The enemy of my enemy..?

At the house next door: No one's home?

 New Analysis Casts Doubt on Claims for Life on Venus

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

A new study throws cold water (vapor?) on an earlier paper that suggested that aerial life forms could exist in Venus’s massive cloud cover:

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the ‘life in the clouds’ hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades, and found that life cannot explain the composition of the Venusian atmosphere.

Any life form in sufficient abundance is expected to leave chemical fingerprints on a planet’s atmosphere as it consumes food and expels waste. However, the Cambridge researchers found no evidence of these fingerprints on Venus. 

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, “NO SIGNS (YET) OF LIFE ON VENUS” AT SCIENCE DAILY (JUNE 14, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

The contention in the earlier paper was that chemicals present in Venus’s clouds are consistent with production by life forms.

Not a Biosignature

Although the authors of the study published last week, Jordan Chortle and P. B. Rimmer, say that the specifics of Venus’s atmospheric chemistry are not a biosignature (evidence of life), they stress that the atmosphere on Venus is nonetheless “strange.”

They hope that their work will assist in identifying other promising sites for extraterrestrial life:

”To understand why some planets are alive, we need to understand why other planets are dead,” said Shorttle. “If life somehow managed to sneak into the Venusian clouds, it would totally change how we search for chemical signs of life on other planets.”

“Even if ‘our’ Venus is dead, it’s possible that Venus-like planets in other systems could host life,” said Rimmer, who is also affiliated with Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “We can take what we’ve learned here and apply it to exoplanetary systems — this is just the beginning.”

They hope their method of analysis will prove a help later this year when the James Webb Space Telescope starts returning images of planets outside our solar system.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Paleo Darwinism V. evolution in general?

 Jason Rosenhouse, a Crude Darwinist

William A. Dembski

I am reviewing Jason Rosenhouse’s new book, The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism (Cambridge University Press), serially. For the full series so far, go here.

For Rosenhouse, Darwin can do no wrong and Darwin’s critics can do no right. As a fellow mathematician, I would have liked to see from Rosenhouse a vigorous and insightful discussion of my ideas, especially where there’s room for improvement, as well as some honest admission of why neo-Darwinism falls short as a compelling theory of biological evolution and why mathematical criticisms of it could at least have some traction. Instead, Rosenhouse assumes no burden of proof, treating Darwin’s theory as a slam dunk and treating all mathematical criticisms of Darwin’s theory as laughable. Indeed, he has a fondness for the word “silly,” which he uses repeatedly, and according to him mathematicians who use math to advance intelligent design are as silly as they come.

Anti-Evolutionism or Anti-Darwinism?

In using the phrase “mathematical anti-evolutionism,” Rosenhouse mistitled his book. Given its aim and arguments, it should have been titled The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Darwinism. Although design theorists exist who reject the transformationism inherent in evolutionism (I happen to be one of them), intelligent design’s beef is not with evolution per se but with the supposed naturalistic mechanisms driving evolution. And when it comes to naturalistic mechanisms driving evolution, there’s only one game in town, namely, neo-Darwinism, which I’ll refer to simply as Darwinism. In any case, my colleague Michael Behe, who also comes in for criticism from Rosenhouse, is an evolutionist. Behe accepts common descent, the universal common ancestry of all living things on planet earth. And yet Behe is not a Darwinist — he sees Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection acting on random variations as having at best very limited power to explain biological innovation. 

Reflexive Darwinism

Rosenhouse is a Darwinist, and a crude reflexive one at that. For instance, he will write: “Evolution only cares about brute survival. A successful animal is one that inserts many copies of its genes into the next generation, and one can do that while being not very bright at all.” (p. 14) By contrast, more nuanced Darwinists (like Robert Wright) will stress how Darwinian processes can enhance cooperation. Others (like Geoffrey Miller) will stress how sexual selection can put a premium on intelligence (and thus on “being bright”). But Rosenhouse’s Darwinism plays to the lowest common denominator. Throughout the book, he hammers on the primacy of natural selection and random variation, entirely omitting such factors as symbiosis, gene transfer, genetic drift, the action of regulatory genes in development, to say nothing of self-organizational processes.

Rosenhouse’s Darwinism commits him to Darwinian gradualism: Every adaptation of organisms is the result of a gradual step-by-step evolutionary process with natural selection ensuring the avoidance of missteps along the way. Writing about the evolution of “complex biological adaptations,” he notes: “Either the adaptation can be broken down into small mutational steps or it cannot. Evolutionists say that all adaptations studied to date can be so broken down while anti-evolutionists deny this…” (p. 178) At the same time, Rosenhouse denies that adaptations ever require multiple coordinated mutational steps: “[E]volution will not move a population from point A to point B if multiple, simultaneous mutations are required. No one disagrees with this, but in practice there is no way of showing that multiple, simultaneous mutations are actually required.” (pp. 159–160) 

“Mount Improbable”

And why are multiple simultaneous mutations strictly verboten? Because they would render life’s evolution too improbable, making it effectively impossible for evolution to climb Mount Improbable (which is both a metaphor and the title of a book by Richard Dawkins). Simultaneous mutations throw a wrench in the Darwinian gearbox. If they played a significant role in evolution, Darwinian gradualism would become untenable. Accordingly, Rosenhouse maintains that such large-scale mutational changes never happen and are indemonstrable even if they do happen. Rosenhouse presents this point of view not with a compelling argument, but as an apologist intent on neutralizing intelligent design’s threat to Darwinism. 

Next, “The Silence of the Evolutionary Biologists.”

Editor’s note: This review is cross-posted with permission of the author from BillDembski.com.

It looks like technology because it is?

 Physicist Brian Miller: The Fruitful Marriage of Biology and Engineering

David Klinghoffer

Discovery Institute physicist Brian Miller spoke at the recent Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. His theme was “The Surprising Relevance of Engineering in Biology.” 

Afterward, moderated by John West, he took some very thoughtful questions from the audience. Miller notes the fruitful marriage of biology and engineering, as in, for example, the study of control systems: “What you find is parallel research: that biologists are understanding these systems, engineers independently discover these systems, and when they work together they’re looking at the overlap. So, what’s happening now is engineers are learning from biology to do engineering better.” If biology isn’t designed, which is another way of saying “engineered,” wouldn’t this state of affairs be pretty counterintuitive? Enjoy the rest of the Q&A with Dr. Miller:

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A peacemaker between mathematics and Darwinism?

 The Challenge from Jason Rosenhouse

William A. Dembski

I am reviewing Jason Rosenhouse’s new book, The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism (Cambridge University Press), serially. For the full series so far, go here.

To show readers that he means business and that he is a bold, brave thinker, Rosenhouse lays down the gauntlet: “Anti-evolutionists play well in front of friendly audiences because in that environment the speakers never pay the price of being wrong. The response would be a lot chillier if they tried the same arguments in front of audiences with the relevant expertise. Try telling a roomful of mathematicians that you can refute evolutionary theory with a few back-of-the-envelope probability calculations, and see how far you get.” (Epilogue, pp. 270-271)

I’m happy to take up Rosenhouse’s gauntlet. In fact, I already have. I’ve presented my ideas and arguments to roomfuls of not just mathematicians but also biologists and the whole range of scientists on whose disciplines my work impinges. A case in point is a 2014 talk I gave on conservation of information at the University of Chicago, a talk sponsored by my old physics advisor Leo Kadanoff. The entire talk, including Q&A, is available on YouTube:

In such talks, I present quite a bit more detail than a mere back-of-the-envelope probability calculation, though full details, in a single talk (as opposed to a multi-week seminar), require referring listeners to my work in the peer-reviewed literature (none of which Rosenhouse cites in his book). 

My Challenge to Jason Rosenhouse

If I receive a chilly reception in giving such talks, it’s not for any lack of merit in my ideas or work. Rather, it’s the prejudicial contempt evident in Rosenhouse’s challenge above, which is widely shared among Darwinists, who are widespread in the academy. For instance, Rosenhouse’s comrade in arms, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who is at the University of Chicago, tried to harass Leo into canceling my 2014 talk, but Leo was not a guy to be intimidated — the talk proceeded as planned (Leo sent me copies of the barrage of emails he received from Coyne to persuade him to uninvite me). For the record, I’m happy to debate Rosenhouse, or any mathematicians, engineers, biologists, or whatever, who think they can refute my work. 

Next, “Jason Rosenhouse, a Crude Darwinist.”

Editor’s note: This review is cross-posted with permission of the author from BillDembski.com.

Sacrifice without cost?

Chronicles21:24KJV" And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without cost."

King David realized that a cost free sacrifice is in effect no sacrifice at all. Yet is this not the effect that Christendom's theology re: Christ being the God-man and unconditional immortality have on the supposed atonement. Christendom's reductive spiritualism has the effect of rendering the physical body (somos) worse than useless, a prison of rotting flesh that anchors our "real selves" to the ground during our probation on this earth. Surely being liberated from any prison is a blessing and not a sacrifice.

Matthew20:28KJV"Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life(gk.psyche) a ransom for many." 

Obviously if Christ's real self(soul) was immortal or if he was god-man or both he could not give his soul as a ransom. The mere liberation of his true self from its prison of flesh would constitute no genuine sacrifice. For Christ atonement offering to be genuinely  substitutionary his death would have to be identical in nature to that of the first Adam.

1Corithians15:21KJV"For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. "

And as to nature of the first Adam's death, let's not speculate, but let JEHOVAH'S word be the authority.

Genesis3:19KJV"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou RETURN unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou RETURN."

Thus Adam was to RETURN to his pre-creation state. That is what death meant to Adam. For the second Adam to to serve as a genuine substitute to the first and thus effect an atonement his death MUST have the same significance. 

Why we must give the members of Christendom's trinity a 'fail' in Godhood.

 What is meant by the expression fully God? The bible tells us that there is just one who is autotheos and thus entitled to absolute worship.

1Corinthians8:6NIV"yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came..."

John17:3KJV"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God,..."

Biblical theology tells us that there are four qualities that set the Lord JEHOVAH apart as uniquely qualified to receive absolute worship.

1. He is both necessary and sufficient as the source and sustainer of life and everything required for its flourishing.

2. He is superlative in authority being without equal or even approximate.

3. He is totally immutable.

4. He is omnipotent/omniscient.

Can any member of Christendom's trinity thus be considered fully God in any meaningful sense?

Obviously no member of Christendom's triad can be both necessary and sufficient, as a first cause if any of the three are sufficient as a first cause the other two are made unnecessary and if all three are necessary none are sufficient.

As per the dictionary definition of superlative one can either be superlative or coequal but not both, thus none of Christendom's triad would qualify as superlative.

Malachi3:6ASV"For I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed."

According to Christendom, JEHOVAH'S plain declaration that he is not subject to even the least change actually means he is subject to infinite change thus he could become a creature subject to death. We reject the fantastic leaps of logic and mental contortions needed to concur with such nonsense. Thus here too, the members of Christendom's triad fail the test of Godhood as determined by Scripture.

Genesis17:1ASV"And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jehovah appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect."

The declaration that JEHOVAH is the almighty God does not merely suggest that the Lord JEHOVAH is mightier than any other but that he is mightier than all others combined. Indeed he is bottomless reservoir of potential energy.

Isaiah40:28ASV"Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, JEHOVAH, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding."

If their are in fact two(or is it three) others as mighty as one then one is clearly not the mightiest thus we are forced to give the members of Christendom's triad another fail in the test of true Godhood.

The 'R' word?

Yet more evidence that I.D is already mainstream.

 Carl Sagan: “An Intelligence That Antedates the Universe”

Paul Nelson

The late astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan (1934-1996) is often seen as an exemplar of a certain attitude on the relationship of science and theology: skeptical, anti-religion, pro-naturalism. Abundant evidence supports this view of Sagan, but there are fascinating hints in both his technical and popular writings that Sagan’s understanding of design detection was far subtler and more open-ended than many realize. Like his British contemporary, the astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), Sagan left evidence that he might well have enjoyed conversations with intelligent design theorists. Such historical counterfactuals are tricky at best, of course, so let’s look at some of the available evidence, and the reader can speculate on her own.

Design Detection in the Galileo Mission

As a scientist on the Galileo interplanetary mission, Sagan designed experiments to be carried on the spacecraft to detect — as a proof-of-principle — the presence of life, but especially intelligent life, on Earth. During Galileo’s December 1990 fly-by of Earth, as the craft was getting a gravitational boost on its way out to the gas giants of the outer Solar System, its instruments indeed detected striking chemical disequilibria in Earth’s atmosphere, best explained by the presence of organisms.

But it was Galileo’s detection of “narrow-band, pulsed, amplitude-modulated radio transmissions” that seized the brass ring of design detection — where “design” means a pattern or event caused by an intelligence (with a mind), not a physical or chemical process. Sagan and colleagues (1993: 720) wrote:

The fact that the central frequencies of these signals remain constant over periods of hours strongly suggests an artificial origin. Naturally generated radio emissions almost always display significant long-term frequency drifts. Even more definitive is the existence of pulse-like amplitude modulations…such modulation patterns are never observed for naturally occurring radio emissions and implies the transmission of information. [Emphasis added.]

Only someone who conceived of “intelligence” as a kind of cause with unique and detectable indicia would bother setting up this proof-of-principle experiment. But it’s the evidence from Sagan’s popular writings that is especially provocative.

Design Detection in Sagan’s Novel Contact

The last chapter (24) of Sagan’s novel Contact (1985; later made into a film [1997] starring Jodie Foster) is an unmistakable example of number mysticism and design detection, using pi — the mathematical constant and irrational number expressing the ratio between the circumference of any circle and its diameter. Entitled “The Artist’s Signature,” the chapter opens with two epigraphs, as follows:

Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. 

1 COR. 15:51

The universe seems…to have been determined and ordered in accordance with the creator of all things; for the pattern was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the determination of number pre-existent in the mind of the world-creating God.

NICOMACHUS OF GERASA, ARITHMETIC I, 6 (CA. AD 100)

This passage, from the very end of the chapter — and the book — bears quoting. Sagan places the whole section in italics for emphasis:

The universe was made on purpose, the circle said…As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you’ll find it. It’s already here. It’s inside everything. You don’t have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe. [Emphasis added.]

Design’s Narrative Power

Of course, Contact is a novel, not a scientific or philosophical treatise. Sagan was writing for drama (Contact actually started out as a movie treatment in 1980-81). But rather like his contemporaries Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, Sagan loved to play around with concepts of design detection and non-human intelligence. Their narrative power was undeniable.

And that sentence — “there is an intelligence that antedates the universe” — come on, that’s being deliberately provocative. In any case, mathematical objects such as pi, or prime numbers, have long held a special status as design indicia. The atheist radio astronomer and SETI researcher Jill Tarter, the real-life model for the Elli Arroway / Jodi Foster character in Contact, has said that she would regard the decimal expansion of pi, if detected by a radio telescope, as a gold-standard indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sagan and Intelligent Design

In 1985, when Contact was first published, intelligent design as an intellectual position was largely confined to the edges of academic philosophy, in the work of people such as the Canadian philosopher John Leslie, and a few hardy souls in the neighborhood of books like Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984).

So Sagan (and Fred Hoyle, whose sci-fi novel The Black Cloud was credited by Richard Dawkins as the book having the greatest influence on him; the story opens with a design inference) could afford to play with notions of design detection, non-human intelligences, and the like. These ideas, which are exciting and full of fascinating implications, posed little risk to the dominance of naturalism in science. Detecting non-human intelligence made for good sci-fi.

When ID appeared to become a real cultural threat, however — as it did starting in the mid 1990s in the United States — the dynamic shifted. Still, while Sagan was anti-religious, he was decidedly not anti-design, in the generic sense of the detectability of intelligent causation as a mode distinct from ordinary physical causation. In any case, he died in 1996, and therefore missed the coming high points of the ID debate. Others took up the skeptical mantle, to make sure that design never found a footing in science proper.

As boundary-pushers, both Sagan and Hoyle caught plenty of flak during their lifetimes. Sagan, for instance, was never elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Both paid a price for their popularity and willingness to write novels toying with non-human intelligences. It is interesting, then, to wonder how Sagan would have responded to ID, as articulated by Michael Behe, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, etc., and how he might have separated his own views from it.

Historical counterfactuals are a playground. Play fairly, and share the equipment.

molecular clocks to the rescue?

 Molecular Clocks Can’t Save Darwinists from the Cambrian Dilemma

David Coppedge

To explain away the Cambrian explosion has been and remains a high priority for Darwinists. Current Biology published one such attempt. On reading certain parts, you might think the authors, including Maximilian Telford, Philip Donoghue, and Ziheng Yang, have solved the problem. Indeed, their first Highlight in the paper summary claims, “Molecular clock analysis indicates an ancient origin of animals in the Cryogenian.” (Cryogenian refers to the Precambrian “cold birth” era about 720 to 635 million years ago.) By itself that statement would be misleading, because the title of the open-access paper is pessimistic: “Uncertainty in the Timing of Origin of Animals and the Limits of Precision in Molecular Timescales.”

Yang appeared briefly in Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt with bad news. Meyer cited a paper Yang co-authored with Aris-Brosou in 2011 showing that molecular clock analyses are unreliable. They “found that depending on which genes and which estimation methods were employed, the last common ancestor of protostomes or deuterostomes (two broadly different types of Cambrian animals) might have lived anywhere between 452 million years and 2 billion years ago” (Meyer, p. 106). 

Nothing has changed since then. The bottom line after a lot of wrangling with numbers, strategies, and analyses is that all current methods of dating the ancestors of the Cambrian animals from molecular clocks are imprecise and uncertain. They cannot be trusted to diffuse the explosion by rooting the animal ancestors earlier in the Precambrian.

Although a Cryogenian origin of crown Metazoa agrees with current geological interpretations, the divergence dates of the bilaterians remain controversial. Thus, attempts to build evolutionary narratives of early animal evolution based on molecular clock timescales appear to be premature. [Emphasis added.]

Check Out the Euphemisms

Translated into plain English, that means, “We can’t tell our favorite evolutionary story because the clock is broken, but we’re working on it.”

In the paper, they provide an analysis of molecular clock data. It’s clear they believe that all the data place the root of the divergence in the Ediacaran or earlier, 100 million years or more before the Cambrian, but can they really defend their belief? They have to admit severe empirical limits:

Here we use an unprecedented amount of molecular data, combined with four fossil calibration strategies (reflecting disparate and controversial interpretations of the metazoan fossil record) to obtain Bayesian estimates of metazoan divergence times. Our results indicate that the uncertain nature of ancient fossils and violations of the molecular clock impose a limit on the precision that can be achieved in estimates of ancient molecular timescales.

Perhaps, a defender might interrupt, the precision, admittedly limited, is good enough. But then, there are those pesky fossils! The molecular clocks are fuzzily in agreement about ancestors in the Precambrian, but none of them has support from the very best observational evidence: the record of the rocks. Even the phyla claimed to exist before the explosion are contested:

Unequivocal fossil evidence of animals is limited to the Phanerozoic [i.e., the modern eon from Cambrian to recent, where animals are plentiful]. Older records of animals are controversial: organic biomarkers indicative of demosponges are apparently derived ultimately from now symbiotic bacteria; putative animal embryo fossils are alternately interpreted as protists; and contested reports of sponges, molluscs, and innumerable cnidarians, as well as putative traces of eumetazoan or bilaterian grade animals, all from the Ediacaran. Certainly, there are no unequivocal records of crown-group bilaterians prior to the Cambrian, and robust evidence for bilaterian phyla does not occur until some 20 million years into the Cambrian.

This severely limits their ability to “calibrate” the molecular clock. Meyer granted the possible existence of three Precambrian phyla (sponges, molluscs, and cnidarians). But there are twenty other phyla that make their first appearance in the Cambrian, many of them far more complex than sponges. What good are the molecular methods if you can’t see any of the ancestors in the rocks?

Missing Ancestors

The authors admit that the Precambrian strata were capable of preserving the ancestors if they existed. 

No matter how imprecise, our timescale for metazoan diversification still indicates a mismatch between the fossil evidence used to calibrate the molecular clock analyses and the resulting divergence time estimates. This is not altogether surprising since, by definition, minimum constraints of clade ages anticipate their antiquity. Nevertheless, it is the extent of this prehistory that is surprising, particularly since the conditions required for exceptional fossil preservation, so key to evidencing the existence of animal phyla in the early Cambrian, obtained also in the Ediacaran.

The only way they can maintain their belief that the ancestors are way back earlier is to discount the fossil evidence as “negative evidence” and to put their trust in the molecular evidence. But how can they trust it, when the answers vary all over the place, depending on the methods used? One clever method is called “rate variation.” Would you trust a clock that has a variable rate? How about one fast-ticking clock for one animal, and a slow-ticking clock for another? 

When rate variation across a phylogeny is extreme (that is, when the molecular clock is seriously violated), the rates calculated on one part of the phylogeny will serve as a poor proxy for estimating divergence times in other parts of the tree. In such instances, divergence time estimation is challenging and the analysis becomes sensitive to the rate model used.

They try their trees with steady rates and with varying rates (“relaxed clock models” — amusing term). They try data partitioning. They try Bayesian analysis. None of them agree. Meyer discussed molecular clock problems in detail in Chapter 5 of Darwin’s Doubt. There’s nothing new here. “Here we show that the precision of molecular clock estimates of times has been grossly over-estimated,” they conclude. “….An evolutionary timescale for metazoan diversification that accommodates these uncertainties has precision that is insufficient to discriminate among causal hypotheses.” In the end, these evolutionists have to admit that fossils would be much, much better:

Above all, establishing unequivocal evidence for the presence of metazoan clades in the late Neoproterozoic, as well as for the absence in more ancient strata, will probably have more impact than any methodological advance in improving the accuracy and precision of divergence time estimates for deep metazoan phylogeny. Realizing the aim of a timescale of early animal evolution that is not merely accurate, but sufficiently precise to effect tests of hypotheses on the causes and consequences of early animal evolution, will require improved models of trait evolution and improved algorithms to allow analysis of genome-scale sequence data in tandem with morphological characters.

Wait a Minute

Isn’t that what Darwin provided — a model of trait evolution? Wasn’t it natural selection of gradual variations? Let’s parse this interesting quote that mentions Darwin:

The timing of the emergence of animals has troubled evolutionary biologists at least since Darwin, who was sufficiently incredulous that he considered the abrupt appearance of animal fossils in the Cambrian as a challenge to his theory of evolution by natural selection. There has been, as a result, a long history of attempts to rationalize a rapid radiation of animals through theories of non-uniform evolutionary processes, such as homeotic mutations, removal of environmental restrictions on larger body sizes, through to the assembly of gene regulation kernels — proposed both as an explanation for rapid rates of innovation followed by subsequent constraint against fundamental innovation of new body plans after the Cambrian. Indeed, there have been explicit attempts to accommodate rapid rates of phenotypic evolution in the early Cambrian, compatible with these hypotheses and a semi-literal (albeit phylogenetically constrained) reading of the fossil record.

And yet our results, as have others before them, suggest that there is no justification for invoking non-uniform mechanisms to explain the emergence of animals and their phylum-level body plans.

That phrase “semi-literal (albeit phylogenetically constrained) reading of the fossil record” is curious. How else are you supposed to read it? They are saying that you have to read the fossil record with Darwin-colored glasses to see it correctly. 

But they’re trying to have it both ways. They want a slow-and-gradual fuse leading up to the Cambrian explosion (disliking “non-uniform evolutionary processes”), which requires a non-literal reading of the fossil record with Darwin glasses on, but they can’t take the molecular data literally either, because it is so method-dependent. You can almost hear them crying out for fossils. As Meyer’s book shows, the fossil record is more explosive now than it was in Darwin’s time.

The Information Enigma Again

Notice how they mention “the emergence of animals and their phylum-level body plans.” How do you get the information to build a phylum-level body plan? Once again, these authors ignore the information issue completely. They say, “Much of the molecular genetic toolkit required for animal development originated deep in eukaryote evolutionary history,” skirting past that with a lateral reference to a paper about a microbe that had no animal body plan. Talk of “emergence” just doesn’t cut it. What is the source of the information to build an animal body plan composed of multiple new cell types and tissues, with 3-D organization and integrated systems like sensory organisms, locomotion, and digestive tracts? Is there an evolutionist who will please answer Meyer’s primary challenge? 

As we’ve seen over and over again, many Darwinian evolutionists think they have done their job if they can just push the ancestry back in time. The fossil record doesn’t allow it, but even if it did, it wouldn’t solve the information problem. Calling it “emergence” is unsatisfactory. Calling it “innovation” is unsatisfactory. Calling it latent potential waiting for environmental factors like heat or oxygen is unsatisfactory. Answer the question: what is the source of the information to build twenty new animal body plans that appeared suddenly in the Cambrian without ancestors? We have an answer: intelligence. What’s yours?

Reductive materialism fails to account for mind.

 Can Self-Organization Theory Account for Consciousness?

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, author of The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity (2022), offers a self-organization theory approach to the reality of the mind:

Most neuroscientists believe that consciousness arises when harmonized global activity emerges from the coordinated interactions of billions of neurons. This is because the synchronized firing of brain cells integrates information from multiple processing streams into a unified field of experience. This global activity is made possible by loops in the form of feedback. When feedback is present in a system, it means there is some form of self-reference at work, and in nervous systems, it can be a sign of self-modeling. Feedback loops running from one brain region to another integrate information and bind features into a cohesive perceptual landscape.

When does the light of subjective experience go out? When the feedback loops cease, because it is these loops that harmonize neural activity and bring about the global integration of information. When feedback is disrupted, the brain still keeps on ticking, functioning physiologically and controlling involuntary functions, but consciousness dissolves. The mental model is still embedded in the brain’s architecture, but the observer fades as the self-referential process of real-time self-modeling ceases to produce a “self.” 

BOBBY AZARIAN, “THE MIND IS MORE THAN A MACHINE” AT NOEMA (JUNE 9, 2022)

One difficulty that arises is that many human beings produce a “self” with split brains, a brain missing key components, or only half a brain, (or maybe less). That’s real but not consistent with the materialist model that Azarian outlines.

“The Missing Puzzle Piece”?

He goes on to say,

Could self-reference be the missing puzzle piece that allows for truly intelligent AIs, and maybe even someday sentient machines? Only time will tell, but Simon DeDeo, a complexity scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and the Santa Fe Institute, seems to think so: “Great progress in physics came from taking relativity seriously. We ought to expect something similar here: Success in the project of general artificial intelligence may require we take seriously the relativity implied by self-reference.”

BOBBY AZARIAN, “THE MIND IS MORE THAN A MACHINE” AT NOEMA (JUNE 9, 2022)

But wait. What’s this about “self”-reference? Machines, as we know them, don’t have a self.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

A new earth?

 1Peter3:13KJV"Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."

Righteousness was never an issue for the spirit heaven. Although the bible shows that some of those privileged to dwell in the very presence of God himself chose to rebel and set up their own kingdom. From there they have exerted a malignant influence over mankind in general. The apostle Paul refers to them as the cosmocrats .

Ephesians6:12KJV"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers(Grk. kosmokratoras) of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. "

Thus for human civilization peace, justice, liberty, brotherhood and the like have most definitely been issues. To say the least humankind's pursuit of these ideals has been characterized by frustration. Is this all part of JEHOVAH'S plan? Though some assert as much the scriptures support no such notion.

Genesis1:28KJV"And God blessed them,.." A promise of success, even spectacular success, in their endeavors was made to the founders of our race. Thus life on this earth was not to be characterized by privation and insecurity.

Genesis2:8KJV"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,.."

Note please, that there was no tree of death in this original paradise planted by JEHOVAH himself, thus death and the deadly were not meant to have any place in man's future as purposed by JEHOVAH. It is man's arrogance not the divine will that has caused humanity's unfortunate detour from the Lord JEHOVAH'S intended blessing. And yet even after earning God's rightful anger we read of a promised blessing for humanity on this earth.

Genesis28:14KJV"And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

Psalms37:9KJV"For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth."

Psalms46:9KJV"He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire."

Psalms72:4-8KJV"He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

5They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

6He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

7In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

8He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth."

Luke2:14KJV"“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

The Lord JEHOVAH'S reassertion of his lawful sovereignty over mankind on this planet will ensure that JEHOVAH'S blessing of our race achieves its purpose. Politicians and their enablers may frustrate their fellow humans but they are no match for our planet's creator. 

Trinitarian's lack of self-awareness and John20:28.

 That John20:28 continues to be a Trinitarian favorite says volumes about Trinitarian apologists' total lack of self-awareness. For some context trinitarians have for years pilloried the new world translation's rendering of John1:1c,on account of its use of the indefinite article, insisting that Jesus is not a God.

John20:28ASV"28Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God" now one possibility is that the risen Christ being a superhuman messenger ,Thomas could be addressing JEHOVAH through Jesus the way the ancient prophets address him through his angels see exodus3. Of course Trinitarians are having none of that,they insists that Thomas called Jesus the God of me according to the Greek text. How could Jesus be the God of anyone without being a God.

John20:17ASV"Jesus saith to her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God. "

Here Jesus calls his Father the God of me. Thus obviously his Father is a God ,just as he is a Father of both Jesus and Thomas. So according to scripture Jesus is a Lord and a God. And his Father is a Lord and a God.  Maybe one can fudge a modalist interpretation out of these facts, but a Trinitarian interpretation is even beyond fudging.

A Gap to wide?

 How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind

Neil Thomas

Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker begins with the grand claim that “our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but … it is a mystery no longer because it is solved, Darwin and Wallace solved it.” Leaving to one side the fact that this statement is a prime example of what writer and satirist Tom Wolfe has dubbed the temptation to “cosmogonism — the compulsion to find the ever-elusive Theory of Everything.”1 The statement is, at best, only half true. For Alfred Russel Wallace as early as the mid 1860s had parted company with Charles Darwin on the subject of the human mind, with its staggering complexity and unique language facility. For him, on more mature reflection, no simple ape-to-human progression was any longer tenable and he could no longer assent to the ontological equivalence of humans and nonhuman animals proposed by Darwin — and later subjected to a reductio ad absurdum by the philosopher Peter Singer, best known for his Animal Liberation (1975) and for his (seriously proposed) advocacy for a normalization of sexual relations between humans and animals.

Marvelously Free of Racism

Wallace had given much thought to his change of heart. Marvelously free of any racist prejudice even at the height of the colonial era, he had noted in his more than a decade of fieldwork in far-flung locations of the globe that primitive tribes were intellectually the equals of Europeans, even if not (yet) their equals at the technological level. “Savages” were, however, required to operate only in the context of simple activities where their great brainpower was redundant given the simplicities of their daily rounds. So, what was the point of their great mental powers and, more importantly, how had it evolved? After all, natural selection would not have been “called on” to enable them to perform cognitively challenging tasks for which there was presently no need. By extension, what was the survival value of musical and mathematical abilities for Europeans? These were patently not brute survival skills. How could they have been promoted by natural selection which favors only immediate utility since, as Darwin himself repeatedly stated, it had no power of foresight? Wallace eventually answered that question (to his own satisfaction) by claiming that “an influx of a higher life” had supervened to accompany the arrival of Homo sapiens on the world’s stage — a volte-face which disappointed Darwin and made Wallace the target of some opprobrium from Darwin’s supporters. 

Wallace and Natural Theology

In his older years Wallace came to reject natural selection as an explanation for the unfurling of all human and even animal life. By then he had transitioned towards the espousal of a form of natural theology; but his initial and gravest misgiving in the 1860s was focused four-square on the mystery of how the human brain could have evolved according to Darwinian lines of explanation. For Wallace it had become so clear that an additional power must have played a role that he thenceforth felt constrained to bid adieu to material modes of explanation. Rather like the adherents of the modern intelligent design trend, Wallace could not see how what is now termed “irreducible complexity” could have been thrown together by the only marginally discriminating forces of natural selection.

It is not difficult to sympathize with Wallace’s doubts. As Michael Ruse recently put it, “mind is the apotheosis of final cause, drenched in purpose … irreducibly teleological.”2 At the same time, however, Ruse puzzlingly and to me somewhat contradictorily contends, “Why should the evolutionist be expected to explain the nature of consciousness? Surely it can be taken as a given, and the evolutionist can move on … leave the discussion at that.”3 Wallace was certainly not prepared to accept such cherry-picking evasions and “leave the discussion at that.” And despite Dawkins’s transparent attempt to airbrush Wallace’s “apostasy” out of the historical record, the latter’s century-and-a half old question about natural selection’s inability to create the human mind has been maintained as a live issue by professional philosophers.

On Darwinian Principles

Wallace’s point was reprised by philosopher Anthony O’Hear who objected that evolutionary theory was inadequate to account for the emergence of the human mental and moral faculties. On Darwinian principles there was simply no source from which human morality and other higher faculties could have originated (all the less so if one believes that we as a species represent essentially a congeries of “selfish genes”):

How is it conceivable that consciousness should develop from unconscious precursors? There is no explanation to date and only those who believe that the difference between a cabbage or an automaton and a sentient human being is of small account will minimize the significance of this incomprehension.4

In other words, Darwinism simply cannot explain human nature to anything like its fullest extent. Both O’Hear and philosopher Richard Rorty have pointed to the plethora of “non-Darwinian motivations” in humankind, including that non-selfish moral compass which exists in all bar the most abject psychopaths. Hence O’Hear attacked the argument of Richard Dawkins when the latter insisted it was possible for humans to resist their selfish biological endowment in order to achieve more morally accountable human societies. Such moral resistance would not be logically possible if one holds to the strict doctrine of biological determinism. For given such a scenario, what resources would people have to draw on in order to escape the adamantine bonds of the deterministic straitjacket they were born into? There is then clearly a fatal logical contradiction in claiming that ethical behavior could be salvaged from the unyielding toils of biological determinism.5

As Anthony Flew once put it, “No eloquence can move pre-programmed robots.”6 It is therefore difficult to make a rationally justified case for the human mind having had the form of evolutionary history commonly imputed to it. Furthermore, the philosophical conclusion towards which Wallace was an early contributor has also come to be buttressed by an empirical discipline unknown in Wallace’s time — that of neuroscience, which throws valuable light on this philosophical issue, even, I would suggest, for those who publicly disdain the discipline of philosophy.

Philosophy and Neuroscience

Neuroscientist Donald Hoffman, who once worked with DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick in attempting to crack the problem of human consciousness, recently conceded that the nature and origins of consciousness remain “completely unsolved” and may best be termed an eternal mystery.7 The brusque and decidedly no-nonsense Crick was in the event fated to meet his Waterloo when it came to the subject of consciousness, explains Hoffman. Crick had at first attempted to explain it somewhat airily as nothing but an “emergent” property which “naturally” arose when matter reaches a certain level of complexity. However, he was at length obliged to withdraw that vacuous contention, conceding that there is nothing about conscious experience that is relatable to the physical stuff or material of the brain. Consciousness simply lies beyond our empirical perception and cognitive reach.

Hoffman develops the point further: “At the most microcosmic level the brain consists of subatomic particles which have qualities like mass, spin and charge. There is nothing about these qualities that relates to the qualities associated with consciousness such as thought, taste, pain or anxiety.”8 To suggest otherwise, continues Hoffman, would be like asserting that numbers might emerge from biscuits or ethics from rhubarb. The bottom line seems to be that we are not only ignorant but, alas, prostrate in our ignorance of the brain’s arcana.9 Theoretically, of course, there may yet emerge an as yet undiscovered materialist explanation for the brain and human consciousness. But to date we must conclude that today’s science cannot with integrity support such a claim on the evidence presently available.

Both Hoffman and Crick were finally forced to conclude that all purely physicalist theories of consciousness had failed to provide illumination and that the state of consciousness could not be explained in neurological terms, a conclusion powerfully endorsed for more than three decades by distinguished British neuroscientist Raymond Tallis in his long opposition to what he terms “Darwinitis.”10 In short, consciousness is simply not derivable from physical laws but remains an inexplicable phenomenon of the human endowment which we are simply left to wonder at. To suggest otherwise, writes philosopher David Bentley Hart, is to fall into the trap of a “misapplication of quantitative and empirical terms to unquantifiable and intrinsically non-empirical realities.”11 This indicates that vague, would-be Darwinian attempts to imagine consciousness arising as an “epiphenomenon” of other physiological processes are misconceived. In fact, not being able to identify the precise biological pathway leading to the claimed “epiphenomena” disqualifies this contention as a bona fide theory and relegates it to the status of little more than magical thinking (which I define as postulating an effect without an identifiable agent or cause).

Deconstructing Darwinian Postulates

It cannot be denied that there are philosophers content to follow the Darwinian line and even to become Darwinian apologists (and indeed cheerleading eulogists — such as Daniel Dennett). But there are very many more who feel a vocational duty to deconstruct Darwinian postulates and unmask their debatable pretensions. Remarkably, Richard Spilsbury felt so strongly on this point that he took to task an older generation of philosophers for being cowed by materialist confirmation bias into not addressing the problem. His remarks were directed at the logical positivist philosophers, in the orbit of Sir Alfred Ayer and his famous Language, Truth and Logic of 1936, for what he saw as their culpable silence on Darwinism.

As a matter of historical record, no group of thinkers was more inclined to denounce propositions for being “non-sense” (in the philosophical sense of not having sufficient logical stringency to merit serious discussion) than the logical positivists. Yet no criticism of Darwinism issued from within that group. Spilsbury’s explanation for the omission seems all too plausible: “It is rather surprising that they [Darwinists] have largely been left alone by logical positivists in search of new demolition work. Perhaps neo-Darwinism has been saved from this [demolition] by its essential contribution to the world view that positivists share” 12 (i.e., materialism). Given that the underlying aim of the Ayerian philosophy was broadly speaking to make the world a safe place for positivism, by discouraging any form of mysticism or metaphysics, I find Spilsbury’s explanation entirely convincing. Nonsense can apparently be exempted from critique when it supports the materialist cause. 

It is uncertain how future generations will react to theories without evidential foundation, simply at the paternalistic direction of scientists riding high on materialist hobbyhorses. Common experience suggests that many persons today are inclined to resist unsubstantiable theories in favor of their own tried-and-tested observations of reality. And the rise of intelligent design thought may be understood as a manifestation of this more precise, empirical mode of thinking. It cannot therefore be stressed strongly enough that inferences to a designing power (of some sort) is not, pace Dawkins, always anchored in an adherence to a particular revealed faith. People now are considerably less swayed by deference and 19th-century fideism (believing on trust). In fact, the (historically) paradoxical truth is that for growing numbers of people today it is science that points in the direction of an “unmoved mover” more than any “positive” or revealed religion — hence Anthony Flew’s well-publicized defection from non-theistic rationalism to a form of deism which he dubbed his “pilgrimage of reason.”

Inference to the Best Explanation

In that remarkable philosophic odyssey, the erstwhile president of the British Rationalist Society finally arrived at an understanding of the world as disclosed to him by natural theology, the multitudinous signatures of which he interpreted as empirical markers for a design which, pace Lucretius, David Hume, Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and Lawrence Krauss could not have arisen “autonomously” without a designer. For Flew as a professional logician, such a position simply represented the inference to the best explanation. He came to reject chance in the sense of the fortuitous configurations and re-configurations of matter postulated by Lucretius (and, mutatis mutandis, by Darwin with reference to the organic world). He found his a more rational explanation than that offered by those of Darwin’s intellectual heirs who seem to be more interested in cooking the books to protect materialist assumptions from theistic incursions than in facing up to the inadequacies of a science which dramatically contradicts their own philosophical case. For such ideologically tainted denials can sometimes seem to represent little more than a covert desire to throw a protective cordon sanitaire around the theory of a purely material genesis for the biosphere and so stifle further debate.

In Wallace’s Footsteps

The acceptance and promotion of what is strictly speaking non-discussible nonsense (in the Ayerian sense)13 by groups of people supposedly devoted to the truth wherever it leads provides a disquieting specter of intellectual integrity playing second fiddle to ideological commitment. In fact, the attempt by more doctrinaire scientific materialists to bounce lay persons into gainsaying their own rational judgments results in a truly incongruous situation. That is, when big science brings forward a host of findings which might most fairly be glossed as prima facie proofs of a higher agency, but thereupon proceeds to deny the most intuitively logical import of its own discoveries, unbiased men and women prove unsurprisingly resistant. That resistance arises from their ability to appreciate the true existential implications of said findings and their entirely consequential determination to cry “Foul!” to the scientists for trying to mislead them. Such persons are in effect following in Wallace’s footsteps, without of course in most cases being fully aware of the historical recapitulation. And this in turn furnishes a very good argument why Wallace should not be erased from the Darwinian narrative. Indeed, welcome historical revisions have been set in train in the last decade, much of that from the pen of Michael Flannery.14

What is impressive about Wallace’s testimony is the without-fear-or-favor intellectual independence it reveals. He suffered no disabling sense of self-consciousness about doing his U-turn from his earlier opinions. He simply accepted the unexceptional fact that persons’ opinions will change over time according to how they come to revisit evidence on more mature reflection. Wallace was, as Frank Turner once put it, primarily a disinterested student of life with no interest in orthodox posturing, even after numerous honors had been bestowed upon him later in life.15

Darwin, on the other hand, found himself in a very different situation, being oppressively aware of the luster of the family name, especially as it pertained to his grandfather, Erasmus. His insistence that his theory had to be true for the sake of personal and family honor may do much to explain his state of obdurate denial when coming up against the many counter-indications to it which he encountered, even from close colleagues such as Thomas Huxley. His intransigence in facing opposition seems to have stemmed from a form of duelist’s point d’honneur. This attitude of mind had already been detectable in the way that he had worked at a break-neck pace to produce the manuscript of the Origin for publication when, after receiving Wallace’s famous Ternate Letter in 1858, he sensed a competitor snapping at his heels.16 It was clearly important to him to be able to have the Darwin imprimatur embossed on his evolutionary ideas. In that way he could both underscore his own status amongst his peers and also be seen to be consummating the glorious tradition of evolutionary speculation inaugurated by his grandfather. For Darwin was for all his adult life concerned with a peculiarly familial construction of reality the truth-value of which he never questioned. He framed his life’s work as a consummation of his grandfather’s endeavors to prove evolution — which was why he was so gratified to be able to advance what he took to be a mechanism to account for evolutionary ideas first advanced by Erasmus Darwin. 

No Intellectual Pedigree

By contrast, Wallace had no intellectual pedigree to live up to. Natural selection was only one part of his life as a naturalist and intellectual17 and he was well able to keep things in perspective. That was all the more so since he had no grand family tradition to live up to. Family piety was simply not a consideration for him since his grandfather had not been a famous naturalist pushing the envelope ever further in quest of illumination of the unknown. For that reason, I find that there is more trust to be placed in Wallace’s cool-headed testimony than there is in Darwin’s desperate denials that there “could be any other explanation.” Wallace was his own man and this bestowed on him the inner strength to follow the evidence where it led him without feeling the need to trim his position in apprehension of how others might react. He seems not to have felt anything like the need shown by Darwin to impress public opinion or pose as a Great Man of Science. And this, I would argue, makes his testimony concerning the fatal weakness of the theory of natural selection all the worthier of heed.

Notes

Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016), p. 20.

On Purpose (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2018), p. 182.

On Purpose, p. 182.

Beyond Evolution Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Speculation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), p.65.

Beyond Evolution, pp. 213-14.

There IS a God (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), p. 81.

Donald D. Hoffman, The Case against Reality: How Evolution hid the Truth from our Eyes (London: Penguin, 2020), pp. 1-21, citation p. 6.

The Case against Reality, pp. 60-61.

See also on this general point Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World (London: Watkins, 2018).

See for instance Tallis’s Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (Durham: Acumen, 2011).

Atheistic Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven/London: Yale UP, 2009), p. 7.

Providence Lost, p. 21.

I repeat that I am using this term in the strict philosophical sense of a proposition admitting of no form of rational analysis which could form a legitimate part of discursive practice.

See his Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology (Alabama: Alabama UP, 2018). 

Frank M. Turner, Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1974), pp. 72-3.

Wallace had dispatched a letter to Down House laying out very similar evolutionary ideas to those hit upon by Darwin himself, and this essentially bounced Darwin into publishing his Origin of Species only one year later (on November 24, 1859).

Wallace lived well into the early 20th century when he made a considerable name for himself by his contributions to cosmology and in a broader sense to debates in the capacity of what we would now term a public intellectual.

Lives not worth living?

 Canadian Bill to Allow Euthanasia of Dementia Patients

Wesley J. Smith

The Netherlands and Belgium already permit people diagnosed with dementia to sign an advance directive ordering themselves killed when they become incapacitated. This has even resulted in one case in which such a patient was euthanized despite resisting — and the government responded by changing the law to enable death-doctors to drug and euthanize such patients without permission.

Now Canada — which last year greatly loosened the criteria for euthanasia — may be on the verge of taking the same path. A bill has been filed in the Senate that would permit patients to order themselves killed without final consent if they become mentally incapacitated. From S-248:

For the purposes of subparagraph (3.‍2)‍(a)‍(ii), a person may waive the need for final consent [to receiving lethal jab] if

(a) they made a declaration in writing that a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner may administer a substance to cause that person’s death should the person lose the capacity to consent to receiving medical assistance in dying and be suffering conditions related to their serious and incurable illness, disease or disability that are identified clearly in the declaration and can be observed by the medical practitioner or nurse practitioner;

(b) the declaration was made after a diagnosis of a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability by a medical practitioner, but no more than five years have elapsed since the declaration was made;

(c) in the declaration, the person consented to the administration by a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner of a substance to cause their death if they are suffering from the conditions listed in the declaration and have lost their capacity to consent to receiving medical assistance in dying prior to that point;

(d) the declaration was witnessed by two independent witnesses to confirm that it was made voluntarily and not as a result of external pressure and each witness signed and dated it . . .

If the patient resists, the killing is not supposed to take place. Right. As though the person would know what was happening.

Once the seeds of euthanasia are planted in a culture, it grows like weeds.

Cross-posted at The Corner.

The resistance?

 Brian Miller: The Intelligent Design Underground

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Sarah Chaffee talks with physicist and Center for Science & Culture Research Coordinator Brian Miller about the growing intelligent design underground. Miller says that as many as one-quarter of Harvard post-docs in relevant fields privately express sympathy for ID. And more and more scientists who don’t agree with ID are at least standing up against common sound-bite misrepresentations. In their conversation Miller also reviews what he describes as three “major pillars” of evolutionary theory that in recent years have been “dramatically shaken.” Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Primeval A.I?

 How Brains Use Data Compression to Get Things Right

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

We are used to thinking of data compression in connection with computers but a recent study with mice shows that brains compress data too. The researchers ask us to imagine a dilemma from an

early video game:

If you were a kid in the 80s, or are a fan of retro video games, then you must know Frogger. The game can be quite a challenge. To win, you must first survive a stream of heavy traffic, only to then narrowly escape oblivion by zig-zagging across speeding wooden logs. How does the brain know what to focus on within all this mess?

CHAMPALIMAUD CENTRE FOR THE UNKNOWN, “THE BRAIN APPLIES DATA COMPRESSION FOR DECISION-MAKING” AT EUREKALERT (JUNE 6, 2022)

Driving in snarled, heavy traffic can feel like that…

Neuroscientists are well aware that, when processing data from our senses, our brains routinely block out information that is irrelevant to an immediate, pressing problem. A person who suddenly smells smoke from the kitchen might barely hear the ring tone of an anxiously awaited, important phone call just coming in.

Priority Processing

But are the cognitive areas of our brains similarly adapted to priority processing? It can’t be done simply by simply blocking out irrelevant signals. If it’s cognitive, there aren’t any signals. The current research, using mice, points to a different technique for focused cognitive decision-making:

A study published today (June 6th) in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience provides a possible solution: data compression. ‘Compressing the representations of the external world is akin to eliminating all irrelevant information and adopting temporary ‘tunnel vision’ of the situation”, said one of the study’s senior authors Christian Machens, head of the Theoretical Neuroscience lab at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal.

CHAMPALIMAUD CENTRE FOR THE UNKNOWN, “THE BRAIN APPLIES DATA COMPRESSION FOR DECISION-MAKING” AT EUREKALERT (JUNE 6, 2022); THE PAPER REQUIRES A FEE OR SUBSCRIPTION BUT YOU CAN READ THE PREPRINT FOR FREE.

So how did the mice show this?:

The mice were challenged with estimating if two tones were separated by an interval longer than 1.5 seconds while researchers recorded the activity of dopamine neurons, known to play a key role in learning the value of actions.

“If the animal wrongly estimated the duration of the interval on a given trial, then the activity of these neurons would produce a “prediction error” that should help improve performance on future trials,” Christian Machens, one of the study’s senior authors, said in a news release. 

ADAM SCHRADER, “BRAIN APPLIES ‘DATA COMPRESSION’ WHEN MAKING DECISIONS, STUDY FINDS” AT UPI (JUNE 6, 2022)

Of course, the mice were was rewarded for getting the answer right.

The researchers noted in a preprint of the study that the mice almost always made the correct choice, but that the results became more variable the closer they were to the 1.5-second target. Previous research has shown that animals estimate their own ability to correctly classify different stimuli.

ADAM SCHRADER, “BRAIN APPLIES ‘DATA COMPRESSION’ WHEN MAKING DECISIONS, STUDY FINDS” AT UPI (JUNE 6, 2022)

Loss but Not Failure

And where does compressed data come in? Greater compression resulted in some information loss (lossy compression) but not total failure:

The team discovered that only models with a compressed task representation could account for the data. “The brain seems to eliminate all irrelevant information. Curiously, it also apparently gets rid of some relevant information, but not enough to take a real hit on how much reward the animal collects overall. It clearly knows how to succeed in this game”, Machens said.

CHAMPALIMAUD CENTRE FOR THE UNKNOWN, “THE BRAIN APPLIES DATA COMPRESSION FOR DECISION-MAKING” AT EUREKALERT (JUNE 6, 2022)

Eating very much concentrates the mouse mind; we just didn’t know that the mice use a technique somewhat like AI to do it.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Another look at Darwinism's OOL problem.

 Topoisomerase Origins Defy Darwinian Explanations

David Coppedge

When Discovery Institute released the new animation of Topoisomerase II back in February, evolutionists could have sought to refute it. They could have submitted detailed accounts of how this multi-talented tool arose by a Darwinian process from simpler ancestors. Instead, they turned on their usual speculation machine.

A Review of Topoisomerases

Also in February, Yves Pommier from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and three colleagues wrote a review article in Nature Reviews Molecular Biology about “Human topoisomerases and their roles in genome stability and organization.” This team no doubt wrote before the animation came out, and likely were unaware of it. Their review does not address origins; there is no mention of evolution, natural selection, or common ancestry. Neither is there any indication of intelligent design, although they mention molecular machines and motors six times.

First, let us marvel at the ubiquity and versatility of these molecular machines. It raises the question of whether any incipient life form could do without them, because even RNA molecules are subject to topological problems. An unstable genome is a dead genome.

DNA topoisomerases are present in all domains of life to resolve a wide variety of topological problems arising from the length of the human double-helix DNA polymer (about 3 × 109 bp) as it is folded, bent and highly compacted into the cell nucleus while remaining accessible to RNA and DNA polymerases. In addition, each human cell contains 100–1,000 copies of circular, ~16,000 bp mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), as well as long and folded RNAs that are even more abundant than DNA and present in all subcellular compartments. [Emphasis added.]

There are six known topoisomerases in humans. “We discuss their specific and overlapping roles as regulators of nucleic acid topology and metabolism,” they begin, also indicating that failure in those roles often lead to cancer and other diseases (see Table 1 for a frightening list of syndromes caused by topoisomerase malfunctions: seizures, retardation, autism, premature aging, various cancers, and more).

To manage the topology of the long, folded and intertwined DNA and RNA polymers that are attached to scaffolding structures and are metabolically and dynamically processed by large molecular machines (such as transcription, DNA replication, chromatin remodelling and DNA repair complexes), human cells use their six topoisomerases often redundantly, but also in specific ways depending on the topological problem, the surrounding cellular structures and the differentiation status of the cell. This section outlines topological problems and the molecular solutions provided by each of the topoisomerases.TOPS Are Always Needed

Topological problems are most likely to occur when the polymerases and helicases attach to DNA and RNA during key operations: transcription, replication, and chromatin remodeling among them. Operations that involve loop extrusion create risks for knots, over-twists, under-twists, catenanes, and other forms of torsional strain. These can lead to crossovers of the strands that can result in improper joining. Even single-stranded RNAs are subject to distortions in the genetic sequence. Operations that bring promoters and enhancers together, which can be considerable distances apart, can also lead to chromatin loops that require topoisomerase activity. 

The six TOP machines are well equipped to handle specific emergencies, and they do not work in isolation; additional repair enzymes and cofactors must be at hand in all parts of the cell.

Human topoisomerases and the associated repair enzymes tyrosyl-DNA phosphodiesterases (TDPs; TDP1 and TDP2) are located both in the nucleus and in mitochondria; in addition, cytoplasmic RNAs are handled by TOP3B and TDP2.

Figures 1-3 in the paper show simplified diagrams of some common topological problems and illustrate which TOP machines work on them. The modes of action, though, as illustrated in the DI animation, are not discussed in detail in the review. The authors do speak of a “fine-tuned balance” between TopIIA and condensin during mitosis, pointing to another design requirement: just-in-time delivery of parts, reminiscent of assembly lines and operating rooms. Throughout replication and condensation of chromosomes during mitosis, the right TOP machines need to present at the right times and in the right quantities. Checkpoints ensure these requirements are met. 

All mutations discussed in the review are disease-causing if not life threatening. Darwinians would wait in vain for a rare beneficial mutation, say from a UV ray, to “help” in any way. And if it occurred in a somatic cell instead of a germ cell, it would be but a brief and quickly forgotten stroke of luck.

Topoisomerases are magicians of DNA and RNA, and their full range of functions remain to be discovered.

How Can Evolutionists Darwinize All This?

Considering these facts, only a bold (or reckless?) individual would attempt to account for the origin of the topoisomerase system by unguided natural processes. One such attempt appeared in bioRxiv by Guglielmini and five co-authors, “Viral origin of eukaryotic type IIA DNA topoisomerases.” They start by recognizing the problem:

Type II DNA topoisomerases of the family A (Topo IIA) are present in all bacteria (DNA gyrase) and eukaryotes. In eukaryotes, they play a major role in transcription, DNA replication, chromosome segregation and modulation of chromosome architecture. The origin of eukaryotic Topo IIA remains mysterious since they are very divergent from their bacterial homologues and have no orthologues in Archaea.

And so, onward they proceed into the darkness of the mystery, looking for Darwin’s Cheshire-cat smile in the trees. But their entire approach is to look for homology between Type IIA topoisomerase genes and DNA sequences in certain viruses. 

To elucidate the origin of the eukaryotic Topo IIA, we performed in-depth phylogenetic analyses combining viral and cellular Topo IIA homologs. Topo IIA encoded by bacteria and eukaryotes form two monophyletic groups nested within Topo IIA encoded by Caudoviricetes and Nucleocytoviricota, respectively…. The topology of our tree suggests that the eukaryotic Topo IIA was probably acquired from an ancestral member of the Nucleocytoviricota of the class Megaviricetes, before the emergence of the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). This result further highlights a key role of these viruses in eukaryogenesis and suggests that early proto-eukaryotes used a Topo IIB instead of a Topo IIA for solving their DNA topological problems.

The homology argument, as shown in our video Long Story Short: Homology, is a circular fallacy: “Homology can’t be used as evidence for evolution because it assumes the very thing it’s trying to prove.” There’s also a personification fallacy in that last sentence. What in a proto-eukaryote, if such a thing existed, could decide it had a topological problem and would know how to latch onto a Topo IIB to solve it? And where did that handy tool come from? 

With the root of the eukaryotic tree being still debated (Burki et al. 2019), it is difficult to propose a scenario for the evolution of Topo IIAs in eukaryotes. From our phylogenetic analyses, one cannot exclude that LECA already contained more than one Topo IIA.

Needless to say, their “scenario” presupposes the existence of Topo IIB and the viral genome to begin with. Some origin story! Begin with the thing already existing.

The eukaryotic molecular fabric appears to be a melting pot of proteins that originated in Nucleocytoviricota (mainly Megaviricetes), those that emerged de novo in the eukaryotic stem branch, proteins inherited from the bacterial ancestor of mitochondria and chloroplasts, and proteins that had ancestors in Archaea (in two domains scenarios) or in the common ancestor of Archaea and eukaryotes (in three domains scenario). Sorting out the viral component of our eukaryotic ancestors is now a major task in understanding eukaryogenesis.

This glimpse into the mental perspiration of Darwinians to account for the origin of exquisitely orchestrated factories of molecular machines serves a purpose other than entertainment. It shows that intelligent design remains the only serious contender for explaining the origin of life. We just need to get the word out. Sharing our animation on social media is a good way to participate.