"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war". John Adams
Friday 14 October 2016
On Ruse V. Nagel and strawman?
Roasting a Straw Man: Evolutionist Michael Ruse on Thomas Nagel
Jonathan Witt
If you're driving along and notice that a bright philosopher has just mangled beyond recognition the argument of another bright philosopher, a tap on the brakes and a bit of careful rubbernecking is in order.
If you then notice that the one who has done the mangling is Darwinist Michael Ruse, and what he mangled is an argument by eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel against Darwinism, then it's worth pulling over and taking an even closer look.
And if upon doing this you find that Ruse has not only badly mischaracterized Nagel's argument but is pouring lime powder on it beside an open grave, then it's time to get out of your car and call out something like, Hey buddy, cut that out. You don't have to do this. There's a better way.
The illustration does not exaggerate. Let's lay Ruse's characterization and dismissal of Nagel's argument beside Nagel's actual argument, then you decide.
The Ruse
The mangling occurred earlier this week at an Oxford University Press blog ("Darwinism as religion: what literature tells us about evolution"). And by the way, Ruse and Nagel are both atheists. Here's the key passage from Ruse:
Just as we have the proselytizing Darwinian New Atheists, so we have today a vocal anti-Darwinian party, consisting somewhat surprising not only of the evangelical Christians of the American South but of some of today's most eminent atheist philosophers, notably Thomas Nagel, OUP author of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (2012). As his subtitle reveals, Nagel's worry is less about the science and more about its supposed religious-cum-metaphysical implications, namely that Darwin plunges us into a hateful world without value and meaning.
Ruse makes Nagel sound a bit like someone who has just learned that, Gosh, scientists are telling us the earth actually revolves around the sun instead of the other way around, and goodness, mightn't that make us feel rather marginal and inconsequential? Do we really want to go there?
Now, maybe Nagel, following Matthew Arnold, does worry that, thanks to Darwinism, our world
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
But whether or not Nagel carries this worry, it isn't his argument against Darwinism, never mind Ruse's suggestion.
Nagel's Actual Argument Against Darwinism
Nagel's case against Darwinism is complex and nuanced. But it has at least two key parts. I'll only mention the first one, and do a bit more unpacking of the second one, since the second one comes closer to Ruse's straw-man characterization.
First, Nagel argues that modern evolutionary biology, a physical theory, cannot account for consciousness. Since evolutionary theory purports to explain the origin of humans, the theory's inability to explain human consciousness is a major strike against it. One finds this laid out plainly in the introduction to Mind and Cosmos.
Ruse is free to agree or disagree with that argument, but he shouldn't mischaracterize it as only the worry that "Darwin plunges us into a hateful world without value and meaning."
And here is a second pillar of Nagel's argument, in his own words, from Mind and Cosmos: "Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself."
Nagel makes the same point at a bit more length on the same page ofthe book:
The evolutionary story leaves the authority of reason in a much weaker position. ... Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn't take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends. (28)
Darwinian evolution might have selected for true and reliable reasoning about the natural world around us, but it might also have selected for all sorts of other ways of arriving at conclusions -- maybe a mix of several -- and who's to say which has predominated? So, for instance, perhaps natural selection opted for a line of primates with an ability to form convictions more readily than the evidence allowed, since in "nature red and tooth and claw," sometimes the worst decision is the delayed decision.
If Darwinism undermines the ground of reason, Nagel asks, what ground do we have to stand on to insist that reason reliably guides us to the supposed truth of Darwinism?
Darwin Anticipates Nagel
We have oceans of evidence for the human tendency to irrationality. And Darwin made extra room for irrational animal behavior through his complementary theory of sexual selection. So the concern that Darwinian evolution saddled humanity with profoundly unreliable faculties for reasoning about biological origins is hardly an idle worry.
Darwin himself didn't consider it an idle concern. John West points this out in a review of Mind and Cosmos:
This objection is not new. Indeed, it reaches back to Charles Darwin himself. Darwin published a lengthy tome, The Descent of Man, purporting to prove that his theory of unguided evolution could explain basically everything, including man's mind and morals. Yet in his private writings, he expressed a lingering reservation over the impact of his theory on the trustworthiness of reason. In a letter written in 1881, he disclosed that "with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
Remember, though: Nagel isn't arguing that we shouldn't trust our natural faculties. He's arguing that since we are properly confident of our natural faculties (even if they aren't foolproof and we are free to indulge in irrational behavior), then the fact that Darwinism logically entails that we can't trust our natural faculties is itself a strike against Darwinism.
Here's Nagel on page 29 of Mind and Cosmos:
The failure of evolutionary naturalism to provide a form of transcendent self-understanding that does not undermine our confidence in our natural faculties should not lead us to abandon the search for transcendent self-understanding. There is no reason to allow our confidence in the objective truth of our moral beliefs, or for that matter our confidence in the objective truth of our mathematical or scientific reasoning, to depend on whether this is consistent with the assumption that those capacities are the product of natural selection. Given how speculative evolutionary explanations of human mental faculties are, they seem too weak a ground for putting into question the most basic forms of thought. Our confidence in truth of propositions that seem evident on reflection should not be shaken so easily (and, I would add, cannot be shaken on these sorts of grounds without a kind of false consciousness).
He turns the line of his argument squarely against Darwinism:
It seems reasonable to run the test equally in the opposite direction: namely, to evaluate hypotheses about the universe and how we have come into existence by reference to ordinary judgments in which we have very high confidence. It is reasonable to believe that the truth about what kind of beings we are and how the universe produced us is compatible with that confidence. After all, everything we believe, even the most-far-reaching cosmological theories, has to be based ultimately on common sense, and on what is plainly undeniable.
So Why Did the Intelligent Ruse Mangle a Skeptical Nagel?
That's Nagel's argument in a nutshell. And he gives us what I've conveyed above all in the book's introduction and the chapter immediately following the introduction. In other words, Ruse didn't need to read far into the book to get this.
But if Ruse did get it, he didn't give it to us in his OUP post. Instead he gave us an unrecognizable mischaracterization of Nagel's critique.
Three possibilities. (1) Ruse isn't smart enough to understand Nagel's argument. We can reject that. Ruse is an intelligent man. (2) Ruse didn't read far enough into the book and relied on someone else for a summary of Nagel's position. Perhaps, but the argument is so central to Nagel's book that this explanation seems unlikely. Or (3) Ruse willfully misrepresented Nagel's core argument because it was so much easier to dispense with an attack on Darwinism from a distinguished philosopher and fellow atheist simply by mischaracterizing the attack.
I don't mean that Ruse necessarily did this consciously. It might have been wishful thinking working hand-in-glove with this or that pressing publication deadline. Who knows? The good news is that Ruse's philosophical position on that human enterprise called scientific reasoning allows plenty of room for the possibility of irrational behavior on the stage of science, so Ruse should be well positioned dispositionally to consider why he behaved as he did.
Jonathan Witt
If you're driving along and notice that a bright philosopher has just mangled beyond recognition the argument of another bright philosopher, a tap on the brakes and a bit of careful rubbernecking is in order.
If you then notice that the one who has done the mangling is Darwinist Michael Ruse, and what he mangled is an argument by eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel against Darwinism, then it's worth pulling over and taking an even closer look.
And if upon doing this you find that Ruse has not only badly mischaracterized Nagel's argument but is pouring lime powder on it beside an open grave, then it's time to get out of your car and call out something like, Hey buddy, cut that out. You don't have to do this. There's a better way.
The illustration does not exaggerate. Let's lay Ruse's characterization and dismissal of Nagel's argument beside Nagel's actual argument, then you decide.
The Ruse
The mangling occurred earlier this week at an Oxford University Press blog ("Darwinism as religion: what literature tells us about evolution"). And by the way, Ruse and Nagel are both atheists. Here's the key passage from Ruse:
Just as we have the proselytizing Darwinian New Atheists, so we have today a vocal anti-Darwinian party, consisting somewhat surprising not only of the evangelical Christians of the American South but of some of today's most eminent atheist philosophers, notably Thomas Nagel, OUP author of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (2012). As his subtitle reveals, Nagel's worry is less about the science and more about its supposed religious-cum-metaphysical implications, namely that Darwin plunges us into a hateful world without value and meaning.
Ruse makes Nagel sound a bit like someone who has just learned that, Gosh, scientists are telling us the earth actually revolves around the sun instead of the other way around, and goodness, mightn't that make us feel rather marginal and inconsequential? Do we really want to go there?
Now, maybe Nagel, following Matthew Arnold, does worry that, thanks to Darwinism, our world
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
But whether or not Nagel carries this worry, it isn't his argument against Darwinism, never mind Ruse's suggestion.
Nagel's Actual Argument Against Darwinism
Nagel's case against Darwinism is complex and nuanced. But it has at least two key parts. I'll only mention the first one, and do a bit more unpacking of the second one, since the second one comes closer to Ruse's straw-man characterization.
First, Nagel argues that modern evolutionary biology, a physical theory, cannot account for consciousness. Since evolutionary theory purports to explain the origin of humans, the theory's inability to explain human consciousness is a major strike against it. One finds this laid out plainly in the introduction to Mind and Cosmos.
Ruse is free to agree or disagree with that argument, but he shouldn't mischaracterize it as only the worry that "Darwin plunges us into a hateful world without value and meaning."
And here is a second pillar of Nagel's argument, in his own words, from Mind and Cosmos: "Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself."
Nagel makes the same point at a bit more length on the same page ofthe book:
The evolutionary story leaves the authority of reason in a much weaker position. ... Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn't take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends. (28)
Darwinian evolution might have selected for true and reliable reasoning about the natural world around us, but it might also have selected for all sorts of other ways of arriving at conclusions -- maybe a mix of several -- and who's to say which has predominated? So, for instance, perhaps natural selection opted for a line of primates with an ability to form convictions more readily than the evidence allowed, since in "nature red and tooth and claw," sometimes the worst decision is the delayed decision.
If Darwinism undermines the ground of reason, Nagel asks, what ground do we have to stand on to insist that reason reliably guides us to the supposed truth of Darwinism?
Darwin Anticipates Nagel
We have oceans of evidence for the human tendency to irrationality. And Darwin made extra room for irrational animal behavior through his complementary theory of sexual selection. So the concern that Darwinian evolution saddled humanity with profoundly unreliable faculties for reasoning about biological origins is hardly an idle worry.
Darwin himself didn't consider it an idle concern. John West points this out in a review of Mind and Cosmos:
This objection is not new. Indeed, it reaches back to Charles Darwin himself. Darwin published a lengthy tome, The Descent of Man, purporting to prove that his theory of unguided evolution could explain basically everything, including man's mind and morals. Yet in his private writings, he expressed a lingering reservation over the impact of his theory on the trustworthiness of reason. In a letter written in 1881, he disclosed that "with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
Remember, though: Nagel isn't arguing that we shouldn't trust our natural faculties. He's arguing that since we are properly confident of our natural faculties (even if they aren't foolproof and we are free to indulge in irrational behavior), then the fact that Darwinism logically entails that we can't trust our natural faculties is itself a strike against Darwinism.
Here's Nagel on page 29 of Mind and Cosmos:
The failure of evolutionary naturalism to provide a form of transcendent self-understanding that does not undermine our confidence in our natural faculties should not lead us to abandon the search for transcendent self-understanding. There is no reason to allow our confidence in the objective truth of our moral beliefs, or for that matter our confidence in the objective truth of our mathematical or scientific reasoning, to depend on whether this is consistent with the assumption that those capacities are the product of natural selection. Given how speculative evolutionary explanations of human mental faculties are, they seem too weak a ground for putting into question the most basic forms of thought. Our confidence in truth of propositions that seem evident on reflection should not be shaken so easily (and, I would add, cannot be shaken on these sorts of grounds without a kind of false consciousness).
He turns the line of his argument squarely against Darwinism:
It seems reasonable to run the test equally in the opposite direction: namely, to evaluate hypotheses about the universe and how we have come into existence by reference to ordinary judgments in which we have very high confidence. It is reasonable to believe that the truth about what kind of beings we are and how the universe produced us is compatible with that confidence. After all, everything we believe, even the most-far-reaching cosmological theories, has to be based ultimately on common sense, and on what is plainly undeniable.
So Why Did the Intelligent Ruse Mangle a Skeptical Nagel?
That's Nagel's argument in a nutshell. And he gives us what I've conveyed above all in the book's introduction and the chapter immediately following the introduction. In other words, Ruse didn't need to read far into the book to get this.
But if Ruse did get it, he didn't give it to us in his OUP post. Instead he gave us an unrecognizable mischaracterization of Nagel's critique.
Three possibilities. (1) Ruse isn't smart enough to understand Nagel's argument. We can reject that. Ruse is an intelligent man. (2) Ruse didn't read far enough into the book and relied on someone else for a summary of Nagel's position. Perhaps, but the argument is so central to Nagel's book that this explanation seems unlikely. Or (3) Ruse willfully misrepresented Nagel's core argument because it was so much easier to dispense with an attack on Darwinism from a distinguished philosopher and fellow atheist simply by mischaracterizing the attack.
I don't mean that Ruse necessarily did this consciously. It might have been wishful thinking working hand-in-glove with this or that pressing publication deadline. Who knows? The good news is that Ruse's philosophical position on that human enterprise called scientific reasoning allows plenty of room for the possibility of irrational behavior on the stage of science, so Ruse should be well positioned dispositionally to consider why he behaved as he did.
Thursday 13 October 2016
Eels vs. Darwin
Eel Migration Comes to Light
Evolution News & Views
In his new book Evolution:Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis Institute biologist Michael Denton gives example after example of living things -- microbes, animals, and plants -- whose traits could not have arisen by a Darwinian process. He describes one of the most bizarre of all, a fish whose life cycle and migration has challenged biologists for over a century: the European freshwater eel. Inhabiting most of the rivers of Europe and the British Isles, the eel undergoes radical metamorphoses, transforming from transparent, flat larvae to cylindrical "glass eels" and then again to yellow eels and, finally, silver eels that migrate to the Sargasso Sea to mate.
During these transitions, digestive and sex organs move about the anatomy. Early scientists were not even sure they were the same species. Individuals can apparently switch sexes depending on the environment, spending some time as hermaphrodites. Denton tells how young Sigmund Freud became baffled trying to find the gonads on an eel. They must develop later in the life cycle, Freud concluded before he abandoned biology for his more famous work in psychology.
"Their life cycle is no less baroque than their sexual development," Denton continues. These vulnerable prey fish manage somehow to swim thousands of kilometers from their freshwater habitats out into the salty ocean to the Sargasso Sea, where they breed. Yet to this day, "no one has observed their mating and spawning of freshwater eels in the wild."
Denton's readers may be gratified to hear that scientists have, for the first time, tracked the migration routes of some of the eels using geolocators. That's bound to be interesting. You may remember the geolocators attached to the feet of Arctic terns in Illustra's film Flight: The Genius of Birds, but how does one fasten a tracking device to an eel, the veritable icon of slipperiness? The authors of an open-access paper in Science Advances used some clever intelligent design for this challenge.
Before tagging, eels were anesthetized using metomidate [d1-1-(1-phenylethyl)-5-(metoxycarbonyl) imidazole hydrochloride] at the concentration of 40 mg/liter. Eels tagged in the Mediterranean were anesthetized with Aqui-S (Aqua-S) at a concentration of 600 mg/liter. Fish were measured and weighed, and, where possible, their fat content was measured using a Distell Fatmeter .... Surgical implantation of i-DSTs was achieved by pushing the tags through a small (~1 cm) incision into the body cavity from the ventral surface. After tag insertion, the incision was closed with two independent single sutures and dusted with Cicatrin antibiotic. [Emphasis added.]
One cannot be sure that any animal will behave normally after radical surgery like this, but the multi-national European team is pretty confident it didn't affect the eels too much. The tags consisted of external PSATs (pop-up satellite archival tags) and DSTs (data storage tags). Though not capable of continuous data recording, they monitored position, temperature and pressure every 2 minutes, and transmitted the data to low-earth orbit Argos satellites at set intervals or if the tag became detached. Considering that many of the 707 eels tagged succumbed to predators, it's remarkable that over 80 of them collected enough data to reconstruct their migratory paths. Here were some of the key findings:
The eels did not make a beeline for the Sargasso Sea. Instead, they tended to congregate near the Azores islands, and then head west. Even so, there was variability depending on the release location.
Not all the eels swam at the same speed. Even though tests in artificial tanks show they can swim at 0.7 body lengths per second for 173 days, individual speeds varied from 3 to 47 kilometers per day, probably because of factors like currents or predator abundances.
Remarkably, the eels dive deep (as deep as 1000 m) during the day, and rise to near the surface at night. This probably helps them avoid predators, but it also exposes them to radically different lighting conditions, pressures and temperatures -- sometimes as low as the freezing point of water. It also adds considerable distance to their overall travel.
The authors avoided any mention of evolution. We can infer, however, that these creatures are even better designed than previously known. They don't just drift with prevailing currents. Like sea turtles and salmon, they know where they need to go and will battle currents to get there, even if it requires taking a roundabout path.
Historically, migration routes to the spawning area have been assumed to be "as the crow flies" from escapement to the Sargasso Sea...; however, as we have shown, migration routes were not simply error-free great-circle routes (that is, the shortest possible route to the Sargasso Sea from the departure points). Instead, many of the routes were in the reverse direction of the northern part of the subtropical gyre in the North Atlantic Ocean, which is consistent with the hypothesis that eels follow olfactory cues originating in the spawning area or that eels navigate using oceanic cues imprinted or learned during the leptocephalus [juvenile] phase. However, our reconstructions showed that the routes taken by eels contain meanders or deviations from a simple point-to-point migration along the shortest possible route. These meanderings are possibly related to entrapment within eddies or navigational responses to other hydrographic or bathymetric features [exemplified by leatherback turtle behavior in contrast to the "perfect" migration assumed in modeling studies].
Surely "olfactory cues" would be diluted to nothingness so far from the destination. How do they do it? Are eels equipped with magnetosensing, like salmon, sea turtles and Monarch butterflies? The authors don't elaborate, but eels must engage multiple sensory modalities to navigate, especially when swimming in the dark at night. And like sea turtles, their "map" is inherited at birth, so that tiny juveniles 5mm long born in the Sargasso Sea know where their native stream is in Europe, and the adults that develop from them will be able to find the Sargasso Sea years later.
These new findings pile on problems for functionalist explanations. Neo-Darwinism would predict bare-minimum adaptation sufficient for survival. Travelling 5,000 to 10,000 km in open sea, rife with predators, makes no sense in evolutionary theory. Undergoing major morphological changes makes no sense, either. Evolution is indeed still a theory in crisis.
More Crises in Darwinian Fish Stories
Elizabeth Pennisi has more bad news for evolutionists. Writing for Science, she says, "Fossil fishes challenge 'urban legend' of evolution." What urban legend does she speak of? It's a favorite myth in Darwinian theory: the idea that gene duplication frees up a spare copy to evolve new innovations. Her fish story involves the most diverse group of vertebrates in the world.
Imagine a half-ton tuna laid out on a dock next to a seahorse, a minnow, and a moray eel. That's just a snapshot of the astonishing diversity found in the group of fishes called teleosts, or ray-finned fish, which today have 30,000 species -- more than all living mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. For more than a decade, many researchers have assumed that teleosts' dizzying array of body types evolved because their immediate ancestor somehow duplicated its entire genome, leaving whole sets of genes free to take on other functions.
Now, an examination of the fish fossil record challenges that view. Despite duplicating their genome about 160 million years ago, teleost fish hewed to a few conventional body types for their first 150 million years. Meanwhile, the holostean fishes, a related group with genomes that never underwent a doubling, evolved a stunning diversity of body plans. The work "demonstrates beautifully how necessary it is to look at the fossil record when testing hypotheses about ... largescale evolutionary changes," says Robert Sansom, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
Pennisi's lesson is clear. How many times have lazily accepted assumptions blinded scientists from the truth? You have to look at the data. You have to test theories with observations.
One can get an idea of the trajectory of a scientific paradigm by watching how rapidly anomalies accumulate. Evolution is more a theory in crisis than Denton's first book was published in 1985. These entries show it has gained more crises since his second book was published earlier this year. Things do not look good for Darwinism. There's an alternative position that doesn't have these problems. Its evidence is growing year by year. It's called intelligent design.
Evolution News & Views
In his new book Evolution:Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis Institute biologist Michael Denton gives example after example of living things -- microbes, animals, and plants -- whose traits could not have arisen by a Darwinian process. He describes one of the most bizarre of all, a fish whose life cycle and migration has challenged biologists for over a century: the European freshwater eel. Inhabiting most of the rivers of Europe and the British Isles, the eel undergoes radical metamorphoses, transforming from transparent, flat larvae to cylindrical "glass eels" and then again to yellow eels and, finally, silver eels that migrate to the Sargasso Sea to mate.
During these transitions, digestive and sex organs move about the anatomy. Early scientists were not even sure they were the same species. Individuals can apparently switch sexes depending on the environment, spending some time as hermaphrodites. Denton tells how young Sigmund Freud became baffled trying to find the gonads on an eel. They must develop later in the life cycle, Freud concluded before he abandoned biology for his more famous work in psychology.
"Their life cycle is no less baroque than their sexual development," Denton continues. These vulnerable prey fish manage somehow to swim thousands of kilometers from their freshwater habitats out into the salty ocean to the Sargasso Sea, where they breed. Yet to this day, "no one has observed their mating and spawning of freshwater eels in the wild."
Denton's readers may be gratified to hear that scientists have, for the first time, tracked the migration routes of some of the eels using geolocators. That's bound to be interesting. You may remember the geolocators attached to the feet of Arctic terns in Illustra's film Flight: The Genius of Birds, but how does one fasten a tracking device to an eel, the veritable icon of slipperiness? The authors of an open-access paper in Science Advances used some clever intelligent design for this challenge.
Before tagging, eels were anesthetized using metomidate [d1-1-(1-phenylethyl)-5-(metoxycarbonyl) imidazole hydrochloride] at the concentration of 40 mg/liter. Eels tagged in the Mediterranean were anesthetized with Aqui-S (Aqua-S) at a concentration of 600 mg/liter. Fish were measured and weighed, and, where possible, their fat content was measured using a Distell Fatmeter .... Surgical implantation of i-DSTs was achieved by pushing the tags through a small (~1 cm) incision into the body cavity from the ventral surface. After tag insertion, the incision was closed with two independent single sutures and dusted with Cicatrin antibiotic. [Emphasis added.]
One cannot be sure that any animal will behave normally after radical surgery like this, but the multi-national European team is pretty confident it didn't affect the eels too much. The tags consisted of external PSATs (pop-up satellite archival tags) and DSTs (data storage tags). Though not capable of continuous data recording, they monitored position, temperature and pressure every 2 minutes, and transmitted the data to low-earth orbit Argos satellites at set intervals or if the tag became detached. Considering that many of the 707 eels tagged succumbed to predators, it's remarkable that over 80 of them collected enough data to reconstruct their migratory paths. Here were some of the key findings:
The eels did not make a beeline for the Sargasso Sea. Instead, they tended to congregate near the Azores islands, and then head west. Even so, there was variability depending on the release location.
Not all the eels swam at the same speed. Even though tests in artificial tanks show they can swim at 0.7 body lengths per second for 173 days, individual speeds varied from 3 to 47 kilometers per day, probably because of factors like currents or predator abundances.
Remarkably, the eels dive deep (as deep as 1000 m) during the day, and rise to near the surface at night. This probably helps them avoid predators, but it also exposes them to radically different lighting conditions, pressures and temperatures -- sometimes as low as the freezing point of water. It also adds considerable distance to their overall travel.
The authors avoided any mention of evolution. We can infer, however, that these creatures are even better designed than previously known. They don't just drift with prevailing currents. Like sea turtles and salmon, they know where they need to go and will battle currents to get there, even if it requires taking a roundabout path.
Historically, migration routes to the spawning area have been assumed to be "as the crow flies" from escapement to the Sargasso Sea...; however, as we have shown, migration routes were not simply error-free great-circle routes (that is, the shortest possible route to the Sargasso Sea from the departure points). Instead, many of the routes were in the reverse direction of the northern part of the subtropical gyre in the North Atlantic Ocean, which is consistent with the hypothesis that eels follow olfactory cues originating in the spawning area or that eels navigate using oceanic cues imprinted or learned during the leptocephalus [juvenile] phase. However, our reconstructions showed that the routes taken by eels contain meanders or deviations from a simple point-to-point migration along the shortest possible route. These meanderings are possibly related to entrapment within eddies or navigational responses to other hydrographic or bathymetric features [exemplified by leatherback turtle behavior in contrast to the "perfect" migration assumed in modeling studies].
Surely "olfactory cues" would be diluted to nothingness so far from the destination. How do they do it? Are eels equipped with magnetosensing, like salmon, sea turtles and Monarch butterflies? The authors don't elaborate, but eels must engage multiple sensory modalities to navigate, especially when swimming in the dark at night. And like sea turtles, their "map" is inherited at birth, so that tiny juveniles 5mm long born in the Sargasso Sea know where their native stream is in Europe, and the adults that develop from them will be able to find the Sargasso Sea years later.
These new findings pile on problems for functionalist explanations. Neo-Darwinism would predict bare-minimum adaptation sufficient for survival. Travelling 5,000 to 10,000 km in open sea, rife with predators, makes no sense in evolutionary theory. Undergoing major morphological changes makes no sense, either. Evolution is indeed still a theory in crisis.
More Crises in Darwinian Fish Stories
Elizabeth Pennisi has more bad news for evolutionists. Writing for Science, she says, "Fossil fishes challenge 'urban legend' of evolution." What urban legend does she speak of? It's a favorite myth in Darwinian theory: the idea that gene duplication frees up a spare copy to evolve new innovations. Her fish story involves the most diverse group of vertebrates in the world.
Imagine a half-ton tuna laid out on a dock next to a seahorse, a minnow, and a moray eel. That's just a snapshot of the astonishing diversity found in the group of fishes called teleosts, or ray-finned fish, which today have 30,000 species -- more than all living mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. For more than a decade, many researchers have assumed that teleosts' dizzying array of body types evolved because their immediate ancestor somehow duplicated its entire genome, leaving whole sets of genes free to take on other functions.
Now, an examination of the fish fossil record challenges that view. Despite duplicating their genome about 160 million years ago, teleost fish hewed to a few conventional body types for their first 150 million years. Meanwhile, the holostean fishes, a related group with genomes that never underwent a doubling, evolved a stunning diversity of body plans. The work "demonstrates beautifully how necessary it is to look at the fossil record when testing hypotheses about ... largescale evolutionary changes," says Robert Sansom, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
Pennisi's lesson is clear. How many times have lazily accepted assumptions blinded scientists from the truth? You have to look at the data. You have to test theories with observations.
One can get an idea of the trajectory of a scientific paradigm by watching how rapidly anomalies accumulate. Evolution is more a theory in crisis than Denton's first book was published in 1985. These entries show it has gained more crises since his second book was published earlier this year. Things do not look good for Darwinism. There's an alternative position that doesn't have these problems. Its evidence is growing year by year. It's called intelligent design.
Sunday 9 October 2016
The deprivileging of mankind's status continues apace.
From the "Nothing Special" Files -- Apes and Their Theory of Mind
This is just in from the laboratories of Nothing Special that I wrote about here the other day. Reports Karen Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times, "[H]umans' thinking abilities aren't quite as special as we'd like to think" (emphasis added). She knows that because of a new study in Science, "Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs."
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, only humans were given credit for being able to ascertain the unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others. (Of course, said credit was doled out by humans.) ...
Ask yourself: Why the sarcastic tone? She goes on:
A notable version of this skill is the ability to recognize when someone else believes something that's false....
A team led by evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye at Duke University and comparative psychologist Fumihiro Kano of Kyoto University chose 41 chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. The researchers showed the apes a series of videos starring a regular person and a man dressed up as King Kong. In a variety of scenarios, King Kong would try to hide a rock-like object from the person. If the person saw what was going on, he'd find the rock in the expected place. If not, he didn't.
To test whether the apes understood what was going on, the scientists showed them additional videos in which King Kong tried to hide in one of two haystacks. Sometimes the person saw where King Kong went, and sometimes he didn't. Using an infrared eye-tracker, the researchers could see where the apes were looking -- and thus, where they expected the human to go.
In a second experiment, the apes watched more videos of King Kong trying to hide a rock from the person. Again, the researchers used eye-trackers to see if the apes could anticipate what the person would do.
In both cases, the chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans correctly anticipated the person's actions -- even when the person looked for King Kong or the rock in the wrong place.
The moral, of course, is that humans are Nothing Special:
Thanks to these results, the claim that only humans can ascertain the mental states of others "is starting to wobble," primatologist Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study....
De Waal seconded that notion, saying the results highlight "the mental continuity between great apes and humans."
It's a useful reminder that humans shouldn't be so quick to put themselves on a pedestal, he added.
The paper in Science is only a little more restrained in drawing the same lesson:
We humans tend to believe that our cognitive skills are unique, not only in degree, but also in kind. The more closely we look at other species, however, the clearer it becomes that the difference is one of degree. Krupenye et al. show that three different species of apes are able to anticipate that others may have mistaken beliefs about a situation.... The apes appear to understand that individuals have different perceptions about the world, thus overturning the human-only paradigm of the theory of mind.
Yet the business about knocking us down from a pedestal is based on a false premise: that we are at all surprised by these results. I'm not. Given that canines with their high emotional intelligence clearly intuit "unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others," as anybody with experience with dogs knows, why would the same not be true of apes?
That we share a limited capacity like this with chimps and orangutans comes as no shock. Therefore nothing is "starting to wobble." The results of the research do little to span the chasm between chimp and man. Instead the Nothing Special crowd uses the "pedestal" as a setup, a momentary fiction useful only for being immediately knocked over.
As Wesley Smith reminds us, dumping dirt on human exceptionalism is a preoccupation of popular science journalism -- not to mention professional science. It goes to show how powerful the will is among many smart and otherwise thoughtful people to believe humans are nothing special, and to convince others of the same thing. Where does that power come from?
An email correspondent notes the irony:
I have never been able to understand why so many people want so badly to believe there is Nothing Special about us, but they do. Only thing I can figure is that some of them just feel saying this makes them look special in the eyes of others.
Yes, right. Status is the key, but the psychology is very strange. Obviously I understand polishing your sense of self by advertising your accomplishments, associations, and possessions. But what drives this weird dynamic where feeling special depends on obsessively disclaiming specialness? We all know people who take pride in their humility. This is different. It seems to be more about sticking it -- "Nothing Special" -- in the face of others. That is the whole point of the L.A. Times article.
I am stumped. If you have any insights, please drop me an email and let me know. (Hit the orange button at the top of the page.)
David Klinghoffer
This is just in from the laboratories of Nothing Special that I wrote about here the other day. Reports Karen Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times, "[H]umans' thinking abilities aren't quite as special as we'd like to think" (emphasis added). She knows that because of a new study in Science, "Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs."
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, only humans were given credit for being able to ascertain the unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others. (Of course, said credit was doled out by humans.) ...
Ask yourself: Why the sarcastic tone? She goes on:
A notable version of this skill is the ability to recognize when someone else believes something that's false....
A team led by evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye at Duke University and comparative psychologist Fumihiro Kano of Kyoto University chose 41 chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. The researchers showed the apes a series of videos starring a regular person and a man dressed up as King Kong. In a variety of scenarios, King Kong would try to hide a rock-like object from the person. If the person saw what was going on, he'd find the rock in the expected place. If not, he didn't.
To test whether the apes understood what was going on, the scientists showed them additional videos in which King Kong tried to hide in one of two haystacks. Sometimes the person saw where King Kong went, and sometimes he didn't. Using an infrared eye-tracker, the researchers could see where the apes were looking -- and thus, where they expected the human to go.
In a second experiment, the apes watched more videos of King Kong trying to hide a rock from the person. Again, the researchers used eye-trackers to see if the apes could anticipate what the person would do.
In both cases, the chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans correctly anticipated the person's actions -- even when the person looked for King Kong or the rock in the wrong place.
The moral, of course, is that humans are Nothing Special:
Thanks to these results, the claim that only humans can ascertain the mental states of others "is starting to wobble," primatologist Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study....
De Waal seconded that notion, saying the results highlight "the mental continuity between great apes and humans."
It's a useful reminder that humans shouldn't be so quick to put themselves on a pedestal, he added.
The paper in Science is only a little more restrained in drawing the same lesson:
We humans tend to believe that our cognitive skills are unique, not only in degree, but also in kind. The more closely we look at other species, however, the clearer it becomes that the difference is one of degree. Krupenye et al. show that three different species of apes are able to anticipate that others may have mistaken beliefs about a situation.... The apes appear to understand that individuals have different perceptions about the world, thus overturning the human-only paradigm of the theory of mind.
Yet the business about knocking us down from a pedestal is based on a false premise: that we are at all surprised by these results. I'm not. Given that canines with their high emotional intelligence clearly intuit "unstated thoughts, beliefs and desires of others," as anybody with experience with dogs knows, why would the same not be true of apes?
That we share a limited capacity like this with chimps and orangutans comes as no shock. Therefore nothing is "starting to wobble." The results of the research do little to span the chasm between chimp and man. Instead the Nothing Special crowd uses the "pedestal" as a setup, a momentary fiction useful only for being immediately knocked over.
As Wesley Smith reminds us, dumping dirt on human exceptionalism is a preoccupation of popular science journalism -- not to mention professional science. It goes to show how powerful the will is among many smart and otherwise thoughtful people to believe humans are nothing special, and to convince others of the same thing. Where does that power come from?
An email correspondent notes the irony:
I have never been able to understand why so many people want so badly to believe there is Nothing Special about us, but they do. Only thing I can figure is that some of them just feel saying this makes them look special in the eyes of others.
Yes, right. Status is the key, but the psychology is very strange. Obviously I understand polishing your sense of self by advertising your accomplishments, associations, and possessions. But what drives this weird dynamic where feeling special depends on obsessively disclaiming specialness? We all know people who take pride in their humility. This is different. It seems to be more about sticking it -- "Nothing Special" -- in the face of others. That is the whole point of the L.A. Times article.
I am stumped. If you have any insights, please drop me an email and let me know. (Hit the orange button at the top of the page.)
Darwinism and mathematics are natural enemies.
Biologic Institute's Groundbreaking Peer-Reviewed Science Has Now Demonstrated the Implausibility of Evolving New Proteins
Yet More on life's anti Darwinian bias IV
Armed Forces in the Cell Keep DNA Healthy
Evolution News & Views September 8, 2015 3:01 AM
Science reporters struggle for metaphors to describe the complex operations they see going on in the cell. For example:
The Orchestra
News from the University of Geneva likens the human genome to a "complex orchestra." Their research led to "unexpected" and "surprising" findings showing "harmonized and synergistic behavior" in the regulation of genes. The metaphor of a conductor keeping all the various players in harmony came to mind:
A team of Swiss geneticists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Lausanne (UNIL) discovered that genetic variation has the potential to affect the state of the genome at many, seemingly separated, positions and thus modulate gene activity, much like a conductor directing the performers of a musical ensemble to play in harmony. These unexpected results, published in Cell, reveal the versatility of genome regulation and offer insights into the way it is orchestrated. [Emphasis added.]
The Armed Forces
Another metaphor popular among reporters is "armed forces." This metaphor will prove instructive as we read about DNA protection and damage repair. Let's look at some of the stages in this process where we will find soldiers, emergency medical technicians, ambulances and military hospitals in action, each well trained and equipped for defense.
Surveillance and Inspection
Any disciplined military operation requires high standards. Soldiers at boot camp know that drill sergeants can be ruthless when inspecting rifles, shoe shines, and barrack beds. Similarly, machines in the genome inspect DNA for errors and won't tolerate less than perfection. A news item from North Carolina State University describes MutS, a machine that inspects unzipped DNA strands looking for errors. Any mismatch makes this drill sergeant stop and stare the recruit in the face, even if he is one in a million.
Fortunately, our bodies have a system for detecting and repairing these mismatches -- a pair of proteins known as MutS and MutL. MutS slides along the newly created side of the DNA strand after it's replicated, proofreading it. When it finds a mismatch, it locks into place at the site of the error and recruits MutL to come and join it. MutL puts a nick in the newly synthesized DNA strand to mark it as defective and signals a different protein to gobble up the portion of the DNA containing the error. Then the nucleotide matching starts over, filling the gap again. The entire process reduces replication errors around a thousand fold, serving as our body's best defense against genetic mutations and the problems that can arise from them, like cancer.
First Response
If casualties occur, they have to be detected. A protein named ATF3 is captain of a squad that acts as "first responder" to DNA damage, as this from Georgia Regents University explains. Let's say a DNA strand breaks because of sunlight, chemotherapy or a cosmic ray. If not corrected quickly, the cell could become cancerous or die. What happens first?
In the rapid, complex scenario that enables a cell to repair DNA damage or die, ATF3, or activating transcription factor 3, appears to be a true first responder, increasing its levels then finding and binding to another protein, Tip60, which will ultimately help attract a swarm of other proteins to the damage site.
Combat Operations
Viruses have invaded! The armed forces go into high alert. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies describes the flurry of activities that result, because every organism "must protect its DNA at all costs."
Before panicking, the cell's commanding officers need intelligence. If a DNA break puts the cell in stress, was it a natural break, let's say from a cosmic ray, or from a virus, like an insurgent tossing a grenade? A false move could lead to friendly-fire casualties.
The researchers explain how the cell figures out if the DNA damage was internal or external. First, the MRN complex gives the "all hands on deck" signal. It stops replication and other cell operations until the break is mended.
What's interesting is that even a single break transmits a global signal through the cell, halting cell division and growth," says O'Shea. "This response prevents replication so the cell doesn't pass on a break."
The viral response begins the same way, the article continues, but doesn't give the global alarm. Instead, the alarm is localized, and sentries in the area dispatch the invaders. There's a reason for this. "If every incoming virus spurred a similarly strong response, points out O'Shea, our cells would be frequently paused, hampering our growth." But when the cell becomes preoccupied with DNA damage repair, the viruses can infiltrate.
A video clip in the article applies the armed forces metaphor:
Govind Shah: "DNA repair proteins serve as security guards inside the nucleus. They catch virus DNA and escort them out of the cell. If a cell experiences a huge amount of DNA damage, then these security guards will be pulled away from the viral DNA and allow the viral DNA to replicate to high levels."
Clodagh O'Shea: "We discovered that if you have DNA damage in your own genome, and the alarm goes off, actually that recruits in all of the forces: all of the police, national guard--everyone's there. All the forces are dealing with your own DNA damage, and there's nothing left to actually even see or actually turn off the virus."
This gave them an idea. Shah says, "So why not use this to kill cancer cells" with viruses engineered to enter tumor cells? The programmed response they discovered will cause the cell to let the viruses in while it's preoccupied with fixing DNA breaks. "If the cell can't fix the DNA break, it will induce cell death-a self-destruct mechanism that helps to prevent mutated cells from replicating (and thus prevents tumor growth)."
Medics
We're all familiar with the images of battlefield helicopters delivering medics to give first aid to the wounded, or airlifting them to the nearest triage station or hospital. The cell nucleus has hospitals, an article at Biotechniques says, and "A molecular ambulance for DNA" knows how to get the casualties to the emergency room.
Double-strand breaks in DNA are a source of stress and sometimes death for cells. But the breaks can be fixed if they find their way to repair sites within the cell. In yeast, one of the main repair sites resides on the nuclear envelope where a set of proteins, including nuclear pore subcomplex Nup84, serves as a molecular hospital of sorts. The kinesin-14 motor protein complex, a "DNA ambulance," moves the breaks to repair sites, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
Researchers at the University of Toronto found it "very surprising" was that the ambulance driver is the well-known motor protein kinesin-14 (see our animation of kinesin at work).
Hospital Staff
News from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center introduces some of the specialists in the DNA repair hospital: fumarase. a metabolic enzyme; DNA-PK, a protein kinase; and histone methylation enzymes that regulate the repair process. These skilled doctors perform restorative surgery for "DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs)," which "are the worst possible form of genetic malfunction that can cause cancer and resistance to therapy."
Clean-up Crew
Cells invest a lot of energy in their ribosomes, the organelles that translate DNA. Ribosomes are assembled from protein and RNA domains. What happens with the leftovers? An item from the University of Heidelberg describes molecular machines that barcode the fragments for delivery to a barrel-shaped shredder called the exosome. Though not described in military terms, the agents are under strict orders and required to pass through checkpoints.
According to Prof. Hurt, the production of ribosomes is an extremely complex process that follows a strict blueprint with numerous quality-control checkpoints. The protein factories are made of numerous ribosomal proteins (r-proteins) and ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA). More than 200 helper proteins, known as ribosome biogenesis factors, are needed in the eukaryotic cells to correctly assemble the r-proteins and the different rRNAs. Three of the total of four different rRNAs are manufactured from a large precursor RNA. They need to be "trimmed" at specific points during the manufacturing process, and the superfluous pieces are discarded. "Because these processes are irreversible, a special check is needed," explains Ed Hurt.
The number of "armed forces" personnel involved in DNA defense and cell quality control is astonishing. It's beyond a well-conducted orchestra. It's like a military operation, with strict protocols, hierarchical command structure and trained specialists. These systems are goal-oriented: they exist to protect the genome. They are on duty inspecting components even when nothing is wrong. And when things do go wrong, they know just what to do, as if well-trained in following orders.
We aren't surprised to notice that these articles say nothing about evolution. Why? Because we all know from our experience that phenomena characterized by hierarchical command and control systems with documented procedures and skilled agents are always intelligently designed.
Evolution News & Views September 8, 2015 3:01 AM
Science reporters struggle for metaphors to describe the complex operations they see going on in the cell. For example:
The Orchestra
News from the University of Geneva likens the human genome to a "complex orchestra." Their research led to "unexpected" and "surprising" findings showing "harmonized and synergistic behavior" in the regulation of genes. The metaphor of a conductor keeping all the various players in harmony came to mind:
A team of Swiss geneticists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Lausanne (UNIL) discovered that genetic variation has the potential to affect the state of the genome at many, seemingly separated, positions and thus modulate gene activity, much like a conductor directing the performers of a musical ensemble to play in harmony. These unexpected results, published in Cell, reveal the versatility of genome regulation and offer insights into the way it is orchestrated. [Emphasis added.]
The Armed Forces
Another metaphor popular among reporters is "armed forces." This metaphor will prove instructive as we read about DNA protection and damage repair. Let's look at some of the stages in this process where we will find soldiers, emergency medical technicians, ambulances and military hospitals in action, each well trained and equipped for defense.
Surveillance and Inspection
Any disciplined military operation requires high standards. Soldiers at boot camp know that drill sergeants can be ruthless when inspecting rifles, shoe shines, and barrack beds. Similarly, machines in the genome inspect DNA for errors and won't tolerate less than perfection. A news item from North Carolina State University describes MutS, a machine that inspects unzipped DNA strands looking for errors. Any mismatch makes this drill sergeant stop and stare the recruit in the face, even if he is one in a million.
Fortunately, our bodies have a system for detecting and repairing these mismatches -- a pair of proteins known as MutS and MutL. MutS slides along the newly created side of the DNA strand after it's replicated, proofreading it. When it finds a mismatch, it locks into place at the site of the error and recruits MutL to come and join it. MutL puts a nick in the newly synthesized DNA strand to mark it as defective and signals a different protein to gobble up the portion of the DNA containing the error. Then the nucleotide matching starts over, filling the gap again. The entire process reduces replication errors around a thousand fold, serving as our body's best defense against genetic mutations and the problems that can arise from them, like cancer.
First Response
If casualties occur, they have to be detected. A protein named ATF3 is captain of a squad that acts as "first responder" to DNA damage, as this from Georgia Regents University explains. Let's say a DNA strand breaks because of sunlight, chemotherapy or a cosmic ray. If not corrected quickly, the cell could become cancerous or die. What happens first?
In the rapid, complex scenario that enables a cell to repair DNA damage or die, ATF3, or activating transcription factor 3, appears to be a true first responder, increasing its levels then finding and binding to another protein, Tip60, which will ultimately help attract a swarm of other proteins to the damage site.
Combat Operations
Viruses have invaded! The armed forces go into high alert. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies describes the flurry of activities that result, because every organism "must protect its DNA at all costs."
Before panicking, the cell's commanding officers need intelligence. If a DNA break puts the cell in stress, was it a natural break, let's say from a cosmic ray, or from a virus, like an insurgent tossing a grenade? A false move could lead to friendly-fire casualties.
The researchers explain how the cell figures out if the DNA damage was internal or external. First, the MRN complex gives the "all hands on deck" signal. It stops replication and other cell operations until the break is mended.
What's interesting is that even a single break transmits a global signal through the cell, halting cell division and growth," says O'Shea. "This response prevents replication so the cell doesn't pass on a break."
The viral response begins the same way, the article continues, but doesn't give the global alarm. Instead, the alarm is localized, and sentries in the area dispatch the invaders. There's a reason for this. "If every incoming virus spurred a similarly strong response, points out O'Shea, our cells would be frequently paused, hampering our growth." But when the cell becomes preoccupied with DNA damage repair, the viruses can infiltrate.
A video clip in the article applies the armed forces metaphor:
Govind Shah: "DNA repair proteins serve as security guards inside the nucleus. They catch virus DNA and escort them out of the cell. If a cell experiences a huge amount of DNA damage, then these security guards will be pulled away from the viral DNA and allow the viral DNA to replicate to high levels."
Clodagh O'Shea: "We discovered that if you have DNA damage in your own genome, and the alarm goes off, actually that recruits in all of the forces: all of the police, national guard--everyone's there. All the forces are dealing with your own DNA damage, and there's nothing left to actually even see or actually turn off the virus."
This gave them an idea. Shah says, "So why not use this to kill cancer cells" with viruses engineered to enter tumor cells? The programmed response they discovered will cause the cell to let the viruses in while it's preoccupied with fixing DNA breaks. "If the cell can't fix the DNA break, it will induce cell death-a self-destruct mechanism that helps to prevent mutated cells from replicating (and thus prevents tumor growth)."
Medics
We're all familiar with the images of battlefield helicopters delivering medics to give first aid to the wounded, or airlifting them to the nearest triage station or hospital. The cell nucleus has hospitals, an article at Biotechniques says, and "A molecular ambulance for DNA" knows how to get the casualties to the emergency room.
Double-strand breaks in DNA are a source of stress and sometimes death for cells. But the breaks can be fixed if they find their way to repair sites within the cell. In yeast, one of the main repair sites resides on the nuclear envelope where a set of proteins, including nuclear pore subcomplex Nup84, serves as a molecular hospital of sorts. The kinesin-14 motor protein complex, a "DNA ambulance," moves the breaks to repair sites, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
Researchers at the University of Toronto found it "very surprising" was that the ambulance driver is the well-known motor protein kinesin-14 (see our animation of kinesin at work).
Hospital Staff
News from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center introduces some of the specialists in the DNA repair hospital: fumarase. a metabolic enzyme; DNA-PK, a protein kinase; and histone methylation enzymes that regulate the repair process. These skilled doctors perform restorative surgery for "DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs)," which "are the worst possible form of genetic malfunction that can cause cancer and resistance to therapy."
Clean-up Crew
Cells invest a lot of energy in their ribosomes, the organelles that translate DNA. Ribosomes are assembled from protein and RNA domains. What happens with the leftovers? An item from the University of Heidelberg describes molecular machines that barcode the fragments for delivery to a barrel-shaped shredder called the exosome. Though not described in military terms, the agents are under strict orders and required to pass through checkpoints.
According to Prof. Hurt, the production of ribosomes is an extremely complex process that follows a strict blueprint with numerous quality-control checkpoints. The protein factories are made of numerous ribosomal proteins (r-proteins) and ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA). More than 200 helper proteins, known as ribosome biogenesis factors, are needed in the eukaryotic cells to correctly assemble the r-proteins and the different rRNAs. Three of the total of four different rRNAs are manufactured from a large precursor RNA. They need to be "trimmed" at specific points during the manufacturing process, and the superfluous pieces are discarded. "Because these processes are irreversible, a special check is needed," explains Ed Hurt.
The number of "armed forces" personnel involved in DNA defense and cell quality control is astonishing. It's beyond a well-conducted orchestra. It's like a military operation, with strict protocols, hierarchical command structure and trained specialists. These systems are goal-oriented: they exist to protect the genome. They are on duty inspecting components even when nothing is wrong. And when things do go wrong, they know just what to do, as if well-trained in following orders.
We aren't surprised to notice that these articles say nothing about evolution. Why? Because we all know from our experience that phenomena characterized by hierarchical command and control systems with documented procedures and skilled agents are always intelligently designed.
Saturday 8 October 2016
An oversimplification examined.
The Position on Organ Transplants
"Agreeing to an organ transplant or organ donation is a personal decision." http://jw-media.org/aboutjw/article02.htm#organ
In an effort to discredit Jehovah's Witnesses and portray them negatively, some religious opposers advance an accusation regarding the position of Jehovah's Witnesses on organ transplants between the years 1967 and 1980.
Did Jehovah's Witnesses zigzag on the acceptability of organ transplant therapy during 1961, 1967 and 1980? As we shall see after an honest examination, the choice was always ultimately left to the conscience. Also, there was never a danger of being disfellowshipped, and while this case became similar to the case of blood transfusions, it falls far short of being equivalent.
Included also is a consideration of what other faiths believed at the time, and how and when organ transplantation improved into the relatively safe therapy that it is today.
What was the position over time?
In the 1950's there was no mention of any transplant procedures in Jehovah's Witnesses' publications, as transplant procedures were still in their infancy. It was in 1961 however, that brief mention of the subject was first made in their doctrinal magazine The Watchtower of August 1, in its Questions From Readers section. The question was:
Did Jehovah's Witnesses zigzag on the acceptability of organ transplant therapy during 1961, 1967 and 1980? As we shall see after an honest examination, the choice was always ultimately left to the conscience. Also, there was never a danger of being disfellowshipped, and while this case became similar to the case of blood transfusions, it falls far short of being equivalent.
Included also is a consideration of what other faiths believed at the time, and how and when organ transplantation improved into the relatively safe therapy that it is today.
What was the position over time?
In the 1950's there was no mention of any transplant procedures in Jehovah's Witnesses' publications, as transplant procedures were still in their infancy. It was in 1961 however, that brief mention of the subject was first made in their doctrinal magazine The Watchtower of August 1, in its Questions From Readers section. The question was:
"Is there anything in the Bible against giving one's eyes (after death) to be transplanted to some living person?"
The answer, being a single paragraph, was:
"The question of placing one's body or parts of one's body at the disposal of men of science or doctors at one's death for purposes of scientific experimentation or replacement in others is frowned upon by certain religious bodies. However, it does not seem that any Scriptural principle or law is involved. It therefore is something that each individual must decide for himself. If he is satisfied in his own mind and conscience that this is a proper thing to do, then he can make such provision, and no one else should criticize him for doing so. On the other hand, no one should be criticized for refusing to enter into any such agreement." (italics added)
As we can see, no objection to organ transplants is presented here, and the decision is left to the person's conscience to accept or refuse.
During the 1960's, the subject for debate was the question of giving transplants to living persons for experimental purposes. In fact, the University Professor of Anesthesiology at Harvard's Medical Faculty published his famous June 16, 1966 article denouncing an extensive series of ethically-questionable medical experiments (Henry K. Beecher, "Ethics and Clinical Research." New England Journal of Medicine, 1966; 274: 1354-60). Soon after, in 1967 there appeared another famous work in the same vein: Human Guinea Pigs, by the British doctor M. H. Pappworth.
It was at this time that The Watchtower of November 15, 1967 commented on organ donation in its Questions From Readers section, in response to the following:
During the 1960's, the subject for debate was the question of giving transplants to living persons for experimental purposes. In fact, the University Professor of Anesthesiology at Harvard's Medical Faculty published his famous June 16, 1966 article denouncing an extensive series of ethically-questionable medical experiments (Henry K. Beecher, "Ethics and Clinical Research." New England Journal of Medicine, 1966; 274: 1354-60). Soon after, in 1967 there appeared another famous work in the same vein: Human Guinea Pigs, by the British doctor M. H. Pappworth.
It was at this time that The Watchtower of November 15, 1967 commented on organ donation in its Questions From Readers section, in response to the following:
"Is there any Scriptural objection to donating one's body for use in medical research or to accepting organs for transplant from such a source?"
Rather than present a single paragraph leaving the matter to the conscience, commendably the article attempted to ascertain God's view of the matter by considering scriptures and principles. However, it also compared accepting a transplanted organ to cannibalism. On that it stated:
"Those who submit to such operations are thus living off the flesh of another human. That is cannibalistic. However, in allowing man to eat animal flesh Jehovah God did not grant permission for humans to try to perpetuate their lives by cannibalistically taking into their bodies human flesh, whether chewed or in the form of whole organs or body parts taken from others."
Granted, this opinion was taken from the article "Medical cannibalism" appearing in the Encyclopœdia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings (Volume 3, page 199), which it referred to and quoted from in its next paragraph. While the response included this comparison in an attempt to be balanced and informative, it also had the potential to offend and distract from the deciding power of the conscience also presented in the same Questions From Readers. Therefore the comparison to cannibalism proved to be unfortunate.
However, even with the unfortunate caution expressed above, the same Questions From Readers article did in fact leave the decision up to the person, as it later stated:
However, even with the unfortunate caution expressed above, the same Questions From Readers article did in fact leave the decision up to the person, as it later stated:
"Baptized Christians have dedicated their lives, bodies included, to do the will of Jehovah their Creator. In view of this, can such a person donate his body or part of it for unrestricted use by doctors or others? Does a human have a God-given right to dedicate his body organs to scientific experimentation? Is it proper for him to allow such to be done with the body of a loved one? These are questions worthy of serious consideration."
Further highlighting the role of the individual's conscience, it closed with these comments:
"[T]he Christian can decide in such a way as to avoid unnecessary mutilation and any possible misuse of the body. Thus he will be able to have a clear conscience before God.—1 Pet. 3:16.
It should be evident from this discussion that Christians who have been enlightened by God's Word do not need to make these decisions simply on the basis of personal whim or emotion. They can consider the divine principles recorded in the Scriptures and use these in making personal decisions as they look to God for direction, trusting him and putting their confidence in the future that he has in store for those who love him.—Prov. 3:5, 6; Ps. 119:105."
Thus, it is important to note that the same article also left much to the person's conscience.
Shortly thereafter in the medical world, in December 1967, the first successful human-to-human heart transplant was performed by Professor Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa (the patient lived 18 days, which was considered successful for a high-risk experimental surgery, as such transplants were at the time).ftn1
During the following years from 1968 to 1975, there were some occasional and brief mentioning of organ transplants in Jehovah's Witnesses' magazines, The Watchtower and Awake!, all of them expressing medical concerns like inherent transplant risks and the side effects of immunosuppressive drugs, and generally referenced non-Witness works and authors (the last of such appeared in the September 1, 1975 issue of The Watchtower, page 519 under "Insight on the News" which noted documented cases of post-operation emotional trauma and upheaval).
Around the same time, the immunosuppressive effect of a substance called cyclosporin (alternatively spelled cyclosporine and ciclosporin) was discovered at the earliest in 1972 and at the latest in 1976. This was followed by a series of experiments attempting to overcome the primary practical problem organ transplants were facing: tissue rejection. These experiments went well and this substance was officially approved for medical use in 1983.ftn2 It was also during the late 1970's and early 1980's that a satisfactory answer had been reached on the exact moment of death. It is no coincidence that the laws and regulations for transplants began to appear around 1980 (for example, the Spanish law on organ extraction and transplant of 1979 and the corresponding 1984 law in the United States). Thus, it was in the early 1980's, and especially from 1983, that organ transplants stopped being experimental procedures and became accepted medical therapy.ftn3 In fact, from that year and even into the 1990's, many churches of Christendom and other religions began releasing official resolutions in favor of organ transplantation.
Today it is an accepted medical treatment.
After the above mentioned September 1, 1975 issue of The Watchtower, there was no reference to the practice of transplants in Jehovah's Witnesses' publications. It was not until The Watchtower of March 15, 1980 that a Questions From Readers article was again published on transplants, which had this exchange:
Shortly thereafter in the medical world, in December 1967, the first successful human-to-human heart transplant was performed by Professor Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa (the patient lived 18 days, which was considered successful for a high-risk experimental surgery, as such transplants were at the time).ftn1
During the following years from 1968 to 1975, there were some occasional and brief mentioning of organ transplants in Jehovah's Witnesses' magazines, The Watchtower and Awake!, all of them expressing medical concerns like inherent transplant risks and the side effects of immunosuppressive drugs, and generally referenced non-Witness works and authors (the last of such appeared in the September 1, 1975 issue of The Watchtower, page 519 under "Insight on the News" which noted documented cases of post-operation emotional trauma and upheaval).
Around the same time, the immunosuppressive effect of a substance called cyclosporin (alternatively spelled cyclosporine and ciclosporin) was discovered at the earliest in 1972 and at the latest in 1976. This was followed by a series of experiments attempting to overcome the primary practical problem organ transplants were facing: tissue rejection. These experiments went well and this substance was officially approved for medical use in 1983.ftn2 It was also during the late 1970's and early 1980's that a satisfactory answer had been reached on the exact moment of death. It is no coincidence that the laws and regulations for transplants began to appear around 1980 (for example, the Spanish law on organ extraction and transplant of 1979 and the corresponding 1984 law in the United States). Thus, it was in the early 1980's, and especially from 1983, that organ transplants stopped being experimental procedures and became accepted medical therapy.ftn3 In fact, from that year and even into the 1990's, many churches of Christendom and other religions began releasing official resolutions in favor of organ transplantation.
Today it is an accepted medical treatment.
After the above mentioned September 1, 1975 issue of The Watchtower, there was no reference to the practice of transplants in Jehovah's Witnesses' publications. It was not until The Watchtower of March 15, 1980 that a Questions From Readers article was again published on transplants, which had this exchange:
"Should congregation action be taken if a baptized Christian accepts a human organ transplant, such as of a cornea or a kidney?"
The answer began with:
"Regarding the transplantation of human tissue or bone from one human to another, this is a matter for conscientious decision by each one of Jehovah's Witnesses."
This article is clearly more focused on the role of the Christian conscience, specifying that each one must make a personal decision. Some Christians, it stated, may view transplants as cannibalistic and unacceptable, while others may view them as acceptable. This position continues to be the one that Jehovah's Witnesses have today. The same article concluded:
"Clearly, personal views and conscientious feelings vary on this issue of transplantation. ... While the Bible specifically forbids consuming blood, there is no Biblical command pointedly forbidding the taking in of other human tissue. For this reason, each individual faced with making a decision on this matter should carefully and prayerfully weigh matters and then decide conscientiously what he or she could or could not do before God. It is a matter for personal decision. (Gal. 6:5) The congregation judicial committee would not take disciplinary action if someone accepted an organ transplant."
Thus, after considering what was said in 1961, 1967 and 1980, it can be seen that the conscience played the ultimate deciding factor. It was up to the individual to decide, with no disciplinary sword of Damocles dangling above. Interestingly, as pointed out above, organ transplant therapy experienced a turning point shortly thereafter in 1983, when cyclosporin was approved for medical use.
No threat of expulsion
Even though the 1967 Questions From Readers included the unfortunate comparison to cannibalism, it specified that transplants are a matter of personal decision, with no mention of disciplinary measures.
To see this matter more clearly, contrast it with the question of blood transfusion. The idea was expressed for the first time in 1945 that blood transfusions violated divine law on the sanctity of blood; nevertheless, it was not until 1961 that it was specified that the matter was of sufficient gravity so as to disfellowship from the congregations any who disregarded this divine requirement and displayed an unrepentant attitude.ftn4
Has the same thing happened with organ transplants? After the 1967 article, did a subsequent publication state that to accept a transplant was a matter of sufficient gravity to disfellowship unrepentant members?
In 1968 the book The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life was published which was a study guide that explained the fundamental teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses to interested ones. This book considered the sanctity of blood in depth, but did not even mention the matter of organ transplants.
Besides, the candidates for baptism then, as today, examine the fundamental Biblical doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses before accepting them, for which they had the books Your Word Is a Lamp to My Foot (1967) and Organization for Kingdom-Preaching and Disciple-Making (1972). Among these questions on the moral norms of Jehovah's Witnesses were covered, included the position on blood transfusions. Nevertheless, nothing in those books mentioned anything about organ transplants.
Therefore, despite what was expressed in the 1967 Questions From Readers and the medical concerns expressed in the Witnesses' magazines on organ transplants from 1968 to 1975, it itself was not grounds for disfellowshipping and therefore no one was disfellowshipped over it.
Contemporary Religious Views
On the other hand, were Jehovah's Witnesses an exception by expressing a negative viewpoint on organ transplants? Leaving aside some medical opinions against transplants since religion deals with ethical issues and frequently questions scientific advances (a current example is the case of utilizing stem-cells or not), the experiments on transplants provoked great controversy, especially at the end of the 1960's, and the religious sector played a noticeable role.
The Catholic Church, for example, presented serious objections in the past to homotransplant, or transplants among creatures of the same species (E. Chiavacci, Morale della vita fisica, EDB, Bologna. 1976: 64-81). In the Catholic book Problems of Sanitary Ethics (Problemi Di Etica Sanitaria, 1992; Ancora, Milano: 189), the Jesuit Giacomo Perico recognized that not too long ago transplants still presented "serious reservations of moral character" for Catholics. (italics original) The same thing can be said of other religions. For example, it was not until 1987-88 that Judaism had officially expressed a favorable opinion regarding transplants (see, for example, Alfredo Mordechai Rabello, "Donazione di organi. Comunicato dell'Assemblea dei Rabbini d'Italia," Ha Keillah, June 2000: 12-13; Riccardo Di Segni, "Il punto di vista dell'ebraismo," in "La donazione e il trapianto di organi e di tessuti," Punto Omega, December 2000 [anno II, n. 4]: 34).
The Muslim Religious Counsel rejected organ donation as late as 1983, although it later completely changed its position and now accepts the procedure, with some conditions.
The Gypsy community does not have its own religion, but its traditional beliefs tend to be opposed to organ donation, for they think that the body should remain intact during a year after death.
In Shintoism, the traditional religion of Japan, it used to be considered a serious crime to mutilate a dead body, according to E. Narnihira in his article "Shinto Concept Concerning the Dead Human Body." Additionally, he reports that: "To this day it is difficult to obtain consent from bereaved families for donation or dissection for medical education or pathological anatomy . . . the Japanese regard them all in the sense of injuring a dead body." Families are concerned that they not injure the itai, the relationship between the dead and the bereaved.ftn5
Therefore, a number of religious groups have opposed organ transplants at some time, and a number with time have changed their viewpoint. Similarly, while Jehovah's Witnesses always believed the conscience was the ultimate determining factor, the concerns about cannibalism were first presented in 1967 and were later reduced in significance in 1980. Although, as we have also seen, Jehovah's Witnesses were never forced to accept that opinion on cannibalism under threat of expulsion. The main concern was always about having "a clear conscience before God."
The Difference between Organ Transplants and Blood Transfusions
Highlighting this is a case of a youth whose experience was published in The Watchtower of November 15, 1969, "Appreciating Jehovah's Protection," pages 700-2. This is not a case of someone passing away, but of someone relating an experience after recovering from surgery. The question this person was faced with was not one of organ transplants but of blood transfusions, although at one point his doctor asked him if he would be willing to donate a kidney. Pointedly, his reaction is a good example of the difference between the position of Jehovah's Witnesses regarding blood transfusions and that regarding organ transplants. When his doctor offered him two possible procedures, one that included blood transfusions and another that did not include them, he chose the later. But when asked if he would give his consent to donate a kidney, this was his reaction:
No threat of expulsion
Even though the 1967 Questions From Readers included the unfortunate comparison to cannibalism, it specified that transplants are a matter of personal decision, with no mention of disciplinary measures.
To see this matter more clearly, contrast it with the question of blood transfusion. The idea was expressed for the first time in 1945 that blood transfusions violated divine law on the sanctity of blood; nevertheless, it was not until 1961 that it was specified that the matter was of sufficient gravity so as to disfellowship from the congregations any who disregarded this divine requirement and displayed an unrepentant attitude.ftn4
Has the same thing happened with organ transplants? After the 1967 article, did a subsequent publication state that to accept a transplant was a matter of sufficient gravity to disfellowship unrepentant members?
In 1968 the book The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life was published which was a study guide that explained the fundamental teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses to interested ones. This book considered the sanctity of blood in depth, but did not even mention the matter of organ transplants.
Besides, the candidates for baptism then, as today, examine the fundamental Biblical doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses before accepting them, for which they had the books Your Word Is a Lamp to My Foot (1967) and Organization for Kingdom-Preaching and Disciple-Making (1972). Among these questions on the moral norms of Jehovah's Witnesses were covered, included the position on blood transfusions. Nevertheless, nothing in those books mentioned anything about organ transplants.
Therefore, despite what was expressed in the 1967 Questions From Readers and the medical concerns expressed in the Witnesses' magazines on organ transplants from 1968 to 1975, it itself was not grounds for disfellowshipping and therefore no one was disfellowshipped over it.
Contemporary Religious Views
On the other hand, were Jehovah's Witnesses an exception by expressing a negative viewpoint on organ transplants? Leaving aside some medical opinions against transplants since religion deals with ethical issues and frequently questions scientific advances (a current example is the case of utilizing stem-cells or not), the experiments on transplants provoked great controversy, especially at the end of the 1960's, and the religious sector played a noticeable role.
The Catholic Church, for example, presented serious objections in the past to homotransplant, or transplants among creatures of the same species (E. Chiavacci, Morale della vita fisica, EDB, Bologna. 1976: 64-81). In the Catholic book Problems of Sanitary Ethics (Problemi Di Etica Sanitaria, 1992; Ancora, Milano: 189), the Jesuit Giacomo Perico recognized that not too long ago transplants still presented "serious reservations of moral character" for Catholics. (italics original) The same thing can be said of other religions. For example, it was not until 1987-88 that Judaism had officially expressed a favorable opinion regarding transplants (see, for example, Alfredo Mordechai Rabello, "Donazione di organi. Comunicato dell'Assemblea dei Rabbini d'Italia," Ha Keillah, June 2000: 12-13; Riccardo Di Segni, "Il punto di vista dell'ebraismo," in "La donazione e il trapianto di organi e di tessuti," Punto Omega, December 2000 [anno II, n. 4]: 34).
The Muslim Religious Counsel rejected organ donation as late as 1983, although it later completely changed its position and now accepts the procedure, with some conditions.
The Gypsy community does not have its own religion, but its traditional beliefs tend to be opposed to organ donation, for they think that the body should remain intact during a year after death.
In Shintoism, the traditional religion of Japan, it used to be considered a serious crime to mutilate a dead body, according to E. Narnihira in his article "Shinto Concept Concerning the Dead Human Body." Additionally, he reports that: "To this day it is difficult to obtain consent from bereaved families for donation or dissection for medical education or pathological anatomy . . . the Japanese regard them all in the sense of injuring a dead body." Families are concerned that they not injure the itai, the relationship between the dead and the bereaved.ftn5
Therefore, a number of religious groups have opposed organ transplants at some time, and a number with time have changed their viewpoint. Similarly, while Jehovah's Witnesses always believed the conscience was the ultimate determining factor, the concerns about cannibalism were first presented in 1967 and were later reduced in significance in 1980. Although, as we have also seen, Jehovah's Witnesses were never forced to accept that opinion on cannibalism under threat of expulsion. The main concern was always about having "a clear conscience before God."
The Difference between Organ Transplants and Blood Transfusions
Highlighting this is a case of a youth whose experience was published in The Watchtower of November 15, 1969, "Appreciating Jehovah's Protection," pages 700-2. This is not a case of someone passing away, but of someone relating an experience after recovering from surgery. The question this person was faced with was not one of organ transplants but of blood transfusions, although at one point his doctor asked him if he would be willing to donate a kidney. Pointedly, his reaction is a good example of the difference between the position of Jehovah's Witnesses regarding blood transfusions and that regarding organ transplants. When his doctor offered him two possible procedures, one that included blood transfusions and another that did not include them, he chose the later. But when asked if he would give his consent to donate a kidney, this was his reaction:
"I told him he would get a frank and thorough answer to his inquiry after we had had a family discussion of God's Word on the issue." (page 701)
It was not until the following day that he gave his response, which was negative. This clearly illustrates that the question of organ transplants was not comparable to that of blood transfusions for this reason: The donation option was not categorically prohibited (like the blood transfusion option), but one left to personal decision (or consulting with one's family, as in the case of this youth).
In Summary
The role of the individual's conscience has always been held as the deciding factor on the acceptability of organ transplants. Unlike with blood transfusions, there was never a disfellowshipping or disciplinary consequence for accepting them. While orally ingesting blood as well as blood transfusion is unacceptable, it is not so with organs.
Thus, critics should be careful not to use this issue to promote hysteria, misunderstanding, or intolerance.Footnotes1. "Heart transplantation." Wikipedia.(September 10, 2008) ( back)
In Summary
The role of the individual's conscience has always been held as the deciding factor on the acceptability of organ transplants. Unlike with blood transfusions, there was never a disfellowshipping or disciplinary consequence for accepting them. While orally ingesting blood as well as blood transfusion is unacceptable, it is not so with organs.
Thus, critics should be careful not to use this issue to promote hysteria, misunderstanding, or intolerance.Footnotes1. "Heart transplantation." Wikipedia.
2. Upton, Harriet. "Origin of drugs in current use: the cyclosporin story." 2001. The Mostly Medical Part of the World of Fungi. (September 8, 2008). "Ciclosporin." Wikipedia. (September 8, 2008) ( back)
4. "Immovable For The Right Worship." July 1, 1945: 199-201. "Questions From Readers." January 15, 1961: 63-4. (back)
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