Habakkuk NWT(2013 edition)

1 A pronouncement that Ha·bak′kuk* the prophet received in a vision:

 2 How long, O Jehovah, must I cry for help, but you do not hear?+

How long must I ask for help from violence, but you do not intervene?*+

 3 Why do you make me witness wrongdoing?

And why do you tolerate oppression?

Why are destruction and violence before me?

And why do quarreling and conflict abound?

 4 So law is paralyzed,

And justice is never carried out.

For the wicked surround the righteous;

That is why justice is perverted.+

 5 “Look among the nations and pay attention!

Stare in amazement and be astounded;

For something will happen in your days

That you will not believe even if it is told to you.+

 6 For here I am raising up the Chal·de′ans,+

The ruthless and impetuous nation.

They sweep through vast stretches of the earth

To seize homes not theirs.+

 7 They are frightening and fearsome.

They establish their own justice and authority.*+

 8 Their horses are swifter than leopards,

And they are fiercer than wolves in the night.+

Their warhorses gallop forward;

Their horses come from far away.

They swoop down like the eagle rushing to feed.+

 9 All of them come bent on violence.+

The assembling of their faces is like the east wind,+

And they scoop up captives like sand.

10 They scoff at kings

And laugh at high officials.+

They laugh at every fortified place;+

They pile up a dirt ramp and capture it.

11 Then they move forward like the wind and pass through,

But they will become guilty,+

Because they credit their power to their god.”*+

12 Are you not from everlasting, O Jehovah?+

O my God, my Holy One, you do not die.*+

O Jehovah, you appointed them to execute judgment;

My Rock,+ you established them for punishment.*+

13 Your eyes are too pure to look on what is evil,

And you cannot tolerate wickedness.+

Why, then, do you tolerate the treacherous+

And keep silent when a wicked man swallows up someone more righteous than he is?+

14 Why do you make man like the fish of the sea,

Like creeping things that have no ruler?

15 All of these he* hauls up with a fishhook.

He catches them in his dragnet,

And he gathers them in his fishing net.

That is why he rejoices greatly.+

16 That is why he offers sacrifices to his dragnet

And makes sacrifices* to his fishing net;

For by them his portion is rich,*

And his food is choice.

17 Will he then keep emptying out his dragnet?*

Will he go on slaughtering nations without compassion?+

2 At my guardpost I will keep standing,+

And I will station myself on the rampart.

I will keep watch to see what he will speak by means of me

And what I will reply when I am reproved.

 2 Jehovah then answered me:

“Write down the vision, and inscribe it clearly on tablets,+

So that the one reading aloud from it may do so easily.*+

 3 For the vision is yet for its appointed time,

And it is rushing toward its end,* and it will not lie.

Even if it should delay,* keep in expectation of it!*+

For it will without fail come true.

It will not be late!

 4 Look at the one who is proud;*

He is not upright within himself.

But the righteous one will live by his faithfulness.*+

 5 Indeed, because the wine is treacherous,

The arrogant man will not reach his goal.

He makes his appetite* as large as the Grave;*

He is like death and cannot be satisfied.

He keeps gathering all the nations

And collecting for himself all the peoples.+

 6 Will not all of these speak a proverb, an allusion, and riddles against him?+

They will say:

‘Woe to him who accumulates what is not his

—For how long?—

And who makes even greater his own debt!

 7 Will not your creditors rise up suddenly?

They will wake up and violently shake you,

And you will become something for them to plunder.+

 8 Because you plundered many nations,

All the rest of the peoples will plunder you,+

Because of your shedding men’s blood

And your violence to the earth,

To the cities and those living in them.+

 9 Woe to the one who makes evil gain for his house,

So as to set his nest on the height,

To escape the grasp of calamity!

10 You have plotted shame against your house.

By wiping out many peoples you sin against yourself.*+

11 For a stone will cry out from the wall,

And from the woodwork a rafter will answer it.

12 Woe to the one who builds a city by bloodshed,

And who establishes a town by unrighteousness!

13 Look! Is it not from Jehovah of armies that peoples will work hard to feed the fire,

And that nations tire themselves out for nothing?+

14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah

As the waters cover the sea.+

15 Woe to the one who gives his companions something to drink,

Adding to it rage and anger, to make them drunk,

In order to look on their nakedness!

16 You will be glutted with dishonor rather than glory.

You too—drink and expose your uncircumcised condition.*

The cup in the right hand of Jehovah will come around to you,+

And disgrace will cover over your glory;

17 For the violence done to Leb′a·non will cover you,

And the destruction that terrified the beasts will come upon you,

Because of your shedding men’s blood

And your violence to the earth,

To the cities and those living in them.+

18 Of what benefit is a carved image

When its maker has carved it?

Of what benefit is a metal statue* and a teacher of lies,

Even though its maker trusts in it,

Making worthless gods that are speechless?+

19 Woe to the one who says to a piece of wood, “Awake!”

Or to a speechless stone, “Wake up! Instruct us!”

Look! It is overlaid in gold and silver,+

And there is no breath at all within it.+

20 But Jehovah is in his holy temple.+

Be silent before him, all the earth!’”+

3 The prayer of Ha·bak′kuk the prophet, in dirges:*

 2 O Jehovah, I have heard the report about you.

I am in awe, O Jehovah, of your activity.

In the midst of the years* bring it to life!

In the midst of the years* make it known.

May you remember to show mercy during the turmoil.+

 3 God came from Te′man,

The Holy One from Mount Pa′ran.+ (Selah)*

His majesty covered the heavens;+

With his praise the earth was filled.

 4 His brightness was like the light.+

Two rays flashed from his hand,

Where his strength was hidden.

 5 Before him went pestilence,+

And burning fever followed at his feet.

 6 He stood still and shook the earth.+

With a look, he made nations leap.+

The eternal mountains were smashed,

And the ancient hills bowed down.+

The paths of long ago are his.

 7 I saw trouble in the tents of Cu′shan.

The tent cloths of the land of Mid′i·an trembled.+

 8 Is it against the rivers, O Jehovah,

Is it against the rivers that your anger is burning?

Or is your fury against the sea?+

For you rode on your horses;+

Your chariots were victorious.*+

 9 Your bow is uncovered and ready.

The rods* are assigned with an oath.* (Selah)

You split the earth with rivers.

10 Mountains writhed in pain at the sight of you.+

A downpour of waters swept through.

The deep roared with its voice.+

It lifted its hands high.

11 Sun and moon stood still in their lofty abode.+

Your arrows went out like the light.+

The lightning of your spear was brilliant.

12 You marched through the earth with indignation.

You trampled* the nations in anger.

13 You went out for the salvation of your people, to save your anointed one.

You crushed the leader* of the house of the wicked.

It was exposed from the foundation to the top.* (Selah)

14 You pierced the head of his warriors with his own weapons*

When they stormed out to scatter me.

They were overjoyed to devour an afflicted one in secret.

15 Through the sea you trod with your horses,

Through the surging of vast waters.

16 I heard and I trembled within;*

At the sound my lips quivered.

Rottenness entered my bones;+

My legs beneath me were shaking.

But I quietly wait for the day of distress,+

For it is coming upon the people who attack us.

17 Although the fig tree may not blossom,

And there may be no fruit on the vines;

Although the olive crop may fail,

And the fields* may produce no food;

Although the flock may disappear from the pen,

And there may be no cattle in the stalls;

18 Yet, as for me, I will exult in Jehovah;

I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.+

19 The Sovereign Lord Jehovah is my strength;+

He will make my feet like those of a deer

And cause me to tread on high places.+

Exploring the limits of self-organisation.

fear itself IV

The look of a Lamb/The voice of a dragon.

Revelation13:11NWT(2013 edition) "Then I saw another wild beast ascending out of the earth, and it had two horns like a lamb, but it began speaking like a dragon."

W.M.D.

Apparently if you're a Darwin sceptic,even when you're right you're wrong

A Pretty Sharp Edge: Reflecting on Michael Behe's Vindication                       

Ann Gauger July 28, 2014 3:59 AM

I am writing a post that shouldn't have to be written. It's about Dr. Michael Behe's book The Edge of Evolution, what it predicted, how that prediction was confirmed, and how his detractors continue to quibble and obfuscate, claiming that even if he was right he was still somehow wrong. That's not the way scientists are supposed to operate.

In science, theory that explains data and makes a prediction that is experimentally verified is considered to be confirmed. That's the way it is supposed to work. Einstein's general theory of relativity, Mendeleev's periodic table, and many other theories have been verified this way.

Now let's look at Behe's theory. Malaria is a devastating disease caused by the parasiteP. falciparum. These parasites are quick to develop resistance to most drugs, but they have had a hard time overcoming chloroquine, requiring more than ten years to develop resistance. In fact, sixty years since the drug's introduction, and after more than 10²⁰malarial parasites total, resistance to chloroquine has developed fewer than ten times. Why?

In The Edge of Evolution, Behe proposed an answer. His explanation -- his hypothesis, if you will -- is simple. The mutation rate of P. falciparum is roughly 1 in 10⁸ mutations per base pair per parasite. There are on average 10¹² parasites in the human body -- that's enough for more than a thousand copies of every possible single mutation to exist somewhere in each infected person. So if resistance required only one mutation, it should have appeared in a few days. However, it took more than a decade for resistance to emerge. Behe argued that therefore at least two mutationsmust be required for the parasite to develop resistance to chloroquine. Furthermore, those two mutations must each be of no use as single mutations, and those two mutations must be present together in the same organism in order to confer resistance to the drug.

Why did Behe make these predictions? It's a simple calculation, really. If two simultaneous mutations are required for resistance, the rate of that double mutation occurring can be calculated by multiplying the single rates together. That makes the rate for two mutations roughly 1 in 10¹⁶ mutations per base pair per parasite. To find those two mutations would require many more trials than are available among the 10¹² parasites in each person infected. However, 10²⁰parasites (the total present in a single year) represent more than enough opportunity for that double mutation to occur.

His critics focus on Behe's use of the word "simultaneous." Getting two simultaneous mutations is ridiculous, they say, and so multiplying two rates together is ridiculous. 

Maybe the two mutations happened simultaneously, meaning together in the same molecule in one generation. It is possible. Maybe the mutations happened one at a time. We don't know. Parasites carrying single mutations on the path to resistance (meaning they have no resistance yet) are sickly, though, because those single mutations have damaged an essential function. They and their offspring might survive and reproduce long enough for a second mutation to occur, but it seems unlikely. Most of the time they will simply be out-competed by their non-mutant siblings.

Another critique Behe's opponents offer is that Behe just doesn't understand evolution. Theremust be some cumulative adaptive path that would take the parasite to drug resistance. In support they offer Joe Thornton's work with hormone receptors, where his lab evolved a hormone receptor from its "ancestral" form by a series of selective steps. Thus there can't be an edge to evolution as sharp as just two mutations, they say. What the critics don't say is that the first step is not a selectable step. It's a gully across the road to new function that must be crossed by jumping.

The same is true about the path to chloroquine resistance. First of all, common sense says if there were a selective path with each mutation conferring increasing resistance, it would happen quickly, much more quickly than in a decade. But more importantly, a recent paper by Summers et al. has shown by experiment that two mutations, neither of them conferring any resistance by themselves, are the first steps of chloroquine resistance. (One mutation is required by all pathways; then either of two other mutations can be used to bring about resistance.) This is a more like a canyon than a gully. Two mutations must be present together in the same molecule to confer resistance to chloroquine. Call it "occurring simultaneously" or not. The effect is the same, and Behe is right and his critics are wrong. 

Ironically, recent work has shown the same thing with regard to hormone receptors. Carroll et al.(2011) reported that at the base of the pathway to evolve the ancient hormone receptor there are two mutations (a gene duplication plus point mutation) that must occur before any further evolution is possible. Harms and Thornton then showed that these mutations are the only way forward. There is no other road to take, no way around the canyon. It sounds remarkably like the malarial resistance pathway, doesn't it?

So how sharp is the edge of evolution? For the malarial parasite P. falciparum, the edge of evolution for chloroquine resistance is two mutations: one specific mutation and either one of two other mutations. These mutations have to occur together, and they have to be there before any other mutations can have any effect. If the parasite doesn't have these two mutations, it remains chloroquine-sensitive. But as we have seen, getting two mutations can take a long time. It happens relatively quickly for malaria because of its huge population size. For us and other animals it may take an extremely long time.

That sounds like a pretty sharp edge of evolution to me.

Behe predicted this requirement for two mutations seven years ago. All continuing criticism now sounds like sniping and quibbling over terminology. Maybe those quibbling and sniping can't see they are wrong. Maybe they don't understand how science works and what counts as evidence. Or, and this is more likely, they will never admit that Behe is right and they are wrong.

Why all the doubt?

Natural selection and the S.D.L algorithm.

Is Natural Selection Like a Computer Algorithm?

Evolution News & Views July 23, 2014 5:24 AM

Analogies can be useful, but they can also distract from what's really important. Consider a simple example. Say you are at a playground, and you hear a steady din of children's voices at play. You notice that the sound has spectral characteristics: a particular frequency range, dynamic range, and time variation, with occasional spikes. As a scientist, you produce a mathematical model to characterize the sound spectrum. You even make a prediction: the addition of n more children will cause the intensity to rise, but not the average pitch. Finding confirmation, you call your model the Weighted Playground Spectral Algorithm (WPSA) and publish it in a journal, where you apply it to galactic spectra. What have you done?

While your model might be useful in some contexts, it obscures what is most important about the playground: the minds, emotions and needs of the children and their parents. A star's light is not in the same ballpark (or playground) as a child calling out cheerfully, "Daddy! Watch me slide down the slide!" Yet we see a similar fallacy in a Commentary for PNAS by Nicholas H. Barton, Sebastian Novak, and Tiago Paixão of the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria. They compare evolution to computer science.

In "Diverse forms of selection in evolution and computer science," the authors notice that a particular mathematical model, the Multiplicative Weights Update Algorithm (MWUA) used in computer science, seems to fit some evolutionary scenarios, too. Launching from a paper by Chastain et al. called "Algorithms, Games and Evolution," they find this similarity interesting, and perhaps fruitful.

The astonishing diversity of complex adaptations that we see in the living worldhas been produced by natural selection, over ∼ 3.5 billion years of evolution. Information from the largely random survival and reproduction of past organisms has accumulated to produce genomes that are precisely fitted to diverse environments. In PNAS, Chastain et al. show that natural selection on freely recombining populations is equivalent to the multiplicative weights update algorithm (MWUA), an efficient optimization algorithm that has been discovered many times in computer science, statistics, and economics. Whether this equivalence explains the extraordinary effectiveness of natural selection, or conversely, of artificial algorithms, depends on one's perspective. Perhaps surprisingly, theoretical results in population genetics and in computer science look quite different, even when they deal with essentially the same questions. Thus, the equivalence identified by Chastain et al. allows these different results to be transferred between fields in both directions. (Emphasis added.)

The obvious problem with this line of thinking is that evolution has no algorithm! By definition, it is aimless, unguided, and mindless -- unlike an economist, statistician, or computer scientist. Like the playground voices compared to stellar spectra, any similarities will surely be swamped by more important differences. We also see that the commenters assume natural selection created all the "astonishing diversity of complex adaptations" in the living world, forcing them to try to fit an intelligent-design algorithm on what they believe originated by chance. Here's how Chastain et al. commit the same question-begging error:

Even the most seasoned students of evolution, starting with Darwin himself, have occasionally expressed amazement that the mechanism of natural selection has produced the whole of Life as we see it around us. There is a computationalway to articulate the same amazement: "What algorithm could possibly achieve all this in a mere three and a half billion years?" In this paper we propose an answer: We demonstrate that in the regime of weak selection, the standard equations of population genetics describing natural selection in the presence ofsex become identical to those of a repeated game between genes played according to multiplicative weight updates (MWUA), an algorithm known in computer science to be surprisingly powerful and versatile. MWUA maximizes atradeoff between cumulative performance and entropy, which suggests a new view on the maintenance of diversity in evolution.

Once again, they first assume evolution, then try to force-fit an intelligently designed algorithm (MWUA) onto the whole of life. This is fallacious. It takes a mind to assign weights, play games to win, and run algorithms. It takes a mind to recognize a tradeoff, measure performance, and counteract entropy. A mindless world is incapable of such things. The authors have merely transferred their own mental activity onto a world that they must assume, being Darwinists, is blind and uncaring. Barton and colleagues never quite catch the absurdity of the comparison:

Although computer science and evolutionary biology appear to be very different fields, there are some surprisingly close parallels, which are apparent if one thinks of natural selection as providing a general algorithm by which populations can efficiently learn about their environment. Although the questions in each field differ, there are common themes -- not least, how rapidly can evolutionary algorithms act? In computer science terms, what is the complexity of anevolutionary algorithm, or in other words, how does the runtime scale with thedimensionality of the environment, genome size, population size, and so on? It is striking that, although these different fields deal with similar problems, their theoretical structures are quite different, giving an opportunity for fruitful transfer.

The only algorithm possible for evolutionary theory is what we might dub (after Berlinski) the SDLA: the "Sheer Dumb Luck" Algorithm. Unfortunately, that algorithm is weighted heavily in favor of entropy and extinction. We would hope that Darwinists would not try to transfer their algorithm back onto the computer scientists. It may be too late for the economists.

Without their halos

Bad Science Muckrakers Question the Big Science Status Quo

Among the American public, trust in professional scientists and scientific journals is declining. Yet an overwhelming majority still believes that science “remains a source for good in the world.” Could the public be on to something? Medical-doctor-turned-journalistIvan Oransky thinks so. And it’s a growing problem.

As editor and publisher of Retraction Watch, a closely followed industry blog that tracks peer-reviewed journal articles withdrawn from publication, Oransky is raising awareness of the impact that competition for grants and career advancement is having on the quality of the science being produced. Far from being above the fray and immune to corrupting influences, “Scientists are just as human as anyone else,” says Oransky. And increasingly, “People are starting to see scientists the way they really are.”One of the deeper problems is the publish-or-perish fight for resources, tenure, and prestige among the elite scientists whose living depends on maintaining the trust of the taxpayers who foot their bills. “Publication is the coin of the realm in academia,” says Oransky. “If you want to get tenure, if you want to get grants, if you want get promoted, if you want to get exposed to companies that might license your products, you have to publish in top journals.”

The academic pecking order is based on the number of papers a scientist gets published in high impact factor journals, that is, journals whose papers are heavily cited by other scientists. And yet, “The vast majority of scientific publications are never cited. There are something like 30,000 [published papers] a week.” How many of those can be first rate? How much second- and third-rate science is being funded? And how can we know?

The surge of publications is a direct result of the tsunami of money that washed over the industry between 1998 and 2003 with the doubling of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget. “It was a gold rush,” says Oransky. “What scientists did was grow their labs so they can produce more papers so they can get more grants.”

But, like a real gold rush, the bonanza couldn’t go on forever. So, asks Oransky, “What happens to all those folks when the doubling stops?” NIH funding has currently leveled out at between $30 billon and $40 billion a year, depending on how you count it. In an era of stagnant budgets, competition for limited funding has become cutthroat. That has led some scientists to take shortcuts. And that, in turn, has caused retractions to soar.

That’s a serious problem. As Oransky explains, “A retraction means there is something deeply wrong” with a given academic paper. “About two thirds of the time, that’s actually something that’s considered misconduct – the official federal definition of which is falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism.”

Another major problem is that many study results cannot be reliable reproduced. Oransky cites a famous paper by Dr. John Iaonnidis, “Why most published research findings are false,” that shows the inherent biases and the flawed statistical analyses built into most “hypothesis driven” research, resulting in publications that largely represent “accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

To make matters worse, private research dollars are being choked off by ill-conceived regulations, making researchers even more dependent on government grants, as Dr. Thomas Stossel at Harvard Medical School points out.

Stossel calls overly restrictive conflict of interest regulations “a damaging solution in search of a problem.” A self-described “typical academic socialist, totally living on grants for the first third of my career,” Stossel says his eyes were opened in 1987, when he was asked to serve on the scientific advisory board of Biogen (now Biogen IDEC), a fledgling biotech startup that went on to become a tremendous success. “I realized how fundamentally honest business people are compared to my academic colleagues, who’d run their grandmothers over for recognition.”

While working with Biogen, Stossel learned how difficult it was to translate academic research into products that actually help people. “It was during that time that conflict of interest mania emerged.” In 1988 Harvard Medical School instituted the first conflict of interest rules, largely as a result of an incident at the Mass Eye and Ear infirmary that was sensationalized by The Boston Globe.

Stossel characterizes this rationale as, “If I am paid by a corporation to do research, I am going to lie, cheat and steal.” Based on his experience at Biogen, he calls this a “total inversion of reality.” He notes that, “95 percent of the scientific papers retracted for falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism have no commercial connection.” And yet, conflict of interest rules continue to proliferate, choking off what could be a critical alternative to taxpayer funding.

In his farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of a day when, “because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity,” and “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Thanks to the work they are doing, Dr. Ivan Oransky and Dr. Thomas Stossel may help us heed Ike’s warning. They are my guests this week on RealClear Radio Hour. You can hear them describe the problem in their own words here.

Just enough religion to make us hate.

The end of Christianity in the Middle East could mean the demise of Arab secularism

In a Middle East rebuilt on intolerant ideologies, there is likely to be little place for beleaguered minorities

William Dalrymple

• The Guardian, Wednesday 23 July 2014 16.47 BST

The past decade has been catastrophic for the Arab world'sbeleaguered 12 million strong Christian minority. In Egypt revolution and counter-revolution have been accompanied by a series of anti-Copt riots, killings and church burnings. In Gaza and the West Bank Palestinian Christians are emigrating en masse as they find themselves uncomfortably caught between Netanyahu's pro-settler government and their increasingly radicalised Sunni neighbours.

In Syria most of the violence is along the Sunni-Alawite fault line, but stories of rape and murder directed at the Christian minority, who used to make up around 10% of the population, have emerged. Many have already fled to camps in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan; the ancient Armenian community of Aleppo is reported to be moving en masse to Yerevan.

The worst affected areas of Syria are of course those controlled by Isis. Last weekend it issued a decree offering the dwindling Christian population of eastern Syria and northern Iraq a choice: convert to Islam or pay a special religious levy – the jizya. If they did not comply, "there is nothing to give them but the sword". The passing of the deadline led to possibly the largest exodus of Middle Eastern Christians since theArmenian massacres during the first world war, with the entire Christian community of Mosul heading off towards Kirkuk and the relative religious tolerance of the Kurdish zone.

Even before this latest exodus, at least two-thirds of Iraqi Christians had fled since the fall of Saddam. Christians were concentrated in Mosul, Basra and, especially, Baghdad – which before the US invasion had the largest Christian population in the Middle East. Although Iraq's 750,000 Christians made up only 7% of the pre-war population, they were a prosperous minority under the Ba'athists, as symbolised by the high profile of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister, who used to disarm visiting foreign dignitaries by breaking into Onward, Christian Soldiers in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

According to tradition it was St Thomas and his cousin Addai who brought Christianity to Iraq in the first century. At the Council of Nicea, where the Christian creed was thrashed out in AD325, there were more bishops from Mesopotamia than western Europe. The region became a refuge for those persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantines, such as theMandeans – the last Gnostics, who follow what they believe to be the teachings of John the Baptist. Then there was the Church of the East, which brought the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, as well as Greek science and medicine, to the Islamic world – and hence, via Cordoba, to the new universities of medieval Europe.

Now almost everywhere Arab Christians are leaving. In the past decade maybe a quarter have made new lives in Europe, Australia and America. According to Professor Kamal Salibi, they are simply exhausted: "There is a feeling of fin de race among Christians all over the Middle East. Now they just want to go somewhere else, make some money and relax. Each time a Christian goes, no other Christian comes to fill his place and that is a very bad thing for the Arab world. It is Christian Arabs who keep the Arab world 'Arab' rather than 'Muslim'."

Certainly since the 19th century Christian Arabs have played a vital role in defining a secular Arab cultural identity. It is no coincidence that most of the founders of secular Arab nationalism were men like Michel Aflaq – the Greek Orthodox Christian from Damascus who, with other Syrian students freshly returned from the Sorbonne, founded the Ba'ath party in the 1940s – or Faris al-Khoury, Syria's only Christian prime minister. Then there were intellectuals like the Palestinian George Antonius, who in 1938 wrote in The Arab Awakening of the crucial role Christians played in reviving Arab literature and the arts after their long slumber under Ottoman rule.

If the Islamic state proclaimed by Isis turns into a permanent, Christian-free zone, it could signal the demise not just of an important part of the Arab Christian realm but also of the secular Arab nationalism Christians helped create. The 20th century after 1918, which saw the creation of the different Arab national states, may well prove to be a blip in Middle Eastern history, as the old primary identifiers of Arab identity, religion and qabila – tribe – resurface.

It is as if, after a century of flirting with imported ideas of the secular nation state, the region is reverting to the Ottoman Millet system (from the Arabic millah, literally "nation"), which represented a view of the world that made religion the ultimate marker of identity, and classified Ottoman subjects by their various sectarian religious "nations".

Despite sizeable Christian populations holding on in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, there is likely to be little place for Christian Arabs in a Middle East rebuilt on intolerant ideologies like those of Isis. Their future is more likely to resemble that of the most influential Christian Arab intellectual of our day, Edward Said. Born in Jerusalem at the height of Arab nationalism in 1935, Said died far from the turmoil of the Middle East in New York in 2003. His last collection of essays was appropriately entitledReflections On Exile.

• The headline of this article was amended on 24 July 2014.