Your survival guide to Darwinism's zombie apocalypse.

For the Public School Biology Teacher, Zombie Science Makes an Outstanding Resource
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Imagine you’re a public high school biology teacher in a state where you are permitted to share objective scientific critiques of evolutionary theory in the classroom – the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinism. Where do you turn for a reliable, responsible resource to help you clarify the issues for your students?

Here’s a great idea: check out biologist Jonathan Wells’s new book,  Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells and fellow biologist Ray Bohlin talk about that in a new ID the Future podcast.

Listen to it here now, or download it here.

Dr. Bohlin was closely involved with recent revisions to science standards in Texas, and he describes what happened in his state. So let’s say you’re a 9th grade biology teacher there. You want to talk with students about the consistent pattern of abrupt appearance of species in the fossil record – an observation inconsistent with Darwinian predictions; about the mystery of where biological information in DNA comes from, or the puzzle of whale evolution.

Zombie Science covers all of these subjects. The idea, obviously, isn’t to use it as textbook. It’s written (very accessibly) with the thoughtful adult in mind, not for a 9th grader. But teachers will find the book very useful for the background it provides.

Wells and Bohlin do note that in a public high school setting, it would be very ill advised to take the discussion some steps further to the question of design in life’s origins. If Darwinism is hobbled as an explanation for biology’s grandeur, however, what then? Dr. Bohlin admits that as a teacher, he’s uncomfortable saying “I don’t know.” But this is the wisest response.

Letting the stones speak.

Letting the stones speak II

Phillip Johnson tells why he will not buy the wares of a blind watchmaker.

Discarded on the battlefield?

Evolutionary Biologist Backs Off from Computer Simulations
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

PZ Myers is an atheist activist and evolutionary biologist whose blog is more about promoting his left-wing politics than it is about evolution. But this caught my eye. In denouncing me for a  brief post here recommending a podcast interview with Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics   co-author Winston Ewert, Professor Myers tellingly backs off from the idea of computer simulations of evolution,at least where the Cambrian explosion is concerned.

He doesn’t like our use of the term “falsify,” or that I call the geologically sudden Cambrian event an “event.” But these are minor points. This I find very interesting. Dr. Myers writes:

I also take exception to creationist’s [sic] constant focus on “computer models”. Computer models are useful tools for assessing some ideas, but they’re no substitute for real data…especially when the events you’re pursuing are not simple, and have a million different equally valid ways of producing a result. Again with the binary thinking: Cambrian evolution will not be described with a “yes” or a “no”.

I’m also going to call shenanigans on his assumptions. The Cambrian was not an “event”. It was a long, multi-million year series of events, and it was driven by multiple phenomena. There was the pre-Cambrian bioturbation revolution, in which the evolution of worms with hydraulic skeletons drove massive turnover of nutrients in sediments; there was the gradual increase in atmospheric oxygen, which made more energetic organisms possible; there was a long history of evolution of animal lineages before the Cambrian that set the stage with breadth and depth of diversity. How do you “simulate” all that on a computer? And why bother, because you know creationists like Klinghoffer will simply reject any result that shows an increase in complexity without an infusion of biological information (whatever that means) as cheating?

Most importantly, no one with any sense or competence would carry out such a simulation to falsify creationism, an endeavor with no reward, since they’ll just move the goalposts as they always have.

Now, Dr. Ewert’s point was that computer evolution simulations, as a rule, fail. I would expect this. If they succeeded, that would be a problem for alternatives to unguided evolution.

Ewert was simply reiterating the conclusion that he and co-authors Robert Marks and William Dembski reach, after meticulous investigation, in their book. As Marks puts it,“There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Period. By ‘model,’ we mean definitive simulations or foundational mathematics required of a hard science.” In turn, Marks, Dembski, and Ewert were responding to the challenge of a distinguished mathematician, Gregory Chaitin, in his book,Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical

Dr. Chaitin wrote:

The honor of mathematics requires us to come up with a mathematical theory of evolution and either prove that Darwin was wrong or right!

Giving some mathematical rigor to evolutionary theory is not the “focus” of “creationists,” as Myers thinks. Gregory Chaitin is not a “creationist,” or a proponent of the theory of intelligent design. But he is a candid and gracious interlocutor. In a comment about the Marks-Dembski-Ewert book, he said that it was “An honest attempt to discuss what few people seem to realize is an important problem.” Well, well.

Others feel similarly. Here are a couple of further comments gathered by the publisher. Bijan Nemati of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

With penetrating brilliance, and with a masterful exercise of pedagogy and wit, the authors take on Chaitin’s challenge, that Darwin’s theory should be subjectable to a mathematical assessment and either pass or fail. Surveying over seven decades of development in algorithmics and information theory, they make a compelling case that it fails.

Professor Donald Wunsch, who directs the Applied Computational Intelligence Lab at Missouri University of Science & Technology:

Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics is a lucid, entertaining, even witty discussion of important themes in evolutionary computation, relating them to information theory. It’s far more than that, however. It is an assessment of how things might have come to be the way they are, applying an appropriate scientific skepticism to the hypothesis that random processes can explain many observed phenomena.

That – whether “random processes can explain many observed phenomena” in life – is exactly the question to consider. Another atheist evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, used to think that simulations held out great promise for settling the issue. (See, for example, Jonathan Witt’s post,Richard Dawkins’s Weasel Program Is Bad in Ways You Never Dreamed ) This is not an issue that “creationists” invented.

And now, just as a major work of ID research arrives, at the cutting edge of thinking on the subject, PZ Myers whines about how simulations are hopeless anyway: “How do you ‘simulate’ all that on a computer? And why bother, because you know creationists like Klinghoffer will simply reject any result that shows an increase in complexity…”

It’s just what Robert Marks wrote here the other day.. He responded to ten common objections to the evidence in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. This one is Myers in a nutshell:

2. But Darwinian evolution is so complicated, it can’t be modeled!

If this objection is true, we have reached the same conclusion by different paths: There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

Which means that on anyone’s honest analysis, Darwinism fails to deliver on an expectation of what Marks calls “hard science.”

Myers is saying that simulations can’t work, and even if they could, “no one with any sense or competence” would “bother” going through with the exercise for fear of being shown the door by…who? Me? What?? Sorry, that is just a pathetic excuse, among the lamest from evolutionary advocates that I’ve heard in a while, which is saying something.

Incidentally, for more on the Cambrian explosion from the perspective of biological information and the challenge of making evolution mathematically rigorous, see our brief video, The Information Enigma, highlighting the work of Doug Axe and Stephen Meyer. Click on the image – a scene from the video – at the top of this post.

Giving"on time" a whole new meaning.

Hyper-precise atomic clocks face off to redefine time:
Next-generation timekeepers can only be tested against each other.

Elizabeth Gibney

02 June 2015


Happy birthday, caesium clock. Now move over. As the atomic clock used to define time itself turns 60, tests are set to begin on a new generation of clocks that are designed to give the caesium version a run for its money.

Such timekeepers would enable a variety of experiments, including testing whether the fundamental constants of nature really are constant over time, and, eventually, a more precise official definition of the second.

Atomic clocks track the frequency of electromagnetic waves emitted by atoms as they change energy states. First demonstrated by British physicist Louis Essen in June 1955, the caesium clock became the world’s official timekeeper in 1967 — defining the second as the time it takes for the microwaves that are absorbed or emitted when caesium atoms switch between states to cycle through 9,192,631,770 oscillations.

Over the past decade, various laboratories have created prototype optical atomic clocks, which use different elements such as strontium and ytterbium that emit and absorb higher-frequency photons in the visible spectrum. This finer slicing of time should, in principle, make them more accurate: it is claimed that the best of these clocks gain or lose no more than one second every 15 billion years (1018 seconds) — longer than the current age of the Universe — making them 100 times more precise than their caesium counterparts. Optical clocks are claimed to be the best timekeepers in existence, but the only way to verify this in practice is to compare different models against each other and see whether they agree.

Starting on 4 June, four European laboratories will kick off this testing process — the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, UK; the department of Time-Space Reference Systems at the Paris Observatory; the German National Metrology Institute (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany; and Italy’s National Institute of Metrology Research in Turin. Between them, the labs host a variety of optical clocks that harness different elements in different experimental set-ups.

For the first test, each institute will transmit a signal related to the optical frequency of its clocks to a satellite, which will beam the frequencies back down to the other labs. This will allow the labs to compare the frequencies of light emitted by their clocks and thus measure whether they all keep time to the same beat.

“We all think our clocks have a very good potential for achieving the highest accuracy.”
“It’s really exciting,” says Andrew Ludlow, a physicist at an optical-clock powerhouse run by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, who is not involved in the project. “A couple of comparisons of optical clocks have been made before, but on nothing like this scale.” With more clocks, it should be easier to root out the source of any discrepancies, adds Helen Margolis, a physicist at the NPL.

She notes that a higher frequency does not necessarily mean a more accurate clock, because varying sensitivities to environmental factors can affect the ability of different clocks to keep time in practice. The hope is that all the clocks will agree, suggesting that they are as precise as claimed. If some clocks do not, it will indicate that improvements are needed.

The initial test is only a prelude to a more accurate test, however, because it has one big limitation: to beam light to a satellite, it must be converted to a microwave frequency — which means that much of the potential extra accuracy gained by using visible light is lost. By increasing the rate of data transfer, the European labs hope to improve the accuracy of current state-of-the-art satellite comparisons by ten, but it will still be limited to one part in 1016. So the main function of the satellite test is to build confidence in optical clocks and show that they perform at least as well as existing caesium clocks, say researchers.

The more accurate test will transmit signals in the visible spectrum through fibre-optic cables to the labs. This will allow the clocks to be compared with an accuracy similar to the expected accuracies of the clocks themselves. Some of the labs have already established such links, and tests have begun on sections between Paris and Teddington, and Paris and Braunschweig. “Eventually, this would allow a four-way comparison. That’s the vision,” says Margolis.

“There is friendly competition,” she adds. “We all think our clocks have a very good potential for achieving the highest accuracy or we wouldn’t be working on them.”

Fibre-optic links between optical atomic clocks already exist elsewhere, such as between the NIST lab and its partner lab JILA, also in Boulder. But these span shorter distances than the European network and are mostly between just two labs. “Europe is in a unique position as it has a high density of the best clocks in the world,” says Fritz Riehle, a physicist at PTB.

Even if the clocks pass this later test, usurping the caesium clock to create a more precise definition of the second will not be easy. International atomic time — on which coordinated universal time, or UTC, is based — is currently calculated by averaging measurements from hundreds of atomic clocks. Doing the same with optical atomic clocks would require a way to aggregate time at this precise level; using the fibre-optic method across oceans is not currently feasible.

In the meantime, ever more precise time is important for improving global positioning systems, high-resolution radio astronomy and the time-stamping of financial transactions, as well as spotting tiny variations in fundamental constants. “Most attempts to unify gravity with other forces would lead to variations of fundamental constants in the expanding Universe,” says Marianna Safronova, a theorist at the University of Delaware in Newark.

On evidence lite cosmogony.

What Becomes of Science When the Evidence Does Not Matter?

Denyse O'Leary

Fine-tuning of the universe is so unpleasant a subject for materialists that it cannot really become a controversy. The desired evidence favors a random universe, accidentally spilled. Differing points of view on the findings would, of course, be funded by the government. But the randomness would be agreed upon up front.

On the other hand, if evidence matters, our universe appears fine-tuned.

In the end it is not really an issue about the evidence. Help! we are drowning in evidence! The universe’s expansion speed is said to be just right for life, the Higgs boson seems to be fine-tuned,  and Earth has a “unique” iron signature, just as a few examples.

This from Natalie Wolchover at  Quanta Magazine: “As things stand, the known elementary particles, codified in a 40-year-old set of equations called the ‘Standard Model,’ lack a sensible pattern and seem astonishingly fine-tuned for life.” Why does being fine-tuned for life “lack a sensible pattern”? What if that is the pattern?

The alternative sounds like saying that the letters STOP on a sign do not form a sensible pattern.

Cocktail napkin objections are always on offer, to be sure. For example, we are informed that evidence no longer counts the way it used to: We evolved to see patterns where there are none (the “staggering genius” of Charles Darwin). Indeed, the Principle of Mediocrity is now a  guiding assertion. The  Birthday Problem  is often used in pop science to claim that we underestimate what sheer randomness can do: “In a room of just 23 people there’s a 50-50 chance of two people having the same birthday. In a room of 75 there’s a 99.9% chance of two people matching.” Yes, but that embarrasingly familiar social icebreaker speaks only to what we might randomly guess, not to facts about our universe.

We are also told that the universe, apart from our planet, is  hostile to life. But if ours is a dedicated environment, could it not be like the human womb during a pregnancy: Life outside is hostile? How does that come to mean that there is no design? Would the circumstances not suggest the opposite?

Some ask, how could a designer know  know what to do, in order to create a universe and intelligent life? Well, it is hard to say, as we have never come close to that ourselves. Perhaps we should try it before offering criticism. Others ask, “Who designed the designer?” which feels somewhat like asking, “How did my old math teacher, who explained why one cannot divide by zero, come to exist?” Is there no point at which a given trail of enquiry legitimately ends?

Some questions do require a more thoughtful response: Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel informs us at Forbes that the odds of our existence are  not infinitely small, as we might have supposed, because our existence “already disproves that possibility!” But wait. We are not talking about the odds of an incidental unusual event but those of a long pattern of statistically abnormal events. Similarly, design is held in some quarters to be an argument from ignorance: “We also cannot rule out hitherto unknown naturalistic causation.” No, but we cannot rule out fairies at the bottom of the garden either. What’s realistic?

Canadian teacher Tim Barnett offers, by way of illustration of the problem of what to rule out: A lucky poker player has been dealt five royal flushes, noting that the probability of getting a single royal flush is one in 649,739… “After the fifth royal flush, you insist that I’m cheating. That is, I’m designing the outcome. But what if I responded, “Yes, five consecutive royal flushes is highly unlikely, but unlikely things happen all the time. In fact, for you to exist your mom and dad had to meet, fall in love, and have sex…” Does anyone ever use such a standard in real life?

Lawyer Barry Arrington plaintively asks, Why won’t these “improbable things happen all the time” people play poker with me?

Barnett notes, “It’s not merely the high improbability of an event that leads to a design inference. It’s the high improbability combined with an independently specified outcome that leads to the conclusion of design.” Presumably, that is why the cocktail set won’t play poker with Arrington.

And then religion looms: Christian evolutionists have begun to quarrel with fine-tuning, a development predicted by Wayne University biologist Wayne Rossiter in his  Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God, (pp. 106, 153) At BioLogos, Casper Hesp argues, “I believe it is unwise to turn fine-tuning into an argument based on the gaps in our understanding, because the properties of the universe could become more amenable to scientific explanation in the future.” That is a curious approach: Has Hesp any reason to expect that more discoveries will lead to fewer perceptions of fine-tuning? The trend has been very much the opposite.

Recently, atheist cosmologist Andreas Albrecht has also warned “deeply religious” people not to put their faith in “apparent” fine-tuning: “And when people do engage in these debates, they seem to find a reason to believe what they want to believe, regardless of how the science unfolds.”

But in this case, the evidence favors the “deeply religious.” Why should they not put their faith in it? And the future of science may depend in part on how the tension between evidence and naturalism plays out in a basic issue like this.

Instant animals.Just add hype.

Researchers Proclaim: Instant Animals by Chance

Evolution News & Views February 16, 2016 12:06 AM 

An old preacher wrote in his sermon notes, "Point weak; pound pulpit harder." That seems to happen, too, whenever a major new success for evolution is announced. A recent headline from the University of Oregon proclaimed, "A mutation, a protein combo, and life went multicellular." Sarah Kaplan at the Washington Post rose to the pulpit and began with a stirring invocation. "Startling new finding: 600 million years ago, a biological mishap changed everything."

How? Well, in the high-stakes game of evolution, mutations in DNA that get passed on can be like bad photocopies, but...

But if the flaw is wrong in exactly the right way, the incredible can happen: disease resistance, sharper eyesight, swifter feet, big brains, better beaks for Darwin's finches. [Emphasis added.]

Before we can catch our breath, Kaplan pounds the pulpit harder:

In a paper published in the open-access journal eLife this week, researchers say they have pinpointed what may well be one of evolution's greatest copy mess-ups yet: the mutation that allowed our ancient protozoa predecessors to evolve into complex, multi-cellular organisms....

Incredibly, in the world of evolutionary biology, all it took was one tiny tweak, one gene, and complex life as we know it was born.

Kaplan has not even reached the climax of her rhetoric, but before getting swept away by the performance, let's pause to look at the evidence. It comes from a paper in eLife by principal author Kenneth Prehoda at the University of Oregon who, with eight others, reported on the "Evolution of an ancient protein function involved in organized multicellularity in animals."

Basically, they claim that a single mutation "repurposed" an enzyme that made multicellularity possible. A common guanylate kinase enzyme (gk), used by all living things to regulate the supply of nucleotides for the genetic code, underwent a mutation that enabled it to learn a new function. The new GKPID enzyme, found primarily in animals and choanoflagellates, is important for cell adhesion and spindle orientation. The mutation gave it a new shape that enabled it to bind to a different ligand. Sometime later, GKPID found a new partner in Pins, a protein on the inner membrane that (with some helper enzymes) connects to both the spindle microtubule and the complex that receives signals from neighboring cells. Astrobiology Magazine explains why this appears significant:

In cells from a broad range of animal species, the spindle is rotated relative to surrounding cells by a protein scaffold known as the guanylate kinase protein interaction domain (GK-PID). It acts as a kind of molecular carabiner by binding to two different partner molecules: an 'anchor' protein on the inside of the cell membrane that indicates the position of adjacent cells and a motor protein that pulls on mitotic spindle filaments. Once hooked together by GK-PID, the motors pull the chromosomes toward the anchors, orienting new daughter cells in line with neighboring cells.

Prehoda gives the gist of the idea himself in a video clip:

It's a neat story; a random mutation at a critical juncture in the history of life opens up a world of possibilities for cells to work together. It's just what Darwin dreamed of: an unguided process, co-option, innovation, at the right place and the right time to create endless forms most beautiful. No wonder this story reverberated around the world in hyped headlines like Kaplan's. Pound the pulpit harder!

In the wild world of pre-complex life, this development was orders of magnitude better than Twitter for getting organisms organized. Every example of cells collaborating that has arisen since -- from the trilobites of 500 million years ago to the dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and you -- probably relied on it or some other similar mutation.

We'll have to add this one to the explanations for the Cambrian explosion. Mutation -- trilobites!

You can't blame Kaplan and other reporters for taking this supposition and running up the whole evolutionary tree with it. In Astrobiology Magazine's coverage, co-author Joe Thornton said, "That one ancient mutation yielded a wholly new molecular function, which helped set the stage for multicellular animals to eventually evolve." Indeed, Prehoda told the Oregon Register-Guard newspaper:

From a microbiology standpoint, Prehoda said, there's no argument about evolution. "You can make evolution happen on a rapid time scale in the lab," he said. "We've witnessed evolution. Evolution is just a fact, hands down."

Prehoda said this, incidentally, in response to "the ire of anti-evolutionists" when the story went viral. Reporter Diane Dietz says in her article, "University of Oregon researcher's paper on evolution stirs debate; he says the transformation of single-celled organisms to multi-celled creatures occurred more easily than many scientists believed." She continues:

A paper on evolutionary biology he and co-authors published this month on eLifeSciences, an electronic scholarly journal, was ground-breaking enough that scientists nationally took notice -- and so provocative that it became clickbait for opponents of evolutionary theory.

Those anti-evolutionists. All they've got is religion.

By contrast, the so-called intelligent design theory put forth by believers who say a divine entity created humans is based on the idea that organisms are so complex that they couldn't arise from the random, step-by-step process of evolution. As a result, Prehoda now finds his email box stuffed with missives from unhappy anti-evolutionists.

The writers' general message is: "You say we come from cells and monkeys, but we come from God," Prehoda said.

Obviously, that is not how ID advocates argue. Prehoda's story is so beset by scientific and logical flaws it doesn't need divine assistance to point it out. Ann Gauger gave a calm, scholarly critique of a similar claim about the origin of multicellularity last year, without any appeals to God, religion, or personal belief. Following her example:

The claim relies on circumstantial evidence.

It's a little hard to do "molecular time travel" when working with living cells, without presupposing evolutionary common ancestry.

If the guanylate kinase was co-opted to become GKPID, what about all the other things it connects to? Was everything co-opted from something else, including the Pins complex on the membrane, and the microtubules in the spindle complex? You can't push co-option too far, or else you end up borrowing from nothing.

It's nice that cells with GKPID can orient their spindles to neighboring cells, but that's a far cry from multicellularity. If one cell gets the mutation, it still doesn't have any goal to line up with its neighbor. Nothing interesting will happen (unless one presupposes that "evolution" will latch onto this new capability). Indeed, if all the choanoflagellates get the mutation, the best they could do is blindly point to neighboring cells in an unguided, chaotic manner.

The signal from the neighboring cell has to be interpreted. Nothing interesting will happen if the mutant hollers, "I've got my carabiner ready!" and the neighbor is deaf, or responds, "No comprendo."

Ann Gauger's critique of the previous such claim bears repeating: much, much more is involved. One of the "simplest" colonies of all, Volvox, has sexual reproduction, alternation of generations, inversion, digestive enzymes, gene regulation, specialized roles, and more.

The authors use loaded words like ancient and primitive copiously. These terms presuppose what they need to prove about evolution. There's nothing primitive about a choanoflagellate, with its genetic code, ribosomes, flagellum and all the complexities of a living cell.

Even if a guanylate kinase differs from GKPID by one mutation, they are both functional within complex systems and regulatory networks. Many other proteins are structurally similar but have different functions. Similarity does not prove ancestry.

If GKPID appeared by mutation, how did the rest of the cell know what to do with it? There has to be genetic coding and gene regulation. Unless the new function is encoded in harmony with the systems that regulate it, it will be treated as a defect and eliminated. To think it will immediately be useful smacks of Lamarckism.

10. The authors admit a "long time" gap between the mutation and the ability to link up to the Pins complex and the spindle orientation complex. Was this a "latent capacity" sitting around waiting to be utilized? "We agree that this is puzzling," they admit. "Because whatever we say here would be very speculative, we did not go into much detail on this point." Even more puzzling, the GKPID does not bind to the Pins complex in the same organism, but only to one from a fruit fly!

In a moment of epistemic modesty, the authors admit that their supposition doesn't really amount to much. It's a case of glittering generalities at best, sweetened with high hopes.

Our analyses do not establish a complete history of the spindle orientation complex. Many key steps remain to be reconstructed, including how and when the interaction between GKPID and KHC-73 evolved, the mechanisms by which Pins' acquired its linker and GoLoco sequences, and the relationship of these components to other molecular complexes and pathways involved in animal spindle orientation. Despite these knowledge gaps, our observations establish a broad overview of the history of the GKPID complex, provide a detailed mechanistic reconstruction of a key event, and point to the importance of reusing molecules -- and specific surfaces within them -- for fortuitous new purposes that have the potential to become biologically essential.

Unusual for a journal paper, this one includes the dialogue between the reviewers and the authors. The criticisms and responses are well worth reading. Despite the editors' interest in publishing this paper, they were clearly concerned about the authors' tendency to overstate their case.

Our major critique is that the broader interpretation is overstated in terms of the centrality of KHC73-DLG-PINS to spindle orientation in all animals and multicellularity in general, and in terms of external orientation being a unique novelty of animals. We also think that some clarification / caveats are needed regarding the experiments on positioning in Choanoflagellates. Finally, we think the manuscript would benefit from more discussion of some puzzling aspects of the co-evolution of GKPID and PINS (or lack thereof).

The editors charged "overstated" multiple times. Embarrassed, the authors confessed and repented somewhat:

We have modified the text in numerous ways to be more cautious on this point and to base our claims more solidly on what is known in the literature....

More generally, we have gone through the text and have changed our wording to dispel the impression that GKPID complex is the sole driver of spindle orientation in all animals and all cell types and to avoid the implication that the evolution of the GKPID complex explains all instances of spindle orientation in all animals.

Unfortunately, this confession didn't make it into Kaplan's sermon or into Prehoda's bombast, "We've witnessed evolution. Evolution is just a fact, hands down." Overstated? That's an understatement.

Yet more on cessationism Vs.continuationism.

by Tom Pennington

Pastor-Teacher, Countryside Bible Church, Southlake, Texas 

When Grace to You asked me to present the biblical case for cessationism at the Strange Fire conference last October, I was excited about the opportunity. Although I am a convinced cessationist and had addressed this issue with my own congregation, I spent several months studying the Scripture and reading the relevant literature on both sides of this contentious issue. But it wasn’t long before my initial euphoria turned to discouragement. 

The problem was not (as some continuationists argue) because there is insufficient biblical evidence for cessationism to preach on for an hour. My problem was the sheer extravagance of biblical material. I was faced with a difficult decision between equally tempting choices: to spend the hour I was given developing one argument or to present a brief summary of the primary arguments. Both choices were fraught with slippery slopes and gaping chasms. If I concentrated on one argument, the uninformed on both sides of the issue would race to the conclusion that cessationism is a tune with only one string and one note. But if I tried to cover all the main arguments, I would have to leave crucial points and counterpoints on the cutting-room floor, appearing to leave holes in an argument that has none. If you listened to my message at Strange Fire, you know that I eventually opted for the lesser of two evils—the second.   

In light of the difficulty of that decision, I have been fascinated by the responses to the biblical case I presented. Cessationists have written to say that the conference strengthened their confidence in the Scripture. I have heard from practicing charismatics who had been told there are no biblical arguments for cessationism but who were troubled by what they saw in their churches. In God’s providence they listened to Strange Fire, the truth they heard resonated with their hearts, and they have since left the charismatic movement for good.

Frankly, much of the online opposition has been all heat and no light. Some critiques have been so apparently self-defeating that they neither require nor deserve a reasoned response. Among the mostly gracious and careful responses to the case for cessationism, Andrew Wilson’s critique stands out. Several on both sides of the issue have suggested I respond to the issues he raised. So that is what I will do here.

Surprisingly, Wilson devotes the first half of his critique to defending the common arguments for continuationism that I mentioned in passing in my introduction.  First, he quotes the arguments as Tim Challies summarized them, and then he defends them. So I will quote Challies’s summaries and the key portions of Wilson’s critique.

(1) The New Testament doesn’t say they [miraculous gifts] have ceased. But then again, it doesn’t say that they won’t either.

Wilson responds:

The burden of proof is firmly on the shoulders of the one who would place a break at the end of the New Testament period, for the simple reason that, throughout Scripture, substantial changes in the way God communicates with people—and cessationism posits a substantial change . . . —are clearly communicated.

But there were, in fact, two huge changes at the end of the New Testament period—changes that even most charismatics (including Wilson) admit can be discerned from the New Testament but that are not clearly announced in one clarion passage. Those two changes are (1) the end of the unique apostolate and (2) the end of canonical revelation. When charismatics state their case against cessationism as Wilson does, they unintentionally also surrender the field to apostolic succession and ongoing canonical revelation.

(2) 1 Corinthians 13:10 - they [continuationists] say this means that only when Christ returns will the partial gifts of tongues and prophecies cease. This implies that the gifts continue. But this is an uncertain interpretation.

To this argument Wilson responds:

The charismatic case here [1 Corinthians 13:10] is immensely strong (and the overwhelming scholarly consensus in the commentaries would confirm this). For Paul, the imperfect (prophecy, tongues, knowledge) will cease at the arrival of the perfect (the return of Christ, when we shall see him face to face). Not much uncertainty there.

That is a case of both overstatement and misdirection. It is overstatement because a survey of commentaries will reveal as many as ten possible interpretations of what “the perfect” is. It is misdirection in that charismatics ignore that for most of church history this text was used primarily to argue against the continuation of the miraculous gifts. I freely admit that some cessationists have tried to make this text bear too much weight. But it is equally true that many charismatics, including Wilson in the quote above, try to make it bear too much weight in their defense. 

(3) The New Testament speaks only of the church age, and so, [continuationists] argue, the gifts that began the church age should continue throughout it. They say we artificially divide it between apostolic and post-apostolic eras. But they do this, too, by not believing that the apostolic office still continues.

Wilson writes:

Actually, a huge number of charismatics don’t believe this at all. Many believe, for reasons outlined in my recent article in JETS, that even in the New Testament period there were eyewitness apostles (the twelve, Paul, James) and people who never witnessed the resurrection but were referred to as apostles anyway (Apollos, very likely Barnabas, Silas, possibly Timothy, and so on), and that while the eyewitness category ceased with Paul, the other category didn’t.

Here, I confess, I was personally disappointed in Wilson. His comments reveal either that he just read the paraphrased version of my message on Tim Challies’s site or that he was careless—either of which is troubling in a person of his intelligence and education.

If he had listened to my complete message or read the transcript, he would have known that I acknowledged that most charismatics don’t believe there are eyewitness apostles today. That was my point. I specifically said that unless charismatics believe that there are apostles today at the same level as Peter and Paul—and most charismatics don’t—they also divide the church age. And they relegate at least apostleship solely to the apostolic era. They have become de facto cessationists—at least in part.

Positing a second tier of apostles as some do (which ignores any nontechnical, nontitular sense of the word apostolos in the New Testament) doesn’t change the point.  In fact, their protest proves the point. There was a marked difference between the apostolic and postapostolic eras. And by agreeing that the most significant mark of the age of the apostles—the men Jesus Himself appointed and called to be His official proxies—ceased, charismatics tacitly accept one of the key tenets of cessationism.

(4) 500 million professing Christians who claim charismatic experiences can’t all be wrong. But if we accept this, then logically we should accept the miracles attested to by one billion Catholics in the world.  The truth is that 500 million-plus people can be wrong.

Wilson responds:

This is not really a fair representation of any responsible charismatic argument. Of course billions of people can be wrong: billions of people do not believe the gospel, and virtually no charismatic would contest that. A fairer representation would be to say that, in order to explain the enormous number of miraculous experiences testified to by charismatics . . . a cessationist has to resort to an awful lot of accusations of fraud, deliberate deceit and delusion amongst some extremely level-headed, critical and theologically informed individuals.

My statement is not only a fair representation of responsible charismatic argument, it is a very common—albeit informal—argument of reputable charismatic authors and scholars, as well as laymen. To appeal as Wilson does to what he calls the “enormous number of miraculous experiences testified to by charismatics” only reinforces my point. We have to accuse more than a billion Roman Catholics of “fraud, deliberate deceit and delusion” to reject their “miracles,” yet that is exactly what the church has always done—and what I suspect Wilson himself does. If charismatics want to argue that sheer numbers lend credibility to their “miracles,” they have to own the weakness that comes with this argument.

After spending half of his critique on the arguments continuationists use to defend their position, to which I devoted less than five minutes, Wilson comes to the primary arguments I presented.

I began by defining cessationism. Cessationists believe it is neither the Spirit’s plan nor His normal pattern to distribute miraculous spiritual gifts to Christians and churches today as He did in the time of the apostles. Those gifts ceased being normative with the apostles. In Scripture we find at least seven arguments that the miraculous gifts have ceased. Again, since Wilson quotes Challies’s summary of my points, I will as well.

(1) The unique role of miracles.  There were only three primary periods in which God worked miracles through unique men. The first was with Moses; the second was during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha; the third was with Christ and his apostles.  The primary purpose of miracles has always been to establish the credibility of one who speaks the word of God—not just any teacher, but those who had been given direct words by God.

Wilson writes:

The crucial word here, which appears twice and is somewhat mysterious on both occasions, is “primary.” Where in the Bible does it say that the miracles of Moses, Elijah or Elisha are more “primary” than those of Joshua (opening the Jordan and stopping the sun in its tracks isn’t bad), or Samuel (who had the odd prophecy), or David or Solomon, or Isaiah, or Daniel, or for that matter any of the canonical prophets (who, by Pennington’s definition, are exercising miraculous gifts)?

First of all, the point is not about God’s working miracles directly—something He did as He chose in both Old and New Testament history. Instead, the focus was on those epochs in redemptive history when God chose to give men the capacity to work miracles. There is a difference between God’s giving Moses the capacity to perform miracles and God’s directly giving Samson superhuman strength. Samson used the strength God gave him, but he never performed a miracle. And prophecy is a miraculous gift because God miraculously reveals His truth to a man. But the prophet is not performing a miracle.

When you examine the biblical record, it is clear that there were three main time periods when there were miracle-working men. Again, Wilson apparently didn’t listen to my message or read the transcript, because the first period I mentioned was not that of Moses but that of “Moses and Joshua.” And although God performed miracles directly during the ministries of Samuel, David, Isaiah, and Daniel, where is the biblical evidence that they were given miracle-working power in the way Moses and Joshua or Elijah and Elisha were? Create a comprehensive list of miracles performed by men in Scripture—not those performed by God directly—and the resulting list will support the point. In thousands of years of human history, there were only about two hundred years in which God empowered men to work miracles. And even during those years, miracles were not common, everyday events.

Wilson adds:

Where does it say that the “primary” purpose of a miracle is always to establish the credibility of the one who speaks the word of God?  One might have thought the primary purpose of the exodus was to lead Israel out of slavery, and the primary purpose of the fall of Jericho was to defeat God’s enemies, and the primary purpose of the destruction of the Assyrians was to preserve Jerusalem, and so on. And even if the “primary” purpose of all miracles was authenticating a preacher, which cannot be shown, it would by no means indicate that this was the only purpose.

When God granted Moses—the first human miracle worker—the power to work miracles, He gave Moses only one reason: “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you” (Exodus 4:5). I provided a number of other examples throughout the Scripture to demonstrate that God’s primary purpose in giving men power to work miracles was to validate them as His messengers.  Of course, God used Moses’ miracles to free Israel from Egyptian bondage. But why did God give miracle-working capacity to Moses, rather than simply free the Israelites Himself? According to God’s own statement, it was to validate His messenger. At Sinai, no one doubted that Moses spoke for God. Look up the other references I cited and you will find exactly the same pattern.

(2) The end of the gift of apostleship. In two places in the New Testament Paul refers to the apostles as one of the gifts Christ gave his church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4).

Most Christians, including most evangelical charismatics, agree that there are no more apostles like the twelve or like Paul. So at least one New Testament gift—the gift of apostleship—has ceased. That means there is a significant difference in the work of the Spirit between the time of the apostles and today, because one of the most miraculous displays of the Spirit disappeared with the passing of the apostolic age. Once you agree that there are no apostles today at the same level with Peter and Paul, you have admitted there was a major change in the gifting of the Spirit between the Apostolic Age and the post-apostolic age. The one New Testament gift most frequently associated with miracles—the gift of apostleship—ceased.

Wilson responds:

This argument takes us nowhere: all agree that the eyewitness apostles have ceased, and all agree that (say) pastors and teachers have not ceased.  Only if we can show that all New Testament miracles, prophecies, tongues and healings came via apostles—which is patently not the case—would this hold any water at all.

Here, Wilson’s argument isn’t clear, but he seems to be relying on an article he wrote for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) in which he argues for a two-tier approach to apostleship.  He maintains that the Twelve, Paul, and several others were “eyewitness apostles,” and those have ceased. But there are lower level apostles who are the Spirit’s ongoing gift to the church. 

Wilson concludes his JETS article with this:

Within conservative evangelicalism, it has become commonplace to divide the apostolate into two, neat types. There are the Apostles (capital “A”) of Jesus Christ, comprising the twelve, James, Barnabas, possibly Silas, and then finally Paul: eyewitnesses of the resurrection, officers of the church, personally commissioned by Jesus, and with the capacity to write or authorise the scriptures, pioneer into new areas, lay foundations in churches, and exercise authority over them. Then there are the apostles (lower case “a”) of the churches, including Andronicus, Junia, Epaphroditus, the brothers of 2 Corinthians 8:23, and possibly Timothy: messengers that were sent out among the churches, but with no eyewitness appearances or commission from Jesus, and without the capacity to write Scripture, pioneer, lay foundations or exercise authority over churches.  On this view, although there is occasional debate (as to which category, say, Ephesians 4:11 should correspond to), it is theoretically possible to dig up every occurrence of the word apostolos and put it squarely into one of these two categories.

The view that Wilson rejects above is not merely the common view of “conservative evangelicalism.” It is the understanding of historic Christianity and even of many charismatic theologians. Wilson finishes his JETS article by saying that a possible reference to Apollos as an apostle in 1 Corinthians 4:9 (which the entire article argues for but never proves) “may . . . suggest that, according to Paul, although the appearances of the risen Jesus ceased with Paul’s encounter on the Damascus road, the apostoloi did not” (emphasis added). In other words, maybe there is another office in the church—Apostle, Second-Class—that continued after the death of the Paul and the twelve.

The weight of proving this novel idea falls on charismatics. Wilson’s conclusion that the best evidence he can muster “may suggest” a two-tiered apostolate is hardly enough to overturn two millennia of Spirit-enabled interpretation. The argument for cessationism based on the end of the gift of apostleship stands.

(3) The foundational nature of the New Testament apostles and prophets. The New Testament identifies the apostles and prophets as the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20-22). In the context, it is clear that Paul is referring here not to Old Testament prophets but to New Testament prophets. Once the apostles and prophets finished their role in laying the foundation of the church, their gifts were completed.

Wilson:

This [argument] runs aground on the sandbanks of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12-14 in particular, in which it is assumed that local churches experience prophecy in their meetings, yet without such prophecy serving as foundational for the church for all time, or being written down in the canon. Clearly, there is a foundational role for the apostles and prophets of whom Paul speaks in Ephesians (2:20; 3:6), but this in no way implies either that all prophecy has now ceased, or (obviously) that tongues or healings have now ceased.

Most charismatics admit that the New Testament “prophets of whom Paul speaks in Ephesians (Ephesians 2:20; 3:6)” play “a foundational role.”  But then without any clear scriptural support, they assume that the prophecy mentioned in Romans and 1 Corinthians must be lower level prophecies. However, if there are not two levels of prophecy—which remains unproven—then Ephesians 2 is definitive. Both the apostles and prophets were the foundation of the church, and their roles were never intended to last.

(4) The nature of the New Testament miraculous gifts. If the Spirit was still moving as he was in the first century, then you would expect that the gifts would be of the same type. Consider the speaking of tongues. At Pentecost, the languages spoken were already existing, understandable languages. The New Testament gift was speaking in a known language and dialect, not an ecstatic language like you see people speaking in today. Prophecies (which were then infallible) and healings are also different in character today from the NT period.

Wilson writes:

Again, this hits serious problems when it comes to 1 Corinthians 12-14, which scholars widely agree refers to ecstatic speech rather than known earthly languages, and to prophetic revelation which needs to be weighed or judged, rather than instantly being added to the infallible canon of scripture.

Contrary to what Wilson implies, there are many scholarly works and commentaries that do not support the view that 1 Corinthians 14 refers to ecstatic speech. But even more important is the analogy of Scripture. When Luke wrote the book of Acts, he knew what Paul had written six or seven years earlier in 1 Corinthians 14. Moreover, Luke knew what was actually happening in the church in Corinth. Yet without any caveat, Luke defines speaking in tongues as “we hear them speak in our own language” or our own dialect (Acts 2:7-8). 

Wilson:

To say, further, that healings are different in character is to beg the question: there are numerous testimonies out there (I have heard many personally) of blind eyes seeing, deaf ears opening, the lame walking and even the dead being raised, unless one prejudges the veracity of such testimonies by assuming cessationism (or, of course, naturalism).

It is important to remember that all Christians believe God can cause blind eyes to see, open deaf ears, and even cause the lame to walk again. But the key issue is whether God still distributes to people the miraculous ability to heal others. When it comes to the supposed modern miraculous gift of healing, there are always “testimonies out there” and those who believe them “have heard many personally.” But there are rarely firsthand accounts, and there is never verifiable evidence of the miraculous gift of healing—much less of the ability to raise the dead!

(5) The testimony of church history. The practice of apostolic gifts declines even during the lifetimes of the apostles. Even in the written books of the New Testament, the miraculous gifts are mentioned less as the date of their writing gets later. After the New Testament era, we see the miraculous gifts cease. John Chrysostom and Augustine speak of their ceasing.

Wilson:

There are two errors here. The first is that miracles are mentioned less in New Testament books that are written later; the book of Acts is certainly written after the books of 1 Thessalonians and James, and very probably after the other Paulines and Petrines, yet contains far more miracles (and John, among the latest books, has one or two miracles in it as well!).

I was not speaking of the working of miracles by the apostles (2 Corinthians 12:12) as Wilson seems to imply, but rather of the miraculous gifts given to individual Christians other than the apostles. When you trace the practice of the miraculous gifts by those other than the apostles against a time line of New Testament history and its letters, you will find that the miraculous gifts decline in their mention and use even during the apostolic period.

Wilson continues:

The second [error] is that we see the miraculous gifts cease after the New Testament; again, this begs the question by assuming that subsequent accounts of and responses to miraculous or prophetic activity, from the Didache and the Montanists onwards, are inaccurate or exaggerated. . . .  In any case, this sort of argument—that, since something gradually disappeared from the church over the course of the first two or three centuries, it must therefore be invalid—should strike any five sola Protestant as providing several hostages to fortune.”

Many scholars believe the original version of the Didache was probably written during the apostolic age, so it proves nothing about the continuation of the miraculous gifts after the time of the apostles. There are scattered reports of the miraculous throughout church history, but many of them are connected to groups and leaders whose doctrine was seriously aberrant in some way. And in spite of Tertullian’s connection to the Montanists, the church eventually spoke with one voice against them.

The consistent testimony of the church’s key leaders is that the miraculous and revelatory spiritual gifts ended with the Apostolic Age—they didn’t “gradually disappear” over several centuries. I provided a sampling of quotes from across church history as proof. John MacArthur cites many others in his book Strange Fire. The consistent testimony of the Christian church’s key leaders across church history poses a huge problem for our continuationist friends. As Sinclair Ferguson expressed it, continuationism provides no convincing theological explanation for the disappearance of certain gifts during most of church history.

(6) The sufficiency of Scripture. The Spirit speaks only in and through the inspired Word. He doesn’t call and direct his people through subjective messages and modern day bestsellers. His word is external to us and objective.

Wilson responds:

This is not so much an argument for cessationism as a restatement of it. Suffice it to say that James and Paul, to mention just two apostles, envisage Christians being given wisdom by God, experiencing the Spirit crying out “Abba!” in their hearts, and being given spontaneous revelation during church meetings, none of which conflict with their high view of the scriptures.”

I intentionally did not develop this point, because I knew Steve Lawson planned to address this issue in his message on sola Scriptura. You can listen to or read Steve’s excellent defense here. 

 (7) The New Testament governed the miraculous gifts. Whenever the New Testament gift of tongues was to be practiced, there were specific rules that were to be followed. There was to be order and structure, as well as an interpreter. Paul also lays down rules for prophets and prophecy. Tragically most charismatic practice today clearly disregards these commands. The result is not a work of the spirit but of the flesh.

Wilson writes:

I’m not qualified to comment on whether this is true of “most” charismatics, rather than “some,” but to the extent that this is true, I wholeheartedly agree with Pennington that miraculous gifts need to be governed and practiced wisely, in line with the New Testament. Clearly, however, this is not an argument against using charismatic gifts—it is an argument against using charismatic gifts badly.

To his credit, Wilson decries the unbiblical practice of the charismatic gifts. And I would agree that there are a few charismatic churches making valiant efforts at following Paul’s directives. But he is too well read and informed not to know that charismatics claim to be 500 million strong. Of that number, more than 125 million are Roman Catholics who have embraced a false gospel. And of the remaining number, even charismatic writers estimate that close to 40 percent of the 500 million are involved with the prosperity gospel (other estimates have the percentage as high as 90 percent). Add in the huge audiences watching charismatic television programs and services where the biblical directives are not followed, and far more than 50 percent of a movement that claims to be a work of the Spirit is either preaching a damning gospel or completely disregarding the Spirit’s clear New Testament commands regarding practice of the gifts. That is more than a few charismatics behaving badly. Instead, it demonstrates that the movement as a whole can claim neither the Scripture nor the Spirit.

Wilson concludes his critique: “I think that the cessationist position is biblically distorted, theologically confused and historically exaggerated.” Sadly, it is the charismatic position that is out of step with the Scripture, with historic theology, and with the key figures of evangelical church history. The biblical case for cessationism still stands.

If you want to read more on charismatic issues, see the brief bibliography below.

A Brief Bibliography of Books Arguing for Cessationism

John MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos.

John MacArthur, Strange Fire.

Samuel Waldron, To Be Continued?.

[Best brief work on the issue for laymen]

Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit.

[Best work on the role of the Holy Spirit, and a helpful defense of cessationism]

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.  Perspectives on Pentecost.

[Recommended]

B.B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles.

[Classic historical defense of the end of the miraculous but not a biblical defense; recommended]

Robert Reymond, What About Continuing Revelations and Miracles in the Presbyterian Church Today?

[Recommended; deals primarily with the gift of tongues but also addresses the issue of cessation; out of print]

Larry Pettigrew, The New Covenant Ministry of the Holy Spirit.

[Helpful work on the roles of the Spirit in the Old Testament & New Testament; section on cessation and tongues is helpful]

Walter Chantry, Signs of the Apostles.

[Helpful but a bit dated]

Robert Thomas, Understanding Spiritual Gifts.

[Great exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14]

Robert Gromacki, The Modern Tongues Movement.

R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit.

Arthur Johnson, Faith Misguided: Exposing the Dangers of Mysticism.

Graham Cole, He Who Gives Life: the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.