Against unknown

Me:This is exact kind of stupidity couched in high sounding language the the holy scriptures warns us against ephesians.5:6

Unknown:Thomistic metaphysics provides the necessary clarity: God knows all things—past, present, future, and possible—by knowing Himself as the universal cause of all that is. His knowledge is not piecemeal or successive, but a single, eternal act. 

Me:if God foreordains a universe inhabited by true free moral agents akin to himself then logically only the possible choices of such free moral agents can be  foreknown since they have been granted the privilege of sharing with JEHOVAH in creating the future being true sons of God. If all of God's thoughts and acts are eternally foreordained then logically he himself is not free and therefore cannot confer freedom on any of his sons.

Unknown:All possible choices and contingencies are present to Him, but He causes no one to sin;

Me:No every choice has already been made by God in your behalf. To prevent evil all he would need to do is not create those making the wrong choices unless he himself has no choice.you don't get to have your cake and eat it too

 Unknown:He merely permits it, respecting the genuine secondary causality and freedom of rational creatures. Predestination, 

Me:If he foreknew your choice eternally prior to your existence his giving you the means to commit evil with that knowledge in mind makes him an accessory. If his acts are all foredetermined then he himself is not free and cannot be a source of freedom

Unknown:in Catholic doctrine, is always subordinated to the universal salvific will of God (1 Tim 2:4); no one is predestined to damnation apart from foreseen resistance to grace. God’s foreknowledge is thus the mirror of His eternal act: it is both absolute and, paradoxically to the temporal mind, perfectly compatible with the free cooperation or refusal of creatures.

Me:All determinism counters morality because morality presumes genuine choice in moral decisions an eternal determinism makes choice a mere illusion God is not good if determinism is a fact.

Unknown:The Watchtower position, in seeking to exonerate God from responsibility for evil, only empties God of His divinity. A God who learns, is surprised, or cannot see the future is not worthy of worship, nor can He guarantee the fulfillment of His promises. Classical theism—and this is the Catholic faith—holds that God’s knowledge and will are not opposed to creaturely freedom but the very condition for its possibility. If God were not outside of time, upholding all things by His word, there would be no free agents to choose at all. To reject this is not only to misunderstand Scripture but to surrender the very ground of hope in divine providence.

Me:Plain logic and common sense tell us that only a free Father can beget free sons. God being free has eternal foreordain a creation where free children are a possibility. We can increase our freedom by making wise choices or decrease it by making foolish choices. Determinism manifestly excludes genuine freedom.

Unknown:In conclusion, the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine of “selective foreknowledge” is a grave theological error. It arises from a false dilemma (that God’s knowing causes our doing), a defective anthropology (reducing freedom to mere unpredictability), and a deficient theology (denying God’s immutability and omniscience).

Me:JEHOVAH Creates the future and is free to create an undetermined future to deny this fact is to undermine his true majesty JEHOVAH is not afraid of the dark he is the creator and sovereign over the the dark just as he is of the light he knows the limits of the dark see Isaiah.45:7. It is christendom's theologians who are injuring JEHOVAH'S Majesty in effect reducing him to the status of a machine.

Unknown:Catholicism, in the line of Thomas Aquinas, teaches that God’s omniscience is both perfect and perfectly compatible with genuine, meaningful freedom.

Me:Omniscience is not the issue does JEHOVAH Have the might and wisdom to create a future that is undetermined in certain respects. Does he have the freedom change his mind. BTW moral choices aren't only choices rendered meaningless by determinism,the entire concept of choice and liberty is rendered moot.

Unknown:The mystery of divine providence is not a rational contradiction but the very source of our confidence and awe before the Creator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and yet “calls us friends” (John 15:15), inviting our free response to His love

Me:Every attempt to rationalise the obvious contradiction  between determinism and free will fails. Merely empty words, trust your divinely provided common sense and reject the the high sounding absurdities that the worldly wise are always attempting to pass off as subtleties.

Grok on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

  phrase "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in science," coined by physicist Eugene Wigner in 1960, captures the astonishing ability of mathematical concepts to describe and predict natural phenomena. Here’s a concise exploration of why this phenomenon is so remarkable and the factors contributing to it:

Universal Patterns: Mathematics provides a language to express patterns and relationships that appear universal. For instance, Newton’s laws of motion, expressed in differential equations, accurately describe everything from planetary orbits to falling apples. The same equations apply across vastly different scales and contexts, revealing a deep order in the universe.

Abstraction and Generalization: Mathematics abstracts complex systems into manageable models. Concepts like symmetry, geometry, or probability allow scientists to simplify reality without losing predictive power. For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity, built on non-Euclidean geometry, predicted phenomena like gravitational lensing, later confirmed by observation.

Predictive Power: Mathematical models often predict phenomena before they’re observed. The discovery of the Higgs boson, predicted by the mathematical framework of the Standard Model, is a prime example. This predictive success suggests mathematics isn’t just descriptive but somehow intrinsic to nature’s structure.

Philosophical Puzzle: Why does mathematics, a product of human thought, align so well with the physical world? Some argue it’s because the universe itself is inherently mathematical (a view held by physicists like Max Tegmark). Others suggest humans developed mathematics specifically to describe observed patterns, making its effectiveness less "unreasonable" and more a product of selection—our brains evolved to recognize and formalize patterns that aid survival.

Limitations and Mysteries: Despite its success, mathematics doesn’t always provide intuitive understanding. Quantum mechanics, described by probability waves and matrix algebra, defies common sense yet yields precise predictions. This gap between mathematical description and intuitive grasp fuels ongoing debate about why math works so well.

Examples Across Disciplines: From Fourier transforms in signal processing to group theory in particle physics, mathematics consistently unlocks insights. Even in biology, mathematical models of population dynamics or neural networks reveal behaviors that empirical observation alone might miss.

The "unreasonable" part lies in how a human-invented (or discovered) system so perfectly maps onto reality, often revealing truths we couldn’t otherwise access. Whether this reflects a deep truth about the universe or our minds’ knack for pattern-finding remains an open question, blending science, philosophy, and metaphysics.

Darwinists move the goalpost?

 Critics Change the Topic: Do Human-Human Genetic Differences Matter? 

Casey Luskin

Editor’s note: For the full “Chimps and Critics” series by Dr. Luskin, see here

One of the common yet unexpected reactions from critics to the discovery that humans and chimps are 15 percent genetically different is to change the topic. These critics want to focus on something else — human-human There’s still a lot we don’t know about human-human genetic differences, but it in no way affects the fact that we are 15 percent genetically different from chimps. This 15 percent difference refutes those who use the “1 percent” icon as an argument for evolution. We can’t dismiss the differences between humans and humans, or humans and chimps, as junk. But we also can’t assume that all types of genetic differences have the same kind of “meaning” or operate based upon the same “function per nucleotide” ratio. Critics need to stop casually dismissing these genetic differences as junk, because the evidence shows they are functional. What all this means for evolution remains to be seen — but one thing is clear: critics have not addressed or refuted my arguments, and in fact have badly misrepresented my arguments. How? We’ll explore that in a final post. genetic differences. I call this a “reaction” rather than an “objection” because these folks generally don’t contest the newest evidence about human-chimp genetic differences. Before going further, let’s remind ourselves of what the relevant arguments have been.

We’re Refuting an Icon of Evolution

For decades, prominent voices have frequently used the supposed “1 percent” genetic difference between humans and chimps as an unsophisticated argument for human-chimp common ancestry and human evolution, and against human exceptionalism. For example, we saw how Bill Nye said 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.” Or we recalled how the Smithsonian Institution claims that “DNA evidence … confirms that … humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor between 8 and 6 million years ago” since “there is only about a 1.2 percent genetic difference between modern humans and chimpanzees.” 

Years ago I noted that sometimes evolutionists are unaware of their own arguments, and they need to be reminded of what they’ve been saying. So there are many other scientific sources that we’ve documented saying this same thing. In 1998, the journal Science used the statistic to diminish the specialness of humans:

We humans like to think of ourselves as special, set apart from the rest of the animal kingdom by our ability to talk, write, build complex structures, and make moral distinctions. But when it comes to genes, humans are so similar to the two species of chimpanzee that physiologist Jared Diamond has called us “the third chimpanzee.” A quarter-century of genetic studies has consistently found that for any given region of the genome, humans and chimpanzees share at least 98.5% of their DNA.

In 2012, the Financial Times posted a typical argument, claiming that human-chimp genomes are highly similar, very junky, and all of this supports common ancestry:

If the theory of our evolutionary origins were true, we would expect species that split off from each other recently to have similar genes. And this is exactly what we find: we share 98 per cent of our DNA with our nearest living relative, the chimpanzee. This applies not only to the DNA that actually makes us work but equally to our vast amount of functionless so-called “junk DNA”, and even the remnants of ancient viruses that once worked their way into our genomes.

As I was writing this post, Amazon delivered a book I recently learned of titled 99% Ape: How Evolution Adds Up, published in 2008 by University of Chicago Press, and co-authored by seven university professors. It claims that of “the roughly 3 billion letters of the genetic code … The difference is just 1.06%” meaning the difference is “1% of 3 billion.” (p. 15) Don’t miss what they just said: they are explicitly applying the “1%” difference statistic to the entire genome. We now know that that statement is false and it is an ideal example of how these statistics have been misused.

The book then uses the supposed small percent genetic differences to argue for human-chimp common ancestry. 99% Ape states that Darwin “believed that the resemblance between humans and orang-utans was evidence of ‘common descent’, or evolution” (pp. 11-12), and claims that “small genetic changes can add up to significant changes in appearance, behaviour, and intelligence like those that took place over the short space of about 6 million years since chimps and humans parted company from our common ancestor.” (p. 15) The back cover says, “Darwin was mocked for suggesting that humans have apes for ancestors, but every scientific advance in the study of life in the last 150 years has confirmed the reality of evolution.” Really?—“Every scientific advance in the study of life” supports evolution? Those are very strong words for a book published by the University of Chicago Press, and this “99% ape” statistic is clearly intended as a forceful argument for evolution. 

So the supposed 1 percent genetic difference between humans and chimps has become an icon of evolution — a cherished argument used by many evolution defenders. That’s what this conversation has been about from the beginning: I’m not trying to argue that the 15 percent genetic difference between humans and chimps somehow confirms or refutes common ancestry or human evolution in general; I am simply pointing out that the factual basis for this common iconic argument for evolution is wrong — and it’s wrong by more than an order of magnitude. 

Not a Valid Argument for Evolution

The “1 percent” argument is not just wrong, it’s also logically fallacious. And so a secondary point I’ve been making is that the exact percent genetic similarity between humans and chimps, whatever it may be, is a fascinating number but, by itself, it’s really not relevant to addressing questions about evolution. 

From the beginning of this conversation — consistent with my past discussions — I’ve been clear that I don’t think the percent genetic similarity between humans and apes tells you anything about whether we share a common ancestor with chimps. As I wrote in 2021: “the ‘percent genome identity’ [i.e., percent genomic similarity between humans and chimps] provides no rigorous argument for common ancestry and does not answer many very interesting questions within this particular debate.”

This is because functional genetic similarities between humans and chimps could be explained by common ancestry, or by common design. Common ancestry is not the only way to explain genetic similarities. Intelligent agents can re-use functional code in different designs. Common design can explain shared functional genetic similarities just as well as common descent can. 

Again, I’ve been very consistent on this point. Even way back in 2008 I wrote: “the percent difference says nothing about whether humans and chimps share a common ancestor. The percent genetic similarity between humans and apes does not demonstrate Darwinian evolution, unless one excludes the possibility of intelligent design.” 

My point is this: I’ve never claimed that the mere percent genetic similarity between humans and chimps helps us discriminate between evolution or intelligent design. So if critics think that by citing human-human genetic similarities that somehow they are able to challenge my argument against evolution, then they misunderstand what I’m saying. In this conversation, I’m not making an argument against evolution. I’m showing that their argument for evolution — citing the supposed “1 percent” genetic similarity between humans and apes — was wrong. 

Do Human-Human Genetic Similarities Matter?

As noted, some critics have responded to this new evidence showing humans and chimps are 15 percent genetically different by changing the topic. Their claim is that certain humans are genetically different from others by up to 10 percent. 

This is also a very new claim based upon newly published and more complete human genomes. A 2023 paper in the journal Genomics Proteomics Bioinformatics compared the complete (“telomere-to-telomere”) genome sequence of a male human of Han Chinese descent to the complete sequence of a human genome called “CHM13.” It reported that when these two human genomes were compared, they showed “~330-Mb exclusive sequences, ~3100 unique genes, and tens of thousands or nucleotide and structural variations” and that “280–350-Mb sequences (~ 10%) in each haplotype are not or poorly aligned to others.” They state: “All these alignment results indicate that ~10% of sequences in each haplotype are of unique and represents most of the inter-individual genome diversity.” Critic Zachary Ardern highlights this, stating that the difference represents “a remarkable approximately 300+Mb each (9% of the genome!).” 

CHM13 does not come from a normal “human” person. It’s an immortalized cell line used in research that originated as a “hydatidiform mole” — essentially a botched human pregnancy where each cell contains two copies of each of the father’s chromosomes and none from the mother. Because it has essentially complete homozygosity, this has enabled improved sequencing of its genome — although one might rightly ask if telomeric sequences in a cell line like this still resemble telomeric sequences in a normal human. Nonetheless, as we reported, CHM13 is the genome used in the Progressive Cactus alignment of Yoo et al. (2025) which showed about 15 percent genetic differences from the complete chimp genome. (Our calculation of 14.9 percent genetic difference between humans and chimps is based upon 1.6 percent single nucleotide variation added to 13.3 percent gap divergence. It derives from analysis that uses a different human genome, not CHM13.) 

I’m skeptical that all of the 3,100 “unique genes” have been clearly confirmed as genes. Regardless, the claim is that these human genomes are about10 percent different from one another, which is said to make the statistic that humans and chimps are about 15 percent different much less interesting or impressive. 

A Lot Can Be Said in Response, Starting with the Obvious

1. Evidence regarding human-human genetic differences doesn’t refute, affect, or answer any of our arguments about human-chimp genetic differences.

Those who are talking about human-human intraspecific differences haven’t justified the continued use of the “1 percent” icon of evolution. My argument was narrow: those who have claimed we are only 1 percent genetically different from chimps were wrong on the facts. But icons of evolution don’t die easily.

The critics want to suggest that if 10 percent differences can evolve between humans then surely 15 percent differences can evolve between humans and chimps. Perhaps that’s true, perhaps it isn’t. At this point I really don’t know. But it doesn’t matter: I have not made an affirmative argument that these differences are too great to evolve. I only said that “it may be possible to do an analysis of whether there is enough time in the fossil record for these genetic differences to evolve by random mutations and other unguided evolutionary mechanisms.” But I noted that this will be a difficult analysis to do, and I don’t yet know what the outcome of such an analysis would be:

Unfortunately, this analysis will be complicated by the fact that many the differences go beyond mere point mutations that could be studied through a relatively straightforward molecular clock analysis. From an evolutionary perspective, many of the large-scale “gap differences” between humans and chimps represent insertions, deletions, duplications, inversions, and other large-scale mutations. In order to do a waiting times analysis, one would have to calculate how often such mutations arise, and the likelihood of them arising by unguided evolutionary mechanisms in the time allowed by the fossil record (usually given as about 4 to 8 million years since our supposed most recent common ancestor we shared with chimps).

It may be a challenging analysis, but now that we have the necessary raw genome sequence data, at least we could start thinking about how to do it.

Perhaps such an analysis would pose a challenge to evolution, or perhaps it would not. I really don’t know, and it’s not really relevant to what I’ve been arguing. 

Two critics — Zachary Ardern, and especially Joel Duff — have recently argued that even 15 percent genetic differences between humans could potentially evolve in the time allowed by the fossil record. Duff, a professor of biology at the University of Akron and a theistic evolutionist, spends a lot of time answering certain creationists who say this new evidence of 15 percent genetic differences between humans and chimps definitively refutes evolution. But I haven’t argued that we know yet whether the 15 percent genetic difference between humans and chimps is a problem for unguided evolution. Duff claims that I have argued otherwise, but he has misstated my position. 

I do want to report, however, that I contacted Dr. Duff about his misstatements and he responded very graciously and apologetically. I believe it was an unintentional mistake, and I really appreciated his response to me. 

But There’s More to Say

2. 10 percent may not be a typical degree of human-human genetic difference.

Ardern notes that “A more recent paper (Liao et al. 2023) suggests on average 4.4% of sequences in pairwise human genome comparisons are either not assembled or can’t be aligned.” Duff acknowledges that “most people probably aren’t 10 percent different, probably more like 3 to 4 percent different.” So this 10 percent genetic difference between humans may not be typical. This is a new area of research, and more data is needed. 

3. Differences in human-human alignable DNA are much lower than in humans vs. chimps.

As we’ve discussed, alignable sections of the human and chimp genomes show about 1.6 percent difference. But the 2023 paper reports that alignable sections of these human genomes are far more similar than that:

Furthermore, in the perfect alignments longer than 50 kb, the weighted average identity between the two haplotypes of YAO is 99.94%, higher than that of 99.83% between YAO and CHM13, suggesting more nucleotide-level variations between YAO and CHM13

In other words, the single nucleotide variation between alignable portions of DNA is as low as 0.06 percent different (when comparing the two haplotypes of the Han Chinese individual) or 0.17 percent different (when comparing CHM13 to the Han Chinese individual’s genome). This is consistent with the NCBI’s longtime statement that “Between any two humans, the amount of genetic variation — biochemical individuality — is about .1 percent.” That’s a very small genetic difference, somewhere between 9 to 26 times less than the comparable type of genetic difference between humans and chimps.

As we saw, some critics argue that the non-alignable DNA can be dismissed because it’s genetic junk. Are we conceding this point by focusing on the fact that alignable DNA differences in humans are much smaller than they are between humans and chimps, implying that they matter a lot more than non-alignable DNA differences? Not at all. There’s good evidence that function exists throughout the genome, both in the alignable DNA that is full of single nucleotide differences, and in the non-alignable DNA that includes may differences in repetitive DNA and other larger-scale differences. We’ll elaborate that in a moment. 

4. We already have prima facie evidence that the vast majority of the human genome has function.

To repeat, there’s good evidence that the vast majority of the human genome is functional. In 2012, the ENCODE project found evidence for “biochemical functions for 80% of the genome, in particular outside of the well-studied protein-coding regions.” It stated, “The vast majority (80.4%) of the human genome participates in at least one biochemical RNA- and/or chromatin-associated event in at least one cell type.” We could go on and on citing evidence of function throughout the human genome. This is prima facie evidence that the vast majority of the human genome is functional — including evidence of numerous types of function for repetitive DNA. 

5. There is evidence that the character of non-alignable genetic differences between humans and humans can be different (and of a lesser degree) than the character of differences between humans and chimps.

The major non-alignable genetic differences between humans and humans, or between humans and chimps, often involves different numbers of copies of repeat sequences of DNA. Critics dismiss these differences as mere junk DNA, but it’s well-known that this kind of DNA difference can perform important functions in terms of both sequence and structure. As we previously saw, repetitive DNA can perform important functions as “non-B” DNA, where the number of copies present can form different structural shapes of the DNA which is important for formatting genome function. According to a paper in Nucleic Acids Research, this non-B DNA is known to be “important regulators of cellular processes” and has “unequivocal importance for genome function.” Indeed, a 2025 paper in Nature Communications noted that different shapes of DNA causes changes in gene regulation, which is crucial for genome function. 

In short, the number of copies of DNA repeats has a major influence on the 3D shape of chromosomes, and the 3D shape of chromosomes has a major impact on gene regulation. So the number of copies of repeats matters.

But how much do they matter? If they matter a lot in causing differences between humans and chimps, then why don’t they cause greater differences between humans? There’s still a lot we don’t know about genomics and this hasn’t been studied very much yet. But there is already some evidence that the nature of differences in repetitive DNA between humans and chimps can be different (and greater) than the nature of differences in repetitive DNA between humans and humans.

Consider Figure 5 from the open access 2024 Nature article “The variation and evolution of complete human centromeres.” It’s a complex figure so I’ve extracted certain key portions below:

Image from Figure 5, Logsdon et al., “The variation and evolution of complete human centromeres,” 629: 136–145 (2024), used under creative commons license

What you’re seeing here is an analysis of both the number and types of repeats present in the centromeric DNA of chromosome 5 in humans and chimps. In the diagram, “CHM1/CHM13” and “Human” are all different human genomes, and you can compare them to the centromeric DNA on the same chimp chromosome at the far right. What you see is that even between homologous human chromosomes, the size of the DNA in megabases (Mb) — i.e., number of repeats — can vary greatly. But the color of the DNA — which essentially represents the sequence / type of those repeats — between humans and humans is basically the same. 

Now compare the human centromeric DNA for chromosome 5 with that of the chimp. Here, again, we see differences in size, meaning that the length of the DNA (e.g., the number of copies of repeats) is different. But the color of the DNA in the chimp chromosome is different from what we see in homologous DNA in humans. What this means is that in chimps, not only is the length of the repetitive DNA different compared with humans, but so is the sequence of that repetitive DNA. 

In both cases (humans vs. human and human vs. chimp) you find large amounts of non-alignable DNA — what has been counted up as the “gap divergence.” But between humans, the non-alignability stems largely from the number of repeat copies, whereas between humans and chimps it stems both from the number of repeat copies and the sequences of those repeats. 

What exactly does this mean, biologically speaking? I don’t think anyone knows for sure. But what is clear is that there can be different characters in the types of non-alignable genetic differences. In this example, between humans the nonalignability stems primarily from differences in the number of copies of repeats, whereas between humans and chimps it involves both numbers of repeats and the sequence of those repeats. So the differences between humans and chimps are of a different and greater character than are the differences between humans.

This is just one example. But it shows that not all differences — including non-alignable “gap divergence” differences — are equal. We mustn’t assume that the percent of non-alignable DNA between humans necessarily has the same degree of differences compared with non-alignable DNA in humans and chimps. 

A Crude Assumption

6. Big differences in DNA need not equal big difference in function — but that doesn’t mean it’s junk DNA. 

In this conversation there are some crude assumptions that permeate the critics’ thinking: They seem to assume that the number of nucleotides involved in a function should be proportional to the amount of “function” that’s being encoded. Then, they seem to assume that if a stretch of DNA has a low “function per nucleotide” ratio, then it can’t be very important and can be dismissed as junk. On both counts their assumptions are flawed. 

Sometimes “a little bit” of DNA might encode “a lot” of function. For example, within gene-coding DNA, a single nucleotide change might make a large difference. This would represent a high “function per nucleotide” ratio.

But in other genomic contexts, “a lot” of DNA might encode “a little” function. For example, with repetitive DNA, a lot of DNA differences might be involved in changing the 3-D shape of the chromosome in the nucleus, and this might result in relatively small-scale changes in gene regulation. 

In all the cases we’re talking about, the DNA can be functional and shouldn’t be considered “junk.” Yet different types of DNA are designed to operate differently, with different “function to nucleotide” ratios. We can’t dismiss DNA as junk even in situations where a lot of DNA may be responsible for only a little bit of function.

An analogy here may help. Imagine a professional NFL football team, which has lots of people employed or connected to the team. Now some people who work for the team might have a major impact on the team’s success. For example, the quarterback is probably the most important player and has a high “impact per person” ratio. In fact any player on the field probably has a major impact on the team’s success. This could be analogous to DNA segments that directly encode genes. 

But in other cases, there are people who work for the team but have a lower “impact per person” ratio. The team probably employs janitors, marketing experts, and ticket-counter operators. They all contribute to the team’s success, but probably not at a level nearly as high or as crucial as the players on the field. These might be very roughly analogous to DNA involved in gene regulation. 

Lastly, there might be people connected to the team who make a difference, but at a much lower “impact per person” ratio. For example, think of the fans. Thousands of fans may attend games. The loss of any one fan might not hurt the team. In fact, the team could probably withstand the loss of large percentages of fans and not go bankrupt immediately. Yet, both individually and collectively, the fans have a major impact upon the team. Their purchasing of tickets, merchandise, and food at games is what ultimately funds the team’s revenue. Individually, each fan probably has a very low “person to impact” ratio, but they aren’t useless. In a biological context, this is like noting that repetitive DNA which plays structural roles in determining the 3-D shape of the chromosome may have a low “function per nucleotide” ratio, but it plays a functional role and certainly isn’t junk. 

The point is this: In some cases, many of the genetic differences between humans could be in DNA with a low “function per nucleotide” ratio, meaning that the DNA is functional but it equates to small phenotypic differences. We should not assume that these differences in non-alignable low “function per nucleotide” DNA represent junk DNA, nor should we assume that it must encode major phenotypic differences. There’s a middle-ground position that’s being ignored: The non-alignable DNA differences between humans could represent different numbers of repeat copies which, though involving large numbers of nucleotides, may have small-scale effects on gene regulation by changing the 3-D shapes of chromosomes. 

Critics in this conversation seem to think you can dismiss or ignore DNA with low “function per nucleotide” ratios. But you can’t say DNA is junk just because it has a low “function per nucleotide” ratio. In fact, this DNA may be doing precisely what it is designed to do. 

The Bottom Line

There’s still a lot we don’t know about human-human genetic differences, but it in no way affects the fact that we are 15 percent genetically different from chimps. This 15 percent difference refutes those who use the “1 percent” icon as an argument for evolution. We can’t dismiss the differences between humans and humans, or humans and chimps, as junk. But we also can’t assume that all types of genetic differences have the same kind of “meaning” or operate based upon the same “function per nucleotide” ratio. Critics need to stop casually dismissing these genetic differences as junk, because the evidence shows they are functional. What all this means for evolution remains to be seen — but one thing is clear: critics have not addressed or refuted my arguments, and in fact have badly misrepresented my arguments. How? We’ll explore that in a final post.

More on Darwinism's scientific pretensions.

 21st-Century Darwinism’s Impossible Situation

Daniel Witt

Charles Darwin lived in an era in which most scientists agreed that the different races of humans possessed distinct moral and intellectual capabilities, with white Europeans at the top and sub-Saharan Africans, Australian Aboriginals, and certain Native American groups at the bottom. Darwin explicitly used those supposed facts as evidence for his theory. As far as Darwin was concerned, differences in psychological, as well as physical, traits between different human populations were exactly what a theory of descent with modification from a common ancestor by random variation and natural selection would predict. 

That was well and fine… until the mid 20th century, when scientists concluded that the cognitive differences between the races were probably illusory. In the intervening decades, Darwinists have come up with a variety of arguments for why Darwinian evolutionary theory doesn’t predict racial IQ disparities after all. 

This is sort thing is pretty common in science, and it might be one of the main weaknesses in the scientific method. A scientific hypothesis is supposed to make testable predictions, but those predictions are often altered after the fact if they didn’t come true — effectively “retconning” the new evidence into the old hypothesis. Sadly, there are no Science Police to prevent this intellectual malfeasance. And it is especially difficult to detect when it occurs over many decades or centuries. 

In this case, there is certainly an a priori implausibility to the claim that Darwinism doesn’t predict racial disparities, since Darwin and Darwinists claimed racial disparities as evidence for their theory … until the evidence showed that no such disparities exist.

The Racialist Holdouts

 It's  not surprising, then, that some stubborn Darwinists are sticking with the racial implications of Darwinism, come hell or high water. 

In 2020, a group of Darwinist academics published a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Personality and Individual Differences. The article was titled “Dodging Darwin: Race, evolution, and the hereditarian hypothesis,” and it amounted to a broadside attack on the dominant viewpoint that there are no innate racial differences in IQ. The authors argue that unfortunately “modern Darwinism in practice is severely limited when applied to humans.” They urge scholars to “overcome their understandable squeamishness and discomfort with hereditarianism to discuss it honestly and judiciously, so that researchers can fulfill the promise of the Darwinian revolution in psychology.”

Interestingly, most of the article is not taken up with presenting actual evidence of an innate racial IQ gap, but rather with the theoretical argument that Darwinism says it must be so. They address several theoretical “dodges” made to avoid this conclusion: 

To the popular argument that there is no clear or immutable line between any racial categories, they reply that (a) this is a strawman, because most prominent racialist thinkers did not really claim that, and (b) it is a red herring, because categories do not need to be discrete or immutable to have analytical value. They point to human age as an obvious example of non-discrete categories with somewhat arbitrary delineation, which nevertheless has immense analytical value. 

To the argument that no single characteristic is universally present in any so-called race, they reply that this is also true of the individual differences in men and women’s facial features — but it is nevertheless usually easy to distinguish between males and females by considering the features in aggregate. A detectable pattern does not depend on a single consistent factor. 

To the argument that human lineages diverged too recently to produce major differences in the brain, they point out that they are not arguing for large differences, but for small differences that can have significant effects. 

The bottom line for the authors is that even if you can come up with various arguments to exclude mental properties from evolutionary analysis, they all seem like special pleading. After all, most scholars agree that evolution has caused various physical differences in human populations. And most scholars agree that the brain is a physical organ. Yet mental differences are somehow exempt from evolutionary analysis. “This position appears intellectually indefensible,” they write, “because the brain is not somehow impervious to selective forces. Rather, it is an organ like any other and therefore is just as susceptible to evolutionary pressures as is the skin, lungs, or digestive system.” 

Modern Darwinists Are… Creationists and Dualists? 

Thus, they write, the modern consensus is really akin to creationism or mind-body dualism, “because it relies upon the implausible assumption that human psychological propensities were not selected for by different environments, niches, and climates in the past 50,000 years.”

I think the authors are just using “creationism” and “dualism” as swear words. But I would argue that this is true in a more technical sense as well: if you believe human brains were created according to a plan, or if you believe that there is more to the human mind than just the brain, you need not necessarily predict that the human mind will differ according to race or ethnicity. 

Needless to say, this article inspired backlash after it came out, and one of the professors was even fired from his university. But one has to feel that they were put in an impossible position. It wasn’t their fault that Darwinism has nasty implications. Modern academia demanded they accept Darwinism, but it also demanded they accept that racism had been disproven. The only two options were intellectual compartmentalization, or admitting the awkward implications of the theory and accepting the career consequences.

Well, those aren’t the only two options. They could have considered a different theory of origins, and accepted those career consequences.

The Real Dilemma  

I need to be clear that I am not trying to present a false dilemma. I am not saying that you must either accept 19th century racism or believe that God created humans ex nihilo in His image. 

The trouble is actually not even with evolution, per se, so much as the mechanism of evolution. After all, everyone from the staunchest Biblical creationist to the most dogmatic neo-Darwinist agrees that all humans, at least, share a common ancestor. And that means that the variations which exist between different human population groups are the result of evolution — presumably through random variation and natural selection. 

The question then is — what kind of changes is that sort of unguided process capable of producing? Any kind, or only some kinds? Few people would have a problem with the idea that unguided evolution can result in changes in skin pigmentation. But what about complex structures? If you believe that brains were built by unguided evolutionary processes, just like simpler features were, then you ought to expect the brains of different populations to develop differences, just like simpler features did. But if you believe that some form of intelligent design is needed to guide the construction of complex structures, you need not assume that brains would vary significantly according to lineage; the design goal would determine the quality of the brain, regardless of time and circumstances. 

To some readers, the idea that brains can’t evolve like simpler features may seem peculiar…because, don’t all of our brains evolve dramatically throughout our lives? As J. B. S. Haldane put it: 

The strangest thing about the origin of consciousness from unconsciousness is not that it has happened once in the remote past, but that it happens in the life of every one of us. An early human embryo without nervous system or sense organs, and no occupation but growth, has no more claim to consciousness than a plant — far less than a jelly-fish. A new-born baby may be conscious, but has less title to rationality than a dog or ape. The evolutionist makes the very modest claim that an increase in rationality such as every normal child shows in its lifetime has occurred in the ancestors of the human race in the last few million years.

This is a false equivalence, stemming from the failure to recognize that the power of an individual brain (or body) to complexify and evolve is itself a remarkable design feature in need of explanation. Darwinian evolution might be invoked to explain that feature, but if so, the feature cannot then be invoked to explain Darwinian evolution! That explanation is circular. 

Unstomachable or False… Or Both?

If science leads us to conclusions that we cannot stomach, there must be something wrong with either our stomachs or our science. In this instance, I would like to suggest that the problem is with our science. I am not saying that simply because I cannot stomach racism, but because the evidence seems to have failed the racialist hypothesis. I’m sure someone can point to studies that seem to show racial differences. But when you consider how the evidence concerning racial intelligence has developed over the last few centuries, the trendline is clear. 

When deciding what conclusions to draw from an investigation, it is important to remember that the results could have been different. This is obvious, but it is easy to forget, especially when the results come in over a long period of time. In the last few centuries, as means of transportations improved and different groups of humans increasingly interacted with each other, we could have discovered vast, immutable differences in intelligence and moral character between different groups of people. That was a possibility once. It was certainly expected in the 18th century, when people believed that savages with tails inhabited the Nicobar Islands. It was still the expectation when Darwin’s theory was formed, and it was what Darwin’s theory predicted. 

But it is not what we found. We found, to our surprise, the opposite. We found that we weren’t so different after all.

When the predictions of a theory turn out to be false, the theory should be reconsidered accordingly. So before anyone chokes down the racialist implications of Darwinism, it might be good to explore some other options.

More on darwinism and master race delusion.

 The End of Scientific Racism

Daniel Witt

One of C. S. Lewis’s intellectual nemeses was J. B. S. Haldane, the famed evolutionary biologist who came up with the idea that life originated in a “primordial soup.” Haldane even humorously compared himself to the inventor of anti-Lewisite, a chemical that neutralizes the toxin Lewisite. Other than their opinions, they had a lot in common. Not only were both men science fiction writers and public intellectuals, they moved in the same circles: Haldane was also a professor at Oxford and later Cambridge, and his sister, the writer and scientist Naomi Mitchison, was a good friend of J. R. R. Tolkien. 

Taking advantage of his own main advantage, Haldane accused Lewis of insufficient scientific accuracy in a mocking review of his science fiction trilogy.1 “Of course, the reason is clear enough,” Haldane wrote. “Christian mythology incorporated the cosmological theories current 18 centuries ago. Dante found it a slight strain to combine this mythology with the facts known in his own day. Milton found it harder. Mr. Lewis finds it impossible.” 

A bit disappointingly, the specific scientific criticisms Haldane offers are all pretty tangential — I’m not sure what the atmosphere of Mars, or the correct lifespan of a severed head perfused with blood, has to do with “Christian mythology.” But I’d like to borrow Haldane’s striking wording for a different diagnosis:

Darwinist mythology incorporated the racial theories current to the 18th century. Charles Darwin found it a slight strain to combine this mythology with the facts known in his day. J. B. S. Haldane found it harder. Contemporary biologists find it impossible.

Race Science in the Early 20th Century

In recent posts, I’ve argued that the modern theory of evolution was not merely influenced by the racial ideas of the time — it was founded on them. In the 18th century it was possible to believe that there were primitive savages who did not even possess the gift of speech (although they may have possessed tails). The apparently unbroken gradation from the higher apes to “civilized man” made it easy for Lord Monboddo, and later Erasmus Darwin, to propose that man had evolved from apes. By the 19th century, however, more facts had come to light, and Charles Darwin was well aware that there was actually an enormous gap between the “lowest savages” and the highest apes. Nevertheless, he argued that the evolutionary progression could still be observed in the gradation of the races above the gap, ranging from the best of the civilized Europeans down to the worst of the Fuegians, sub-Saharan Africans, and Australian aboriginals. 

When J. B. S. Haldane was starting his scientific career in the early 20th century, that idea was still widely accepted. In his 1927 collection Possible Worlds and Other Essays, Haldane writes that if a new religion were to be invented in the modern world, it would include the scientific ideas of the day just as the ancient religions had included the science of their day — and that therefore the modern religion would affirm “the existence of innate psychological difference between the human races,” among other things.2

Haldane initially subscribed to some of the racism of the era — but, to his credit, his views shifted over time as more evidence came to light. Haldane was an anti-imperialist with a taste for contrarianism and an instinct to side with the weak and oppressed (and those strong and powerful who claimed to be their benefactors, such as Stalin and Mao). Perhaps because of these sentiments, he seemed eager to accept the new evidence on race as it emerged. Thus, Haldane’s evolving views on race are a useful “canary in the coal mine” for the death of scientific racism. As the cutting edge of race science moved farther away from what Darwin’s premises, Haldane moved with it. 

The  Evolution of Race Science

Thus, in an essay written to combat the racial propaganda of the Third Reich, Haldane presents a rather ambiguous picture of racial differences, in accordance with the ambiguous state of the data available to him. He wrote:    

As for intelligence, it is certain that races overlap, for clever negroes are cleverer than stupid Englishmen, and musical Englishmen are more musical than unmusical negroes. 

We don’t know much about averages. In the United States whites do better than negroes, on the average, in intelligence tests. But this may have nothing to do with race, for education counts in these tests. In the army tests of 1914, the negroes of Ohio scored a higher average than the whites of Arkansas. 

Even if it were found that, given equal opportunities, whites were found to do better than negroes on tests drawn up by whites, it is quite likely that negro examiners could design test on which their own race would beat the whites!

Haldane thought the different races were each superior in their natural habitats, and that it therefore didn’t make sense to label one or another as absolutely superior. As for the question of general intelligence, he hoped that would finally be answered “when the different races have enjoyed real equality for another generation.” 

It turned out he didn’t have to wait that long. In 1945, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was established along with the rest of the UN, and found itself faced with the prospect of coming up with an official stance on the contentious issue of race. To solve the problem, the agency summoned luminaries in biology from around the world to a conference in Paris. 

As an eminent evolutionary biologist, Haldane was among the summoned. Afterwards, Haldane wrote that he had found the conference helpful, because he learned the views of other scientists on the matter. He wrote: 

One thing that came clearly out of our discussion is that there was no evidence for inborn differences in any important aptitudes between people of different races. Certainly their performances are very different… It is only when the children of other races have been brought up like Europeans that the differences disappear. Fortunately this has happened often enough to tell a clear story. Thus on the whole American Red Indians have rather low intelligences quotients, and their half-breeds with whites are somewhere in between. But a number of Red Indian children adopted by whites did just as well as white children, and the children of the Caegi tribe, who used some of the money got from oil found on their territory to build schools, did equally well. There are also a few converse cases, as where poor whites on a small West Indian island did no better than their negro neighbours.

When the UNESCO statement was released in 1951, it presented these conclusions: 

When intelligence tests, even non-verbal, are made on a group of non-literate people, their scores are usually lower than those of more civilized people. It has also been recorded that even different groups of the same race occupying similarly high levels of civilization may also yield considerable differences in intelligence tests. When, however, the two groups have been brought up from childhood in similar environments the differences are usually very slight. There is good evidence that, given similar opportunities, the median performance (that is to say, the performance of the individual who is representative because he is surpassed by as many as he surpasses), and the variation around it, do not differ from one race to another.

Therefore, they concluded, any psychological attribute common to a group of people “is more likely to be due to a common history and social background” than to race. 

In other words, Lord Monboddo and Charles Darwin were wrong about humankind, and the centuries-old racial paradigm was finally at an end. This meant that a crucial piece of evidence in Darwin’s Descent of Man was also gone — though I’m not aware that Haldane ever acknowledged that. 

Environmental Pressure 

C. S. Lewis would not have been surprised. Since he was well aware of the limits of his scientific expertise, he was wary of getting involved in any scientific debates. But as an expert in the history of ideas, he knew that scientific theories don’t appear ex nihilo, but rather emerge out of the primordial intellectual soup of their time. When the environment changes, the theory either evolves or goes extinct. 

Haldane was no dummy3, and he also understood that the science of his day was fallible. But he was slower to skepticism than Lewis, because he believed science had a saving grace: the ease with which scientists accept new data. Haldane wrote: 

T]he experience of the past makes it clear that many of our most cherished scientific theories contain so much falsehood as to deserve the title of myths… The main objection to religious myths [in contrast] is that, once made, they are so difficult to destroy. Chemistry is not haunted by the phlogiston theory as Christianity is haunted by the theory of a God with a craving for bloody sacrifices.

This is partly true. Haldane is right that most scientific theories die easily and do not leave a haunting ghost. But that is because most scientific theories do not merit intense emotional investment. No one cares too much about, say, the structure of bromine, or the atmosphere of Mars. Granted, people tend to have an emotional investment in the theories they themselves invented or have publicly defended — but when those scientists die, the scientific community usually moves on. 

But a few scientific theories do provoke strong emotional investment. These are theories that have implications about the things humans find most important: who we are, what we’re made for, who gets to decide the ultimate meaning of our lives, whether we will continue to exist after death (for better or worse), whether or not we’re allowed to have sex with the person we want to have sex with at a given moment…etc. In those cases, we should expect a dead scientific theory to leave a haunting for a long time, just as a religious theories do. 

Modern Darwinism has been undergoing severe environmental pressure since the time of J. B. S. Haldane, including (among other things) from new evidence on race and human origins. Neither Darwinism nor scientific racialism has given up the ghost easily, though there have been many efforts to extricate the former from the latter. In my next post, we’ll consider some contemporary challenges neo-Darwinists face in their attempt to make the theory retroactively imply racial equality.

Notes

1.Haldane was so pleased with it that he included it in one of his essay anthologies, despite admitting that it didn’t really fit.

2.Haldane, J. B. S. (1927). “Science and Theology as Art Forms.” In Of Possible Worlds and Other Essays, pages 228-231. Chatto and Windus. 

3.Except when it came to Joseph Stalin

Unhyping the bunker buster?

 

Back to the forever schoolyard.

 

JEHOVAH God:Founder of both the spiritual and physical sciences?

 The Birth of Science and of the Cosmos

Andrew McDiarmid

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.

Science at its darkest.

 

Just another divided house?

 

Spacex continues to make moves?

 

Darwinists' secular myths are sacrosanct?

 Challenged on the “1 Percent” Myth, Smithsonian Gives a Meaningless Non-Answer

David Klinghoffer

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?

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 .

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.

The Thorium dream lives?

 

The OoL science empire strikes back(sort of)

 

Saying that there is a meaningful difference between living and nonliving matter is controversial?

 Peter Corning and the Taint of Vitalism

Daniel Witt

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.