“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Saturday 25 June 2016
Small brain,big smarts
Source:
University of Bonn
The elephantnose fish explores objects in its surroundings by using its eyes or its electrical sense -- sometimes both together. Zoologists at the University of Bonn and a colleague from Oxford have now found out how complex the processing of these sensory impressions is. With its tiny brain, the fish achieves performance comparable to that of humans or mammals. The advance results have been published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The elephantnose fish (Gnathonemus petersii) is widespread in the flowing waters of West Africa and hunts insect larva at dawn and dusk. It is helped by an electrical organ in its tail, which emits electrical impulses. The skin contains numerous sensor organs that perceive objects in the water by means of the changed electrical field. "This is a case of active electrolocation, in principle the same as the active echolocation of bats, which use ultrasound to perceive a three-dimensional image of their environment," says Professor Dr. Gerhard von der Emde at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Bonn. Furthermore, the elephantnose fish can also orient using its eyes.
Professor von der Emde, along with his doctoral candidate Sarah Schumacher and Dr. Theresa Burt de Perera of Oxford University, have now investigated how the unusual fish processes the information from the various sensory channels. Ms. Schumacher summarizes the results: "The animals normally use both senses. If necessary, for example because one of the two senses provides no information or the information of the two senses differs greatly, however, the fish can switch back and forth between their visual and electrical senses." The scientists were surprised by the manner in which the fish use these two senses to get the best perception of their environment: When the animals became familiar with an object in the aquarium, for example with the visual sense, they were also able to recognize it again using the electrical sense, although they had never perceived it electrically before.
Fish give precedence to the most reliable sensory information
In addition, the fish demonstrated a previously unexpected ability: Their brain gave more weight to the information it thought was more reliable. When the two senses delivered different information in the close range of up to two centimeters, the fish trusted only the electrical information and were then "blind" to the visual stimuli. In contrast, for more distant objects, the animals relied above all on their eyes. They perceived the environment best by using their visual and electrical senses in combination. "A transfer between the different senses was previously known only for certain highly developed mammals, such as monkeys, dolphins, rats, and humans," says Professor von der Emde. An example: In a dark, unfamiliar apartment, people feel their way forward to avoid stumbling. When the light goes on, the obstacles felt are recognized by the eye without any problem. Mammals process such information with their cerebral cortex. The elephantnose fish, however, has just a relatively small brain and no cerebral cortex at all -- but nevertheless switches back and forth between the senses.
Clever experimental setup
The scientists came up with a very clever test setup: The elephantnose fish was in an aquarium. Separated from it were two different chambers, between which the animal could choose. Behind openings to the chambers there were differently shaped objects: a sphere or a cuboid. The fish learned to steer toward one of these objects by being rewarded with insect larvae. Subsequently, it searched for this object again, to obtain the reward again.
When does the fish use a particular sense? In order to answer this question, the researchers repeated the experiments in absolute darkness. Now the fish could rely only on its electrical sense. As shown by images taken with an infrared camera, it was able to recognize the object only at short distances. With the light on the fish was most successful, because it was able to use its eyes and the electrical sense for the different distances. In order to find out when the fish used its eyes alone, the researchers made the objects invisible to the electrical sense. Now, the sphere and cuboid to be discriminated had the same electrical characteristics as the water.
Many repetitions of the individual experiments were necessary in order to apply statistical analyses to reach conclusions about the sensory processing of the elephantnose fish. The scientists worked with a total of ten animals, working more or less in shifts. "The behavior of the different individuals was nearly identical," says Professor von der Emde. For that reason the scientists are certain that this enormous sensory performance is achieved not only by a particulary talented specimen but by all elephantnose fish.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Bonn. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
University of Bonn
The elephantnose fish explores objects in its surroundings by using its eyes or its electrical sense -- sometimes both together. Zoologists at the University of Bonn and a colleague from Oxford have now found out how complex the processing of these sensory impressions is. With its tiny brain, the fish achieves performance comparable to that of humans or mammals. The advance results have been published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The elephantnose fish (Gnathonemus petersii) is widespread in the flowing waters of West Africa and hunts insect larva at dawn and dusk. It is helped by an electrical organ in its tail, which emits electrical impulses. The skin contains numerous sensor organs that perceive objects in the water by means of the changed electrical field. "This is a case of active electrolocation, in principle the same as the active echolocation of bats, which use ultrasound to perceive a three-dimensional image of their environment," says Professor Dr. Gerhard von der Emde at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Bonn. Furthermore, the elephantnose fish can also orient using its eyes.
Professor von der Emde, along with his doctoral candidate Sarah Schumacher and Dr. Theresa Burt de Perera of Oxford University, have now investigated how the unusual fish processes the information from the various sensory channels. Ms. Schumacher summarizes the results: "The animals normally use both senses. If necessary, for example because one of the two senses provides no information or the information of the two senses differs greatly, however, the fish can switch back and forth between their visual and electrical senses." The scientists were surprised by the manner in which the fish use these two senses to get the best perception of their environment: When the animals became familiar with an object in the aquarium, for example with the visual sense, they were also able to recognize it again using the electrical sense, although they had never perceived it electrically before.
Fish give precedence to the most reliable sensory information
In addition, the fish demonstrated a previously unexpected ability: Their brain gave more weight to the information it thought was more reliable. When the two senses delivered different information in the close range of up to two centimeters, the fish trusted only the electrical information and were then "blind" to the visual stimuli. In contrast, for more distant objects, the animals relied above all on their eyes. They perceived the environment best by using their visual and electrical senses in combination. "A transfer between the different senses was previously known only for certain highly developed mammals, such as monkeys, dolphins, rats, and humans," says Professor von der Emde. An example: In a dark, unfamiliar apartment, people feel their way forward to avoid stumbling. When the light goes on, the obstacles felt are recognized by the eye without any problem. Mammals process such information with their cerebral cortex. The elephantnose fish, however, has just a relatively small brain and no cerebral cortex at all -- but nevertheless switches back and forth between the senses.
Clever experimental setup
The scientists came up with a very clever test setup: The elephantnose fish was in an aquarium. Separated from it were two different chambers, between which the animal could choose. Behind openings to the chambers there were differently shaped objects: a sphere or a cuboid. The fish learned to steer toward one of these objects by being rewarded with insect larvae. Subsequently, it searched for this object again, to obtain the reward again.
When does the fish use a particular sense? In order to answer this question, the researchers repeated the experiments in absolute darkness. Now the fish could rely only on its electrical sense. As shown by images taken with an infrared camera, it was able to recognize the object only at short distances. With the light on the fish was most successful, because it was able to use its eyes and the electrical sense for the different distances. In order to find out when the fish used its eyes alone, the researchers made the objects invisible to the electrical sense. Now, the sphere and cuboid to be discriminated had the same electrical characteristics as the water.
Many repetitions of the individual experiments were necessary in order to apply statistical analyses to reach conclusions about the sensory processing of the elephantnose fish. The scientists worked with a total of ten animals, working more or less in shifts. "The behavior of the different individuals was nearly identical," says Professor von der Emde. For that reason the scientists are certain that this enormous sensory performance is achieved not only by a particulary talented specimen but by all elephantnose fish.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Bonn. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Darwinism Vs. the real world XXXVI
In the Beginning: Male and Female
Howard Glicksman
Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.
Everyone knows that a human being is either male or female. And most people know that the nucleus in each human cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes which house the genetic material needed to produce the essential molecules for life. There are even some who know that, in addition to providing 22 somatic chromosomes, the female egg always provides an X chromosome and the male sperm provides either an X or Y chromosome to make a female (XX) or a male (XY) human person.
But what most people do not know or appreciate is how the body decides whether to make male or female parts. Although a given person's survival does not depend on having the right parts for reproduction, we all know that without adequate sexual function human life would be impossible. Moreover, as difficult as it may be for evolutionary biologists to explain the development of the different organ systems and the body's ability to control them to survive within the laws of nature, because of how human reproduction takes place, they must also explain the simultaneous development of both males and females since neither is of any use for survival without the other. Let's look at the structures each sex must have to reproduce and how the body decides which ones to develop.
The word sex comes from the Latin secare which means to separate or divide. Each of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes are separated from each other and placed within gametes called male sperm and female eggs. Human reproduction requires that the 23 chromosomes in the sperm be joined to the 23 chromosomes in the egg to form a new human being. The natural way this takes place is through sexual intercourse. This involves the male depositing sperm from his penis into the female's vagina so they can travel through the cervix into the body of her uterus and one of them can join up with an egg.
To accomplish this task the male is equipped with testes, which produce sperm, and a genital duct system (epididymis, vas deferens, and seminal vesicle) and external genitalia (penis, scrotum, and prostate) to help move the sperm from the testes out of his body. The female is equipped with external genitalia (labia, clitoris, and lower vagina) and a genital duct system (upper vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes) to help guide the sperm toward an egg that has been released from one of her ovaries. The sperm and egg usually meet in one of the fallopian tubes of the uterus where the newly formed one-celled zygote forms a new human life. The zygote soon starts to divide, becoming an embryo which migrates into the body of the uterus and implants in its endometrial lining, allowing it to grow and develop into a newborn baby that exits about nine months later.
For the first several weeks of life the human embryo is asexual because the gonads have not yet declared themselves to be either testes or ovaries. Human embryology teaches that the undifferentiated gonads are destined to become ovaries by default unless acted upon by a molecule called the Testis Determining Factor (TDF). The genetic information needed to produce TDF is located on the Sex Determining Region of the Y chromosome (SRY). So this explains why a male must have a Y chromosome...or does it? Nature can sometimes play tricks and a translocation of the genes that code for the TDF may wind up on the X chromosome instead. This is how it is possible to have an XX male who, due to the TDF being on his X chromosome, forms testes instead of ovaries but who nevertheless is usually sterile and unable to reproduce. By telling the primordial gonads to become testes, the TDF on the SRY is therefore the master switch that makes the body go down the male track rather than the female one. But becoming a male with all the right parts for reproduction involves much more.
The testes produce testosterone, a steroid hormone derived from cholesterol, by using different enzymes encoded on several different somatic chromosomes. Each human embryo begins life with two different undeveloped genital duct systems, the Wolffian ducts and the Mullerian ducts. If the gonads do not become testes, the Wolffian ducts degenerate and disappear and the Mullerian ducts develop into the female genital duct system. However, if the gonads become testes, the testosterone they produce attaches to androgen receptors (encoded on the X chromosome) and directs the Wolffian ducts to develop into the male genital duct system.
However, if the androgen receptor is absent or not working at all this causes a condition called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). In CAIS the testes produce testosterone but, without properly working androgen receptors to respond to it, the Wolffian ducts degenerate anyway leaving no genital duct system. This takes place in about one in 20,000 male births and these people are known as XY females. They will have testes that may migrate into the groin and labia, which if removed, will prove their true original nature. But they will often go undetected, appearing as normal females until they fail to menstruate at the appropriate age when all the other signs of puberty have taken place. It is then that they will be found to not have male or female internal organs, and a vagina that is usually smaller than normal and leads into a blind pouch going nowhere. How can this be? Read on!
On the way to developing into a normal male, in addition to testosterone, the testes also produce Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) which is encoded on the 19th chromosome. AMH attaches to specific AMH receptors (encoded on the 12th chromosome) and instructs the Mullerian duct cells to degenerate and disappear. This is very important for male fertility because if both the Wolffian and Mullerian ducts develop, they physically interfere with each other. This usually results in sterility. It also explains why the XY female with CAIS looks like a normal female but has neither a male nor female genital duct system. Since her Wolffian ducts didn't have working androgen receptors, they degenerated. But her testes also produced AMH which attached to the AMH receptors on her Mullerian ducts and made them degenerate too!
Here again we see that the embryo is destined to become female unless acted upon by specific molecules, in this case, testosterone and AMH, with the help of the androgen and AMH receptors. But there is still more to explain.
The external genitalia develop from the urogenital sinus, swellings, folds, and tubercle. If the gonads do not become testes and produce testosterone, these automatically develop into the female external genitalia. However, for this tissue to become normal male external genitalia requires much more stimulation of the androgen receptor than testosterone can provide. The cells in these tissues use an enzyme, called 5-alpha reductase (encoded on the second chromosome), to convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is a stronger stimulator of the androgen receptor. When DHT attaches to the androgen receptors in these embryonic tissues, it makes them develop into the penis, the scrotum, and the prostate gland. An XY person with a rare genetic disorder called 5-alpha reductase deficiency will have normally functioning testes and a normal male genital duct system, but their external genitalia will often be deformed and ambiguous making them incapable of participating in sexual intercourse and rendering them infertile. Again we see that the human embryo is destined to develop female parts by default or defective male parts unless acted upon by specific molecules, in this case the need for 5-alpha reductase to convert testosterone into DHT to adequately stimulate the androgen receptor.
To reiterate, the human embryo is destined to become female by default if not acted upon by several different chemicals. The TDF, usually on the Y chromosome, is what starts it down the male track by making the primordial gonads become testes; but much more is still needed. The testes use several enzymes encoded on different chromosomes to convert cholesterol into testosterone, which must attach to androgen receptors on the Wolffian ducts to form the male genital duct system. Without testosterone or properly working androgen receptors, the Wolffian ducts degenerate. In addition, to have normal male external genitalia requires a specific enzyme to convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone so it can adequately stimulate the androgen receptors on the urogenital sinus, swellings, folds, and tubercle. If this enzyme is absent or not working right, the result is deformed and ambiguous external genitalia that cannot perform sexual intercourse, while if the androgen receptor is missing the result is female external genitalia. Finally, the testes also produce AMH which binds to AMH receptors on the Müllerian ducts to make them degenerate. If either of these are absent or not functioning properly, it results in the male having both a male and female genital duct system, which renders him infertile.
To paraphrase Stephen Meyer in The Information Enigma,different cell types require different proteins, different proteins require different genetically encoded instructions, and different instructions requires information that all human experience teaches comes from a mind and not material processes. Notwithstanding what it takes to produce properly working female parts, the information needed to make the male parts for reproduction requires the TDF, the enzymes to convert cholesterol into testosterone and testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, the androgen receptor, AMH and the AMH receptor.
The absence of any one of these results in either female parts or sterile male parts -- and the survival of the human race hangs in the balance. Yet at birth and for many years afterward, human beings are incapable of participating in reproduction. What happens to change that? That's what we'll look at next time.
Howard Glicksman
Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.
Everyone knows that a human being is either male or female. And most people know that the nucleus in each human cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes which house the genetic material needed to produce the essential molecules for life. There are even some who know that, in addition to providing 22 somatic chromosomes, the female egg always provides an X chromosome and the male sperm provides either an X or Y chromosome to make a female (XX) or a male (XY) human person.
But what most people do not know or appreciate is how the body decides whether to make male or female parts. Although a given person's survival does not depend on having the right parts for reproduction, we all know that without adequate sexual function human life would be impossible. Moreover, as difficult as it may be for evolutionary biologists to explain the development of the different organ systems and the body's ability to control them to survive within the laws of nature, because of how human reproduction takes place, they must also explain the simultaneous development of both males and females since neither is of any use for survival without the other. Let's look at the structures each sex must have to reproduce and how the body decides which ones to develop.
The word sex comes from the Latin secare which means to separate or divide. Each of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes are separated from each other and placed within gametes called male sperm and female eggs. Human reproduction requires that the 23 chromosomes in the sperm be joined to the 23 chromosomes in the egg to form a new human being. The natural way this takes place is through sexual intercourse. This involves the male depositing sperm from his penis into the female's vagina so they can travel through the cervix into the body of her uterus and one of them can join up with an egg.
To accomplish this task the male is equipped with testes, which produce sperm, and a genital duct system (epididymis, vas deferens, and seminal vesicle) and external genitalia (penis, scrotum, and prostate) to help move the sperm from the testes out of his body. The female is equipped with external genitalia (labia, clitoris, and lower vagina) and a genital duct system (upper vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes) to help guide the sperm toward an egg that has been released from one of her ovaries. The sperm and egg usually meet in one of the fallopian tubes of the uterus where the newly formed one-celled zygote forms a new human life. The zygote soon starts to divide, becoming an embryo which migrates into the body of the uterus and implants in its endometrial lining, allowing it to grow and develop into a newborn baby that exits about nine months later.
For the first several weeks of life the human embryo is asexual because the gonads have not yet declared themselves to be either testes or ovaries. Human embryology teaches that the undifferentiated gonads are destined to become ovaries by default unless acted upon by a molecule called the Testis Determining Factor (TDF). The genetic information needed to produce TDF is located on the Sex Determining Region of the Y chromosome (SRY). So this explains why a male must have a Y chromosome...or does it? Nature can sometimes play tricks and a translocation of the genes that code for the TDF may wind up on the X chromosome instead. This is how it is possible to have an XX male who, due to the TDF being on his X chromosome, forms testes instead of ovaries but who nevertheless is usually sterile and unable to reproduce. By telling the primordial gonads to become testes, the TDF on the SRY is therefore the master switch that makes the body go down the male track rather than the female one. But becoming a male with all the right parts for reproduction involves much more.
The testes produce testosterone, a steroid hormone derived from cholesterol, by using different enzymes encoded on several different somatic chromosomes. Each human embryo begins life with two different undeveloped genital duct systems, the Wolffian ducts and the Mullerian ducts. If the gonads do not become testes, the Wolffian ducts degenerate and disappear and the Mullerian ducts develop into the female genital duct system. However, if the gonads become testes, the testosterone they produce attaches to androgen receptors (encoded on the X chromosome) and directs the Wolffian ducts to develop into the male genital duct system.
However, if the androgen receptor is absent or not working at all this causes a condition called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). In CAIS the testes produce testosterone but, without properly working androgen receptors to respond to it, the Wolffian ducts degenerate anyway leaving no genital duct system. This takes place in about one in 20,000 male births and these people are known as XY females. They will have testes that may migrate into the groin and labia, which if removed, will prove their true original nature. But they will often go undetected, appearing as normal females until they fail to menstruate at the appropriate age when all the other signs of puberty have taken place. It is then that they will be found to not have male or female internal organs, and a vagina that is usually smaller than normal and leads into a blind pouch going nowhere. How can this be? Read on!
On the way to developing into a normal male, in addition to testosterone, the testes also produce Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) which is encoded on the 19th chromosome. AMH attaches to specific AMH receptors (encoded on the 12th chromosome) and instructs the Mullerian duct cells to degenerate and disappear. This is very important for male fertility because if both the Wolffian and Mullerian ducts develop, they physically interfere with each other. This usually results in sterility. It also explains why the XY female with CAIS looks like a normal female but has neither a male nor female genital duct system. Since her Wolffian ducts didn't have working androgen receptors, they degenerated. But her testes also produced AMH which attached to the AMH receptors on her Mullerian ducts and made them degenerate too!
Here again we see that the embryo is destined to become female unless acted upon by specific molecules, in this case, testosterone and AMH, with the help of the androgen and AMH receptors. But there is still more to explain.
The external genitalia develop from the urogenital sinus, swellings, folds, and tubercle. If the gonads do not become testes and produce testosterone, these automatically develop into the female external genitalia. However, for this tissue to become normal male external genitalia requires much more stimulation of the androgen receptor than testosterone can provide. The cells in these tissues use an enzyme, called 5-alpha reductase (encoded on the second chromosome), to convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is a stronger stimulator of the androgen receptor. When DHT attaches to the androgen receptors in these embryonic tissues, it makes them develop into the penis, the scrotum, and the prostate gland. An XY person with a rare genetic disorder called 5-alpha reductase deficiency will have normally functioning testes and a normal male genital duct system, but their external genitalia will often be deformed and ambiguous making them incapable of participating in sexual intercourse and rendering them infertile. Again we see that the human embryo is destined to develop female parts by default or defective male parts unless acted upon by specific molecules, in this case the need for 5-alpha reductase to convert testosterone into DHT to adequately stimulate the androgen receptor.
To reiterate, the human embryo is destined to become female by default if not acted upon by several different chemicals. The TDF, usually on the Y chromosome, is what starts it down the male track by making the primordial gonads become testes; but much more is still needed. The testes use several enzymes encoded on different chromosomes to convert cholesterol into testosterone, which must attach to androgen receptors on the Wolffian ducts to form the male genital duct system. Without testosterone or properly working androgen receptors, the Wolffian ducts degenerate. In addition, to have normal male external genitalia requires a specific enzyme to convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone so it can adequately stimulate the androgen receptors on the urogenital sinus, swellings, folds, and tubercle. If this enzyme is absent or not working right, the result is deformed and ambiguous external genitalia that cannot perform sexual intercourse, while if the androgen receptor is missing the result is female external genitalia. Finally, the testes also produce AMH which binds to AMH receptors on the Müllerian ducts to make them degenerate. If either of these are absent or not functioning properly, it results in the male having both a male and female genital duct system, which renders him infertile.
To paraphrase Stephen Meyer in The Information Enigma,different cell types require different proteins, different proteins require different genetically encoded instructions, and different instructions requires information that all human experience teaches comes from a mind and not material processes. Notwithstanding what it takes to produce properly working female parts, the information needed to make the male parts for reproduction requires the TDF, the enzymes to convert cholesterol into testosterone and testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, the androgen receptor, AMH and the AMH receptor.
The absence of any one of these results in either female parts or sterile male parts -- and the survival of the human race hangs in the balance. Yet at birth and for many years afterward, human beings are incapable of participating in reproduction. What happens to change that? That's what we'll look at next time.
Friday 24 June 2016
Russian authorities continue to frame mischief by law.
RUSSIA: Jehovah's Witnesses face possible liquidation
By Victoria Arnold, Forum 18
If prosecutors proceed with their threat to liquidate the Jehovah's Witness headquarters near St Petersburg, thousands of local congregations across Russia could also face prohibition of their activities and individuals could be vulnerable to criminal charges for expressing their beliefs, Forum 18 notes.
The Jehovah's Witnesses' principal body in Russia is under threat of dissolution as an "extremist" organisation after the deadline in an official warning from the General Prosecutor's Office expired on 10 May, Forum 18 notes. If prosecutors decide to pursue liquidation, thousands of local Jehovah's Witness congregations across Russia could also face prohibition of their activities and individuals could be vulnerable to criminal charges for expressing their beliefs.
If dissolution of the Administrative Centre is pursued, this would be the first instance of a registered, centralised religious organisation with active subdivisions being liquidated for "extremism", Forum 18 notes.
Lawyers have until 10 June to challenge the warning in court, the Administrative Centre told Forum 18 from St Petersburg. Lawyers for the Administrative Centre are planning to lodge a challenge at Tver District Court in Moscow, and told Forum 18 they still hope that the matter will be resolved in their favour.
Forum 18's questions to the General Prosecutor's Office – including whether liquidation of the Administrative Centre would amount to a prohibition on all Jehovah's Witness activity across Russia – had not been answered by the end of the working day in Moscow on 24 May (see below).
"Slanderous accusations"
Jehovah's Witnesses have strongly denied the accusations of extremism. "The slanderous accusations of ‘extremism' against us are simply being used to mask the true religious intolerance of those who disagree with our beliefs," Administrative Centre representative Vasiliy Kalin said on the jw.org website on 27 April. "We are not extremists."
"For Jehovah's Witnesses to be lumped together with extremist groups and for their literature to be listed with works of violent terrorists is an affront to decency and justice," New York-based General Counsel Philip Brumley added in the same article.
The use of "extremism" laws has been the biggest single threat to freedom of religion or belief in Russia for some years. Particular victims of this have been Muslims (including those who read the works of the late Turkish theologian Said Nursi) and Jehovah's Witnesses (see Forum 18's Russia "extremism" survey http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1724).
The Administrative Centre
The Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses of Russia, based on the outskirts of St Petersburg, has been registered as a "centralised religious organisation" since 1999. Jehovah's Witnesses were first officially registered under Soviet law in 1991, but have been present in Russia since the late 19th century.
"Engaging in extremist activity is not permitted"
On 10 March 2016, the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses received the formal warning "that engaging in extremist activity is not permitted", dated 2 March, from Viktor Grin, Deputy General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation. The warning is explicitly predicated on the alleged "extremist" activities of the local communities (and their members) which the Centre oversees and supports.
The warning, seen by Forum 18, instructs the Centre to take "specific organisational and practical measures" within a period of two months in order to prevent further offences under the Extremism Law. It cautions that the Centre will be subject to dissolution if it does not eliminate existing violations or if new evidence of extremism is detected over the following twelve months.
The document does not elaborate on what such "organisational and practical measures" may be or how they will be monitored. Any subsequent extremism-related conviction of an individual or local community may provide grounds for prosecutors to pursue liquidation of the Administrative Centre.
Potential consequences
Forty-seven entities currently appear on the Justice Ministry's list of banned and/or liquidated terrorist and extremist organisations (which is dominated by extreme nationalist groups and includes some Ukrainian political organisations).
Seven of these are former registered religious organisations, which operated only on a local level (such as the Borovsk Muslim community in Tyumen and the Taganrog, Samara and Abinsk Jehovah's Witness congregations).
A further eleven are religious associations which were never officially registered, such as the Muslim missionary movement Tabligh Jamaat and "Nurdzhular", which Muslims in Russia deny even exists – nevertheless, Muslims who read the works of Said Nursi are regularly prosecuted for "continuing its activities" (see F18News 11 April 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2166).
In an article of 27 April on their international website, Jehovah's Witnesses point out that, if liquidated, the Administrative Centre will be closed, it will be added to the federal list of extremist organisations and its property will be turned over to the State.
"Because of their affiliation with the Centre, all religious associations of Jehovah's Witnesses - 406 local religious organizations (legal entities) and over 2,500 congregations – may also face liquidation," Jehovah's Witnesses complain. "As a result, Witnesses throughout Russia could lose their Kingdom Halls (houses of worship)." They also warn that "Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia could find themselves in a scenario in which they are free to believe as they wish but not free to practice their religion with others".
This would, the Office of the General Counsel fears, amount to a ban on all Jehovah's Witness activity in Russia. It told Forum 18 on 23 May that it believes that dissolution of the Administrative Centre would be grounds for liquidation of all registered Jehovah's Witness organisations in the country, although separate legal proceedings would have to be opened against each of them.
Article 9 of the Extremism Law states that "In the event of the rendering by a court of law of a decision on the grounds provided for by the given federal law on the liquidation of a public or a religious association, their regional and other structural subdivisions shall be also liquidated."
When a registered religious organisation is liquidated, it loses its status as a legal entity and concomitant rights such as the ability to own or rent property, employ staff and hold a bank account. Although an unregistered community should legally be able to continue to operate as a religious group, which does not require registration, and meet privately for worship and study, this carries the risk of criminal charges if their organisation was liquidated on grounds of extremism.
Sixteen Jehovah's Witnesses in Taganrog were convicted on 30 November 2015 of "continuing the activities of a banned extremist organisation" (see F18News 3 December 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2128). Rostov Regional Court rejected their appeals on 17 March 2016 and the convictions have now come into force.
"The worst thing is that, after the elimination of a local religious organisation, believers face prosecution simply for reading the Bible," Jehovah's Witness spokesperson Kalin complained in a press release of 12 April.
Communities already under threat
The General Prosecutor's Office warning notes that several Jehovah's Witness communities have already been liquidated, have had liquidation suits opened against them, or have been warned of the possibility of liquidation, all for alleged "extremist" activity. The only specific form of such activity it mentions is the distribution of prohibited religious literature.
These moves – and the increase in prosecutions of Jehovah's Witnesses under Administrative Code Article 20.29 (distribution of extremist materials – see F18News 25 April 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2171) and Article 20.2 ("unapproved" public events – see F18News 18 May 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2179) mark a recent intensification of law enforcement efforts to curtail Jehovah's Witness activity, Forum 18 notes (see F18News 22 March 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2161).
Before 2014, only one Jehovah's Witness congregation (in Taganrog, Rostov Region, in 2009) had been dissolved on charges of "extremist" activity. In 2014, the Samara community was dissolved, followed by the Abinsk community (Krasnodar Region) in March 2015, Tyumen in October 2015, and Belgorod, Stariy Oskol (also in Belgorod Region), and Elista (Republic of Kalmykiya) in February 2016.
Proceedings against the Cherkessk Jehovah's Witnesses were initiated in May 2015 and have been delayed multiple times by other civil cases involving the congregation (see F18News 28 August 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2095).
Prosecutors have also submitted liquidation suits against Jehovah's Witness communities of Arkhangelsk and Oryol on 8 April and 12 May 2016 respectively. No hearing dates have yet been set in Oryol. The next hearing at Arkhangelsk Regional Court is due on 2 June. This is despite the fact that Arkhangelsk Jehovah's Witness leader Aleksandr Parygin applied to the Justice Ministry in October 2015 to have the community dissolved at its own request (see F18News 22 March 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2161).
The Belgorod, Stariy Oskol, and Elista congregations are now awaiting the outcome of appeals to Russia's Supreme Court. Hearings in the first two cases are scheduled for 9 and 16 June respectively. The Elista community's appeal was registered on 22 April and the court has not yet given a hearing date.
The Supreme Court has already overturned the liquidation order with respect to the Tyumen Jehovah's Witnesses. It ruled on 15 April that the evidence presented and the small size of the community "do not give reason to believe that the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses in Tyumen has led to the need to choose the exceptional measure of liquidation of the organisation", based principally on the fact that "The liquidation of a social or religious association or other organisation is an exceptional measure which should be proportionate to the violations permitted by the legal entity and the consequences they provoke. Repeated violation of the law in itself cannot form the basis for a court decision on the liquidation of a legal entity."
According to the written verdict, seen by Forum 18, the Supreme Court also accepted that the Tyumen community had expelled a member found guilty under Administrative Code Article 20.29 and had repeatedly shown its members a list of publications included on the Federal List and acquainted them with the requirements of the Extremism Law.
At least nine more Jehovah's Witness communities have received warnings of "the inadmissibility of extremist activity" from prosecutor's offices since spring 2015, Forum 18 has found. Three of these – Tikhoretsk (Krasnodar), Chapayevsk (Samara), and Shakhty (Rostov) – are in regions which have already seen the liquidation of Jehovah's Witness congregations on grounds of "extremism" (in Abinsk, Samara, and Taganrog respectively).
The other six are in Kaluga, Birobidzhan in the Jewish Autonomous Region, Vilyuchinsk on the Far Eastern Kamchatka peninsula, Teykovo in Ivanovo Region, Stavropol, and Prokhladny in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkariya. Four communities (Tikhoretsk, Teykovo, Chapayevsk, Prokhladny) are so far known to have gone to court to have the warnings recognised as unlawful, all unsuccessfully.
If communities or their members are convicted again (usually within 12 months) under Administrative Code Article 20.29 ("Production or mass distribution of extremist materials"), they risk liquidation proceedings.
The warning sent to the Administrative Centre claims that warnings about extremist activity have also been issued to Jehovah's Witness communities in the Kemerovo and Novosibirsk Regions and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District in Tyumen Region.
Jehovah's Witness literature banned
Over 80 Jehovah's Witness texts, as well as the international jw.org website (in addition to numerous Muslim, several Falun Gong and one Catholic book), have been declared "extremist" and placed on the Justice Ministry's Federal List of Extremist Materials.
Possession of an item on the Federal List carries the risk of a fine or imprisonment for up to 15 days, and confiscation of the banned literature. Jehovah's Witnesses described the inclusion of their publications on the Federal List as a "miscarriage of justice" in a press statement of 12 April.
The Federal List now runs to over 3,500 items, often does not include full bibliographical details, and is irregularly updated. Checking whether a particular item is on the List can be difficult or even impossible (see F18News 27 July 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2084).
Prosecutions under Administrative Code Article 20.29 ("Production or mass distribution of extremist materials") have increased (see F18News 25 April 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2171). The import into Russia of Jehovah's Witness literature (not deemed "extremist") is routinely blocked (see F18News 14 December 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2133). A court in Vyborg is currently considering a request by prosecutors to outlaw the Jehovah's Witness edition of the Bible as an "extremist" text (see F18News 5 May 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2174).
All community dissolutions have followed a similar path, Forum 18 notes. They have involved the discovery of "extremist" literature, charges under Article 20.29, prosecutors' warnings, and allegations of repeat offences, leading to prosecutors seeking liquidation through the courts.
On 15 February 2016, Jehovah's Witnesses stated on their website jw.org that Russia's law enforcement agencies "have increasingly resorted to fabricating evidence to justify charges of extremism against Jehovah's Witnesses", claiming that the "extremist" materials found in their homes and Kingdom Halls are in fact planted by the police (see F18News 2 March 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2154).
General Prosecutor's Office response
On 28 March, the General Prosecutor's Office rejected the Jehovah's Witnesses' request for a meeting to discuss the warning. Since then, the Administrative Centre has received no further communication from prosecutors, spokesperson Ivan Belenko told Forum 18. He added that they complained directly to the General Prosecutor Yury Chaika on 29 April, but have had no reply. Jehovah's Witnesses have also approached the Presidential Administration.
Forum 18 sent a fax to the General Prosecutor's Office in the afternoon of the Moscow working day of 19 May, asking the following questions:
1. What "concrete organisational and practical measures" should the Administrative Centre take to prevent further violations?
2. Could any violation by a local community or member of a community be grounds for the liquidation of the Administrative Centre in the twelve-month period after the warning was issued?
3. If the Administrative Centre is liquidated, will all local religious organisations of Jehovah's Witnesses also be automatically dissolved, or would separate court proceedings be necessary?
4. Would the liquidation of the Administrative Centre amount to a prohibition on all Jehovah's Witness activity on the territory of the Russian Federation?
Forum 18 had received no reply as of the end of the Moscow working day of 24 May. (END)
Psalm94)1O Jehovah, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth.
2Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: Render to the proud their desert.
3Jehovah, how long shall the wicked, How long shall the wicked triumph?
4They prate, they speak arrogantly: All the workers of iniquity boast themselves.
5They break in pieces thy people, O Jehovah, And afflict thy heritage.
6They slay the widow and the sojourner, And murder the fatherless.
7And they say, Jehovah will not see, Neither will the God of Jacob consider.
8Consider, ye brutish among the people; And ye fools, when will ye be wise?
9He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
10He that chastiseth the nations, shall not he correct, Even he that teacheth man knowledge?
11Jehovah knoweth the thoughts of man, That they are vanity.
12Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah, And teachest out of thy law;
13That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, Until the pit be digged for the wicked.
14For Jehovah will not cast off his people, Neither will he forsake his inheritance.
15For judgment shall return unto righteousness; And all the upright in heart shall follow it.
16Who will rise up for me against the evil-doers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
17Unless Jehovah had been my help, My soul had soon dwelt in silence.
18When I said, My foot slippeth; Thy lovingkindness, O Jehovah, held me up.
19In the multitude of my thoughts within me Thy comforts delight my soul.
20Shall the throne of wickedness have fellowship with thee, Which frameth mischief by statute?
21They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, And condemn the innocent blood.
22But Jehovah hath been my high tower, And my God the rock of my refuge.
23And he hath brought upon them their own iniquity, And will cut them off in their own wickedness; Jehovah our God will cut them off.
By Victoria Arnold, Forum 18
If prosecutors proceed with their threat to liquidate the Jehovah's Witness headquarters near St Petersburg, thousands of local congregations across Russia could also face prohibition of their activities and individuals could be vulnerable to criminal charges for expressing their beliefs, Forum 18 notes.
The Jehovah's Witnesses' principal body in Russia is under threat of dissolution as an "extremist" organisation after the deadline in an official warning from the General Prosecutor's Office expired on 10 May, Forum 18 notes. If prosecutors decide to pursue liquidation, thousands of local Jehovah's Witness congregations across Russia could also face prohibition of their activities and individuals could be vulnerable to criminal charges for expressing their beliefs.
If dissolution of the Administrative Centre is pursued, this would be the first instance of a registered, centralised religious organisation with active subdivisions being liquidated for "extremism", Forum 18 notes.
Lawyers have until 10 June to challenge the warning in court, the Administrative Centre told Forum 18 from St Petersburg. Lawyers for the Administrative Centre are planning to lodge a challenge at Tver District Court in Moscow, and told Forum 18 they still hope that the matter will be resolved in their favour.
Forum 18's questions to the General Prosecutor's Office – including whether liquidation of the Administrative Centre would amount to a prohibition on all Jehovah's Witness activity across Russia – had not been answered by the end of the working day in Moscow on 24 May (see below).
"Slanderous accusations"
Jehovah's Witnesses have strongly denied the accusations of extremism. "The slanderous accusations of ‘extremism' against us are simply being used to mask the true religious intolerance of those who disagree with our beliefs," Administrative Centre representative Vasiliy Kalin said on the jw.org website on 27 April. "We are not extremists."
"For Jehovah's Witnesses to be lumped together with extremist groups and for their literature to be listed with works of violent terrorists is an affront to decency and justice," New York-based General Counsel Philip Brumley added in the same article.
The use of "extremism" laws has been the biggest single threat to freedom of religion or belief in Russia for some years. Particular victims of this have been Muslims (including those who read the works of the late Turkish theologian Said Nursi) and Jehovah's Witnesses (see Forum 18's Russia "extremism" survey http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1724).
The Administrative Centre
The Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses of Russia, based on the outskirts of St Petersburg, has been registered as a "centralised religious organisation" since 1999. Jehovah's Witnesses were first officially registered under Soviet law in 1991, but have been present in Russia since the late 19th century.
"Engaging in extremist activity is not permitted"
On 10 March 2016, the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses received the formal warning "that engaging in extremist activity is not permitted", dated 2 March, from Viktor Grin, Deputy General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation. The warning is explicitly predicated on the alleged "extremist" activities of the local communities (and their members) which the Centre oversees and supports.
The warning, seen by Forum 18, instructs the Centre to take "specific organisational and practical measures" within a period of two months in order to prevent further offences under the Extremism Law. It cautions that the Centre will be subject to dissolution if it does not eliminate existing violations or if new evidence of extremism is detected over the following twelve months.
The document does not elaborate on what such "organisational and practical measures" may be or how they will be monitored. Any subsequent extremism-related conviction of an individual or local community may provide grounds for prosecutors to pursue liquidation of the Administrative Centre.
Potential consequences
Forty-seven entities currently appear on the Justice Ministry's list of banned and/or liquidated terrorist and extremist organisations (which is dominated by extreme nationalist groups and includes some Ukrainian political organisations).
Seven of these are former registered religious organisations, which operated only on a local level (such as the Borovsk Muslim community in Tyumen and the Taganrog, Samara and Abinsk Jehovah's Witness congregations).
A further eleven are religious associations which were never officially registered, such as the Muslim missionary movement Tabligh Jamaat and "Nurdzhular", which Muslims in Russia deny even exists – nevertheless, Muslims who read the works of Said Nursi are regularly prosecuted for "continuing its activities" (see F18News 11 April 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2166).
In an article of 27 April on their international website, Jehovah's Witnesses point out that, if liquidated, the Administrative Centre will be closed, it will be added to the federal list of extremist organisations and its property will be turned over to the State.
"Because of their affiliation with the Centre, all religious associations of Jehovah's Witnesses - 406 local religious organizations (legal entities) and over 2,500 congregations – may also face liquidation," Jehovah's Witnesses complain. "As a result, Witnesses throughout Russia could lose their Kingdom Halls (houses of worship)." They also warn that "Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia could find themselves in a scenario in which they are free to believe as they wish but not free to practice their religion with others".
This would, the Office of the General Counsel fears, amount to a ban on all Jehovah's Witness activity in Russia. It told Forum 18 on 23 May that it believes that dissolution of the Administrative Centre would be grounds for liquidation of all registered Jehovah's Witness organisations in the country, although separate legal proceedings would have to be opened against each of them.
Article 9 of the Extremism Law states that "In the event of the rendering by a court of law of a decision on the grounds provided for by the given federal law on the liquidation of a public or a religious association, their regional and other structural subdivisions shall be also liquidated."
When a registered religious organisation is liquidated, it loses its status as a legal entity and concomitant rights such as the ability to own or rent property, employ staff and hold a bank account. Although an unregistered community should legally be able to continue to operate as a religious group, which does not require registration, and meet privately for worship and study, this carries the risk of criminal charges if their organisation was liquidated on grounds of extremism.
Sixteen Jehovah's Witnesses in Taganrog were convicted on 30 November 2015 of "continuing the activities of a banned extremist organisation" (see F18News 3 December 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2128). Rostov Regional Court rejected their appeals on 17 March 2016 and the convictions have now come into force.
"The worst thing is that, after the elimination of a local religious organisation, believers face prosecution simply for reading the Bible," Jehovah's Witness spokesperson Kalin complained in a press release of 12 April.
Communities already under threat
The General Prosecutor's Office warning notes that several Jehovah's Witness communities have already been liquidated, have had liquidation suits opened against them, or have been warned of the possibility of liquidation, all for alleged "extremist" activity. The only specific form of such activity it mentions is the distribution of prohibited religious literature.
These moves – and the increase in prosecutions of Jehovah's Witnesses under Administrative Code Article 20.29 (distribution of extremist materials – see F18News 25 April 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2171) and Article 20.2 ("unapproved" public events – see F18News 18 May 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2179) mark a recent intensification of law enforcement efforts to curtail Jehovah's Witness activity, Forum 18 notes (see F18News 22 March 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2161).
Before 2014, only one Jehovah's Witness congregation (in Taganrog, Rostov Region, in 2009) had been dissolved on charges of "extremist" activity. In 2014, the Samara community was dissolved, followed by the Abinsk community (Krasnodar Region) in March 2015, Tyumen in October 2015, and Belgorod, Stariy Oskol (also in Belgorod Region), and Elista (Republic of Kalmykiya) in February 2016.
Proceedings against the Cherkessk Jehovah's Witnesses were initiated in May 2015 and have been delayed multiple times by other civil cases involving the congregation (see F18News 28 August 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2095).
Prosecutors have also submitted liquidation suits against Jehovah's Witness communities of Arkhangelsk and Oryol on 8 April and 12 May 2016 respectively. No hearing dates have yet been set in Oryol. The next hearing at Arkhangelsk Regional Court is due on 2 June. This is despite the fact that Arkhangelsk Jehovah's Witness leader Aleksandr Parygin applied to the Justice Ministry in October 2015 to have the community dissolved at its own request (see F18News 22 March 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2161).
The Belgorod, Stariy Oskol, and Elista congregations are now awaiting the outcome of appeals to Russia's Supreme Court. Hearings in the first two cases are scheduled for 9 and 16 June respectively. The Elista community's appeal was registered on 22 April and the court has not yet given a hearing date.
The Supreme Court has already overturned the liquidation order with respect to the Tyumen Jehovah's Witnesses. It ruled on 15 April that the evidence presented and the small size of the community "do not give reason to believe that the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses in Tyumen has led to the need to choose the exceptional measure of liquidation of the organisation", based principally on the fact that "The liquidation of a social or religious association or other organisation is an exceptional measure which should be proportionate to the violations permitted by the legal entity and the consequences they provoke. Repeated violation of the law in itself cannot form the basis for a court decision on the liquidation of a legal entity."
According to the written verdict, seen by Forum 18, the Supreme Court also accepted that the Tyumen community had expelled a member found guilty under Administrative Code Article 20.29 and had repeatedly shown its members a list of publications included on the Federal List and acquainted them with the requirements of the Extremism Law.
At least nine more Jehovah's Witness communities have received warnings of "the inadmissibility of extremist activity" from prosecutor's offices since spring 2015, Forum 18 has found. Three of these – Tikhoretsk (Krasnodar), Chapayevsk (Samara), and Shakhty (Rostov) – are in regions which have already seen the liquidation of Jehovah's Witness congregations on grounds of "extremism" (in Abinsk, Samara, and Taganrog respectively).
The other six are in Kaluga, Birobidzhan in the Jewish Autonomous Region, Vilyuchinsk on the Far Eastern Kamchatka peninsula, Teykovo in Ivanovo Region, Stavropol, and Prokhladny in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkariya. Four communities (Tikhoretsk, Teykovo, Chapayevsk, Prokhladny) are so far known to have gone to court to have the warnings recognised as unlawful, all unsuccessfully.
If communities or their members are convicted again (usually within 12 months) under Administrative Code Article 20.29 ("Production or mass distribution of extremist materials"), they risk liquidation proceedings.
The warning sent to the Administrative Centre claims that warnings about extremist activity have also been issued to Jehovah's Witness communities in the Kemerovo and Novosibirsk Regions and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District in Tyumen Region.
Jehovah's Witness literature banned
Over 80 Jehovah's Witness texts, as well as the international jw.org website (in addition to numerous Muslim, several Falun Gong and one Catholic book), have been declared "extremist" and placed on the Justice Ministry's Federal List of Extremist Materials.
Possession of an item on the Federal List carries the risk of a fine or imprisonment for up to 15 days, and confiscation of the banned literature. Jehovah's Witnesses described the inclusion of their publications on the Federal List as a "miscarriage of justice" in a press statement of 12 April.
The Federal List now runs to over 3,500 items, often does not include full bibliographical details, and is irregularly updated. Checking whether a particular item is on the List can be difficult or even impossible (see F18News 27 July 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2084).
Prosecutions under Administrative Code Article 20.29 ("Production or mass distribution of extremist materials") have increased (see F18News 25 April 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2171). The import into Russia of Jehovah's Witness literature (not deemed "extremist") is routinely blocked (see F18News 14 December 2015 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2133). A court in Vyborg is currently considering a request by prosecutors to outlaw the Jehovah's Witness edition of the Bible as an "extremist" text (see F18News 5 May 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2174).
All community dissolutions have followed a similar path, Forum 18 notes. They have involved the discovery of "extremist" literature, charges under Article 20.29, prosecutors' warnings, and allegations of repeat offences, leading to prosecutors seeking liquidation through the courts.
On 15 February 2016, Jehovah's Witnesses stated on their website jw.org that Russia's law enforcement agencies "have increasingly resorted to fabricating evidence to justify charges of extremism against Jehovah's Witnesses", claiming that the "extremist" materials found in their homes and Kingdom Halls are in fact planted by the police (see F18News 2 March 2016 http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2154).
General Prosecutor's Office response
On 28 March, the General Prosecutor's Office rejected the Jehovah's Witnesses' request for a meeting to discuss the warning. Since then, the Administrative Centre has received no further communication from prosecutors, spokesperson Ivan Belenko told Forum 18. He added that they complained directly to the General Prosecutor Yury Chaika on 29 April, but have had no reply. Jehovah's Witnesses have also approached the Presidential Administration.
Forum 18 sent a fax to the General Prosecutor's Office in the afternoon of the Moscow working day of 19 May, asking the following questions:
1. What "concrete organisational and practical measures" should the Administrative Centre take to prevent further violations?
2. Could any violation by a local community or member of a community be grounds for the liquidation of the Administrative Centre in the twelve-month period after the warning was issued?
3. If the Administrative Centre is liquidated, will all local religious organisations of Jehovah's Witnesses also be automatically dissolved, or would separate court proceedings be necessary?
4. Would the liquidation of the Administrative Centre amount to a prohibition on all Jehovah's Witness activity on the territory of the Russian Federation?
Forum 18 had received no reply as of the end of the Moscow working day of 24 May. (END)
Psalm94)1O Jehovah, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth.
2Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: Render to the proud their desert.
3Jehovah, how long shall the wicked, How long shall the wicked triumph?
4They prate, they speak arrogantly: All the workers of iniquity boast themselves.
5They break in pieces thy people, O Jehovah, And afflict thy heritage.
6They slay the widow and the sojourner, And murder the fatherless.
7And they say, Jehovah will not see, Neither will the God of Jacob consider.
8Consider, ye brutish among the people; And ye fools, when will ye be wise?
9He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
10He that chastiseth the nations, shall not he correct, Even he that teacheth man knowledge?
11Jehovah knoweth the thoughts of man, That they are vanity.
12Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah, And teachest out of thy law;
13That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, Until the pit be digged for the wicked.
14For Jehovah will not cast off his people, Neither will he forsake his inheritance.
15For judgment shall return unto righteousness; And all the upright in heart shall follow it.
16Who will rise up for me against the evil-doers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
17Unless Jehovah had been my help, My soul had soon dwelt in silence.
18When I said, My foot slippeth; Thy lovingkindness, O Jehovah, held me up.
19In the multitude of my thoughts within me Thy comforts delight my soul.
20Shall the throne of wickedness have fellowship with thee, Which frameth mischief by statute?
21They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, And condemn the innocent blood.
22But Jehovah hath been my high tower, And my God the rock of my refuge.
23And he hath brought upon them their own iniquity, And will cut them off in their own wickedness; Jehovah our God will cut them off.
The end of the world:A commentary by the Watchtower Society.
When Will the World End?
The Bible’s answer
To know when the end of the world will happen, it is necessary to understand how the Bible uses the term “world.” The Greek word koʹsmos, usually translated “world,” most often refers to the world of humankind, especially the part that is out of harmony with God and his will. (John 15:18, 19; 2 Peter 2:5) At times, koʹsmos refers to the framework of human society.—1 Corinthians 7:31; 1 John 2:15, 16. *
What is “the end of the world”?
The phrase “the end of the world,” which appears in many Bible translations, can also be rendered as “the conclusion of the system of things,” or “the close of the age.” (Matthew 24:3; English Standard Version) It refers, not to the destruction of the earth or of all humanity, but to the end of the framework of human society.—1 John 2:17.
The Bible teaches that “evil men will be done away with” so that good people can enjoy life on earth. (Psalm 37:9-11) This destruction will happen at the “great tribulation,” which culminates in the war of Armageddon.—Matthew 24:21, 22; Revelation 16:14, 16.
When will the world end?
Jesus said: “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36, 42) He added that the timing of the end would be unexpected, “at an hour that you do not think to be it.”—Matthew 24:44.
Even though we cannot know the exact day and hour, Jesus did provide a composite “sign,” or group of events, that would identify the time period leading up to the end of the world. (Matthew 24:3, 7-14) The Bible refers to this period as “the time of the end,” “the end times,” and “the last days.”—Daniel 12:4; God’s Word Bible; 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
Will there be anything left after the end of the world?
Yes. The earth will still be here, for the Bible says that “it will not be moved from its place forever and ever.” (Psalm 104:5) And the earth will be filled with people, just as the Bible promises: “The righteous will possess the earth, and they will live forever on it.” (Psalm 37:29) God will bring about the conditions that he originally purposed:
Paradise.—Isaiah 35:1; Luke 23:43.
Security and prosperity.—Micah 4:4.
Meaningful and satisfying work for all.—Isaiah 65:21-23.
Freedom from disease and aging.—Job 33:25; Isaiah 33:24.
The Bible’s answer
To know when the end of the world will happen, it is necessary to understand how the Bible uses the term “world.” The Greek word koʹsmos, usually translated “world,” most often refers to the world of humankind, especially the part that is out of harmony with God and his will. (John 15:18, 19; 2 Peter 2:5) At times, koʹsmos refers to the framework of human society.—1 Corinthians 7:31; 1 John 2:15, 16. *
What is “the end of the world”?
The phrase “the end of the world,” which appears in many Bible translations, can also be rendered as “the conclusion of the system of things,” or “the close of the age.” (Matthew 24:3; English Standard Version) It refers, not to the destruction of the earth or of all humanity, but to the end of the framework of human society.—1 John 2:17.
The Bible teaches that “evil men will be done away with” so that good people can enjoy life on earth. (Psalm 37:9-11) This destruction will happen at the “great tribulation,” which culminates in the war of Armageddon.—Matthew 24:21, 22; Revelation 16:14, 16.
When will the world end?
Jesus said: “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36, 42) He added that the timing of the end would be unexpected, “at an hour that you do not think to be it.”—Matthew 24:44.
Even though we cannot know the exact day and hour, Jesus did provide a composite “sign,” or group of events, that would identify the time period leading up to the end of the world. (Matthew 24:3, 7-14) The Bible refers to this period as “the time of the end,” “the end times,” and “the last days.”—Daniel 12:4; God’s Word Bible; 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
Will there be anything left after the end of the world?
Yes. The earth will still be here, for the Bible says that “it will not be moved from its place forever and ever.” (Psalm 104:5) And the earth will be filled with people, just as the Bible promises: “The righteous will possess the earth, and they will live forever on it.” (Psalm 37:29) God will bring about the conditions that he originally purposed:
Paradise.—Isaiah 35:1; Luke 23:43.
Security and prosperity.—Micah 4:4.
Meaningful and satisfying work for all.—Isaiah 65:21-23.
Freedom from disease and aging.—Job 33:25; Isaiah 33:24.
On second thoughts about dark matter
Cosmologists should be more skeptical of dark matter
Stuart Clark is an astronomy journalist and the author of several books about space, both non-fiction and fiction, including The Unknown Universe (2008). He writes the blog Across the Universe for the Guardian.
To get computer models to look similar to the Universe around us, cosmologists have assumed that around 96 per cent of matter and energy are in forms that we cannot directly detect. You might think that this would make cosmologists wary of relying on such hypothetical substances. Yet for the majority working today, dark matter and dark energy are every bit as real as the stars and galaxies that we can see.
Such corporate belief might work for business, but it has no place in science. Back in 1620, Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum (The New Method). In his description of how to investigate nature, he cautioned would-be scientists about four ‘idols of the mind’. Namely:
Idola tribus (idols of the tribe) – which occur when people try to feed new facts into their preconceived ideas. ‘The human understanding is like a false mirror,’ Bacon wrote, ‘which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.’
Idola specus (idols of the cave): ‘Everyone… has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light of nature,’ writes Bacon. These individual likes and dislikes cloud judgment.
Idola fori (idols of the marketplace): in the exchange of ideas, Bacon writes, ‘the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding’.
Idola theatri (idols of the theatre): the final idol comes about by blindly following academic dogma and not asking enough real questions about the world. Why theatre? ‘In my judgment,’ writes Bacon, ‘all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.’
Cosmology could well be falling foul of these idols. In the case of dark matter, the unquestioning belief is puzzling because the direct searches for these particles are coming up effectively empty‑handed. Yet observations are routinely interpreted as being the result of dark matter. No other avenues of approach are taken by the vast majority of researchers.
In reality, there are other possible solutions that at least warrant examination and comparison. In certain circumstances they fit the observations better than dark matter can. They usually involve a different approach, which is to alter how the force of gravity works or to relax an assumption about the way we think the Universe works, rather than add new constituents to the Universe.
An alternative to dark matter was offered in 1981, by the physicist Mordehai Milgrom of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He postulated that gravity pulls a little more strongly than Newton’s laws predict at extremely weak levels.
A different approach to dark energy, which is thought to power an acceleration of the Universe, is to dismiss the assumption that matter is distributed evenly throughout space. Then the Universe will naturally change the rate at which it expands.
Yet these ideas are generally sidelined in favour of the status quo. Why?
Cosmology has become too conservative, too unwilling to step outside of the mainstream in the search for answers. While some might see this piece as an attack, it is simply the adoption of a position that I believe is truly scientific. One in which skepticism rules, and prevailing ideas are questioned.
The true gold standard for science is constant self-questioning, constant re‑evaluation, and constant open-mindedness in the search for better explanations. Theories are never ‘true’, even if they fit all known facts. They are merely hypotheses that have been shown to be useful. And they could fall at any moment if new observations come to light that do not fit.
The sobering fact is that either 96 per cent of the Universe is unknown to us or we are completely wrong about the way we think the Universe works. Either way, cosmology is far from finished: we have a lot to work out.
Stuart Clark is an astronomy journalist and the author of several books about space, both non-fiction and fiction, including The Unknown Universe (2008). He writes the blog Across the Universe for the Guardian.
To get computer models to look similar to the Universe around us, cosmologists have assumed that around 96 per cent of matter and energy are in forms that we cannot directly detect. You might think that this would make cosmologists wary of relying on such hypothetical substances. Yet for the majority working today, dark matter and dark energy are every bit as real as the stars and galaxies that we can see.
Such corporate belief might work for business, but it has no place in science. Back in 1620, Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum (The New Method). In his description of how to investigate nature, he cautioned would-be scientists about four ‘idols of the mind’. Namely:
Idola tribus (idols of the tribe) – which occur when people try to feed new facts into their preconceived ideas. ‘The human understanding is like a false mirror,’ Bacon wrote, ‘which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.’
Idola specus (idols of the cave): ‘Everyone… has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light of nature,’ writes Bacon. These individual likes and dislikes cloud judgment.
Idola fori (idols of the marketplace): in the exchange of ideas, Bacon writes, ‘the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding’.
Idola theatri (idols of the theatre): the final idol comes about by blindly following academic dogma and not asking enough real questions about the world. Why theatre? ‘In my judgment,’ writes Bacon, ‘all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.’
Cosmology could well be falling foul of these idols. In the case of dark matter, the unquestioning belief is puzzling because the direct searches for these particles are coming up effectively empty‑handed. Yet observations are routinely interpreted as being the result of dark matter. No other avenues of approach are taken by the vast majority of researchers.
In reality, there are other possible solutions that at least warrant examination and comparison. In certain circumstances they fit the observations better than dark matter can. They usually involve a different approach, which is to alter how the force of gravity works or to relax an assumption about the way we think the Universe works, rather than add new constituents to the Universe.
An alternative to dark matter was offered in 1981, by the physicist Mordehai Milgrom of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He postulated that gravity pulls a little more strongly than Newton’s laws predict at extremely weak levels.
A different approach to dark energy, which is thought to power an acceleration of the Universe, is to dismiss the assumption that matter is distributed evenly throughout space. Then the Universe will naturally change the rate at which it expands.
Yet these ideas are generally sidelined in favour of the status quo. Why?
Cosmology has become too conservative, too unwilling to step outside of the mainstream in the search for answers. While some might see this piece as an attack, it is simply the adoption of a position that I believe is truly scientific. One in which skepticism rules, and prevailing ideas are questioned.
The true gold standard for science is constant self-questioning, constant re‑evaluation, and constant open-mindedness in the search for better explanations. Theories are never ‘true’, even if they fit all known facts. They are merely hypotheses that have been shown to be useful. And they could fall at any moment if new observations come to light that do not fit.
The sobering fact is that either 96 per cent of the Universe is unknown to us or we are completely wrong about the way we think the Universe works. Either way, cosmology is far from finished: we have a lot to work out.
Nature's wireless communicators for design
For Bees, Static Electricity Is Information
Evolution News & Views
Three years ago, we reported on the "shocking" discovery that flowers decorate their petals with negative charges that bumblebees can detect. The patterns of charge are species-specific, as if to tell the positively charged insects to come on in for a treat. At the time, the methods bees use to detect the charges were unknown, but the news created quite a buzz in the media (see National Geographic). Now, the organs of electrical sensing in insects are coming to light.
In a recent open-access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Sutton et al. locate the sensing in the tiny hairs, called filiform hairs, that cover the bumblebee's body. It was known that the hairs respond to motion and sound, and that they are innervated at the base for transmission of information to the brain. The new findings add another function to these multipurpose sensors:
Electroreception in terrestrial animals is poorly understood. In bumblebees, the mechanical response of filiform hairs in the presence of electric fields provides key evidence for electrosensitivity to ecologically relevant electric fields. Mechanosensory hairs in arthropods have been shown to function as fluid flow or sound particle velocity receivers. The present work provides direct evidence for additional, nonexclusive functionality involving electrical Coulomb-force coupling between distant charged objects and mechanosensory hairs. Thus, the sensory mechanism is proposed to rely on electromechanical coupling, whereby many light thin hairs serve the detection of the electrical field surrounding a bumblebee approaching a flower. [Emphasis added.]
The "electromechanical coupling" means that the hairs respond to the presence of static electricity by moving toward or away from one another. That motion among "many light thin hairs" creates patterns in the nerve endings that the bee can use for information on the nectar quality in the flower. Apparently the antennae are less sensitive to electrical movement than the body hairs, for bumblebees at least. Honeybees may make more use of antennal deflections.
If another positively charged pollinator visited recently, the flower will have fewer negative ions due to charge cancellation. It will take a few minutes for the flower to recharge itself. In the meantime, the pollinator can move on to better sources, not wasting time where the nectar has already been taken.
Commenting on this discovery in PNAS, Harold H. Zakon finds it intriguing that insects get information from static "noise." We humans feel static electricity (also called triboelectricity) primarily when we touch a doorknob after scuffing our shoes on the carpet; otherwise we are not aware of it (unless it gets strong enough to make our hair stand on end). That brief shock on the fingertip is noise to us, not information. It's just an epiphenomenon to us, Zakon says. Imagine, though, if sensors on our body hairs detected patterns of charge in a candy store, leading us directly to the best-advertised treats? What if our friends could read and interpret our electrical charge patterns without our having to say a word about where we have been?
Whatever differences may exist between honeybees and bumblebees, Zakon says, "the bigger take-home message of all of these studies is that insects have a triboelectric sense mediated by mechanoreceptors." Note, however, that having hairs that deflect in the presence of static electricity is not enough. The nerves have to know the difference between electrically-induced motions and wind or sound motions. The brain has to be able to interpret the patterns of sensations coming in. Then, the brain has to activate instinctive responses, with muscles and nerves, to make use of the information. Unless the whole system works together, static electricity is useless as a signal.
Most of us have watched bees pollinating flowers all our lives without knowing there's a hidden communication system going on between plant and insect using invisible forces. That's fascinating enough, but the case of bumblebees hints at widespread electrical signaling in the biosphere. Sutton et al. remark, "This finding prompts the possibility that other terrestrial animals use such sensory hairs to detect and respond to electric fields."
What other animals might use static information? Zakon offers some possibilities.
Is there a triboeletric sense in other insects? If accumulation of charge on an insect's body is as widespread as appears likely, is it an epiphenomenon or even a nuisance in some species -- perhaps even suppressed centrally as noise -- but used in others? Have other insect pollinators -- such as wasps, moths, butterflies, flies, and beetles -- also evolved to interact electrically with their flowers? It has been known for over 100 y that charge is held on the hair of mammals and feathers of birds. Similar to bees, pollen may be electrostatically attracted to approaching hummingbirds. Might hummingbirds and other nectarivorous pollinating birds, or perhaps some pollinating mammals such as bats, have evolved a similar triboelectric sense?
We're used to hearing that all kinds of complex systems "have evolved." But how sensible is that when a triboelectric sense requires detectors, nerves, brains, and muscles to utilize an information source? How much less sensible to say they "have evolved" multiple times in unrelated animals as diverse as birds, butterflies, and fish? How did members of the plant kingdom get involved?
A phenomenon is not a "signal" unless it is detected by a creature looking for it, equipped with an appropriate receiver. A signal is not "information" unless a creature can use it for a function. Mars has static electricity, but the only ones who care are humans who sent intelligently designed rovers there to measure it when dust devils passed by. The moon has static electricity, too; it was a nuisance to Apollo astronauts when it made dust cling to everything. It only became "information" when scientists investigated its properties to gain insight into the origin of the lunar regolith, partly to plan for dealing with it in case a lunar base is ever built.
We've pointed to other invisible sources of information used by animals, including the earth's magnetic field. Earlier this month we reported how deer are magnetically equipped; now we can add another mammal: the wart hog. No kidding; scientists from Uppsala University reporting in Mammal Review now say that "wild boars and wart hogs may have an internal compass."
"The fascinating findings add on to a well growing body of evidence for a magnetic sense in mammals. The interesting questions that arise now are how they are able to sense the magnetic field and whether they really use it for navigation" said Dr. Pascal Malkemper, senior author of the Mammal Review study.
In Living Waters, Illustra Media showed sea turtles using the magnetic field for information, salmon using odor molecules for information, and dolphins using sound for information. In each case, the animals are equipped with extremely sophisticated machines to detect, transmit, interpret, and utilize the information. In each case, furthermore, the mechanisms appear irreducibly complex -- incapable of explanation by blind, unguided processes.
Now we can add static electricity to the growing list of information sources utilized by living things. Without well-designed receivers and interpreters, static electricity is a mere epiphenomenon of no functional consequence. In short, it's noise. Only intelligence knows how to extract signal out of noise and use it to get things done.
Evolution News & Views
Three years ago, we reported on the "shocking" discovery that flowers decorate their petals with negative charges that bumblebees can detect. The patterns of charge are species-specific, as if to tell the positively charged insects to come on in for a treat. At the time, the methods bees use to detect the charges were unknown, but the news created quite a buzz in the media (see National Geographic). Now, the organs of electrical sensing in insects are coming to light.
In a recent open-access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Sutton et al. locate the sensing in the tiny hairs, called filiform hairs, that cover the bumblebee's body. It was known that the hairs respond to motion and sound, and that they are innervated at the base for transmission of information to the brain. The new findings add another function to these multipurpose sensors:
Electroreception in terrestrial animals is poorly understood. In bumblebees, the mechanical response of filiform hairs in the presence of electric fields provides key evidence for electrosensitivity to ecologically relevant electric fields. Mechanosensory hairs in arthropods have been shown to function as fluid flow or sound particle velocity receivers. The present work provides direct evidence for additional, nonexclusive functionality involving electrical Coulomb-force coupling between distant charged objects and mechanosensory hairs. Thus, the sensory mechanism is proposed to rely on electromechanical coupling, whereby many light thin hairs serve the detection of the electrical field surrounding a bumblebee approaching a flower. [Emphasis added.]
The "electromechanical coupling" means that the hairs respond to the presence of static electricity by moving toward or away from one another. That motion among "many light thin hairs" creates patterns in the nerve endings that the bee can use for information on the nectar quality in the flower. Apparently the antennae are less sensitive to electrical movement than the body hairs, for bumblebees at least. Honeybees may make more use of antennal deflections.
If another positively charged pollinator visited recently, the flower will have fewer negative ions due to charge cancellation. It will take a few minutes for the flower to recharge itself. In the meantime, the pollinator can move on to better sources, not wasting time where the nectar has already been taken.
Commenting on this discovery in PNAS, Harold H. Zakon finds it intriguing that insects get information from static "noise." We humans feel static electricity (also called triboelectricity) primarily when we touch a doorknob after scuffing our shoes on the carpet; otherwise we are not aware of it (unless it gets strong enough to make our hair stand on end). That brief shock on the fingertip is noise to us, not information. It's just an epiphenomenon to us, Zakon says. Imagine, though, if sensors on our body hairs detected patterns of charge in a candy store, leading us directly to the best-advertised treats? What if our friends could read and interpret our electrical charge patterns without our having to say a word about where we have been?
Whatever differences may exist between honeybees and bumblebees, Zakon says, "the bigger take-home message of all of these studies is that insects have a triboelectric sense mediated by mechanoreceptors." Note, however, that having hairs that deflect in the presence of static electricity is not enough. The nerves have to know the difference between electrically-induced motions and wind or sound motions. The brain has to be able to interpret the patterns of sensations coming in. Then, the brain has to activate instinctive responses, with muscles and nerves, to make use of the information. Unless the whole system works together, static electricity is useless as a signal.
Most of us have watched bees pollinating flowers all our lives without knowing there's a hidden communication system going on between plant and insect using invisible forces. That's fascinating enough, but the case of bumblebees hints at widespread electrical signaling in the biosphere. Sutton et al. remark, "This finding prompts the possibility that other terrestrial animals use such sensory hairs to detect and respond to electric fields."
What other animals might use static information? Zakon offers some possibilities.
Is there a triboeletric sense in other insects? If accumulation of charge on an insect's body is as widespread as appears likely, is it an epiphenomenon or even a nuisance in some species -- perhaps even suppressed centrally as noise -- but used in others? Have other insect pollinators -- such as wasps, moths, butterflies, flies, and beetles -- also evolved to interact electrically with their flowers? It has been known for over 100 y that charge is held on the hair of mammals and feathers of birds. Similar to bees, pollen may be electrostatically attracted to approaching hummingbirds. Might hummingbirds and other nectarivorous pollinating birds, or perhaps some pollinating mammals such as bats, have evolved a similar triboelectric sense?
We're used to hearing that all kinds of complex systems "have evolved." But how sensible is that when a triboelectric sense requires detectors, nerves, brains, and muscles to utilize an information source? How much less sensible to say they "have evolved" multiple times in unrelated animals as diverse as birds, butterflies, and fish? How did members of the plant kingdom get involved?
A phenomenon is not a "signal" unless it is detected by a creature looking for it, equipped with an appropriate receiver. A signal is not "information" unless a creature can use it for a function. Mars has static electricity, but the only ones who care are humans who sent intelligently designed rovers there to measure it when dust devils passed by. The moon has static electricity, too; it was a nuisance to Apollo astronauts when it made dust cling to everything. It only became "information" when scientists investigated its properties to gain insight into the origin of the lunar regolith, partly to plan for dealing with it in case a lunar base is ever built.
We've pointed to other invisible sources of information used by animals, including the earth's magnetic field. Earlier this month we reported how deer are magnetically equipped; now we can add another mammal: the wart hog. No kidding; scientists from Uppsala University reporting in Mammal Review now say that "wild boars and wart hogs may have an internal compass."
"The fascinating findings add on to a well growing body of evidence for a magnetic sense in mammals. The interesting questions that arise now are how they are able to sense the magnetic field and whether they really use it for navigation" said Dr. Pascal Malkemper, senior author of the Mammal Review study.
In Living Waters, Illustra Media showed sea turtles using the magnetic field for information, salmon using odor molecules for information, and dolphins using sound for information. In each case, the animals are equipped with extremely sophisticated machines to detect, transmit, interpret, and utilize the information. In each case, furthermore, the mechanisms appear irreducibly complex -- incapable of explanation by blind, unguided processes.
Now we can add static electricity to the growing list of information sources utilized by living things. Without well-designed receivers and interpreters, static electricity is a mere epiphenomenon of no functional consequence. In short, it's noise. Only intelligence knows how to extract signal out of noise and use it to get things done.
Darwinism Vs.The real world XXXV
The Challenge of Adaptational Packages
William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells
Editor's note: William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, leading figures in the intelligent design movement, are co-authors of The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems. Originally published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, this path-breaking work explores some of the most important arguments for intelligent design in biology. To celebrate the launch of Foundation for Foundation for Thought & Ethics Books as an imprint of Discovery Institute Press, we will be publishing excerpts from the book here at Evolution News. Through July 8, we will also be making the book available for only $10 -- that's more than a 70 percent discount, and it includes both the full-color hardcover and an accompanying CD with additional materials. If you haven't read this classic book, now is your chance! Order now, because this special discount won't last long.
To determine what sorts of genetic changes macroevolution requires, one first needs to be clear on what key feature of biological organisms macroevolution must explain. A biological organism is more than the sum of its individual structures. In discussions of biological evolution, this point is often missed because evolution is thought to proceed by cumulating advantages. But organisms are not just bundles of accumulated advantages. An organism's ability to function successfully requires an entire adaptational package, that is, a set of structures that are carefully coordinated with one another to help the organism make a living. The challenge for macroevolution is to bring about such adapational packages.
An excellent example of an adaptational package is the giraffe. What impresses people most about the giraffe is its long neck. Darwin himself drew attention to the giraffe's neck. In the Origin of Species he wrote:
The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, forelegs, head and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees. It can thus obtain food beyond the reach of the other Ungulata or hoofed animals inhabiting the same country and this must be a great advantage to it....1
The advantage of the giraffe's long neck for "browsing on the higher branches of trees" is, however, not nearly as obvious as Darwin makes out. Consider that the neck of the female giraffe is two feet shorter, on average, than that of the male. If a longer neck were needed solely to reach above the existing forage line, then the females would have soon starved to death and the giraffe would have become extinct.
Darwin was correct when he called the giraffe "beautifully adapted," but he did not have enough information to appreciate the full extent and refinement of the adaptations. Observe some giraffes eating and drinking in the zoo and you will notice that they don't just raise their heads to eat leaves high up in trees but also bend their heads to the ground to eat grass and drink water. Given their long legs, giraffes could be said to need a long neck less to reach up into the trees (which are not the only source of vegetation in many terrains) than to reach the ground to drink water.
The giraffe is an integrated adaptational package whose parts are carefully coordinated with one another. To fit successfully into its environmental niche, the giraffe presumably needed long legs. But in possessing long legs, it also needed a long neck. And to use its long neck, further adaptations were necessary. When a giraffe stands in its normal upright posture, the blood pressure in the neck arteries will be highest at the base of the neck and lowest in the head. The blood pressure generated by the heart must be extremely high to pump blood to the head. This, in turn, requires a very strong heart. But when the giraffe bends its head to the ground it encounters a potentially dangerous situation. By lowering its head between its front legs, it puts a great strain on the blood vessels of the neck and head. The blood pressure together with the weight of the blood in the neck could produce so much pressure in the head that, without safeguards, the blood vessels would burst.
Such safeguards, however, are in place. The giraffe's adaptational package includes a coordinated system of blood pressure control. Pressure sensors along the neck's arteries monitor the blood pressure and can signal activation of other mechanisms to counter any increase in pressure as the giraffe drinks or grazes. Contraction of the artery walls, the ability to shunt arterial blood flow bypassing the brain, and a web of small blood vessels between the arteries and the brain (the rete mirabile, or "marvelous net") all control the blood pressure in the giraffe's head. The giraffe's adaptations do not occur in isolation but presuppose other adaptations that all must be carefully coordinated into a single, highly specialized organism.
In short, the giraffe represents not a mere collection of isolated traits but a package of interrelated traits. It exhibits a top-down design that integrates all its parts into a single functional system. How did such an adaptational package arise? According to neo-Darwinian theory, the giraffe evolved to its present form by the accumulation of individual, random genetic changes that were sifted and preserved piecemeal by natural selection. But how could such a piecemeal process, in which mutation and selection act on the spur of the moment with no view to the future benefit of the organism, bring about an adaptational package, especially when the parts that make up the package are useless, or even detrimental, until the whole package is in place? That's the trouble with integrated packages -- they are package deals that offer no benefit until the entire package is in place.
To be sure, random genetic changes might adequately explain changes in a relatively isolated trait, such as an organism's color. But major changes, such as the evolution of a giraffe from an animal with short legs and short neck, would require an extensive suite of coordinated adaptations. The complex circulatory system of the giraffe must appear at the same time as its long neck or the animal will not survive. If the various elements of the circulatory system appear before the long neck, they are useless or even detrimental. This interdependence of structures strongly suggests a top-down design that is capable of anticipating the total engineering requirements of organisms like the giraffe.
The biological literature is filled with examples of adaptational packages. Some organisms, such as arthropods (a group that includes modern crabs and lobsters), even appeared with their adaptational packages intact during the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion marks the sudden appearance in the fossil record of numerous multicellular animals exhibiting diverse body plans. For most of these animals, evidence of fossil ancestors is completely lacking (with but one or two exceptions, there are no known Precambrian precursors). And yet these organisms arrive fully formed in the fossil record as integrated adaptational packages.
As always, microevolution is not the issue here. Moth populations that over generations shift in color from light to dark or mosquitoes that exhibit resistance to DDT are often cited as examples of evolution by natural selection. But such examples only illustrate small changes in the gene frequency of populations. A shift in the dominant moth coloring requires no new genetic information because the alleles (variant genes) are already present in the population. In contrast, major changes require major coordinated adaptations, which in turn require impressive amounts of new functional and genetic information. When we fully appreciate the informational requirements for the origin of even a modest new biological structure, much less the origin of a major adaptational package, we can see what a tall order it is for blind mechanisms such as mutation and natural selection to account for them.
According to E.J. Ambrose, selection pressure from the environment is too general for the demands of evolution: "The sort of message which the physical or biological environment can transmit to the organism in the way of new information is an extremely simple one, of the yes or no type such as 'Can I find food higher up the hill or not?'"2 Simple information like this, however, even when cumulated over time, is not the tightly integrated information needed to coordinate the numerous changes that must occur to build novel complex biological structures and body types. To evolve novel adaptational packages, populations face an information hurdle.
One way to see this hurdle is in the phenomenon of phylogenetic inertia. Phylogenetic inertia denotes the tendency of populations to maintain an average morphology as well as a limited degree of variability around the population average. How can mutations overcome phylogenetic inertia to evolve new adaptational packages? It's not clear that they can. Chromosome mutation may exchange parts of gene sequences. But there is no evidence that such "new" genes can provide the steady accumulation of novel traits (to say nothing of their coordination) that natural selection needs for Darwinian evolution to be effective. Chromosome mutation merely reshuffles existing genes.
The only known way to introduce genuinely new genetic information into the gene pool is by mutations that alter the nucleotide bases of individual genes. This is different from chromosome mutation, in which sections of DNA are duplicated, inverted, lost, or moved to another place in the DNA molecule. Point mutations do not merely rearrange but fundamentally alter the structure of existing genes. Such mutations typically result from random copying errors of DNA and are intensified through exposure to heat, chemicals, or radiation.
Could chromosome and point mutations working in tandem provide the raw material for macroevolutionary change? As the primary source of evolutionary novelty in the neo-Darwinian theory, mutations have been studied intensively for the past half-century. The fruit fly is a case in point. Its genome is easily manipulated and its short lifespan and reproductive cycle allows scientists to observe and track many generations. As a result, it has been the subject of numerous experiments. By bombarding it with radiation to increase the rate of mutations, scientists now have a pretty clear idea what kind of mutations can occur.
There is no evidence of mutations in fruit flies creating new structures. Mutations merely alter existing structures. For instance, mutations have produced crumpled, oversized, and undersized wings. They have produced double sets of wings (one set of which doesn't work and thus is deleterious to the organism). But they have not created a new kind of wing. Mutations have also created monstrosities, like fruit flies with legs growing where they should have antennae (a condition known as Antennapedia). But even such monstrosities merely rearrange existing structures, albeit in bizarre ways. Nor have mutations transformed the fruit fly into a new kind of insect. Experiments have simply produced variations of fruit flies.
In conclusion, to generate an adaptational package requires not piecemeal change but integrated, systematic change. Moreover, the source of such change must impart massive amounts of new functional information into an organism. Such information, however, gives no evidence of resulting from the interplay of mutation and selection. Indeed, it gives no evidence of being reducible to matter and energy at all.
As Norbert Wiener, one of the founders of information theory, remarked: "Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day."3 Just as the information on a book's printed page is distinct from the ink and paper that make up the page, so the information in biological systems is distinct from its material constituents. What is the source of the information needed to build adaptational packages? As with the information in written messages and engineered systems, the only source known to be capable of generating information such as we see in biological systems is intelligence.
References:
(1) Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 6th edition, Ch. 7.
(2) E.J. Ambrose, Nature and Origin of the Biological World, 140-41.
(3) Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press, 1961), 132.
William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells
Editor's note: William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, leading figures in the intelligent design movement, are co-authors of The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems. Originally published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, this path-breaking work explores some of the most important arguments for intelligent design in biology. To celebrate the launch of Foundation for Foundation for Thought & Ethics Books as an imprint of Discovery Institute Press, we will be publishing excerpts from the book here at Evolution News. Through July 8, we will also be making the book available for only $10 -- that's more than a 70 percent discount, and it includes both the full-color hardcover and an accompanying CD with additional materials. If you haven't read this classic book, now is your chance! Order now, because this special discount won't last long.
To determine what sorts of genetic changes macroevolution requires, one first needs to be clear on what key feature of biological organisms macroevolution must explain. A biological organism is more than the sum of its individual structures. In discussions of biological evolution, this point is often missed because evolution is thought to proceed by cumulating advantages. But organisms are not just bundles of accumulated advantages. An organism's ability to function successfully requires an entire adaptational package, that is, a set of structures that are carefully coordinated with one another to help the organism make a living. The challenge for macroevolution is to bring about such adapational packages.
An excellent example of an adaptational package is the giraffe. What impresses people most about the giraffe is its long neck. Darwin himself drew attention to the giraffe's neck. In the Origin of Species he wrote:
The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, forelegs, head and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees. It can thus obtain food beyond the reach of the other Ungulata or hoofed animals inhabiting the same country and this must be a great advantage to it....1
The advantage of the giraffe's long neck for "browsing on the higher branches of trees" is, however, not nearly as obvious as Darwin makes out. Consider that the neck of the female giraffe is two feet shorter, on average, than that of the male. If a longer neck were needed solely to reach above the existing forage line, then the females would have soon starved to death and the giraffe would have become extinct.
Darwin was correct when he called the giraffe "beautifully adapted," but he did not have enough information to appreciate the full extent and refinement of the adaptations. Observe some giraffes eating and drinking in the zoo and you will notice that they don't just raise their heads to eat leaves high up in trees but also bend their heads to the ground to eat grass and drink water. Given their long legs, giraffes could be said to need a long neck less to reach up into the trees (which are not the only source of vegetation in many terrains) than to reach the ground to drink water.
The giraffe is an integrated adaptational package whose parts are carefully coordinated with one another. To fit successfully into its environmental niche, the giraffe presumably needed long legs. But in possessing long legs, it also needed a long neck. And to use its long neck, further adaptations were necessary. When a giraffe stands in its normal upright posture, the blood pressure in the neck arteries will be highest at the base of the neck and lowest in the head. The blood pressure generated by the heart must be extremely high to pump blood to the head. This, in turn, requires a very strong heart. But when the giraffe bends its head to the ground it encounters a potentially dangerous situation. By lowering its head between its front legs, it puts a great strain on the blood vessels of the neck and head. The blood pressure together with the weight of the blood in the neck could produce so much pressure in the head that, without safeguards, the blood vessels would burst.
Such safeguards, however, are in place. The giraffe's adaptational package includes a coordinated system of blood pressure control. Pressure sensors along the neck's arteries monitor the blood pressure and can signal activation of other mechanisms to counter any increase in pressure as the giraffe drinks or grazes. Contraction of the artery walls, the ability to shunt arterial blood flow bypassing the brain, and a web of small blood vessels between the arteries and the brain (the rete mirabile, or "marvelous net") all control the blood pressure in the giraffe's head. The giraffe's adaptations do not occur in isolation but presuppose other adaptations that all must be carefully coordinated into a single, highly specialized organism.
In short, the giraffe represents not a mere collection of isolated traits but a package of interrelated traits. It exhibits a top-down design that integrates all its parts into a single functional system. How did such an adaptational package arise? According to neo-Darwinian theory, the giraffe evolved to its present form by the accumulation of individual, random genetic changes that were sifted and preserved piecemeal by natural selection. But how could such a piecemeal process, in which mutation and selection act on the spur of the moment with no view to the future benefit of the organism, bring about an adaptational package, especially when the parts that make up the package are useless, or even detrimental, until the whole package is in place? That's the trouble with integrated packages -- they are package deals that offer no benefit until the entire package is in place.
To be sure, random genetic changes might adequately explain changes in a relatively isolated trait, such as an organism's color. But major changes, such as the evolution of a giraffe from an animal with short legs and short neck, would require an extensive suite of coordinated adaptations. The complex circulatory system of the giraffe must appear at the same time as its long neck or the animal will not survive. If the various elements of the circulatory system appear before the long neck, they are useless or even detrimental. This interdependence of structures strongly suggests a top-down design that is capable of anticipating the total engineering requirements of organisms like the giraffe.
The biological literature is filled with examples of adaptational packages. Some organisms, such as arthropods (a group that includes modern crabs and lobsters), even appeared with their adaptational packages intact during the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion marks the sudden appearance in the fossil record of numerous multicellular animals exhibiting diverse body plans. For most of these animals, evidence of fossil ancestors is completely lacking (with but one or two exceptions, there are no known Precambrian precursors). And yet these organisms arrive fully formed in the fossil record as integrated adaptational packages.
As always, microevolution is not the issue here. Moth populations that over generations shift in color from light to dark or mosquitoes that exhibit resistance to DDT are often cited as examples of evolution by natural selection. But such examples only illustrate small changes in the gene frequency of populations. A shift in the dominant moth coloring requires no new genetic information because the alleles (variant genes) are already present in the population. In contrast, major changes require major coordinated adaptations, which in turn require impressive amounts of new functional and genetic information. When we fully appreciate the informational requirements for the origin of even a modest new biological structure, much less the origin of a major adaptational package, we can see what a tall order it is for blind mechanisms such as mutation and natural selection to account for them.
According to E.J. Ambrose, selection pressure from the environment is too general for the demands of evolution: "The sort of message which the physical or biological environment can transmit to the organism in the way of new information is an extremely simple one, of the yes or no type such as 'Can I find food higher up the hill or not?'"2 Simple information like this, however, even when cumulated over time, is not the tightly integrated information needed to coordinate the numerous changes that must occur to build novel complex biological structures and body types. To evolve novel adaptational packages, populations face an information hurdle.
One way to see this hurdle is in the phenomenon of phylogenetic inertia. Phylogenetic inertia denotes the tendency of populations to maintain an average morphology as well as a limited degree of variability around the population average. How can mutations overcome phylogenetic inertia to evolve new adaptational packages? It's not clear that they can. Chromosome mutation may exchange parts of gene sequences. But there is no evidence that such "new" genes can provide the steady accumulation of novel traits (to say nothing of their coordination) that natural selection needs for Darwinian evolution to be effective. Chromosome mutation merely reshuffles existing genes.
The only known way to introduce genuinely new genetic information into the gene pool is by mutations that alter the nucleotide bases of individual genes. This is different from chromosome mutation, in which sections of DNA are duplicated, inverted, lost, or moved to another place in the DNA molecule. Point mutations do not merely rearrange but fundamentally alter the structure of existing genes. Such mutations typically result from random copying errors of DNA and are intensified through exposure to heat, chemicals, or radiation.
Could chromosome and point mutations working in tandem provide the raw material for macroevolutionary change? As the primary source of evolutionary novelty in the neo-Darwinian theory, mutations have been studied intensively for the past half-century. The fruit fly is a case in point. Its genome is easily manipulated and its short lifespan and reproductive cycle allows scientists to observe and track many generations. As a result, it has been the subject of numerous experiments. By bombarding it with radiation to increase the rate of mutations, scientists now have a pretty clear idea what kind of mutations can occur.
There is no evidence of mutations in fruit flies creating new structures. Mutations merely alter existing structures. For instance, mutations have produced crumpled, oversized, and undersized wings. They have produced double sets of wings (one set of which doesn't work and thus is deleterious to the organism). But they have not created a new kind of wing. Mutations have also created monstrosities, like fruit flies with legs growing where they should have antennae (a condition known as Antennapedia). But even such monstrosities merely rearrange existing structures, albeit in bizarre ways. Nor have mutations transformed the fruit fly into a new kind of insect. Experiments have simply produced variations of fruit flies.
In conclusion, to generate an adaptational package requires not piecemeal change but integrated, systematic change. Moreover, the source of such change must impart massive amounts of new functional information into an organism. Such information, however, gives no evidence of resulting from the interplay of mutation and selection. Indeed, it gives no evidence of being reducible to matter and energy at all.
As Norbert Wiener, one of the founders of information theory, remarked: "Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day."3 Just as the information on a book's printed page is distinct from the ink and paper that make up the page, so the information in biological systems is distinct from its material constituents. What is the source of the information needed to build adaptational packages? As with the information in written messages and engineered systems, the only source known to be capable of generating information such as we see in biological systems is intelligence.
References:
(1) Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 6th edition, Ch. 7.
(2) E.J. Ambrose, Nature and Origin of the Biological World, 140-41.
(3) Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press, 1961), 132.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away There was no one?
Fancy Math Can’t Make Aliens Real
An astrophysicist says extraterrestrial civilizations “almost certainly” existed at one time or another. Here’s what’s wrong with his argument.
ROSS ANDERSEN
Last week, The New York Times published an op-ed titled, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens.” As its headline suggests, the piece makes an extraordinary claim. “While we do not know if any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations currently exist in our galaxy,” its author writes, “we now have enough information to conclude that they almost certainly existed at some point in cosmic history.”
That we could know such a thing is not inconceivable. For decades now, a small group of “interstellar archaeologists” has pored over star surveys, looking for evidence of long-dead civilizations, in the form of enormous technological structures. Reading that headline in the Times, I wondered: had one of these astronomers seen something extraordinary?
Alas, I was disappointed.
Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, wrote the essay that appeared in the Times. Frank is a gifted scientist, and a thoughtful science writer. He begins the op-ed with an enthusiastic update on the ongoing exoplanet revolution. I must confess I share his enthusiasm. I suspect that future historians of science will wonder what it was like to live in this moment. A little more than two decades ago, we weren’t sure whether there were any planets outside our solar system. Now we have reason to believe that nearly all stars host planets, and that many of them are rocky and wet like our own. No generation of humans has ever gazed up at night skies so pregnant with possibility.It is precisely this profusion of planets that gives Frank confidence that ours is not the first intelligent civilization. “Given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets,” he tells us, “the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational.” Most of us have heard a version of this argument, late at night, around a campfire: Look at all the stars in the night sky. Is it really possible that all of their planets are sterile, and all of their predecessors, too?
These arguments have their appeal, but it is an appeal to intuition. The simple fact is that no matter how much we wish to live in a universe that teems with life—and many of us wish quite fervently—we haven’t the slightest clue how often it evolves. Indeed, we aren’t even sure how life arose on this planet. We have our just-so stories about lightning strikes and volcanic vents, but no one has come close to duplicating abiogenesis in a lab. Nor do we know whether basic organisms reliably evolve into beings like us.
We can’t extrapolate from our experience on this planet, because it’s only one data point. We could be the only intelligent beings in the universe, or we could be one among trillions, and either way Earth’s natural history would look the exact same. Even if we could draw some crude inferences, the takeaways might not be so reassuring. It took two billion years for simple, single-celled life to spawn our primordial lineage, the eukaryotes. And so far as we can tell, it only happened once. It took another billion years for eukaryotes to bootstrap into complex animal life, and hundreds of millions of years more for the development of language and sophisticated tool-making. And unlike the eye, or bodies with legs—adaptations that have arisen independently on many branches of life’s tree—intelligence of the spaceship-making sort has only emerged once, in all of Earth’s history. It just doesn’t seem like one of evolution’s go-to solutions.Frank compresses each of these important, billions-of-years-in-the-making leaps in evolution into a single “biotechnical” probability, which is meant to capture the likelihood of the whole sequence. For all we know, each step could be a highly contingent cosmic lottery win. Perhaps eukaryotes “usually” take tens of billions of years to evolve, and we lucked into an early outlier on the distribution curve. Perhaps we have been fortunate at every step of the way. Frank’s argument skips over these probabilities. Or rather, it bundles them up into a single, tidy unknown, that he can hammer with a big italicized number:
“What our calculation revealed is that even if this probability [that technological civilization evolves] is assumed to be extremely low, the odds that we are not the first technological civilization are actually high. Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first.”
Absent a clear account of how often we can expect planets to spawn technological civilizations, we don’t have any way to evaluate that “10 billion trillion” number. We certainly don’t have grounds to say that the “odds are high” that some civilization preceded ours, or enough evidence to suggest that skepticism about the possibility “borders on the irrational.”
An astrophysicist says extraterrestrial civilizations “almost certainly” existed at one time or another. Here’s what’s wrong with his argument.
ROSS ANDERSEN
Last week, The New York Times published an op-ed titled, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens.” As its headline suggests, the piece makes an extraordinary claim. “While we do not know if any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations currently exist in our galaxy,” its author writes, “we now have enough information to conclude that they almost certainly existed at some point in cosmic history.”
That we could know such a thing is not inconceivable. For decades now, a small group of “interstellar archaeologists” has pored over star surveys, looking for evidence of long-dead civilizations, in the form of enormous technological structures. Reading that headline in the Times, I wondered: had one of these astronomers seen something extraordinary?
Alas, I was disappointed.
Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, wrote the essay that appeared in the Times. Frank is a gifted scientist, and a thoughtful science writer. He begins the op-ed with an enthusiastic update on the ongoing exoplanet revolution. I must confess I share his enthusiasm. I suspect that future historians of science will wonder what it was like to live in this moment. A little more than two decades ago, we weren’t sure whether there were any planets outside our solar system. Now we have reason to believe that nearly all stars host planets, and that many of them are rocky and wet like our own. No generation of humans has ever gazed up at night skies so pregnant with possibility.It is precisely this profusion of planets that gives Frank confidence that ours is not the first intelligent civilization. “Given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets,” he tells us, “the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational.” Most of us have heard a version of this argument, late at night, around a campfire: Look at all the stars in the night sky. Is it really possible that all of their planets are sterile, and all of their predecessors, too?
These arguments have their appeal, but it is an appeal to intuition. The simple fact is that no matter how much we wish to live in a universe that teems with life—and many of us wish quite fervently—we haven’t the slightest clue how often it evolves. Indeed, we aren’t even sure how life arose on this planet. We have our just-so stories about lightning strikes and volcanic vents, but no one has come close to duplicating abiogenesis in a lab. Nor do we know whether basic organisms reliably evolve into beings like us.
We can’t extrapolate from our experience on this planet, because it’s only one data point. We could be the only intelligent beings in the universe, or we could be one among trillions, and either way Earth’s natural history would look the exact same. Even if we could draw some crude inferences, the takeaways might not be so reassuring. It took two billion years for simple, single-celled life to spawn our primordial lineage, the eukaryotes. And so far as we can tell, it only happened once. It took another billion years for eukaryotes to bootstrap into complex animal life, and hundreds of millions of years more for the development of language and sophisticated tool-making. And unlike the eye, or bodies with legs—adaptations that have arisen independently on many branches of life’s tree—intelligence of the spaceship-making sort has only emerged once, in all of Earth’s history. It just doesn’t seem like one of evolution’s go-to solutions.Frank compresses each of these important, billions-of-years-in-the-making leaps in evolution into a single “biotechnical” probability, which is meant to capture the likelihood of the whole sequence. For all we know, each step could be a highly contingent cosmic lottery win. Perhaps eukaryotes “usually” take tens of billions of years to evolve, and we lucked into an early outlier on the distribution curve. Perhaps we have been fortunate at every step of the way. Frank’s argument skips over these probabilities. Or rather, it bundles them up into a single, tidy unknown, that he can hammer with a big italicized number:
“What our calculation revealed is that even if this probability [that technological civilization evolves] is assumed to be extremely low, the odds that we are not the first technological civilization are actually high. Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first.”
Absent a clear account of how often we can expect planets to spawn technological civilizations, we don’t have any way to evaluate that “10 billion trillion” number. We certainly don’t have grounds to say that the “odds are high” that some civilization preceded ours, or enough evidence to suggest that skepticism about the possibility “borders on the irrational.”
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