they were most frequently found in a solid state, in which they are most stable. Yet biology is understood to have started in water, which would have contained little of the phosphates on early Earth.

"This has long been called 'the phosphate problem,'" Adcock said in an interview. "There are theories out there about how it might have worked [on early Earth], but there's no consensus.

"That played a part in getting us interested in Mars," he said.

On Mars, Adcock's team concluded, the phosphate problem appears to be much smaller. Adcock and his colleague Elizabeth Hausrath synthesized the two types of phosphates known to be on both early and current-day Mars, compounds that have also been delivered to Earth via meteorites.

Those Martian phosphates turned out to be far more soluble in water and also more abundant. So when it came to essential phosphates, at least, Mars appears to have been a better nursery for life.

Answering the Big Cosmic Question

The reemergence of the theory of panspermia is intertwined with progress (or lack of progress) in a long-term scientific quest to find out how life began on Earth, a question that synthetic biology experts such as Benner have been working on for decades. Despite some advances, the field has come up against chemical walls that are proving impossible to climb.

For instance, Benner said, the organic—meaning carbon-based—compounds understood to have come together to form life in a "prebiotic soup" do not behave in the lab in a way that would indicate they led to the formation of life on early Earth.

When these compounds are energized by heat or light, instead of producing early RNA they create tar—hardly the stuff from which we would all evolve. Yet discoveries over the past decade on Mars have pointed to a planet that was once warmer and wetter than it is now.

No living or fossil organisms have been found on Mars. But the science team working with the rover Curiosity concluded earlier this year that they had drilled into an ancient lake bed that had all that was needed to support life—and consequently that the planet had been habitable. (See "NASA's Mars Rover Makes Successful First Drill.")

That doesn't mean it ever was inhabited, but scientific signs are beginning to point, however hesitantly, in that direction.

Does this mean Benner or Adcock sees panspermia as a likely beginning for life on Earth? Not exactly.

Benner says that "it's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite." But it's more of a changing of probabilities than it is scientific proof.

"A panspermia solution, after all, produces another panspermia problem," he said. "If a Martian microbe did make it from Mars to Earth, maybe it would be as if it landed in Eden. But just as likely, it would quickly die."

In the path of the second horseman.

How a century-old war affects you

By Ruth Ben-Ghiat

CNN) -- World War I began a hundred years ago this summer, but for many of us it might as well be a thousand. We know it, if we know it at all, as a dimly remembered chapter in high school history, or as scenes from old black-and-white movies of soldiers hunkered in trenches doing battle with Germans in pointy helmets. It was all too real for more than 65 million men from some 30 nations who were plunged into carnage the likes of which the world had never before seen.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Every one of those soldiers is dead, and the causes they fought for are lost on many of us. Yet this "war to end all wars" is not a remote event. In fact, World War I changed the world forever, and its effects are all around us.

To begin with, it rewrote history at the grandest level: Empires fell, and new nations--Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland among them-- were born in the ashes. Leaders of the still-powerful French and British empires used the conflict to redraw borders in ways that set the stage for future conflicts that stretch on today, in the Middle East, for example.

WAR'S LASTING LEGACY 

The first World War began August 4, 1914, in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28 of that year. In the next two months,CNN.com/Opinion will feature articles on the weapons of war, its language, the role of women, battlefield injuries and the rise of aerial surveillance.

But there is much more. The first mass conflict among industrialized nations, World War I upended the way war was fought. The weapons it introduced -- submarines, machine guns, poison gas, grenades, tanks -- are all still part of our arsenals. And it was World War I that made airpower and strategic bombing central to the success of any future war. Trench warfare traumatized both soldiers and landscapes, and informed art and literature for years. It would reappear as a battlefield strategy in both the Korean War and in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

At home and on the battlefield, World War I put new objects and words into circulation: "cooties" are something no kid but for GIs in the trenches, they were real and they were lice; and sanitary napkins developed from the handy alternative use nurses found for cellulose bandage material produced for the war. The war popularized Kleenex and tea bags and zippers.

In fact, every time you admire an aircraft carrier, eat a meatless sausage, sit under a sun lamp, wear a Burberry trench coat, or set your clock ahead for daylight saving time, you are reaching back to commune with World War I.

The dawn of chemical weapons

Photos: World War I

World War I's new weapons caused previously unseen and horrific kinds of injuries, and scientists raced to develop protections against them -- or to make even more lethal versions to use against the enemy. Poison gas was first used on a mass scale by the Germans in April 1915 during the second battle of Ypres, and cloths strapped over the mouth and nose were at first the only protection.

Gas masks evolved quickly, though, and by the end of the war even some horses and dogs at the front had their own. The horrors of gas attacks resonate today in the reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, and, earlier, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the world still struggles to contain them.wants to get, All told, more than 9 million died in the conflict, and 21 million were wounded, psychologically scarring a generation. Soldiers were at pains to explain this new human experience of battle to those back home.

The English poet Siegfried Sassoon had this to say in 1917 about his time at the front: "I'm back from hell/With loathsome thoughts to sell/Secrets of death to tell;/ And horrors from the abyss." Many others had no more words: these victims of "war exhaustion," (the label of shell shock became more common) had trouble speaking: they are the forefathers of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder today.

"Every time you admire an aircraft carrier, eat a meatless sausage, sit under a sun lamp, wear a Burberry trench coat, or set your clock ahead for daylight saving time, you are reaching back to commune with World War I."

Likewise the scale and type of physical injuries challenged the ingenuity of prosthesis designers, whose work to replace lost body parts would enable countless soldiers to return to productive civilian life, a process echoed today as soldiers from recent wars recover from the toll of roadside bombs.

World War I also set the stage for future conflicts, by breaking down barriers between military and civilian life. While soldiers fought at the battlefront, civilian women and men built their weapons, distributed food and propaganda, and kept the home front running. Women gained new visibility in society, moving into the jobs vacated by enlisted men.

They drove streetcars, smelted iron, built bombs and then, after a long day at the factory, scrounged for food for their families. Civilians working for the war effort meant that anyone could be a target: German Fokker planes attacked at the front, but Zeppelin airships bombed London and Paris. "Total war" made the home front a dangerous place.

This war left few things unchanged in its path, even in lands that saw no fighting. Although it was mainly fought in Europe, it awakened many to the scope and diversity of the planet. "The entire world is participating in the war!" a French almanac exclaimed in 1917, showing its readers a map of the world divided into enemy, ally, and neutral peoples. Whether as laborers or soldiers, Europeans went to other countries, and millions of Americans, Africans and Asians came to Europe.

'Trapped in a net of woe'

More than two million United States soldiers fought in Europe, and the British and French empires brought over their colonial subjects. "We perish in the desert; you wash yourself and lie in bed," wrote an Indian soldier to his wife in September 1915. "We are trapped in a net of woe; while you go free. Our life is a living death."

How did Europe arrive at this state of catastrophe? The assassination of Austrian-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, on June 28, 1914 by the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip caused an international crisis that led in just over a month to multiple mobilizations.

The Archduke, traveling in an open car, was in Sarajevo to inspect imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were among the former Ottoman territories annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908, angering Serbian nationalists such as Princip.

"The scale and type of physical injuries challenged the ingenuity of prosthesis designers, whose work to replace lost body parts would enable countless soldiers to return to productive civilian life."

After the assassination, Austria-Hungary gave Serbia an ultimatum, causing Russia to intervene to protect its Serbian client state, and Germany to help its Austrian ally. And so it all began: the military obligations imposed by the system of alliances drew one power after another into combat.

All parties thought the war would be a short one; none imagined the speed with which the conflict would degenerate into a series of local atrocities (the Belgians became the conflict's first group of refugees, as they fled German rape and plunder) and mass slaughter across many fronts.

The habituation to violence and the acceptance of these lethal new inventions is one of World War I's most unfortunate legacies. Chemical weapons provides a case in point. Their effectiveness, as proved by the precedent of World War I, has given them a permanent place in many state arsenals, despite the paper trail of international agreements meant to ban their use. Democracies and dictatorships (France and Italy) both used them in the interwar period as agents of colonial conquest and rule, and Syria is the most recent example of their use.

As we approach this 100-year anniversary, each combatant country is remembering the war in its own way. In America, the echo has been fainter, due as much to the country's late entry into the war (April 1917) as to the prominence of World War II.

"The First World War is not well understood or remembered in the United States, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a 2008 Veterans Day ceremony at which the last living American combatant, Frank Buckles, who died in 2011, was present. "Yet few events have so markedly shaped the world we live in."

At war's end in 1918, America emerged from its 18 months of combat with a raft of new legislation that is still in force -- such as the Selective Service Act, which still today allows the President to draft soldiers, and the Espionage Act, used recently to charge 

Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden -- and with a new status as an international power.

A century of debates over how and whether America should intervene in global crises would lie ahead.

Revelation22:1 demystfied.

Throne (Rev. 22:1)

THRONE

"The Throne of God and of the Lamb"

"Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb." - Rev. 22:1, RSV.

Some trinitarians claim that if there is only one throne that God and the Lamb share, then they both must be God. If we carefully examined what this scripture actually says, most of us would probably reject such reasoning out of hand. However, for those who may still have a problem with it, let's examine the subject.

First, let's look at some scriptures where "throne" is used:

(1) "Let the king and his throne be guiltless" - 2 Sam. 14:9, RSV.

(2) "Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne ...." - Is. 66:1; Mt 5:34; 23:22.

(3) "Blessed be Jehovah thy God, who delighted in thee, to set thee on his throne." - 2 Chronicles 9:8, ASV.

(4) "Then Solomon sat on the throne of Jehovah as king instead of David his father." - 1 Chron. 29:23, ASV.

(5) "He [Jesus] will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord will give him the throne of his father David ... his kingdom will never end." - Luke 1:32.

(6) "[Jesus] sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." - Heb. 12:2, NASB.

(7) "To him who overcomes, I [Jesus] will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne." - Rev. 3:21, NIV.

(8) "Round the throne [of God] were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were 24 elders...with golden crowns upon their heads." - Rev. 4:4, RSV.

("The 24 elders on their thrones....represent...the heads of the 12 tribes together with the 12 apostles." - The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, p. 615, v. 2; also, see New Oxford Annotated Bible [1977 ed.] f.n. for Rev. 4:4.) - cf. Rev. 20:4, 6.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I believe that the majority of people who truly want to approach this subject fairly and objectively could find honest alternatives to the trinitarian argument found at the beginning of this page merely by examining the above scriptures carefully.

Therefore, most people should stop at this point and review, analyze, and correlate the above scriptures. Then they should ask themselves what interpretations could honestly be found for the scripture quoted in the heading of this paper. Those who still can see no honest alternative to the trinitarian interpretation might want to turn the page for a further discussion.

Scriptures (1) and (2) quoted above show some of the Bible's figurative meanings for the word "throne." The first, of course, shows that "throne" can stand for the rule or authority of a person. The second shows "throne" may include the entire location (room, building, city, territory, etc.) where that government is stationed.

Scriptures (3) and (4) show that the "throne" or authority of a much higher ruler can be delegated to another, much inferior ruler. Even King David (and Solomon) was said to be sitting on God's throne. That is, he wielded the authority over God's people on earth as a representative for God. So it was the throne of God and of David and of Solomon.

Scripture (5) shows that Jesus, like David, sat "on the throne of Jehovah."

Scripture (6) shows that when Jesus assumed David's God-given authority (or throne) over God's people, he "sat at the right hand of the Throne of God." Cf. Ps 110:1 where Jesus is to sit at the right hand of Jehovah. A footnote in the very trinitarian The NIV Study Bible for Ps. 110:1 tells us:

"right hand.... thus he [Christ] is made second in authority to God himself. NT references to Jesus' exaltation to this position are many (see...Mark 16:19;...Acts 2:33-36;...Heb 10:12-13)." Compare the NIVSB footnote for Mark 16:19 - "right hand of God. A position of authority second only to God's." - The NIV Study Bible, Zondervan, 1985.

Scriptures (7) and (8) similarly show that Jesus' sitting on his own (subordinate) throne (Rev. 3:21) can be figuratively described as sitting "down with my Father on his throne" (who, in effect, shares some of his authority with Christ). The same description then applies to the Apostles who "sit with me on my throne" (Rev. 3:21) which can also be described as sitting upon their own separate thrones around the throne of God (Rev. 4:4) because the Christ shares some of his God-given authority with them. (See The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 3, p. 588.)

As in certain other "trinitarian" interpretations the separate consideration of God and Christ proves in itself that Christ is not God. (It might have been worth considering, at least, if it said "the throne of the Father and of the Lamb.")

Obviously, we wouldn't give a thought to the "Godhood" of David and Solomon if we saw a reference to "the throne of God and David and Solomon" - cf. scriptures (3) and (4) above! We are speaking of only one throne (perhaps), but there is certainly no reason to think that one throne unites all three mentioned who had the authority symbolized by that throne!

And the fact that God is mentioned as one person (and David and Solomon as others) precludes any possibility of honest error. For example, even when we add the testimony of the scripture which says that all the assembly bowed down and worshiped ["shachah"] Jehovah and King David (1 Chron. 29:20 - see the WORSHIP study paper), we still wouldn't reason that David was Jehovah! The fact that they are so clearly represented as two separate individuals compels us to find some other solution to the problem of what seems to be "equal worship" (unless, of course, you already have an unshakable tradition or mindset that David is Jehovah). So why should we accept such poor reasoning for Rev. 22:1?

* * * * * * * *

"Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne [of God]." - Rev. 5:6, NIV.

Some trinitarians also imply that the slain Lamb (obviously the heavenly-resurrected Christ) must be God because he is in the middle of God's throne in this verse.

There is never any doubt that the one seated on God's throne in Rev. 4 and 5 is God.

"They [the 24 elders] lay their crowns before the throne and say: `You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things." - Rev. 4:10, 11 NASB.

But the Lamb is never called God, nor does he sit on the throne of God in these two chapters. He approaches God, and is clearly differentiated from God:

"To him who sits on the throne [God] and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory...." Rev. 5:13, NASB.

So why is the Lamb standing in the center of the throne of God? Well here is how it reads in the original Greek: "And I saw in midst of the throne (en meso tou thronou) ... lamb standing...." Thayer tells us of this NT Greek word meso:

"in midst of, i.e. in the space within, tou thronou [`the throne'] (which must be conceived of as having a semicircular shape [c-shaped]: Rev. iv. 6; v. 6."

Thayer continues with an explanation of Rev. 5:6 that meso means

"between the throne and the four living creatures and the elders (i.e. in the vacant space between the throne and the living creatures [on one side] and elders [on the other side], accordingly nearest the throne." - p. 402, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Baker Book House.

Highly trinitarian New Testament expert A. T. Robertson also takes this to mean "before" or in front of the throne. - Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. vi, p. 328.

Accordingly, many modern trinitarian translations use "between" here (rather than "in the center of"): "between the throne and the four living creatures"- (1) RSV, (2) The Jerusalem Bible, (3) NASB, (4) NAB (1970 ed.), (5) NRSV, (6) The Amplified Bible (1965), (7) MLB (1969), (8) Beck's The Holy Bible in the Language of Today (1976), (9) C. B. Williams' New Testament in the Language of the People (1963), (10) REB, (11) Living Bible.

But no matter how you wish to translate en meso tou thronou, it is obvious that the Lamb's being there does not make him God. Simply look at Rev. 4:6 and the complete Rev. 5:6. We see in Rev. 4:6 that the four living creatures are en meso tou thronou just as the lamb is in 5:6! If that means the Lamb is God, then it also means the four living creatures are God!

A further examination of Rev. 4:6 reveals this additional information concerning "en meso tou thronou" and the throne of God. These 4 living creatures ("beasts" - KJV) are "in the midst of the throne and around the throne." This could mean that they are positioned around the throne so that each one is standing in the center of each side. For that reason, the translators of TEV and GNB translated it:

"surrounding the throne on each of its sides." CBW and Beck both translate: "in the middle of each side of the throne." (Cf. RSV, MLB, and LB.)

This understanding and these renderings by modern trinitarian Bibles correlate well with Ezekiel's vision of Jehovah's throne at Ezek. 1:15-22 where the 4 living creatures (Cherubs) are stationed at each corner of the throne (or chariot which supports the throne).

It could also mean the four living creatures are in the central position in heaven (or in the throne room) where the throne of God is located. For this reason, The Jerusalem Bible reads: "in the center, grouped around the throne itself."

The above gives us good evidence for determining what en meso tou thronou may mean for the position of the Lamb in Rev. 5:6.

Or merely examine all of the scripture in question. Rev. 5:6 reads literally in the Greek:

"And I saw in midst of the throne [en meso tou thronou] and of the four living [creatures] and in midst of [en meso] the older persons lamb having stood as having been slaughtered."

Again we see the four living creatures in the "midst" of the throne, and also the Lamb is in the "midst" of the 24 elders. The 24 elders, then, must also be in the "midst" of the throne with Jesus. So, this trinitarian "evidence" would mean the 24 elders are God too!

Let's examine the scriptural visions of God on his throne in a little more detail.

Ezekiel's inspired vision of God on his throne shows these details:

"From the midst of it [the vision of fire] came the likeness of four living creatures [Cherubs, angels]. And this was their appearance: they had the form of men, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings." - Ezek. 1:5, 6, RSV.

Notice that Ezekiel tells us that these 4 Cherubs at the 4 corners of God's throne (Ezek. 1:26) look just like men except for 4 faces (and wings) which are further described in verses 10, 11. We know, therefore, exactly what they looked like. Any significant variation from a man's likeness has been carefully explained by Ezekiel.

Now look at the description of God himself as Ezekiel continues his vision. Ezekiel again tells us that "seated above the...throne was a likeness as it were of a human form." - Ezek. 1:26, RSV. And again Ezekiel describes all the significant differences from the appearance of a man (v. 27): brightness, gleaming like glowing bronze, fiery appearance from the waist down. Except for these significant differences the vision of God looks like a man! Not three persons; not a man with three heads; not a man with three faces, etc. but just like a man!

IF God were 3 persons, Ezekiel's vision surely would have given us some indication of that (such as his description in this very same vision of the 4 aspects of each of the 4 Cherubs shown figuratively by 4 distinctive faces for each person which he gave just before this description of God).

But, instead, we are shown the one person, like a man seated on God's throne whereas trinitarians should be insisting that three equal persons should be somehow represented there!

"This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah." - Ezekiel 1:28, ASV and The King James II Version, Fourth Ed.

We see the same thing in the throne visions of Rev. 4 and 5 and 19:4.

"lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there [the Lamb later approaches this one - vv. 6, 7] appeared like jasper and carnelian and round the throne was a rainbow...." - Rev. 4:2, 3, RSV.

Obviously this is a single person who differs from the likeness of a man only in the brilliant, glowing colors of his person. (Notice that John doesn't hesitate to describe the figurative details of the 4 cherubs as they differ from human likenesses - as did Ezekiel above - in vv. 6, 7 and even describes a figurative 7-headed beast of his own in Rev. 13:1.) But John, who is, of course, very familiar with the figurative descriptions of Ezekiel (4-faced person) and Daniel (4-headed beast) uses nothing (figurative or literal) to represent God as anything more than a single person!

This single person on the throne is obviously the only true God, the creator (Rev. 4:10, 11 - see The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 3, p. 588) and this does not include the person of Jesus Christ: "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb." - Rev. 7:10, RSV. ("All glory to him who alone is God, who saves us through Jesus Christ our Lord" - Jude 25, Living Bible. - cf. John 17:1, 3, NEB.)

This one person, with the likeness of a man, seated upon the throne is worshiped by those in heaven as Jehovah God!

"and the 24 elders and the 4 living creatures fell down and worshiped God who is seated on the throne, saying, `Amen, Hallelujah!'" - Rev. 19:4, RSV.

"Hallelujah," as is well known, means "Praise Jehovah." (Today's Dictionary of the Bible; Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, etc.)

Notice Rev. 21:3, 5.

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne. [So this must be God, right? - - - Wrong!], saying, `Behold the tabernacle of God is among men and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be among them.'"

Now notice in verse 5:

"And He who sits on the throne said, `Behold I am making all things new.'" - NASB.

We see that although the first voice was from the throne, it was still not from God. The second voice was from the one who sits on the throne (God).

Another vision of God in heaven is noteworthy. "Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw God's glory and Jesus standing at the right side of God." - Acts 7:55, TEV.

Please note: God is a single person here who is not Jesus Christ. If it had said, "Stephen ... saw God's glory. Yes, he saw Jesus standing at the right side of the Father," then we could accept one possible interpretation as Jesus and the Father both being God. (But why isn't the "person" of the Holy Spirit standing here also - or in any other vision of God in heaven?) But as it's worded by the inspired Bible writer, this is simply not a permissible interpretation. Yes, we never see God represented in visions, dreams, etc. as more than one person (and this person is never Jesus or the Holy Spirit). Whenever personality can be determined, the person shown to be God in heaven is always the Father, Jehovah alone.

We never find the word "trinity" (nor anything remotely equivalent to it) used by the Bible writers. We don't even find the word "three" used to describe God in any sense! ("God is three;" "There is only one God in three persons;" "Jehovah is three;" etc.) This alone makes the "evidence" for a trinity totally incredible and completely unacceptable! - see the IMAGE study paper.

So we find, as usual, that the evidence for a Trinity is so ambiguous, so indirect, that the same type of "evidence" can be used to "prove" that many others are "God" - see the "TRIN-TYPE" study paper. This simply cannot be! Anything of such essential importance to man's salvation and God's true worship cannot be so inconclusive.

Can we imagine that other teachings of such essential importance to man's salvation could be so vague? Just look at the massive number of straight-forward statements that openly declare that Jesus is the Messiah! He is our Savior, and we had better believe it if we want to please God and receive life! We don't have to add up little bits and pieces, hints, strained interpretations, and vague references to patch together a life-saving doctrine. God clearly and repeatedly reveals the necessities for life. (See MINOR 14-15)

Watchtower society's commentary on 'hell'

HELL

 

 

A word used in the King James Version (as well as in the Catholic Douay Version and most older translations) to translate the Hebrew sheʼohl′ and the Greek hai′des. In the King James Version the word “hell” is rendered from sheʼohl′ 31 times and from hai′des 10 times. This version is not consistent, however, since sheʼohl′ is also translated 31 times “grave” and 3 times “pit.” In the Douay Version sheʼohl′ is rendered “hell” 64 times, “pit” once, and “death” once.

In 1885, with the publication of the complete English Revised Version, the original word sheʼohl′ was in many places transliterated into the English text of the Hebrew Scriptures, though, in most occurrences, “grave” and “pit” were used, and “hell” is found some 14 times. This was a point on which the American committee disagreed with the British revisers, and so, when producing the American Standard Version (1901) they transliterated sheʼohl′ in all 65 of its appearances. Both versions transliterated hai′des in the Christian Greek Scriptures in all ten of its occurrences, though the Greek word Ge′en·na (English, “Gehenna”) is rendered “hell” throughout, as is true of many other modern translations.

Concerning this use of “hell” to translate these original words from the Hebrew and Greek, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (1981, Vol. 2, p. 187) says: “HADES . . . It corresponds to ‘Sheol’ in the O.T. [Old Testament]. In the A.V. of the O.T. [Old Testament] and N.T. [New Testament], it has been unhappily rendered ‘Hell.’”

Collier’s Encyclopedia (1986, Vol. 12, p. 28) says concerning “Hell”: “First it stands for the Hebrew Sheol of the Old Testament and the Greek Hades of the Septuagint and New Testament. Since Sheol in Old Testament times referred simply to the abode of the dead and suggested no moral distinctions, the word ‘hell,’ as understood today, is not a happy translation.”

It is, in fact, because of the way that the word “hell” is understood today that it is such an unsatisfactory translation of these original Bible words. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged, under “Hell” says: “fr[om] . . . helan to conceal.” The word “hell” thus originally conveyed no thought of heat or torment but simply of a ‘covered over or concealed place.’ In the old English dialect the expression “helling potatoes” meant, not to roast them, but simply to place the potatoes in the ground or in a cellar.

The meaning given today to the word “hell” is that portrayed in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, which meaning is completely foreign to the original definition of the word. The idea of a “hell” of fiery torment, however, dates back long before Dante or Milton. The Grolier Universal Encyclopedia (1971, Vol. 9, p. 205) under “Hell” says: “Hindus and Buddhists regard hell as a place of spiritual cleansing and final restoration. Islamic tradition considers it as a place of everlasting punishment.” The idea of suffering after death is found among the pagan religious teachings of ancient peoples in Babylon and Egypt. Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs depicted the “nether world . . . as a place full of horrors, . . . presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness.” Although ancient Egyptian religious texts do not teach that the burning of any individual victim would go on forever, they do portray the “Other World” as featuring “pits of fire” for “the damned.”—The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by Morris Jastrow, Jr., 1898, p. 581; The Book of the Dead, with introduction by E. Wallis Budge, 1960, pp. 135, 144, 149, 151, 153, 161, 200.

“Hellfire” has been a basic teaching in Christendom for many centuries. It is understandable why The Encyclopedia Americana (1956, Vol. XIV, p. 81) said: “Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word hell. The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.” Nevertheless, such transliteration and consistent rendering does enable the Bible student to make an accurate comparison of the texts in which these original words appear and, with open mind, thereby to arrive at a correct understanding of their true significance.—See GEHENNA; GRAVE; HADES; SHEOL; TARTARUS.

On apoptosis or the death of Darwinism.

Apoptosis Is Unchanged from Cambrian Corals to Humans

Science progresses when investigators boldly question assumptions. Look at the assumption that a group of scientists questioned: Darwinian evolution. Eight scientists from San Diego State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute published a bombshell in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

The Precambrian explosion [they mean the Cambrian explosion] led to the rapid appearance of most major animal phyla alive today. It has been argued that the complexity of life has steadily increased since that event. Here we challenge this hypothesis through the characterization of apoptosis in reef-building corals, representatives of some of the earliest animals. Bioinformatic analysis reveals that all of the major components of the death receptor pathway are present in coral with high-predicted structural conservation with Homo sapiens. (Emphasis added.)

Apoptosis is "programmed cell death." When a cell becomes unstable or diseased, genetic algorithms kill it in an orderly way, to prevent further harm to the organism. Specialized enzymes (especially the TNF superfamilies) switch on the program, setting locked-up destroyers called caspases loose in the cell. The microbiologist can see bubbles and blisters forming (blebbing), followed by complete disruption of the cell and all its parts (this is animated in a sequence in Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies, where the caterpillar parts are shown breaking down inside the chrysalis).

Corals have many of the same TNF enzymes that humans do. This got the team wondering:

The TNF receptor-ligand superfamilies (TNFRSF/TNFSF) are central mediators of the death receptor pathway, and the predicted proteome of Acropora digitifera contains more putative coral TNFRSF members than any organism described thus far, including humans. This high abundance of TNFRSF members, as well as the predicted structural conservation of other death receptor signaling proteins, led us to wonder what would happen if corals were exposed to a member of the human TNFSF (HuTNFα).

In a series of experiments, they inserted coral enzymes into human cells. The human cells died. Then they ran the reciprocal experiment, putting human TNF enzymes into coral, and its cells died too. Even the bleaching process was seen using human enzymes. The agents of death were perfectly interchangeable, despite 550 million years for evolution to have increased the complexity of the system.

HuTNFα was found to bind directly to coral cells, increase caspase activity, cause apoptotic blebbing and cell death, and finally induce coral bleaching. Next, immortalized human T cells (Jurkats) expressing a functional death receptor pathway (WT) and a corresponding Fas-associated death domain protein (FADD) KO cell line were exposed to a coral TNFSF member (AdTNF1) identified and purified here. AdTNF1 treatment resulted in significantly higher cell death (P < 0.0001) in WT Jurkats compared with the corresponding FADD KO, demonstrating that coral AdTNF1 activates the H. sapiens death receptor pathway. Taken together, these data show remarkable conservation of the TNF-induced apoptotic response representing 550 My of functional conservation.

Obviously, conservation is not evolution. This is evidence against Darwinian evolution on both sides of the coin: it shows no evolutionary "progress" despite all that time, and it shows a complex system appearing abruptly right at the beginning of complex animal origins. The significance of this discovery was not lost on the team: "Here we show that TNF induced apoptosis has been functionally maintained for more than half a billion years of evolution."

Abrupt appearance, and remarkable stasis: it's a common theme in biology. Can they rescue Darwinism from this evidence?

Phylogenetic analysis indicates a deep evolutionary origin of the TNFSF and TNFRSF that precedes the divergence of vertebrates and invertebrates. The most ancient and well-defined invertebrate TNF ligand-receptor system that has been described to date is that of the fruit fly Drosophila melangastor [melanogaster, sic passim]. D. melangastor posseses just one member of both the TNFRSF/TNFSF, in contrast to humans who have 18 and 29, respectively. This difference has led to the widely accepted hypothesis that the TNF ligand-receptor superfamily expanded after the divergence of invertebrates and vertebrates.

In this paper, we describe the annotation of 40 members of the TNFRSF and 13 members of the TNFSF in the reef building coral A. digitifera, suggesting that key parts of the TNF receptor ligand superfamily have been lost in D. melangastor but maintained in coral. Comparison of these coral TNFSF/TNFRSF members to those of Homo sapiens reveals high genetic and predicted structural conservation.

Instead of confirming Darwinian expectations, they debunked "the widely accepted hypothesis" that the complexity of the TNF ligand system should have increased. No; it was there from the beginning. Some animals lost some of it, but the most "primitive" Cambrian animals had it, and it works in human cells today.

This is no small matter. Most of the 53 proteins (containing 228 to 533 amino acids apiece) show "high amino acid conservation" with their human counterparts, especially at the active sites. From extreme ends of the animal complexity scale, tens of thousands of amino acids in these families of enzymes show no evolution at all. What's more, the coral's system appears even more complex than ours. "Compared with previously published work on members of the TNFRSF," they say, "corals contain the most diverse TNFRSF repertoire of any organism described to date, including humans."

About the only thing they could say in support of Darwinian evolution from these data is that evolution is a "non-linear process." If so, that is very different from the vision Darwin had of the slow, gradual accumulation of small variations.

This is but one more instance in a huge body of evidence supporting intelligent design for the origin of animal body plans, as Stephen Meyer explains further in Darwin's Doubt (now in paperback with an added chapter answering critics of the first edition). Apoptosis is but one mechanism that makes an organism work. It plays important roles in embryonic development as well as disease prevention. When you add up all the other systems required to build and maintain an animal, on so many levels, Darwinism seems clearly inadequate to the account for them. The only cause we know of that is able to explain the observations, from the overall forms down to the specific amino acids, is intelligent design.