Saturday, 29 July 2023
Bringing "science" down from Olympus.
Douglas Axe: Science as a Human Enterprise
On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Eric Metaxas interviews biologist Douglas Axe. Axe is the Maxwell Professor of Molecular Biology at Biola University, the founding Director of Biologic Institute, the founding Editor of BIO-Complexity, and the author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed. Dr. Axe discusses how he lost his research position in Cambridge during a season of political controversy over Darwinian evolution in the UK. Axe’s research led him to cast doubt on the prevailing ideas about protein evolution, showing that proteins are actually more fragile and less flexible than many claim. In talking about his book Undeniable, Axe explains that science is a human enterprise: “Science is not the dispassionate, purely rational, perfect discipline that some people still seem to think it is,” says Axe. “The human part of science brings all the baggage and complexity that humans bring to every other discipline in science, and how could it be otherwise?” This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Download the podcast or listen to it Here.
How wise is the faithful and wise servant.
The Society's leaders build their authority on this and therefore do not tolerate contradiction or independent thinking within the organization, therefore they call everyone to convert and obey them in everything.
Anyone who thinks that they have a superior command of the bible on any topic than me is free to demonstrate said superior knowledge our readers can judge for themselves whose interpretations are forced and whose are who is determined to let the bible speak for itself that is why I know that those selected by JEHOVAH are trustworthy. Like Socrates I have put all you biblical illiterates to the test and am satisfied that you have nothing to teach me. It is simply a lie to claim that the brothers have quibbled on fundamentals the fundamentals of our faith are regarding the nature of the one true God and his Messiah and the need to remain separate from the world the understanding of prophecy has ALWAYS been understood to be provisional that is why brothers used the term present truth. Indicating that overall their understanding of prophecy though imperfect was the best approximation available and that any better approximation must await JEHOVAH'S design.
https://aservantofjehovah.blogspot.com/2023/07/on-false-prophets-and-false-accusers.html?m=1
Scripture or tradition?
Anonymous:Tradition Is Not a Dirty Word
Protestants often quote the verses in the Bible where corrupt traditions of men are condemned (e.g., Matt. 15:2–6; Mark 7:8–13; Col. 2:8). Of course, Catholics agree with this.
I totally agree that tradition is not a dirty word however
"Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other."
The inspired scriptures are to supersede all else.
In defence of biblicism
Anonymous:Biblicism is right that the church is entirely under the law of Scripture and is only a church insofar as it listens to Scripture. But the dogmatician, as a member of the church, can only reach the hearing of the Word together with the church, not in a vacuum or arbitrarily chosen space, but within the church.
Matthew ch.7:21-23ESV"“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"
Only the head of the church has the authority to declare it's boundaries and who is inside or outside of those boundaries. The fact that you are wealthier and more powerful as this world tends to evaluate matters means nothing to him he has provided a sign for sincere truth-seekers
Matthew ch.7:15NIV"“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? "
The violent oppression perpetrated by Christendom including her persecution of JEHOVAH'S People rule out any possibility that that tree was planted by the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
Matthew ch.15:13NIV"He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots."
JEHOVAH distinguishes himself from the false Gods and their acolytes by blessing his people with global peace that they simply cannot replicate
Isaiah ch.2:3,4ASV"3And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of JEHOVAH, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of JEHOVAH from Jerusalem.
4And he will judge between the nations, and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Any God who cannot bring peace among his own people cannot be trusted to bring world peace.
In his days shall the righteous flourish, And abundance of peace, till the moon be no more.
8He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, And from the River unto the ends of the earth.
JEHOVAH'S Word or human councils.
Anonymous" The theologian cannot teach about the Scriptures if he has not first heard it in the church community. The Bible is read by the church and in it the church hears the Word of God. This means that when we read the Bible, we must also hear what the church has so far read and heard from the Bible."
Christians are supposedly disciples of Christ, is it the example that we received from our Lord to put tradition above the plain reading of the sacred text ,btw the text repeatedly makes it clear that is JEHOVAH'S creation and possession and not the property of any man or council of men.
Thessalonians ch.2:13NIV"And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe."
Mark ch.7:6-8 NIV"He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“ ‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’ b
8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”"
So this seems clear enough our Lord's council is that under no circumstance is any tradition to supersede JEHOVAH'S word.
JEHOVAH'S People and philosophy
Anonymous:"You will hardly be able to deal with scholasticism with the Watchowerite excuse that it is "philosophy". Anyway according to my belief "the philosophy" is usually not some satanic horrible thing in itself that has to be feared. According to Catholic Teaching, "faith seeks understanding, reason seeks faith""
The issue is not one of philosophy or not but rather the embrace of flagrant violations of the laws of logic as sophisticated thinking.
In his book intellectuals and society warned about the ability of intellectuals to create labrynthine mental constructs that tend to cut the mind off from feed back from the real world. It is simply not possible to abandon the laws of logic without impairing epistemology.
The common man's philosophy
Anonymous :"If you make the criterion of a religious truth the simple people's "common sense" compliance, indeed, not much would remain of Christianity, as it is full of miracles: they simply do not meet the "common sense". Now I don't mean the quick answer that "God can do it", but the question of how exactly. But it shows that if you have to explain miracles, even the wildest rationalist-biblicist can dismiss it by saying that it is supernatural, and it does not matter if it does not match formal logic, "
There are no miracles recorded in scripture that are any more puzzling and inexplicable than the one we each see in our mirrors every day yet we can be sure that like every other miracle
Performed by JEHOVAH Logical contradictions are not a factor in its explanation. The bible has satisfying answers for all the questions it raises none of which requires the embrace of logical contradictions JEHOVAH is sage not Mage
Jeremiah ch.10:12NIV"But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his WISDOM and stretched out the heavens by his UNDERSTANDING."
Letting the book speak for itself
Unknown: see a concrete example: The Scripture teaches that there is one God: yet it states both explicitly and implicitly that there are three subjects who are God.
Actually there are more than three subjects called God in the scriptures
The angels are called God
Psalms ch.8:5
Moses is called God
Exodus 7:1
At John 10:34 and Psalms 82:1-6 the rulers of the Hebrew nation are called God's
If there is one way of interpreting the scriptures that makes sense and that can be consistently applied and another that leaves matters even more puzzling after its application and that cannot be consistently applied. Occam's razor demands that the former be the preferred choice.
Friday, 28 July 2023
Against Nincsnevem XX
Nincsnevem:Regarding Matthew 24:15, this refers back to Daniel 9:27, thus the New Testament scripture indeed references the prophecy in question from the book of Daniel, but not in relation to the coming of Jesus Christ, but rather in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world.
The destruction of Jerusalem was a divine judgment and thus was effected through Christ here is John's Warning Luke ch.3:16NIV"John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and FIRE."
Thus The outpouring of divine wrath by the risen Christ upon 1st century Jerusalem was a miniature fulfillment of his coming to judge all the world especially those gigantic religious bureaucracies and their enablers claiming to be Christians or spiritual jews. That there is a larger fulfillment is confirmed by the use of imagery from the book of Daniel in the post temple inspired book of revelation
Against unknown?II
This well known propaganda technique is called poisoning the well. It is a a variant of the ad hominem attack. You will notice that no actual argument is presented. Merely defamatory propaganda with the aim of dissuading the reader/listener from giving the opposing view a fair hearing.
The pitch in this case is based on the implied lie that the brothers have claimed prophet hood or infallibility or some such nonsense.
The fact of the matter is the Society's founders were cessationists who believed in a closed canon
:We have not the gift of prophecy Zion's Watch Tower, July 1883.
Zion's watchtower January 1908With regard to 1914: : "We are not prophesying; we are merely giving our surmises . . . We do nvot even aver that there is no mistake in our interpretation of prophecy and our calculations of chronology. We have merely laid these before you, leaving it for each to exercise his own faith or doubt in respect to them"
Another fact is none of those Ideas were thought up by the brothers they were based on commentaries that preceded them some long before Russell was born. The fact of the matter is that we believe that JEHOVAH is blessing our community of Ernest bible students in our research because with the benefit of hindsight we can see the emergence of a clearer picture of JEHOVAH'S Character and purposes from scripture and that the promises of religious cleansing and global peace that JEHOVAH indicated would be fulfilled upon keepers of his present truth are quite frankly being fulfilled only upon JEHOVAH'S servants,and not because we think our leaders are prophets or saints or infallible.
Isaiah ch.2:3,4ASV"3And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of JEHOVAH, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of JEHOVAH from Jerusalem.
4And he will judge between the nations, and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Daniel ch.12:8-10ASV"And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my lord, what shall be the issue of these things? 9And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the words are shut up and sealed till the time of the end. 10Many shall purify themselves, and make themselves white, and be refined; but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand; but they that are wise shall understand"
The argument that Satan can cause these prophesies to be fulfilled on those he confuses but that Jesus cannot cause them to be fulfilled on those he enlightens is tantamount to arguing that Satan is wiser than Jesus.
Why every Friday is a black Friday for Darwinists.
Fossil Friday: Another Prediction Vindicated
In a recent article for Fossil Friday (Bechly 2023a) I discussed the controversial hominin taxon Homo habilis and said that “this ape-like creature was rather the animal prey of contemporary human hunters than a human ancestor and producer of stone tools.” The virtual ink for this article had hardly dried when a story about a new discovery hit the news around the globe, reporting the earliest evidence of cannibalism by human ancestors about 1.45 million years ago (Bower 2023, Metcalfe 2023, Tozer 2023, Zhao 2023).
In 1970 the famous paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey discovered a fragment of a hominin tibia at the Koobi Fora locality in the Turkana region of Kenya. It was first considered as belonging to Australopithecus (Leakey 1971, Leakey & Leakey 1977), but later attributed to Homo erectus (Walker & Leakey 1993). However, Wood (2011) remarked about this fossil in the prestigious Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution that its “current conventional taxonomic allocation is H. erectus or Hominin gen et sp. indet.” and “because so little is known about the tibial morphology of early hominins other than Australopithecus afarensis it may be premature to rule out the possibility that it belongs to Homo habilis or Paranthropus boisei.” Consequently, Pobiner et al. (2023) cautioned that “due to the taxonomic uncertainty of this fossil, we simply refer to it in this study as a hominin (hominin gen. et sp. indet).”
Cut Marks by Stone Tools
More than a half century after the initial discovery of the fossil bone, Pobiner et al. (2023) had reanalyzed the material and found on this leg bone several cut marks that were probably made by stone tools. Control experiments indeed confirmed that similar marks result from butchering activity with stone tools, which the authors interpreted as evidence for cannibalism among early humans.
Even though this fossil is slightly younger than the youngest known finds of Homo habilis, it is still contemporary with other ape-like hominins of the genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Considering its taxonomic uncertainty, the bone more likely belonged to an australopithecine-like Homo habilis than to a contemporary member of genuine Homo erectus (= Homo ergaster), who could rather have been the hunter. In the latter case this could hardly be called cannibalism and instead would simply be an instance of human hunting and butchering of large hominid primates that is still common in the notorious bushmeat trade of West Africa today. An article in the New York Times agreed that the cannibalism claim might rather be mere clickbait and that “the field has a long history of overstating such claims” (Lidz 2023). You don’t say.
Anyway, this case arguably represents yet another empirical prediction by Darwin critics, which is vindicated by modern science, confirming a consistent pattern that I recently emphasized in another article for Fossil Friday (Bechly 2023b).
Against nincsnevem XIX
The nineteenth installment in my responses to Mr.Nevem
Nincsnevem5:49 AM
This is really easy to answer: according to his human nature, Jesus is a Messianic King, according to his human nature he is the heir to David's throne, and of course Jesus' humanity is not God, not YHWH. Jesus' human and divine natures are distinct but inseparable.
Reply
aservantofJehovah6:31 AM
"This is really easy to answer: according to his human nature, Jesus is a Messianic King, according to his human nature he is the heir to David's throne, and of course Jesus' humanity is not God, not YHWH. Jesus' human and divine natures are distinct but inseparable.,"
Here is the thing Mr.nevem the verse makes no mention of a nature but of a person so if this person( not nature) is equal to his Father is not the most high or he is his own Father stop putting words in the prophet's mouth
Also there is a small matter of the Holy Spirit who is not the Father of Jesus according to the Nicene creed and not incarnated if he is equal to the Father then obviously the Father of Jesus is not the most high.
So your fudge fails the person (not the nature) of the Father is greater than the person of the Son and if the spirit is a person greater than the person of the spirit.
Luke ch.1:32NIV"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, "
A similar problem exists with Matthew ch.24:36
Matthew ch.24:36KJV"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my FATHER ONLY. "
Why would the unincarnated Spirit not know the day or hour
And if you could just put the smug away for a minute(because it is clearly impeding your judgment) you will see that the question was mainly about the identity of the most high because, by definition the most high can have no equals so who is this unequalled Father of Jesus.
So it really doesn't matter whether the human Jesus was less than his father if there is a divine Jesus that is equal to his Father his Father is not the MOST HIGH as per the dictionary definition of that term
Against Nincsnevem XVIII
Daniel 12:4 is not a prophecy about the Daniel 12:4 is not a prophecy about the evolving doctrines of a denomination would be created in the 19th century, but on the one hand, the book of Daniel basically refers to Antiochus' persecution, and on the other hand, in a biblical context, "the last time", the messianic era itself, which is the last era in order, and therefore last, because there will be no more periods, no third covenant, it also does not apply to the 20th century. doctrines of a denomination would be created in the 19th century, but on the one hand, the book of Daniel basically refers to Antiochus' persecution, and on the other hand, in a biblical context, "the last time", the messianic era itself, which is the last era in order, and therefore last, because there will be no more periods, no third covenant, it also does not apply to the 20th century.
This of course is the opinion of men who refuse to let the bible speak for itself let us instead here from a real expert on the subject
Matthew ch.24:15NIV"“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet DANIEL—let the reader understand—"
This of course is well after Antiochus the book of revelation written long after the Fall of the temple borrows a lot of its imagery from the book of Daniel
Revelation ch.13:2NIV"beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. "
Compare Daniel Chapter 7:1-8:
Daniel ch.12:8-10NIV"I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, “My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?”
9He replied, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end. 10Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand"
Amen and Amen
Against unknown?
Corinthians 2:14-15, which says that "a physical man does not receive the things of God," but that "the spiritual man examines indeed all things." The JW should agree that what Paul means is that a physical man without God's
The word spirit can have a number of different usages it can refer to a spirit person but it need not. It can also refer to the inner mental life that might be inaccessible to onlookers see Hebrews ch.4:12 or indeed it may refer to the Holy Spirit. Here the contrast is between mindsets there is a mindset that results from submitting to/being led by the spirit and it is being contrasted with the mindset that results from submitting to/being led by the flesh JEHOVAH doesn't give his spirit to Just anyone he gives to to those hungering for it spiritual people
1Corinthians ch.2:11KJV"For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit(mind) of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit(mind )of God."
1Corinthians ch.2:12KJV"Now we have received, not the spirit(Mindset) of the world, but the spirit(mindset) which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God"
So we are not dealing with a contrasting of essential natures because both the fleshly man and the spiritual man have the same essential nature but the spiritual man has chosen to pursue a relationship with JEHOVAH And the fleshly man has chosen to pander to the flesh
This spiritual mindset is not an essential nature it can be lost if not carefully curated likewise there is always the hope that one with a fleshly mindset can come to realise futility of attempting to satisfy the flesh and begin a sincere search for the truth.
Matthew ch.11:25NIV"At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. "
Unknown:without the Spirit will not accept the truth of God's word. Yet the contrast here is between the exact same two words (in Greek as well as in English, as can be shown using the JWs' Kingdom Interlinear Translation if necessary). Clearly, the "spiritual" man in this text has not ceased to have physical existence; the point is that the ultimate source of his life is different from that of the (merely) physical man. In like manner the "spiritual" body of 1 Corinthians 15:44 is not an immaterial body,
we know that all words can be used in a variety of senses so is the word pneumatikos/spiritual being used in the same sense at both 1corinthians ch.15:44 and 1Corinthian ch.2:14,15 one way to tell would be to carefully examine the respective contrasts that are being made
At 1Corinthians ch.2:14,15 it is two mindsets and not two essential natures that are being contrasted
While at 1Corinthians Ch.15:44 it is the essential nature of the body that is sown that is contrasted with the essential nature of the body that is raised up.
Unknowned:but one that is energized or enlivened by the Spirit in a way that it was not beforehand. And so this verse also is a prooftext for, and not against, the physical resurrection of Jesus.
It does seem that Paul was alluding to a change of essential natures though
1Corinthians ch.15:45KJV"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."
It is important to note both what is said and what isn't said
It is said that the man was MADE a soul it is not said that the man received a soul so the man is a soul rather than possessing a soul
The same statement is made of the lower lifeforms they too are referred to as psyche/nefesh
Genesis ch.1:21KJV"And God created great whales, and every living creature(Psyche/Nefesh) that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
Likewise it is not said that the last Adam received a spirit but that he BECAME a spirit the same word is used of angels
1Chronicles ch.18:21ASV"there came forth a SPIRIT, and stood before JEHOVAH, and said, I will entice him. And JEHOVAH said unto him, Wherewith?"
Just as the first Adam was not a Soul before becoming such neither was the last Adam spirit before BECOMING such
Think of Fred who goes to medical school and becomes a doctor there is no concrete distinction between Fred and the doctor that he has BECOME thus if Fred dies it would be understood that the doctor that he had become died.
And what does it mean for a soul to die it simply means that that soul has RETURNED to its pre-creation state:
Genesis ch.3:19NIV"By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until YOU(not your body) RETURN to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust YOU(not you body) are
and to dust YOU(not your body) will RETURN.”
Though the bodies possessed by spirit beings are essentially intangible ,invisible and certainly not humanoid. they can materialise bodies that look indistinguishable from humans
Luke ch.24:4ASV"And it came to pass, while they were perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel: "
Such materialisations would not only explain his tangibility on occasion but also his mysterious appearances and disappearances
Luke ch.24:31 ASV"31And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he VANISHED out of their sight."
Luke ch.24:31ASV"And as they spake these things, he himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. "
Thus the fact that Jesus could be visible and tangible if he chose to (at least before his glorification)
Does not disprove that his essential nature was spirit but his appearances and disappearances at times in forms that were not recognisable to his disciples
Suggest that he had exchanged his human perfection for superhuman perfection.
John ch.20:14NIV" At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus."
The best Son a mother ever had and she did not recognise him.
John ch.21:4NIV"4Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus."
They had known him their whole lives, if there is one person that you would think would be easily recognisable to friend and foe alike it would be Jesus Christ.
2Corinthians ch.5:1NIV"For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."
Note there is no remodelling of the earthly house it is destroyed and replaced by a heavenly one the prospect of human perfection is exchanged for superhuman perfection.
Thursday, 27 July 2023
Color by design
Intelligent Design in Color Vision — A Gift to Us
Recently, I came across a display of flowers that seemed to pulsate with colors spanning the visible spectrum — from deep red to purple, and multiple shades in between. My physicist brain began to think of the colors in terms of their wavelengths and it struck me how this gorgeous frolic across the visible spectrum actually only covered wavelengths differing in value by less than a factor of two. From about 400 nanometers to 700 nanometers, this narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum offers us every color we perceive with our eyes.
If we compare a similar wavelength range of sound waves, a difference of a factor of two spans just a single octave. I think it’s fair to say that our auditory perception of the range of notes spanning an octave doesn’t begin to give us such a dramatic sense of variety as the spectrum of colors seen in the accompanying photo of the array of flowers.
Why the Difference?
Perhaps we are seeing further evidence of design built into our sense of sight. The laws of physics in conjunction with biochemistry set up the limitations on the range of wavelengths we can perceive with our vision. Visible light, seen as red (around 700 nm), orange, yellow, green blue, and violet (about 400 nm) is the only portion of the entire electromagnetic spectrum that could serve as the basis of our gift of sight. The photosensitive molecules in the rods and cones of the retinas of our eyes would either be inactivated or destroyed by light with longer or shorter wavelengths, respectively.1 Sunlight peaks in intensity near the middle of the visible portion of the spectrum, and Earth’s atmosphere has a narrow window of transparency covering the range of visible light. Water, whether as vapor in the atmosphere or as the fluid within our eyes through which light must pass, also possesses a remarkably sharp drop in its absorption just in the range of the colors of sight.
The Most Important Sense
Consider that since sight is arguably the most important of our five senses, and since the laws of physics and chemistry limit the feasibility of sight to such an extremely narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum, a design feature we can be thankful for is the rich association of vibrant hues of color perceived with just minor variations in wavelength across the visible range.
In an earlier article (“Thank God for Quantum Mechanics”), I highlighted one of the aspects of the quantum nature of reality that allows life—namely the wavelike nature of particles that facilitate the production of sunlight via nuclear fusion reactions in the core of our star. At the receiving end of sunlight, as it contributes to our gift of sight, the quantum nature of light itself becomes an essential factor in our ability to see. Michael Denton, in his book Children of Light, points out that while the ability of our eyes to form a focused image relies upon the wave nature of light, the ability of the photoreceptive molecules in our retinas to detect incoming light relies upon the quantum nature of light.
Light’s Dual Aspect
In the quantum or photon view of light, the energy of a light wave is delivered in quantized packets of energy, called photons. The energy of each photon is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the light wave. It’s the quantum nature of visible light that enables it to deliver a bullet-like packet of energy to the nanoscale photoreceptive molecules in the rods and cones of our eyes. Without this dual aspect of light, our sense of sight would be as limited as our skin’s ability to detect variations in ambient temperature.
Waves, photons, photoreceptors — do these features of physical reality explain our vivid awareness of colors in how we “see” small variations of optical wavelengths? In my understanding of electromagnetic radiation, there is nothing intrinsically a part of light in the visible spectrum that carries the attributes of “green” or “red.” The approximately six million cones in the retina of the human eye come in three different varieties, each one exhibiting optical sensitivity across overlapping wavelength ranges spanning the visible spectrum.2 When photons of different optical wavelengths impinge on the photosensitive molecules in these cones, they induce electrochemical changes that stimulate the optical nerve connecting our eyes to our brain.
Still, the question remains, where, for example, does the color violet come from in our perception of an array of flowers? What produces the palette of greens that we see when viewing grass and trees? Again, nothing in the physics of light or our retina’s biochemical response to light is inherently connected with the colors we perceive. And yet, color sense is an almost universal human phenomenon that has both practical and aesthetic value for us.
A World in Grey
How different our perception of reality would be if our brains processed visual signals from the optical nerve as only varying shades of beige or pink or grey! A certain percentage (up to 8 percent) of people have a type of color vision deficiency (CVD), preventing them from distinguishing between particular colors, usually caused by one or more photoreceptive molecules being absent or non-functional.3 CVDs are noted in comparison to normal human vision. But what if everyone had what we consider complete color blindness, perceiving only shades of grey — would we even be aware of the existence of color, or would we even be able to imagine it?
From the dual nature of light — behaving both as a wave and a photon — to the ability of visible light to initiate the photochemical transformations within our eyes, to our brains’ perception of optical signals as vividly varying colors, to our aesthetic appreciation of the hues composing our visible world, the gift of sight manifests design of the highest order. To borrow a remark by physicist Eugene Wigner, made in a different context, our perception of color “is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”4
The labrynth.
Against Christendom's theology
For starters I would like state that I have nothing against Philosophy in its purest sense i.e affection for "Sophia" true wisdom if we take the scriptures seriously every dedicated Christian and sincere truth-seeker ought to be a lover of wisdom/philosophy
James ch.1:5ESV"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. "
Proverbs ch.8:10,11NIV"Take my instruction instead of silver,
and knowledge rather than choice gold,
11for wisdom is better than jewels,
and all that you may desire cannot compare with her."
But we are warned that all that glitters is not gold, so lest we be swindled into exchanging our gold for brass our brother Paul warns us
1Corinthians ch.3:19NIV"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness";"
One way of making a separation between wisdom that is actually wisdom and the many counterfeits on offer in this post truth world, is to hone ones ability to use logic and commonsense. there is a lot of sophistry masquerading as sophistication in this present age. There has always quite a bit of that but now the pedlars of fake smarts have more powerful tools than ever at their disposal. Often they assume a smug know it all tone in an effort to intimidate their targets. The key is to remember that there is an objective truth that does not care about rank or wealth and that is accessible to anyone will not allow himself to be intimidated into abandoning logic and commonsense.
Luke ch.10:21NIV"At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do."
JEHOVAH himself is the original philosopher if we plead with him daily in faith he will help us to keep fast hold to sound logic
That way we won't give the time of day to nonsense like the incarnation Jesus is called the Logos he is never the source of the illogical no single object can simultaneously possess mutually exclusive qualities or natures any more than there can be a perfect circle with a circumference of greater or lesser the d×pi it just can't happen JEHOVAH cannot be added to or subtracted from and he certainly cannot add a quality that excludes his essential qualities which are supremacy JEHOVAH is the Most High so he can't add subordination to his supremacy ,he is necessary ,he cannot be substituted, if any one else disappears the universe will go on just fine if JEHOVAH disappears it's game over thus JEHOVAH cannot add redundancy to his essentiality. JEHOVAH is immutable he simply is not subject to change thus JEHOVAH cannot add transience to his immutability. JEHOVAH is transcendent he is permanently outside of his creation no creation can contain/limit/affect JEHOVAH thus JEHOVAH Cannot add the nature of the creation to his transcendence.
And the scriptures are on the side of those clinging loyally to true wisdom
Psalms ch.83:18KJV"That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the MOST HIGH over all the earth."
Isaiah ch.44:6ASV"Thus saith JEHOVAH, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, JEHOVAH of hosts: I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is NO God."
Malachi 3:6ASV"For I, JEHOVAH, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed."
1Kings ch.8:27ASV"But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens CANNOT contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded! "
Against nincsnevem XVII
THE seventeenth of my responses to Mr.nevem
Nincsnevem:What does the "heavenly body" mentioned here mean? The text refers to the diversity of creatures on earth and in heaven as evidence of God's infinite power. So the "heavenly bodies" are, as written there: the Sun, the Moon, and the stars, i.e., celestial bodies. Remember back to the very first chapter of the Bible: "And God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of the sky...'"
We see the trend of arguing by assertion rather than making a case continues here is the context of 15:40
1Corinthians ch.15:36-38ESV"But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body"
So nothing to do with the nonliving creation but the living Paul says that JEHOVAH would not need to reinvent wheel there are already models of living forms in heaven and earth each with its own glory angels are routinely compared to stars in the bible the resurrected sons of God are also compared to stars
Job ch.38:4-7ESV"On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
Daniel ch.12:3NIV"Those who are wise a will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. "
Revelation ch.22:16 NIV"“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you a this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”
Against nincsnevem XVI
The sixteenth of my responses to Mr.nevem
Since you don't answer directly, I will do it for you: the term "spiritual body" ("sōma pneumatikos") is NOT used in the Bible for angels, since they do not have a "spiritual body",
First this is an argument from silence . One can't logical deduce anything from silence
1Corinthians ch.15:40ESV"For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another."
There are (present tense Heavenly bodies) so this is not speaking of what is to come but
Of what is now there are superhuman beings with bodies suited to a superphysical way of life e.g angels
1 John 3:2 also does not say anything about the resurrected ones becoming similar to the spirits in nature,
So what does it say
1John ch.3:2ESV"Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is."
We shall see him as he is and be like him
Exodus ch.33:20ESV"But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” "
It is impossible for humans to see JEHOVAH as he is and live
We understand all stated facts about JEHOVAH be permanent and unchangeable
By way of a second witnesses
1Timothy ch.6:16ESV"who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has EVER seen or CAN see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen."
This is why the human i.e flesh and blood CANNOT Inherit the superhuman
Flesh and blood refers to the human which is mortal by definition
Spirit refers to the superhuman only the superhuman can withstand that light
Nincsnevem"we do know what we will look like in the resurrection" - We know that it will truly be OUR OWN body (Philippians 3:21, 1 Corinthians 15:38), not something transformed into an angel.
If we were transformed into angels we would know our own bodies the fact of the matter is that from birth we have changed bodies annually with no consciousness of having changed bodies so this is yet another non-argument the body that those in line for a resurrection in the superphysical realm will receive is adapted for life in that realm
And of course being a necessary element of ourselves we will recognise it as a necessary part of ourselves.
Phillipians ch.3:21NIV"who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."
Any body the person is raised up in would be his body we've had dozens of bodies over the course of our life and yet we think of them all as our one body there is no need to incorporate any of the substance from our corpse for the resurrected body to be OUR body
2Corinthians ch .5:1NIV"1For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. "
The old is destroyed to make way for the new
"where in SCRIPTURE does it say the angels don't have bodies" - Among others where Jesus says that the spirits do not have "bones and flesh" (Luke 24:39), but he does, hence He is not a spirit. Also in the places cited above.
More circular logic presume that all bodies are made of flesh and bones or that spirit here means spirit creature not an apparition and use your presuppositions as evidence
There are superphysical bodies. Physical bodies are not the only kinds of bodies referred to in scripture
1Corinthians ch.15:40NIV"There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. "
Each with its own glory Mr.Nevem
Nincsnevem:Why were the wounds of his crucifixion visible on Jesus?
As I have explained spirit creatures are able to materialise and dematerialise physical forms through which the communicate with humans
Genesis 6:4NIV"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown."
Here are spirit beings materialising bodies capable of copulating with human females and producing offspring.
Reproducing some bodily scars would be child's play for such a being when I called spirit beings superhuman that is what I meant
When Jesus was appearing and disappearing he was always fully clothe sandals and all obviously he materialised the clothes as well
Against Nincsnevem XIV
My fourteenth installment of responses against Mr. Nevem
Similarly, the Scripture explicitly and decisively teaches the pure spirituality of God, not only in an inductive way, attributing understanding and will to Him, but by presenting God as a sovereign power over matter. Moreover: God is not like humans: He has no body, He is not visible, cannot be represented by an image, He is the father of spirits (Ex 33:20, Deut 4,1–6, Is 31,3, 40:18; Heb 12,9); He is simply a spirit: "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (Jn 4,24; cf. Lc 24,39 2 Cor 3,7 1 Tim 6,16)
All spirit would imply is invisible and intangible to humans there is no implication of incorporeality and corporeality does not imply a humanoid body which of course was designed for the physical world there heavenly bodies
Very distinct from anything in the physical world
1Corithians ch.15:40NIV"There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another"
Exodus ch.33:20 ESV"But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”"
So he has a form just not one visible to humans
Deuteronomy ch.4:1-6ESV"“And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rulesa that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. 2You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. 3Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-peor, for the LORD your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of Peor. 4But you who held fast to the LORD your God are all alive today. 5See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 6Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people"
Again nothing to see here.
Isaiah ch.31:3ESV"The Egyptians are man, and not God,
and their horses are flesh, and not spirit.
When the LORD stretches out his hand,
the helper will stumble, and he who is helped will fall,
and they will all perish together."
Suggesting that flesh and spirit are mutually exclusive
But nothing about corporeality
Hebrews ch.12:9ESV"Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?"
Circular logic presume that superphysical means incorporeal
And use presumption as evidence
But these spirits are in danger of death if they disobey not torture.
2Corinthians ch.3:7ESV"Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, "
Nothing about the subject
You get basically more arguing in a circle.
Against Nincsnevem XIII
The thirteenth of my responses against Mr. Nevem
Nincsnevem:"With this in mind we should understand the statement that “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). As spirit, Jesus also had a body, a body of glory (Phil. 3:21). The “spiritual body” that Christ had when He was raised from death and the spiritual body that we will have at the resurrection is not an immaterial body, but a body that is no longer subject to death and decay (1 Cor. 15:44)."
All spirit beings have bodies and glorious bodies at that
Your asserting a thing does not demonstrate it to be true a debate/dialog is not a lecture no one here recognise any authority you claim on these issues if you want to persuade anyone you to have to demonstrate from scripture
Nincsnevem:Further, when Paul says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50), He must mean that that which is mortal, earthly, and perishable cannot inherit God’s kingdom. “Flesh and blood” can simply mean mortal man, as a comparison with Jesus’ words at Matthew 16:17 reveals: “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
Flesh and blood pertains to the human even a sinless human like Jesus lower than angels it does not necessarily have anything to do with sin
Nincsnevem:1 Corinthians 15:45 - “’life-giving spirit’ does not speak of the nature of the resurrection body, but of the divine origin of the resurrection. Jesus’ physical body came back to life only by the power of God (cf. Rom. 1:4). So, Paul is speaking about its spiritual source, not its physical substance
More argument by assertion also called the circular logic fallacy
Romans ch.1:4ESV"and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
Which tells us nothing of relevance
Nincsnevem:, Paul is speaking about its spiritual source, not its physical substance as a material body. In summation, the resurrection body is called ‘spiritual’ and ‘life-giving spirit’ because its source is the spiritual realm, not because its substance is immaterial. Christ’s supernatural resurrection body is ‘from heaven,’ as Adam’s natural body was ‘of the earth’ (v. 47). But just as the one from ‘earth’ also has an immaterial soul, even so the One from ‘heaven’ also has a material body.”
In other words Paul was implying a contrast where there was absolutely none actually by this standard the both Adams are from heaven the first Adam's body was created ab initio the second Adam had a human mother and he did not become a spirit at his resurrection he was a spirit in a body before the rejoining of his restored corpse to his immortal spirit and afterward he was the same both Adams are exactly the same so what was Paul on about.
1Corinthians ch.15:45-49KJV"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 46Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 47The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. 48As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."
As you read observe what the verse does not say .It does not say that the first Adam RECEIVED a soul it says he BECAME a living soul so you can think of say Mary going to law school and BECOMING a lawyer, no one would understand the lawyer that Mary had become as being distinct from Mary such that the lawyer that Mary had become could survive Mary's death .
Vs. 47 does not say that the first Adam's body is from the earth it says the first man who became a living soul was made of earth. Clearly we are talking about the nature of the entire man
Going back to verse 45 it does not say that the second Adam was always a spirit and upon his resurrection received a spiritual body. It says quite clearly that that the second Adam BECAME a lifegiving spirit again the nature of the second Adam is being contrasted with the nature of the first Adam there is no resurrection of a body it is the person who is resurrected.
We know that spirit beings can incarnate it's not their usual state but in order to communicate with humans without overly alarming them JEHOVAH'S angels have done this in the past
See Genesis ch.19:1,5 once Jesus became a Spirit being he would have this ability. That would explain why he could simply appear or vanish into thin air
Luke ch.24:31KJV"And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he VANISHED out of their sight."
In fact the reason they taught they were SEEING an APPARITION at Luke ch.24:339 (spirit beings are invisible) was because of the manner that he appeared out of thin air
Luke ch.24:36KJV"And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. "
This mysterious appearing and disappearing argues that Jesus had in fact exchanged his human perfection for superhuman perfection. Being aware of the capabilities of superhuman spirit beings to materialise and dematerialise humanoid bodies the fact that Jesus was tangible on some occasions before his glorification proves nothing one way or the other
Let us look again at the sequence at 2Corinthians ch.5:1NIV"For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. "
There is no remodelling the old house from a human source is Junked and a house from an entirely different source replaces it.
Against Nincsnevem XII
The twelfth installment of my responses Mr.Nevem.
"Anyway, where does the Bible say that either God or the angels have a "spiritual BODY?"
Luke ch.20:32 they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. "
Suggesting that they and the heavenly angels have similar bodies
1John ch.3:2KJV"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."
If we a going to have the same human bodies we've had all our lives we do know what we will look like in the resurrection,John says it is impossible to know the appearance of heavenly resurrection body because it will resemble God's own body that no man has ever seen.
Suggesting that God does have a body though unlike anything in creation.
I can flip the question back at you where in SCRIPTURE does it say the angels don't have bodies or where is it specified that God has no body we know for instance that angels came to the patriarchs in the form of men
Against nincsnevem XI
The eleventh installment in my responses to Mr.Nevem
Nincsnevem:When I discuss with JWs, I always suggest that we talk not about "the Trinity", but about the Nicene doctrine: was the Son begotten/born from the Father before all worlds/ages, or was he created at a certain time?
AservantofJEHOVAH: Here is the thing nontheists are told in response to the question of who/what made God that God is brute fact and requires no cause once we get to eternity there are no cause and effect relations, as cause must precede effect. I think atheists would be justified in thinking that Trinitarians are talking out of both sides of their mouths when they speak of an eternal God being caused.
The real issue is the identity of the most high God, the most high God by definition can have no equals. Obviously neither the Nicene creed's Father nor Son can be the most high God. Also first cause arguments are based on the necessity of the first cause if the Son is himself an effect then he is unnecessary/redundant redundancy violates the principle of Occam's razor and biblical theology JEHOVAH is absolutely superlative and necessary JEHOVAH is also immutable, in the dictionary sense ,every declaration about him in scripture is to be understood as a permanent and unchangeable fact e.g:
1Kings ch.8:27ESV"“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven CANNOT contain you; how much less this house that I have built! "
Note please that JEHOVAH'S being outside of his creation is not presented as incidental it is a logical necessity like the relationship of pi to the circumference of the perfect circle.
What does it mean that the New Testament always consistently uses the verbs tikto / gennao and never the verbs poio / ktizo for the origin of the Son from the Father? Is fully God, or just possessing some ontologically inferior divinity?"
Does the use of the term begotten mean/suggest eternity ?
Acts ch.13:33ESV"this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm,
“‘You are my Son,
TODAY I have begotten you.’"
So there is no suggestion that JEHOVAH'S Begetting of his only Son must necessarily be eternal. It is also noteworthy that the resurrection is called a Begetting in as much as that word suggest a bring into being of something that did not exist prior to its begetting.
Jesus says that JEHOVAH becomes Father to those he resurrects
Luke ch.20:36NIV"and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection."
The resurrection is a creative act for JEHOVAH Begetting and creating are synonymous.
Psalms ch.90:2KJV"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."
Note the use of the birth language. Is it the case though that no part of the N.T includes Jesus in the creation.
Colossians ch.1:15-17KJV"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 16For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. "
First we note that Jesus is not merely called the image of the Father he is repeatedly called the image of the GOD, so we agree with the Nicene creed that Jesus is the son of the Father alone, but we disagree with the assertion the God and Father of Jesus does not exhausts the category of most high God
Luke ch.1:32KJV"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the LORD God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: "
As an aside we note a bit of trinitarian style evidence that David is in fact the most high God.
if his Father is the most high God and by common consent he is not numerically identical to his Father then logic demands the conclusion that he is not the most high God. He is further called the firstborn(grk. Prototokos) of every creature in every(as in without exception) other occurrence of this term in scripture the referent is understood to be a part of the implied set ,some claim that because all things are created "en" and "Dia" him he cannot be part of the creation. Though the prepositions "en" and"Dia" are translated as "by" in the King James they suggest an intermediary role between him and the ultimate source of the creation ,note for instance the way that these same prepositions are used at Hebrews ch.1:1 and John ch.1:17
Colossians ch.1:18ESV"he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent."
We note that no one would use the same logic to deny that Jesus was in fact resurrected
1Corinthians ch.15:21KJV"For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead."
Also consider Revelation ch.3:14KJV"And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of (The)God;"
The one thing that is clear from the grammar is that the source of the creation is the God not merely the Father .The Father is the God John is consistent in his use of 'arche' to mean beginning so the King James is on solid ground here.
The most undeniable conclusion here is that the Father i.e JEHOVAH is the most high God logic therefore demands that everyone else be considered part of his creation.
Wednesday, 26 July 2023
Darwinists spin an explosion(don't try this at home)
Evolutionists Spin the Cambrian Explosion — But Alas, All in Vain
To understand a fossil bed, it’s important to know what came before and after it (or above and below it, to be more precise). The explosive burst of new body plans called the Cambrian Explosion is undisputed among paleontologists, even those who disagree with the ID understanding that Stephen Meyer argues for in Darwin’s Doubt and Return of the God Hypothesis Fossils before and after the explosion have come to light. Let’s see what kind of context they provide — and evaluate the evolutionary
spin given in the reports.
Precambrian Sponge
A headline at Phys.org sounds promising: “Tiny sponge fossil upsets evolutionary model.” Below the headline, though, evolution appears to score points by stretching out the Cambrian Explosion into the Precambrian by tens of millions of years. Dribbling for this goal is David Bottjer, whom we saw promoting Vernanimalcula as a bilaterian ancestor before the explosion — a view later debunked by his colleagues (see Casey Luskin’s critique here, and Meyer’s discussion in Darwin’s Doubt, pp. 90-92). That fossil was 580 million years old; Bottjer’s tiny new sponge is dated 600 million. Here’s what he says about it:
Though some evidence, including molecular clocks, has already pointed to sponges evolving earlier, this fossil shows that the Cambrian explosion might not be a period when a large number of new traits emerged, but a period when a large number of fossils could be preserved, as animals during the Cambrian grew larger and gained skeletons.
“This specimen is of an animal that had already evolved a number of fundamental sponge traits,” Bottjer said. “It implies that by the time this animal was living, most of the developmental genes for sponges had evolved.”
This raises the possibility that some aspects of early animals’ evolution, a good deal of which happened during the Cambrian explosion, happened even more gradually.
With an international team of colleagues, Bottjer discovered that the millimeter-wide, 600-million-year-old fossil has characteristics that many thought emerged in sponges only 540 million years ago.
“Fundamental traits in sponges were not suddenly appearing in the Cambrian Period, which is when many think these traits were evolving, but many million years earlier,” Bottjer said….
“These organisms don’t have all the bells and whistles that modern creatures do,” Bottjer said. “But this particular fossil has enough complexity that we can say we hadn’t been dating the early evolution of animal traits properly.” [Q
So that’s the upset: the Cambrian wasn’t really an explosion after all. Bottjer’s team paper was published in PNAS. Let’s take a look at it.
What the Paper Claims
The paper claims that the existence of this sponge at 600 million years ago supports the notion that sponges diverged from a eumetazoan ancestor much earlier, such that this sponge already had most of the “metazoan genetic toolkit” associated with complex animals very early on. Bottjer also continues to promote Vernanimalcula as a bilaterian ancestor, despite the naysayers:
Adult forms have been reported only rarely, which has increased the difficulty of interpreting the putative fossilized embryos. However, reported Doushantuo microfossils include small tubular cnidarians and a small bilaterian form, Vernanimalcula, of which multiple fossils have been recovered. Alternative interpretations have been proffered for virtually all of the Doushantuo microfossils. The present report, which describes an unmistakable adult animal form, will alter the structure of this debate, although the full force of the implications will not be realized until more than this single specimen becomes available.
What’s the Surprise Here?
It’s hard to see what the fuss is about, though, considering that Meyer acknowledges in his books that sponges existed in the Ediacaran period (635-540 mya). In fact, sponge embryos provided his evidence that the Precambrian strata were fully capable of preserving fossils of the Cambrian ancestors, had they existed. It’s clear that if sponge embryos are found, adults were present to spawn them, so what’s the surprise there? Moreover, Meyer demonstrated that the Ediacaran period had its own mini-explosion, a “pow” before “biology’s big bang” (p. 87). Bottjer’s sponge is a case in point; “It displays the unmistakable gross anatomy of an adult sponge-grade animal, but beyond this finding, several distinct cell types and cellular structures can be clearly recognized, as displayed in the figures accompanying this report.”
Sponges (phylum Porifera) are among the simplest of multicellular animals, hardly more complicated than other Ediacaran organisms. Bottjer’s tiny fossils look like little more than hollow tubes or cups. They are not bilaterians. The paper acknowledges that “sponges do not display tissue-grade anatomical characters or organs beyond a general gross, spongelike structure.”
From this unimpressive data, grand scenarios are drawn, ending with this promissory note:
Thus, just as implied by the current temporal extrapolations of phylogenomics, the “calibration point” afforded by this fossil suggests that the shared metazoan genetic toolkit must have originated in the Cryogenian. Furthermore, if a relatively advanced sponge existed 600 Ma, then so did coeval animals of the eumetazoan lineage that also descended from the same last common poriferan/eumetazoan ancestor. Thus, it is a clear prediction that fossilized organisms of eumetazoan affinity from similarly deep in time await paleontological discovery, and some such may already have been seen in the Doushantuo animal microfossils cited above.
i.e., Vernanimalcula. No other eumetazoans are mentioned. So Bottjer is not backing down from his claim, even after the stinging criticism by others that he is only seeing what he wants to see. Now he sees slow, gradual evolution in this sponge. Convincing?
Ordovician Arthropods
More exciting are the discoveries from Morocco. Fossils of exceptional preservation in a remote region called the Fezouata formation, dated to the Ordovician period (485-443 Ma) that followed the Cambrian, have come to light. Live Science has photos of some of these beautiful fossils, including horseshoe crabs that look identical to modern ones.
What’s interesting is that many of the Burgess Shale-type animals are found here: trilobites, marrella-like arthropods, and anomalocaridids of enormous size (see an example here). A companion article on Live Science tells the story of their discovery by adventure and luck.
So what context do these fossils provide about the Cambrian Explosion? Some diversification is evident, but mostly, it’s a story of stasis. Animals appeared abruptly in the Cambrian, then remained largely unchanged for tens of millions of years into the Ordovician. In the case of horseshoe crabs, that’s hundreds of millions of years on the evolutionary timeline. Not only do the fossils look thoroughly modern, they appear 20 million years earlier than thought (see this from the Geological Society of London). Live Science‘s photo caption says, “It shows a sub-adult that has fused segments at its rear, a characteristic that living horseshoe crabs still have today.”
Facts Versus Spin
Most of these articles mention the Cambrian Explosion, and spin the story to suggest the fossils are shedding light on evolution. “Spectacular Moroccan fossils redefine evolutionary timelines,” the Geological Society of London says. “As well as demonstrating the longevity of fauna thought to have been extinct millions of years previously, the Fezouata proves that other creatures evolved far earlier than previously thought.”
Horseshoe crabs, for example, turn out to be at least 20 million years older than we thought. The formation demonstrates how important exceptionally preserved fossils are to our understanding of major evolutionary events in deep time’ says Peter Van Roy, also of Yale, who first recognised the scientific importance of the Fezouata fauna and is lead author of the study, part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation.
Live Science adds, “During the past few years, these newfound Fezouata fossils have rewritten evolutionary textbooks,” as if that is good. But what if the revision says, “Animals appeared suddenly without evidence of transitions, and stayed the same without evolving”? It would be like your accountant saying cheerfully, “Your IRA just lost 50 percent of its value; this will rewrite your retirement.”
Fossils are great; the more the better. Experience from other spectacular discoveries (e.g., Marble Canyon, Chengjiang) assures us that no surprises will change the situation — Charles Darwin’s own cause for doubt — once the spin is scrubbed off the data. New fossils tend to fall into the same bins. They don’t increase “our understanding of major evolutionary events in deep time”; instead, they add more data points to the same story: sudden appearance of complex body plans, followed by diversification and stasis. That’s not Darwinism; that’s design.
Shaking the foundation of Darwinism
The Other Unsolved Problem of Evolution
It is generally accepted that the main problem with Darwin’s explanation for evolution is the existence of many apparently “irreducibly complex” features in living things, and especially in their cells. How could these features evolve gradually through apparently useless intermediate stages? In a 2020 Evolution News post I offered one spectacular example: the aquatic bladderworts, whose carnivorous traps have
trigger hairs attached to a valve-like door which normally keeps the trap tightly closed. The sides of the trap are compressed under tension, but when a small form of animal life touches one of the trigger hairs the valve opens, the bladder suddenly expands, and the animal is sucked into the trap.
Wolf-Ekkehard Lӧnnig and Heinz-Albert Becker, in their article on carnivorous plants that is quoted in the post, write that
it appears to be hard even to imagine clearcut selective advantages for all the thousands of postulated intermediate steps in a gradual scenario…for the origin of the complex carnivorous plant structures examined above.
A More Fundamental Difficulty
How plants could gradually evolve water-tight traps with valve-like doors and trigger hairs is a very difficult problem. But a recent article of mine, “Human-Engineered Self-Replicating Machines,” focuses on a more fundamental problem: we really have no idea how living things are able to pass their current complex structures on to their descendants generation after generation, without significant degradation — much less how they evolve even more complex structures.
The new peer-reviewed article in the journal BioCosmos explains why human engineers are not close to building self-replicating machines and argues that “we are unlikely to be successful in explaining how the self-replicating machines we see everywhere in the living world could have arisen through entirely natural causes, when we still do not know how such machines could be designed.”
The Problem of Self-Replicating Machines
A few paragraphs from the new article:
With all our advanced technology, we are not close to producing human-engineered self-replicating machines. This is significant because it is widely believed that the first self-replicators on Earth must have arisen through chance chemical processes — it being impossible to appeal to natural selection of replication errors before anything could self-replicate.
To better appreciate the enormous difficulties in designing such machines, and thus the difficulties in understanding how the first living things arose on Earth, let’s think about what would be required to build, say, a self-replicating “Model T” car.
We know how to build a simple Model T. Now let’s build a factory inside this car, so that it can produce Model T cars automatically, and call the new car, with the Model T factory inside, a “Model U.” A car with an entire automobile factory inside, which never requires any human intervention, is far beyond our current technology, but it doesn’t seem impossible that future generations might be able to build a Model U.
Of course, the Model U cars are not self-replicators, because they can only construct simple Model T’s. So let’s add more technology to this car so that it can build Model U’s, that is, Model T’s with car-building factories inside. This new “Model V” car, with a fully automated factory inside capable of producing Model U’s (which are themselves far beyond our current technology) would be unthinkably complex. But is this new Model V now a self-replicator? No, because it only builds the much simpler Model U. The Model V species will become extinct after two generations, because their children will be Model U’s, and their grandchildren will be infertile Model T’s. So back to work, and each time we add technology to this car, to move it closer to the goal of reproduction, we only move the goalposts, because now we have a more complicated car to reproduce. It seems that the new models would grow exponentially in complexity. And even if we were able to engineer self-replicating cars, it is hard to imagine that without any human maintenance these cars could keep reproducing themselves for more than a few generations before errors accumulate to the point that all replication halts.
And here we have ignored the very difficult question of where these cars get the raw materials they need to supply their factories.
Some will object here that the first living things may have been much simpler than self-replicating cars. It is widely believed that you only need to explain how very simple self-replicators could have arisen though chance chemical processes, because then natural selection of the resulting duplication errors could take over and explain how self-replicators far more complex than cars could have arisen. But even if we could explain the appearance of simple self-replicators, imagining trying to design self-replicating cars may help us appreciate the enormity of the difficulties facing any scientific explanation (let alone one which relies on replication errors) for the unimaginably complex self-replicators that we see everywhere in the living world.
Against nincsnevem X
The tenth installment in my responses to Mr.nevem.
"The fact that Jesus "only" wanted to "prove" that he is not "invisible spirit creature perhaps a demon" and "not such a conjuring", etc. only your vision into in the text,"
This unhinged rant is based on Mr.Nevem's attempted use of
Luke ch.2:36-39NIV" they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!”irit 37But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. 38And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."
To prove that the resurrected Jesus was human and not superhuman.i
I simply pointed out that if this spirit was visible then what is being refer to is not a spirit being as these tend to be unseen. The account further shows they were afraid of the sight, so obviously they thought they were seeing an apparition of some sort perhaps conjured by a demon which would explain the apprehension
We know that spirit beings can take on fleshly bodies indistinguishable from humans see Luke ch.24:4-6. so Jesus' demonstrating that he was not an apparition would prove nothing about whether he had become a spirit being or not
In support of the claim that Jesus was made a spirit being with corresponding spirit body upon his resurrection
1Corinthians ch.15:45KJV"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."
1Corinthians ch.15:47,48KJV"The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. 48As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
The first Adam is made of dust the second Adam(since his resurrection) is not made of dust i.e no longer human but super human
2Corinthians ch.5:1KJV"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Let us take careful note of the sequence of events there is no remodeling of the earthly house it is DISSOLVED and replaced by a heavenly house not of human origin.
Galatians ch.1:1NIV"Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—"
suggesting that Paul did not consider the risen Christ to be human but superhuman.
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