Jehovah's servants continue to stand up for religious liberty in Russia.

Further Arguments Presented on Day Four of Russian Supreme Court Case

NEW YORK—With a large number of observers in attendance, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation continued into its fourth day of hearings, considering a claim from the Ministry of Justice to liquidate the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. The Court announced a recess late in the afternoon, and the hearing will resume on Wednesday, April 19, 2017, at 10:00 a.m.

Attorneys for Jehovah’s Witnesses opened with arguments in defense of the Administrative Center, followed by a cross-examination from attorneys representing the Ministry of Justice. Reacting to evidence presented by the defense, the judge requested the Ministry of Justice to identify the specific legal basis for liquidating Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Administrative Center. The attorneys for the Ministry of Justice were unable to provide a response to the judge’s request and other related questions. The day’s proceedings concluded after hearing testimony from witnesses for both parties.


Next week, the court is expected to begin their review of the case materials.

Media Contacts:

International: David A. Semonian, Office of Public Information, +1-845-524-3000


Russia: Yaroslav Sivulskiy, +7-911-087-8009

The cell as walled city.

A clash of Titans. LI

Verified science v. Darwinism's theology.

Evolutionists’ Certainty Comes from Metaphysics, Not Science
Cornelius Hunter

We have seen  here  and here  that a new book,Adam and the Genome , co-authored by theistic evolutionist Dennis Venema is influenced by the mythical Warfare Thesis.

The book, for example, informs readers that the basic issue of the 17th-century Galileo Affair was “the veracity of the new science, and its perceived threat to biblical authority.” As we saw, this is the false, evolutionary rendition of history. The Warfare Thesis is a myth, and the Galileo Affair is perhaps the favorite example for evolutionists.

After framing the discussion with this bit of Whig history, Venema introduces scientific evidences that he believes make evolution to be compelling. He begins with the fossil record. This is a bit surprising given how badly the theory fares on the fossil evidence. Later in the book Venema will state that according to evolution truly new features should be rare:

One of the things evolution predicts is that seldom will any feature in an evolutionary lineage be truly “new.” [37]
This is an example of an evolutionary prediction that has gone terribly wrong, and the fossil record gives a plethora of examples. As we have explained many times, the general character of the fossil record is precisely the opposite of what evolutionists had expected. Rather than the traditional evolutionary tree pattern of new species gradually appearing over time, the fossil record reveals the exact opposite. The strata show several bursts of new species appearing on the scene, followed by a winnowing.

This is upside down. Like a Christmas tree, you have a wide expanse of branches and twigs at the bottom, or beginning, and over time there is a narrowing as the species are lost to extinctions. Rather than a tree becoming increasingly wide over time from narrow beginnings, the strata often reveal the opposite pattern. Of course it is far more complicated than this simple analogy, but what is important is that the fossil record reveals so many “explosions” of new species. The so-called “Cambrian explosion” (yes, it is called an “explosion”) is the most famous, but there are several others. In these events, new species appear abruptly in the fossil record. Not only do a great many “truly new” features appear, but entirely new lineages appear as well.

Clearly, the fossil record repeatedly falsifies this prediction of evolution.

In a great example of confirmation bias, evolutionists often downplay the importance of these fossil data and the falsifications they present. In fact, sometimes these are ignored altogether.

And so it is with Venema’s treatment of the fossil record. He appeals to the general pattern of the fossil record, and to the specific example of the evolution of cetaceans. The latter is his primary example of why the fossil record is such strong evidence for evolution.

A collection of fossils can be arranged from land mammals to whales, which is precisely what evolution needs since whales are mammals. The idea is that mammals first evolved on land, and then certain species made their way back into the water, thus introducing mammals to marine environments.

Venema agrees that some of these fossil species may not be in the actual lineage leading to modern whales. That is good because the literature often illustrates these species as forming a clean, simple, lineage, from ancient mammals to modern whales.

While one may draw a line between the fossil species, the fact is there are many species suggesting more of a bush than a branch, and any such line is imposed onto the data rather than read out of the data.

And if these species did arise from evolution, and if the modern whale did arise from such a land-to-sea transition then, as usual, it would be quite a mystery. For a great transition, including the loss of hind limbs, grinding teeth, and pelvises, while developing a host of new features, must have occurred relatively quickly.

The new features include the fluke tail with its unique vertical propelling motion, the huge filter-feeding jaw, and the ability to give live birth and raise young in the marine environment. The latest entry to the community could swim, dive, and feed better than most fish and sharks. All sorts of evolutionary scenarios can explain why the whale acquired such advanced skills, but they are speculative. The whale’s aquatic prowess does not refute evolution, but it raises the question of how we can be so sure about the purported evolutionary change that is supposed to have created the whale.

Why then are evolutionists so taken with the patterns of the fossil record, and examples such as the fossil sequence that is supposed to lead to the whale? Yes, it provides a good sequence, but there are many questions of just how random mutations could accomplish such heroics. And there are the many other aspects of the fossil data that are problematic, such as the many “explosions.”

These are serious evidential problems, and it would seem the fossils would be the last thing to which evolutionists would appeal. What’s going on?

The answer is, as usual, that the evolutionist’s certainty comes from metaphysics, not science. The idea is not that the whale-like fossils prove evolution directly, but that they disprove any notion that God created them independently. Therefore they must have evolved. Venema makes several such arguments. Here is one of his passages (emphasis added):

Of course, some might argue that it simply pleased God, as Creator, to create a series of unrelated species at this time in earth’s history that happen to suggest an evolutionary relationship. Many Christians find this plausible; but note how this type of argument cannot ever be ruled out by additional evidence. Any additional such species we find in the fossil record would then merely be more separate species that God elected to create at this time. This explanation also leaves scientists bereft of a hypothesis to test with further research. If the species we observe in the fossil record are the direct, special creations of God, then we will not necessarily find a pattern in the fossil record. Faced with such an explanation, a scientist would not have the ability to make predictions about what should be found in the fossil record at certain times. [13]
Here Venema makes two strong arguments. First, there is is the classic argument from the intellectual necessity of evolution. Science, as Venema argues, won’t work with creationism. Venema explains that such creationism (i) is not vulnerable to the evidence, (ii) makes it impossible to form testable hypotheses, and so (iii) leaves scientists unable to make predictions.

These are arguments from the philosophy of science that mandate evolution. We must have evolution in order to do science properly. Creationism must be ruled out.

These metaphysics render the scientific evidence irrelevant and, ironically, make evolution untestable and not vulnerable to the evidence. Fossil species appearing abruptly in the strata don’t matter when your philosophical argument makes creation untenable. As usual, the evolutionary argument is guilty of the very criticism it casts.

Second, there is the age-old theological argument about how God would create the world. Rather than using patterns that appear arbitrary to us, God should fill the design space randomly.

Venema goes on to make the usual evolutionary arguments that the patterns we observe are unlikely. The evolutionary premise here is that the alternative to evolution is a random design of the species. For example, Venema writes:

The probability of mammalian characteristics (such as having hair and feeding their young with milk, as well as a number of defining skeletal characteristics) arising in a separate, unrelated lineage is a pretty big stretch. [14]
This argument hinges entirely on random design being the sole alternative to evolution. Either the species are designed randomly, or it’s evolution. This reasoning dates back centuries and, as Venema has explained, entails beliefs about how God would create the world. In other words, it is religious.

What if God would not necessarily create the species randomly? In that case, the evolutionist’s powerful argument absolutely fails. It would be fatal to the entire position.

In other words, the evolutionary argument entirely hinges on a silly, strawman claim about God.

In my studies of the arguments for evolution, I find they fall into two broad categories: philosophical arguments about man, knowledge, and science; and religious arguments about God. In typical fashion, Venema has appealed to both these long-standing categories of strong arguments for evolution.

If the evolutionist’s premises are correct, then evolution is a no-brainer. We must be evolutionists — regardless of the scientific evidence. The species arising from random causes, such as mutations, makes no sense scientifically, but would be a must. As usual the religion and philosophy steer the science.


This new book is yet another example, in a long line of works going back to Darwin and before, of how evolution is our modern-day mythology. New species appearing out of nowhere. Fantastic designs arising from random mutations. And all of this mandated to be a fact. If you cannot see a problem with this, then you must be an Epicurean.

Why atheistic sophistry keeps giving birth to self-refuting incoherence.

Can a Determinist Change the World?
Michael Egnor

G.K. Chesterton told an amusing story of a young man who wrote to him extolling the truth of solipsism. The young man believed it was the only rational viewpoint he could take, and he wondered why it wasn't a more popular viewpoint.

Witless self-refutation is amusing. Which brings us to a post by determinist and free will-denier Jerry Coyne, who writes:

Our behaviors are solely and uniquely decided by our genes and our environments, and nothing else. [I]f you returned to the "original situation" ... you would always decide the same thing. We feel as if we are agents who could have chosen otherwise, but in reality we can't. Hard determinists like me feel it's pointless to talk about "free will."

So why does Coyne prattle on so much about determinism and his denial of free will? After all, he thinks the future's baked in the cake, so to speak. Why would he write about something he can't do anything about?

You'll also know that the reason I bang on about this at length -- frustrating compatibilist readers -- is because I believe that fully grasping determinism has a huge potential effect on human behavior, including in particular how we treat transgressors or criminals. It also has import in politics in general... Finally, we all surely agree that accepting determinism will sink the libertarian free will inherent in many religions, which I think is a good thing. You simply CANNOT freely accept whether or not to hold Christ as your savior, or Muhammad as Allah's prophet. To punish people for eternity on the basis that they could have chosen otherwise makes no sense at all...

While we're on the topic of "makes no sense at all," let's consider Coyne's ambitious program for changing our minds about free will...

Wait. Coyne denies that he can change his own mind, so how can he change the minds of others? How can anyone without free will, in a deterministic universe, change anything? The future, according to Coyne, is already determined, so what's the use of "banging on" about determinism? It can't change anything at all. Why not retire from "banging on" and find some other pointless pastime? It won't make any difference. It can't make any difference, in a determined world.

If determinism is true, there are no "huge potential effect[s] on human behavior." There are no huge potential effects on anything. There's no "potential" at all. There are no choices and there are no options. It's baked in the cake.

Or half-baked, as befits Coyne's puerile self-refuting determinism.

Prokaryotes v. Settled science.

Programmable Memory in Prokaryotes
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

In the past couple of days (here and  here), we’ve documented upsets in conventional evolutionary thinking. Here’s a third. Three strikes and you’re out?

Excitement over the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool has led to more research on how the system works in bacteria, from where it was plagiarized by human geneticists. Science Magazine now says that it appears to provide adaptive immunity to prokaryotes. Most interesting is how the system works. Again, we will need to read past the evo-speak to understand what’s really going on:

The arms race between prokaryotes and their perpetually evolving predators has fueled the evolution of a defense arsenal. The so-called CRISPR-Cas systems — clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and associated proteins — are adaptive immune defense systems found in bacteria and archaea. The recent exponential growth of research in the CRISPR field has led to the discovery of a diverse range of CRISPR-Cas systems and insight into their defense functions. These systems are divided into two major classes and six types. Each system consists of two components: a locus for memory storage (the CRISPR array) and cas genes that encode the machinery driving immunity. Information stored within CRISPR arrays is used to direct the sequence-specific destruction of invading genetic elements, including viruses and plasmids. As such, all CRISPR-Cas immune systems are reliant on the formation of CRISPR memories, known as spacers, to facilitate future defense. To form these memories, small fragments of invader nucleic acids are added as spacers to the CRISPR memory banks in a process termed CRISPR adaptation. The genetic basis of immunity means that CRISPR adaptation provides heritable benefits, an attribute that is unparalleled in eukaryotic immune systems. There is widespread evidence of highly active CRISPR adaptation in nature, and it is clear that these systems play important roles in shaping microbial evolution and global ecological networks.
Think of it: a “simple” bacterium can identify a foreign invader, capture part of its genetic sequence, and store it in a memory bank. The article goes on to say that it uses a kind of last-in-first-out algorithm, placing the most recent sequence at the active end. Moreover, the enzymes monitoring the database are able to determine if the invader is entirely new or a mutated version of a previous attacker.

Here’s a small taste of the article to savor the design implications:

Before integration, accurate processing of the spacer precursors is required to ensure that the new spacers are compatible with the protein machinery in order to elicit CRISPR-Cas defense. For a given CRISPR-Cas system, spacers must typically be of a certain length and be inserted into the CRISPR in a specific orientation. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Cas1-Cas2 complexes from diverse systems are capable of ensuring that these system-specific factors are met with high fidelity.
Would anyone have expected such sophistication in the smallest, supposedly most primitive forms of life? This has the hallmarks of precision anti-hacking software. In modern computers, antivirus programs store sequences of known viruses to be able to distinguish friend from foe. Can blind processes of nature do this?

Think about it; a mechanism for storing alien sequences would be useless without the recognition and response system. But recognition and response would be useless without the ability to store the alien sequences with high fidelity, in the right orientation, in the right length, in the right order.

Here’s more:

New findings also account for the ordering of stored memories: Typically, the insertion of new spacers is directed to one end of CRISPR arrays, and it has been shown that this enhances immunity against recently encountered invaders. The chronological ordering of new spacers has enabled insights into the temporal dynamics of interactions between hosts and invaders that are constantly changing. Some CRISPR-Cas systems use existing spacers to recognize previously encountered elements and promote the formation of new CRISPR memories, a process known as primed CRISPR adaptation. Viruses and plasmids that have escaped previous CRISPR-Cas defenses through genetic mutations trigger primed CRISPR adaptation. Several recent studies have revealed that primed CRISPR adaptation is also strongly promoted by recurrent invaders, even in the absence of escape mutations. This has led to previously separate paradigms of invader destruction and primed CRISPR adaptation beginning to converge into a unified model.
As noted, in three days we’ve observed three genetic mechanisms that destroy the Central Dogma, fail to confirm neo-Darwinism mutation/selection expectations, and undermine the Tree of Life itself.

If an  octopus can edit its own RNA and prevent neo-Darwinism, it is not becoming more fit; it is fit and always has been. If a  virus can be almost as complex as a cell but gain its complexity by theft of existing parts, it is not a stepping-stone to the first cell. And if bacteria can operate a complex adaptive immune system using stored memories and active response systems, they do not deserve the epithet “primitive” nor a lowly position in the hierarchy of living things.

We may need to cast off Darwinian metaphors to understand life. The language of an “arms race” or “evolutionary strategy” or “tree of life” tends to obscure understanding, not enlighten it. If Darwinian evolution doesn’t work, why maintain the icons of Zombie Science   it entails?


A design perspective would expect cooperation, homeostasis, and programmed adaptability using very complex, interacting parts. These three discoveries fit that picture well.

Darwin's tree catches a virus.

Giant Virus Attacks Darwin’s Tree
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Viruses have long been an enigma to microbiologists. A new paper in the journal  Science says that viruses are infecting Darwin’s tree, but not in a healthy way (for Darwinism, that is). Mitch Leslie summarizes:

Researchers used to think that viruses were small and simple, but they’ve identified giant viruses that are larger than many bacteria and carry more genes. Now, scientists report that they’ve uncovered genomes of the most cell-like viruses discovered so far. Compared with previous giant viruses, the new viruses have more of the genes necessary for protein synthesis, including a complete set of genes that code for enzymes that ensure delivery of amino acids to sites of protein synthesis. The researchers’ analysis of the viruses’ gene sequences challenges a controversial hypothesis that giant viruses descended from cells and represent a new domain, or a new branch on the tree of life.
Nature is hedging its bets on what this means for evolution:

Evolutionary biologists have never known what to make of viruses, arguing over their origins for decades. But a newly discovered group of giant viruses, called Klosneuviruses, could be a ‘missing link’ that helps to settle the debate — or provoke even more discord.
It’s clear that anything this complex cannot be a stepping-stone to the first life. But if viruses don’t fit an evolutionary place as a “fourth domain of life” near the root of Darwin’s tree, how did they become “a network of stolen parts” from cells?

One researcher says that the giant virus’s “translation machinery does not match that of any other known organism.” Jordi Paps at The Conversation likens these entities to zombies. “Maybe it would be just easier to consider viruses undead,” he says. “The big question is: where do they come from?” He’s not ready to bet on the Darwin Tree defenders:

The researchers conclude that the giant viruses analysed in this study have evolved multiple times from smaller viruses, rejecting the idea they evolved from cellular lifeforms.

However, the new evidence doesn’t kill viruses completely. New gnarls in the tree of life are discovered every day, and a new finding could still provide a link between cellular and acellular life — or prove the opposite. Until then, we will keep thinking about the nature of life, the relationship between zombies and viruses, and wondering “what the hell is that?”

As we noted yesterday, there are interesting developments for the Darwin Tree support team: even the managers are calling time out because of the shakeup on wiggly field. We call them as we see them.

Why the quest for the origin of the original technologist misses the point.

Why some know the cost of everything but the true value of nothing.

“The Music of Humanity”
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Better late than never, I came across this from Wesley Smith writing at NRO that noted a reader’s wonderful and very apt metaphor. Wesley has of course frequently clashed with and contested  bioethicist Peter Singer’s way of thinking about human dignity.

Singer “admit[s] he wouldn’t raise a child with Down [syndrome], and justif[ies] the killing of the developmentally and cognitively disabled because, in his view, their lower mental capacities renders them of less moral worth than pigs.”

Wesley cites a poignant response from a reader:

I have a daughter with Down’s syndrome. Two other families in my neighborhood do, too.

Just as there are people who lack the capacity to appreciate any music (Milton Friedman, for instance, was one of them), there are people with the far more serious lack of capacity to appreciate the worth of other human beings.

The music of humanity that most of us hear is just noise to them. So it is with Singer…
Yes, and this may clarify attitudes that underlie a range of views touching on human dignity and human exceptionalism.

I am, for example, agnostic on the question of what role human activity plays in climate change. It seems undeniable, though, that many people with a pronounced tone deafness to the “music of humanity” have eagerly leapt on the issue as an occasion to punish people for reproducing and thriving. The idea of a well-populated planet fills them with loathing because when they think of human beings they hear only noise, not music.

So too with those who are all to eager to end a human life, whether of the young or the old, thereby extinguishing another source of unwanted noise.


This may, too, go some way to explaining varying attitudes about evolution. Clearly, some Darwinists seize on their theory as a way to rub our faces in what we share with animals, while dismissing what makes us unique. They hear only the noise, not the music.

On Prophecy the Watchtower Society's commentary.

What Is Prophecy?

The Bible’s answer
A prophecy is a message inspired by God, a divine revelation. The Bible says that prophets “spoke from God as they were moved by holy spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20, 21) So a prophet is one who receives God’s message and transmits it to others.—Acts 3:18.
How did prophets receive information from God?
God used several methods to transmit his thoughts to his prophets:

Writing. God used this method in at least one case by directly supplying to Moses the Ten Commandments in written form.—Exodus 31:18.
Oral communication through angels. For example, God used an angel to instruct Moses about the message he was to deliver to Pharaoh of Egypt. (Exodus 3:2-4, 10) When precise wording was crucial, God directed angels to dictate his message, as he did when he told Moses: “Write down these words, because in accordance with these words, I am making a covenant with you and with Israel.”—Exodus 34:27. *
Visions. These were sometimes given while the prophet was awake and fully conscious. (Isaiah 1:1; Habakkuk 1:1) Some were so vivid that the recipient participated in them. (Luke 9:28-36; Revelation 1:10-17) At other times, visions were conveyed while the recipient was in a trance. (Acts 10:10, 11; 22:17-21) God also transmitted his message by dreams while the prophet slept.—Daniel 7:1; Acts 16:9, 10.
Mental guidance. God guided the thoughts of his prophets to convey his message. This is the sense of the Bible’s statement: “All Scripture is inspired of God.” The phrase “inspired of God” can also be rendered “God-breathed.” (2 Timothy 3:16; The Emphasised Bible) God used his holy spirit, or active force, to “breathe” his ideas into the minds of his servants. The message was God’s, but the prophet selected the wording.—2 Samuel 23:1, 2.
Does prophecy always involve foretelling the future?

No, Bible prophecy is not limited to foretelling the future. However, most messages from God relate to the future, even if only indirectly. For example, God’s prophets repeatedly warned the ancient Israelites about their evil ways. Those warnings described the future blessings if the people would heed the warning, as well as the future calamity if they refused. (Jeremiah 25:4-6) The actual outcome depended on the course that the Israelites chose to follow.—Deuteronomy 30:19, 20.

Examples of Bible prophecies not involving predictions

On one occasion when the Israelites asked God for help, he sent a prophet to explain that because they had refused to obey God’s commands, He had not helped them.—Judges 6:6-10.
When Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman, he revealed things about her past that he could have known only by divine revelation. She recognized him as a prophet even though he had made no predictions about the future.—John 4:17-19.

At Jesus’ trial, his enemies covered his face, hit him, and then said: “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” They were not calling for Jesus to foretell the future but for him to identify by divine power who had hit him.—Luke 22:63, 64.

Mr.Berlinski on Darwinism's gatekeepers

David Berlinski on the Darwinian Guild
David Berlinski 

ENV: Darwinism is fiercely guarded by a scientific guild. What does the guild have at stake in this? Prestige? Money? To some observers, the defense seems impermeable. Do you see cracks in the fortress wall opening up?

DB: Fiercely guarded, but not, mind you, effectively guarded. If the Darwinian Guild, to adapt your phrase (since science has nothing to do with it), was interested in rational self promotion, the Guild would have never allowed its members to display in public their characteristic attitude of invincible arrogance and sheep-like stupidity. Just listen to them as they limber up in the insult room: Dumbski, Little Mikey Behe, Stevie Meyer (a regression to school yard taunts irresistible at both the Panda's Thumb and Talk Reason), the creationist playbook, creationist pablum, creationism in a cheap tuxedo, tired creationist canards, creationist cranks, ID'iots, creotards, creos, sky fairies, liars for Jesus. I've even seen Disco'Tute, this the invention of an elderly fellow at the Panda's Thumb who, like Polonius, imagines that he is the soul of wit. One lunatic named Quick or Quack -- or is that simply the sound of his posts? -- has become fond of the phrase mendacious intellectual pornography and has so overused it that his fellow bloggers have taken to attacking him. When they do, Quick as a Quack responds that they are guilty of mendacious intellectual pornography. The gabble is as unedifying as it is unending.

What is wonderful, I think, is the way in which membership in the Guild so runs to type, P.Z. Myers, to take the loudest case, reveling in his role as the hearty American rustic, a man prepared as circumstances demand either to desecrate the Catholic wafer or at dinner to immerse his feet in a platter of boeuf bourguignon. If in public he now refrains from withdrawing long spools of lint from his navel and examining them studiously that is because Richard Dawkins has advised him that at Oxford, it is no longer done.

When it is late at night and my old war wounds ache, I very much enjoy chasing down discussions on the Panda's Thumb in which members of the Guild begin to abuse one another, their indignation discharging itself in a series of menopausal hot flashes, the discussion skipping from disagreement to disgruntlement to peevishness and finally to insult, until at last someone stands accused of being a lying scum for Jesus.

I offer nothing as invention. I have made nothing up.

What I find most remarkable about the Darwinian Guild is what is least remarked. There is not a single first rate intelligence in the bunch. 

Not one.

**********************************

Let's go back. At some time in the late 1980s or so, Darwin found himself promoted from the back alley to the Big Tent, where he very profitably employed himself in peddling a universal acid, one said to cure warts as well as it explained speciation. A world view was in prospect. And cheap, too. Academics who had grown weary of being foxes were delighted to become hedgehogs. They turned to radical Darwinism and Richard Dawkins because they could find no other place to turn. Stephen Jay Gould had already straddled so many fences, after all, that friends were concerned for the integrity of his genitals. His supporters were never quite clear whether NOMA designated a position in thought or a wing of the Museum of Modern Art. There was no turning to him.

How much better Darwin's theory; once it had passed through the Dawkins mangler it emerged radical, simple, scientific, easy to grasp, and, of course, free of large wrinkles. 

Academics who ten minutes before had been occupied in affirming their allegiance to Mao, and before Mao to Freud, affirmed their allegiance to Darwin. They had sworn -- sworn! -- never to be swept off their feet again. Darwin swept them up anyway.

Love is like that.

But still, trend setters tend to drop trends the very moment that trends become trendy. If you have taken the trouble to evacuate Cannes in order to become a radical Darwinist in Toulon, the last thing you would wish to see at that darling little restaurant on the Quai is Barbara Forrest preparing herself to barge right in, and my goodness that woman positively honks.

There is a sense, then, that so far as radical Darwinism goes, the tide is beginning to move out. Even David Brooks at the New York Times is persuaded that if someone like Susan Blackmore is now babbling about memes and genes, it really may be time to cough discreetly and withdraw. There is a difference, after all, between favoring the latest fad and indulging the feeble-minded. A number of academics -- Tom Nagel and Jerry Fodor come to mind -- say now that they knew it all along.

Perhaps this is so.

Is there more in all this than fashion? A little more. It is good for the cause that evolutionary psychology flamed and went. It revealed the gap that haunts all of evolutionary thought, and that is the gap between what life is and what the theory explains. Ideological systems do not crumble from the center; it is the margins that are the first to go.

This sense of a withdrawal from commitment is hardly unique to Darwinism. A retreat from theory is general. For more than thirty years now, bright physicists have very diligently attempted to unify the Standard Model of Particle Physics and General Relativity. The result has been string theory. The hoped-for unification still seems far away.

Peter Woit and Lee Smolin have both made the case to the general pubic. Although physicists were indignant, those with a certain kind of sensitivity began to hedge their bets. Just recently, Steven Weinberg gave a fascinating talk at CERN. A great physicist, Weinberg had during the 1990s offered string theory his support, and using the anthropic principle, he had correctly predicted the positive value of the cosmological constant. At CERN, he was more tentative. Perhaps the world required no more than General Relativity and the Standard Model.

This sort of thing cannot be learned. It is a gift. Some men are born knowing how to tip-toe across the lawn at night, shoes in hand. Leonard Susskind, on the other hand, is not one of them. Just recently, he has proposed uniting the implausible in physics with the absurd in biology, writing dreamily about Universal Darwinism, its role in cosmology, the subordination of chance to the multiplication of possibilities, the anthropic principle, the Landscape.

The physicists who discovered Toulon when it was just a dreary fishing village have already made plans to move on. 

Rumor has it that Edward Witten and Steven Weinberg are thinking of Port au Prince.

They believe it is the coming thing.

Be sure to visit  www.daviberlinski.org  for more information.

The maths refuses to play nice with the Darwinian narrative.

Ancient technology challenges the Darwinian paradigm

The Science of the Human heart.

Religious minorities under the gun in India?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence except when made by atheists?

The Materialist “Extraordinary Claims” Double Standard
Posted by Barry Arrington

Materialist Carl Sagan is credited with the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”  The dictum is known as the “Sagan Standard,” but it should be known as the “Extraordinary Claims Fallacy,” as explained very well in this  article.

Materialists often use the Sagan Standard as a cudgel against theistic claims.  For example, as pointed out in the article, they may assert that people do not ordinarily rise from the dead, and therefore the claim that Jesus rose from the dead must be supported by something more than ordinary evidence; it must be supported by some vaguely defined standard of evidence they call “extraordinary evidence.”

My purpose here is not to debunk the Sagan Standard.  That has been done many times.  See the article linked above and  here  and here.  No, my purpose here is to note the hypocritical double standard in the way materialists employ the Sagan Standard.

Let’s take the example above.  People do not ordinarily rise from the dead.  True enough, but the claim that nonliving matter spontaneously organized itself into living matter is even more extraordinary.  There is no evidence (much less “extraordinary evidence”) to support the claim that it did.  As Franklin Harold has admitted, “There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

Yet every materialist believes the claim as a matter of course.

Matter does not ordinarily spontaneously organize itself into a sophisticated self-replicating code, and there is good reason to believe it is impossible to do so.

Yet every materialist believes the claim as a matter of course.

Staggeringly sophisticated systems such as the blood clotting cascade are not ordinarily assembled through the accretion of random errors.

Yet every materialist believes the claim as a matter of course.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  For the materialist the rule of the day is “extraordinary evidence is required for thee, but not for me.”


Update:  The wishful speculation quotation was erroneously attributed to James Shapiro.

Why there is no downside to studying the bible with Jehovah's servants.:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

Am I Expected to Become One of Jehovah’s Witnesses if I Study the Bible With Them?

No, you are not obligated in any way. Millions enjoy our Bible study program without becoming members of our congregations. * The purpose of the program is to show you what the Bible teaches. What you decide to do with that knowledge is up to you. We recognize that faith is a personal matter.—Joshua 24:15.

Can I use my own Bible during the study?

Yes. Although we enjoy using the modern-language New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures and will give you a copy free of charge if you would like to have one, we would be happy for you to use your own Bible. You can learn about the Bible’s message of hope and salvation from nearly any translation.

Why do you study with people who don’t join your faith?

Our primary motive is love for Jehovah God, who wants Christians to teach others what they have learned. (Matthew 22:37, 38; 28:19, 20) We feel that there is no greater privilege than to be “God’s fellow workers” in helping people to learn what his Word teaches.—1 Corinthians 3:6-9.

We are also motivated by love for our neighbors. (Matthew 22:39) We find joy in sharing with others the wonderful things we have learned.—Acts 20:35.

On the necessity of building a better design filter

Bad Design Inferences Can Land Innocent People in Jail
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

We’ve noted forensic science in previous discussions of sciences that show   intelligent design in action 
(along with archaeology, informatics, cryptology, and others). A good forensic analyst can determine where a particular uranium ore came from in Africa, even if it is found in North Korea. Crime labs routinely piece together clues to separate natural from intelligent causes in murder cases, and calculate the probabilities that clues are not due to chance.

When there is strong motivation to find a particular outcome, however, forensics can not only yield wrong answers, but put innocent people in jail. Courtrooms have long trusted forensic analysts as expert witnesses. Highly motivated prosecuting attorneys try to wring confident assertions from their expert witnesses about DNA matches to a suspect, ammunition links to his weapon, and the like. Often, defense attorneys lack the expertise to counter the assertions, and a jury can be swayed by what appears to be strong evidence of guilt.

In Nature, Robin Mejia argues for labeling the limits of forensic science. As a forensic scientist herself and a member of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (a consortium of four universities that aims to close holes in statistical analyses of pattern-matching evidence), she knows of many horror stories of innocent people wrongly convicted.

In 2005 I produced a documentary showcasing several cases in which flawed forensic analyses helped to get innocent people locked up. Riky Jackson went behind bars for two years because of incorrectly matched fingerprints. Jimmy Ray Bromgard spent nearly 15 years in jail, mainly because of hair comparisons that lacked scientific rigour. Now I’m a scientist who uses data analysis to promote human rights, and I’m disheartened to see these errors continue. That is why I hope that a US federal commission will vote next week to endorse practices that would transform how forensic analysts talk about evidence.

This would reduce the number of innocent people sent to prison. Consider Crystal Weimer, a single mother of three whose murder conviction was largely based on assertions that wounds on a dead man’s hand were made by Weimer’s teeth. Last June, after a multi-year, multi-lawyer saga, all charges against her were dismissed. [Emphasis added.]
Would these errors have been prevented by proper application of the Design Filter? As with criminal justice, natural causes are “innocent till proven guilty” of intelligent design. The burden of proof is on the forensic analyst to show that a given phenomenon could not have happened by chance. Only through sufficiently small probabilities can chance be eliminated. Coincidences do happen. This month, BBC News reported that a lucky couple won the lottery three times: in 1989, in 2010, and again this year.

Mejia lists what the proposals would do to tighten up loose design inferences:

The proposals that will be put to a vote on 10 April lay out how forensic analysts should testify about evidence such as shoeprints, bullet ballistics, blood spatter and glass shards. Analysts must explain how they examined evidence and what statistical analyses they chose. They must also describe inherent uncertainties in their measurements. Most importantly, experts must never claim with certainty that anything found at a crime scene is linked to a suspect, and they must always try to quantify the probability that observed similarities occurred by chance.
In forensics, that probability can be hard to calculate.

Even if scientists can objectively quantify the similarities between evidence from a crime scene and evidence from a suspect, no one knows how often such matches would occur by chance. Suppose striations on a bullet from a crime scene resemble those from a bullet test-fired from a suspect’s gun. How frequently would bullets from other guns have similar markings? Except for some types of DNA samples, just about every type of forensic comparison lacks that information.
She did not elaborate on which “DNA samples” are more amenable to eliminating chance when analyzing similarities, but that’s interesting. Clearly, some types of evidence can eliminate chance with much greater certainty.

One major boost for certainty in a design inference is the magnitude of the improbability of chance. In their recent film Origin, Illustra Media used Biologic Institute scientist Doug Axe’s calculation of chance generating a single functional protein of 100 amino acids in length, under ideal conditions, as 1 in 10 to the 161st power. Such an inconceivable number exceeds William Dembski’s “Universal Probability Bound” (1 in 10 to the 150th power) by 11 orders of magnitude — 100 billion times less probable. Clearly, if something is so improbable it will never ever happen in the entire universe, it’s not going to happen if it is 100 billion times less probable!

A sharp defense attorney might cross-examine the forensic analysis with pointed questions: How do you know it is that improbable? How was this figure calculated? Axe would explain his methods for measuring the degree of functional space within configuration space for proteins of that length. He would explain, additionally, that the amino acids have to form peptide bonds, not just any bond. And they would have to be left-handed. Writing on the whiteboard in court, he could justify his calculation. He might even show that his value underestimates the real improbability.

But even if Axe were off by billions, or indeed trillions or quadrillions or septillions, he could still convincingly eliminate chance with auxiliary calculations. Obviously, he could tell the jury, one protein is not alive. The simplest known living cell has over 300 different proteins. Discovery fellow Paul Nelson emphasizes this point in the film. Even if against all odds the single protein assembles by chance, the improbability ramps up much further when you factor in all the other requirements for a self-replicating cell. Tim Standish rubs it in by explaining that peptide bonds do not form in water anyway, and Biologic Institute scientist Ann Gauger closes all the other loopholes that origin-of-life materialists try to use to get around the vast improbability.

This, friends, is the level of certainty to be had in the design inference for life. Other intelligent-design sciences actually fall far short of this level of certainty. Whether in forensics, optimization, SETI, or one’s own experience, inferences to design as the best explanation will always leave some room for doubt. The jury in a murder case needs to maintain the accused’s innocence till proven guilty, and only convict when the evidence is “beyond reasonable doubt.”


There is no reasonable doubt that the origin of life occurred by design. One has to believe in miracles upon miracles to say chance could surmount such enormous, unthinkable, preposterous improbabilities. Scientists don’t reject design in cases involving far, far less robust calculations. Even a hiker infers design intuitively when seeing three rocks stacked on top of each other. How much more should one recognize design when the probability of chance is so absurdly low?

A brief history of the atom.

Yet more on proto-life v. Darwin.

New Study on the Evolution of Photosynthesis — A “Very Advanced Capability”
Cornelius Hunter

How exactly is evolution a fact when, as the number two science journal in the world put it, “How and when Cyanobacteria evolved the ability to produce oxygen through photosynthesis is poorly understood”?

Or as evolutionist Robert Blankenship admitted, “The whole question of the origin of cyanobacteria has long been a mystery because they kind of just appeared out of the tree of life with this very advanced capability to do oxygenic photosynthesis without any apparent forebears.”

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

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

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

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

It took a substantial unfolding of evolutionary time before oxygenic photosynthesis developed, perhaps because, as we know, it was a very challenging biochemistry to develop.
Nor is it as though the evidence we do have suggests any kind of a straightforward evolutionary development of photosynthesis.

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

The phylogenetic relationships of these prokaryotes suggest that the evolution of aerobic respiration likely occurred multiple times. This, along with evidence that the modern photosynthetic system apparently arose through the lateral gene transfer and fusion of two photosynthetic systems
This is absurd. Convergence, horizontal gene transfer, and fusion are all made up mechanisms to fix the problem that the scientific evidence contradicts evolutionary theory.

But it gets worse.

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

But from where?

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

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

The fact that Oxyphotobacteria possess the complex apparatus for oxygenic photosynthesis while their closest relatives do not suggests that Oxyphotobacteria may have imported the genes for photosynthesis from another organism via a process known as lateral gene transfer. It remains a mystery what the source of these genes was, “and because it happened long ago, it’s pretty likely that the group may actually have gone extinct,” Fischer said.
Photosynthesis is crucial to life and incredibly complex, evolutionists haven’t a clue how it could have evolved, it doesn’t fit the evolutionary common descent model and “just appeared” without a hint of where it came from, evolutionists are forced to make up a long just-so story to try to explain it, their story can’t be falsified because the origin of photosynthesis has long since disappeared, and on top of all this, evolutionists insist their theory is a fact, beyond all reasonable doubt.


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

On conflating politics with science.

March for Science Is Going to Be a Hell of a Mess — Bring It On
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Coming on April 22 to the Mall in Washington, DC, plus hundreds of other locations around the country and the world, the March for Science is gloriously misnamed. The word “science” has many meanings, but most people think of it as the evidence-based search for truth about the natural world, with no holds barred.

In this understanding of science, there are no preconceived conclusions, no sacred dogma, no repression of disfavored thinkers or politically incorrect thoughts, no politics, no parties, no agenda beyond teasing out the truth. The March for Science isn’t really about all that.

Sure, it pays lip service to this common conception of science, derived for many people from science classes you took in high school and college. But judging from the coverage we’ve seen up till now, it looks like the march is set to be an exercise in self-congratulation and virtue signaling, political axe-grinding, a veiled grab by ideological partisans for power and funding. We venture to predict that most marchers won’t even be scientists but, instead, people looking to seize hold of the prestige of science for their own ends.

There’s been much talk of diversity, as organizers have revised the diversity statement on their website multiple times, so that nobody — no possible sexuality, ethnicity, or other identify — feels left out. This rainbow coalition, however, expects lock-step agreement with its views on controversial scientific claims.

The organizers, meanwhile, have been racked by infighting, and some clear-eyed scientists have warned colleagues to beware of conflating science with political agendas.

To all appearances, it’s going to be a hell of a mess, and we say: Bring it on.

Why? Because Americans are going to get a look at something we’ve been telling you about for years. And it’s not going to be pretty. Science, more and more, has been hijacked. Rather than glorying in freewheeling debate, it increasingly insists on conformity. It’s in step with the times on university campuses, where intellectual diversity is frowned on at best, or, at worst, drowned out by screaming, sometimes violent young people.

Advocates of the theory of intelligent design have been protesting for open discussion for two decades now. We’ve seen the closing of the American mind up close. We were the canary in the coalmine, as Darwin skeptics became among the first scholars to feel the impact of the insistence on intellectual conformity.

The academy and the media ignored our warnings. Evolution’s apologists claimed there was no controversy about evolution. They denied the existence of the rumblings going on in peer-reviewed science journals.

On the issue of evolution, Stephen Meyer in Darwin’s Doubt (2013) documented the growing discontent among mainstream scientists with orthodox Darwinian theory. He was dramatically vindicated this past November when the august Royal Society in London met to consider “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology.” The very first speaker, Austrian evolutionary theorist Gerd Müller, stood up and acknowledged that evolution lacks explanations for three major mysteries of life’s history, what most people think of when they think of “evolution.” See my article with Paul Nelson, “Scientists Confirm: Darwinism Is Broken.”

But the media covers all this up. As Meyer notes in Darwin’s Doubt, “Rarely has there been such a great disparity between the popular perception of a theory and its actual standing in the relevant peer-reviewed science literature.”

Rather than candidly acknowledge dissent among scientists, the media together with the academic community insists on assent from the populace in favor of what Douglas Axe calls Darwinism’s “self-righteous monoculture,” or what Jonathan Wells describes in a new book as “zombie science.”

The March for Science promises to be a massive demonstration of that monoculture, applied to several areas of scientific, political, and cultural disagreement. The marchers will demand an end to that disagreement. And if recent episodes on campuses such as U.C. Berkeley and Middlebury College are any sign, we should not be surprised to see violence.

The March’s website includes a “Statement on Peaceful Assembly and Nonviolence.” “We do not condone violence,” they say. But if they weren’t well aware of the possibility, they wouldn’t need to have a statement on it.

We take no pleasure in saying “We told you so.” But…we did tell you so. This monoculture with its intense dislike of debate seems set to be exposed in all its ugly quasi-fascism. Getting an eyeful of that, for the public, may be a step on the road to recovering intellectual freedom.

Jonathan Haidt of Heterodox Academy hit the nail on the head in a Wall Street Journal interview this past weekend. He spoke specifically of campus disorder and disrespect for genuine diversity. But what happens in Washington, DC, will likely be an extension of that.

“What I think is happening,” Mr. Haidt says, is that “as the visible absurdity on campus mounts and mounts, and as public opinion turns more strongly against universities — and especially as the line of violence is crossed — we are having more and more people standing up saying, ‘Enough is enough. I’m opposed to this.’” Let’s hope.

Indeed, looking forward to April 22, that could be the best outcome for the March for Science.