Michael Behe's defense of the design argument continues.

 Michael Behe Answers More Reasonable Objections to Intelligent Design 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

Michael Behe Answers More Reasonable Objections to Intelligent Design

A new ID the Future episode continues A Mousetrap for Darwin author Michael Behe’s conversation with philosopher Pat Flynn, focused on some of the more substantive objections to Behe’s case for intelligent design in biology. In this segment the pair discuss the bacterial flagellum, the cilium, and the blood clotting cascade, and tackle critiques from Alvin Plantinga, Graham Oppy, Russell Doolittle, Kenneth Miller, and others. Download the podcast or listen to it here. e.

And still even yet more on the OOL'S anti-Darwinian bias

Forming Polymers: A Problem for the Origin of Life 

Walter Bradley 

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin on the question, “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” This is the fourth entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the recent book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Find the full series so far here. 

Assume for a moment that there was some way to produce simple organic molecules on the early Earth. Perhaps these molecules did form a primordial soup, or perhaps they arose near some high-energy hydrothermal vent. Either way, origin-of-life theorists must then explain how amino acids or other key organic molecules linked up to form long chains (polymers), thereby forming proteins or RNA through a process called polymerization. 

A Popular Model 

A problem for the primordial soup version of this model is that it would be at chemical equilibrium, without any free energy for organic monomers to react further.1 Indeed, chemically speaking, the last place you would want to link amino acids or other monomers into chains would be a vast, water-based environment like the primordial soup or in the ocean near a hydrothermal vent. As the U.S. National Academy of Sciences acknowledges, “Two amino acids do not spontaneously join in water. Rather, the opposite reaction is thermodynamically favored.”2 Origin-of-life theorists Stanley Miller and Jeffrey Bada similarly acknowledged that the polymerization of amino acids into peptides “is unfavorable in the presence of liquid water at all temperatures.”3 In other words, water breaks protein chains of monomers back down into amino acids (or other constituents), making it very difficult to produce proteins (or other polymers like RNA) in the primordial soup or underwater near a hydrothermal vent. 

The hydrothermal vent model is popular among origin-of-life theorists because it represents a high-energy environment, but this model faces additional problems. Hydrothermal vents tend to be short-lived, lasting perhaps only hundreds of years4 — timescales so short that the origin of life at undersea vents has been said to be “essentially akin to spontaneous generation.”5 It is also difficult to envision how prebiotic chemicals could become concentrated in such a chaotic, unbounded oceanic environment.6 

The Biggest Obstacle 

But perhaps the biggest obstacle to the origin of life at hydrothermal vents is implied in their name: extremely high temperatures. According to Scientific American, experiments by Miller and Bada on the durability of prebiotic compounds near vents showed that the superheated water would “destroy rather than create complex organic compounds.”7

In the view of Miller and Bada, “organic synthesis would not occur in hydrothermal vent waters,” indicating that vents are not an option for the origin of life because “[a]ny origin-of-life theory that proposes conditions of temperature and time inconsistent with the stability of the compounds involved can be dismissed solely on that basis.”8 Some might reply that certain alkaline thermal vents have lower temperatures,9 but the high pH present near alkaline vents tend to precipitate carbon into carbonate minerals, with very little carbon remaining in the seawater for prebiotic chemical reactions,10 and such a high pH is highly destructive to RNA.11 As one paper put it, “the evolution of RNA is unlikely to have occurred in the vicinity of an alkaline deep-sea hydrothermal vent.”12 

Notes 

1)Nick Lane, John F. Allen, and William Martin, “How did LUCA make a living? Chemiosmosis in the origin of life,” BioEssays 2 (2010), 271-280.

2)Committee on the Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, Committee on the Origins and Evolution of Life, National Research Council, The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2007), 60.

3)Stanley Miller and Jeffrey Bada, “Submarine hot springs and the origin of life,” Nature 334 (August 18, 1988), 609-611.

4)John Horgan, “In the Beginning,” Scientific American 264 (February 1991), 116-125. Horgan is discussing the research of Miller and Bada in Miller and Bada, “Submarine hot springs and the origin of life.” 

5)Jeffrey L. Bada, “New insights into prebiotic chemistry from Stanley Miller’s spark discharge experiments,” Chemical Society Review 42 (2013), 2186-2196.

6)Koichiro Matsuno and Eiichi Imai, “Hydrothermal Vent Origin of Life Models,” Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, eds. Gargaud M. et al. (Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2015), 1162-1166.

7)Horgan, “In the Beginning.”

8)Miller and Bada, “Submarine hot springs and the origin of life.” See also Stanley L. Miller and Antonio Lazcano, “The Origin of Life Did It Occur at High Temperatures?,” Journal of Molecular Evolution 41 (1995), 689-692.

9)Matsuno and Imai, “Hydrothermal Vent Origin of Life Models”; Deborah S. Kelley et al., “An off-axis hydrothermal vent field near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 30°N,” Nature 412 (July 12, 2001), 145-149; Deborah S. Kelley et al., “A Serpentinite-Hosted Ecosystem: The Lost City Hydrothermal Field,” Science 307 (March 4, 2005), 1428-1434.

10)Norio Kitadai and Shigenori Maruyama, “Origins of building blocks of life: A review,” Geoscience Frontiers 9 (2018), 1117-1153.

11)Harold S. Bernhardt and Warren P. Tate, “Primordial soup or vinaigrette: did the RNA world evolve at acidic pH?,” Biology Direct 7 (2012), 4.

12)Bernhardt and Tate, “Primordial soup or vinaigrette?” 

 

The Manhattan project a brief history.

Manhattan Project, U.S. government research project (1942–45) that produced the first atomic bombs.

American scientists, many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe, took steps in 1939 to organize a project to exploit the newly recognized fission process for military purposes. The first contact with the government was made by G.B. Pegram of Columbia University, who arranged a conference between Enrico Fermi and the Navy Department in March 1939. In the summer of 1939, Albert Einstein was persuaded by his fellow scientists to use his influence and present the military potential of an uncontrolled fission chain reaction to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. In February 1940, $6,000 was made available to start research under the supervision of a committee headed by L.J. Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards (later National Institute of Standards and Technology). On December 6, 1941, the project was put under the direction of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, headed by Vannevar Bush. 

After the U.S. entry into World War II, the War Department was given joint responsibility for the project, because by mid-1942 it was obvious that a vast array of pilot plants, laboratories, and manufacturing facilities would have to be constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers so that the assembled scientists could carry out their mission. In June 1942 the Corps of Engineers’ Manhattan District was initially assigned management of the construction work (because much of the early research had been performed at Columbia University, in Manhattan), and in September 1942 Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves was placed in charge of all Army activities (chiefly engineering activities) relating to the project. “Manhattan Project” became the code name for research work that would extend across the country. It was known in 1940 that German scientists were working on a similar project and that the British were also exploring the problem. In the fall of 1941 Harold C. Urey and Pegram visited England to attempt to set up a cooperative effort, and by 1943 a combined policy committee with Great Britain and Canada was established. In that year a number of scientists of those countries moved to the United States to join the project there.

If the project were to achieve success quickly, several lines of research and development had to be carried on simultaneously before it was certain whether any might succeed. The explosive materials then had to be produced and be made suitable for use in an actual weapon. 

Uranium-235, the essential fissionable component of the postulated bomb, cannot be separated from its natural companion, the much more abundant uranium-238, by chemical means; the atoms of these respective isotopes must rather be separated from each other by physical means. Several physical methods to do this were intensively explored, and two were chosen—the electromagnetic process developed at the University of California, Berkeley, under Ernest Orlando Lawrence and the diffusion process developed under Urey at Columbia University. Both of these processes, and particularly the diffusion method, required large, complex facilities and huge amounts of electric power to produce even small amounts of separated uranium-235. Philip Hauge Abelson developed a third method called thermal diffusion, which was also used for a time to effect a preliminary separation. These methods were put into production at a 70-square-mile (180-square-km) tract near Knoxville, Tennessee, originally known as the Clinton Engineer Works, later as Oak Ridge 

Only one method was available for the production of the fissionable material plutonium-239. It was developed at the metallurgical laboratory of the University of Chicago under the direction of Arthur Holly Compton and involved the transmutation in a reactor pile of uranium-238. In December 1942 Fermi finally succeeded in producing and controlling a fission chain reaction in this reactor pile at Chicago. 

Quantity production of plutonium-239 required the construction of a reactor of great size and power that would release about 25,000 kilowatt-hours of heat for each gram of plutonium produced. It involved the development of chemical extraction procedures that would work under conditions never before encountered. An intermediate step in putting this method into production was taken with the construction of a medium-size reactor at Oak Ridge. The large-scale production reactors were built on an isolated 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-km) tract on the Columbia River north of Pasco, Washington—the Hanford Engineer Works. 

Before 1943, work on the design and functioning of the bomb itself was largely theoretical, based on fundamental experiments carried out at a number of different locations. In that year a laboratory directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer was created on an isolated mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico, 34 miles (55 km) north of Santa Fe. This laboratory had to develop methods of reducing the fissionable products of the production plants to pure metal and fabricating the metal to required shapes. Methods of rapidly bringing together amounts of fissionable material to achieve a supercritical mass (and thus a nuclear explosion) had to be devised, along with the actual construction of a deliverable weapon that would be dropped from a plane and fused to detonate at the proper moment in the air above the target. Most of these problems had to be solved before any appreciable amount of fissionable material could be produced, so that the first adequate amounts could be used at the fighting front with minimum delay. 

By the summer of 1945, amounts of plutonium-239 sufficient to produce a nuclear explosion had become available from the Hanford Works, and weapon development and design were sufficiently far advanced so that an actual field test of a nuclear explosive could be scheduled. Such a test was no simple affair. Elaborate and complex equipment had to be assembled so that a complete diagnosis of success or failure could be had. By this time the original $6,000 authorized for the Manhattan Project had grown to $2 billion. 

The first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, at a site on the Alamogordo air base 120 miles (193 km) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was detonated on top of a steel tower surrounded by scientific equipment, with remote monitoring taking place in bunkers occupied by scientists and a few dignitaries 10,000 yards (9 km) away. The explosion came as an intense light flash, a sudden wave of heat, and later a tremendous roar as the shock wave passed and echoed in the valley. A ball of fire rose rapidly, followed by a mushroom cloud extending to 40,000 feet (12,200 metres). The bomb generated an explosive power equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT); the tower was completely vaporized and the surrounding desert surface fused to glass for a radius of 800 yards (730 metres). The following month, two other atomic bombs produced by the project, the first using uranium-235 and the second using plutonium, were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. 

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica •

Is this soup past its 'sell by'date.

A Mystery: Prebiotic Synthesis of Simple Organic Monomers 

Walter Bradley

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin on the question, “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” This is the third entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the recent book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Find the full series so far here. 

The Miller-Urey experiments were conducted in 1952–19531 and were celebrated as a great breakthrough in the search for a chemical pathway from gases assumed to be present in the early Earth’s atmosphere to chemical reactions that produced amino acids, the building blocks for protein molecules. This experiment (see the apparatus depicted below), and other similar experiments, have produced additional simple monomers — certain building blocks of life.  

 Critiques of Miller-Urey 

Subsequently, careful critiques of the Miller-Urey experiments and similar experiments created great doubt about their significance, though they are still taught in some high school textbooks as if they were scientifically sound. The atmosphere used in their experiments assumed a very energy-rich primordial atmosphere of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen, none of which would have been chemically stable in an early-Earth atmosphere. Studies of the early Earth’s atmosphere by NASA during the 1980s confirmed that the mix of atmospheric gases used in the groundbreaking Miller-Urey experiments was wrong. The journal Science summed up the discoveries in 1980 by noting, “No geological or geochemical evidence collected in the last thirty years favors an energy rich, strongly reducing primitive atmosphere (i.e., hydrogen, ammonia, methane, with no oxygen). Only the success of the Miller laboratory experiments recommends it.”2 Later articles put it equally bluntly — in 1995, Science stated that “the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey situation.”3 Again in 2008, an article in Science reported, “Geoscientists today doubt that the primitive atmosphere had the highly reducing composition Miller used.”4 

Atmosphere of the Early Earth 

There are good reasons to understand why the Earth’s early atmosphere did not contain high concentrations of methane, ammonia, or other reducing gases. Earth’s early atmosphere is thought to have been produced by outgassing from volcanoes, and the composition of those volcanic gases is related to the chemical properties of the Earth’s inner mantle and core. Geochemical studies have found that the chemical properties of the Earth’s interior would have been very similar in the past as they are today.5 But today, volcanic gases do not contain methane or ammonia, and are not generally reducing. Instead, an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide is preferred, but this poses a problem for prebiotic synthesis experiments, as prominent origin of life theorist David Deamer observed: “Carbon dioxide does not support the rich array of synthetic pathways leading to possible monomers, so the question arose again: what was the primary source of organic carbon compounds?”6

Another problem with Miller-Urey type prebiotic synthesis experiments is that when amino acids are synthesized from energy-rich gases, a racemic mixture of amino acids is created with 50 percent L-amino acids and 50 percent D-amino acids, sometimes called left-handed and right-handed. Proteins molecules created in living systems must have 100 percent L-amino acids. If there are any D-amino acids in the chain, it would prevent the chain of amino acids from folding up into the proper three-dimensional protein structures associated with this amino acid string, preventing it from performing its function. 

More Problems with Miller-Urey 

There are many additional problems with Miller-Urey-type research that seeks to identify plausible chemical pathways for the synthesis of proteins, DNA, and RNA molecules — the molecules of life. So drastic is the evidence against prebiotic synthesis of life’s building blocks that in 1990, the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council recommended a “reexamination of biological monomer synthesis under primitive Earthlike environments, as revealed in current models of the early Earth.”7 Because of these difficulties, many leading theorists have abandoned the Miller-Urey experiment and the “primordial soup” model it is claimed to support. In 2010, University College London biochemist Nick Lane stated the primordial soup theory “doesn’t hold water” and is “past its expiration date.”8 Instead, he proposes that life arose in undersea hydrothermal vents where water circulates through hot volcanic rock at the bottom of the ocean. But both the hydrothermal vent and primordial soup hypotheses face another major problem. 

Notes 

1)Stanley L. Miller, “A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions,” Science 117 (May 15, 1953), 528-529.

2)Richard A. Kerr, “Origin of Life: New Ingredients Suggested,” Science 210 (October 3, 1980), 42-43

3)Jon Cohen, “Novel Center Seeks to Add Spark to Origins of Life,” Science 270: 1925-1926 (December 22, 1995)

4)Adam P. Johnson, “The Miller Volcanic Spark Discharge Experiment,” Science 322 (October 17, 2008), 404

5)Kevin Zahnle, Laura Schaefer, and Bruce Fegley, “Earth’s Earliest Atmospheres,” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2(10), a004895 (October 2010) (“Geochemical evidence in Earth’s oldest igneous rocks indicates that the redox state of the Earth’s mantle has not changed over the past 3.8 Gyr”); Dante Canil, “Vanadian in peridotites, mantle redox and tectonic environments: Archean to present,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 195:75-90 (2002)

6)David W. Deamer, “The First Living Systems: a Bioenergetic Perspective,” Microbiology & Molecular Biology Reviews 61:239 (1997)

7)National Research Council Space Studies Board, The Search for Life’s Origins (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1990)

8)Deborah Kelley, “Is It Time to Throw Out ‘Primordial Soup’ Theory?,” NPR (February 7, 2010). ...... 2010).

Matthew ch.5 KJV

Matthew5KJV:"And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the sam

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans s

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

By its fruit the tree is known.

 The ongoing war in Europe represents yet another failure by Christendom to live up to her claims of being Christian. It's not simply the fact that she has once again provided ammunition to the haters of Christ and his God by indulging in yet another industrial scale bloodbath. But that the leaders of the churches, rather than exerting any moderating influence, have been pouring fuel on the flames. By way of a reminder here is the kind of fruit that our Lord indicated ought to be expected of any tree planted by his God and Father John14:35KJV"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" in other words the opposite of what has historically been(and indeed presently is)  the case with Christendom. Now, for the sincere truth seeker, there is a global community of Christian who have by JEHOVAH'S grace have been able to resist relentless pressure from the world's political establishment to take sides nationalistic and revolutionary wars of the present age and thus fulfill our Lord's prophecy to the glory of his God and Father .

I don't expect that my words will meet with universal agreement, indeed our Lord warn us that as was the case with him ,few will see the obvious blessing of the Lord JEHOVAH upon his people. 

John15:20NIV"Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.'" but hopefully you would at least understand why I don't find the claim that Satan could succeed in teaching his servants to live in peace while God has consistently failed to do so impressive.

Darwinists continue to not see the forest for the trees.

 Gene Sharing Is More Widespread than Thought, with Implications for Darwinism 

David Coppedge. 

Evidence is growing that organisms share existing genetic information horizontally, not just vertically. This has immense implications for neo-Darwinian theory that are not yet fully recognized. If traits can be shared across species, genera and even phyla, they are not being inherited from common ancestors. The findings might also cast stories about convergence and co-evolution in a completely different light. Let’s look at some of the news on this front. 

Introgression 

Last month, Current Biology posted a Primer on Introgression by four authors. Introgression refers to “lasting transfer of DNA from one of the species into the genome of the other” by means of hybridization and backcrossing. Basically, it describes “the incorporation of the DNA from one species into another.” 

Over the last few decades, advances in genomics have transformed our understanding of the frequency of gene flow between species and with it our ideas about reproductive isolation in nature. These advances have uncovered a rich and often complicated history of genetic exchange between species — demonstrating that such genetic introgression is an important evolutionary process widespread across the tree of life 

Figure 1 in this open-access paper shows nine photos of creatures where “gene flow” has been inferred. They include vastly different organisms, from bacteria to birds, fish, and mammals — including humans. The authors strive to maintain Darwinism in their explanation, but this realization undermines what previously was explained by convergence or by independent origins of traits: 

Instead of waiting for a beneficial mutation to arise, gene flow can instead introduce variation that has been ‘pre-tested’ by selection, allowing species to evolve rapidly. For instance, alleles causing brown winter coat color in snowshoe hares (Figure 1E), early flowering time in sunflowers or serpentine soil tolerance in Arabidopsis have introgressed from closely related species, which has facilitated adaptation to new environments. 

The authors do not speculate at this time how common adaptive introgression might be.  

Kleptomania 

In news from the Florida Museum of Natural History, biologists discussed how a new genome for ferns reveals “a history of DNA hoarding and kleptomania.” The article is classified under “Evolution” but what is Darwinian about it? 

The “hoarding” part refers to ferns having 720 pairs of chromosomes “crammed into each of its nuclei” for unknown evolutionary reasons. Whole-gene duplication is not uncommon in plants and animals, but most species slim down their genomes over time. Why has this not happened in ferns? Geneticists are still trying “to figure out the evolutionary process underlying this paradox,” the article says. 

The “kleptomania” claim refers to “the surprise discovery that ferns stole the genes for several of their anti-herbivory toxins from bacteria.” 

Rather than evolving this toxin on its own, Ceratopteris appears to have obtained it directly from bacteriathrough a process called horizontal gene transfer. And given that there were multiple copies of the gene spread out among three separate chromosomes, it’s likely this happened more than once. 

The article references a 2014 study that showed another instance of kleptomania. Ferns seem to have inherited genes for thriving in shade from distantly related plants, but “exactly how organisms separated by millions of years of evolution are able to swap fully functional genes remains unclear.”  

“The mechanisms behind horizontal gene transfer remain one of the least investigated areas of land plant evolution,” Doug Soltis explained. “Over evolutionary timescales, it’s a bit like winning the lottery. Any time a plant is wounded, its interior is susceptible to invasion from microbes, but for their DNA to be incorporated into the genome seems amazing.” 

These examples illustrate a sea change in thinking about horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which was formerly thought to be restricted to microbes. 

Library Books 

A related preprint by Haimlich et al. on bioRxiv investigated “Widespread horizontal gene transfer between plants and their microbiota.” Finding 180 genes that indicated “prevalent horizontal gene transfer,” they concluded, 

Our results suggest that horizontal gene transfer between hosts and their microbiota is a significant and active evolutionary mechanism that contributed new traits to plants and their commensal microbiota. 

Crediting evolution seems stretched, though. Information shared is not the same as information innovated, nor is borrowing a book as difficult as writing one. 

Another preprint on bioRxiv reported introgression between “highly divergent sea squirt genomes” that were brought into contact by humans. The paper suggests that hybridization of these “incompletely isolated” species offered “an adaptive breakthrough” for the organisms. What other cases of assumed allopatric speciation convergence might turn out to be cases of introgression or HGT? Can life share library books of genes across distant species? 

From Division of Labor to Expertise Sharing 

Speaking of bacteria, Duke University proclaims that “Microbial Communities Stay Healthy by Swapping Knowledge.” How and why microbes do this prompted a metaphor that portrays intelligent action: 

Put another way, a construction crew could be extremely resilient to electricians quitting if the plumbers on site also knew how to wire a building. But the same crew would be even more resilient if the remaining electricians could simply transfer their expertise to anyone on the job when needed, no matter their profession. 

Dr. Lingchong You at Duke considers HGT a “dynamic division of labor” by which bacteria maintain their health in nature. 

Human Sharing 

With these reassessments of heredity in mind, how much of assumed “human evolution” could be explained by gene sharing instead of by the neo-Darwinian mutation-selection model? Have human beings been sharing library books or downloading each other’s software apps instead of writing them from scratch?

News from the University of Tübingen says that paleoanthropologists are considering the degree to which genetic hybridization affected the human skeleton and skull shape. 

Many people living today have a small component of Neanderthal DNA in their genes, suggesting an important role for admixture with archaic human lineages in the evolution of our species. Paleogenetic evidence indicates that hybridization with Neanderthals and other ancient groups occurred multiple times, with our species‘ history resembling more a network or braided stream than a tree. Clearly the origin of humankind was more complex than previously thought. 

It’s not the percentage of Neanderthal DNA that affects the phenotype, the researchers are finding, but “the presence of particular genetic variants” instead. 

Similar conclusions are being reached at North Carolina State University where a news item says that “Ancient DNA caused a revolution in how we think about human evolution.” Out is the old single-file march of progress from ape to man. In is the “a series of streams that converge and diverge at multiple points.” The “exploratory study” going on at NC State is changing the view that evolution is driven by external environmental factors, such as climate, and toward the view that internal gene flow causes the variations in human anatomy. 

Gene Flow Everywhere 

The Tübingen story notes that evolutionary innovation by hybridization is being found everywhere:  

In other organisms — from plants to large mammals — hybridization is known to produce evolutionary innovation, including outcomes that are both novel and diverse. “It is estimated that about 10 percent of animal species produce hybrids, including, for example, bovids, bears, cats and canids,” Ackermann says. Hybrids are also known in primates, our close relatives, such as baboons, she says. “Because hybridization introduces new variation, and creates new combinations of variation, this can facilitate particularly rapid evolution, especially when facing new or changing environmental conditions.” 

A question arises whether these variations and combinations of variations are random when introduced by gene flow instead of mutation. If the latter, then old-school Darwinians might argue that they are merely additional manifestations of neo-Darwinism’s unguided process of random variation and selection. 

But if these shared genes are instead modular pieces of functional information that are pre-adapted to join up in certain ways, then biologists will need to consider whether the source of that information requires an intelligent cause. The case for intelligent design in instances of gene flow can be further strengthened by observing whether newly incorporated genes are epigenetically regulated, targeted to functional loci, and responsive to signals from the environment. If so, organisms have been equipped with mechanisms to ensure robustness to changing conditions. That implies Foresight.

Yet more on why we make a big deal about the Name.

 Exodus 14:4ASV"4And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he shall follow after them; and I will get me honor upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host: and the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah. And they did so."

11For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name'shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense'shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name'shall be great among the Gentiles, saith Jehovah of hosts. 

 The Lord JEHOVAH is determined to have his name exalted above the names of the false gods ,as his loyalists we are simply responding to the current of his Spirit. The great enemy of God and his loyalists is ,of course ,bent on the erasure of the divine name, ,doubtless as retaliation for the erasure of his own name. The title 'Satan' (meaning enemy)by which he is referred to in scripture is not a self designation but the sentence pronounced upon him by the Lord JEHOVAH. So it's no surprise that in the present civilisation,of which Satan is architect and ruler, there is widespread Animus toward the divine name. For instance I have never seen a bible translation with the names of false gods like Zeus and Marduk substituted by titles, but the same translators have no problem disrespectfully removing JEHOVAH'S name from his own book.

So then whose will are they fulfilling? That loyal servant of JEHOVAH who declared :John17:26KJV"26And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." 

Or the the enemy of the Lord JEHOVAH and his loyalists.

And yet even more on why the OOL Remains the keystone of the design argument.

 All Living Systems Must Process Energy, Store and Utilize Information, and Replicate 

Walter Bradley

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin on the question, “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” This is the second entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the recent book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Find the full series so far here.  

Aristotle posited the idea of spontaneous generation of life from nonliving matter, or abiogenesis, that held sway for two millennia. But in 1859, Louis Pasteur showed persuasively — with a clever set of experiments — that what appeared to be life springing forth from nonliving matter was actually life emerging from exceedingly small living organisms, not lifeless matter. Pasteur’s experiments were widely seen as having settled the question of whether life could only come from preexisting living matter, a process called biogenesis. In 1864, Pasteur triumphantly predicted to the science faculty at the Sorbonne in Paris, “Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.”1 Pasteur’s view remained dominant for almost a century. 

In 1924, after sixty years of virtual silence since Pasteur’s experiments, the Russian biochemist Alexander Ivanovich Oparin proposed that the complex molecular arrangements and associated functions of living systems evolved from simpler molecules that preexisted on the lifeless, primitive Earth. With this bold speculation, a recognizably modern hypothesis of how life might have arisen, Oparin reopened the discussion of abiogenesis.2 

A Rationalist Biologist 

In 1929, the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane published a paper in the Rationalist Annual speculating on what initial conditions might be most favorable for a naturalistic origin of life.3 He imagined an early Earth atmosphere rich in gases that was acted upon by lightning that caused chemical reactions to produce various building blocks for life — such as sugars and simple amino acids. In Haldane’s view, these molecules might become sufficiently concentrated in oceans, or more likely in lakes and ponds, such that they could chemically react to form long polymer chains that today we know are the key components in living cells (i.e., protein, DNA, and RNA).4 In 1944, the noted quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger observed that living systems are characterized by highly ordered, aperiodic structures that survive by continually utilizing (chemical or radiant) energy from their surroundings.5 In 1952, Harold C. Urey proposed that the Earth’s early atmosphere was rich in hydrogen, ammonia, and methane—chemicals that both provided the elemental building blocks and the energy to facilitate the chemical reactions necessary to make primary biopolymers, the chemical building blocks of life.6 

Many Additional Steps 

The review above outlines early theories about generating the building blocks of life on Earth. But many additional steps would be needed for the origin of life to occur, which are sketched in the figure below.7 In our next post in this series, these various steps in a hypothetical origin-of-life scenario will be reviewed so that you can judge for yourself whether current theories are plausible. 

 

Figure: Major steps involved in the origin of life. All prebiotic evolutionary scenarios contain many hypothetical steps. Credit: Casey Luskin, modified with permission after Committee for Integrity in Science Education, Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy: A View from the American Scientific Affiliation (Ipswich, MA: American Scientific Affiliation, 1986), 31.  

 First, though, it is vital to define the problem. As noted already, all living systems (1) process energy, (2) store information, and (3) replicate. In nature, these processes are performed primarily by molecules from three families of large biopolymers: proteins, DNA, and RNA. The mystery of how life began is essentially the mystery of how these three types of biopolymers formed and congregated within a cell with a barrier made of lipids as a self-replicating system. 

Notes 

1)R. L. Devonshire, The Life of Pasteur, translated R. Vallery-Radot (New York: Doubleday, 1920), 109.

2)Alexander I. Oparin, Proiskhozhdenie Zhizni (Moscow, Russia: Izd. Moskovski Rabochii, 1924), translated as Origin of Life by S. Morgulis (New York: Macmillan, 1938).

3)J. B. S. Haldane, “Origin of Life,” Rationalist Annual 148 (1929), 3-10. For a discussion of Haldane’s views, see Stéphane Tirard, “J.B.S. Haldane and the origin of life,” Journal of Genetics 96 (November 2017), 735-739.

4)Y. D. Bernal, “The Physical Basis of Life,” paper presented before British Physical Society in 1949, found in The Physical Basis of Life (London, UK: Routledge, 1951).

5)Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1944).

6)Harold C. Urey, The Planets: Their Origin and Development (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952).

And yet more on why the OOL remains the keystone of the design argument.

Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means? 

Walter Bradley

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin on the question, “Did Life First Arise by Purely Natural Means?” This is the first entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the recent book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Find the full series so far here.

Major scientific magazines and journals often feature articles on the “Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Science”1 — and the origin of life is almost always on that list, sometimes as the number one mystery.2 In this and coming posts we will explore key challenges to a natural, chemical origin of life. We’ll examine the formation of the essential functional polymers of life — proteins, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and RNA (ribonucleic acid). How might these extraordinarily complex molecules have formed in oceans, lakes, or ponds from simple, naturally occurring molecular building blocks like sugars and amino acids? What is life? How does it operate? Could life originate by strictly natural means? 

Three Scientific Discoveries 

Darwin’s theory of evolution and the development of the second law of thermodynamics by Boltzmann and Gibbs are two of the three major scientific discoveries of the 19th century. Maxwell’s field equations for electricity and magnetism are the third. The second law of thermodynamics has had a unifying effect in the physical sciences much like the theory of evolution has had in the life sciences. What is intriguing is that the predictions of one seem to contradict the predictions of the other. The grand story of evolution teaches that living systems have generally moved from simpler to more complex over time.3 The second law of thermodynamics teaches just the opposite, a progression from order to disorder, from complexity to simplicity in the physical universe. Your garden and your house, left to themselves, go from order to disorder. But you can restore the order if you do the necessary work. In the winter, when it is cold, the interior of your house will gradually drop in temperature toward the outside temperature. But a gas heater can reverse this process by converting the chemical energy in natural gas into thermal energy in the house.  

True Everywhere in Life 

This simple analogy illustrates what is true of all living systems: they can only live by having access to energy and a means of converting this energy into the alternative forms of energy or work required to oppose the pull toward thermodynamic equilibrium, from complexity to simplicity. Living systems are much more complex than nonliving systems. Like a lawnmower with gasoline as a source of energy and an engine to convert that energy into movement of a blade to cut the grass, living systems must have access to sources of energy and systems to convert the energy into the needs of plants and animals. Nonliving objects in nature exist without any complex functional systems or any energy flow requirements. They are generally made of simple crystalline or amorphous materials. A picture of my (Walter Bradley’s) backyard (at the top of this article) shows a region in the foreground that is completely shaded by a large oak tree; it receives no sunlight, and consequently, has no grass. Adjacent to this shadowy, bare section is a region where sunlight is present about 50 percent of the daytime and consequently has a beautiful, grassy cover. The second law of thermodynamics is a law of nature (like gravity, everyone is subject to it). Living plants and animals can survive only with energy flowing through their systems. Nonliving objects such as mountains, rocks, sand, rivers, and soil have no need for energy flow, nor do they have the complexity to utilize energy toward some goal.  

To Utilize and Store Energy 

To summarize, plants can utilize solar energy to levitate above thermodynamic equilibrium. Nonliving objects such as mountains, oceans, rocks, sand, and soil have no need for such complexity; they do not store chemical energy like plants do; nor can they process solar or other forms of energy. Living matter is much more complex (e.g., RNA, DNA, protein, etc.), needing as it does to be able to utilize and store available energy from the sun or from the consumption of plants and animals.  

Notes 

1)See for example Ronak Gupta, “The 7 biggest unsolved mysteries in science,” Digit (May 26, 2015), https://www.digit.in/features/general/7-greatest-unsolved-problems-in-science-26132.html (accessed November 18, 2020).

2)See for example Philip Ball, “10 Unsolved Mysteries in Chemistry,” Scientific American (October 2011), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/10-unsolved-mysteries/ (accessed November 18, 2020).

3)Technically the official line from neo-Darwinian evolutionists is that evolution knows nothing of “progress” and does not necessarily move from “simple to more complex.” Nonetheless, it is also true that the grand arc of the evolutionary story moves from simpler organisms toward more complex ones. In this evolutionary story, biological and organic systems began with a single self-replicating molecule and ended up at us. Evolutionary theorists sometimes try to trivialize this clear progression by calling it “bouncing off the lower wall of complexity,” but it cannot be denied that their story entails a march towards greater complexity. See for example Stephen Jay Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York: Three Rivers, 1996). 

 

Bomb thrower Michael Behe holds court.

Behe Answers Best Objections to Irreducible Complexity 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

 

On a new episode of ID the Future Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe addresses what Philosophy for the People host Pat Flynn considers some of the best objections to Behe’s central intelligent design argument. As far back as the 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box, Behe has argued that certain features in biology are irreducibly complex. That is, they require numerous essential parts, each carefully fitted to its task and integrated with the other parts, in order for the molecular machine or system to function at all. Two examples are the bacterial flagellum motor and the blood clotting cascade. Such systems are, in Behe’s words, irreducibly complex and could not have arisen through any blind and gradual evolution process. The better explanation for their origin: intelligent design. Since Darwin’s Black Box became a bestseller a generation ago, Behe has attracted opponents in places high and low. Following the philosopher Alvin Plantinga, Flynn says that some of the attacks on Behe have been hysterical, but some have been more thoughtful. Flynn focuses the discussion on what he regards as some of the more substantive and interesting objections, beginning with one from a noted philosopher who is partly sympathetic to Behe’s work, Plantinga himself. Behe gamely responds. Download the podcast or listen to it here. 

  To see Behe’s responses to common and key objections collected in a single book book, get your copy of his newest book, A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics. 

A steal of a deal?

 Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel Sells “Something from Nothing”: I’m Not Buying 

Rob Sheldon 

Ethan Siegel explains how “70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing”:

Whoever said, “You can’t get something from nothing” must never have learned quantum physics. As long as you have empty space — the ultimate in physical nothingness — simply manipulating it in the right way will inevitably cause something to emerge. Collide two particles in the abyss of empty space, and sometimes additional particle-antiparticle pairs emerge. Take a meson and try to rip the quark away from the antiquark, and a new set of particle-antiparticle pairs will get pulled out of the empty space between them. And in theory, a strong enough electromagnetic field can rip particles and antiparticles out of the vacuum itself, even without any initial particles or antiparticles at all.

Previously, it was thought that the highest particle energies of all would be needed to produce these effects: the kind only obtainable at high-energy particle physics experiments or in extreme astrophysical environments. But in early 2022, strong enough electric fields were created in a simple laboratory setup leveraging the unique properties of graphene, enabling the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs from nothing at all. The prediction that this should be possible is 70 years old: dating back to one of the founders of quantum field theory, Julian Schwinger. The Schwinger effect is now verified, and teaches us how the Universe truly makes something from nothing.

You can read the rest at Big Think. According to his bio, Siegel is a “science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges.” He has become quite adept at blogging on physics from the “establishment position.” Part of his appeal is always backing up the status quo, which in today’s world means the mainstream media, Nature editorials, and the like. And regarding the origin of the universe, the status quo position is “anything but God.” So naturally Ethan is going to offer the Lawrence Krauss gimmick of selling “a universe from nothing.” 

Changes to the Dictionary 

In order to push this, he has to make some pretty big changes to our normal dictionary definition of what “nothing” means, just as Krauss did and got ridiculed for it. The new item is graphene. Supposedly graphene is so marvelous that it makes particles out of electric fields. But need I point out that graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms? And the “holes” are actually displacements of carbon atoms? So we are making waves out of carbon atoms and calling this “something from nothing.” Really?

Here’s an example of that thinking we used to joke about. The joke is: Photons don’t exist. They are really just the absence of darkons. A flashlight is sucking up darkons, and that’s why you think it has a ray of light going out. Don’t believe me? Then test it out by cutting open a dead battery from the flashlight. Sure enough, it is black, just as you’d expect if it was full of darkons. Which is why it was dead of course.

That joke employs the same sort of logic that Ethan is using. 

Matter and Energy 

What about particle physics and mesons and all that? It is true that E = mc2, so we can make matter out of energy, and vice versa, energy from matter. We’ve done this ever since the uranium atom was split in 1939 by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, and the pieces weighed less than the uranium atom did. For the forces that hold the uranium atom together are pretty strong and therefore massive. But mind you, the fields are massive, and it is simply a trick of physics to approximate these forces and fields with subatomic particles. What you are doing is modifying potentials and calling these modifications “particles.” You aren’t making particles; you are manipulating fields.

Ethan is saying we can put those forces to work in a graphene sheet, whereas it’s a lot harder to work with uranium nuclei. True, but that is just saying, “If I make my sheet ring by hitting it with a hammer, I’m making phonons from nothing.” It isn’t nothing, it’s a sheet of graphene. If you want to call waves of atoms moving “particles,” then what you are really doing is making a press release out of nothing.  

The Casimir Force 

And now a comment about the Casimir force, also invoked by Ethan. It is the go-to field for wacky YouTube cranks. When you hold two conductors close to each other, they attract with a 1/R5 attraction that Hendrik Casimir attributed to “virtual particles” appearing out of the vacuum in between the plates. 

First of all, virtual particles are just a math trick to truncate an infinite sum which describes the field. So, they are virtual in more ways than one. Secondly, there’s a perfectly valid way to describe this attraction without invoking virtual particles: random motion of electrons in one plate set up transient dipole fields that induce transient dipole fields in the other plate, so the attraction is a dipole-dipole interaction maintained by thermal instabilities. 

I had a colleague who owned a business etching silicon into miniature optical components. An inventor came to him with a design for using the Casimir force to do work. They constructed an etched silicon perpetual motion machine based on this force. Guess what? It didn’t work. And he is a smart man. 

Another theoretical physicist also looked for virtual particles affecting starlight. Stars (and our sun) emit correlated light, but the kiloparsecs of space should produce enough collisional virtual particles to decohere it. So, he looked for decoherence. Nope, not there either. So no, I think that invoking the Casimir effect is proof that you don’t understand thermodynamics and have too great a confidence in the existence of “virtual particles.”

On the mortal soul and the doctrine of Christ ransom.

 Mark12:30 NIV"Love the Lord your God... with all your MIND...’" 

Christendom's falsehoods render the above cited scriptural admonition impossible. These not only promote wrong(i.e unscriptural) beliefs but they also impede clear thinking. Having recently addressed the brain eating absurdities of Christendom's doctrines of the trinity and the hypostatic union, I would now like to examine the way in which Christendom's reductionist spiritualism makes a mockery of the biblical doctrine of Christ substitutionary atonement, as it's name suggest the atonement provides a legal basis for our Justification by the Lord JEHOVAH by having the human son of (the) God endure the sentence of the eternal loss of his human life in our stead. The prophet Isaiah frames it this way.

Isaiah53:8KJV"8He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken." 

Note please that death was sufficient to fulfill the legal requirement for Christ substitutionary atonement, there was no need for any reductionist spirit soul to endure eternal conscious torment subsequent to it's separation from a reductionist material form, which of course would be absolutely distinct from the self which would have been charged with sin, if the penalty for sin is eternal conscious torment of an immortal spirit soul distinct from the body it merely inhabits ,then clearly Christ temporary separation from the physical form that merely housed his true self would have no redemptive value to mankind.

John 8:58 and the supremacy of the Father.

 Trinitarians and Modalists would often trot out John 8:58(in a matter of fact way) as evidence for their respective (and opposing) doctrines. By way of a reminder the KJV renders the verse: "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." Now mind you, a mere four verses earlier Jesus declares :"Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God:"  thus Trinitarians affected by logic ought to be wondering ,why if he and his Father are equal in every way, would being glorified by his Father make a difference and Modalists whose brains had not yet been devoured by the absurdity that is their dogma would wonder why the glory of their God seems to fluctuate from mode to mode. 

Nevertheless one might sincerely wonder what in John 8 verse 58 would qualify as evidence that the one God of the bible consists of three persons and that the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed one of these three persons. Well according to proponents this view the Greek 'ego eimi' rendered 'I am' in many translations is supposedly a title for almighty God. Now ,let us suppose that there is some substance to this claim (spoiler alert; there isn't) how does one sensibly extrapolate the necessary implication of a triune deity from this fact or for that matter that the Lord Jesus is a mode of the supreme  being? Jesus is not the first Messiah of almighty God to share titles held by God.

Exodus7:1KJV"1And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." 

Here Moses is called Theos/Elohim by the Lord JEHOVAH himself, as I have repeatedly demonstrated there is more trinitarian style evidence for Moses' Godhood than Jesus' Godhood. But from where did this notion that 'ego eimi' is a divine title originate. Supposedly from it's use at exodus3:14. The trouble is that if one examines the Septuagint version ,which would have been the text available to Jesus' contemporaries, one would note that 'ego eimi' is not used as a title. In fact in response to Moses' inquiry re:JEHOVAH'S  name God responds "ego eimi' ho on" i.e "I am the being" and at Exodus 3:14c is instructed to tell the Israelites that "ho on" i.e the being had sent him. Clearly none of this is a declaration of a name or title but a statement of intent re:the captive condition of his people. Despite appearances he was the real God not the idols of the Egyptians and he was about to demonstrate that beyond all reasonable doubt. 

As for the name by which he is to be invoked in prayer and otherwise :

Exodus3:15ASV"And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, JEHOVAH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. " The same name by which their ancestors invoked him. Even if one wanted to make reach that a divine title was being declared, " ho on" would be this title not "ego eimi" . Interestingly at revelation 1:4 and 1:8 the God and Father of Jesus is indeed referred to as " ho on" in the Greek text.

19th Century philosophy v. 21st century science?

 If Darwin Visited the 21st Century 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

On a classic ID the Future episode, hear another chapter from Nickell John Romjue’s fascinating book I, Charles Darwin. Follow along as Darwin, on his visit to the 21st century, learns about DNA and the other amazing discoveries of molecular biology that have occurred since he developed his theory, as well as discoveries in physics and cosmology, which have our time-traveling Darwin reconsidering some of his earlier conclusions. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Part 1 of the audio series is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. To learn more and to purchase the book, visit www.icharlesdarwin.com. 

Paganism hiding in plain sight.

 One thing that doctrines that are required by authority (other than logic and scripture that is) tend to have in common,is a slipperiness  re:definitions. For instance Trinitarians assure non trinitarian Christians that despite what our eyes and ears fairly scream to us, their doctrine does not represent a reversion to polytheism. 

Thus despite claiming that each of the three persons(/beings?) Constituting their compound deity is "fully God" the listener/reader would be mistaken should he then come to perfectly logical conclusion that the trinity is composed of three Gods. It all begs the question what does being fully God entail? Can one be fully God ,in the scriptural sense ,without being a God? For instance when the scriptures say : 

1Corinthians8:4NIV"So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is NO God but ONE.”" 

To whom (or what?) are they referring? Can anyone (or anything?) other than this one be sensibly said to be "fully God" ,is it not plain that the designation fully God is exclusive to this one ,denoting as it does, supremacy?

Against the 'hypostatic union'

While the doctrine of the trinity remains comfortably settled atop the heap of brain eating nonsense to which one must subscribe if one wishes to be considered Christian by Christendom's gate keepers, the dogma of the hypostatic union would be a close second ,and lest I be accused of misrepresentation etc., here is the definition of the doctrine from our friends at Zondervan in their own words: Hypostatic union is how Christians explain the relationship between Jesus’ divine nature, his human nature, and his being. It means that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Jesus has all of the characteristics that are true of a person, and all of the characteristics that are true of a divine being. Both natures fully exist in one person. 

It's interesting that Zondervan in their definition refer to Jesus as a divine being and speak as though his being a divine being and a person is some how remarkable or necessarily implies that his kenosis left him with a superhuman nature which was inscrutably included in his fully human nature. What about his God and Father is he not also a person does that mean that he also shared in the hypostatic union. And if Jesus' is a divine being in his own right. Does that mean that the trinity is in fact constituted of three Gods 

According to webster's a God is :

God : a being or object that is worshipped as having more than natural attributes and powers. 

Another definition of God is the supreme being. Is Jesus in fact the supreme being ,and if so how could it also be true of the supreme being that: Hebrews2:9KJV"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels..." only a creature could be lower than angels or be subject to death.

This is how we know that Christendom's doctrines are nonsense ,they require the ignoring of the obvious meaning of words. If one is supreme one can have no peers and most definitely no superiors. 

They also require the most cringe inducing mental gymnastic re:clear scriptures e.g:

Numbers23:19KJV"19God is not(NEVER) a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent..." 

Hosea11:9KJV"I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am(EVER) God, and not(NEVER) man..."  

On teleology in science.

Defining the “Science of Purpose”

Stephen J. Iacoboni 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Dr. Iacobini as a new contributor to Evolution News. 

Does the idea of “purpose” have a place in science? Can there really be a science of “purpose”? Has anyone previously tried to describe such a concept? And what might that entail? 

Since the subject matter itself is at the very least novel in the scientific context, questions like these are unavoidable. The “science of purpose” is new to the analytic framework, and is thus obliged to make the case for its claim to validity. 

Purpose in a Framework 

Let’s agree to accept an inarguable definition of science, and see if purpose can be accommodated within that framework. Here is a straightforward and broadly accepted definition of science. It is “the observation of natural phenomena in order to discern recognizable patterns that can be described in a cause/effect relationship, so that a model of that relationship can be developed that provides at the very least a qualitative generalization that applies to those observed natural phenomena. At the quantitative level, such a generalization must be tested to make verifiable predictions regarding the behavior of such phenomena.”

I don’t think that one can easily find an exception to this definition. Science, especially biology, has historically been a descriptive, qualitative exercise. Almost all of the “laws of science,” which apply to the quantitative portion of the definition, are limited to the realm of chemistry and physics. 

The science of purpose can be readily subsumed within the qualitative/descriptive definition. But beyond that, a modeling relation allows for quantitative analysis as well.

Let’s continue with a further definition. What is purpose? I define it as: “the achievement of a predetermined outcome to fulfill a desired goal.” Notice that this definition entails two concepts rarely employed in science: intentionality and the future tense. 

An Endless List 

Yet, with just a little reflection, one realizes that it is straightforward to compile an endless list of examples in nature that exhibit purpose. Bees gather honey, birds build nests for their young, salmon migrate to feed and mate, snakes lay in ambush for their prey, plant stems bend toward the light, gymnosperms spray pollen to reproduce, prairie dogs dig burrows to hide from predators, wolves hunt in packs to improve their predatory success, ruminants travel in herds to resist predation. That would be the taxonomy of purpose, understood in much the same way that anatomists began to understand physiology two centuries ago. 

It was the discovery of the similarity of the anatomy between different classes and phyla of organisms that allowed for biology as a descriptive and qualitative science to progress. In much the same way, one quickly realizes the unity of several discrete purposes that govern and unify the biosphere.

Those purposes include procurement of food, shelter, a suitable environment, mating, protection of offspring, and more. These are all readily definable purposes that define almost all of biota. Purpose at these descriptive levels is undeniable, demonstrable, and easily contained within a generalizable model of organism. Yes, in short, purpose has a place in science. 

 

More on the rise of the expertocracy.

Another Prestigious Science Journal Conflates Science with Politics and Pushes for Technocracy 

Wesley J. Smith 

Last month I criticized the prestigious journal Science for pushing ideology and attacking the Supreme Court’s rulings — as if its authors’ and editors’ subjective beliefs and policy preferences are the same thing as supporting objective science.

Not to be outdone in conflating politics with “science,” the British journal Nature — perhaps the world’s most respected “scientific” publication — has similarly attacked SCOTUS based on the wrongheaded idea that policy preferences are somehow synonymous with good science. From “Inside the Supreme Court’s War on Science,” by Nature’s U.S. correspondent Jeff Tollefson: 

In late June, the US Supreme Court issued a trio of landmark decisions that repealed the right to abortion, loosened gun restrictions and curtailed climate regulations. Although the decisions differed in rationale, they share a distinct trait: all three dismissed substantial evidence about how the court’s rulings would affect public health and safety. It is a troubling trend that many scientists fear could undermine the role of scientific evidence in shaping public policy. Now, as the court prepares to consider a landmark case on electoral policies, many worry about the future of American democracy itself. 

 

Issues such as abortion, gun regulations, and yes, even what to do about climate change are not matters that can be determined objectively by science. Instead, they involve many different disciplines and possible approaches that policy-makers have to balance. For example, whether abortion should be permitted through the ninth month of pregnancy, as much of the pro-choice movement wants, or strictly curtailed, as many on the pro-life side want, or something in between, is a question based primarily on issues of morality, ideology, philosophy, ethics, and religion. Science per se cannot answer the question.  

Science and the Administrative State 

Tollefson seems particularly troubled by the Supreme Court’s recent rulings impeding the growth of the administrative state: 

In September 2021, the court tossed out a moratorium on housing evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic that had been issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And in January, the justices rejected a mask mandate for major employers issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But the conservative majority went one step further in West Virginia v. EPA, and laid out a new legal test: the ‘major questions’ doctrine, which posits that agencies need explicit permission from Congress when implementing major rules. 

Please. The regulation imposed to prevent evictions was not a scientific question and, moreover, was clearly beyond the CDC’s jurisdiction. Neither was the West Virginia ruling, which in my subjective opinion — which is as valid as any scientist’s on a nonscientific question — upholds democracy by requiring Congress to explicitly delegate policy-making power to executive-branch bureaucrats. 

Science and Technocracy 

But that kind of democratic oversight is precisely what Tollefson objects to. He — and presumably Nature‘s editors — want a system of rule by experts, e.g., technocracy: 

The problem, says Blake Emerson, who studies administrative law at the University of California, Los Angeles, is that the civil service is precisely where science enters government. That’s by design: Congress does not have the expertise or the political capacity to craft detailed regulations, so lawmakers pass broadly worded laws that are often intentionally vague, leaving the details up to the experts. Now, those experts are at risk of getting squeezed from both sides — being stripped of authority and becoming more vulnerable to the whims of elected officials. 

Yes, heaven forbid that elected officials interfere with the policy preferences that unelected “experts” want to impose on society. Good grief.

Tollefson then wanders into the question of state gerrymandering, again not an issue of scientific concern. And like the Science article referenced above, he voices support for stacking the Court to increase the likelihood that SCOTUS will issue decisions more to his political liking.

If anything is a “war on science,” it is publishing ideological articles like this in what is supposed to be a science journal — a trend that seems particularly infectious among establishment medical and scientific outlets. By pushing rank political advocacy that would have been perfectly appropriate in The Nation or Politico — as if the issues discussed were scientific matters — Nature has undermined trust in its objectivity as an important institution furthering the dispassionate search for truth. 

File under well said LXXXI

 Every nation gets the government it deserves. 

Joseph de Maistre 

Ps. Generally speaking. 

And still yet even more primeval tech v. Darwin.

 RuvAB: Another Elegant Molecular Motor Visualized 

David Coppedge 

Admirers of molecular machines will love RuvAB. This machine looks like something out of a CAD/CAM project, but it’s found in bacteria. And it plays an essential role in maintaining this “primitive” microbe’s genomic integrity. 

A picture is worth a thousand words. Before we talk about it, look at the 30-second animation of RuvAB modeled by scientists at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), a research center of the Helmholtz Association in Hamburg, Germany.

That’s an eye-popping example of irreducible complexity if there ever was one. Are those gears, rotors, and clutches operating in a detailed sequence of moving parts? The scientists must have thought so; a graphic in the press release portrays the operation as a set of twenty gears operating on DNA strands, with the caption, “Artistic representation of the Holliday junction and the RuvB motors.” 

A Minor Correction 

One little correction to the animation should be noted. They show it in slow motion. The actual movements are “very fast and highly dynamic,” they say — so much so that they “provided the … motor with a slower burning fuel which allowed us to capture the biochemical reactions as they occur.” They took “over ten million images” of the motor in action.  

Using the high-performance computing facility at DESY, the scientists were then able to put all the puzzle pieces together to generate a high-resolution movie detailing how the RuvAB complex functions on the molecular scale.  

Is this molecular machine important? 

DNA recombination is one of the most fundamental biological processes in living organisms. It is the process by which chromosomes “swap” DNA either to generate genetic diversity, by creating new offspring, or to maintain genetic integrity, by repairing breaks in existing chromosomes. During DNA recombination, four DNA arms separate from their double-helix formations and join together at an intersection known as a Holliday junction. Here the DNA arms exchange strands in a process called active branch migration. 

RuvA is the stator and RuvB is the motor. The two form the “RuvAB branch migration complex” that handles DNA recombination and repair. 

The essential energy needed for this branch migration to occur comes from a molecular machinery that scientists have tagged as the RuvAB branch migration complex. This complex assembles around the Holliday junction and is made of two motors labelled RuvB AAA+ ATPases, that fuel the reaction, and a RuvA stator. The research team has now provided an intricate blueprint that explains how the RuvB AAA+ motors work under the regulation of the RuvA protein to perform synchronized DNA movement. 

The AAA+ family of molecular machines deserves attention from ID researchers, because they move things in elaborate ways and take part in diverse cellular activities (see another example reported here in 2019). 

AAA+ motors are often used in other biological systems, such as protein transport, therefore this detailed model of the RuvB AAA+ motor can be used as a blueprint for similar molecular motors. “We understand how the motor works and now we can put this motor into another system with some minor adaptations,” explains Marlovits. “We are essentially presenting core principles for AAA+ motors.” 

More detail is given in an open-access paper in Nature by Wald et al. , “Mechanism of AAA+ ATPase-mediated RuvAB–Holliday junction branch migration.” 

Coordinated motions in a converter formed by DNA-disengaged RuvB subunits stimulate hydrolysis and nucleotide exchange. Immobilization of the converter enables RuvB to convert the ATP-contained energy into a lever motion, which generates the pulling force driving the branch migration. We show that RuvB motors rotate together with the DNA substrate, which, together with a progressing nucleotide cycle, forms the mechanistic basis for DNA recombination by continuous branch migration. 

A Feast for the Eyes 

The figures in the paper are worth feasting your eyes on. Hmmm; I wonder why they didn’t say anything about how it evolved? Look for the word “mutation” and you will find that “mutational studies markedly compromised branch migration activity, and mutation of trans-Glu128 resulted in a bacterial growth defect.”

Here is another biological wonder that needs little verbiage to convince readers of intelligent design. It certainly spoke to the researchers: 

“We were able to visualize seven distinct states of the motor and demonstrate how the interconnected elements work together in a cyclical manner,” explains Wald. “We also demonstrated that the RuvB motor converts energy into a lever motion which generates the force that drives branch migration. We were amazed by the discovery that the motors use a basic lever mechanism to move the DNA substrate. Overall, the sequential mechanism, coordination and force generation manner of the RuvAB motor share conceptual similarities with combustion engines.” 

I would love to see this motor star in an expanded animation documentary with dramatic music.