Thursday, 19 June 2025
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
Monday, 16 June 2025
JEHOVAH God:Founder of both the spiritual and physical sciences?
The Birth of Science and of the Cosmos
Do we have to choose between science and God? Absolutely not, says philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer. In fact, theistic ideas about nature actually inspired the rise of modern science. On a classic episode of ID the Future, Return of the God Hypothesis author Stephen Meyer and radio host Michael Medved discuss the arguments presented in a series of short videos featuring Dr. Meyer that explore the increasingly strong scientific case for intelligent design and for the idea that the universe is the product of a transcendent mind. In their discussion, Meyer and Medved focus on how evidence of a cosmic beginning supports Judeo-Christian theism, and how the Judeo-Christian tradition inspired the birth of science. “It’s not just that scientists happened to be religious and therefore there was no conflict,” says Meyer. “Rather, they were pursuing scientific investigation of the natural world FOR religious reasons.” Learn about the surprising connection between science and faith at the birth of modern science in this brief and intriguing exchange. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
Sunday, 15 June 2025
Saturday, 14 June 2025
Darwinists' secular myths are sacrosanct?
Challenged on the “1 Percent” Myth, Smithsonian Gives a Meaningless Non-Answer
Casey Luskin broke the bombshell story that a Nature paper published in April had overturned an evolutionary icon: the endlessly repeated statistic that human and chimp DNA are separated by a difference of just “1 percent” or so. Science media and educators brandish the figure to show that human beings are little more than just fancy chimpanzees. In fact, buried deep in the Supplemental Data of the paper (“Complete sequencing of ape genomes”) was the reality that the difference is more like 15 percent.
Journalist Elizabeth Shenk at World Magazine interviewed Dr. Luskin, the CSC’s Associate Director, alongside a co-author of the study, University of Washington geneticist Evan Eichler. Luskin has written to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, asking that that the misleading signage (e.g., “You and chimpanzees [are] 98.8% genetically similar”) be corrected to match the new data.
A Reasonable Request
That seems like a reasonable thing to ask of the country’s top science museum. But as Shenk notes, the Smithsonian has dodged the request. From, “Architect or ancestry? New research casts scientific doubt on traditional evolutionary theory”:
Casey Luskin, a geologist and lawyer at Discovery Institute, says this disproves the theory of a 1% difference. He added that the gap between the human genome and the chimp genome is “basically representing sections of the genomes that are so different that you can’t align them together to figure out exactly what is the percent difference.” Now Luskin and Discovery Institute are demanding the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History take down displays using outdated research arguing for common ancestry. The Smithsonian replied that, if it ever updates its numbers, it will take the study into account.
Luskin doesn’t see the similarities between human and ape DNA as proof of common ancestry. He explained how computer programmers borrow code and engineers use car wheels for planes — all to serve a specific purpose. “It’s a good design principle to reuse parts that work in different designs. The fact that we share a lot of similar DNA with the chimp could simply reflect the fact that we are built upon a common blueprint,” Luskin insists. “It shows common design, which could explain those similarities just as well as common descent.
Note to the President
Ah, so to a plea for scientific accuracy, the nation’s own museum has replied by providing a meaningless non-answer. Dr. Luskin’s letter, republished here at Evolution News, documents the inaccurate signage. Another display repeats the falsehood: “There is only about a 1.2 percent genetic difference between modern humans and chimpanzees throughout much their genetic code.” Note to President Trump: I find it pretty disrespectful to the people who pay the bills at the Smithsonian (namely, American taxpayers) to refuse to provide a meaningful reply when questioned on a scientific point with profound implications. Don’t you?
Thursday, 12 June 2025
More memories of an iconoclast.
Jonathan Wells Cleared the Ground for Intelligent Design
Andrew McDiarmid
Before the positive case for intelligent design can be received effectively, the case against the Darwinian evolutionary mechanism must be clearly laid out. One man who was instrumental in this initial “ground clearing operation” was biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells, our friend and colleague who passed away in 2024 at the age of 82. On this ID the Future, I welcome Dr. Jay Richards to the podcast to share his memories of Dr. Wells and discuss the significance of Wells’s life and work.
The conversation highlights Wells’s early and deep understanding of biological complexity, even in the late 1990s. Richards recalls Wells explaining that the information in organisms goes “way beyond” the sequential information in DNA. Wells perceived “orders of information” and “extra sources of information” coordinating organismal development, which couldn’t simply be located in DNA. He had a sense of the immateriality of the Genome, much like that of his friend Richard Sternberg, and anticipated the need for new categories and theories to account for what happens in organisms.
Dr.. Richards also describes his experience working closely with Wells on the classic work Icons of Evolution. Wells’s 2000 book was highly accessible and served as part of that necessary “ground clearing operation” showing that the reigning Darwinian explanation was inadequate by examining its pedagogical tools and claims, such as the infamous and long-known-inaccurate Haeckel’s embryos. Wells argued in Icons that Darwinism made predictions contrary to evidence and was a “paradigm that’s either spent or really never fit the facts.”
The episode also covers Wells’s intense work on Getting the Facts Straight, a viewer’s guide to the 2001 PBS series Evolution, which failed to accurately represent shortcomings of Darwinian theory and dismissed its critics. Wells was the primary author on the viewer’s guide, working diligently for weeks on it. The critique aimed to counter the series, especially because it was also turned into curricula for use in public schools across America. Download the podcast or listen to it here .
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
On the Coptic bible's John.1:1
Nominal Sentence Predicates and Coptic John 1:1
ϩΝ ΤЄϩΟΥЄΙΤЄ ΝЄϤϢΟΟΠ ΝϬΙΠϢΑϪЄ.
ΑΥШ ΠϢΑϪЄ ΝЄϤϢΟΟΠ ΝΝΑϩΡΜ ΠΝΟΥΤЄ.
ΑΥШ ΝЄΥΝΟΥΤЄ ΠЄ ΠϢΑϪЄ -- John 1:1, Sahidic Coptic text
A literal English translation:
In the beginning existed the Word
And the Word existed with the God
And a god was the word.
Did the Sahidic Coptic translators see theos ("god") in the Greek anarthrous construction of John 1:1c as adjectival ("divine") or as a predicate noun ("god/God")? It has become popular for certain scholars to see the Greek of John 1:1c as qualitative in character, matching the descriptive or adjectival use of common nouns like noute ("god") in Sahidic Coptic.
Descriptively (adjectively), Sahidic Coptic ou.noute can be translated as "divine" or "a divine one." Denotatively, Sahidic Coptic ou.noute can be translated as "a god."
Note that whether descriptive or denotative, the Sahidic Coptic common noun with the indefinite article, ou.noute , can be rendered into standard English with the English indefinite article: "a divine one; a god." -- Compare Coptic scholar Bentley Layton, A Coptic Grammar, 2nd Edition (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), page 227.
But one important fact must be kept in mind in determining the best English translation at John 1:1c. Although Sahidic Coptic ou.noute may, in context, be denotative ("a god") or descriptive ("divine"; "a divine one") the actual usage of common nouns with the Coptic indefinite article ou- in the Sahidic Coptic Gospel of John (and the Sahidic Coptic New Testament generally) favors the simple denotative function: "a god," "a man," "a woman," "a prophet," etc.
Thus, the first example of this Coptic grammatical form found after John 1:1 is translated denotatively, with the English indefinite article "a" in George William Horner's version as "a man" (ou.rwme). --John 1:6, The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume 3 (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1911) Similarly, we have "a man" (ou.rwme) again in verse 30; "a dove" (ou.groompe) at verse 32; "a marriage (feast)" (ou.Seleet) at 2:1, and so on denotatively a multitude of times throughout the Sahidic Coptic Gospel of John.
The Sahidic Coptic indefinite article bound to the Coptic common noun is routinely translated denotatively (with the English indefinite article "a") in Horner's Coptic Gospel of John, but not descriptively or adjectivally or "qualitatively" at all.
Coptic scholar Bentley Layton has "a-god" in his interlinear translation of Sahidic Coptic ou.noute at John 1:1c in his Coptic in 20 Lessons (Peeters, Leuven, 2007), page 7.
The tendency to want to view Coptic John 1:1c as adjectival or descriptive ("divine," "a divine one") rather than as denotative ("a god") is that of modern scholars, and does not appear to be the view of the Sahidic Coptic translators, as demonstrated by their regular use of indefinite article - common noun phrases as denotative everywhere else in John's Gospel.
Tuesday, 10 June 2025
Sunday, 8 June 2025
Saying that there is a meaningful difference between living and nonliving matter is controversial?
Peter Corning and the Taint of Vitalism
It’s kind of funny how academic debates which seem rather dull or arcane or even pedantic from the outside can provoke such intense feelings on the inside. The Mexican philosopher Manuel DeLanda once said that, for decades, in the world of continental philosophy “admitting that one was a [metaphysical] realist was equivalent to admitting one was a child molester.”1 The nearest thing to that in biology is probably vitalism, the idea that life can’t be reduced to matter and the laws of physics and chemistry.2
That’s probably why biologist Peter Corning has gone to such great lengths to clear himself of the taint of vitalism, after an Evolution News post put his name and the v-word in the same paragraph.
In the offending post, I suggested that the work of Corning and some of his colleagues may indicate that vitalism is making a comeback in biology. This aspersion was enough to make Corning devote a whole (short) chapter in his new book Evolution and the Fate of Humankind (2025) to rebutting the notion.
Corning seems to be concerned that someone might think he is advocating some sort of non-physical, “external” élan vital that cannot be explained by naturalistic evolutionary processes. This worry does not seem strongly warranted, given that the post clearly stated that Corning and his colleagues “are arguing for a naturalistic vital principle, not some spooky supernatural force” and referred to their view as “purely materialistic.” But then, I suppose a little overreaction is understandable when the risk is so dire.
Two Kinds of Vitalism
The truth is, “vitalism” is not really a theory at all, but simply a vague umbrella term that can cover a broad range of theories, including materialist ones. So it may be useful to introduce some more precise terminology into the discussion.
The physicist Marco Masi helpfully distinguishes between “physical vitalism” and “metaphysical vitalism” (and argues that neither has actually been falsified by science). He does so in a 2022 peer-reviewed paper in Communicative & Integrative Biology.3 Under his definition, physical vitalism is essentially just anti-reductionism applied to biology. It says that life cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts and that it is characterized by abstract principles which set it apart from non-life, but it does not posit any actual metaphysical essences or entities. You might also call this view “compatibilism,” taking the term from the philosophy of mind, where it refers to the idea that the existence of free will is actually compatible with physical determinism. This is the kind of vitalism that Stuart Kauffman seems to endorse when he suggests (in a book co-edited by Corning) that the combination of thermodynamic work, catalytic closure, and constraint closure is, in a real sense,“the long sought ‘vital force,’ here rendered entirely nonmystical.” 4
This stands in contrast to the views of biologists like Michael Levin of Tufts University, who takes an explicitly anti-physicalist stance, and does invoke metaphysical entities.5 Contemporary biologists who hold similar metaphysical views include Richard Sternberg (who argues for an immaterial, Platonic genome, described in the new book Plato’s Revenge, but rejects the label of “vitalist”), the recently deceased German paleontologist Günter Bechly (who called himself both a Platonist and a “neo-vitalist”), and University of Zurich evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner (who invokes metaphysical Platonic structures as an explanation for evolution).
Two Kinds of Comeback
Physical vitalism or compatibilism is quite clearly making a comeback in biology. It seems almost unfashionable these days to be an old-school eliminativist materialist and claim that everything can be reduced to mere physics and chemistry. This is what Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell says about that philosophy:
For me, that idea is not just wrong — it’s wrong-headed. A purely reductionist, mechanistic approach to life completely misses the point. On the contrary: basic laws of physics that deal only with energy and matter and fundamental forces cannot explain what life is or its defining property: living organisms do things, for reasons, as causal agents in their own right. They are driven not by energy but by information. And the meaning of that information is embodied in the structure of the system itself, based on its history. In short, there are fundamentally distinct types of causation at play in living organisms by virtue of their organization…We are not a collection of mere mechanisms.
Meanwhile, scientists who openly support metaphysical vitalism are out there, and seem to be getting bolder, but they are still fewer and farther between (and, like physical vitalists, they often do not like to be called “vitalists”). This is to be expected, since methodological materialism is basically the law of the land in academia. A well-established scientist like Michael Levin might get away with stepping outside of the confines of physicalist explanation, but most sympathetic scientists are going to have to content themselves with hints and murmurs.
It must be acknowledged, however, that some of the arguments for physical vitalism indirectly provide support for the metaphysical vitalist position.
Take Corning’s own view as an example. He has argued that the complexity of life is the result of synergy. In many of the examples he offers, the synergy in question is actually created by the choices of intelligent agents. The following paragraph from Evolution and the Fate of Humankind is typical:
Cooperation in nest-building, and in the nurturing and protection of the young, may significantly improve the collective odds of reproductive success. Coordinated movement and migration, including the use of formations to increase aerodynamic or hydrodynamic efficiency, may reduce individual energy expenditures and/or aid in navigation. Forming a coalition against competitors may improve the chances of acquiring a mate, or a nest-site, or access to needed resources (such as a watering-hole, a food patch, or potential prey). In all of these situations, it is the synergies that are responsible for achieving greater efficiencies and enhancing profitability.
In other words, intelligent design (by animals, not God) causes synergy. For some reason, it does not seem to bother Corning that this sort of input from a mind would presumably be necessary in the cellular and even molecular systems where he also sees synergy at work. Since Corning does not think Darwin’s theory explains complexity, he maintains that synergies have been driving the emergence of biological complexity since the origin of life.7 Yet synergistic arrangements do not occur by default. They require coordination.8 And this coordination has to occur before natural selection can do its work. So if it turns out that these synergistic scenarios are extremely improbable (which seems likely); and if a system in question is too primitive to possess a brain or any internal computer-like mechanistic intelligence programmed to seek out and select synergistic outcomes (which must be the case in the earliest evolutionary stages of life, invocations of “teleonomy” and biopsychism notwithstanding); then the only remaining option is some sort of guidance external to the material structure of the organism. This could, in theory, be either guidance from an outside agent (i.e., intelligent design) or some sort of metaphysical guide or blueprint influencing the developing organism (i.e., metaphysical vitalism) — or both.
Again, I am not saying Corning and his colleagues want to provide support for a non-physicalist hypotheses. I’m saying that they are, whether they want to or not.
Imagine a dozen respected scientists gathered to discuss the scientific explanation for some phenomenon.
The first eleven scientists all say: “We don’t need to consider the old Hypothesis X as an explanation for Phenomenon A, because all qualified experts agree that Hypothesis Y explains it.”
But then the last scientist in the group, Scientist 12, speaks up: “Hypothesis Y actually doesn’t explain Phenomenon A, but my new Hypothesis Z does!”
Scientist 12 is indirectly supporting the dread Hypothesis X, because he is invalidating the claim that the first eleven scientists were using to exclude it a priori from the discussion. The fact that he is proposing another alternative hypothesis (which the other scientists have not yet ratified) does not undo the damage.
Corning and his colleagues are filling the role of Scientist 12 when they say things like “the long sought ‘vital force,’ here rendered entirely nonmystical,” or “Darwin’s theory does not provide an explanation for the rise of biological complexity” (Peter Corning, Synergistic Selection, page 1).
Intelligent Design and Vitalism
For proponents of intelligent design, physical and metaphysical vitalism are interesting hypotheses that may or may not be true. And they can both be seen as either a threat or as an ally. On the one hand, ID theory has largely focused on the mechanical complexity of life, and some theorists see vitalism as a way to try to weasel out of the design implications. On the other hand, physical vitalist models often point to the unique sophistication of living systems; and metaphysical vitalism entails the rejection of the doctrine of materialism, a doctrine which has been the main barrier to intelligent design arguments in the scientific community.
I see this ambivalence as a great strength for investigating vitalist hypotheses. No one can be fully objective, but scientists should strive for it. If you have a prior commitment to methodological materialism you quite simply have no way of determining whether a non-materialist hypothesis is true or false; to determine whether there is anything outside a box, you have to look outside the box. But a scientist who wants to investigate the intelligent design hypothesis has to adopt a metaphysically neutral investigative methodology — which is also what is necessary to investigate metaphysical vitalism. Therefore, scientists working in the framework of intelligent design have an enormous advantage in exploring the evidence for and against vitalist hypotheses.
Another advantage ID theorists possess in this discourse is simply that they are generally used to being treated as persona non grata in the scientific world, and therefore have a lot less to lose if their inquiry happens to lead them into the vitalist camp. If you’re not worried about stigma and rejection, you can follow the evidence wherever it leads.
I anticipate these advantages being especially relevant in the coming years, because, as the insightful work of Corning and many others has shown, the vitalist/mechanist debate in biology is nowhere near over. If anything, it’s just getting started.
Notes
Quoted by Graham Harman in the forward to A Manifesto of New Realism, by Maurizio Ferraris (2012).
In fact, the two leprous philosophies are related, since some of the most prominent contemporary biological theories that risk being labeled “vitalism” fall under the category of “Platonism,” which is simply the most extreme form of metaphysical realism.
Masi, Marco. “Vitalism in a conscious universe.” Communicative & Integrative Biology, 15:1, 121-136, May 2022. DOI: 10.1080/19420889.2022.207110.
Kauffman, Stuart. “Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm: A Statistical Mechanics of Emergence.” In Evolution on Purpose: Teleonomy in Living Systems (page 145). Edited by Corning, Peter A., Stuart A. Kauffman, Denis Noble, James A. Shapiro, Richard I. Vane-Wright, and Addy Pross. The MIT Press, 2023.
Levin would probably not want to be classified as a vitalist, because he does not think that biological organisms are unique in this regard — he believes that immaterial Platonic forms can interact with non-organic structures as well as organic. That is an important distinction, but it basically means his view is more vitalist than vitalism. You might say that Levin’s view is to vitalism as panpsychism is to Cartesian dualism.
Mitchell, Kevin. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (pages x, 22). Princeton University Press, 2023.
Corning, Peter. Synergistic Selection: How Cooperation Has Shaped Evolution and the Rise of Humankind (pages 1, 18). World Scientific Publishing, 2017.
Synergy that appears to occur “by default” is actually pre-written into the laws of mathematics, physics, or chemistry.
There is no simple lifeform(still).
Engineered Complexity in the Microbial World
On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Jonathan Witt speaks with molecular biologist and professor Dustin Van Hofwegen about his research into the engineered complexity in microbial life. The two sat down at the yearly Conference on Engineering in Living Systems to discuss the event, which brings together biologists and engineers to study how engineering principles can be applied to living things, as well as Hofwegen’s article in the Journal of Bacteriology, co-authored with Carolyn Hovde and Scott Minnich, based on research conducted at the University of Idaho.
Hofwegen shares his research on the famous decades-long E. coli evolution experiment conducted by Richard Lenski, which showed the sudden appearance of an ability to utilize citrate after many generations. However, Van Hofwegen’s own experiments demonstrated that this “evolutionary innovation” could occur much faster and repeatedly under stressful conditions, suggesting it was not a random evolutionary leap but rather the activation of pre-existing genetic mechanisms, akin to flipping a switch. The discussion highlights that many biological “adaptations” may involve the use of innate abilities or the disruption of existing functions, rather than the creation of entirely new ones, supporting the idea of engineered complexity in microbial life. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
Thursday, 5 June 2025
Wednesday, 4 June 2025
Against Litigious XIX
You accuse the Catholic Church of "mass murder" and "tolerating immorality" but fail to substantiate these claims with proper historical evidence.
Bloodstained history of christendom is well known. Is there really an individual so deluded as to be unaware of it? But it is not the way that christendom has oppressed religious minorities that is the major stumbling block but the way she has treated her coreligionists,during the two world wars christendom introduced the world to mass fratricide on an industrial scale, industrial scale fratricide has returned to europe and again it is the christendom clergy who are beating the war drums.
While it is true that members of the Church, including clergy, have sinned throughout history, these individual failings do not represent the teachings or mission of the Catholic Church. Christ also instructed us on what to do when our religious leaders are hypocrites, even though their teachings are objectively correct: "Therefore, do and observe all that they tell you, but do not do according to their deeds, for they teach but do not practice."
The law covenant was on its way out trying to reform that dying system would not have made sense as for the church of Christ hypicrisy was not to be tolerated.
1corithians ch.5:12,13NIV"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.” d"
(Matthew 23:2) The Church has always called for repentance and sanctity, recognizing that human beings are fallible (e.g., 1 John 1:8-9, Mark 2:17). Events like the Crusades or the Inquisition are often cited out of context. For example, the Crusades were largely defensive wars responding to centuries of Muslim aggression against Christian territories. While there were abuses, these were deviations from Church teaching, not evidence of systemic immorality. Similarly, the Inquisition's primary purpose was to combat heresy and preserve societal order in a deeply religious age, not to indiscriminately kill or oppress. Your argument ignores the Church's extensive contributions to human rights, charity, education, healthcare, and peacebuilding. Figures like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Calcutta, and Pope John Paul II exemplify the Church's commitment to promoting the dignity of every human life.
It is your deeds not your words and like I pointed out it is not the violent persecution of religious minorities that concern us(although that is bad enough)JEHOVAH Does not care whether you've killed your fellowman over religious or political or ethnic differences,all religions that tolerate mass killings by their members fall under curse of revelation 18:24 ,regardless of any sanctimonious proclamations about peace or repentance.
You compare criticism of Jehovah's Witnesses to Jewish opposition to the early Christian Church. This analogy is flawed. While the apostles sometimes misunderstood the timing of eschatological events (e.g., Acts 1:6-7), it’s all happened BEFORE they received the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8), they never made false prophecies. They always affirmed that the exact timing of Christ's return was known only to God (Matthew 24:36). In contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses have repeatedly set specific dates for the end of the world (e.g., 1914, 1925, 1975), which failed to come true. This is explicitly condemned in Deuteronomy 18:20-22, where false prophecy is identified by unfulfilled predictions. The early Church grew through the apostles’ preaching of Christ’s resurrection and their willingness to suffer martyrdom for their faith. This stands in stark contrast to the repeated doctrinal flip-flops and failed prophecies of the Watchtower Society, which have led to disillusionment and departures from the organization.
The apostles were actual prophets the brothers never claimed any type of prophethood Ive read all of those predictions in their proper context and not ONCE have I seen a thus saith the LORD type proclamation
(january 1908 watchtower" "We are not prqophesying; we are merely giving our surmises . . . We do not 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".
But even the apostles admitted that they did not fully understand the prophesies that they proclaimed see 1Corinthians ch.13:9 just like the prophets of old did not fully understand the prophesies they proclaimed daniel ch.12:9. Note that their will continue to be an incomplete understanding of prophesy down to the end. But on matters having to do eith the identity of the true God JEHOVAH and his true high priest Jesus Christ and keeping ourseves in a sanctified condition upholding the bibles moral standards and keeping ourselves away from nationalism,war and politics the sign of JEHOVAH'S Presence among us and his absence from christendom could not be plainer
You claim that Jehovah's Witnesses fulfill Isaiah 2:2-4, which prophesies global peace under God's kingdom. However, Isaiah 2:2-4 refers to a future messianic age, not a present organizational structure. The prophecy envisions a time when all nations will seek God's ways and war will cease completely. This has not yet occurred, as evident in the ongoing conflicts and divisions in the world. While you claim internal peace, this ignores the emotional, spiritual, and familial harm caused by policies such as shunning, disfellowshipping, and the mishandling of abuse cases. True peace cannot exist where systemic harm persists, even if outward conflict is suppressed.
We have resisted pressure to kill our fellowman that includes threats of death from christendom's princes. If anyone finds our way of life to restrictive all he or she has to to do is not get baptised it's that simple the penalty(see 1Corinthians ch.5:11-13) for turning ones back on the vow you took of your own free will us known in advance,but it is a lie to clain that families are divided by the penalty, cohabiting blood relations are not required to abandon family obligations(Since blood and marital relationships are not dissolved by a congregational disfellowshiping action, the situation within the family circle requires special consideration. A woman whose husband is disfellowshiped is not released from the Scriptural requirement to respect his husbandly headship over her; only death or Scriptural divorce from a husband results in such release. (Rom. 7:1-3; Mark 10:11, 12) A husband likewise is not released from loving his wife as “one flesh” with him even though she should be disfellowshiped. (Matt. 19:5, 6; Eph. 5:28-31) Parents similarly remain under the injunction to ‘go on bringing up their children in the discipline and mental-regulating of Jehovah’ even though a baptized son or a daughter yet a minor is disfellowshiped. (Eph. 6:4) And sons and daughters, of whatever age, remain under the obligation to ‘honor their father and mother’ although one or both of these may be disfellowshiped. (Matt. 15:4; Eph. 6:2) This is not difficult to understand when we consider that, according to the Scriptures, even political officials of this world are to be shown due honor by Christians) from the august 1 1974 watchtower page 470 par.17
Your assertion that there are "no harmful policies" among Jehovah’s Witnesses is demonstrably false. Shunning and disfellowshipping isolate individuals from family and community, often causing severe emotional and psychological harm. The Bible calls for forgiveness and reconciliation (Matthew 18:21-22, Luke 15:11-32), not punitive isolation. The prohibition of blood transfusions has led to preventable deaths, including children. This policy is based on a misinterpretation of biblical passages like Acts 15:28-29, which refer to dietary restrictions, not life-saving medical procedures. Numerous legal cases have revealed the Watchtower Society's failure to protect victims of abuse, often prioritizing organizational reputation over justice. This contradicts biblical teachings on caring for the vulnerable (Matthew 18:6).
Are you seriously comparing loss of fellowship by a minority of of ones relatives,you can still fellowship with the majority of your family and as we have seen it it is just a flat out lie that spouses and cohabiting offspring are forbidden from having normal family ties. Compared to the churches of christendom who use the power of the state to force their religion on those born in a certain geographic area this is nothing, remember we do not practice infant baptism,every baptismal candidatendies so of his own free will with full awareness of the penalty for breaking his oath,and the idea that a member of the catholic church thinks that he can compare the catholic churches record re:child abuse with us is laughable,grok gives the number of cases involving JWs in the last ten years as between 50 and 150 where as for the population at large 600,000 cases were brought before the court at the same time. Likely we can all agree that those are 50 to 150 cases too many but the fact is that it represents between 1 in 25000 and 1 in 8000 approximately whereas the ratio for the population at large is about one in 50. So this idea pushed by you and your kind that JW children are more likely to be abused is yet another lie. The idea that those who opt for bloodless medicine yet more lies,if any figures to that effect existed we both know that you and your fellow haters would make sure that they posted in a loop all over the internet,the only reason we have not seen any such figures is because they don't exist.
Romans chapter 12 New Interntional Version
1.Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2.Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
3.For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4.For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5.so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6.We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your a faith; 7.if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8.if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, b do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
9.Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10.Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11.Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12.Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13.Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14.Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15.Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16.Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. c Do not be conceited.
17.Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18.If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19.Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” d says the Lord. 20.On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” e
21.Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Sunday, 1 June 2025
Saturday, 31 May 2025
The line between science and pseudoscience just keeps getting thinner?
How the “Scientific Community” Undermines Its Own Trustworthiness
Leading spokespersons for science are complaining about the decline of public trust in their craft. They don’t need anyone to explain why this is happening. Their own journals contain the evidence. It’s time for a scientific revolution: an ethical revolution. Scientists need to clean up their act. Listen to their own confessions.
Peer Review: The Collapse Collapses
One of the strongest props for scientism has been peer review. This practice is meant to promote objectivity and accuracy in scientific publishing and weed out fraud and pseudoscience. The alleged lack of peer review has been used to bash design advocates (here). Inside the sausage factory of peer review, though, the atmosphere stinks, as many scientists know. Complaints against the practice have been increasing in intensity in the last two decades. Denyse O’Leary reported last year that it may be beyond reform.
To add insult to injury, Alexander Goldberg and six colleagues found that “peer reviews of peer reviews” are similarly flawed. Their randomized controlled test of studies that rank the effectiveness of peer reviews, published in PLOS ONE, found stink all the way up:
In this work, we analyze the reliability of peer reviewing peer reviews. We find that many problems that exist in peer reviews of papers — inconsistencies, biases, miscalibration, subjectivity — also exist in peer reviews of peer reviews. In particular, while reviews of reviews may be useful in designing better incentives for high-quality reviewing and to measure effects of policy choices in peer review, considerable care must be taken when interpreting reviews of reviews as a sign of review quality
implies, of course, that we cannot even trust the work of Goldberg and team in this paper. Who peer reviewed this “peer review of peer reviews” anyway? Only fallible humans, often too lazy to take “considerable care” when seeking the truth about a matter.
Procuring input from peers makes common sense, but such is not unique to science. Historians, teachers, and artists know the value of seeking wise advice from knowledgeable peers. To treat peer review in science as a reliable means to accuracy is naïve. The practice relies on the ethics of fallible humans, varies in its methodology from one field to another, and is subject to perverse incentives. Predatory journals have been on the rise, pretending to be peer reviewed but with low standards. Besides, many of the most epochal ideas in science were not peer reviewed. Principia, anyone?
Hiding Evidence
The “file drawer problem” leads invariably to biased reporting. It refers to scientists deciding not to report negative results. The silence creates an impression that research is making progress. This issue was brought to attention in 2014 by Franco et al. in Science, before the Open Science movement gained momentum.
Philip Moniz et al. stated in PNAS on March 2, “The file drawer problem — often operationalized in terms of statistically significant results being published and statistically insignificant not being published — is widely documented in the social sciences.” With two colleagues, Moniz sought to extend Franco’s work.
We examine projects begun after Franco et al. The updated period coincides with the contemporary open science movement. We find evidence of the problem, stemming from scholars opting to not write up insignificant results. However, that tendency is substantially smaller than it was in the prior decade. This suggests increased recognition of the importance of null results, even if the problem remains in the domain of survey experiments.
This sounds like a blindfolded person in Blind Man’s Bluff acting as his own caller: “I’m getting warmer.” How do the three know that the progress is being made in solving the file drawer problem, when they used flawed “survey experiments” themselves to come to that conclusion? They paid respondents to answer their questions. How objective is that? Some day in the future they may figure out the extent of the problem.
The file drawer problem we document appears to stem from researchers’ choices to not write up or submit null results. We cannot dismiss the possibility that those decisions correlate with other parts of the studies, meaning that they would not have been accepted if written/submitted. This highlights the importance of future work looking at other study aspects such as sponsors, the contribution relative to prior work, and so on, as well as variation in journal processes and prestige…. As null results become more acceptable, these types of factors may become more influential in the publication process.
Notice what “these types of factors” have in common: human fallibility. Scientists chose not to write up or submit null results, biasing the corpus of scientific literature toward the illusion of progress. Don’t imagine that this problem is limited to the social sciences. It’s human nature to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.
The Gollum Grasp
There’s another human foible messing up trust in science: the “Gollum Effect.” “It’s mine! My precious data.” This foible goes back centuries, leading to historic priority battles over scientific discoveries. But isn’t science supposed to rise above petty squabbles for the good of the world? Maybe in idyllic poetry it is, but often not in practice. Researchers at German universities in Wittenberg and Leipzig state that “the ‘Gollum effect’ hinders research and careers.” They begin with the Pollyana word “should” —
Scientific research should serve the good of mankind, which is why data is not kept under lock and key and findings are shared openly. “Unfortunately, the academic world does not always live up to this ideal. Possessiveness, exclusion, and the hoarding of data, resources and ideas are widespread issues,” explains Dr Jose Valdez, a biodiversity researcher at MLU and iDiv. The phenomenon is known as the “Gollum effect”, a term coined by the researchers themselves and inspired by the tragic character in “The Lord of the Rings” — a figure so fixated on a magic ring that his obsession pulls him into the abyss. “In science, possessive behaviour undermines scientific progress and disproportionately impacts early-career and lessed establish researchers,” says Valdez.
In a survey of 563 scientists in 64 countries, half the respondents said they “had experienced the phenomenon themselves.” But didn’t we just learn that survey experiments suffer from lower credibility?
The consequences of the Gollum effect can be serious. Over two thirds of those surveyed reported significant career setbacks. Many were forced to abandon their research topics, change research groups and institutes, or even leave science altogether. Only a third of those had experienced the Gollum effect said that they took any actions to defend themselves. Nearly a fifth of respondents even admitted to likely having displayed Gollum-like behaviour themselves.
And Now This
Just when these problems were shattering trust in scientism, this appeared: AI fakery. Nature warns, “Fake AI images will cause headaches for journals.” Even experts and peer reviewers have been demonstrably fooled by AI-generated images of tissues, tests have shown. Ralf Mrowka in Germany looked into methods of generating fake images.
The fabrications have reached a level of quality “that will give editors, reviewers and readers a hard time”, he says. “Once I have trained an AI model to generate this type of data, I can generate endless new fake images” and also make modifications to them, he adds.
Nature reporter Dalmeet Singh Chawla said, “The race is on to build tools that can detect fraudulent AI-generated images in research.” Perhaps they will succeed, but this may be an ongoing spy-vs-spy saga as engineers try to design better tools for distinguishing authenticity from fakery.
But it gets worse. Nature worries that “AI-generated literature reviews threaten scientific progress.” AI is getting so good it can generate fake scientific papers, graphics and all, that can fool reviewers. What’s more, even the reviewers can be fake! What’s coming next? Will humans turn over science to humanoid robots? Built and trained by fallible humans, would they not reflect the same fallibility of their creators?
Ethics for Me but Not for Thee
With hands over their self-righteous hearts, Christine Coughlin and Nancy M. P. King of Wake Forest University write at The Conversation that “Science requires ethical oversight” — after which they launch into a political tirade against the current U.S. administration for cutting NIH funds they deem necessary to prevent research abuse. It’s odd they had nothing to say about ethical abuses at the NIH under the prior administration (see here, here, and here).
Regardless of one’s political view, it must seem highly out of line for institutional science to be wholeheartedly supportive of one party and critical of the other, something I witness almost daily in my scouring of science headlines. This, I feel, is the major reason for the declining trust in science. Political partisanship damages the reputation of science and its ideal of objectivity.
The Solution: Integrity
None of us knows everything. We need the freedom to share ideas and debate them. That is why groupthink hinders science. As long as the nebulous “scientific community” acts politically partisan and censors skeptics of Darwinism and materialism, it will continue to lose public trust. Open debate can help bring our fallibilities to the surface, where they can be exposed and corrected. Each interlocutor, though, must value integrity above all.
Other writers here at Evolution News (Klinghoffer, Egnor, Gauger) have spoken out on the decline of integrity in science. Integrity means valuing truth over self. It means being honest with one’s own work when alone, being willing to stand against power and groupthink, and being willing to admit failure even when it costs. Integrity is a very un-Darwinian trait because it can decrease one’s fitness in a crazy world of liars and temptations.
Integrity is also un-Darwinian in that it cannot evolve. If shoved into a Hegelian triad it might theoretically evolve into its own antithesis, collapsing in a heap of confusion. If science departments in our schools and universities return to an emphasis on integrity in every course, some alert students may reason that integrity cannot be a product of natural selection.
Integrity by its nature is eternal. Knowledge can accumulate, but integrity must stand rock solid against the winds of change. Scientists have undermined their own credibility of late, but whenever integrity is nurtured and takes root in science, it will produce the fruit of trustworthiness.
Wednesday, 28 May 2025
Tuesday, 27 May 2025
Monday, 26 May 2025
Sunday, 25 May 2025
Friday, 23 May 2025
GROK on the age of the shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin’s age is a topic of ongoing debate, with evidence pointing to different conclusions. Radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 by three independent labs (Oxford, Zurich, and Arizona) dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 CE, suggesting it’s a medieval artifact, roughly 635–765 years old as of 2025. The tests used accelerator mass spectrometry on a small sample of the cloth, yielding consistent results across the labs.
However, some researchers and believers challenge these findings, citing potential contamination (e.g., from repairs or environmental factors) or questioning the sample’s representativeness. They argue the shroud could be older, potentially from the 1st century CE, aligning with the time of Jesus, which would make it around 2,000 years old. Supporting this, some point to historical references, like the Edessa cloth mentioned in early Christian texts, or pollen and textile studies suggesting a Middle Eastern origin consistent with 1st-century Judea.
Recent analyses, like a 2024 X-ray study by Italian researchers, propose the cloth’s degradation patterns could indicate an age of about 2,000 years, but these findings are not peer-reviewed and remain contentious. Critics argue the radiocarbon data is more robust, while proponents of an older shroud claim the science is inconclusive.
Given the conflicting evidence, the most widely accepted estimate, based on the 1988 radiocarbon dating, places the shroud’s origin in the 13th–14th centuries (635–765 years old). Yet, the debate persists due to the artifact’s cultural and religious significance.
Thursday, 22 May 2025
The science is never settled?
The Myth of “Settled Science”
Be it global warming, COVID shots, Darwinian evolution, neuroscience, or even physics, there is no such thing as “settled science.” The late great physicist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) agreed. He wrote:
Any physical theory is always provisional. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.
Stephen Hawking, A brief history of time: from big bang to black holes. Random House, 2009.
If that is true even for physical theories, Hawking’s claim certainly applies to softer sciences like neuroscience, epidemiology, climate change, and evolution.
Those Who Claim a Science Is Settled Are Doing So on Faith
Mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) said there is a “God-shaped vacuum” in every person. Those who believe that there is such a thing as settled science are members of the Church of Scientism. Some are filling their God-shaped vacuum with a belief in science.
That’s one of the reasons I like being an engineer. Scientists embrace a theory, place it on a throne and worship her like a queen. Engineers make the queen step down from the throne and scrub the floor. And if she doesn’t work, we fire her.
Some physical theories are better supported by evidence than others. Drop a pencil, and you observe direct evidence supporting the theory of gravity.
Everyone believes in gravity, right? Yet the Newtonian model of gravity as action at a distance was shown by Einstein to be caused by spacetime curvature. Scientists are still exploring relativistic gravity waves. Questioning models and finding alternate or deeper truths is the beginning of scientific progress.
What About Consensus Science?
If the term “settled science” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, a more meaningful phrase is “consensus science.” On that view, science reflects broad agreement but does not claim a corner on truth.
Michael Crichton (1942‒2008), a medical doctor and author of science fiction classics like Jurassic Park, Westworld, and The Andromeda Strain — and the creator of the TV series ER — shared this view. In a Caltech lecture, the master storyteller gives consensus science a gut punch. He said,
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming” Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003
Unfortunately, as John West, author of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity (Discovery Institute Press 2025), has pointed out, the U.S. government tends to almost exclusively fund consensus science. One outcome may be that members of the Church of Scientism take no prisoners in defending their turf and this practice. Anything contrary to their view is dubbed polarization and misinformation. From that comes a conceited sense of superiority as evidenced by Anthony Fauci’s claim that “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” A more accurate quote would be “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on consensus science.”
Crichton’s cutting critique of consensus science is supported by history.
What We Can Learn from History
Below is a list of discredited scientific theories dating from the 20th century. Each was once widely accepted as established science at some point during that period. And some who bucked the scientific consensus have made world-changing discoveries.
Ulcers: For a long time, the medical consensus was that peptic ulcers were caused by stress and lifestyle factors. Two Australian researchers, however, came to believe ulcers were caused by bacteria. Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren’s claim was so far outside of consensus that no scientist believed them. Great discoveries come from Johns Hopkins, Harvard and MD Anderson. Not from Perth, Australia.
To prove the theory, Marshall underwent a gastric biopsy to demonstrate that he had no ulcer. Then he infected himself with bacteria and formed an ulcer. When he cured himself with antibiotics and bismuth salt regimens, the theory was proved. Marshall’s dedication to disproving the consensus was, as they say, beyond the call. Marshall and Warren were awarded a Nobel Prize for ignoring consensus science and thinking and acting creatively outside the box instead.
Famine: In 1970 Professor Peter Gunter defended an alarming claim with an appeal to consensus:
Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable…. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.
The consensus was wrong. There have certainly been famines since Gunter’s prophecy. But they sporadically occur locally due to droughts, war and politics. Gunter’s gloomy prophecy about global famine was wrong and he will be primary remembered in history for the wrongness of his consensus-based claim.
Relativity: Or take the consensus science rebel Albert Einstein (1879–1955) who — at the tender age of 26 — challenged consensus in his development of relativity theory. For one thing, the speed of light was widely viewed to be relative to the speed of the observer with respect to the light source. Inspired by the Michelson‒Morley experiment, Einstein abandoned this consensus. He theorized that the speed of light was a constant, independent of the relative speeds of the light source and the observer.
Further, it was known that sound waves need air or some other medium to propagate. Scientists during the time of Einstein believed that electromagnetic waves like light need some similar medium in outer space. Thus they assumed that something called aether was the propagation medium. Einstein correctly hypothesized that there was no such medium as aether. From his breaking out of the box of consensus, the theory of relativity was born.
Quantum mechanics: Einstein, in turn, did not believe in quantum mechanics. In response to his quote (paraphrased) “God does not play dice with the universe!” quantum mechanics pioneer Niels Bohr (1885–1962) purportedly responded “Einstein. Quit telling God what to do!”
Here were Einstein’s thoughts. Consider rolling two dice. The outcome can be predicted using precise physical mechanics, accounting for the throw’s dynamics, air resistance, and the dice’s interactions with the table surface. But treating the dice throw outcome as probabilistic is a simpler more tractable model. This is the jist of what Einstein believed about quantum mechanics. The randomness in quantum mechanics was a probabilistic model describing underlying non-probabilistic laws.
As demonstrated by Bell’s inequality, Einstein was wrong. Quantum mechanics does not follow the principle of “local causality.”
God apparently does play dice with the universe.
Many Other Centuries-Old Science Beliefs Have Been Discredited
Below is a list of discredited scientific beliefs from before the 20th century, beliefs that were once considered consensus science. Today they seem silly, prompting reflection on whether any of today’s consensus science beliefs will seem equally foolish in a century.
Bleeding: The belief that bloodletting gets out the bad blood and lets you heal more quickly. (This is how Geoge Washington died.)
Spontaneous generation: The belief that living organisms (e.g., maggots, microbes) arose spontaneously from non-living matter, like rotting food.
Phlogiston theory: The belief that combustion and rusting were attributed to the release of a substance called “phlogiston” from materials.
Miasma theory of disease: The belief that diseases like cholera and the plague were spread through “miasmas” (bad air) from decaying matter or foul environments.
Caloric theory of heat: Heat was once thought to be a fluid called “caloric” that flowed from hot to cold objects.
Geocentrism: The belief the earth is the center of the universe.
Static Universe: The belief the universe was eternal and static, neither expanding nor contracting.
These flawed theories have been abandoned in large because of the courage and insight of those willing to buck consensus.
Learning from History
Smart people learn from history. If history has shown numerous cases where consensus science was wrong, should we not be somewhat skeptical of today’s consensus science? While we know more now, greater humility and less arrogance are still essential. We don’t have all the answers and no one has a corner on truth.
Current worship of absolute “settled science” ropes off sections in the arena of ideas. No one knows the answer to many of the currently argued topics in science. But we do know that by limiting debate and censoring minority scientific viewpoints, “settled science” keeps spinning wheels, stuck in the mud on the open road to scientific progress.
Learning from History
Smart people learn from history. If history has shown numerous cases where consensus science was wrong, should we not be somewhat skeptical of today’s consensus science? While we know more now, greater humility and less arrogance are still essential. We don’t have all the answers and no one has a corner on truth.
Current worship of absolute “settled science” ropes off sections in the arena of ideas. No one knows the answer to many of the currently argued topics in science. But we do know that by limiting debate and censoring minority scientific viewpoints, “settled science” keeps spinning wheels, stuck in the mud on the open road to scientific progress.
On why there will never be a planet of the apes.
Bombshell: New Research Overturns Claim that Humans and Chimps Differ by Only 1 Percent of DNA
How many times have you heard it said that the human and chimpanzee genomes are so similar that they are only “1 percent different” at the level of their DNA? This shows, we were told, not only that humans and chimps share common ancestry, but that humans aren’t all that special, which is a common talking point in science journalism and other public discussions. After all, we’re just slightly modified chimps! This “fact” has been discussed so much that it has become what the late biologist Jonathan Wells famously called an “icon of evolution.”
But now, new data reported in a recently published Nature paper by Yoo et al. has overturned this previous claim. The new findings reveal that human DNA is far more different from chimp DNA than previously thought.
That should be major news in the science world, yet those involved don’t seem interested in highlighting their discovery. More on that later.
Many times over the years, I’ve discussed how this 1 percent claim about humans and chimps is likely wrong. It is also misleading. No matter how similar humans might be to chimps at the genetic level, anyone who has been to the zoo knows already that chimps and humans are vastly different. After all, we’re the ones writing scientific papers about them—not the other way around. So common sense alone dictates that there is something misleading about that number and how it is used. But the new data show that the previous statistic isn’t just misleading. It’s flat-out false.
As I will elaborate in a subsequent article, this team of researchers has published “complete” sequences of ape genomes that were created ‘from scratch’ rather than using the human genome as a template. As a result, for the first time we can attempt a much more accurate assessment of the true degree of difference between the human and chimp genomes.
The results are groundbreaking:
At least 12.5 percent and possibly up to 13.3 percent of the chimp and human genomes represent a “gap difference” between the two genomes. That means there’s a “gap” in one genome compared to the other, often where they are so different, they cannot even be aligned.
There are also significant alignable sections of the two genomes that show “short nucleotide variations” which differ by only about 1.5 percent. We can add this difference to the “gap difference,” and calculate a 14 percent to 14.9 percent total difference between human and chimp genomes. This means that the actual difference between human and chimp DNA is 14 times greater than the often-quoted 1 percent statistic.
It’s true that large portions of the human genome are still only about 1.5 percent genetically different from the chimp genome. We’ll explore what that means in a subsequent post. But the new data reveal just how little this one fact tells us about the overall picture. We now know that major portions of the two genomes — 12.5 percent to 13.3 percent of the human genome, in fact — are so different that arguably the sections are unalignable and/or not directly present in one genome or the other.
Burying the Lead
One very peculiar thing about the research just published is that nowhere in the technical paper is this bombshell discovery clearly reported, and nowhere is it stated clearly that human and chimp DNA is some ~14 percent different. Even an explainer article in Nature — which usually do a great job of translating technical findings for the average scientist — does not mention this huge finding. You have to dig deep into the Supplementary Data to find it, and even there it is opaquely stated in technical jargon.
This data has huge implications for the long-quoted statistic that we are only 1 percent genetically different from chimps, and many people are interested in this question for its implications regarding evolution, origins, and the exceptional status of human beings. Yet the papers almost seemed like they want to obscure the numbers, making them hard to find for the reader, whether a scientist or layman.
How hard would it have been for the original Nature paper or — even better — the explainer article to say that this new data shows that the human and chimp genomes are more like 14 percent to 15 percent different rather than 1 percent?
And yet for some very strange reason they did not do that. In journalism, this is called “burying the lead” — putting the main point of your reporting, the most notable fact, under a heap of less important verbiage. Sometimes this happens due to incompetence. Other times, it is deliberate.
Remembering the Icon
As Jonathan Wells taught us, “icons of evolution” are arguments for evolution that get recycled over and over again — yet are not true. How do we know the 1 percent statistic is such an icon? Science popularizer Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” provided a great example when he wrote in his 2014 book Undeniable:
As our understanding of DNA has increased, we have come to understand that we share around 98.8 percent of our gene sequence with chimpanzees. This is striking evidence for chimps and chumps to have a common ancestor.
p. 248
The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s website likewise states:
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another — and thus how closely or distantly related they are.
While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%.
Similar statements are found in the Smithsonian itself — the nation’s museum! — visited by nearly 4 million people yearly. I took this photo in 2023 when I visited:
A caption below declares that: “DNA evidence … confirms … that modern humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor…”
David Klinghoffer provides a nice rundown of other sources that have cited this statistic:
“We share more than 98 percent of our DNA and almost all of our genes with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.” (Nature)
“[A]bout 99 percent of our DNA is identical to that of chimpanzees.” (Kevin Williamson, National Review)
“Most studies indicate that when genomic regions are compared between chimpanzees and humans, they share about 98.5 percent sequence identity.” (Scientific American)
“Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA.” (American Museum of Natural History)
“[H]umans share about 99 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives.” (Science)
“Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds.” (National Geographic News)
This “1 percent human-chimp genetic difference” statistic has been widely promoted and is widely believed. It’s undeniably an icon of evolution. But Dr. Wells also noted that these icons are like “zombies” — they don’t die easily. Instead, they keep being repeated, long after they’ve been refuted.
If that’s true, then don’t expect the 1 percent statistic to go away anytime soon. In fact, as I mentioned, the new Nature paper makes it very difficult to dig up the figures I’ve quoted here, so I suspect we’ll continue to see zombie numbers quoted, despite what the newly published data shows. I’ll explain all of that in more detail in a subsequent article. For the moment, suffice to say that the old 1 percent difference statistic is the latest icon of evolution to fall. May it rest in peace.
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