Going nuclear?

Earlier Burgess-Shale-Type Fossils Found in Greenland
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Graham Budd has been critical of associations between Ediacaran fauna and Cambrian animals, and has also debunked alleged Precambrian animal ancestors such as Vernanimalcula (Stephen Meyer,Darwin’s Doubt, pp. 85, 90-91). Budd also was in attendance at the Darwin-doubting Altenberg 16 conference in 2008 (p. 292), confessing that the fossil record tells little about the origin of biological forms. This Cambrian expert from Uppsala University has a new paper in Geology describing new exquisitely-preserved fossils of the Burgess Shale type, but earlier. Along with lead writer Ben Slater, Graham Budd’s team unveils photographs of tiny but exquisite parts of arthropods, worms and other animals that burst into appearance in the Cambrian Explosion. What’s amazing is that these fossils were collected not in Canada or China, but in the northern reaches of Greenland.

The location, called Sirius Passet in Peary Land in the far north of Greenland, has been known as an early Cambrian fossil site, but it lies close to a geological fold belt. Having been heated to 200° C or more by metamorphism, most of the fossils at Sirius Passet have suffered thermal alteration and are difficult to interpret. Not far to the south, however, the team found sites in the same formation that escaped most of the alteration.News from Uppsala University describes how they found a “treasure trove of highly detailed fossils” of the Burgess Shale type.

The ‘Cambrian explosion’ of animal diversity beginning ~541 million years ago is a defining episode in the history of life. This was a time when the seas first teemed with animal life, and the first recognisably ‘modern’ ecosystems began to take shape.

Current accounts of this explosion in animal diversity rely heavily on records from fossilised shells and other hard parts, since these structures are the most likely to survive as fossils. However, since most marine animals are ‘soft-bodied’ this represents only a small fraction of the total diversity.

Rare sites of exceptional fossilisation, like the world-famous Burgess Shale, have revolutionised palaeontologists understanding of ‘soft-bodied’ Cambrian life. Because of the special conditions of fossilisation at these localities, organisms that did not produce hard mineralized shells or skeletons are also preserved. Such sites offer a rare glimpse into the true diversity of these ancient seas, which were filled with a dazzling array of soft and squishy predatory worms and arthropods (the group containing modern crustaceans and insects). 

Also important is that these fossils date earlier than the Burgess Shale by 10 million years (518 million instead of 508 million), and yet are recognizable as the same animals. This indicates that the Cambrian animals had a global distribution at the time they were fossilized. The same animals are found many thousands of miles apart on three continents.

Instead of the large, articulated fossils from China and Canada, those at the Greenland sites are made up of tiny fragments. So rich were the deposits, they often found 100 specimens in a 50-gram sample.

A team of palaeontologists from Uppsala (Ben Slater, Sebastian Willman, Graham Budd and John Peel) used a low-manipulation acid extraction procedure to dissolve some of these less intensively cooked mudrocks. To their astonishment, this simple preparation technique revealed a wealth of previously unknown microscopic animal fossils preserved in spectacular detail.

Most of the fossils were less than a millimetre long and had to be studied under the microscope. Fossils at the nearby Sirius Passet site typically preserve much larger animals, so the new finds fill an important gap in our knowledge of the small-scale animals that probably made up the majority of these ecosystems. Among the discoveries were the tiny spines and teeth of priapulid worms — small hook shaped structures that allowed these worms to efficiently burrow through the sediments and capture prey. Other finds included the tough outer cuticles and defensive spines of various arthropods, and perhaps most surprisingly, microscopic fragments of the oldest known pterobranch hemichordates — an obscure group of tube-dwelling filter feeders that are distant relatives of the vertebrates. This group became very diverse after the Cambrian Period and are among some of the most commonly found fossils in rocks from younger deposits, but were entirely unknown from the early Cambrian. This new source of fossils will also help palaeontologists to better understand the famously difficult to interpret fossils at the nearby Sirius Passet site, where the flattened animal fossils are usually complete, but missing crucial microscopic details.

The photos of the small carbonaceous fossils (SCFs) in the paper show exquisite details of identifiable Burgess Shale type animals. Pieces of trilobite cuticles were also found. Trilobites are among the most complex of Cambrian animals, possessing articulated limbs, eyes and multiple body systems for locomotion, digestion and survival. The authors seem most excited about finding the earliest pterobranch hemichordates (a type of filter feeder known in the Burgess Shale), recognizing that the worldwide distribution indicates an even earlier origin. The paper says,

Our report of early Cambrian pterobranch fragments confirms this hypothesis [of early origin], and their potential affinities to Graptolithina also suggest that the divergence and radiation of the pterobranch clades containing cephalodiscids and graptolites had a somewhat deeper, early Cambrian origin.

Nowhere do they suggest evidence for evolution or transitional forms. On the contrary, these new fossils confirm the picture of abrupt appearance and stasis. The best the team can say is that this fossil site offers “new insights” into the fossilization process and may “reshape our view” of this ‘episode’ known as the Cambrian explosion:

“The sheer abundance of these miniature animal fossils means that we have only begun to scratch the surface of this overlooked resource, but it is already clear that this discovery will help to reshape our view of the non-shelly animals that crawled and swam among the early Cambrian seas more than half a billion years ago,” says Sebastian Willman, researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.

Marshall Is Back

In 2013, U.C. Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall published a critique of Darwin’s Doubt in the journal Science that Stephen Meyer considered the first critical review to actually address the main argument in the book: the inability of standard evolutionary mechanisms to explain the origin of morphological novelty in the Cambrian period. Meyer wrote a four-chapter response to Marshall in the follow-up book,  Debating Darwin’s Doubt (2015).

Late last year, Marshall wrote an article in Science (November 29, 2017) called “A tip of the hat to evolutionary change,” in which he reviewed another paper in the same issue that claims to reveal “an unexpectedly simple pattern of driver action in peak evolutionary success.” That paper by Žliobaitė et al concludes from the fossil record of herbivorous mammals that species rise toward success and decline toward extinction in a “hat shape” graph (thus his title).  In passing, Marshall admits that “one of the challenges of studying evolution … is the hierarchical structure of the evolutionary process.” What drives innovation: abiotic (environmental) processes or biotic processes, like competition? How do they work together? How simple is the rise to “evolutionary success”?

Though only peripherally related to evolutionary processes in the Cambrian explosion, Marshall’s article shows what he thinks these days about the origin of biological novelty. Old-fashioned Darwinian competition is a driver of extinction, he agrees, but what drives innovation?

The results of Žliobaitė and colleagues’ work also provide insight into the drivers of evolutionary innovation. The authors’ data for North America and Europe show that, although both biotic and abiotic factors contribute roughly equally to genus origination rates, neither contribution is statistically significant. As the authors note, this provides evidence that evolutionary innovation is not driven by biotic or abiotic external changes. Instead, the data support the idea that evolutionary innovation is influenced by intrinsic factors — the less-predictable origin of the ‘right’ variants at the right time, able to exploit either existing or new resources.

This statement indicates that nothing much has changed in his thinking. It appears Marshall still has no better tool for innovation than lucky mutations that just happen to arrive at the right time to be exploited. How this solution can possibly address the “hierarchical structure of the evolutionary process” leading to body plans with hierarchical levels of morphological innovation seems lost in academic jargon and generalizations.

The Greenland fossils are observational facts. Graham Budd’s team in that cold, remote, northern wasteland could look at those cold, hard facts under a microscope, seeing complexity that shouldn’t be there by any unguided natural process. If Charles Marshall had a better mechanism for innovation than sheer dumb luck, he has had years to announce it. Until and unless he does, Meyer’s thesis remains unchallenged: only intelligent design can account for the functional hierarchical organization revealed by the Cambrian animals.

On considering a career in the skilled trades

Economists Say Millennials Should Consider Careers In Trades

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

As the economy continues to recover, economists are seeing stark differences between people with high school and college degrees. The unemployment rate is nearly twice as high for Americans with a high school diploma as for those with a four-year college degree or more.

But economists say that doesn't mean everybody needs a four-year degree. In fact, millions of good-paying jobs are opening up in the trades. And some pay better than what the average college graduate makes.

Learning A Trade

When 18-year-old Haley Hughes graduated from high school this past summer, she had good grades; she was on the honor roll every year. So she applied to a bunch of four-year colleges and got accepted to every one of them. But she says, "I wasn't excited about it really, I guess."

"The baby-boom workers are retiring and leaving lots of openings for millennials."

Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce

So instead of going that route, Hughes is taking a different path: an apprenticeship through the big New England power utility company NStar. In one of her recent classes at an NStar facility outside Boston, the classroom work was actually more exciting than some people might like.

Haley Hughes (right) and Kristen Sabino stand in the meter training room at an NStar learning facility. The two are part of an apprenticeship program with the utility company, something economists say the U.S. needs more of in order to fill open trade jobs.i

Haley Hughes (right) and Kristen Sabino stand in the meter training room at an NStar learning facility. The two are part of an apprenticeship program with the utility company, something economists say the U.S. needs more of in order to fill open trade jobs.

Courtesy of Earl Benders

Lara Allison is one of the instructors. On a recent morning, she was teaching Hughes and the other utility worker apprentices how to protect themselves if something bad happens while they're down under a manhole cover in an underground electrical substation.

"An arc flash — that's the thing we worry the most about," Allison says.

An arc flash is a highly energized bolt of electricity, an explosion of electricity in a sense, that jumps from an energy source to another spot that's grounded or that the energy can flow into. Allison tells the students that if they wear the wrong clothing and they get hit by an arc flash, their clothes can catch on fire and get seared into their skin. "It's really, really hot," she says.

On her apprenticeship, Hughes already has been down working in those underground substations.

"I loved it, it was great," she says.

Hughes says another thing that's great is that taking this path into the high-skilled trades is a lot cheaper than a four-year college would have been.

$40,000 Vs. $2,400 Per Year

"The student loans would be ridiculous," Hughes says during a break from class. "The schools I was looking at ... were like $40,000 a year." In the long run she thought that was just too much.

By comparison, NStar is partnering with nearby Bunker Hill Community College to offer students the opportunity to earn a two-year associate degree. Hughes has some scholarships and NStar pays some of the cost, so for Hughes, the price tag works out to about $1,200 a semester. Hughes says she's been paying that herself, and so she expects to graduate with no debt.

Hughes is also getting a lot of on-the-job training and taking a wide range of courses at the community college: English, math, a computer science course and even a psychology group dynamics class. Then there are the classes directly related to power utility work: DC theory, AC theory, physics, engineering and business etiquette. Not bad for $1,200 a semester.

'Averages Lie'

After graduating, 90 percent of the students get jobs with the power utility NStar (which is in the process of changing its name to Eversource Energy). Starting base pay is about $58,000 a year.

On average, it is certainly true that people with a four-year college degree make more money than those with a two-year degree or less. But there is plenty of nuance behind that truth.

"Averages lie," says Anthony Carnevale, the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

He says the problem with those averages is that people who work at RadioShack or Target get lumped in with master carpenters and electricians.

"You can get a particular skill in a particular field and make more than a college graduate," he says. For example, he says the average electrician makes $5,000 a year more than the average college graduate. And the country is going to need a lot more skilled tradespeople.

A Different Road To Work, Bypassing College Dreams

Unlike the smoky, eardrum-damaging factories of yesterday, today's manufacturing is going high-tech. That can mean more robots and automated machines than workers. But companies like Machine Inc. in Stoughton, Mass., are still growing and hiring.

ECONOMY

Manufacturing 2.0: Old Industry Creating New High-Tech Jobs

"The baby-boom workers are retiring and leaving lots of openings for millennials," Carnevale says. He says there are 600,000 jobs for electricians in the country today, and about half of those will open up over the next decade. Carnevale says it is a big opportunity for that millennial generation born between 1980 and 2000.

With so many boomers retiring from the trades, the U.S. is going to need a lot more pipe-fitters, nuclear power plant operators, carpenters, welders, utility workers — the list is long. But the problem is not enough young people are getting that kind of training.

Not Enough Training

Hughes says she chose to work in the trades, in large part, because she went to a vocational high school. A lot of her friends are going into the trades. She got comfortable there with wiring light switches and doing basic electrical work and learning about the industry. But there aren't nearly as many of these types of programs in high schools as there used to be.

"We made a mistake," Carnevale says. "Back in 1983, there was the 'Nation at Risk' report in which, quite rightly, we all were appalled at the quality of education in America."

After that, he says, most high schools focused on academics and getting students ready for college. For a lot of parents, they wanted their kids to have a four-year degree. But Carnevale says, in the process "we basically obliterated the modernization of the old vocational education programs and they've been set aside."

Carnevale says we should bring those programs back and we need to be preparing a lot more young people for good, well-paying jobs in the trades. And he says that means we need better training programs at high schools and community colleges in partnership with businesses in scores of different industries around the country.

The trinity according to the encyclopaedia britannica.

Written by The Editors of Encyclopædia BritannicaView All Contributors

Last Updated 9-19-2013

Trinity, in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead.

Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The earliest Christians, however, had to cope with the implications of the coming of Jesus Christ and of the presumed presence and power of God among them—i.e., the Holy Spirit, whose coming was connected with the celebration of the Pentecost. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were associated in such New Testament passages as the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19); and in the apostolic benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14). Thus, the New Testament established the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity.

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The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Hebrew Scriptures and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman religions seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality and hence of their unity (subordinationism); the second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness as “persons” (modalism). It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is “of the same substance [homoousios] as the Father,” even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half century, Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. It is accepted in all of the historic confessions of Christianity, even though the impact of the Enlightenment decreased its importance.

On the Rome of the bible:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

ROME

The once-small city in Latium that became the government seat of the greatest world empire in ancient Bible times; today, it is the capital of Italy. Rome is located inland about 25 km (16 mi) up the Tiber River, on both banks, about halfway down the W side of the 1,130-km-long (700 mi) Italian peninsula.

Just when Rome was founded, and by whom, is shrouded in legend and mythology. Tradition says it was in 753 B.C.E. by a certain Romulus, its first king, but there are graves and other evidence indicating it was inhabited at a much earlier time.

The first known settlements were built on seven hills on the E side of the Tiber River. According to tradition the Palatine hill was the site of the oldest settlement. The other six hills located around Palatine (beginning in the N and turning clockwise) were Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Aventine, and Capitoline. In time the marshy valleys between the hills were drained, and in these valuable areas dwellings, forums, and circuses were built. According to Pliny the Elder, in 73 C.E. the walls surrounding the city were some 21 km (13 mi) long. In time the hills and valleys to the W side of the Tiber were annexed, including the more than 40 ha (100 acres) occupied today by the Vatican. Before the great fire of Nero’s time, according to conservative estimates, the population of the city was well over a million people.

Rome’s Political Image. Over the centuries Rome experimented with many types of political rule. Some institutions were adaptations from other nations; some were innovations of her own. In his Pocket History of the World, H. G. Wells observed: “This new Roman power which arose to dominate the western world in the second and first centuries B.C. was in several respects a different thing from any of the great empires that had hitherto prevailed in the civilised world.” (1943, p. 149) Rome’s political complexion kept changing as various styles of rule came and went. These included coalitions of patriarchal chieftains, kingships, governments concentrated in the hands of a few families of noble birth, dictatorships, and different forms of republican rule in which the power conferred on the senators, consuls, and triumvirates (three-man governmental coalitions) varied, with typical party struggles between classes and factions. In the latter years of the empire there was a series of emperors. As is common with human governments, Rome’s political history was mottled with hatred, jealousy, intrigue, and murder, with many plots and counterplots generated from internal friction and external wars.

Domination of the world by Rome was a gradual development. First, her influence spread over the entire Italian Peninsula and eventually around the Mediterranean and far beyond. The name of the city became practically synonymous with that of the empire.

In international affairs Rome reached the zenith of her glory under the Caesars. Heading this list was Julius Caesar, appointed dictator for ten years in 46 B.C.E. but murdered by conspirators in 44 B.C.E. After an interval in which a triumvirate attempted to hold the reins of power, Octavian finally became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire (31 B.C.E.–14 C.E.). In 27 B.C.E. he succeeded in becoming emperor, having himself proclaimed “Augustus.” It was during the rule of Augustus that Jesus was born in 2 B.C.E. (Lu 2:1-7) The successor to Augustus, Tiberius (14-37 C.E.), was ruling during Jesus’ ministry. (Lu 3:1, 2, 21-23) Next came Gaius (Caligula) (37-41 C.E.) and Claudius (41-54 C.E.), the latter issuing a decree expelling the Jews from Rome. (Ac 18:1, 2) Nero’s rule followed (54-68 C.E.), and it was to him that Paul appealed his case.​—Ac 25:11, 12, 21; PICTURES, Vol. 2, p. 534.

Roman emperors in the order of succession after Nero (through the first century) were Galba (68-69 C.E.); Otho and Vitellius (69 C.E.); Vespasian (69-79 C.E.), during whose reign Jerusalem was destroyed; Titus (79-81 C.E.), who previously had directed the successful assault on Jerusalem; Domitian (81-96 C.E.), under whose rule, tradition says, John was exiled to the penal island of Patmos; Nerva (96-98 C.E.); and Trajan (98-117 C.E.). It was under Trajan that the empire reached its greatest limits, the boundaries by then extending far out in all directions​—to the Rhine and the North Sea, the Danube, the Euphrates, the cataracts of the Nile, the great African Desert, and the Atlantic on the W.​—MAP, Vol. 2, p. 533.

During the declining years of the Roman Empire, Constantine the Great was emperor (306-337 C.E.). After seizing control, he transferred the capital to Byzantium (Constantinople). In the next century Rome fell, in 476 C.E., and the German warlord Odoacer became its first “barbarian” king.

City Life and Conditions. Administration of city government was divided into 14 districts under Augustus, with a magistrate chosen annually by lot to govern each district. Seven fire-fighting brigades called vigiles were organized, each responsible for two of the districts. Just outside the NE city limits was stationed a special force of about 10,000, known as the Praetorian, or Imperial, Guard, for the protection of the emperor. There were also three “urban cohorts,” a kind of city police force, to maintain law and order in Rome.

The wealthy and influential often lived in palatial homes on the hills; their homes were maintained by large households of servants and slaves, sometimes numbering into the hundreds. Down in the valleys the common people were crowded together in enormous insulae, or tenement houses, several stories high, limited in height by Augustus to 21 m (70 ft). These tenement blocks were separated by narrow, crooked, dirty streets filled with the customary traffic and corruption prevalent in big cities.

It was in these poor sections that the historic fire of 64 C.E. resulted in the greatest suffering and loss of life. Tacitus describes the plight of “shrieking and terrified women; fugitives stricken or immature in years.” (The Annals, XV, XXXVIII) Only 4 out of the 14 districts of Rome were spared.

There were very few persons in Rome who could be called middle class; the wealth rested with a small minority. When Paul first reached Rome, perhaps half the population were slaves, brought there as prisoners of war, as condemned criminals, or as children sold by parents, slaves with no legal rights. The greater part of the free half of the population were paupers who practically lived off government subsidies.

Two things, food and entertainment, were provided by the state to keep these poor people from rioting, hence the satirical phrase, panem et circenses (bread and circuses), implying that this was all that was needed to satisfy the poor of Rome. From 58 B.C.E. on, grain was generally distributed free as well as water, which was brought many miles into the city by aqueducts. Wine was a cheap commodity. For the enjoyment of those so inclined, there were libraries available. For the entertainment of the general populace, there were public baths and gymnasiums, as well as the theaters and circuses. The theatrical performances consisted of Greek and Roman plays, dances, and pantomimes. In the great amphitheaters and circuses exciting games were held, chiefly spectacular chariot races and desperate gladiatorial contests in which men and beasts fought to the death. The Circus Maximus had a capacity of more than 150,000 persons. Admission to the games was free.

The high cost of these government expenses was not borne by the populace of Rome, for after the conquest of Macedonia in 168 B.C.E., Roman citizens were tax free. Instead, the provinces were heavily taxed, both directly and indirectly.​—Mt 22:17-21.

Foreign Influence. In many ways Rome proved to be a great melting pot of races, languages, cultures, and ideas. Out of the forge of Roman politics the code of Roman law gradually emerged​—laws that defined the rights and limitations of governments, courts, and magistrates and that provided legal devices such as citizenship for the protection of human rights. (Ac 25:16) Citizenship was extended to Rome’s confederate cities and to various colonies of the empire. It carried with it many advantages. (Ac 16:37-39; 22:25, 26) If not obtained by birth, it could be purchased. (Ac 22:28) In this and other ways, Rome sought to Romanize the territories she won and thus to strengthen her position as mistress of the empire.

One of the best examples of outside influence on Rome is found in her ruins of past architectural glories. Everywhere, the visitor to this museum city sees how she borrowed from the Greeks and others. The so-called Roman arch, which she used to great advantage, was not her own engineering discovery. Rome’s successes as a builder were also due in large measure to her use of a primitive form of concrete as mortar and as a major ingredient in making artificial stones.

The building program of Rome began in earnest in the last century of the republic and was thereafter given special impetus by the emperors. Augustus said he found Rome a city of bricks but left it a city of marble. For the most part, the marble was a veneer over the structural brick or concrete. There was a second rebuilding of the city, after the conflagration of 64 C.E. Among the more notable Roman structures were the forums, temples, palaces, amphitheaters, baths, aqueducts, sewers, and monuments. The great Colosseum and some monuments, like Titus’ archway depicting the fall of Jerusalem, either are still standing or are partly standing. (PICTURES, Vol. 2, p. 536) The Romans also made a name for themselves as builders of roads and bridges throughout the empire.

There was such an influx of foreigners that the Romans complained Rome was no longer Roman. Gravitating from all quarters of the empire, they brought with them their trades, customs, traditions, and religions. Whereas Latin was the official language, the international language was common Greek (Koine). That is why the apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Romans in Greek. Greek influence had its impact on the literature and methods of education too. Boys, and sometimes girls, were formally educated according to the Athenian system, being schooled in Greek literature and oratory, and the sons of those who could afford it were sent to one of the schools of philosophy in Athens.

Religion. Rome also became the recipient of every form of false worship. As historian John Lord described it: “Superstition culminated at Rome, for there were seen the priests and devotees of all the countries that it governed,​—‘the dark-skinned daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of the Persian Mithras; emasculated Asiatics; priests of Cybele, with their wild dances and discordant cries; worshippers of the great goddess Diana; barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldaean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers.’”​—Beacon Lights of History, 1912, Vol. III, pp. 366, 367.

Devotion to these religions, and indulgence in their wanton sex orgies, opened the door to total abandonment of moral virtue and righteousness among Romans of both low and high rank. According to Tacitus, among the latter, Messalina, the adulterous, murderous wife of Emperor Claudius, is an example.​—The Annals, XI, I-XXXIV.

Outstanding among the religions of Rome was emperor worship. The Roman ruler was deified. Emperor worship was recognized especially in the provinces, temples being built in which they sacrificed to him as to a god. (PICTURE, Vol. 2, p. 536) In A History of Rome, George Botsford says: “The worship of the emperor was to be the most vital force in the religion of the Roman world till the adoption of Christianity.” An inscription found in Asia Minor says of the emperor: “He is the paternal Zeus and the saviour of the whole race of man, who fulfils all prayers, even more than we ask. For land and sea enjoy peace; cities flourish; everywhere are harmony and prosperity and happiness.” This cult proved to be a chief instrument of persecution for Christians, concerning whom this writer says: “Their refusal to worship the Genius, or guardian spirit, of the emperor was naturally construed as impiety and treason.”​—1905, pp. 214, 215, 263.

Christianity Comes to Rome. On the day of Pentecost, 33 C.E., there were “sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,” present to witness the results of the outpouring of the holy spirit, and some of them were no doubt among the 3,000 baptized on that occasion. (Ac 2:1, 10, 41) Upon returning to Rome, they doubtless preached, resulting in the formation of a very strong, active Christian congregation whose faith the apostle Paul mentioned as being “talked about throughout the whole world.” (Ro 1:7, 8) Both Tacitus (The Annals, XV, XLIV) and Suetonius (The Lives of the Caesars, Nero, XVI, 2) referred to the Christians in Rome.

Paul wrote to the Christian congregation in Rome about 56 C.E., and about three years later he arrived in Rome as a prisoner. Although he had entertained desires of visiting there sooner and under different circumstances (Ac 19:21; Ro 1:15; 15:22-24), he was able, even though a prisoner, to give a thorough witness by having people come to his house. For two years, under these conditions, he continued “preaching the kingdom of God to them and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with the greatest freeness of speech, without hindrance.” (Ac 28:14-31) Even the emperor’s Praetorian Guard became acquainted with the Kingdom message. (Php 1:12, 13) So, as it had been foretold of him, Paul ‘gave a thorough witness even in Rome.’​—Ac 23:11.

During this two-year detention in Rome Paul found time to write letters, those to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Evidently about the same time, Mark wrote his Gospel account in Rome. Shortly before or immediately after Paul’s release, he penned his letter to the Hebrews in about 61 C.E. (Heb 13:23, 24) It was during his second imprisonment in Rome, in about 65 C.E., that Onesiphorus visited him and that Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy.​—2Ti 1:15-17.

Though Paul, Luke, Mark, Timothy, and other first-century Christians visited Rome (Php 1:1; Col 4:10, 14), there is no conclusive evidence that Peter was ever in Rome, as some traditions would have it. The stories about Peter’s martyrdom in Rome are based on tradition.​—See PETER, LETTERS OF.

The city of Rome developed a very bad reputation for its persecution of Christians, particularly during the reigns of Nero and Domitian. These persecutions were attributed to two causes: (1) the great evangelizing zeal of Christians to convert others, and (2) Christians’ uncompromising stand in giving to God the things that are God’s rather than giving them to Caesar.​—Mr 12:17.

Frankenstein's heirs?

Macaque Monkeys and Human Dignity
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Why does the evolution debate matter so intensely? In an  interview with P.J. Media‘s Tyler O’Neil,  our biologist colleague Ann Gauger hits the nail on the head. The profound importance of the controversy lies in human dignity, and our rapidly dissolving sensitivity to it. She spoke in the context of news about the cloning of macaque monkeys by Chinese researchers, a major and disquieting step toward human cloning.

Will scientists take it that far? The present culture certainly gives reasons to think they won’t stop at monkeys.

“I connect it to the issues of euthanasia and abortion because it all boils down to what value we place on human life,” Ann Gauger, a senior research scientist at the Biologic Institute who earned her Ph.D. in biology at the University of Washington and did post-doctorate work at Harvard, told PJ Media.

“It’s a question of how you view human life. If you view it as starting from conception to natural death, then for cloning it involves the creation of a new human being, although by artificial means,” Gauger explained.

The kind of cloning discussed here involves introducing a somatic cell nucleus into the egg, which then develops into an embryo. The Chinese study itself seemed rather wasteful and problematic. Out of 127 eggs injected with somatic cell nuclei, 79 were transferred into surrogate mothers, leading to six pregnancies, and two live births. Another part of the experiment involved 290 eggs, resulting in 22 pregnancies, 2 live births, and no surviving monkeys.

In the case of humans, each embryo is genetically an individual, with the potential to grow into an adult human being. After an embryo is created, it can be implanted in a womb for birth — “reproductive cloning” — or it can be harvested for stem cells and medical research — “therapeutic cloning.”

Gauger called both kinds of cloning “problematic.”

Why problematic? Dr. Gauger presented the issue in very personal terms:

“I have a disabled daughter, and I know people who have Down syndrome children. Most Down syndrome children — if they’re diagnosed in utero — end up being aborted,” the biologist lamented. “Is all human life of value or is it only valuable if it’s of use to the society?”

She connected the selling of baby parts from abortion to this issue as well — using human beings for research.

Gauger suggested a deep disconnect between scientists’ research and their consciences.

Go back and read Richard Weikart reflections here the other day on the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. O’Neil goes on:

This suppression of conscience is terrifying, and combined with the curiosity and rush to achieve something new, it may present a powerful incentive for scientists to delve into human cloning.

“The push in the human direction comes mainly from the scientist’s desire to be the first to do something, to meet a challenge, to be curious about ‘what would happen if I did this,’“ Gauger explained. “It’s an intrinsic human thing to want to explore and to want to control and to be the first.”

Another “personal revelation” from Dr. Gauger:

“I probably know scientists who are now working on this issue and most of them have not considered seriously the ethical questions. I know some who have and who have left that area of research.”

What’s the source of it all? “She pointed to Darwinism as the key threat behind the loss of understanding of human dignity.” That seems hard to deny. The whole agenda of evolutionary thinking is to erase the exceptional status of human beings in nature, considering us as one among many animals competing for existence amid the blind churning of the cosmos and of terrestrial biology. From Darwin’s visions to nightmare scenarios of human cloning, it’s a straight shot from premise to conclusion.

Yet more damage control re:the Cambrian explosion.

Cambrian Explosion Blues
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

What else is new in the campaign to explain the Cambrian explosion in Darwinian terms, despite the evidence? An article in The Australian says, “Fossils found in Gabon rewrite timeline of life on Earth,” as if finding earlier complexity is going to help the evolutionary story.

Fossils discovered in west Africa have pushed back the dawn of multicellular life on Earth by at least 1.5 billion years, scientists believe.

Just how complex the newly discovered organisms are is sure to be hotly debated.

But there can be no doubt that the creatures unearthed from the hills of Gabon, visible to the naked eye, have upended standard evolutionary timelines.

“The cursor on the origin of complex multicellular life is no longer 600 million years ago, as has long been maintained, but more like 2.1 billion years,” said Abderrazak El Albani, a researcher at the University of Poitiers and lead author of the study. 

The fossils, appearing to represent colonial organisms, vary from 12 centimeters to five inches. What are they? Ediacarans? The cookie-shaped fossils certainly don’t represent anything familiar, and the authors don’t draw any connections with what came later.

Up to now, conventional scientific wisdom held that the planet was populated only by single-celled microbes until the so-called Cambrian explosion, a major surge of biodiversity that began some 600 million years ago [actually, more like 530 million or 540 at most].

Ever-more complex life forms emerged rapidly from there, eventually creating an evolutionary tree with homo sapiens atop one of its branches.

“Multicellularity represents one of the principle thresholds in evolutionary history,” Philip Donoghue and Jonathan Antcliffe from the University of Bristol said in a commentary, also in Nature.

But the new organism, which appears to have lived in colonies, shows that the drive toward complexity began much sooner.

The article also claims that these organisms had a membrane-bound nucleus protecting its chromosomes! This announcement cannot help the Darwinian story. Earlier complexity, with no affinity to what followed, does not fit what Darwin had in mind. Perhaps the dating of the strata is wrong. If not, it looks like a proverbial Precambrian Rabbit that will have “upended standard evolutionary timelines” until the Darwin damage control committee can come up with a new story.

Fast-forwarding to the Ediacaran era, NASA put out another positivist spin at  Astrobiology Magazine about the enigmatic animals that flourished before the Cambrian explosion:

Microbial mats that existed on sea floors prior to the “Cambrian explosion” provided the foundation for early animal life to arise, new research looking at trace fossils of that early life has found.

When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species and for decades thereafter, scientists ascribed the beginning of animal life to the Cambrian, eventually pinned to about 540 million years ago when trilobites and other multicellular organisms emerged in a relatively short timeframe.

In recent years, however, astonishing complexity has been discovered in the period right before the advent of the Cambrian explosion, revising the scientific view of the origins of the most complex, multicellular life on Earth.

“By the time we get to the Cambrian — which has much more familiar organisms — a lot of the evolution had already happened on Earth,” says paleobiologist Mary Droser at the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of California, Riverside.

Droser presents a queer idea that microbial mats caused animals to appear.

The range and diversity of microbial mats that served as the foothold for Ediacara biota would prove even more pivotal to the ecology of these ancient habitats. The mats offered an alternative path from the free-floating lifestyle of microscopic algae and bacteria as something for the new and enterprising species to attach to or feed from on a shifting seafloor. The stability and environmental complexity provided by the sticky mats made the extensive seafloor habitable.

In this magical world, microbial mats made animals evolve, and the animals returned the favor:

The appearance, diversification, and evolution of Ediacara biota are inextricably linked to these mats. Researchers have found that with the rise of complex animals comes advancements in the microbial mats themselves, revealing the ecological interplay between the species, Droser says.

And so, the story goes, the evolving life could ride out the storms and exploit the shared benefits they provided each other. “Earth’s first vertebrates, mobility, early mollusks, skeletons, plant-like reproduction and population struggles such as competition over resources and space, which are all vital components of modern animal ecosystems today” were just a matter of time.

What is her evidence for this tale? Droser only presents Dickinsonia, Spriggina, and various “evolutionary dead ends” with no clear connection to the twenty new phyla appearing in the Cambrian explosion.

“We would argue that the beginning of animal life as we know it begins in the Precambrian,” says Droser. “By the time that you get to the Cambrian, all of the major groups are established.”

What? There’s a blatant falsehood for you Where are her arthropods? Where are the ctenophores? echinoderms? brachiopods? Where are bilaterian animals with eyes, guts, and articulated limbs? Her only empirical evidence for this claim is an inference from patterns in microbial mats that might indicate mobility of some Ediacarans like Dickinsonia and Spriggina. “Sprigginia [sic] fossils are some of the most complex fossils found in the Ediacaran period,” she says enthusiastically. “Vaguely resembling soft-bodied trilobites, Sprigginia has a head-like region and repeating segments running the length of its body.”

This greatly overstates the evidence. They are not true segments, and a head-like region is not a head. Meyer dealt with Spriggina in detail in his book (pp. 82-85), quoting numerous authorities such as Conway Morris, Valentine, and Erwin who do not believe a connection exists with any Ediacaran animal to the Cambrian biota. In fact, as Meyer explains on page 86 and following, the Ediacarans themselves exploded onto the scene. Most paleontologists believe the Ediacarans went extinct before the sudden appearance of twenty new animal phyla in the Cambrian. The NASA astrobiologists make a fake bridge across the divide that cannot hold the weight of all the new body plans needing to get across.

Ironically, another entry in  Astrobiology Magazine undermines the “oxygen theory” for the rise of Cambrian animals.

A study by University of California, Berkeley geochemists presents new evidence that high levels of oxygen were not critical to the origin of animals.

The researchers found that the transition to a world with an oxygenated deep ocean occurred between 540 and 420 million years ago. They attribute this to an increase in atmospheric O2 to levels comparable to the 21 percent oxygen in the atmosphere today.

This inferred rise comes hundreds of millions of years after the origination of animals, which occurred between 700 and 800 million years ago.

Basically, animals already had arrived before dissolved oxygen was sufficient to contribute to the “emergence” of animals. So much for that explanation.

On beating higher Ed.

The Watchtower Society's commentary on "the Word".

WORD, THE:

The term “word” in the Scriptures most frequently translates the Hebrew and Greek words da·varʹ and loʹgos. These words in the majority of cases refer to an entire thought, saying, or statement rather than simply to an individual term or unit of speech. (In Greek a ‘single word’ is expressed by rheʹma [Mt 27:14], though it, too, can mean a saying or spoken matter.) Any message from the Creator, such as one uttered through a prophet, is “the word of God.” In a few places Loʹgos (meaning “Word”) is a title given to Jesus Christ.

The Word of God. “The word of Jehovah” is an expression that, with slight variations, occurs hundreds of times in the Scriptures. By “the word of Jehovah” the heavens were created. God said the word and it was accomplished. “God proceeded to say: ‘Let light come to be.’ Then there came to be light.” (Ps 33:6; Ge 1:3) It should not be understood from this that Jehovah himself does no work. (Joh 5:17) But he does have myriads of angels that respond to his word and carry out his will.—Ps 103:20.

Creation, animate and inanimate, is subject to God’s word, and can be used by him to accomplish his purposes. (Ps 103:20; 148:8) His word is dependable; what God promises he also remembers to do. (De 9:5; Ps 105:42-45) As he himself has said, his word “will last to time indefinite”; it will never return without accomplishing its purpose.—Isa 40:8; 55:10, 11; 1Pe 1:25.

Jehovah is a communicative God, in that he reveals to his creatures in a variety of ways what his will and purposes are. God’s words were spoken, doubtless through an angel, to such men as Adam, Noah, and Abraham. (Ge 3:9-19; 6:13; 12:1) At times he used holy men like Moses and Aaron to make known his purposes. (Ex 5:1) “Every word” that Moses commanded Israel was in effect the word of God to them. (De 12:32) God also spoke through the mouth of prophets such as Elisha and Jeremiah, and prophetesses such as Deborah.—2Ki 7:1; Jer 2:1, 2; Jg 4:4-7.

Many of the divine commandments were committed to writing from the time of Moses forward. The Decalogue, commonly called the Ten Commandments and known in the Hebrew Scriptures as “the Ten Words,” was first delivered orally and later ‘written by the finger of God’ on stone tablets. (Ex 31:18; 34:28; De 4:13) These commandments were called the “Words” at Deuteronomy 5:22.—See TEN WORDS.

Joshua wrote additional “words in the book of God’s law” under divine inspiration, and this was true with other faithful Bible writers. (Jos 24:26; Jer 36:32) Eventually all such writings were collected together and made up what is called the Sacred Scriptures or Holy Bible. “All Scripture . . . inspired of God” would include, today, all the canonical Biblical books. (2Ti 3:16; 2Pe 1:20, 21) In the Christian Greek Scriptures, God’s inspired word is often spoken of as simply “the word.”—Jas 1:22; 1Pe 2:2.

There are many synonyms for God’s word. For example, in Psalm 119, where references to Jehovah’s “word(s)” occur more than 20 times, synonyms are found in poetic parallelisms—such terms as law, reminders, orders, regulations, commandments, judicial decisions, statutes, and sayings of Jehovah. This also shows that the expression “word” means a complete thought or message.

The word of God is also described in a number of other ways that give it breadth and meaning. It is “the ‘word’ [or “saying” (rheʹma)] of faith” (Ro 10:8, Int), “the word [or message (form of loʹgos)] of righteousness” (Heb 5:13), and “the word of the reconciliation” (2Co 5:19). God’s word or message is like “seed,” which, if planted in good soil, brings forth much fruitage (Lu 8:11-15); his sayings are also said to ‘run with speed.’—Ps 147:15.

Preachers and Teachers of the Word. The greatest exponent and supporter of Jehovah’s inspired word of truth was the Lord Jesus Christ. He astounded people by his methods of teaching (Mt 7:28, 29; Joh 7:46), yet he took no credit to himself, saying, “the word that you are hearing is not mine, but belongs to the Father who sent me.” (Joh 14:24; 17:14; Lu 5:1) Faithful disciples of Christ were those who remained in his word, and this, in turn, set them free from ignorance, superstition, and fear, also from slavery to sin and death. (Joh 8:31, 32) Often it was necessary for Jesus to take issue with the Pharisees, whose traditions and teachings made void “the word [or declaration] of God.”—Mt 15:6; Mr 7:13.

It is not just a matter of hearing the word of God preached. Rather, acting upon and showing obedience to that message is also essential. (Lu 8:21; 11:28; Jas 1:22, 23) After being well trained for the ministry, the apostles and disciples, in turn, obeyed the word and took up the preaching and teaching themselves. (Ac 4:31; 8:4, 14; 13:7, 44; 15:36; 18:11; 19:10) As a result, “the word of God went on growing, and the number of the disciples kept multiplying.”—Ac 6:7; 11:1; 12:24; 13:5, 49; 19:20.

The apostles and their associates were no peddlers of the Scriptures, as the false shepherds were. What they preached was the straight, unadulterated message of God. (2Co 2:17; 4:2) The apostle Paul told Timothy: “Do your utmost to present yourself approved to God, a workman with nothing to be ashamed of, handling the word of the truth aright.” Furthermore, Timothy was commanded: “Preach the word, be at it urgently in favorable season, in troublesome season.” (2Ti 2:15; 4:2) Paul also counseled Christian wives to watch their conduct, “so that the word of God may not be spoken of abusively.”—Tit 2:5.

Ever since the Devil contradicted what God had said in the garden of Eden, there have been many satanic opponents of God’s word. Many persons who have upheld God’s word have lost their lives for doing so, as both Bible prophecy and history testify. (Re 6:9) It is also a fact of history that persecution has failed to stop the proclamation of God’s word.—Php 1:12-14, 18; 2Ti 2:9.

The Power of God’s Word and Spirit. God’s word exerts tremendous power upon its hearers. It means life. God demonstrated to Israel in the wilderness that “not by bread alone does man live but by every expression of Jehovah’s mouth does man live.” (De 8:3; Mt 4:4) It is “the word of life.” (Php 2:16) Jesus spoke the words of God, and he said: “The sayings [rheʹma·ta] that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”—Joh 6:63.

The apostle Paul wrote: “The word [or message (loʹgos)] of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and their marrow, and is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb 4:12) It reaches the heart and reveals whether one is actually living according to right principles.—1Co 14:23-25.

The word of God is the truth and can sanctify one for God’s use. (Joh 17:17) It can make a person wise and happy; it can accomplish whatever work God purposes for it. (Ps 19:7-9; Isa 55:10, 11) It can equip a person completely for every good work and can enable him to conquer the wicked one.—2Ti 3:16, 17; compare 1Jo 2:14.

Of Jesus’ preaching it is said: “God anointed him with holy spirit and power, and he went through the land doing good and healing all those oppressed by the Devil; because God was with him.” (Ac 10:38) The apostle Paul accomplished conversions of persons, even pagans, “not with persuasive words of [men’s] wisdom but with a demonstration of spirit and power.” (1Co 2:4) The words that he spoke by God’s holy spirit, based on the Scriptures, the Word of God, worked powerfully to make the conversions. He told the congregation at Thessalonica: “The good news we preach did not turn up among you with speech alone but also with power and with holy spirit and strong conviction.”—1Th 1:5.

John the Baptizer came “with Elijah’s spirit and power.” He had Elijah’s “spirit,” his drive and force. Jehovah’s spirit also directed John, so that he spoke the words of God, words that exerted strong power; he was able very successfully to “turn back the hearts of fathers to children and the disobedient ones to the practical wisdom of righteous ones, to get ready for Jehovah a prepared people.”—Lu 1:17.

The message of the good news from God’s Word the Bible should therefore not be underrated. These words are more powerful than any words men can devise or speak. The ancient Beroeans were commended for “carefully examining the Scriptures” to see whether what an apostle taught was correct. (Ac 17:11) God’s ministers, speaking God’s powerful Word, are energized and backed up by “power of holy spirit.”—Ro 15:13, 19.

“The Word” as a Title. In the Christian Greek Scriptures “the Word” (Gr., ho Loʹgos) also appears as a title. (Joh 1:1, 14; Re 19:13) The apostle John identified the one to whom this title belongs, namely, Jesus, he being so designated not only during his ministry on earth as a perfect man but also during his prehuman spirit existence as well as after his exaltation to heaven.

“The Word was a god.” Regarding the Son’s prehuman existence, John says: “In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” (Joh 1:1, NW) The King James Version and the Douay Version read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This would make it appear that the Word was identical with Almighty God, while the former reading, in the New World Translation, indicates that the Word is not the God, Almighty God, but is a mighty one, a god. (Even the judges of ancient Israel, who wielded great power in the nation, were called “gods.” [Ps 82:6; Joh 10:34, 35]) Actually, in the Greek text, the definite article ho, “the,” appears before the first “God,” but there is no article before the second.

Other translations aid in getting the proper view. The interlinear word-for-word reading of the Greek translation in the Emphatic Diaglott reads: “In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and a god was the Word.” The accompanying text of the Diaglott uses capital and small capital letters for the God, and initial capital and lowercase letters for the second appearance of “God” in the sentence: “In the Beginning was the LOGOS, and the LOGOS was with GOD, and the LOGOS was God.”

These renderings would support the fact that Jesus, being the Son of God and the one used by God in creating all other things (Col 1:15-20), is indeed a “god,” a mighty one, and has the quality of mightiness, but is not the Almighty God. Other translations reflect this view. The New English Bible says: “And what God was, the Word was.” The Greek word translated “Word” is Loʹgos; and so Moffatt’s translation reads: “The Logos was divine.” The American Translation reads: “The Word was divine.” Other readings, by German translators, follow. By Böhmer: “It was tightly bound up with God, yes, itself of divine being.” By Stage: “The Word was itself of divine being.” By Menge: “And God (= of divine being) the Word was.” And by Thimme: “And God of a sort the Word was.” All these renderings highlight the quality of the Word, not his identity with his Father, the Almighty God. Being the Son of Jehovah God, he would have the divine quality, for divine means “godlike.”—Col 2:9; compare 2Pe 1:4, where “divine nature” is promised to Christ’s joint heirs.

The Four Gospels—A New Translation, by Professor Charles Cutler Torrey (2nd ed., 1947), says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was god. When he was in the beginning with God all things were created through him; without him came no created thing into being.” (Joh 1:1-3) Note that what the Word is said to be is spelled without a capital initial letter, namely, “god.”

This Word, or Loʹgos, was God’s only direct creation, the only-begotten son of God, and evidently the close associate of God to whom God was speaking when he said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” (Ge 1:26) Hence John continued, saying: “This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.”—Joh 1:2, 3.

Other scriptures plainly show that the Word was God’s agent through whom all other things came into existence. There is “one God the Father, out of whom all things are, . . . and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are.” (1Co 8:6) The Word, God’s Son, was “the beginning of the creation by God,” otherwise described as “the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and upon the earth.”—Re 3:14; Col 1:15, 16.

Earthly ministry and heavenly glorification. In due time a change came about. John explains: “So the Word became flesh and resided among us [as the Lord Jesus Christ], and we had a view of his glory, a glory such as belongs to an only-begotten son from a father.” (Joh 1:14) By becoming flesh, the Word became visible, hearable, feelable to eyewitnesses on earth. In this way men of flesh could have direct contact and association with “the word of life,” which, John says, “was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have viewed attentively and our hands felt.”—1Jo 1:1-3.

The glorified Lord Jesus Christ continues to carry the title “the Word,” as noted in Revelation 19:11-16. There in a vision of heaven John says he saw a white horse whose rider was called “Faithful and True,” “The Word of God”; and “upon his outer garment, even upon his thigh, he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Why God’s Son is called “the Word.” A title often describes the function served or the duty performed by the bearer. So it was with the title Kal-Hatzé, meaning “the voice or word of the king,” that was given an Abyssinian officer. Based on his travels from 1768 to 1773, James Bruce describes the duties of the Kal-Hatzé as follows. He stood by a window covered with a curtain through which, unseen inside, the king spoke to this officer. He then conveyed the message to the persons or party concerned. Thus the Kal-Hatzé acted as the word or voice of the Abyssinian king.—Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, London, 1790, Vol. III, p. 265; Vol. IV, p. 76.

Recall, too, that God made Aaron the word or “mouth” of Moses, saying: “He must speak for you to the people; and it must occur that he will serve as a mouth to you, and you will serve as God to him.”—Ex 4:16.

In a similar way God’s firstborn Son doubtless served as the Mouth, or Spokesman, for his Father, the great King of Eternity. He was God’s Word of communication for conveying information and instructions to the Creator’s other spirit and human sons. It is reasonable to think that prior to Jesus’ coming to earth, on many of the occasions when God communicated with humans he used the Word as his angelic mouthpiece. (Ge 16:7-11; 22:11; 31:11; Ex 3:2-5; Jg 2:1-4; 6:11, 12; 13:3) Since the angel that guided the Israelites through the wilderness had ‘Jehovah’s name within him,’ he may have been God’s Son, the Word.—Ex 23:20-23; see JESUS CHRIST (Prehuman Existence).

Showing that Jesus continued to serve as his Father’s Spokesman, or Word, during his earthly ministry, he told his listeners: “I have not spoken out of my own impulse, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a commandment as to what to tell and what to speak. . . . Therefore the things I speak, just as the Father has told me them, so I speak them.”—Joh 12:49, 50; 14:10; 7:16, 17.

Is the sun setting on scientific objectivity?

Science and the "Darkness of the West"

David Klinghoffer

Writing in the London Times, Melanie Phillips is on fire with a righteous indignation at the "dark ages," the eclipse of wisdom and integrity, into which science has fallen. She starts with climate change but is only warming up:

The problem of scientific integrity, however, goes far wider. Psychology, neuroscience, physics and other scientific areas have been convulsed by revelations of dodgy research.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, has written bleakly: "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."

One reason is that cash-strapped universities, competing for money and talent, exert huge pressure on academics to publish more and more to meet the box-ticking criteria set by grant-funding bodies. Corners are being cut and mistakes being made.

But whatever happened to peer-review, the supposed kitemark of scientific integrity produced by the collective judgment of other researchers? Well, that seems to have gone south too. In 1998 Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, sent an article containing eight deliberate mistakes to more than 200 of the BMJ's regular reviewers. Not one picked out all the mistakes. On average, they reported fewer than two; some did not spot any.

This reminds me of the PLOS ONE "Creator" censorship story. I was shocked by this statement from a spokesman for the journal:

This past year PLOS ONE published more than 28,000 articles that were handled by a community of more than 6,000 editors and 76,000 reviewers.

Twenty eight thousand articles? Six thousand editors? Seventy six thousand reviewers? Just one journal? That is absurd. The spokesman's point was that despite "quality control checks" the occasional error, like attributing the human hand to the "design" of a "Creator," should not be unexpected. But with such a volume of material being published, it's obvious that some interest beyond the enlightenment of the scientific community is being served. There's an industrial quality to the enterprise. Is anyone reading all this stuff? Reviewing it? Editing it? Seems not. Or is it more about satisfying metric expectations, "box-ticking criteria set by grant-funding bodies"?

Phillips:

The problem lies with research itself. The cornerstone of scientific authority rests on the notion that replicating an experiment will produce the same result. If replication fails, the research is deemed flawed. But failure to replicate is widespread. ...
A 2005 study by John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said the majority of published research findings were probably false.
At most, no more than about one in four findings from early-phase clinical trials would be true; epidemiological studies might have only a one in five chance of being true. "Empirical evidence on expert opinion", he wrote, "shows that it is extremely unreliable".

What lies behind it all? Simply the pressure facing scholars from the scientific-industrial-publishing complex? Not just that:

Underlying much of this disarray is surely the pressure to conform to an idea, whether political, commercial or ideological. Ideological fads produce financial and professional incentives to conform and punishment for dissent, whether loss of grant-funding or lack of advancement. As Professor Ioannidis observed: "For many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."

Deeper still:

Underlying this loss of scientific bearings is a closed intellectual circle. Scientists pose as secular priests. They alone, they claim, hold the keys to the universe. ...The resulting absence of openness and transparency is proving the scientists' undoing. In the words of Richard Horton, "science has taken a turn towards darkness". But science defines modernity. It is our gold standard of truth and reason. This is the darkness of the West too.


"Scientists pose as secular priests." True. Now go back and watch that excruciatingly stupid video from Bill Nye where the celebrity science educator dismisses philosophy in the most shallow, ignorant terms.

You can track what James Burnham called the "suicide of the West" in a number of areas of public life. The general culture is rife with barbarism. That's nothing you don't already know. But Philips is picking up on a little acknowledged truth. Confined by ideology and a "closed intellectual circle," science, far from being an exception to the trend of decline as some might say, is fully part of it.

On atheism's smugness; A rogue's view.