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Tuesday, 11 April 2023

When the thumb print of JEHOVAH is the logical conclusion.

 Debate About the God Hypothesis: An Overview with Stephen Meyer



Stephen Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis is out now in paperback with a new epilogue by Dr. Meyer responding to critics. See the book’s website for more information and resources. For the occasion, we’re highlighting some of the best interviews Meyer has done about the book. In this episode of Great Minds with radio host Michael Medved, Dr. Meyer gives an overview of the debate and explains why he wrote the book.

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On black America's academic history.


On separating Church from state.

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Rise of the "Christian" Taliban?

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Ps. There is also an equally radical "Christian" left on the march but it and its danger to civil liberty gets precious little mention from the left leaning mainstream media and its cohorts in academia.





The theory of devolution is on the march?

 Even More Mammoth Devolution

Last year I reported1 on a paper2 that showed 87 genes were broken in genomes of recovered extinct woolly mammoth remains, compared to their modern elephant relatives. The authors of the paper noted previous research had shown that “gene losses … can be adaptive” and thought that was the case for the mammoths they studied, too. I pointed out that, while such a process might indeed aid adaptation of a species to its changing environment, nonetheless it constitutes de-volution, not e-volution, in the sense that the species is losing genetic information, not gaining it.

A new paper strongly bolsters that conclusion.3 In “Genomics of adaptive evolution in the woolly mammoth” a large international team of researchers sequenced genomes from 23 woolly mammoth remains and examined genes for proteins that had the most “fixed” amino acid mutations (that is, mutations that occurred in all of the genomes that were sequenced, and so very probably were widely present in the mammoth population). They evaluated the mutations by something called an “aggregated SIFT score.” SIFT stands for “Sorting Intolerant From Tolerant.”4 In the paper, the higher the aggregated SIFT score, the more likely the amino acid mutations were to not be tolerated by the protein’s structure — that is, to disrupt the protein’s activity. Of the 31 most highly mutated genes (Table S5), the great majority had high aggregated SIFT scores for the number of mutations they carried, and 21 of the genes each contained one or more “high impact” mutations (very likely to disrupt structure). Only four genes had low aggregated SIFT scores. (Interestingly, one of those is the BRCA2 gene, whose mutation in humans can lead to breast cancer.) 

Revisiting Darwin Devolves 

This seems like a good time to reiterate what I wrote in Darwin Devolves in 2019:5
                 Thus, although these are difficult matters to test directly, and although the more widely two species are separated in time the harder it is to interpret changes, it seems very likely that degradative modification-of-function and loss-of-FCT mutations drove much of mammoth evolution. If so, then not only do beneficial-degrading changes explain modern evolution from bacteria to bears, but also the evolution of now-extinct species that arose millions of years in the past.
                  The blazingly obvious lesson from woolly mammoth studies and many other ones, too, is that it is much faster and easier to break or blunt a gene than to improve or make a new one. Thus, if a helpful effect can be had by degrading or destroying genetic information, the blind watchmaker will toss it out in an evolutionary instant, well before any constructive mutations meander onto the scene. That’s certainly not the kind of process that would be expected to build complex machinery in the first place.

Notes

1.https://evolutionnews.org/2022/08/mammoth-support-for-devolution/
2.Van der Valk, Tom, et al. 2022. Evolutionary consequences of genomic deletions and insertions in the woolly mammoth genome. iScience 25, 104826.
3.Díez-del-Molino, D. et al. 2023. Genomics of adaptive evolution in the woolly mammoth. Current Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.084.
4.Ng, P.C. and Henikoff, S. 2003. SIFT: predicting amino acid changes that affect protein function. Nucleic Acids Research 31: 3812–3814.
5.Behe, M. J. 2019. Darwin Devolves: The New Science about DNA that Challenges Evolution. New York, NY, HarperOne, p. 196. 


The second horseman's ride along the banks of the Nile.

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Super no more?


Buyer's remorse?


Monday, 10 April 2023

One more tradeoff?

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In search of the bright line between artificial and natural selection.

 There Was Berra’s Blunder; Now Lieberman’s Lapse


Ohio State biologist Tim Berra thought evolutionary progress was like the diversification seen in Corvette models. Now, another evolutionist makes an analogy for extinction. But can the “extinction” of the steam locomotive really bring understanding to Darwinian theory? 

Back in 1997, Phillip Johnson had fun with Tim Berra’s notion that biological evolution was like Corvette evolution (see his quips recounted by Casey Luskin Here , and later instances of similar blunders Here and Here). He called it “Berra’s Blunder” because, like Darwin, Berra had confused intelligently directed processes with natural selection — Darwin, with animal breeding; Berra, with engineering. This is not to accuse either man of being completely unaware of the differences, but of trying to score points for natural selection theory with obviously flawed analogies.

Today’s “inverted Berra blunder” concerns extinction. Is the analogy just as flawed, or does it lead to increased understanding of the ebb and flow of biological life? The fact of extinction is empirically verified by fossils. It is not controversial in the way Darwinian progress up the tree of life is. What if the new claim overturns a Darwinian assumption about the extinction of species? Can the analogy be embraced by ID supporters?

Lieberman’s Lapse

Bruce Lieberman, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and a curator of the school’s Natural History Museum, was featured in news from KU about his epiphany. Perhaps it was triggered by a song.
          When the Kinks’ Ray Davies penned the tune “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains,” the vanishing locomotives stood as nostalgic symbols of a simpler English life. But for a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, the replacement of steam-powered trains with diesel and electric engines, as well as cars and trucks, might be a model of how some species in the fossil record died out.
                     Lieberman thought about how diesel and electric engines rendered the old steam locomotives obsolete. A simple understanding of the history might lead one to conclude that the newer engines outcompeted the steam engine, and that’s why steam engines went extinct. Except for a few remaining antiques operated for railroad museums and vacation rides in the mountains, steam locomotives are rarely seen today. They just can’t compete with the faster, cleaner, cheaper, more powerful modern engines. Lieberman thought and he thought, and the light bulb went on: This could be a way to test the popular theory called “competitive exclusion” used by evolutionists to explain the extinction of biological species.
                          “There’s always been a bias to assume in the scientific community that competition is sort of the fundamental force that drives evolution and plays the biggest role on extinction,” Lieberman said. “That idea comes from a lot of different areas of research, including on the fossil record. But we, as paleontologists, have to dive down deeper into the data and analyze them.”
                     
It Seems an Honorable Quest

Don’t scientists want to debunk poor assumptions, overcome biases, and understand why things happen? Is competition a different kind of force when it comes to extinction than it is when Darwinists offer it up to explain innovation?
                 “I’d always been fascinated by steam engines because they’re the technological equivalent of dinosaurs,” Lieberman said. “They’re gigantic. We infer dinosaurs made a lot of noise. We know that steam locomotives made a lot of noise, but they’re no longer with us.”
                         Now that comparison sounds stretched, but let’s hear him out. Searching through a steam train database for examples, Lieberman and colleague Luke Strotz found evidence against the competitive exclusion model. Sure, there was competition at first. It looked like the newer engines were robbing steam locomotives of their ecological niche. A closer look, though, showed that competition only excludes an older technology when there is direct overlap for the same space.
                               “For a time when there’s no competitors to steam-locomotive technology, we see them almost diversify and diffuse into no particular direction,” Lieberman said. “But when these new locomotives appear, we see a profound shift to really active natural selection and adaptation of the steam locomotive. Often, it’s thought that adaptation is a good sign for a group. But what we would argue is, in fact, when things start to adapt and shift directionally — traditionally in evolution that’s not a good time for a group. We’d argue it’s a sign the group may be experiencing duress or pressure from other things.”
                           There’s the first sign of trouble with the analogy: Lieberman and Strotz are comparing the fates of engineered technologies with natural selection. Can they transfer the analogy to biology? In their paper, they make three comparisons of steam engine history with biological extinction.
                         In some cases, the idea that competitive exclusion was at play has been debunked; in other examples, evidence of competitive exclusion falls far short compared with the meticulous data available on the demise of steam engines.

“One of the classic examples involved mammals and non-flying dinosaurs, where the traditional view was, ‘Hey, the mammals were smarter and quicker and they dropped these dinosaurs to extinction,’” he said. “Now we know that it was a giant rock that fell out of the sky that caused this tremendous environmental damage, and bigger things are more likely to be susceptible to that.
        This point, too, seems stretched and factually incorrect. Not all dinosaurs were big, but they all perished, while frogs and butterflies survived.

A Major Insight into Evolution?

In their paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Lieberman and Strotz list four criteria for a locomotive to be competitive in the transportation market. Then they justify the analogy for biological evolution, with some caveats. For example, they know that steam locomotives (SLs) are not truly extinct; there are a few still operating in various locations. But even with their caveats, they are adamant that they have hit on a major insight into the process of biological evolution.
                         While we provide evidence that SLs adhere to our four criteria, we do not propose that a technological entity can be considered truly homologous with a macroevolutionary unit. For instance, SLs cannot be considered monophyletic and they are incapable of speciation. We do consider them strongly analogous, however, as they do experience both ‘birth’ and ‘death’, and are subject to processes that fall within the purview of macroecology. In this sense, technological entities can be considered parallel to higher biological units, such as genera and above. Although the functional lifespan of the SL is several orders of magnitude shorter than typical macroevolutionary units, the rapid generation time of new locomotive forms (measured on a scale of months/years) means SLs can be considered comparable to a ‘temporally condensed’ macroevolutionary unit.
                                     Just as Bad as Berra’s Blunder 
               I’m sure most of our readers do not need an explanation of why this analogy is just as bad as Berra’s Blunder, so the summary here can be brief. Locomotives are designed by engineers with minds and knowledge of physics! Trains don’t have babies! They neither “emerge” by blind processes of nature, nor do they go extinct without reasoned decisions made by the intelligent minds of businessmen. This is crazy.

If it weren’t for the sad reality that Darwinism lives in university echo chambers without critical thinkers to object, Lieberman’s Lapse would have gone extinct itself before getting published. And extinct it would have gone not by natural blind processes nor by competitive exclusion, but by reasoned debate among thinking people who understand the difference between what minds can do and what chance does. This isolation from critique fosters loco motives for fantasizing.

Lieberman’s Lapse is actually worse than Berra’s Blunder, because Lieberman and Strotz think their “insight” has broad application to all of evolution, including macroevolution. We’ll let their own words provide the evidence that this was an exercise in futility on their part, ending with the customary Darwinian promissory notes for some “understanding” that never arrives at the dock.
               It should also be noted that the relevant data needed to conduct a full assessment of both the frequency of our proposed model in the fossil record and the relative import of clade replacement in macroevolutionary dynamics is currently lacking, as the necessary functional trait data associated with putative examples of competition-driven extinction has not yet been compiled. The fossil record does, however, contain a plethora of suitable options from which such data could be obtained.

Our results thus cannot, at this time, resolve what role, if any, competition plays in driving extinction at the macroevolutionary scale. They do, however, provide a path forward that may serve to resolve the issue by addressing the existing impasse in identifying causal relationships in fossil time series. There is no doubt that the SL was derailed by its competitors; however, it still remains to be established if biological clades are frequently similarly sidetracked.
                         Sidetracked? This analogy has derailed and flipped over, spilling toxic chemicals in fantasyland.


False messiahs ?

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Red team vs. Blue team post game?


My two cents on the JEHOVAH must be be triune to be perfect argument

A union of three imperfect divinities cannot constitute a perfect trinity. Therefore each member of our perfect trinity must himself be a trinity if we are to take this reasoning to its logical conclusion ,and of course each member of the perfect trinities constituting the perfect trinity must themselves be perfect trinities and so on ad nauseum .


We are all X-Men?

A Single Mutation Makes Humans


When evolutionists found out that the chimp and human genomes were practically identical they went ape, claiming the evidence all but proved our shared lineage, with the chimp, to a small, primitive, ancestral primate. There was only one problem: With so few random genetic changes, how would such dramatic and complex changes come about? Far from a confirmation, our similar genes posed a dilemma for evolution. For how could so little genetic change cause so much significant evolutionary distance be traversed? And if the answer is, as it always seems to be, that those rare and random genetic changes were able to achieve such monumental results because the requisite parts and pieces that would be used were, fortuitously, already in place (because they just happened to have evolved for some other reason), then we have entered the realm of just-so stories. For the theory then amounts to the claim that “the fix was in.” The various key ingredients to making a human were all there, lying around, perhaps in disguise, or perhaps doing some other job. And then they were systematically recruited, coming into their own by virtue of a few, rare, mutations finally occurring and enabling the puzzle pieces to come together. It would be like a supersonic jet aircraft just happening to come together because its various parts just luckily were lying around. That is serendipity on steroids.

Well it just gets worse. More recently evolutionists were  forced to conclude that most of the mutations affecting protein-coding genes led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” So not only are evolution’s random mutation resources meager, but even worse, those mutations mostly led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.”

In fact the beneficial mutations in protein-coding genes, which presumably would be important in evolving the human from a small, primitive ape, literally number only in the hundreds. It would be astonishing if the human could be evolved from so few mutations.
                 In fact the beneficial mutations in protein-coding genes, which presumably would be important in evolving the human from a small, primitive ape, literally number only in the hundreds. It would be astonishing if the human could be evolved from so few mutations.

But again, it just gets worse. For now evolutionists must conclude that not only are there few random mutations that must somehow create Newton and Einstein (to name just a couple of humans), and not only are most of those mutations neutral or slightly deleterious, and not only would evolution probably have only a few hundred genes undergoing selection, but that a monumental part of that evolutionary change, so important in creating humans, must have arisen from, yes, a single mutation. To wit: 
                      What distinguishes humans from monkeys and apes? The gene ARHGAP11B is probably among the things that make humans special: This gene is only present in humans and contributes to the amplification of brain stem cells. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden have now made a spectacular finding: It is a single base pair substitution in the ARHGAP11B gene that ultimately is responsible for the ability of the ARHGAP11B protein to amplify brain stem cells, a process thought to underlie the expansion of the neocortex in modern humans.
                   Spectacular indeed. As one of the researchers explained:
                     This change is tiny on a genomic scale but substantial in its functional and evolutionary consequences – it’s a single base substitution that likely drove brain size evolution and that may have set the stage for what makes humans special.
                 
A single mutation? Here we have evolution reductio ad absurdum. A single mutation essentially worked the magic to create humans. How lucky we are.

Of course such absurdity entails the idea that an army of molecular components were serendipitously in place, ready and waiting for the single mutation to unleash their creative powers.
                      

Sunday, 9 April 2023

When your only tool is an eraser?


The religiopolitical right makes another bid for the lead in the race to the bottom with the religiopolitical left .


Darwin of the gaps?

 Current Biology: RNA-Only Life Coming Soon


Here is a trade secret: Evolutionists acknowledge scientific problems only after they find solutions. We have seen this repeatedly. Evolutionists evade the science, and ridicule their critics, only later to confess readily that the problem was real. The difference is they have found what they think is a solution to the problem they once so steadfastly denied. To wit, our latest example comes from Michael Gross’s recent article in Current Biology on the RNA world praising the progress made in developing the on-again / off-again RNA World hypothesis. Gross is sufficiently confident that the hypothesis is “on-again” that he can now agree with critics that the origin of life was once a big problem:
                    Just how the transition from non-life to life may have happened was indeed a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution in the 20th century, which a few inspired experiments like Stanley Miller’s famous 1952 primordial soup kitchen couldn’t quite bridge.
Indeed a gaping hole? Couldn’t quite bridge?

You would never know this from the evolutionist’s rosy assessments, and ridicule of anyone suggesting the science indicated otherwise. As Carl Zimmer wrote more than 15 years ago, scientists “have found compelling evidence that life could have evolved into a DNA-based microbe in a series of steps.” Perhaps he had read the National Academy of Science’s 1999 claim that
             For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells? [1]
                           Of course for the Mother of all such absurd, non scientific, statements we can go back to Alexander Oparin’s 1924 prediction that origin of life research would be solved “very, very soon.”

But now, almost a century after Oparin’s slightly premature forecast, the evolutionists feel they have finally arrived. And so now Gross can admit to what we have been inconveniently pointing out all along: There has been “a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution.”

Evolutionists can finally admit to this because they are rather confident that they are on the cusp of a profound break-through: A compelling demonstration of the feasibility of the origin and operation of RNA-based life. That is, the RNA World hypothesis:
                      it appears conceivable that a working model of RNA-only life could be synthesized soon.
                                 At least Gross did not say “very, very soon.” Nonetheless, we think evolutionists are, yet again, speaking a bit prematurely.

That, however, is neither here nor there. For our purposes what is important about Gross’ article is not his proclamation of imminent success—which until it actually happens carries no more weight than the boatload of other failed evolutionary expectations—but rather the delayed admission of “a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution.”

Now that we have that cleared up, we can apparently all agree that until the RNA World, or some other miracle breakthrough, is demonstrated, evolutionary theory has “a gaping hole.” That’s progress.

                           

Saturday, 8 April 2023

What cosmic speed limit?

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Complications re:Darwinism's "simple beginning"

 James Tour on Origin-of-Life Dealbreakers


On a new episode of ID the Future, distinguished synthetic organic chemist James Tour of Rice University explains why the goal of synthesizing life from non-life in conditions similar to those of the early Earth appears further away than ever. It’s not an illusion, he explains. The illusion was how close OOL researchers thought they were 50-70 years ago. They were never close, and the more we learn about how mind-bogglingly sophisticated even the simplest cells are, and how the complexity is essential for biological life, the more we realize just how far we are from constructing a plausible scenario for the mindless origin of the first life.

Tour points out that even granting a great deal of intelligent design in the form of the highly skilled and interventionist work of the origin-of-life researchers in the lab, they still can’t engineer into existence all the key building blocks of a living cell. What if you handed them all the building blocks in the right proportions? They’re still nowhere near being able to intelligently design those ingredients into a living cell, Tour says. It has to do with what’s termed the interactome — that is, all the interdependent molecular interactions in a particular cell, many of which may initially appear unimportant but turn out to be crucial.

Tour doesn’t argue that researchers will never be able to design a cell from non-living matter. He does say that if it is achieved, it will be well into the future. What will such an achievement underscore? As host Casey Luskin emphasizes, it will highlight the creative power of intelligent agency.

Download the podcast or listen to it Here. The occasion for Dr. Tour’s conversation with Dr. Luskin is Tour’s essay in a new Book now available for free download, Science and Faith in Dialogue. For more from Dr. Tour, check out his Website and his YouTube Channel.

Friday, 7 April 2023

Yet one more rant on the utter absurdity of Christendom's Trinity dogma.

 Imagine a book with three Chapters,the subject of each chapter is a complete up to the moment understanding Chemistry. That's right if one diligently studies any of the three chapters of our hypothetical book he would become an expert on the subject of chemistry. Also having studied any of the three chapters none of the remaining chapters could contribute any further understanding of the aforesaid subject to our reader .

Let's say that this book alone contained this up to the moment understanding of chemistry.

If all of these premises be accepted as true, how could the claim that that any particular chapter of this book is necessary re: a complete understanding of chemistry be taken seriously?

Would this book in its entirety be any more valuable re: an up to the moment knowledge of chemistry than any of its chapters?

Would any worthwhile refutation be possible of the observation that this book is a couple of chapters too long?

More cause for despair re:Darwinism's "simple beginning"

 Do Present Proposals on Chemical Evolutionary Mechanisms Point Toward the First Life?


Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series of excerpts from chapters in the recent book, Science and Faith in Dialogue, edited by Frederik van Niekerk and Nico Vorster. You can download a full copy of the book for free by going here 

Abiogenesis is the prebiotic process wherein life, such as a cell, arises from non-living materials such as simple organic compounds. Long before evolution could even begin, the origin of the first life, that first cell, would have arisen from some simpler non-living molecules. On Earth, the essential molecules for life as we know it are carbohydrates (also called sugars or saccharides), nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins (polymers of amino acids). Described in this chapter is the process by which organic synthesis is performed and the considerations that are generally required to synthesize a complex system where many molecular parts come together to operate concertedly. This will be demonstrated in the synthesis of nanomachines. 

Then some proposals that others have espoused for the synthesis of carbohydrates and carbohydrate- bearing nucleotide bases will be considered, from a prebiotic milieu. The obstacles to the much more difficult task of having the molecular building blocks assemble into a functional system will be briefly mentioned. The scientifically unknown entities that have been proposed to have seeded life on Earth, such as a design agent or panspermia, are not considered. An opinion showing that the strongest evidence against the proposals of current prebiotic research is the researchers’ own data will be rendered. The current proposals can prevent the discovery of scientific solutions in the field as they seem to be directing researchers down paths of futility despite hyperbolic claims to the contrary. 

Paths of Futility

Any account of the origin of the first form of life must include a mechanism for the generation of the chemicals needed for life and then for how life arose from those pre-existing non-living chemicals. Abiogenesis proposals attempt to explain how chemical processes transformed pre-existing non-living chemicals into more complex information-bearing molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. For an account of the origin of life to be realistic, there must be chemical processes that can successfully arrange simple organic compounds into complex biologically relevant macromolecules and living cells. Life requires carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. But what is the chemistry behind their origin? What is the origin of metabolism, or of the information-storage and processing systems that depend on these complex biochemical compounds? 

Working in synthetic chemistry, building relatively simple nanomachines, has led to being sceptical of proposals for the origin of the requisite chemical building blocks necessary for life. Some biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for the synthesis of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, or nucleic acids. They have been grossly misinformed. Others think that, if not yet known, such chemical pathways will soon be identified. To me, these biologists are naively optimistic. What they hope for will not happen anytime soon. 

And no wonder: few biologists have ever synthesized a complex molecule ab initio. Experience with organic synthesis leads to suggesting that chemistry acting on its own simply does not do what it would need to do to generate the biologically relevant macromolecules, let alone the complex nanosystems in a living cell. The reasons for this skepticism are further explained in more detail. 

Lessons from Synthetic Chemistry

The process of molecular design and synthesis in general, what it takes to successfully build a molecule to perform a particular function, is discussed at the start. The initial design is important. Sometimes molecular designs are computer-assisted, but more often than not, the initial steps are noted on paper. A target must first be drawn or otherwise designated. This is no trivial task. In some cases, chemists have seen the target in a related system; in other cases, they guess the target’s properties on the basis of its molecular weight, its shape, the moieties appended to the main backbone and its functional capacities. 

Once a target is selected, retrosynthesis is next, whether on paper or on a computer screen. Placing the target at the top, the chemist draws an inverted tree (or graph), one step down at a time, into multiple branch points, until a level where starting materials are at hand is reached. The inverted tree is then pruned. Certain branches lead to dead-ends. They are lopped off. Further refinement of various routes leads to a set of desired paths; these are the routes that can be attempted in the laboratory. 

A Target and a Path

Given a target and a path to get there, the synthetic chemist must now try a number of chemical permutations. Each step may need to be optimized, and each step must be considered with respect to specific reaction site modifications and different reaction rates. 

What is desired is often ever so slightly different in structure from what is not. If Product A is a mirror image of Product B, one left-handed and the other right-handed, separation becomes a time-consuming and challenging task, one requiring complementary mirror-image structures. Many molecules in natural biological systems are homochiral, meaning only left-handed or right-handed molecules are used, not both. Their mirror images cannot do their work. In addition, few reactions ever afford a 100 percent yield; few reactions are free of deleterious by-products. Purification is essential. If by-products are left in the reaction, they result in complex mixtures that render further reactions impossible to execute correctly. 

After purification, a number of different spectroscopic and spectrometric methods must be used to confirm the resulting molecular structures. In case the wrong molecular intermediate is made, the synthetic chemist quickly learns, and all subsequent steps are compromised. 

Finally, intermediate products are often unstable in air, sunlight or room light, or water. Synthetic chemists must work in seconds or minutes to prevent destructive natural processes or chemical reactions from taking over. 

Read the rest by downloading a free copy of Science and Faith in Dialogue here

Another look at the king of the planets.

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The James Webb Chronicles.

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Why JEHOVAH'S law demands that Jesus Christ be sinless man and not God-man

 1Corinthians15:17NIV"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. "

So the above verse clearly states that if the PERSON identified as Christ Jesus in scripture did not truly die and was not truly resurrected no redemption from sin would be possible.

If the person identified as Jesus Christ in scripture is the uncreated only true God he cannot also be a creature according to scripture, indeed he cannot even resemble any created object, according to scripture.

Romans ch.1:22,23NIV"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."

It is stupid,according to JEHOVAH'S word, to even think that JEHOVAH would outwardly resemble a man to say nothing of being fully human 

More to the point if the person called Jesus in scripture was the uncreated God of scripture he would not be subject to death 

Psalms ch.90:2NIV"Before the mountains were born

or you brought forth the whole world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God."

1Timothy ch.1:17NIV"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen." 

The Lord JEHOVAH was always ,is always ,will always be immortal.

According to scripture,hence can never die and thus can never be resurrected.

No wonder then that the scriptures tell us:

1Corinthians ch.15:21NIV"For since death came through a man(not God-man), the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man(not God-man)."





Thursday, 6 April 2023

Anthropomorphized Darwinism?

 About Those Placental Regulatory Genes


Last time we noted the teleological ideas and language used to describe the hypothetical evolution of several genes that are expressed for a mere few hours, in the early development stages of many placental mammals. And by early we mean when we consist of only 8-16 cells. The teleology is not a mere slip-up. As we have documented many times, it is a common thread running throughout the genre of evolutionary literature. It is needed to make sense of the data, because evolution doesn’t.

That teleological language appeared in an article about the research. Not too surprisingly, teleological language also appears in the research journal paper as well. To wit:
                     A small number of lineage-specific tandem gene duplications have occurred, and these raise questions concerning how evolutionarily young homeobox genes are recruited to new regulatory roles. For example, divergent tandem duplicates of the Hox3 gene have been recruited for extra-embryonic membrane specification and patterning in dipteran and lepidopteran insects, a large expansion of the Rhox homeobox gene family is deployed in reproductive tissues of mouse, and duplicates of TALE class genes are expressed in early development of molluscs.
                           Two of the evolutionists’ favorite words are “recruited” and “deployed.” They sound so active. What better way to obviate the rather awkward problem that, if evolution is true, all biological variation must be random with respect to fitness (a claim which, by the way, has been falsified so many times we stopped counting). Evolutionists nonetheless continue to spread this fake news.

And no teleological idea would be complete with the mandatory infinitive form (“for … specification and patterning”)

Politics and nationalism are just false Gods.

 Revelation ch.13:4NIV"People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”" 

Revelation ch.13:4NIV"ALL inhabitants of the earth (not a mere handful of "deluded cultists")  will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. "

Politics and nationalism are Just other false Gods. 

Revelation ch.3:6NIV"Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."



What is meant by 'Son of God'?

 Acts17:28KJV"For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (or he is our Father)" 


Luke 3:38NIV"the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God." 


John 6:57NKJV "57As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father(i.e the Father caused me to live), so(in the same manner) he who feeds on Me will live because of Me."  


Luke 1:35NKJV"The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." 


Acts13:33NKJV"God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm:


‘You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You.’" note please that JEHOVAH'S restoring of his Son's life is spoken of as his begetting him anew. 


Proverbs8:22NJB"Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works." 

To be clear JEHOVAH'S Wisdom is eternal hence uncreated like its possessor. Thus the passage speaks of the initial expression of this wisdom and not the wisdom itself. 

Proverbs8:30NJB"I was beside the master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence," 

Then this living derivative of JEHOVAH'S Wisdom proceeds to glorify its source by doing praiseworthy work. 

Colossians1:15_16NJB"He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation,


16 for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him."

1Corinthians1:24NIV"but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." 

He is called logos one of the meanings of which is logic. He is JEHOVAH'S living rebuttal to those who accuse him of being a poor Father. He can only serve this purpose If he is truly a Son i.e owes his life/existence to his Father.





The supremacy of the Father permeates he scriptures II

    John8:54NIV"If I glorify myself ,my glory means nothing. My Father,is the ONE who glorifies me." Once more Jesus identifies his Father as the one God of Israel. For Jesus and his fellow Jews the Father and the God were identical,the father was not a member of a collective deity. And can we even conceive of the Father claiming that if he glorified himself his glory would be nothing.(btw why is the Holy Spirit not glorifying him)

John:6NIV"I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Here again we see that the Father and the God are the same person. Unless we wish to claim that Jesus is merely mediator between man and a subsisting member of the God. Also if all members of this Godhead are truly co-equal why is it that only the Father requires a mediator and the Son and the spirit don't. 

John ch.14:28"You heard me say,"I am going away and am coming back to you." If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father,for the Father (the God) is greater than I" The Son's plain declaration that the person identified as the Father is greater than the person identified as the Son really ought to be the end of the matter,unfortunately we have had to witness the most cringe inducing mental gymnastics in connection with this text. 

Hebrews ch.6:13NIV"When (the)God made his (third person singular)promise to Abraham since there was no one greater for him to swear by.." God is immutable, so the apostle's declaration holds true at all times and in all places. 

John ch.6:57NIV"Just as (in the same manner that) the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father (or the Father caused me to live),so (or in like manner) the one who feeds on me will live because of me." If someone else caused one to live then one is most certainly not the one God of scripture. And the comparison with the way Christ will resurrect faithful followers should be a safeguard against attempts to needlessly mystify the verse. But who caused the Son to live The Father (i.e the God).

Luke ch.18:19NIV""why do you call me good" Jesus answered" no one is good_except (the)God alone."" Here is another verse that really ought to be as plain as day as to its meaning ,but regarding which Christendom's theologians have elected for the most appalling mental contortions rather than the plain reading of the text. The Father is good in a way that distinguishes him from even the very best of his Sons. And this distinction is a transcendent one.





Wednesday, 5 April 2023

Emperor Qin's tomb: a brief history.

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Playing God(again)

 Pleistocene Park: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?


Popular Mechanics reports, “Bringing Back the Wooly Mammoth Is One Big Genetic Gamble, Scientists Say.” Pleistocene Park, as it’s called, is the brainchild of Sergey Zimov in 1997, 50 square miles of Siberia are to be returned to the Pleistocene — 25,000 years ago, during the Ice Age. (See sources here, here, here, and here.)

But how, and why? Strangely, as glaciers slowly ground over North America, producing the Great Lakes, Siberia sported vast grasslands in which the apex herbivore was the wooly mammoth. Like the bison of the American plains, the mammoth modified its environment to remove the trees and keep it a productive grassland, the “mammoth steppe.” The last mammoth died on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, some 4,000 years ago. But not before leaving frozen carcasses in the permafrost of Siberia, which were so well preserved that we have stories of stranded explorers subsisting on mammoth steaks. It is to these ancient TV dinners that we owe the rediscovery of the genome of an extinct species of cold-adapted elephant. 

Well, in recreating an extinct species, what else would researchers choose — the passenger pigeon that crowded the Appalachian forests, the thylacine wolf that preyed on Australian marsupials, or the half-zebra quagga that had roamed the South African plains? For all these animals, their habitat had been taken over by humans, and it is doubtful that they would ever survive in the wild again. But the mammoth lived in Siberia, in one of the least inhabited places on earth, and likely to stay uninhabited. If ever there was a place to regain prehistoric paradise, this was it. 

Getting Started

How is one to restart an extinct species? Isn’t this the chicken-and-egg problem in spades?

The idea is to recreate some of the DNA from the sequencing of frozen mammoths, and inject it into an Asian elephant egg to produce a half-elephant half-mammoth hybrid. Once a viable embryo is made, further CRISPR-Cas9 splicing can increase the percentage of mammoth DNA to produce 3/4 and 7/8 “mammophants.” Then by degrees one approaches true mammoths. Many challenges present themselves, not least is finding which hybrids are viable and which are stillborn. The gestation of an Asian elephant is 22 months and many trials are needed. This will be an expensive and lengthy process.

Wouldn’t one of the other extinct species be a whole lot easier to recreate? Why choose a mammoth?
            
A Mission to Save the Planet

Zimov doesn’t want to just recreate the Pleistocene, but in an echo of the commercial possibilities outlined in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, he wants to save the planet. In a world devoid of religion, global climate change (GCC) has risen to fill the need. The earth has a fever, and billions of dollars are being spent on antipyretics such as lithium batteries, giant windmills, carbon dioxide sequestration, and hydrogen fuels. If Zimov can link up to this powerful liturgy, his funding, if not his park, will be secure. And so he proposed that mammoths did not just spread poop across the steppe, distributing micronutrients, but they also cooled the planet, hence, the Ice Age.

How could a mammoth cool the planet, by flapping its ears?

That’s a peculiar feature of permafrost. It’s cold 365 days of the year. Cold enough that the methane gas, produced by methanogen bacteria slowly decomposing plant material, can form a special water ice mixture called a “clathrate.” Think of this as God’s bottled gas supply, existing in the bottom of oceans near gas seeps and in the polar permafrost. The GCC liturgy views methane as a powerful greenhouse gas, despite the fact that more abundant water vapor has already blocked all the infrared radiation that methane might potentially block, and despite the fact that methane is destroyed by ultraviolet light in less than a year. So GCC computer divinations warn the devout that should global warming begin to melt the permafrost, it would release all the methane and cause the runaway heat death of the planet.

Zimov Saw His Chance 

Yet clones have no mothers, and surrogate wombs are either tanks or female African elephants. Like the elephant Horton in Dr. Seuss’ children’s book, this work will not hatch mammoths, but at best, elephants.

More to the genetics point, the same technologies would make even more profit for the breeding of humans. The success of Pleistocene Park would be rapidly transformed into Brave New World.

The carbon atom:foundation of life.

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Crowdsourced smarts vs. crowdsourced stupidity.

 <iframe width="932" height="524" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/25kqobiv4ng" title="Collective Stupidity -- How Can We Avoid It?" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Yet another slippery slope?

 In Belgium, Subjectivity Triumphs Over Biology


We live in an irrational age. Germany allows people to change their gender once a year simply by filing out an official form. And now, Belgium is about to allow people to change gender — apparently, whenever they want.

The Belgian supreme court previously ruled that requiring people to identify as male or female violated the equality of people who don’t see themselves as exclusively either. So, a new law will be passed allowing ongoing fluidity of gender identity which will be officially recognized by submitting a simple form. From the Sudinfo story (Google translation):
                        The principle of irrevocability as well as the procedure before the family court are abolished, announced the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne in a press release. . . . This means that people will be allowed to change their gender and first name several times.

Similarly, the procedure before the family court will also be abolished. It will therefore always be possible to change the sex registration or first name with the registrar, following the same simple procedure as for the first change . . .

“It is important that the rights of transgender people are respected and that they can change their sex registration based on their gender identity, without unnecessary or nit-picking procedures. The Constitutional Court has rightly pointed out that the original law is insufficient in this area. We now want to remedy this situation with this bill, so that transgender people are recognized for who they are,” the minister said.
                         Apparently, even if “who they are” continually shifts.

Civilization-Destroying Stuff

This is civilization-destroying stuff. Not because of the transgender issue per se, but because it represents the triumph of the subjective.

A society based primarily on feelings over thought will be, by definition, profoundly unstable. Our emotions are ephemeral. If I “feel” I am male today, and female tomorrow, and neither the next day — and the law and culture must accommodate my current emotional state — rationality as the basis of society will shatter.

Why is this, Wesley? Transgendered people are a tiny minority of the population.

Because rule by irrationality won’t be limited to gender dysphoria. The attitude will metastasize throughout the depth and breadth of society and culture, eventually corroding our most fundamental institutions and societal structures. As the ancient wisdom has it, a house built on sand cannot stand.

Tuesday, 4 April 2023

Still able to cheat?

 Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation


Paralympic athletes and high-ranking officials have expressed alarm at what they say is widespread and growing cheating, calling for urgent action to salvage the credibility of the Games – one of the world's most-watched sporting events.

Key points

The International Paralympic Committee is reviewing its code for classifying competitors
Officials told the review an independent body was needed to deal with cheating
Classifiers said coaches and national sporting bodies must also be held to account
A Four Corners investigation this week revealed how Paralympic athletes are deliberately exaggerating their impairments to improve their chances of winning medals, sometimes with the tacit approval or even encouragement of coaches.

At the heart of the issue is a classification system meant to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.

But Paralympians and senior classifiers from around the globe have told a current International Paralympic Committee (IPC) review how easy it is to exploit flaws in the current system and expressed their despair at the movement's apparent impotence in the face of the cheating.
                     In comments to the IPC's review of its athlete classification code, Frenchman Richard Perot, the Chair of the Para Badminton Athletes' Commission, wrote that the practice of misrepresenting impairments, known as intentional misrepresentation, was "the biggest threat and … weakness of our system".

He said the difficulty of proving intentional misrepresentation and the fact that penalties were so rarely handed out "tends to promote cheating as the ratio [of] little risk of sanction vs big chance of winning medals is in the favour of cheaters".

"If the community knows there are little chances of sanction, then people will cheat more and more," he said.
                     In 2016, the IPC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but found there was not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoing.

Most recently, Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar was banned from participating in Paralympic events for two years after the Board of Appeal of Classification found that he intentionally misrepresented his abilities when he presented for classification at the Tokyo Paralympics.
                        
 'No repercussions' for cheating, official says

In an IPC document from last year, produced as part of the ongoing classification review, more than 100 current and former competitors and officials from multiple sports and impairment classes detail their concerns with the current system.

The New Zealand-based official Ruth McLaren, who advises World Para Swimming on classification, described a "sense of powerlessness" in the face of "the increasing incidence of … intentional misrepresentation".

"Despite our best efforts, we are never able to get our evidence to the point where we can enforce these parts of the rules … " she wrote.

"This essentially means there are currently no repercussions [for intentional misrepresentation], and athletes and coaches are aware of this and are using this to their advantage."
                     She said classifiers should have the mandate to carry out random checks of athletes' classification, similar to drug testing.

She also called for "protection for classifiers/ volunteers from threats, bullying and abuse from athletes and coaches as this remains an ongoing issue".

US paralympic rower Laura Goodkind told the review: "It's become clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field."

Goodkind said some athletes decided "to cheat during classification because they know they'll perform better in a certain class".
             She said other athletes with spinal cord injuries were being classified early in their recovery, knowing their function would "vastly improve" over time.

Misrepresentation on the rise, official says

Dia Pernot, the head of classification for World Para Nordic skiing, said classifiers needed a clear and formal system to report misrepresentation.

"Intentional Misrepresentation appears to be increasing," she wrote.

Dr Pernot said coaches of national sporting federations might be coaching their athletes to misrepresent their abilities.

"In these cases, there needs to be disciplinary action against the coach, team and [national sporting federation].

"The athlete may themselves be an "innocent" victim of their coach."
               Carlos Henrique Prokopiak Garletti, a Brazilian paralympic shooter, ophthalmologist and visual impairment classifier, said national Paralympic committees should be held responsible for misrepresentations by their athletes.

"[It is] not rare to find athletes performing way better than the expected performance for their visual class," he wrote.

He said classifiers should be given the power to lodge protests over athlete classifications.

Under the current rules, only national bodies and international federations may make protests.
                       Another vision impairment classifier, Tania Jain, called for a tougher approach to intentional misrepresentation.

"I feel that we need to be more strict with it," she wrote.

"Sometimes we just mark an athlete NE [Not Eligible] but don't put intentional misrepresentation."
                          
 Calls for independent body to combat cheating

Winnie Timans, a consultant on classification to Germany's Paralympic committee, said the biggest challenge was trust in the classification system.

"Classification, being the cornerstone of para sport, should be transparent and trustworthy," she wrote.
                  She is one of a number of officials who have called for an independent body to detect and deal with the growing number of intentional misrepresentation (IM) cases.

"Disciplinary actions must be taken against athletes and support personnel that conduct IM," she wrote.

"An independent body with the resources to clear these cases would help in the development of trust in the classification systems.

"There should also be clearer pathways [on] how IM can be identified and which kind of information can count in terms of evidence for IM."
                        Paralympics Australia's classification manager, Cathy Lambert, also called for an independent body to investigate and respond to allegations of intentional misrepresentation, similar to the role the World Anti-Doping Agency plays on drugs in sport.

She recommended regular spot testing of athletes be considered, along with stronger provisions for whistleblowers and greater sharing of data and intelligence between sports.
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Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation
Four Corners / 
By Hagar Cohen, Alex McDonald, Alice Mulheron and Dan Harrison, ABC Investigations
Posted 17h ago17 hours ago, updated 12h ago12 hours ago
Three medals, one gold, one silver and one bronze sit on a wooden surface. They have purple ribbon and the Paralympic logo.
The Paralympic Games is the third-largest sporting event in the world by tickets sold.(Four Corners)
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Paralympic athletes and high-ranking officials have expressed alarm at what they say is widespread and growing cheating, calling for urgent action to salvage the credibility of the Games – one of the world's most-watched sporting events.

Key points:
The International Paralympic Committee is reviewing its code for classifying competitors
Officials told the review an independent body was needed to deal with cheating
Classifiers said coaches and national sporting bodies must also be held to account
A Four Corners investigation this week revealed how Paralympic athletes are deliberately exaggerating their impairments to improve their chances of winning medals, sometimes with the tacit approval or even encouragement of coaches.

At the heart of the issue is a classification system meant to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.

But Paralympians and senior classifiers from around the globe have told a current International Paralympic Committee (IPC) review how easy it is to exploit flaws in the current system and expressed their despair at the movement's apparent impotence in the face of the cheating.

Flame burns inside the Paralympic Cauldron, a structure made of multiple curved metal pieces.
The Paralympic flame at the closing ceremony for the Tokyo Games.(AAP: Thomas Lovelock)
In comments to the IPC's review of its athlete classification code, Frenchman Richard Perot, the Chair of the Para Badminton Athletes' Commission, wrote that the practice of misrepresenting impairments, known as intentional misrepresentation, was "the biggest threat and … weakness of our system".

He said the difficulty of proving intentional misrepresentation and the fact that penalties were so rarely handed out "tends to promote cheating as the ratio [of] little risk of sanction vs big chance of winning medals is in the favour of cheaters".

"If the community knows there are little chances of sanction, then people will cheat more and more," he said.

A man looks at the camera with a neutral expression and his arms crossed.
Mr Perot says the current approach to intentional misrepresentation is not working.(Badminton World Federation)
In 2016, the IPC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but found there was not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoing.

Most recently, Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar was banned from participating in Paralympic events for two years after the Board of Appeal of Classification found that he intentionally misrepresented his abilities when he presented for classification at the Tokyo Paralympics.

'No repercussions' for cheating, official says
In an IPC document from last year, produced as part of the ongoing classification review, more than 100 current and former competitors and officials from multiple sports and impairment classes detail their concerns with the current system.

The New Zealand-based official Ruth McLaren, who advises World Para Swimming on classification, described a "sense of powerlessness" in the face of "the increasing incidence of … intentional misrepresentation".

"Despite our best efforts, we are never able to get our evidence to the point where we can enforce these parts of the rules … " she wrote.

"This essentially means there are currently no repercussions [for intentional misrepresentation], and athletes and coaches are aware of this and are using this to their advantage."

An overheard view of a running track with with Paralympics logo. Eight runners can be seen racing in lanes of the track.
The classification system is designed to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.(AAP: Joel Marklund)
She said classifiers should have the mandate to carry out random checks of athletes' classification, similar to drug testing.

She also called for "protection for classifiers/ volunteers from threats, bullying and abuse from athletes and coaches as this remains an ongoing issue".

US paralympic rower Laura Goodkind told the review: "It's become clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field."

Goodkind said some athletes decided "to cheat during classification because they know they'll perform better in a certain class".

A person, wearing a white cap with a USA logo, looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression and their arms crossed.
 Goodkind competed at the Rio and Tokyo Paralympic Games.(Facebook: US Rowing)
She said other athletes with spinal cord injuries were being classified early in their recovery, knowing their function would "vastly improve" over time.

Misrepresentation on the rise, official says
Dia Pernot, the head of classification for World Para Nordic skiing, said classifiers needed a clear and formal system to report misrepresentation.

"Intentional Misrepresentation appears to be increasing," she wrote.

Dr Pernot said coaches of national sporting federations might be coaching their athletes to misrepresent their abilities.

"In these cases, there needs to be disciplinary action against the coach, team and [national sporting federation].

"The athlete may themselves be an "innocent" victim of their coach."

An unidentifiable person in a wheelchair rugby chair with a reinforced front bumper, holds a white ball.
The IPC's review of the athlete classification code was announced two years ago.(Four Corners)
Carlos Henrique Prokopiak Garletti, a Brazilian paralympic shooter, ophthalmologist and visual impairment classifier, said national Paralympic committees should be held responsible for misrepresentations by their athletes.

"[It is] not rare to find athletes performing way better than the expected performance for their visual class," he wrote.

He said classifiers should be given the power to lodge protests over athlete classifications.

Under the current rules, only national bodies and international federations may make protests.

The words 'International Paralympic Committee' and the IPC logo, on the side of a white wall of a building.
The International Paralympic Committee's headquarters in Bonn, Germany.(Four Corners)
Another vision impairment classifier, Tania Jain, called for a tougher approach to intentional misrepresentation.

"I feel that we need to be more strict with it," she wrote.

"Sometimes we just mark an athlete NE [Not Eligible] but don't put intentional misrepresentation."


YOUTUBEGaming the Games: The scandal threatening the Paralympics
Calls for independent body to combat cheating
Winnie Timans, a consultant on classification to Germany's Paralympic committee, said the biggest challenge was trust in the classification system.

"Classification, being the cornerstone of para sport, should be transparent and trustworthy," she wrote.

Wheelchair races compete along a road lined with traffic cones.
Several officials told the review the classification system needed to be more transparent.(Four Corners)
She is one of a number of officials who have called for an independent body to detect and deal with the growing number of intentional misrepresentation (IM) cases.

"Disciplinary actions must be taken against athletes and support personnel that conduct IM," she wrote.

"An independent body with the resources to clear these cases would help in the development of trust in the classification systems.

"There should also be clearer pathways [on] how IM can be identified and which kind of information can count in terms of evidence for IM."

Do you have a story tip?
Email Hagar Cohen at Hagarcohenabc@protonmail.com and cohen.hagar@abc.net.au. 

Paralympics Australia's classification manager, Cathy Lambert, also called for an independent body to investigate and respond to allegations of intentional misrepresentation, similar to the role the World Anti-Doping Agency plays on drugs in sport.

She recommended regular spot testing of athletes be considered, along with stronger provisions for whistleblowers and greater sharing of data and intelligence between sports.

A sign that reads 'Paralympics Australia' has its logo and the Paralympic Games logo. Out of focus in the foreground is a weight
Paralympics Australia's classification manager backed calls for an independent body to handle allegations of intentional misrepresentation.(Four Corners)
The IPC's classification code review process started in 2021 and is scheduled to run for three years.

In a statement to the ABC, the IPC said the purpose of the review was "to further improve classification as a whole and address topics that have been raised by stakeholders, including IPC member organisations and the athlete community".

"Intentional misrepresentation is one of several topics that the IPC and stakeholders have discussed in detail during the review process and will be addressed in the new code…" it said.

"The IPC strongly encourages senior officials and classifiers who have concerns regarding classification to share them with their respective International Federation so that they can be looked into and appropriate action taken.

"The IPC and all International Federations treat intentional misrepresentation as a very serious offence. It is one that can lead to a suspension of up to four years for an athlete and/or athlete support personnel for a first offence and a lifetime suspension for repeat offenders."
                          
'Change needs to happen now'

A new classification code is not expected to be implemented until after the summer and winter Paralympic Games, to be held in Paris in 2024 and in Milan and the Italian ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo in 2026.
                      But Francesca Cipelli, who competed in athletics for Italy in the Tokyo Paralympics, told the IPC review more urgent action was needed.

Cipelli, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was 10 years old, competes in the T37 classification, one of a number of classifications for athletes with coordination impairments.

She said because of flaws in the classification system, she was competing against athletes with cerebral palsy whose impairments had less impact on their sporting performance than hers.
           "The Paralympics were created to ensure equal competition between athletes with the same disability, while currently in the brain injury standing categories, this is not happening," she wrote.

"I'll probably never win [a medal] in the current T37 category which I'm in … because my competitors are much stronger than me because their disability affects them in a slighter way than mine does."

Cipelli said the IPC risked losing its credibility if the existing categories were not reorganised before the Paris Games next year.

"This is a real emergency; the change needs to happen now."