Examining yet another challenge to life's no free lunch law.

Breaking Sticks
Winston Ewert December 5, 2015 5:30 AM

This is the fourth and final post in a series in which I have examined criticisms from Joe Felsenstein (University of Washington geneticist) and Tom English (Oklahoma City computer scientist) in response to two arguments for intelligent design: specified complexity and conservation of information. Look here for Parts 1, 2, and 3.

A large portion of post by Tom English, "The Law of Conservation of Information is defunct," is devoted to an example of conservation of information involving broken sticks. He argues that we can obtain active information without any bias in the initial process. Since active information is a measurement of bias in a system, this would mean that our use of active information was fundamentally broken.

English's process involves sticks that are broken into six pieces randomly. The sticks are six meters long (English does not give units, so I picked meters). The average length of a broken stick will be one meter. However the process is such that some pieces will end up much longer than other pieces.

English claims to compute the active information of these outcomes:

Suppose that the length of the 3rd segment of the broken stick is 2. Then the evolutionary process is biased in favor of outcome 3 by a factor of 2. ... These biases are what Dembski et al. refer to as active information.

This calculation is absolutely not active information. Active information is defined as being the logarithm of relative probabilities. English can be forgiven for skipping the logarithm, but using the observed length of a stick instead of a probability is nonsensical. If English wishes to criticize active information, he should actually follow the definitions of active information.

Let's consider another scenario, which may be what English is getting at. I have two coins. One is weighted so that 99 percent of the time it lands on heads. The other is weighted so that 99 percent of the time it lands on tails. If I pick a coin at random and flip it once, the result is actually fair despite the use of biased coins. Both heads and tails are equally likely. However, if I flip the coin 100 times, the sequence will be either mostly heads or mostly tails.

Suppose I observe the process of flipping 100 coins, and see that 99 are heads. Then following something like English's logic, I could argue that the probability of heads is 99 percent, and thus calculate positive active information. But this would be incorrect. Estimating the probabilities this way would only be valid for independent events. In this case, the events are all dependent due to sharing the same biased coins.

Let's compare the confused attempt to establish these probabilities with the logic I argued for in the case of birds:

Clearly, some configurations of matter are birds. However, almost all configurations of matter are not birds. If one were to pick randomly from all possible configurations of matter, the probability of obtaining a bird would be infinitesimally small. It is almost impossible to obtain a bird by random sampling uniformly from all configurations of matter.

Note that I am not saying the frequency of birds observed in biology can somehow represent an estimate of the probability of birds. It is in fact a reductio ad absurdum that implicitly invokes specified complexity. If birds were no more probable than any other configuration of matter, the total probability of birds would be miniscule. In the terminology of specified complexity, they would be highly complex. This in itself would not be a problem, but since birds constitute a specification, their presence gives us good reason to reject that the idea that birds are no more likely than any other configuration of matter. For birds to have arisen in the universe, they must be probable enough that they would no longer constitute a large amount of specified complexity. That's why I can argue that birds must be more probable than random chance.

English's attempt to dismantle conservation of information fails. It is based on a confused interpretation of how to compute active information. He does not compute probability, nor provide any justification for treating the length of a stick as a probability. Even if I consider a related scenario that has probabilities, anything like his technique is invalid for estimating probability. The method we use for arguing that the probability is higher is entirely different from the caricature presented by English.

Conclusion

English and Felsenstein have been engaged in knocking down straw men. Felsenstein attacks a version of specified complexity that Dembski never articulated. He misrepresents the actual idea promoted by Dembski as being pointlessly circular. Both critics misrepresent conservation of information as a simplistic argument that only intelligence can produce active information. They misrepresent us as claiming that Darwinian evolution is only as good as a random guess, despite the explicit published demonstration that repeated queries are a source of active information. English misrepresents our reasons for thinking that birds are more probable than a random configuration of matter. Their arguments are valid objections to these straw men, but our actual arguments lie elsewhere.

What, then, would be necessary to demonstrate that we are wrong? As I've argued, conservation of information shows that evolution requires a source of active information. We have not proven that such a source must be teleological. Nevertheless, we've argued that the sources present in available models of evolution are indeed teleological. Our argument would be refuted by the demonstration of a model with a source that is both non-teleological and provides sufficient active information to account for biological complexity.

Felsenstein hints at trying to do this when he talks about the weakness of long-range physics interactions. He thinks that by invoking these interactions he can obtain "quite possibly all" of the necessary active information to account for complexity in biology.

Some, quite possibly all, of Dembski and Marks's "active information" is present as soon as we have genotypes that have different fitnesses, and genotypes whose phenotypes are determined using the ordinary laws of physics.

However, when discussing the amount of active information that he can obtain from his assumption, he can only go as far as:

[T]he ordinary laws of physics, with their weakness of long-range interactions, lead to fitness surfaces much smoother than white-noise fitness surfaces.

Arguing that the weakness of long-range interactions produces sufficient active information to explain complexity in biology because it outperforms random search is like arguing that I can outrun a jet because I move much faster than a snail. However, if Felsenstein could demonstrate that the weakness of long-range physics interactions, or something equivalently non-teleological, could account for the active information in biology, it would dismantle the argument we have made. Furthermore, it would be a massive contribution to the fields of computational intelligence and evolutionary biology.


I cannot prove that Felsenstein cannot do this. I can point to past attempts, which all incorporated teleological decisions. They all show the effect of having been designed. My prediction is that you cannot build a working model of Darwinian evolution without invoking teleology. Felsenstein, English, or anyone else is invited to attempt to falsify my prediction.

Reviewing peer review.

Fleming's discovery of penicillin couldn't get published today. That's a huge problem

Updated by Julia Belluz on December 14, 2015, 7:00 a.m. ET


After toiling away for months on revisions for a single academic paper, Columbia University economist Chris Blattman started wondering about the direction of his work.

He had submitted the paper in question to one of the top economics journals earlier this year. In return, he had gotten back nearly 30 pages of single-space comments from peer reviewers (experts in the field who provide feedback on a scientific manuscript). It had taken two or three days a week over three months to address them all.

So Blattman asked himself some simple but profound questions: Was all this work on a single study really worth it? Was it best to spend months revising one study — or could that time have been better spent on publishing multiple smaller studies? He wrote about the conundrum on his blog:

Some days my field feels like an arms race to make each experiment more thorough and technically impressive, with more and more attention to formal theories, structural models, pre-analysis plans, and (most recently) multiple hypothesis testing. The list goes on. In part we push because want to do better work. Plus, how else to get published in the best places and earn the respect of your peers?

It seems to me that all of this is pushing social scientists to produce better quality experiments and more accurate answers. But it’s also raising the size and cost and time of any one experiment.

Over the phone, Blattman explained to me that in the age of "big data," high-quality scientific journals are increasingly pushing for large-scale, comprehensive studies, usually involving hundreds or thousands of participants. And he's now questioning whether a course correction is needed.

Though he can't prove it yet, he suspects social science has made a trade-off: Big, time-consuming studies are coming at the cost of smaller and cheaper studies that, taken together, may be just as valuable and perhaps more applicable (or what researchers call "generalizable") to more people and places.

Do we need more "small" science?

Over in Switzerland, Alzheimer's researcher Lawrence Rajendran has been asking himself a similar question: Should science be smaller again? Rajendran, who heads a laboratory at the University of Zurich, recently founded a journal called Matters. Set to launch in early 2016, the journal aims to publish "the true unit of science" — the observation.

Rajendran notes that Alexander Fleming’s simple observation that penicillin mold seemed to kill off bacteria in his petri dish could never be published today, even though it led to the discovery of lifesaving antibiotics. That's because today's journals want lots of data and positive results that fit into an overarching narrative (what Rajendran calls "storytelling") before they'll publish a given study.

"You would have to solve the structure of penicillin or find the mechanism of action," he added.

But research is complex, and scientific findings may not fit into a neat story — at least not right away. So Rajendran and the staff at Matters hope scientists will be able to share insights in this journal that they may not been able to publish otherwise. He also thinks that if researchers have a place to explore preliminary observations, they may not feel as much pressure to exaggerate their findings in order to add all-important publications to their CVs.

Smaller isn't always better

Science has many structural problems to grapple with right now: The peer review system doesn't function all that well, many studies are poorly designed so their answers are unreliable, and replications of experiments are difficult to execute and very often fail. Researchers have estimated that about $200 billion — or about 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on poorly designed and redundant studies.

A big part of the reason science funders started emphasizing large-scale studies is because they were trying to avoid common problems with smaller studies: The results aren't statistically significant, and the sample sizes may be too tiny and therefore unrepresentative.


It's not clear that emphasizing smaller-scale studies and observations will solve these problems. In fact, publishing more observations may just add to the noise. But as Rajendran says, it's very possible that important insights are being lost in the push toward large-scale science. "Science can be small, big, cure diseases," he said. "It can just be curiosity-driven. Academic journals shouldn't block the communication of small scientific observations."

The global brotherhood of Jehovah's servants rallies.

MARCH 21, 2017
RUSSIA

Jehovah’s Witnesses Mobilize Global Response to Threat of Ban in Russia

NEW YORK—Threatened with an imminent ban on their worship in Russia, Jehovah’s Witnesses are responding with a direct appeal to Kremlin and Supreme Court officials for relief through a global letter-writing campaign. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses is inviting the over 8,000,000 Witnesses worldwide to participate.

On March 15, 2017, Russia’s Ministry of Justice filed a claim with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to label the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia as extremist and liquidate it. The claim also seeks to ban the activities of the Administrative Center. If the Supreme Court upholds this claim, the Witnesses’ national headquarters near St. Petersburg will be shut down. Subsequently, some 400 registered Local Religious Organizations would be liquidated, outlawing the services of over 2,300 congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. The branch property, as well as places of worship used by Witnesses throughout the country, could be seized by the State. Additionally, individual Jehovah’s Witnesses would become subject to criminal prosecution for merely carrying out their worship activities. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the claim on April 5.

“The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses wants to heighten attention to this critical situation,” states David A. Semonian, a spokesman at the Witnesses’ world headquarters. “Prosecuting non-violent, law-abiding citizens as if they were terrorists is clearly a misapplication of anti-extremist laws. Such prosecution is based on completely false grounds.”

The Witnesses’ global campaign is not without precedent. Nearly 20 years ago, Witnesses wrote to defend their fellow worshippers in Russia in response to a smear campaign by some members of the government in power at the time. Additionally, Witnesses have initiated past letter-writing campaigns to motivate government officials to end persecution of Witnesses in other countries, including Jordan, Korea, and Malawi.


“Reading the Bible, singing, and praying with fellow worshippers is clearly not criminal,” adds Mr. Semonian. “We hope that our global letter-writing campaign will motivate Russian officials to stop this unjustifiable action against our fellow worshippers.”

Media Contacts:

International: David A. Semonian, Office of Public Information, +1-845-524-3000


Russia: Yaroslav Sivulskiy, +7-812-702-2691

Addresses

 President of Russia
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
23 Ilyinka Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation
103132

 Prime Minister of Russia
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev
2 Krasnopresnenskaya Naberezhnaya
Moscow
Russian Federation
103274


 Prosecutor General
Yury Yakovlevich Chayka
Prosecutor General’s Office of the
Russian Federation
15A Bolshaya Dmitrovka Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation
GSP-3
125993

 Minister of Justice
Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov
Ministry of Justice of the Russian
Federation
14 Zhitnaya Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation
GSP-1
119991


 Minister of Foreign Affairs
Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Russian Federation
32/34 Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square
Moscow
Russian Federation
119200

 The Chairman of the Supreme
Court
Viacheslav Mikhailovich Lebedev
Supreme Court of Russian Federation
15 Povarskaya Str.
Moscow
Russian Federation

121069

Predators:the plough of God

Re:Darwinian theology.

Flip-Sides of the Warfare Thesis
Cornelius Hunter

Empirical observations of the world don’t suggest that it arose by natural law and chance events. But that is what evolutionists believe, and so it is always interesting to see where they are coming from. What underlying beliefs or influences drive one to the age-old position of Epicureanism? Why would one believe the world arose by randomly swerving atoms, or randomly mutating genomes?

Dennis Venema, co-author of Adam and the Genome, a new book promoting evolution, makes his influences clear from the very first sentence:

Like many evangelicals, I (Dennis) grew up in an environment that was suspicious of science in general, and openly hostile to evolution in particular.

That speaks volumes. Venema is a Fellow of Biology with BioLogos. As he recounts, he is a refugee from creationism and what I call the flip-side of the Warfare Thesis. The Warfare Thesis holds that religion, and Christianity in particular, often conflicts with and opposes scientific advances. It can be traced at least as far back as Voltaire with his 18th-century mythical retelling of the Galileo Affair. Many later contributors embellished and established the myth that was eventually labeled the “Warfare Thesis.”

While the Warfare Thesis can be found in the evolution literature, creationists have their own version. In this reverse, or flip-side, the idea is that evolutionists are just atheists, pushed to believe in a naturalistic origins because of the rejection of God. To be sure, atheism today has been aided and abetted by evolution’s popularity. But from Epicureanism to Darwinism to neo-Darwinism and beyond, it is theism, not a-theism, that is doing the heavy lifting.

Why did Richard Bentley charge Thomas Burnet (an Anglican cleric who appealed to Scripture in his popular 17th-century cosmogony) with atheism? Burnet was indeed a latitudinarian, but hardly an atheist. Why did Charles Hodge charge Darwin’s new theory as atheism in disguise? Darwin was hardly a mainline Christian but, like Burnet, his 1859 tome on evolution was chock-full of theological discussion and claims about the Creator. Darwin’s strong arguments were based on theism, not a-theism.

These are the A-side and B-side of the Warfare Thesis. As Venema explains, he was taught that evolution was “pushed by atheists,” that Darwin and his theory “were evil,” and their mere utterance was tantamount to cursing, “and not mildly.” Evolution “was bad,” and “Science and God’s actions, at least in this case, were placed in opposition to each other.”

This flip-side of the Warfare Thesis sets its adherents up for a fall. One simply is in no position to comprehend the deep theology at work in Epicurean and evolutionary thought. Darwin presented his arguments with a patina of scientific jargon, and that formed the template for the genre. Consider this gem from Chapter 6 of the Origin:

Thus, we can hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose or of the frigate-bird are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe that the similar bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore-leg of the horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures to inheritance.

One can read through such passages and almost conclude that Darwin is merely presenting empirical scientific reasoning and conclusions. And so it is with today’s evolutionary reasoning, such as this typical textbook example:

If the 11 species had independent origins, there is no reason why their [traits] should be correlated.

It all sounds so scientific. But of course it is not. This is the great deception of evolutionary thought. And those under the influence of the B-side of the Warfare Thesis — believing for certain that evolutionists are nothing more than atheist rascals — lack the tools and knowledge to reckon with it. Venema never had a chance. It was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Unfortunately his story is all too common.

Venema also discusses another important factor in his thinking, and again, it is all too common. Evolutionists tend to place great value on theories. To be sure, theories are extremely important in science. But for centuries, we have seen an unhealthy, undue, emphasis on theories above the importance of following the data. Better to have a theory that doesn’t work very well than to have no theory at all (and no, creationism is not a theory).

Venema makes clear that this way of thinking was an important influence for him. At an early age he found biology to be a “dreadful bore compared with physics and chemistry.” Physics and chemistry were appealing because they were about principles. Biology “seemed to have no organizing principle behind it, whereas the others did.” Indeed, chemistry and physics had “underlying principles that gave order and cohesion to a body of facts.”

With this foundation, Venema was an evolutionist waiting to happen.


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/flip-sides-of-the-warfare-thesis/#sthash.advQ4kED.dpuf

Engineering logic v. Darwinian logic.

New Skull-Hole Study Is No Evidence for Evolution
Jonathan Witt

A Science Daily headline exclaims, “Human skull evolved along with two-legged walking, study confirms.” Actually, the study confirmed no such thing. The headline is a pro-evolution gloss unwarranted by the findings.

They were reporting the publication of a scholarly paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. The paper itself waits until the first sentence of the Abstract to start overselling the evolutionary implications: “A more anteriorly positioned foramen magnum evolved in concert with bipedalism at least four times within Mammalia.” The paper doesn’t so much fail to show this; it never seriously attempts to do so. Its aims are elsewhere.

The study looked at various bipedal mammals, compared them to some quadruped relatives, and found that the foramen magnum — the hole for the spinal column in the base of the skull — tends to sit farther forward on the bipeds.

The findings aren’t revolutionary. They confirm a longstanding view. But if they hold up, they will give fossil hunters an improved diagnostic for deciding if a mammalian fossil skull was from a biped.

That’s interesting and useful, but it’s not evidence of evolution. That is the case for multiple reasons.

Engineering Logic vs. Darwinian Illogic

Having the foramen magnum closer to the front of the skull’s base makes good engineering sense in the case of mammalian bipeds. The features, in other words, appear to come as a matched set for good design reasons.

The matched set finding isn’t weird-world engineering either. The matched set phenomenon is commonplace in engineering. Bicycles have one kind of axle and four-wheeled vehicles another. On a car or wagon, those long axle shafts and the four-wheel architecture appear together because they make engineering sense.

There are also good engineering reasons to doubt the Darwinian evolution of quadruped to biped. Vast oceans of reduced fitness lie between a well-integrated quadruped design and a well-integrated biped design. Ann Gauger goes into some detail about this on pages 21-25 of Science and Human Origins. Here, suffice to say that evolving one tiny step at a time from quadruped to biped — gradually re-engineering all the numerous integrated details by random mutations — would force our aspiring quadruped to spend many generations distinctly less fit than he was before.

That’s a problem for evolution because natural selection doesn’t back less functional cripples generation after generation for the mere hope of a glorious upright and striding biped somewhere in the distant future. Natural selection is all about the here and now.

Finally, the study doesn’t describe a finely graded series of fossils moving from quadruped to various intermediates to bipeds. The study is all about the two distinct groups — biped and quadruped.

As for the misleading claims that the study confirms evolution, there is a quick fix at least for the opening words of the Science Daily article. The fix involves a deletion of information rather than the creation of new information (fitting since Darwinism’s verified success stories involve loss of biological information).

In this case, just cut the first three words, thus: “The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull — a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and the University of Texas at Austin.”


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/new-skull-hole-study-is-no-evidence-for-evolution/#sthash.ixVBdtYZ.dpuf

Yet more on high quality ignorance.

Asking the Right Questions: My Visit to Brown University and MIT -
Brian Miller

This past week I had the privilege of speaking at Brown University and MIT about the evidence for design in nature. I covered the topics of fine-tuning in the laws of physics, the thermodynamics of the origin of life, and biological information. I was deeply impressed by the students at both schools, particularly in their responses to my presentations.

Several of the participants had never heard the evidence for design, so they were visibly struck by its weight and the enormity of its implications. The questions were particularly thoughtful, sincere, and relevant. They were also very common in such discussions, so I thought I would address each of them.

In relation to the fine-tuning of the universe, two issues came up, as they almost always do.

Question: If the laws of physics were different, could not some other type of life have evolved in those alternative conditions?

Response: Many of the laws of physics have to be fantastically fine-tuned for a diversity of atoms to appear in sufficient abundance for any type of life. For instance, if the masses of the protons and neutrons were not just right, we would not have any of the atoms, such as carbon, needed for any type of life. Or, if gravity were not correctly set, planets would never have formed. Without planets, no type of life would have been possible.

Question: Does not the fact that we are here to observe the universe mean that the universe had to have the needed parameters for life to exist? Moreover, if a multiverse exists consisting of an infinite number of universes, we could simply have had the good fortune of ending up in the universe with the required properties.

Response: To better understand the questions, imagine the cousin of a state lottery commissioner winning the lottery twenty years in a row. The police then visit the commissioner and accuse him of wrongdoing, since the odds of a given person winning that many times is so fantastically low. The commissioner responds that we could be living in a multiverse with countless numbers of lotteries happening on planets in different universes at the same time. We just happen to live in the right universe where his cousin won so many times. In addition, if he had not won that often, we would not be having this conversation. Clearly, the police would not be satisfied with that explanation. In the same way, the fact that so many parameters are correct for the specific goal of supporting intelligent life points to design. Moreover, every theory proposed to justify the multiverse has itself to be fine-tuned to generate the correct variety of universes. The fine-tuning cannot be escaped.

In the portion of my presentations dealing with the origin of life, I addressed the fact that nature always tends towards high entropy (disorder) and low energy. However, life is both low entropy (highly ordered) and high energy. No natural process would ever take the basic building blocks of life and form a cell, since nature would have to move in the opposite direction from how it always proceeds. In response, I received another standard question.

Question: Cannot a system move from higher to lower entropy locally, if the surrounding environment increases in entropy to compensate for the local change?

Response: A system can only move to lower entropy if the process is exothermic, which means it gives off heat. In that case, the heat that enters the surrounding environment increases the entropy more than the local entropy decreases. However, the formation of a cell corresponds to a decrease in entropy, and in endothermic processes, heat is absorbed. Therefore, both the local system and the surrounding environment go to lower entropy, which is physically impossible.

In the last part of my talk I discussed how the information in the cell points to intelligent design. I received this common question.

Question: Do people not naturally tend to misidentify design in nature, such as seeing a bunny in a cloud? Might we similarly be mistaken in identifying design in the cell?

Response: People might misidentify design, when the evidence is ambiguous. However, when they see a pattern such as Mount Rushmore, they are always correct in inferring design. The amount of information in the simplest possible cell demonstrates the specificity and the level of intentionality seen in Mount Rushmore, not a cloud bunny. Therefore, the conclusion of design is equally valid.

The students commented that they very much enjoyed the discussion, since they never hear the design perspective. And the vast majority wished to stay connected with the sponsoring groups for future conversations. If only all academics could learn to ask the right questions and demonstrate such open mindedness and such a desire for truth.


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/asking-the-right-questions-my-visit-to-brown-university-and-mit/#sthash.Vdue0JHu.dpuf

Yet another Darwinian just so story?

New Skull-Hole Study Is No Evidence for Evolution
Jonathan Witt

A Science Daily headline exclaims, “Human skull evolved along with two-legged walking, study confirms.” Actually, the study confirmed no such thing. The headline is a pro-evolution gloss unwarranted by the findings.

They were reporting the publication of a scholarly paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. The paper itself waits until the first sentence of the Abstract to start overselling the evolutionary implications: “A more anteriorly positioned foramen magnum evolved in concert with bipedalism at least four times within Mammalia.” The paper doesn’t so much fail to show this; it never seriously attempts to do so. Its aims are elsewhere.

The study looked at various bipedal mammals, compared them to some quadruped relatives, and found that the foramen magnum — the hole for the spinal column in the base of the skull — tends to sit farther forward on the bipeds.

The findings aren’t revolutionary. They confirm a longstanding view. But if they hold up, they will give fossil hunters an improved diagnostic for deciding if a mammalian fossil skull was from a biped.

That’s interesting and useful, but it’s not evidence of evolution. That is the case for multiple reasons.

Engineering Logic vs. Darwinian Illogic

Having the foramen magnum closer to the front of the skull’s base makes good engineering sense in the case of mammalian bipeds. The features, in other words, appear to come as a matched set for good design reasons.

The matched set finding isn’t weird-world engineering either. The matched set phenomenon is commonplace in engineering. Bicycles have one kind of axle and four-wheeled vehicles another. On a car or wagon, those long axle shafts and the four-wheel architecture appear together because they make engineering sense.

There are also good engineering reasons to doubt the Darwinian evolution of quadruped to biped. Vast oceans of reduced fitness lie between a well-integrated quadruped design and a well-integrated biped design. Ann Gauger goes into some detail about this on pages 21-25 of Science and Human Origins. Here, suffice to say that evolving one tiny step at a time from quadruped to biped — gradually re-engineering all the numerous integrated details by random mutations — would force our aspiring quadruped to spend many generations distinctly less fit than he was before.

That’s a problem for evolution because natural selection doesn’t back less functional cripples generation after generation for the mere hope of a glorious upright and striding biped somewhere in the distant future. Natural selection is all about the here and now.

Finally, the study doesn’t describe a finely graded series of fossils moving from quadruped to various intermediates to bipeds. The study is all about the two distinct groups — biped and quadruped.

As for the misleading claims that the study confirms evolution, there is a quick fix at least for the opening words of the Science Daily article. The fix involves a deletion of information rather than the creation of new information (fitting since Darwinism’s verified success stories involve loss of biological information).

In this case, just cut the first three words, thus: “The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull — a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and the University of Texas at Austin.”


- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/new-skull-hole-study-is-no-evidence-for-evolution/#sthash.ASXxSbbq.dpuf

Time to revise the U.S constitution?:Pros and cons.

Tough guy?

Creative writing 101

Victorian era scourges make a mockery of our 21st century tech.

London (CNN)Josie Garrett seems like a healthy and happy 24-year-old when we meet her in between classes at University College London where she is studying for a master's degree.

But Garrett is making a tough recovery from a potentially deadly strain of tuberculosis -- a disease she, along with many people, thought was a thing of the past.Six months ago she was seriously ill and being treated in an isolation unit in a London hospital.

Up until recently, Garrett says she wasn't able to do anything.

"I couldn't work, wasn't able to socialize, I wasn't able to kind of live a normal life. It had a huge impact, so the idea of it being done and hopefully not coming back again is amazing," the student says.

Garrett says she felt "complete shock" at her diagnosis.

"I think there is a general sense in this country, at least for me -- which is incorrect -- that infectious diseases are completely eradicated, or that we found some way to get rid of them and that they are 'Victorian' illnesses," she says. "The reality is that's just not the case. It's definitely something people need to be aware of."
   Deadlier than Iraq?
Some London neighborhoods have higher rates of tuberculosis than almost anywhere else in the world, as high as 113 per 100,000 people. That's significantly higher than in countries such as Rwanda, Iraq and Guatemala."We think TB is a disease of developing countries or of days gone by, but TB is a disease of today. It certainly was a disease of yesterday, and we need to make sure that it isn't a disease of tomorrow," says Dr. Onkar Sarhota, who is chair of London's Health Committee.

TB is one disease often synonymous with poverty, affecting the most vulnerable.

And it is not the only such disease worrying London's doctors.

Recent studies for Britain's National Health Service found that other diseases, widespread in the 19th and early 20th centuries, are making a comeback.

"There has been a huge rise in scarlet fever -- 14,000 [suspected] cases in the last year, the highest since the 1960s," says Dr. Nuria Martinez-Alier, a London immunologist. "We have seen a rise in the cases of tuberculosis, we've seen a rise in cases of whooping cough, we have seen more measles in the last 10 years than in the last 10 years before that," she warns.

Over the past five years in England, hospital admissions for scarlet fever have risen 136%, scurvy by 38% and cholera by 300%, though the number of scurvy and cholera cases is very small.
     TB fightback:
Modern factors like migration are contributing to the resurgence, as well as age-old afflictions: malnutrition, poverty and lack of access to health care.In England, malnutrition has risen by 51% over the past five years, the National Health Service reports.

And there are other factors.

"We are seeing a reduced vaccine uptake, for example with measles; reduced population immunity, for example with whooping cough; increased poverty and more people on the poverty line," Martinez-Alier says.

London health officials credit awareness campaigns and free screening sessions in the city for a steady improvement in the rate of tuberculosis infection this year, though it remains high.In England, malnutrition has risen by 51% over the past five years, the National Health Service reports."It is a serious problem and we need to tackle it," says Dr. Sarhota.

Josie Garrett's recovery from TB will have taken two years when she is finished with her treatment.

She is urging awareness, so other people can get diagnosed faster than she was. "My perception of TB was something Jane Austen heroines had, not someone today."

Is wikipedia run by the borg?

Wikipedia and the Sociology of Darwinian Belief
David Klinghoffer February 5, 2012 8:12 PM


I wish I worked as efficiently as Wikipedia's editors. Last week I noted here that notwithstanding the impressive volume of pro-ID peer-reviewed publications, by researchers within and outside the intelligent-design movement, Wikipedia's article on ID carries the ridiculously false statement that "The intelligent design movement has not published a properly peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal," with a footnote to the six-years-old Kitzmiller v. Dover decision.

Writing us at ENV, a reader in South Africa promptly took it on himself to try to correct the Wiki article and report back about the results. A worthy gesture, but I could have told him he was probably wasting his time.

As anyone knows who's followed the popular Darwinist blogging sites, Darwinism is an ideological movement seemingly rich in believers unhindered by responsibilities to family or work or both, with little better to do day and night than engage in (usually anonymous) skirmishes on the Internet. Editing the Wiki article, our South African friend inserted references to the 50-plus peer-reviewed articles from our updated list of pro-ID scientific literature. Sure enough, within just 30 minutes, someone had erased his additions and substituted snide and again false language to the effect that:

The Discovery Institute insists that a number of intelligent design articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals.... Critics, largely members of the scientific community, reject this claim, stating that no established scientific journal has yet published an intelligent design article. Rather, intelligent design proponents have set up their own journals with peer review that lacks impartiality and rigor, consisting entirely of intelligent design supporters.
This is preposterous, as anyone who has looked at the list of papers would have to honestly admit. Our South African friend went a few rounds with the Wikipedia editors but, last time I checked, without ultimate success. They kept erasing or editing his edits. The main Wiki article on intelligent design still falsely reports, "The intelligent design movement has not published a properly peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal."
Our friend suggested despairingly,

I'm afraid that the only way to get some balance in Wikipedia is if the [Discovery Institute] appoints people on a full time basis just to monitor and correct the articles...Given how important Wikipedia is as a source to the common man, it might well be a worthwhile investment.
A nice suggestion, if totally unrealistic. Of course he's right, though, about Wikipedia's cultural importance. Many a high school or college student or curious adult will rely on that article and conclude erroneously with Judge Jones, on whose cribbing from the ACLU six years ago the article explicitly relies, that ID has no serious scientific backing.
It's pathetic, but also revealing. As I noted at the American Spectator the other day, Darwinists and other liberals are very big on seeking sociological or medical explanations for the persistent tendency of most Americans to "deny science" by doubting Darwinism, politically correct climate science, and the rest. It tells you something that, in defending their doctrine at Wikipedia, the Darwinian cause can draw on such an impressive body of apparently unemployed and socially isolated devotees.

Intelligent design can't do that. If I had to estimate, based on ample experience, I would say that the sociology of ID leans far, far more in the direction of people tied in with other people -- work, family, friends -- in other words, with reality. We don't live just virtually on the Internet. And so, despite the fact that Darwin-doubting represents a majority view in American culture as a whole, we can't muster the needed forces among the unemployed and isolated to monitor Wikipedia for falsehoods around the clock. We just don't have the time. We have other things to do.

That's a big challenge. But if the sociology of belief means anything -- if you can tell something about an idea from the people who hold it -- it speaks well for our side in the evolution debate and gives some reason for longterm hope.

Metamorphosis Vs. Darwinism

Previewing Metamorphosis: The Case for Intelligent Design in a Nutshell Chrysalis
David Klinghoffer May 18, 2011 7:46 AM 

The other night, I watched the latest production from Illustra Media, Metamorphosis, with our oldest kid, nine-year-old Ezra. Given that he pretty strictly requires that video entertainment involve robots flying around blowing things up, I expected him to scoff at a movie about caterpillars that crawl around, turn into butterflies then proceed to fly to Mexico. Conspicuously, on its remarkable unguided cross-continental journey, the luminous orange-and-black Monarch butterfly fails to blow up anything at all.

Yet Ezra sat entranced throughout, as I did, which leads me to think Metamorphosis is going to be a big, cross-generational hit.

Scheduled to be released in DVD form on June 15, Metamorphosis follows on the heels of past Illustra offerings, including Privileged Planet, Unlocking the Mystery of Life, and Darwin's Dilemma. It's probably true that with these films taken altogether, Illustra producer and documentarian Lad Allen has made the most easily accessible, visually stunning case for intelligent design available.

If you have one shot at opening the mind of an uninformed and dismissive friend or family member, the kind who feels threatened by challenges to Darwinism, then presenting him with a copy of a 600-page volume like Signature in the Cell, or even a slimmer alternative like Darwin's Black Box, would probably be less effective than choosing one of Mr. Allen's DVDs.

Among those, Metamorphosis might well make the best initial selection, since the argument for intelligent design doesn't come in till the third and final act. When it comes, it's a soft sell, preceded by a gorgeous, non-threatening nature film that only hints at what's ahead in Act III. In Act I, the focus is on the mind-blowing magical routine by which the caterpillar enters into the chrysalis, dissolves into a buttery blob and swiftly reconstitutes itself into a completely different insect, a butterfly.

A cute graphic sequence shows, by way of analogy, a Ford Model T driving along a desert road. It screeches to a stop and unfolds a garage around itself. Inside, the car quickly falls to pieces, divesting itself of constituent parts that spontaneously recycle themselves into an utterly new and far more splendid vehicle. A sleek modern helicopter emerges from the garage door and thumps off into the sky.

In Act II, we follow a particular butterfly, the Monarch, on its journey to a volcanic mountain lodging site in Mexico for the winter, accomplished each year despite the fact that no single, living Monarch was among the cohort that made the trip the year before. Only distant relations -- grandparents, great-grandparents -- did so. Given the brief life cycle of the insect, those elders are all dead. The Monarch follows the lead of an ingenious internal mapping and guidance system dependent on making calculations of the angle of the rising sun and on magnetic tugs from ferrous metal in the target mountain range.

Experts explain and comment, including CSC fellow and philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, Biologic Institute developmental biologist Ann Gauger, and University of Florida zoologist Thomas Emmel. The film argues that neither metamorphosis nor migration is the kind of feature with which blindly groping Darwinian natural selection could ever equip a creature. How could an unguided step-by-step process build metamorphosis, inherently an all-or-nothing proposition? As Dr. Gauger points, once the caterpillar has entered the chrysalis, there's no going back. It must emerge either as a fully formed butterfly or the soupy remains of a dead caterpillar.

If I had a criticism of the film, it would be that too little time is devoted to the evolution debate. You come away wondering how Darwinists would respond, and how ID-friendly experts would reply in turn.

Well, Lad Allen's film won't be the last word on the subject, just as it is far from the first. Contemplating butterflies was among the considerations that drove evolutionary theory's co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, to doubt the sufficiency of natural selection to account for the most wondrous aspects of animal life. Like lepidopterist and novelist Vladimir Nabokov a half-century later, Wallace noted the astonishing, gratuitous artistry with which butterflies adorn their wings.

In The World of Life, Wallace wrote of how he could satisfyingly account for this only as a feature intended by design "to lead us to recognize some guiding power, some supreme mind, directing and organizing the blind forces of nature in the production of this marvelous development of life and loveliness." Butterflies may not literally blow up bad guys like the robots in my son's favorite movies, but they strike another blow for Wallaceism.

More subtly, the transformation of the caterpillar hints at a deeper truth about life, that it is not bestowed on machines or other mechanical devices, as per the mechanistic myth. Ancient philosophers and mystics spoke of an "animal soul," different from the soul that makes human beings unique, although people possess both an animal and a divine soul, along with our physical bodies. The animal soul, in this view, is a vital force received by inheritance at conception and, among other functions, participating in the direction of how the body gets knitted together.

Speaking of it as a soul implies purpose, intention, intelligence. That sure does look like what's at work in those mere couple of weeks spent in the chrysalis. Darwinism, of course, has a hard enough time explaining the construction of a living machine. This is something much greater, posing a far harder challenge to materialist evolutionism.

On the Genius of the original designer

On Darwin’s Day, Let’s Ask: Are Our Bodies the Product of ‘Unintelligent Design’?
By Ann Gauger | February 11, 2016

This Friday, February 12, is Darwin Day, the birth date of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). It’s an occasion celebrated around the world for revealing the truth about who we really are and what we’re really like—so say Darwin’s more aggressive followers. Look at yourself in the mirror. You’re just an animal, and a poorly made one, at that. You are the product of “unintelligent design.”

But perhaps, on this occasion of Darwin’s birthday, might it not be worth asking, is what they say true?

Let’s examine the rhetoric of one of the more articulate and media-savvy of those who express this viewpoint, professor of psychology Dr. David Barash. A couple of years ago he opened a remarkable window on his classroom teaching. Writing in the New York Times, he described a yearly talk – “The Talk” – he gives to his students at the University of Washington. In The Talk, he explains why Darwinian theory, if faced squarely, undermines belief in a “benevolent, controlling creator.”

His candor is to be commended. Many biology students likely receive a similar message, perhaps more implied than explicit, from their teachers.

More recently, in the Wall Street Journal, the prolific Dr. Barash highlighted a particular challenge, as he sees it, to “intelligent design.” I put the phrase in quotation marks because the only example of design thinking he gives goes back well over a century and a half, to a theological document, the Bridgewater Treatises (1833-1840), while skipping over modern scientific evidence of intelligent design (ID) altogether. I’m sorry to say this is typical of many who criticize ID. But leave that aside.

In the article, Barash reviews two new books that describe the evolutionary mess that our bodies are – a hodgepodge, so this view insists, of barely good enough solutions to physiological problems, a collection of compromises that leave us prone to injury and disease, according to the authors and according to him. I haven’t read the books in question, but Barash’s piece itself makes the case for “unintelligent design.”

There’s an undercurrent that runs through that argument, sometimes visible on the surface, sometimes below the water, tugging our feet out from under us. That ripple on the surface goes something like this: Our design isn’t perfect. That’s the visible part. Then there’s the undercurrent: If there were an intelligent designer he would have made perfect things. Barash, ever frank, says this directly. Giving examples like the optic nerve and the prostate gland, he says, “An intelligent designer wouldn’t have proceeded this way.” Therefore we are the product of patchwork evolution and there is no designer.

Note, that undercurrent is an assumption. Who knows what an intelligent designer capable of creating life would have done? Theologians who believe the designer is God may argue about that, but science provides no insight.

It’s another assumption that good design never breaks down. Not many human machines can last 70 years without breaking down sometime. A 1940 Cadillac, top of the line, in continuous use, would have needed considerable refurbishing by now to keep it running and looking decent. Its leather seats would likely have cracked and its paint job flaked and dimmed, numerous sets of tires worn out, its brakes replaced numerous times, and its valves and pistons either machined or replaced.

At the same age, many human beings look pretty good by comparison, since we generally keep running without replacement parts long after our warranty has expired.

Any human designer knows that good design often means finding a way to meet multiple constraints. Consider airplanes. We want them to be strong, but weight is an issue, so lighter materials must be used. We want to preserve people’s hearing and keep the cabin warm, so soundproofing and insulation are needed, but they add weight. All of this together determines fuel usage, which translates into how far the airplane can fly. In 1986, the Rutan Voyager made its flight around the world without stopping or refueling, the first aircraft ever to do so. To carry enough fuel to make the trip, the designers had to strip the plane of everything except the essentials. That meant no soundproofing and no comfortable seats. But the airplane flew all the way. This was very special design.

Last, despite what some, like Dr. Barash, would tell you, our bodies are marvels of perfection in many ways. The rod cells in our eyes can detect as little as one photon of light; our brains receive the signal after just nine rods have responded. Our speech apparatus is perfectly fit for communication. Says linguist Noam Chomsky, “Language is an optimal way to link sound and meaning.” Our brains are capable of storing as much information as the World Wide Web.

We can run long distances, better than a horse and rider sometimes. For an amusing comparison of our fastest times compared to various animals, have a look here. But bear in mind, not one of those animals can run, swim, and jump as well as we can.

Then there is our capacity for abstract thought, an activity you and I are engaged in right now, and our incredible fine-motor skills. Think concert pianist.

On that note, happy Darwin Day, and I do mean happy. Before allowing some evolutionists to get us down and drag us under, let’s remember and be grateful for all the things that go right and work well. Intelligent design does not mean “perfect design,” or “design impervious to aging, injury, and disease.” It means being a product of intelligence, whatever the source might be, giving evidence of care, intention, and forethought, as our bodies surely do.

Ann Gauger holds a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington and is a senior research scientist at Biologic Institute.

Acts17 ESV

English Standard Version
Paul and Silas in Thessalonica

1Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” 4And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. 5But the Jewsa were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. 6And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, 7and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” 8And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. 9And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

Paul and Silas in Berea

10The brothersb immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. 13But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. 14Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. 15Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.

Paul in Athens

16Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

Paul Addresses the Areopagus

22So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,c 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;d

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’e

29Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

32Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33So Paul went out from their midst. 34But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Footnotes:
a 5 Greek Ioudaioi probably refers here to Jewish religious leaders, and others under their influence, in that time; also verse 13
b 10 Or brothers and sisters; also verse 14
c 24 Greek made by hands
d 28 Probably from Epimenides of Crete
e 28 From Aratus's poem "Phainomena"