Why the origin of life remains the bane of design deniers.

Mystery of Life’s Origin Authors Reunite for Dallas Conference on Science & Faith
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

There was a wonderful turnout this past Saturday for the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, with more than 1,400 in attendance. A highlight was the reunion of the three scientists who sparked the modern intelligent design revolution. That was in 1984 with the publication of The Mystery of Life’s Origin. The pioneering authors, biochemist Charles Thaxton, materials scientist Walter Bradley, and geochemist Roger Olsen, are pictured above (from right to left, Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen), being interviewed by Stephen Meyer about the paradox-filled intellectual world of origin-of-life researchers.

To Carry On a Legacy

The audience, which had already nearly filled the parking lot 45 minutes before the event began, were rewarded with a very entertaining conversation celebrating a new book from Discovery Institute Press. Mystery of Life’s Origin was republished today in a very substantially expanded, updated version that brings the origin-of-life controversy up to date, with new contributions by Meyer, biologist Jonathan Wells, chemist James Tour, physicist Brian Miller, and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, and a historical introduction by Evolution News editor David Klinghoffer. The new book is graced by an updated title, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy.

Dr. Meyer is of course one of the foremost scholars and ID proponents who have carried on the intellectual legacy of Thaxton and his colleagues. A photo from a pre-conference barbecue, at the home of Pam Bailey who manages Discovery Institute Dallas, shows Thaxton (front), and Olsen, Bradley, and Meyer:A presentation by Dr. Bradley was introduced appropriately by the director of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, Robert J. Marks. His comments included the observation that as a theist, Dr. Marks is grateful to have all possible scientific explanations of the natural world, including intelligent design, available to him whereas atheists and materialists have that option arbitrarily foreclosed to them.

A Tour of Intelligent Design

The Dallas Conference was thus a tour of the theory of intelligent design from its beginnings, to today, and looking forward to the next frontier, which Stephen Meyer discussed: his forthcoming book, The Return of the God Hypothesis. The book shows that theism is the one view of reality that is consistent with the relevant scientific evidence.Political scientist and Discovery Institute Vice President John West illuminated the cultural and worldview impact of Darwinism, with its explanations of life’s wonders all rooted in suffering and death. Try fashioning a life-affirming culture from that. Michael Behe (above) discussed irreducible complexity and the provocative argument of his new book, Darwin Devolves, showing that “adaptive” evolution favored by natural selection usually involves squandering genetic information for short-term gains. In a Q&A, Dr. Behe fielded a controversial question from an audience member. The gentleman demanded to know about Behe’s plans for his facial hair. Is he going to allow his beard to really grow out, or not!?

Finally, protein chemist Douglas Axe (above) demonstrated why any modestly sophisticated system showing functional coherence sets off our design intuitions, and rightfully so. These are indicators of extremely specified, low-probability events, which justify the inference to design.

In every way, this conference was an even bigger success than our 2019 Dallas Conference. We are building on many strengths, and looking forward to 2021!

And still yet even more on design all the way down.

Surprises in Cell Codes Reveal Information Goes Far Beyond DNA

Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Information is the stuff of life. Not limited to DNA, information is found in most biomolecules in living cells. Here are some recent developments.

Sugar Code

Certain forms of sugars (polysaccharides called chitosans) trigger the immune system of plants. Biologists at the University of Münster are “deciphering the sugar code.” They describe the variables in chitosans that constitute a signaling system. 

Chitosans consist of chains of different lengths of a simple sugar called glucosamine. Some of these sugar molecules carry an acetic acid molecule, others do not. Chitosans therefore differ in three factors: the chain length and the number and distribution of acetic acid residues along the sugar chain. For about twenty years, chemists have been able to produce chitosans of different chain lengths and with different amounts of acetic acid residues, and biologists have then investigated their biological activities.

Condensed Code

DNA is becoming known as a more of a team member in a society of biomolecules. In some ways, it is more a patient than a doctor. It gets operated on by numerous machines that alter its message. One of the most important “doctors” that operates on RNA transcripts is the spliceosome, says a review article inThe Scientist about alternative splicing. This complex molecular machine can multiply the messages in the coding regions of DNA by cutting out introns and stitching coded parts called exons together in different ways.

The process of alternative splicing, which had first been observed 26 years before the Human Genome Project was finished, allows a cell to generate different RNAs, and ultimately different proteins, from the same gene. Since its discovery, it has become clear that alternative splicing is common and that the phenomenon helps explain how limited numbers of genes can encode organisms of staggering complexity. While fewer than 40 percent of the genes in a fruit fly undergo alternative splicing, more than 90 percent of genes are alternatively spliced in humans.

Astoundingly, some genes can be alternatively spliced to generate up to 38,000 different transcript isoforms, and each of the proteins they produce has a unique function.

The discovery of splicing seemed “bizarre” from an evolutionary perspective, the authors say, recalling obsolete ideas about “junk DNA.” It seemed weird and wasteful that introns were being cut out of transcripts by the spliceosome. Then, the ENCODE project found that the vast majority of non-coding DNA was transcribed, giving “these seemingly nonfunctional elements an essential role in gene expression, as evidence emerged over the next few years that there are sequences housed within introns that can help or hinder splicing activity.”

This article is a good reminder that evolutionary assumptions hinder science. Once biochemists ridded themselves of the evolutionary notion of leftover junk in the genetic code, a race was on to understand the role of alternative splicing. 

Understanding the story behind each protein in our bodies has turned out to be far more complex than reading our DNA. Although the basic splicing mechanism was uncovered more than 40 years ago, working out the interplay between splicing and physiology continues to fascinate us. We hope that advanced knowledge of how alternative splicing is regulated and the functional role of each protein isoform during development and disease will lay the groundwork for the success of future translational therapies.

Beyond Methylation

Another discovery that is opening doors to research opportunities comes from the University of Chicago. Darwin-free, they announce a “fundamental pathway” likely to “open up completely new directions of research and inquiry.” Biologists knew about how methyl tags on RNA transcripts regulate the ways they are translated. Now, Professor Chuan He and colleagues have found that some RNAs, dubbed carRNAs, don’t get translated at all. “Instead, they controlled how DNA itself was stored and transcribed.”

“This has major implications in basic biology,” He said. “It directly affects gene transcriptions, and not just a few of them. It could induce global chromatin change and affects transcription of 6,000 genes in the cell line we studied.”

Dr. He is excited about the breakthrough. The “conceptual change” in how RNA regulates DNA offers an “enormous opportunity” to guide medical treatments and promote health. Take a look at this design-friendly quote:

The human body is among the most complex pieces of machinery to exist. Every time you so much as scratch your nose, you’re using more intricate engineering than any rocket ship or supercomputer ever designed. It’s taken us centuries to deconstruct how this works, and each time someone discovers a new mechanism, a few more mysteries of human health make sense — and new treatments become available.

Genes Jumping for Joy

Remember the evolutionary myth that “jumping genes” were parasites from our evolutionary past that learned how to evade the immune system? A discovery at the Washington University School of Medicine changes that tune, saying, “‘Jumping genes’ help stabilize DNA folding patterns.” These long-misunderstood genes thought by some evolutionists to be sources of novel genetic traits actually function to provide genomic stability.

“Jumping genes” — bits of DNA that can move from one spot in the genome to another — are well-known for increasing genetic diversity over the long course of evolution. Now, new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that such genes, also called transposable elements, play another, more surprising role: stabilizing the 3D folding patterns of the DNA molecule inside the cell’s nucleus.

Lead author Ting Wang says this gives insight into why coding regions between different animals vary in structure.

“Our study changes how we interpret genetic variation in the noncoding regions of the DNA,” Wang said. “For example, large surveys of genomes from many people have identified a lot of variations in noncoding regions that don’t seem to have any effect on gene regulation, which has been puzzling. But it makes more sense in light of our new understanding of transposable elements — while the local sequence can change, but the function stays the same.

So while evolutionists had expected junk and simplicity, Wang says the opposite has occurred. “We have uncovered another layer of complexity in the genome sequence that was not known before.” Now, more discoveries are likely to flow from intelligent design’s expectation that a closer look reveals more complexity.

Mountains of Complexity

In another recent podcast at ID the Future honoring the late Phillip E. Johnson, Paul Nelson likened a graph of mounting discoveries about life to a sharply rising mountain range. Darwin proposed his theory on the flatlands, unaware of the peaks his theory would have to explain. In the last fifty years, scientists have encountered mountain after mountain of complexity in life that evolutionary theory never anticipated back out there on the flatlands. “We can’t see the top of the mountains yet, but we know that we’re still not there, and we won’t be for a long, long time,” Nelson says. As we witness scientists continuing up the mountains, we anticipate with awe more wonders of design that will likely come to light in the next decade.

Why the Origin of Life remains the main pressure point in the design debate.

On the myth of scientific objectivity.

Scientific “Decadence” and the Myth of Objectivity
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Writing here yesterday about the mischaracterization of 437-million-year-old scorpion fossils, paleontologist Günter Bechly used an apt but unexpected word to describe evolutionary thinking. It isn’t just mistaken. It reflects a state of “decadence”: 

In today’s science world it is no longer sufficient to objectively describe some nicely preserved ancient fossils. You must overinterpret the evidence and oversell their importance with a fancy evolutionary narrative. And you do not have to hesitate to be really bold with your claims, because neither the scientific reviewers nor the popular science media will care if your claims are actually supported by the evidence. This system is broken. It was broken by the pressure to publish or perish, by the pressure of public relation departments to generate lurid headlines, and by the pressure of the idiotic paradigm that nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution.

“By the Wayside”

Under these circumstances, “Good science falls by the wayside.” Now neuroscientist Michael Egnor comments over at Mind Matters on decadence in a completely different scientific field: medicine and medical ethics. Abortion advocates have long advanced the falsehood that babies in the womb feel less pain than we do or no pain at all. The truth is the exact opposite: “An unborn child with an immature brain probably experiences pain more intensely than an individual with a mature cortex.”

Perhaps the most disturbing damage that the abortion lobby has done to our society — aside from the systematic killing of tens of millions of innocent human beings — is the corruption of science in the name of ideology. Nowhere is this corruption more obvious than in the misrepresentation of the neuroscience of fetal pain perception.

A new article in the Journal of Medical Ethics titled Reconsidering Fetal Pain (open access) is a welcome correction to the abortion lobby’s systematic misrepresentation. The authors, one of whom is an abortion advocate, reviewed the literature on the perception of fetal pain and came to the conclusion that there is clear scientific evidence to support the view that unborn children feel pain as early as 13 weeks of gestation.

This should not have come as a surprise, since doctors who work with newborns and premature babies routinely observe that they respond with screams to a needle prick that an adult would barely register. 

Dr. Bechly calls it “decadence.” Dr. Egnor calls it “corruption.” It’s one and the same thing: whereas, according to widespread legend, scientists just objectively sift facts, in reality ideological ax-grinding is common and probably worse than it ever was. Remember, what Bechly and Egnor are describing isn’t limited to a stray scientist here or there. It is systematic. Hence the state of decadence.

Corrosive or Worse

As the new “Long Story Short” video from Discovery Institute on homology puts it, “Scientists are just like everyone else: people. And we can be uncritical of things that we want to believe.” 

That’s a charitable way of putting it. In one way, scientists aren’t like “everyone else”: that is, because of the enormous prestige they enjoy, the impact of their being “uncritical of things that [they] want to believe” is tremendous. And it can be quite corrosive, quite malign. It affects how the rest of us think about the origins of life, about the nature of reality — ultimate questions — and about how to treat the most vulnerable members of humankind, the unborn in the womb, whether with care or savage disregard.

These are reasons for applying special scrutiny and an extra degree of skepticism — they are reasons for thinking your own thoughts rather than be spoon-fed — when considering what “Scientists Say.”

For more on the culture of contemporary science, see Egnor’s post“Jeffrey Epstein and the Silence of the Scientists.”

Settled science v. Actual science.

Apocalypse Now — More Things Scientists Would Like You to Forget 

 Michael Egnor

 

 

Scientific consensus is in the news. Scientists agree (at least in public) on all sorts of things: evolution is Darwinian, global warming is real, taking money from patrons like Jeffrey Epstein is great but mustn’t be publicized, etc. The history of science is the history of shifting consensus, and of scientists who shifted it, for better or worse. 

Of late, scientific consensus has been apocalyptic. When you read this morning that we only have a few years left before we are incinerated by our over-heated planet, it’s worth recalling the science apocalypses of recent memory. 

Science Apocalypses Past

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has done for us what scientists won’t — that is, remind us of science apocalypses past. It’s amusing: 

• “Space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast” (1974)
• “Already too late to avert famine” (1975)
• “New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019” (1989)
• “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past” (2000)
• “Rising Seas Could Obliterate Nations by 2000” (1989)
• “Britain will be Siberian in less than 20 years” (2004)

Science apocalypses can only be understood in context. The context is that there have been a lot of them, there are a lot of them, there no doubt will be a lot of them, and they’re always wrong. And, obviously, there’s a scientific consensus that you shouldn’t pay attention to the last scientific consensus.

The Sales Pitch

The contemporary sales pitch for this stuff — that evolution is only by chance and necessity, that DDT will silence the spring, that overpopulation is reaching a Malthusian brink, that man is burning the planet to a cinder — needs to be distinguished from science, which is the work that challenges the consensus.

Scientific consensus is not science. Actually, scientific consensus has almost always been wrong. It was consensus that heavenly bodies move in epicycles, that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, that phlogiston is what burns in a furnace, that malaria is caused by bad air, and that light propagates in ether. This is not to condemn scientific consensus. Science is a business, so scientists have to agree as a corporate body to get things done. 

A Consensus at 30,000 Feet

Scientific consensus that isn’t true is consigned to oblivion, by scientific consensus. Scientific consensus that is true is engineering. Scientific consensus governs the construction of bridges and power plants and airplanes. On my commute and when I flip a light switch and when I look out the window at the clouds below I’m grateful for scientific consensus. I like engineering, especially when I’m at 30,000 feet.

Science is a search, and precludes consensus. Consensus is a means to act, whether wisely or foolishly. The scientific consensus that penicillin kills streptococcus has saved millions of lives. The scientific consensus that DDT causes cancer has cost millions of lives. 

But we must never confuse scientific consensus with science. Science is inquiry. Consensus is cloture of inquiry. What is consensus is not science. Yet consensus has its place — it makes it possible to act corporately. 

The purpose of consensus in science is to manipulate. It’s a political act. It permits scientists to act as a polity. The purpose of the scientific consensus in engineering is to manipulate nature. The purpose of scientific consensus in evolution, in global warming, and in discreet patronage is to manipulate you.

Darwinism's march toward state religion status hits a speed bump?

David Goldman on Gelernter’s Darwin Apostasy

David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

 

 

 

Yale computer scientist David Gelernter’s recent confession in the Claremont Review of Books, rejecting Darwinism, continues to pick up notices from the most interesting writers out there. The economist and philosopher David Goldman, aka Spengler, notes it in an essay, “Pseudo-science, the Bible and human freedom.” 

Goldman points out that even as the “popularity of scientific determinism has jumped,” the limits of scientific arguments for a purely material basis to reality have become ever clearer. Materialists assume that physics and biology make their case for them, yet “physics has lost its ability to make grand statements about the nature of reality,” and “biology hasn’t fared any better.”

Life’s “Great Leap”

The evidence for unguided evolution, a central pillar for any materialist ethos, doesn’t add up:

The new science of DNA proves mathematically that the odds of a random mutation leading to an improvement in the adaptability of a living organism are effectively zero, Gelernter shows. Even a small protein molecule has a chain of 150 amino acids. If we rearrange them at random we mostly obtain gibberish. In fact, “of all 150-link amino acid sequences, 1 in 10⁷⁴ will be capable of folding into a stable protein. To say that your chances are 1 in 10⁷⁴ is no different, in practice, from saying that they are zero. It’s not surprising that your chances of hitting a stable protein that performs some useful function, and might therefore play a part in evolution, are even smaller,” Gelernter explains. That is Establishment science, not the murmurings of the Creationist fringe. 
In short, the evolutionary biologists can’t explain how animal life made the great leap from protozoans to arthropods in the Cambrian Explosion, let alone how natural selection through random mutation might have shaped the human mind. Biologists do brilliant and important research, to be sure, and the profession should not be blamed for the exaggerated claims made by a few publicists like [Yuval] Harari or Harvard’s Steven Pinker.

So then, against the backdrop of materialist science’s failure, what accounts for the rise of modern determinist mythologies, led by astrology and transhumanism, that have captured the imagination of Generation X and Silicon Valley? Read Goldman’s article, but I’ll try to summarize: Behind the phenomenon is a resurgent paganism, with its shamans like Yuval Harari, “this strange little vegan who spends two hours a day in meditation,” exciting the tech elite “because he visualizes them as a new class of demigods,” and with its repellant, narcissistic moral perspective: “The New Atheism turns out to be the old idolatry packaged into a smartphone app.”

Ancient and Modern Man

The choices before modern man are not so different from the choices that faced ancient man. In fact, underneath the wrappings of contemporary life, they’re almost exactly the same. Goldman dismisses naïve “proofs” for God. The theist today makes a bold commitment just as the atheist does in his own way: “the premise of biblical religion requires a leap of faith no greater than that of the atheists. Its consequence is the birth of human freedom, by making human beings free moral agents. The consequences of the old idolatry as well as the new paganism, by contrast, are repugnant.”

The book of Psalms advises, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” That the new paganism is not good, but twisted and terrible, is also a matter to be tasted and seen. See Michael Egnor’s powerful reflections from earlier today, “Jeffrey Epstein and the Silence of the Scientists.” Can anyone who experiences our world, and follows its news, really doubt this?

Trojan horse of the new Gods?

How Is Darwin’s Idea Dangerous? John West Counts the Ways

David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

 

 

 

It amazes me that people who are otherwise smart and sensitive can treat the impact of Darwinism on our culture as an afterthought, if that. One of the best book titles on evolution is atheist Daniel C. Dennett’s 1995 book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Of course Dennett meant that evolution was dangerous in good ways as he sees it, “eat[ing] through just about every traditional concept, and leav[ing] in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.” 

You could hardly put it better. In an excellent new print and podcast interview with World Magazine, Discovery Institute vice president John West details the landscape of the cultural, moral, legal, even medical “landmarks” that have been worn away under the influence of evolutionary thinking.

First and foremost, the impact has been on faith: “Darwin’s theory wasn’t just about change over time — it was that we’re part of an accidental process.” How could this not have a corrosive affect? West also discusses the sexual revolution, racism, reductionism of the human being to a meat machine, and more. The last point brings an observation, deserving of more attention, about the rush to medicate young people. A purely material process of origins naturally means a purely material person as its product:

Psychoactive drugs are a great benefit to society — I’ve had family members who have benefited from them. But I think it should concern people that in some schools in America, 40 percent or more of the young boys are put on Ritalin for ADHD. Ritalin is pharmacologically related to cocaine, so it is going to affect your concentration whether you have ADHD or not. This idea that we’re just these material creatures leads to a psychoactive-drug-first mentality.

Advice for Parents

And Dr. West adds other helpful counsel for parents, who should be proactive in how they allow their kids to be educated. Don’t just farm it out to the schools, whether secular or religious:

Be responsible for those in their own circles of influence. Don’t fret if you don’t have 100,000 people listening to you on YouTube or Facebook. Pay attention to your own kids. Pay attention to the kids of your friends. Even in evangelical churches, parents often farm out the raising of their kids. You can’t cede your parenting to schools — public or Christian. And you certainly can’t cede it to the internet, social media, or video games. If you feel ill-equipped, there’s good news: Various groups have produced lots of great resources to help you talk about these things with your kids. You don’t need to be an expert. Just watch a video with your kids each week and engage them in discussion around the dinner table.

That is great practical advice. I would say, if parents do not take such an active role, then religious schools may be the most risky option. If those schools are spineless in surrendering to what the prestige voices in the culture say, then they have given your own faith’s imprimatur to the theory that humans arose by accident. If they are faithful yet unsophisticated in how they teach, then your children are in for a disturbing surprise when they get to college.

Why does it matter so much what your own family thinks about biological origins? To find out, read the rest of the interview here and listen to an excerpt here.

Seeking to explain away rather than to explain?

The Modern-Day Phlogiston: Darwinism Explains Everything and Nothing

 

Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

 On a new episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid reads an excerpt from Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design, by Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola and Jonathan Witt. It makes the case that modern neo-Darwinism is today’s “phlogiston,” a theory that explains everything but nothing, faces mounting contrary evidence, and survives only with ever more ancillary hypotheses. 
In the excerpt Leisola and Witt also discuss the well-documented pattern of scientists defending an existing scientific paradigm even after fresh discoveries have turned against it, with the obsolete dominant paradigm dying only very slowly. An especially dramatic and tragic example gave the name to this all-too-human tendency — the Semmelweis reflex. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Ancient whale v. Darwin.

An Unbearable Rush -- Antarctic Whale Fossil Poses a Challenge to Evolution that Won't Go Away
Evolution News &Views


As many readers are aware, the standard whale evolution scheme suggests that a fully terrestrial land mammal evolved into a fully aquatic whale in less than 10 million years. Richard Sternberg (see  Part 1 and  Part 2), Casey Luskin (see here and  here), Jonathan M, and others have explained that this is not enough time for neo-Darwinian mechanisms to produce the many complex adaptations found in whales that allow for a fully aquatic lifestyle. (For another great discussion of this challenge to neo-Darwinism, see the film  Living Waters.)

The situation changed in 2011, making things worse for neo-Darwinism. Casey Luskin wrote about the discovery   that year of an Antarctic whale jawbone fossil that was dated to 49 million years ago (Ma).

Previously, the supposed transition was from fully terrestrial ancestors of whales at about 50 Ma to fully aquatic whales called "basilosaurids" at 40 Ma. That left about 10 million years for the transition. But the new jawbone find seemed to make whale evolution even more rapid than previously thought, compressing the time available to as little as a million years -- an unbearable rush.

That is "far too little time to allow the origin and fixation of all the multitude of traits necessary to convert a land-mammal into a whale," Luskin wrote. He observed, "The problem that Richard Sternberg has identified for whale evolution just got even worse."

But that was just based on a news report. We were curious to see what would happen when the discoverers published their find in a scientific journal. Earlier this year they did so, formally giving a date on these Antarctic whale fossils.

Well, in their paper, the authors assert a probable date for this fossil of 49 Ma. Instead of 10 million years for the transition from terrestrial to aquatic, this leaves only 1 million years.

The key question is where the whale fossil specimen MLP 11-II-21-3 was found, because it was stratigraphically lowest (i.e., oldest). Here's what they say in the paper (some internal references omitted):

Age control within the La Meseta Formation has been based primarily on biostratigraphy and suggests that its deposition spanned during much of the Eocene, but there is uncertainty about the precise age of particular units within this formation. In particular, the age of the lower part of the La Meseta Formation (TELMs 2-5), where MLP 11-II-21-3 was collected, is still disputed. Based on the low overall 87Sr/86Sr ratios derived from bivalve carbonate, Dutton et al. (2002) suggested the deposition of TELMs 2-5 took place during the early-middle Eocene (Ypresian and Lutetian in the chronostratigraphic scheme of Cohen et al., 2013). In contrast, Ivany et al. (2008) suggested an early Eocene age (54-48.8 Ma; Ypresian) for these units. TELM 4 includes a significant number of reworked shells, which could have biased the strontium-isotope data. The uncertainty is heightened by the small degree of variance in the global seawater curve for the early to the middle Eocene. However, overlying shells from TELM 5 produce ratios that suggest an age for the base of the unit of ca. 51 Ma. Finally, an early Eocene age of the lower part of the La Meseta Formation is consistent with estimates derived from dinoflagellate and diatom biostratigraphy.
A younger age for TELM 4 and TELM 5 has been discussed as a feasible alternative to an early Eocene age in a number of publications. The most recent comprehensive analysis of the La Meseta Formation is a magnetostratigraphically calibrated dinocyst biostratigraphic framework for the early Paleogene of the Southern Ocean, which support a middle Eocene age for TELM 4. Samples from La Meseta basal stratigraphic units are characterized by an abundance of Antarctic endemic dinocyst taxa (Enneadocysta diktyostila, Vozzhennikovia apertura, Spinidinium macmurdoense, Deflandrea antarctica, and Octodinium askiniae; Douglas et al., 2014). The first occurrence of Enneadocysta diktyostila (earlier assigned to Enneadocysta partridgei), which is dominant in these sediments, has been calibrated to Chron C20r (~45 Ma; Brinkhuis et al., 2003; Williams et al., 2004). Essentially, all dinocyst taxa present in these sediments (E. diktyostila, Vozzhennikovia aperture) belong to the so-called transantarctic fauna, whose dominance reflects an age near the early-middle Eocene boundary (49 Ma or younger; Bijl et al., 2011).

In summary, considering that 87Sr/86Sr ratios provided for TELM 4 might be biased (because of potential reworking and oscillation of the marine Sr isotope curve during the Eocene), we interpret the age of the horizon that produced MLP 11-II-21-3 (i.e., TELM 4) as early middle Eocene (~46- 40 Ma; middle Lutetian to early Bartonian based on ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart 2015; Cohen et al., 2013) and follow the most recent chronostratigraphic interpretation for the La Meseta Formation. This age is also more consistent with the published stratigraphic record of basilosaurids elsewhere.

Previous reports of basilosaurids in the Southern Hemisphere come from approximately coeval deposits from New Zealand (39.5-34 Ma, late Bartonian-Priabonian based on recent interpretation of the lower Greensand Member; Marx and Fordyce, 2015) and Peru (41-37 Ma, Bartonian; Uhen et al., 2011). With a middle Lutetian-early Bartonian age, MLP11-II-21-3 predates other basilosaurid records and provides the oldest Pelagiceti record known worldwide, documenting an early global dispersal of basilosaurids.

What did we just read?

The authors say there is "uncertainty" about the age, an observation they will exploit to justify going with the youngest age possible. (As we'll see below, they prefer an age of "~46-40 Ma".)

Dutton et al. (2002) found 87Sr/86Sr dating methods suggest the early-middle Eocene (Ypresian and Lutetian), which means between 56-41.3 Ma.

Ivany et al. (2008) suggested an early Eocene age (54-48.8 Ma; Ypresian), and found the base of the unit dates to 51 Ma.

Dinoflagellate and diatom biostratigraphy date it to early Eocene (54-48.8 Ma).

Based upon the above, there are good reasons to think this fossil of a fully aquatic whale is no younger than 48.8 Ma. We'll call it 49 Ma.

However, that is much too early for the standard whale evolution scheme. Fully aquatic whales should not have lived so early. So the authors say they want "a younger age" which they claim is "a feasible alternative to an early Eocene age" based upon dinocyst biostratigraphy. Yet even then they admit that under dinocyst biostratigraphy it could be as old as 49 Ma:

Essentially, all dinocyst taxa present in these sediments (E. diktyostila, Vozzhennikovia aperture) belong to the so-called transantarctic fauna, whose dominance reflects an age near the early-middle Eocene boundary (49 Ma or younger; Bijl et al., 2011).
Geological dating is all about using multiple methods that, together, constrain the age of a rock unit to something ever more precise. In this case, there is an age that fits all the different methods used: about 49 Ma.

That's the same age that was originally reported, and that age makes the most sense for this fossil. But the authors don't want that age, for the reasons already stated. In the end, they claim the age of the earliest basilosaurid fossil they found is "~46-40 Ma" because that is "more consistent with the published stratigraphic record of basilosaurids elsewhere." In other words, that age makes their evolutionary timeline a bit more bearable. Still, that contradicts a lot of the other data discussed.

Even then, having settled on a 46-40 Ma age range, they admit this still means that basilosaurids had a "rapid radiation":

In addition, one of these records is among the oldest occurrences of basilosaurids worldwide, indicating a rapid radiation and dispersal of this group since at least the early middle Eocene. ... These findings suggest a rapid radiation and dispersal of protocetids and basilosaurids into the Southern Hemisphere at least since the early middle Eocene (Lutetian).
Yet an age of about 49 Ma remains the most likely conclusion for these true whale fossils.

Obviously, the authors want to reject that age and prefer their basilosaurid fossils to be younger. Evolutionary considerations are plainly pushing the interpretation of data here. The story is not an unfamiliar one.

The unchristian Cross

        Extracts from:

HISTORY OF THE CROSS:
THE PAGAN ORIGIN
AND
IDOLATROUS ADOPTION AND WORSHIP,

OF THE IMAGE.

BY
HENRY DANA WARD, M.A.,
U.S.A.
1871.

CHAPTER I.

THE CROSS OF CHRIST 

STAUROS and ZULON, are the only words in the Greek Testament descriptive of the wooden cross of Christ. Neither of them admit of the radical idea of a cross in English, or in any other modern language. In all the languages of Christendom, a cross consists of one line drawn through another. Two sticks, one crossing the other, are essential to constitute, and to present the universal idea of, a material, visible cross.
No such idea is conveyed by the Scripture words stauros and zulon. Stauros means "an upright pale," a strong stake, such as farmers drive into the ground to make their fences or palisades- no more, no less. To the stauros the Roman soldiers nailed the hands and the feet of the King of glory, and lifted Him up to the mockery of the chief priests and elders of the people. Over Him, on the stauros, Pilate put His title: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." And no mortal is at liberty to affirm any other form of stauros on which our Saviour was lifted up than is implied in the meaning of that word, which alone the four Evangelists in the four Gospels use to describe the wood on which Jesus was lifted up.
ZULON, which I write for the easier pronounciation zulon, means "wood cut ready for use, a stick, cudgel, or beam; any timber; a live tree." This is, as I have said, the only word besides stauros employed in the New Testament to signify the cross of Christ. The Evangelists use this word to signify the clubs or staves with which the company were armed when they arrested Jesus by night in Gethsemane. In the Acts, and rarely in the Epistles, it signifies the wood or timber on which Jesus was impaled alive.
Zulon, then, no more than stauros, conveys the English sense of a cross. Zulon and stauros are alike the single stick, the pale, or the stake, neither more nor less, on which Jesus was impaled, or crucified. Stauros, however, is the exclusive name given by all the Evangelists to the wood of Christ's cross. The stauros Jesus bore, on it He was hanged, from it He was taken down dead. The Evangelists use this word also in the figurative sense: "Come, take up thy stauros, and follow me" (Matt. xvi. 24, Mark viii. 34, Luke ix. 23). "He that taketh not his stauros and followeth after me, is not worthy of me" (Matt. x. 38). Neither stauros nor zulon ever means sticks joining each other at an angle, either in the New Testament or in any other book.

THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

When Israel in the wilderness murmured against God, the Lord sent fiery serpents among them, and much people of Israel died. The penitent people besought Moses to pray the Lord to take away the serpents. Moses's prayer was answered, not by removing the serpents, but by providing a remedy against their bite. By command of the Lord, "Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole. And it came to pass that if the serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived"(Numb.xx. 9). The healing power was not in the "pole," neither was it in the brazen serpent, but in the word of the living God. The healing virtue resided not in these lifeless forms singly or jointly, but in the faith of the word which turned the eyes of the wounded to look that they might live. After the lapse of eight centuries, Judah came to believe there was miraculous power in that image, and they worshipped it. They did not make an image; they worshipped with incense, the same which Moses, by divine command, had made, and had elevated in the healing sight of the congregation. They worshipped it, not as the work of their hands, but as an instrument of salvation, set up by their great lawgiver. Notwithstanding, that good King Hezekiah, such as " after him was none like him , nor any that were before him," when he removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves, brake in pieces also "the brazen serpent that Moses had made ; and he called it Nehushtan," i.e., brass(2 Kings xviii. 4). So, were the veritable wood of Christ's cross now before our eyes, it should sooner be cut -in pieces, and burned for wood, than be adored with incense, and reverence, and love. Is it any holier and better to reverence and love an image of that wood, to kiss it, to wreathe it with laurel, to bow down and worship before the image, which, whether of wood or stone, is man's device, wrought into shape by the hands of man ? 
Not an instance of exalting or honouring the visible form of the cross occurs in the New Testament. On the contrary, it is the emblem of our humiliation and sorrow, which being endured in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, through Jesus and the resurrection, "when our captivity will be turned again, as the streams in the south, our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing;" for we shall not only see Him as He is, but be like Him, having our vile body changed into the likeness of His glorious body, and our joint inheritance of all things  with Christ Jesus in eternal life.

THE PUNISHMENT OF THE CROSS.

This was Inflicted on hardened criminals, and on resolute enemies, and on vile murderers and slaves, among all the renowned nations of antiquity. The manner and circumstances of the execution do not concern us now, so much as the instrument, respecting which Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible " gives large information. "In Livy," says Smith, evencrux means a mere stake. More generally, the cross is called arbor infelix -Livy, Seneca ; or lignum infelix-Cicero. The very name of the cross was abhorrent not only to the flesh, but even to the eyes, ears, and thoughts of Roman citizens-Cicero proRab.5." Yet the learned Dr Smith himself follows the learned of every name in Christendom, whether scoffer or believer, in confounding the cross monogram in various forms and fashions, calling and considering them as one and the same thing. .......Crosses must have been commonly of the simplest form, "because they were used in such marvellous numbers. Of Jews alone, Alexander Jannaeus crucified 800, Varus, 2000, Hadrian, 500 a day; and the gentle Titus so many that there was no room for the crosses, nor crosses for the bodies."-Smith's Dict. of the Bible. Alexander the Great crucified 2000 Tyrians, and both the Sogdian king and people, for their brave defence of their several countries. And Augustus crucified 600 Sicilians. Under such circumstances, men could not be particular about the form of the stauros, or the manner of applying it. Some were nailed, others were  tied hand and foot and lifted up on the stauros; others on the tree. Others, also , were spiked to the earth with the stauros driven through their body, and others were spitted on it. Thus the crucifying or impaling was executed in the cruelest manner, and the sufferers were left to rot unburied, or to be devoured by the birds and beasts. In deference to the Mosaic law, the bodies were in Judea removed and buried, and the crosses were burned, to avoid legal defilement by the accursed thing, as it is written: "His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but in any wise thou shalt bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of God); that the land be not defiled " (Dent. xxi. 23).

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With these facts before us, showing the many and divers forms which the most learned and accurate are wont to call by one common name, " the cross," which name contradicts the form of the wood on which Christ suffered according to the Scriptures; and further, showing the corrupt use of this symbol in orgies of the ancient heathen, we are better prepared to take up the thread of the story from its beginning in the counterfeit Barnabas, and to follow it down through the labyrinth of error, until the initial of Tammuz has come to supplant the monogram of Christ on the standard of Rome, and to be exalted as the banner of Christendom. These are no dreams, but realities set forth not in opposition to the Church of our crucified Lord but in fidelity to the glorified Lord of the Church. For though Aaron and all Israel made of their ornaments the golden calf, and danced, feasted, and shouted before it, "Behold , these be thy gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt;" and though the chief Pontiff and all Christendom make an ornament of the image of the cross, and lift it in reverence and worship, on their person, on the church spire, and on the communion-table in the house of God and say, " Behold the cross of thy Lord and Saviour! behold, these be thy Saviour, O Israel, which redeemed thee from the bondage of corruption! " the images alike are idols-the image of the calf and the image of the cross, both are a pretence and an abomination, supplanting, with a dumb show, the presence of the living God, and closing the heart against Jesus Christ crucified Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God" (I Cor. i. 24).

A GRAND MISTAKE.

Many Romans and some others think that by exalting an image of the cross, they honour the Lord Jesus Christ, in the spirit of the Apostle, who exclaims : " God forbid that I should glory, save in the stauros of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. vi. 14). They little consider that the stauros is death to this world with shame and reproach on the sufferer. They little consider whether it is indeed honouring an upright man, our Friend, to set up in His name an image invented to commemorate Him through the ignominious weapon with which His relentless enemies put Him to death. Such honour more befits His enemies than His friends. Yet the very murderers themselves would be understood to glory in their deed, should they make such image their personal badge,-the recognised banner of their polity and the test of their brotherhood, and a charm of their person. It is time to shout aloud with Imbert: "Worship Christ, not the wood!" And, though rejected of men, we may hope with Him to be accepted of the Lord.

CHAPTER III

A SUMMARY.

The Scripture sense of the word stauros, for the cross of Christ, is in the concrete a pale, a strong stake, a wooden post; and in the abstract, it is a voluntary and patient suffering of shame, reproach, and torment unto death, in whatever form it may please God to lay it on us, whether by the rack, the wild beasts, the fire, or the hatred and persecution of godless men, for the sake of truth and righteousness, and in the hope of everlasting life. The Scriptures never speak of the stauros as an image or a sign, but always as a reality, cognisable to the senses, in every case known, by the sorrows and anguish of the sufferer. "Pilate wrote a title and put it on the stauros," i.e., the wood. "Jesus said, He that taketh not his stauros, and followeth me, is not worthy of me ;" i.e., the stauros of personal shame and suffering for the truth and righteousness of God. "The preaching of the stauros is to them that perish, foolishness;" i.e., they see no sense in suffering wrong and injury patiently-"Lest they should suffer persecution for the stauros of Christ ;" ie., contumely and reproach for believing in the suffering and crucified Saviour. "Far be it that I should glory save in the stauros of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world; " i.e., not the stauros of wood, but the self-sacrifice and offering of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ on the wood. In every sense, the Scripture stauros, first, is a pale or wooden and, secondly, the shame, the reproach, and the patient suffering of innocence before the world for righteousness' sake. Joseph bore this form of the stauros while imprisoned by the captain of Pharaoh's guard, till the Lord delivered him; and so Ignatius, being condemned in Antioch to be torn and devoured by the wild beasts for the faith of Christ, bore his stauros from } Antioch to Rome, where, in the amphitheatre, he suffered it, despising the agony and the shame. In every Scripture sense, the stauros of Christ is a living reality, and never that lying vanity, a senseless image and sign of the wood.
Inquiring about this image, three things surprise us: 
I. The fact that a great variety of wholly unlike forms are, by the common and universal consent of the learned, called by the same name, "the cross," and are understood to mean the cross or stauros of our Lord Jesus Christ.
II.That the figure of the cross, used among the primitive Christians, was X(hi), the Greek initial of Christ, for a sign of Christ, as authors to this day make in their manuscripts X for Christ, and Xmas for Christmas, and Xian for Christian.
III. The third thing that exceedingly surprises us is, to find that this sign and image commonly called the cross, was a profane symbol in heathen mysteries, exalted and honoured from Babylon to Jerusalem ' from the Nile to the Ganges, and from Syria to Britain many centuries before our era. These are facts fully established, but not generally known.
Following up our inquiry, we learn how, when, and by whom this pagan symbol found entrance among Christians, and we shall soon learn how it came at length to supplant the sign of Christ in the churches and on the banners of Christendom. For no writer of the age and the school of the apostles ever mentions, or alludes to any sign, image, or form of the stauros, other than its name implies, one pale or stake; except a certain man under the assumed name of " Barnabas, the companion in labour of Paul, the apostle." The counterfeit Nicodemus follows in the same path, setting forth the power of the sign of the wood in Hades. Minutius Felix and Tertullian, in the beginning of the third century, follow, coyly teaching that it is no worse for Christians to worship the wooden cross, than for the pagans to worship their wooden gods and trophies and eagles Cyprian,A.D.-950-8, acknowledges the sign in the form of the initial of Christ-not the pagan image, but "Christi signum, signum Dei-the symbol of Christ and of God." And, finally, we learn that Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, A.D. 350, comes boldly forth for the sign of the wood, and for the wood of the stauros,} without saying ever a word about the form of the image of the stauros, or about worshipping it. He neither made nor vended images; but he pretended to have the original wood, with portions of which he parted, as a special favour to them that were worthy; and the wood grew in his keeping, so as, in his own words, " to fill the whole world," which many believed, if he did not.
It is time to awake to the fact that the Tammuz or old heathen cross, led the whole column of images, such as of the virgin, of the apostles, of the saints and martyrs, and of our blessed Lord himself, with their several altars, into the Catholic Church, by degrees, from the latter half of the fourth to the latter half of the eighth century; when image-worship was firmly and for ever established in the Roman Catholic Church by the seventh Ecumenical Council, which was the second Council of Nice, held A.D. 787. It is time to awake, for the same strong tide of formalism, which then overflowed Christendom, is now coming under the form and fashion of the same image of the Tammuz cross, to overwhelm the Protestant world. The self-styled Infallible in the flesh, whose mark is the cross, is no less confident of possessing the kingdom o the whole earth now, than the Jews were in the expectancy of that kingdom, when they crucified the Lord of glory.
The Greek initial of Christ is a sign bringing to the memory of Christians, in the midst of the torments of heathen persecution, both the name and the sufferings of Christ, with His victory over death, and His soon coming again to judge the quick and the dead, and to give His faithful followers inheritance in His everlasting kingdom. Hence they learned to recognise their fraternal fellowship in Christ by the sign of His monogram. Gibbon says, "In all occasions of danger and distress, it was the practice of primitive Christians to fortify their minds and bodies by the sign of the cross, which they used in all their ecclesiastical rites, in all the daily occurrences of life, as an infallible preservative against every species of spiritual and temporal evil."-Gibbon, chap.xx
That the persecuted and suffering believers should " fortify their minds and bodies by the sign of the stauros "of wood is inconceivable; but it is natural that, in their circumstances, they should fortify their faith by the sign of the initial of our Lord's name, X for Christ. That this custom came at last to be superstitious is evident. After the boasted vision of Constantine, and the invention and the multiplication of the wood, in the name of the cross, had supplied the whole world, many superstitious practices of the heathen were adopted, perverting the faith, and changing the significant sign of Christ's name into the present sign of the murderous tree.

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IS THIS GLORYING IN THE IMAGE OF THE WOOD PLEASING TO GOD?

Could our blessed Lord himself be pleased with the evil tree? Could He make an idol of the wood on which He was nailed, then lifted up, and left to drink the vinegar and the gall in death? Can it be pleasing in His sight for His citizens to make an ornament of the image of that wood on which He was lifted up, amid the scoffs and jeers of the chief priests and rulers of His chosen people ? Can it be pleasing to the blessed Jesus to behold His disciples glorying in the image of that instrument of capital punishment on which He patiently and innocently suffered, despising the shame? It was a shame, else how did the innocent Sufferer despise the shame ? It was an infamous shame. Why should a rational man make an image of the instrument of it? Reverence and love the image! Lift it up and make an ornament of it! Bow down before it, and kiss the thing with his lips! It is monstrous. Were the crown of thorns taken from the Saviour's wounded head, or the rod with which they smote the Judge of Israel on the cheek, or the nails which fastened His bands and His feet to the tree, really brought to our view, they would, with the spear which pierced His side, be objects of abhorrence to every loving heart. We hear of " Israel's judicial blindness." What else is this which leads Christendom to boast of the instrument on which "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many ?" (Heb.3 ix. 28). That it is most unnatural will plainly appear when we bring the case home to our own heart. Suppose we take up reverently in honour, and glory in, and even kiss a weapon which, in cruel hands had, without the slightest provocation, slain our best friend and benefactor-our elder brother-and brought him to an untimely, shameful, and agonising death ! No mortal in his senses is capable of such perverseness, while yet many, under the delusion of the cross, are daily guilty of it. Neither can it be conceived that such honour to the evil instrument would be agreeable to our departed brother, could his immortal spirit look on it. Would he not rather, in a burst of indignation, exclaim, ill the language of Christ, " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, " If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets " (Matt. xxiii. 29).

THE BEARER OF THIS CROSS DOES NOT PRAY IT MAY
PASS FROM HIM.

No language is too strong to express the indignation of our loving Brother at conduct so shameful, so unnatural. Nor does it improve the matter to pay this homage to an image of the murderous weapon, to lift it up, to gild, and wear it for a charm of the person, for an ornament of the house, and of the house of God. It does not lessen the offence to make this idol minister to the pomp of public worship, to the pride of life, the vanity of fashion, or sale of an article stamped with the image. No; this pagan image is a false cross, from which the holy apostles would shrink in horror, however the multitude of their successors honour it. This is a make-believe cross of pearl, gold, and precious stones, which the wearer cannot pray that it may be taken away from him, and which the multitude naturally covet, should it please God to give it them! How impious and blind to call this image the cross of Him who said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee. Take away this cup from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt " (Mark xiv. 36). All the images of the heathen are an abomination in His sight. How much more those of Christendom, and, most of all, "the glory cross," borne in solemn procession, adorned and set up in the house of the living God, to honour the most cruel death of His be loved Son at the hand of envious murderers! How much better such manners are in this age than those of the thirteenth century, when the visible head of the churches ordained festivals sacred to the memory of the various instruments of torture which afflicted our Lord unto death, the reader will judge."

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Of interest are these comments from Jesus: God, Man, or Myth (The Truth Seeker, 1950), which states:

"A stauros was a mere stake, and horrible to contemplate, it was used in the cruelest fashion to execute criminals and other persons..... It was sometimes pointed and thrust through the victim's body to pin him to earth; or he was placed on top of the stake with it's point upwards so that it gradually pierced his body; or he was tied upon it and left exposed till death intervened; and there were other methods too. There is not a scrape of evidence that a stauros was ever in the form of a cross or even of a "T" shape............

"If Jesus had been executed, mythically or historically, it would not have been with outstretched arms on a cruciform structure.Cutner reports that scholars have been aware of the error but have been unable to resist the TRADITIONAL MISTRANSLATION. In the 18th century some Anglican bishops recommended eliminating the cross symbol altogether, but they were ignored.There is no cross in early Christian art before the middle of the 5th century, where it (probably) appears on a coin in a painting. The first clear crucifix appears in the late 7th century. Before then Jesus was almost always depicted as a fish or a shepherd, never on a cross. Constantine's supposed 4th century vision of a cross in the sky was not of the instrument of execution: it was the Greek letter "X" (chi) with a "P" (rho) through it, the well-known monogram of Christ, from the first two letters of XPISTOS. Any Bible that contains the word "cross" or "crucify" is dishonest. Christians who flaunt the cross are unwittingly advertising a pagan religion."