It's Darwinism all the way down?

 Many remember the joke about the best way to open a can: “Assume a can opener.” Or the joke about what holds up the Earth, if the Earth is supported by a turtle: “It’s turtles all the way down.” We laugh at these vacuous explanations, but is not Darwinism like that? It’s a catch-all explanation for everything. Just assume it, and it will explain any data. Darwin may have defined it in terms of the origin of species, but today, natural selection is the Swiss Army knife applied in widely divergent fields. It can be used as a can opener, corkscrew, scraper, screwdriver, and even a dagger for defending itself against critics. Simply assume this can opener and the explanatory work is done. If not, there are more Swiss Army knives all the way down.

Serious papers have used natural selection to explain bacterial antibiotic resistance, human politics, and the multiverse. Any phenomenon that undergoes change but survives seems fair game for bringing out Darwin’s all-purpose explanatory pocket tool. Put another way, it’s like a demon. Maxwell’s demon was a thought experiment about a possible way to violate a natural law; even today, physicists argue about ways to test it. Natural selection is another occult force, complete with mystical “selection pressures” that can create eyes and wings by chance. This demon, too, makes possible violations of a natural law: the law of cause and effect. Natural selection could be called “Darwin’s demon” or, as the demon likes to portray itself, Darwin’s genie. It will fulfill its master’s every wish.

Historical Blunders

Critics of the Origin of Species immediately pounced on Darwin’s fallacious analogy of selective breeding with his new notion of natural selection. The former is done by people with minds acting with foresight toward a goal, they pointed out; the latter is supposed to be blind and unguided. Nevertheless, Darwin’s disciples ever since have played fast and loose with natural selection, applying it in situations where it doesn’t belong, without regard to any human intelligence involved. A recent example appeared a PNAS special issue about economics. In their introductory article to the series, Simon A. Levin and Andrew W. Lo praise Darwin as they repeat his blunder of flawed analogical reasoning.

We motivate this ambitious initiative with an analogy. The brilliant evolutionary insights of Darwin and others have revolutionized our understanding of the world. Darwin was impressed by the “tangled bank” of elaborate forms that emerged from the undirected processes of evolution to produce the complexity of the biological world. Through continuous innovation coupled with the deceptively simple filter known as natural selection, the characteristics of species and their interactions change in response to changing environments. However, evolution is not limited only to the biological world. Wherever the evolutionary forces of reproduction, variation, and selection exist — as they do in financial markets — evolutionary consequences will follow.[Emphasis added.]

Under the Bus

Never mind the traders, innovators, and theorists in the science of economics. They have been thrown under the bus. It’s natural selection all the way down. Intelligent choice by skilled people with free will responding as wisely as possible to rapidly changing market conditions is old hat. Entrepreneurship is gone. Economic theory by tenured professors like Thomas Sowell is gone. Everything now is Darwin’s demon at work, bringing enlightenment about the true nature of economics. People are just pawns of selection pressures. Economics is now like rafts in rapids without pilots. The luckiest will survive, and the genie will smile at an explanatory job well done.

Evolution is about short-term, relative optimality with respect to other participants in the system. In the biosphere, natural selection acts to improve reproductive success relative to the benchmark of other genomes, within and across species. Evolutionary change can thus be thought of in terms of differential fitness: that is, small differences in reproductive rates between individuals over time leading to large differences in populations.Even the very mechanisms of evolution — including those that generate new variation — are subject to constant modification. In the financial world, the evolutionary forces of mutation, recombination, reproduction, and selection often work on financial institutions and market participants through direct competition, finance “red in tooth and claw.” Financial concepts and strategies thus reproduce themselves through cultural transmission and adoption based on their success in the marketplace. These strategies undergo variation through financial innovation, analogous to mutation or genetic recombination in a biological system, but take place at the level of information and abstract thought in financial contexts. It is “survival of the richest.”

If evolution itself evolves, one doesn’t need people in this picture. One only needs “evolutionary forces” pushing objects around, be they molecules, cells, organisms, men or universes.

No Intelligence Allowed

The other papers in the series repeat the error. Their authors conjure up Darwin’s genie to create the appearance of scientific explanation for human endeavors.

In “Sunsetting as an adaptive strategy,” Roberta Romano and Simon Levin liken corporate decisions to discontinue products to apoptosis (programmed cell death). “Apoptosis, death, and extinction are part of a spectrum of responses but are essential features of the evolutionary play,” they explain gleefully as they discuss boardroom banter.

In “The landscape of innovation in bacteria, battleships, and beyond,” Burnham and Travisano compare Lenski’s Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE) with naval warfare. “The message from naval warfare and the LTEE is that competition fosters innovation,” they say with liberal applications of “selection” from the genie. No admirals allowed.

No Authors Allowed

In “How quantifying the shape of stories predicts their success,” Toubia, Berger, and Eliashberg justify that Darwinian bad habit, just-so storytelling. “Why are some narratives (e.g., movies) or other texts (e.g., academic papers) more successful than others?” they begin. Once again, it’s due to a “selection mechanism” acting silently behind the scenes. They fail to see what this does to their own hypothesis.

In “Social finance as cultural evolution, transmission bias, and market dynamics,” Akçay and Hirshleifer continue the game with Darwin’s genie. “In this paradigm, social transmission biases determine the evolution of financial traits in the investor population,” they say. “It considers an enriched set of cultural traits, both selection on traits and mutation pressure, and market equilibrium at different frequencies.”

In “Moonshots, investment booms, and selection bias in the transmission of cultural traits,” Hirshleifer joins Plotkin to apply natural selection to risk-taking in business. For once, they introduce cognitive reasoning into the mix:

We view adoption or rejection of the risky project as a cultural trait transmitted between firms. We employ the Price Equation to decompose this trait’s evolution into a component due to natural selection and a component due to mutation. Surprisingly, despite the central role of selection bias in the evolution of project choice in the model, the predominant source of cultural change in our context is not natural selection, but, rather, mutation pressure. The importance of mutation during transmission differs sharply from cultural evolutionary models with biased imitation, in which there is only natural selection. This feature of our analysis highlights the role of cognitive reasoning in the cultural evolution of risk-taking behaviors.

Cognitive reasoning cannot overcome the power of Darwin’s genie, however. “The Price Equation decomposes evolutionary change into selection and nonselection effects,” they explain. “The nonselection component is often called mutation pressure — the degree to which traits shift through the inheritance process instead of fitness-biased biased replication.” Thus, cognitive reasoning degenerates into a form of mutation pressure. Does that happen in the process of writing scientific papers, too?

In “Evolved attitudes to risk and the demand for equity,” Robson and Orr continue the use of terms natural selection, fitness, and survival to financial planning. Risk-taking and choice by real people with minds and values is the same kind of thing as the foraging strategies of cattle.

Design Advocates Beware

A theory this plastic makes any debate about Darwinism all but impossible to win. Tackle the genie here, and he will reappear over there. He can always outsmart the debater by shape-shifting into another form. Natural selection is a meaningless concept if the professors over in the Economics building are like evolving bacteria in a long-term evolution experiment. 

These papers give an appearance of erudition through an illusion of mathematical rigor (e.g., Robson and Orr speak of “Convex–Concave Ψ in Biology and Economics”) but what does natural selection really do to scientific explanation? If all human choice and action reduce to selection pressures acting on mindless objects, the intellectual world implodes. Even the writing of scientific papers about “evolutionary models of financial markets” becomes nothing more than a survival strategy.

The Last Laugh 

In his essay The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis warned that scientism is dehumanizing to science itself. The Darwinists are today’s Conditioners teaching the populace about the true nature of things. They view themselves as victors in the conquest of Nature, “explaining away” and “seeing through” human values, which are now “mere natural phenomena” like natural selection. 

This is not a victory, Lewis says, but a defeat. It is not conquering medieval magic, but embracing it. Lewis does not suppose that the Conditioners are bad men; “They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean.” 

The last laugh is for Darwin’s demon. He tricked them. He manifested himself as a genie of explanation. He promised to bring them enlightenment, the ability to see through the outward appearance of things to their true natures. He promised to explain away human values in natural terms.

But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.

On origins and loaded dice.

 

Bernoulli, Keynes, and the Big Bang

Robert J. Marks II

Jacob Bernoulli made a now obvious observation about probability over three-and-a-half centuries ago: If nothing is known about the outcome of a random event, all outcomes can be assumed to be equally probable. Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason (PrOIR) is commonly used. Throw a fair die. There are six outcomes, one for each face of the cube. The chance of getting five pips showing on the roll of a die is therefore one sixth. If a million lottery tickets are sold and you buy one ticket, the chances of winning are one in a million. This reasoning is intuitively obvious. 

If the Die Is Loaded

The assumption about the die is wrong if the die is loaded. But you don’t know that. You know nothing. So Bernoulli’s PrOIR provides the best model based on the known. If the lottery is fixed and you’re not in on the fix, your chances of winning will be less that one in a million. Maybe zero. But you don’t know the game is fixed. You know and assume nothing. Under the circumstances, equal probability is the best assumption you can make.

In analysis of fine-tuning, No Free Lunch Theorems, and conservation of information, Bernoulli’s PrOIR is foundational. In thermodynamics, uniform distributions correspond to maximum entropy. In the absence of air currents or thermal gradients, the temperature is the same in the middle of the room as it is in the corners.  

Those who disagree with Bernoulli’s PrOIR consistently misapply the principle. They don’t appreciate the definition of “knowing nothing.” The concept of “knowing nothing” can be tricky. The sentences “knowing nothing means knowing something” and “knowing nothing means knowing nothing” are both curious puns.

Strange Ideas in Economics

The most visible opposition of Bernoulli’s PrIOR comes from the economist John Maynard Keynes who is most famous for some strange ideas in Keynesian economics. Keynes’ problems with Bernoulli’s assumption are discussed in his book A Treatise on Probability. Two of his objections, Bertand’s Paradox and the distribution of reciprocals, are soundly debunked in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics by Ewert, Dembski and me.

A third argument made by Keynes stems from the sort of data economists would deal with. Here is the example: Consider presenting a man who is either from Great Britain or France. You know nothing about the selection process. Bernoulli then says the chances of the man being French is one half. Consider a second situation where locations are finer grained. You are told the visitor is either from Scotland, Wales, or France. Is the chance the man is French now one third? Since both Scotland and Wales are part of Great Britain, what does this say about the first answer where the chance of being French is one half? Is this a case where Bernoulli’s PrOIR breaks down?

No. In reaching this contradiction, Keynes knew something. He did not know nothing” as required by Bernoulli’s PrOIR.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Time to start calling technology technology?

 

Recasting Darwin Stories into Engineering Models

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Not all change is “evolution” in the Darwinian sense. Darwin theorized that every change was the result of unguided variations somehow “selected” by the environment for reproductive success and survival. But what if organisms were engineered to survive in changing environments? What if a designer had the foresight to install mechanisms in the genetic code that would switch on under stressful circumstances? Stickleback fish offer an opportunity to test those alternatives.

The three-spine stickleback has been Michael Bell’s evolutionary pet since he retired from Stony Brook University. News from U.C. Berkeley tells how he became intrigued by these 2.5” fish that swim up Alaskan streams to spawn. They are his version of Darwin’s finches, “evolving” in short enough timeframes to shed light on the mechanisms of adaptation. They have lately been among evolutionists’ favorite icons demonstrating the truth of Darwinian evolution.

Michael Bell, currently a research associate in the University of California Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley, stumbled across one such natural experiment in 1990 in Alaska, and ever since has been studying the physical changes these fish undergo as they evolve and the genetic basis for these changes. He has even created his own experiments, seeding three Alaskan lakes with oceanic sticklebacks in 2009, 2011 and 2019 in order to track their evolution from oceanic fish to freshwater lake fish. This process appears to occur within decades — very unlike the slow evolution that Charles Darwin imagined — providing scientists a unique opportunity to actually observe vertebrate adaptation in nature. [Emphasis added.]

Writers at Evolution News have commented on stickleback “evolution” for years, arguing that the changes are microevolutionary at best, simply oscillating back and forth with no net fitness gains. The CELS event last month, though, provided an opportunity to look at the empirical data from an engineering perspective. Were these marine fish equipped with mechanisms to adapt when trapped in freshwater lakes, finding themselves surrounded by different ecological conditions? 

Puzzling Observations for Darwinists 

Before analyzing the scientific paper, note that the news mentions some observations that Darwinian biologists should find puzzling. For one, the “evolution” was very rapid: within a decade or less, the offspring of the trapped fish had adjusted to their new surroundings. For another, similar genetic changes were found in populations that had “evolved” independently. Additionally, the code for adaptation seems to be imbedded in the fish before they adapt.

The title of the paper in Science Advances, by Garrett A. Roberts Kingman et al., also looks curiously out of sync with traditional Darwinism: “Predicting future from past: The genomic basis of recurrent and rapid stickleback evolution.” Isn’t Darwinian evolution unguided and therefore unpredictable? Eighteen authors, besides Michael Bell, hailing from 11 institutions in 8 states and one from Germany, participated in this heroic attempt to document evolution and to elevate stickleback fish to the iconic stature of Darwin’s finches. Those birds, in fact, figure prominently in the paper. The team believes that their findings will help explain the adaptive success of Darwin’s finches and other species that show rapid adaptation to a changed environment.

Similar forms often evolve repeatedly in nature, raising long-standing questions about the underlying mechanisms. Here, we use repeated evolution in stickleback to identify a large set of genomic loci that change recurrently during colonization of freshwater habitats by marine fish. The same loci used repeatedly in extant populations also show rapid allele frequency changes when new freshwater populations are experimentally established from marine ancestors. Marked genotypic and phenotypic changes arise within 5 years, facilitated by standing genetic variation and linkage between adaptive regions. Both the speed and location of changes can be predicted using empirical observations of recurrence in natural populations or fundamental genomic features like allelic age, recombination rates, density of divergent loci, and overlap with mapped traits. A composite model trained on these stickleback features can also predict the location of key evolutionary loci in Darwin’s finches, suggesting that similar features are important for evolution across diverse taxa.

Standing Genetic Variations 

A key element of the new model is Standing Genetic Variations (SGV), mentioned a dozen times in the paper. As opposed to de novo mutations, which arise randomly over time in traditional neo-Darwinism, standing genetic variations are already present within a population. Moreover, these “ancient adaptive alleles” can be linked to other alleles in what they call EcoPeaks that confer adaptive success to the organism. Is this beginning to sound more like internal programming indicative of foresight? Perhaps that is why there is no operative mention of Darwinian evolution, neo-Darwinism or random variation/mutation in the paper. It’s not that the authors disbelieve or discredit old neo-Darwinism. They just find a short-term process that is observable and predictable:

Although the predictability of evolution may appear to be in conflict with the unpredictability of historical contingency, understanding the past can yield important insights into future evolution. For example, vertebrate populations frequently harbor large reservoirs of standing genetic variation (SGV) that give independent populations access to similar raw genetic material to respond to environmental challenges, as observed in diverse species including songbirds, cichlid fishes, and the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus). SGV is often apparent in divergent species or populations where it is pretested by natural selection and then distributed by hybridization to related populations. Thus filtered and capable of leaping up fitness landscapes, SGV can also drive rapid evolution, helping address a very real practical challenge to testing evolutionary predictions: time.

Aha! This Is Rich

They basically say, “We can’t watch natural selection work in real time, but we can observe mutations that were pre-selected to leap up fitness peaks. Whether in species of fish or birds, individuals can just borrow the pre-adapted alleles by hybridization and get through hard times. See? Evolution is predictable after all!” This is how dogmatic Darwinists can have their cake and eat it, too. Mutations are still random, but they occurred in the invisible past. What we have now are pools of pre-selected genes able to help organisms evolve quickly and predictably. Evolution is still a fact!

Stickleback fish provide an outstanding system for further study of the genomic basis of recurrent evolution. At the end of the last Ice Age, threespine stickleback, including anadromous populations that migrate from the ocean to freshwater environments to breed, colonized and adapted to countless newly exposed freshwater environments created in the wake of retreating glaciers around the northern hemisphere. This massively parallel adaptive radiation was facilitated by natural selection acting on extensive ancient SGV. Under the “transporter” hypothesis, these variants are maintained at low frequencies in the marine populations by low levels of gene flow from freshwater populations. Reuse of ancient standing variants has enabled identification of genomewide sets of loci that are repeatedly differentiated among long-established stickleback populations. In addition, SGV enables new freshwater stickleback populations to evolve markedly within decades, including conspicuous phenotypic changes in armor plates and body shape.

What if those adaptive alleles instead were engineered? A designing intelligence would have the foresight to provide organisms with a toolkit for adapting to changed environments. If so, one would expect organisms to already possess the tools (standing genetic variation) or a means to get them (hybridization). One would expect populations to adapt quickly and independently, not gradually. Consequently, the fossil record would be characterized by systematic gaps. Which model fits the evidence?

Pretested Adaptive Information

Evolutionists have been complaining about gaps in the fossil record long before Stephen Jay Gould spoke of them as the “trade secret of paleontology.” The gaps were explained away by punctuated equilibria and other rescue devices, arguing that evolution occurred too fast to leave fossils but too slow to observe. Well, these 19 authors are now saying that adaptation can be observed, but what happens is not natural selection of random mutations. It’s genetic sharing of pretested adaptive information. That is why Darwin’s finches quickly adapt to droughts and availability of food sources. That is why stickleback fish can gain and lose armor, depending on the predation ecology. The authors insist that their model improves old evolutionary theory:

The importance of SGV for evolution is becoming increasingly apparent, especially in species with large genome sizes, including humans. At first glance, the dependence of threespine stickleback on SGV for freshwater adaptation may appear to be a peculiarity in terms of repeatability and speed and their particular natural history. However, by more comprehensively understanding the dynamics of this highly optimized process, we have extracted general features of genome architecture and evolution that successfully translate to species on distant branches of the tree of life, thus demonstrating the tremendous power of the stickleback system to identify unifying principles that underlie evolutionary change.

But if this is a “highly optimized process” around the tree of life (or, better, network of life), how is it Darwinian? The paper says precious little about the fitness, survival, and speciation — terms that used to be centerpieces of evolutionary theory. The idea of progressive evolution is also merely assumed, not demonstrated:

This suggests that individual regions may grow over time, with alleles originally based on an initial beneficial mutation accumulating additional linked favorable mutations, snowballing over time to form a finely tuned haplotype with multiple adaptive changes. This is consistent with work in other species identifying examples of evolution through multiple linked mutations that together modify function of a gene (50–52) and implies that progressive allelic improvement may be common.

Their three examples in the references, however, only refer to regulatory effects on existing genes — not the origin of species that Darwin wished to explain. Their new model actually sounds designed: organisms can borrow existing know-how supplied to them in a vast library of SGV.

No Need for Excuses

Today’s engineering-conversant biologists have no need of the old excuses for rescuing neo-Darwinism’s gradualism, which contradicts the fossil evidence. Adaptive alleles can be viewed not as a haphazard pool of pre-filtered random mistakes that just happen to work. They are sets of tools for surviving in a dynamic world. This new paper, which does not provide any evidence for randomness or gradualism, proposes a distributed network strategy that looks like good design. Just as each car does not need to carry every tool if it can be obtained from a warehouse, each organism does not need to carry all possible adaptive alleles if it can obtain what it needs from the population’s library. That’s a design strategy that engineering-aware biologists may wish to develop, using this paper (sans its neo-Darwinist assumptions) as evidence. 

More light less heat on exoplanets.

 

Study: Planets Capable of Sustaining Photosynthesis Are Extremely Rare

Casey Luskin

Headlines currently buzzing around the Internet are saying things like “Earth-like worlds capable of sustaining life may be less common than we thought” (CNET) or “There Is Only One Other Planet In Our Galaxy That Could Be Earth-Like, Say Scientists” (Forbes). While some might find it encouraging that there’s one other Earth-like planet in our galaxy, when you consider that there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, this certainly makes it sound like habitable planets are pretty special. 

The claims are based upon a new study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, “Efficiency of the oxygenic photosynthesis on Earth-like planets in the habitable zone.” Photosynthesis, of course, is the basis of the biosphere for life on Earth, as the paper explains: 

Photosynthesis is the dominant process, as it allows us to produce about 99 per cent of the entire biomass of the Earth biosphere. OP is also essential for providing abundant O2 levels which appear to be necessary for the high-energy demands of multicellular life anywhere in the Universe.” A planet that can sustain photosynthesis thus has the ability to sustain a wide variety of other life forms. The study aims to estimate the ability of a planet to sustain oxygenic photosynthesis (OP) given three parameters: (1) the photon flux (i.e., the amount of light), (2) the “exergy,” which is a measure of the amount of work that can be done given the radiation input, and (3) something that can only be put in the words of the authors: “the exergetic efficiency of the radiation in the wavelength range useful for the oxygenic photosynthesis as a function of the host star effective temperature and planet-star separation.

Earth Has Highest Exergetic Efficiency

Let’s cut to the chase: The paper finds that among a database of planets both inside and outside our solar system, Earth is far and away the planet that is best-suited for life, with only one other planet with a radiation input that could possibly sustain oxygenic photosynthesis:

Earth is … the rocky planet with the largest PAR photon flux and with the highest exergetic efficiency. However, we also find that Kepler-442b receives a PAR photon flux slightly larger than the one necessary to sustain a large biosphere, similar to the Earth biosphere. So, it is likely that a Kepler-442b biosphere would not be light-limited.

Now of course the amount and type of radiation reaching a planet is crucial for its habitability. But there is a whole suite of additional features that are needed for advanced life to exist. This includes the presence of water (as well as the proper distance from the host star for the water to be in a liquid form), availability of necessary elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, and the proper balance of other compounds such as carbon dioxide. To give a more complete list, planetary habitability requirements seem to include:

• Rocky planet with active plate tectonics to recycle elements needed for life
• Presence of sufficient water in the crust
• Large moon with right rotation period and distance
• Right planetary mass
• Presence of magnetic field
• Location within circumstellar habitable zone which allows liquid water to exist
• Low-eccentricity orbit to allow for stable climate
• Presence of large Jupiter-mass planetary neighbors in large circular orbits 
• Location outside spiral arm of galaxy and far enough from center of galaxy – the Galactic Habitable Zone
• Near co-rotation circle of galaxy, in circular orbit around galactic center
• Stable radiation output of host star
• Atmosphere which can allow visible light to penetrate to surface yet block out harmful radiation

We know that Earth meets all of these requirements, but does Kepler-442b? At this point we simply don’t know. 

A Planetary System Fit for Life

In his 2018 book Children of Light, Michael Denton elaborates on the last item in the list above — special properties of Earth’s atmosphere which allow radiation needed for “light-eating” organisms to reach the surface yet block out forms of radiation which are destructive to organic molecules. He explains that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by our sun is especially suited to the needs of life, and the atmosphere of Earth allows the precise wavelengths of radiation that are needed for photosynthesis:

[T]he electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun (and that of most other stars) is almost entirely light and heat (or infrared), which have precisely the characteristics needed for life, especially advanced life, to thrive on the Earth’s surface. Light is required for photosynthesis and heat is required to raise the Earth’s temperature to well above freezing and preserve liquid water on Earth.

It is only because of the precise absorption characteristics of Earth’s atmospheric gases that most of the light radiation emitted by the Sun reaches the Earth’s surface where it drives the chemical process of photosynthesis upon which we “light eaters” ultimately depend. And the same atmospheric gases which let the light through for photosynthesis absorb a portion of the infrared (IR) radiation, which warms the Earth and preserves water as a liquid on the Earth’s surface. Adding to the miracle, both the atmospheric gases and liquid water, the matrix of carbon-based life, not only let through the right light but strongly absorb all the dangerous types of radiant energy on either side of the visual and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, a vital property without which no advanced life forms would grace the surface of the Earth. 

CHILDREN OF LIGHT, PP. 15-16

Not only is Earth’s atmosphere precisely suited for the forms of EM radiation needed for life, but Denton explains that there’s a coincidence of chemistry wherein the very wavelengths of light that pass through our atmosphere can activate organic molecules yet not destroy them: 

Within this Goldilocks region, the light is not so energetic as to cause chemical disruption of organic matter, but it is energetic enough to gently activate organic molecules for chemical reaction. In other words “just right.” No other EM radiation will do! As Wald points out, it is not that life adapted to the right light but that the right light is the only light that provides the correct energy levels for photochemistry: 

“There cannot be a planet on which photosynthesis or vision occurs in the far infrared or far ultraviolet, because these radiations are not appropriate to perform these functions. It is not the range of available radiation that sets the photobiological domain, but rather the availability of the proper range of wavelengths that decides whether living organisms can develop and light can act upon them in useful ways.”

CHILDREN OF LIGHT, PP. 25, EMPHASIS IN ORIGINAL

Both Earth and our sun form a finely balanced system that is finely tuned to allow photosynthesis to occur. We don’t know that this overall system exists on Kepler-442b. 

Underestimating the Complexity of Photosynthesis

Have you ever heard of those “ghost malls” in China? They were fully built and ready for business — including one that was arguably the largest mall in the world. Everything was just right for business, but they were missing one thing: vendors and customers. In a similar way, having the right kind of sun and planetary atmosphere aren’t the only requirements for photosynthesis. You could have a planet that is perfectly habitable for life yet if life never arises it will be empty. Organisms capable of photosynthesis itself must somehow arise. But how? Reflecting a common form of evolutionary thinking, the new paper discussed above seems to suggest that once the right conditions are present, photosynthesis can evolve quite easily. In one passage it describes the familiar basic chemical equation for photosynthesis and then lauds its “overall simplicity”:

6CO2 + 6H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6O2 (1)

We conjecture that the chemical reaction (1) should be quite common in the cosmos because of the generally large amounts of radiation received by exoplanets from their host stars, the availability of the input ingredients, and its overall simplicity supported by the fact that OP evolved very early on Earth.

As the paper suggests, photosynthesis is the conversion of light into chemical energy. This is a process that happens in the leaves of plants and requires five highly specialized protein complexes (photosystems I & II, cytochrome bf complex, NADPH reductase, and ATP synthase) for the light reactions and 11 enzymes for the dark reactions. Briefly, in the light reactions, a photon is captured by an antenna pigment, and the energy of excited electrons is then transferred to chlorophyll molecules. A high-energy electron from chlorophyll is passed through an electron transport chain which causes the pumping of protons across a membrane. Those protons are used to power the ATP synthase molecular machine which generates ATP, the energy molecule of the cell.  And of course ATP synthase alone is a multicomponent irreducibly complex molecular machine:

The dark reactions of photosynthesis are where you fix carbon by taking in CO2 and make a carbohydrate which the organism can further use. This whole process is called the Calvin cycle and over the series of 11 enzyme-controlled steps you have a tightly controlled process that generates either energy molecules or structural molecules or both depending on what the cell needs.

Michael Denton provides his own nice sketch of the complexity of photosynthesis:

The primary event on which the whole process of photosynthesis depends is the capture or absorption of photons of light by the photosynthetic pigments (chiefly the green pigment chlorophyll) in the thylakoid membranes (which surround the so-called thylakoid discs in the chloroplast). When the chlorophyll molecules situated in these membranes capture photons, the energy imparted activates electrons in the chlorophyll, raising them to higher energy levels. (Each photon absorbed raises one electron to a higher energy level.) 

This allows the electrons to escape from the chlorophyll, leaving the chlorophyll molecules positively charged or oxidized. (The loss of electrons is oxidation.) The positively charged chlorophylls draw electrons from water molecules (H2O) in the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC), oxidizing them and releasing at the same time free oxygen (0) molecules, as well as protons (H+) and electrons (e-).

Water [H20] → Oxygen [02] + protons [H+] + electrons [e-]

The energetic electrons escaping from the chlorophyll find their way to electron transport chains, where they flow “down” in discrete steps, releasing energy at each step, which is used to do work, pumping protons (H+) across a membrane (the thylakoid membrane) into the thylakoid lumen (a membrane-enclosed compartment in the chloroplast). These then flow back through the same membrane, providing energy to drive the synthesis of ATP (the cell’s chemical energy currency) by the enzyme ATP synthase. 

[…]

Overall, photosynthesis can be seen to occur in two stages. In the first stage, light-dependent reactions capture the energy of light and use it to make the energy-storage molecule A TP and the reducing agent NADPH. These light-dependent reactions occur in the thylakoid membranes. During the second stage (the Calvin cycle), the light-independent reactions use these products to reduce carbon dioxide. 

CHILDREN OF LIGHT, PP. 75-77

Of course each of these steps requires finely tuned enzymes, cofactors, and other biomolecules which facilitate the requisite chemical reactions. It may even represent an irreducibly complex system. 

So how did the paper determine that photosynthesis has an “overall simplicity,” despite the complexity just described? Only due, again, to evolutionary thinking: photosynthesis appears early in life’s history, and because they presume that unguided evolution is the only mechanism by which complex biological systems can arise, they therefore conclude that photosynthesis must be simple and easy to evolve. But as we have seen it’s not simple at all. Having the right conditions for photosynthesis to take place doesn’t in any way guarantee that photosynthesis will evolve. Compared to evolving the complexity of photosynthesis, obtaining the rare special conditions where a planet receives the EM radiation needed for photosynthesis seems like a much simpler task — even though it’s apparently very rare in the universe! 

The Watchtower society's commentary on prayer.

 

PRAYER

Worshipful address to the true God, or to false gods. Mere speech to God is not necessarily prayer, as is seen in the judgment in Eden and in the case of Cain. (Ge 3:8-13; 4:9-14) Prayer involves devotion, trust, respect, and a sense of dependence on the one to whom the prayer is directed. The various Hebrew and Greek words relating to prayer convey such ideas as to ask, make request, petition, entreat, supplicate, plead, beseech, beg, implore favor, seek, inquire of, as well as to praise, thank, and bless.

Petitions and supplications, of course, can be made to men, and the original-language words are sometimes so used (Ge 44:18; 50:17; Ac 25:11), but “prayer,” used in a religious sense, does not apply to such cases. One might “beseech” or “implore” another person to do something, but in so doing he would not view this individual as his God. He would not, for example, silently petition such one, nor do so when the individual was not visibly present, as one does in prayer to God.

The “Hearer of Prayer.” The entire Scriptural record testifies that Jehovah is the One to whom prayer should be directed (Ps 5:1, 2; Mt 6:9), that he is the “Hearer of prayer” (Ps 65:2; 66:19) and has power to act in behalf of the petitioners. (Mr 11:24; Eph 3:20) To pray to false gods and their idol images is exposed as stupidity, for the idols do not have the ability either to hear or to act, and the gods they represent are unworthy of comparison with the true God. (Jg 10:11-16; Ps 115:4, 6; Isa 45:20; 46:1, 2, 6, 7) The contest concerning godship between Baal and Jehovah, held on Mount Carmel, demonstrated the foolishness of prayer to false deities.​—1Ki 18:21-39; compare Jg 6:28-32.

Though some claim that prayer may properly be addressed to others, such as to God’s Son, the evidence is emphatically to the contrary. True, there are rare instances in which words are addressed to Jesus Christ in heaven. Stephen, when about to die, appealed to Jesus, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” (Ac 7:59) However, the context reveals a circumstance giving basis for this exceptional expression. Stephen at that very time had a vision of “Jesus standing at God’s right hand,” and evidently reacting as if he were in Jesus’ personal presence, he felt free to speak this plea to the one whom he recognized as the head of the Christian congregation. (Ac 7:55, 56; Col 1:18) Similarly, the apostle John, at the conclusion of the Revelation, says, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.” (Re 22:20) But again the context shows that, in a vision (Re 1:10; 4:1, 2), John had been hearing Jesus speak of his future coming and thus John responded with the above expression of his desire for that coming. (Re 22:16, 20) In both cases, that of Stephen and that of John, the situation differs little from that of the conversation John had with a heavenly person in this Revelation vision. (Re 7:13, 14; compare Ac 22:6-22.) There is nothing to indicate that Christian disciples so expressed themselves under other circumstances to Jesus after his ascension to heaven. Thus, the apostle Paul writes: “In everything by prayer and supplication along with thanksgiving let your petitions be made known to God.”​—Php 4:6.

The article APPROACH TO GOD considers the position of Christ Jesus as the one through whom prayer is directed. Through Jesus’ blood, offered to God in sacrifice, “we have boldness for the way of entry into the holy place,” that is, boldness to approach God’s presence in prayer, approaching “with true hearts in the full assurance of faith.” (Heb 10:19-22) Jesus Christ is therefore the one and only “way” of reconciliation with God and approach to God in prayer.​—Joh 14:6; 15:16; 16:23, 24; 1Co 1:2; Eph 2:18; see JESUS CHRIST (His Vital Place in God’s Purpose).

Those Whom God Hears. People “of all flesh” may come to the “Hearer of prayer,” Jehovah God. (Ps 65:2; Ac 15:17) Even during the period that Israel was God’s “private property,” his covenant people, foreigners could approach Jehovah in prayer by recognizing Israel as God’s appointed instrument and the temple at Jerusalem as his chosen place for sacrifice. (De 9:29; 2Ch 6:32, 33; compare Isa 19:22.) Later, by Christ’s death, the distinction between Jew and Gentile was forever removed. (Eph 2:11-16) At the home of the Italian Cornelius, Peter recognized that “God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.” (Ac 10:34, 35) The determining factor, then, is the heart of the individual and what his heart is moving him to do. (Ps 119:145; La 3:41) Those who observe God’s commandments and do “the things that are pleasing in his eyes” have the assurance that his “ears” are also open to them.​—1Jo 3:22; Ps 10:17; Pr 15:8; 1Pe 3:12.

Conversely, those who disregard God’s Word and law, shedding blood and practicing other wickedness, do not receive a favorable hearing from God; their prayers are “detestable” to him. (Pr 15:29; 28:9; Isa 1:15; Mic 3:4) The very prayer of such ones can “become a sin.” (Ps 109:3-7) King Saul, by his presumptuous, rebellious course, lost God’s favor, and “although Saul would inquire of Jehovah, Jehovah never answered him, either by dreams or by the Urim or by the prophets.” (1Sa 28:6) Jesus said that hypocritical persons who sought to draw attention to their piety by praying received their “reward in full”​—from men, but not from God. (Mt 6:5) The pious-appearing Pharisees made long prayers, boasted of their superior morality, yet were condemned by God for their hypocritical course. (Mr 12:40; Lu 18:10-14) Though they drew near with their mouths, their hearts were far from God and his Word of truth.​—Mt 15:3-9; compare Isa 58:1-9.

The individual must have faith in God and in his being “the rewarder of those earnestly seeking him” (Heb 11:6), approaching in “the full assurance of faith.” (Heb 10:22, 38, 39) Recognition of one’s own sinful state is essential, and when serious sins have been committed, the individual must ‘soften the face of Jehovah’ (1Sa 13:12; Da 9:13) by first softening his own heart in sincere repentance, humility, and contrition. (2Ch 34:26-28; Ps 51:16, 17; 119:58) Then God may let himself be entreated and may grant forgiveness and a favorable hearing (2Ki 13:4; 2Ch 7:13, 14; 33:10-13; Jas 4:8-10); no longer will one feel that God has ‘blocked approach to himself with a cloud mass, that prayer may not pass through.’ (La 3:40-44) Though a person may not be cut off completely from receiving audience with God, his prayers can be “hindered” if he fails to follow God’s counsel. (1Pe 3:7) Those seeking forgiveness must be forgiving toward others.​—Mt 6:14, 15; Mr 11:25; Lu 11:4.

What are proper matters about which to pray?

Basically prayers involve confession (2Ch 30:22), petitions or requests (Heb 5:7), expressions of praise and thanksgiving (Ps 34:1; 92:1), and vows (1Sa 1:11; Ec 5:2-6). The prayer given by Jesus to his disciples was evidently a model, or a basic pattern, because later prayers by Jesus himself, as well as by his disciples, did not rigidly adhere to the specific words of his model prayer. (Mt 6:9-13) In its initial words, this prayer concentrates on the matter of primary concern, the sanctification of Jehovah’s name, which name began to be profaned by the rebellion in Eden, as well as on the realization of the divine will by means of the promised Kingdom, which government is headed by the prophesied Seed, the Messiah. (Ge 3:15; see JEHOVAH [Sovereignty to Be Vindicated and Name to Be Sanctified].) Such prayer requires that the one praying be definitely on God’s side in the issue involving Jehovah’s sovereignty.

Jesus’ parable at Luke 19:11-27 shows what the ‘coming of the Kingdom’ means​—its coming to execute judgment, to destroy all opposers, and to bring relief and reward to those hoping in it. (Compare Re 16:14-16; 19:11-21.) The following expression, “let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth,” thus refers primarily, not to the doing of God’s will by humans, but, rather, to God’s own acting in fulfillment of his will toward the earth and its inhabitants, manifesting his power to realize his declared purpose. The person praying, of course, also expresses thereby his own preference for, and submission to, that will. (Mt 6:10; compare Mt 26:39.) The request for daily bread, forgiveness, protection against temptation, and deliverance from the wicked one all relate to the petitioner’s desire to continue living in God’s favor. He expresses this desire for all others of like faith, not for himself alone.​—Compare Col 4:12.

These matters in this model prayer are of fundamental importance to all men of faith and express needs they all have in common. The Scriptural account shows that there are, on the other hand, many other matters that may affect individuals to a greater or lesser degree or that result from particular circumstances or occasions and that are also proper subjects for prayer. Though not specifically mentioned in Jesus’ model prayer, they are, nevertheless, related to the matters there presented. Personal prayers, then, may embrace virtually every facet of life.​—Joh 16:23, 24; Php 4:6; 1Pe 5:7.

Thus, all rightly seek increased knowledge, understanding, and wisdom (Ps 119:33, 34; Jas 1:5); yet some may need such in special ways. They may call on God for guidance in matters of judicial decisions, as did Moses (Ex 18:19, 26; compare Nu 9:6-9; 27:1-11; De 17:8-13), or in the appointment of persons to special responsibility among God’s people. (Nu 27:15-18; Lu 6:12, 13; Ac 1:24, 25; 6:5, 6) They may seek strength and wisdom to carry out certain assignments or to face up to particular trials or dangers. (Ge 32:9-12; Lu 3:21; Mt 26:36-44) Their reasons for blessing God and thanking him may vary according to their own personal experiences.​—1Co 7:7; 12:6, 7; 1Th 5:18.

At 1 Timothy 2:1, 2, the apostle speaks of prayers being made “concerning all sorts of men, concerning kings and all those who are in high station.” On his final night with his disciples, Jesus, in prayer, said that he did not make request concerning the world, but concerning those whom God had given him, and that these were not of the world but were hated by the world. (Joh 17:9, 14) It therefore appears that Christian prayers regarding officials of the world are not without limitation. The apostle’s further words indicate that such prayers are ultimately in favor of God’s people, “in order that we may go on leading a calm and quiet life with full godly devotion and seriousness.” (1Ti 2:2) Earlier examples illustrate this: Nehemiah prayed that God would ‘give him pity’ before King Artaxerxes (Ne 1:11; compare Ge 43:14), and Jehovah instructed the Israelites to “seek the peace of the city [Babylon]” in which they would be exiled, praying on its behalf, since “in its peace there will prove to be peace for you yourselves.” (Jer 29:7) Similarly, Christians prayed concerning the threats of the rulers in their day (Ac 4:23-30), and undoubtedly their prayers in behalf of imprisoned Peter also involved the officials with authority to release him. (Ac 12:5) In harmony with Christ’s counsel, they prayed for those persecuting them.​—Mt 5:44; compare Ac 26:28, 29; Ro 10:1-3.

Giving thanks for God’s provisions, such as food, was done from early times. (De 8:10-18; note also Mt 14:19; Ac 27:35; 1Co 10:30, 31.) Appreciation for God’s goodness, however, is to be shown in “everything,” not only for material blessings.​—1Th 5:17, 18; Eph 5:19, 20.

In the final analysis, it is knowledge of God’s will that governs the contents of a person’s prayers, for the supplicant must realize that, if his request is to be granted, it must please God. Knowing that the wicked and those disregarding God’s Word have no favor with Him, the supplicant obviously cannot request that which runs counter to righteousness and to God’s revealed will, including the teachings of God’s Son and his inspired disciples. (Joh 15:7, 16) Thus, statements regarding the asking of “anything” (Joh 16:23) are not to be taken out of context. “Anything” clearly does not embrace things the individual knows, or has reason to believe, are not pleasing to God. John states: “This is the confidence that we have toward him, that, no matter what it is that we ask according to his will, he hears us.” (1Jo 5:14; compare Jas 4:15.) Jesus told his disciples: “If two of you on earth agree concerning anything of importance that they should request, it will take place for them due to my Father in heaven.” (Mt 18:19) While material things, such as food, are proper subjects of prayer, materialistic desires and ambitions are not, as such texts as Matthew 6:19-34 and 1 John 2:15-17 show. Nor can one rightly pray for those whom God condemns.​—Jer 7:16; 11:14.

Romans 8:26, 27 shows that the Christian, under certain circumstances, will not know just what to pray for; but his unuttered ‘groanings’ are nonetheless understood by God. The apostle shows that this is by means of God’s spirit, or active force. It should be remembered that it was by his spirit that God inspired the Scriptures. (2Ti 3:16, 17; 2Pe 1:21) These included events and circumstances similar to those that would come upon his servants in later times and showed the way in which God would guide his servants and bring them the help they needed. (Ro 15:4; 1Pe 1:6-12) It may not be until after the needed help has been received that the Christian realizes that what he might have prayed for (but did not know how to) was already set forth in God’s spirit-inspired Word.​—Compare 1Co 2:9, 10.

The Answering of Prayers. Although God anciently carried on a measure of two-way communication with certain individuals, this was not common, for the most part being restricted to special representatives, such as Abraham and Moses. (Ge 15:1-5; Ex 3:11-15; compare Ex 20:19.) Even then, with the exception of when he spoke to or about his Son while on earth, God’s words were evidently transmitted through angels. (Compare Ex 3:2, 4; Ga 3:19.) Messages delivered personally by materialized angels were likewise uncommon, as is evidenced by the disturbed effect they generally produced on the receivers. (Jg 6:22; Lu 1:11, 12, 26-30) The answering of prayers in the majority of cases, therefore, was through prophets or by the granting of, or the refusal to grant, the request. Jehovah’s answers to prayers often had a clearly recognizable effect, as when he delivered his servants from their enemies (2Ch 20:1-12, 21-24) or when he provided for their physical needs in times of dire scarcity. (Ex 15:22-25) But undoubtedly the most frequent answer was not so easily discernible, since it related to giving moral strength and enlightenment, enabling the person to hold to a righteous course and carry out divinely assigned work. (2Ti 4:17) Particularly for the Christian the answer to prayers involved matters mainly spiritual, not as spectacular as some powerful acts of God in earlier times, but equally vital.​—Mt 9:36-38; Col 1:9; Heb 13:18; Jas 5:13.

Acceptable prayer must be made to the right person, Jehovah God; on right matters, those in harmony with God’s declared purposes; in the right manner, through God’s appointed way, Christ Jesus; and with a right motive and a clean heart. (Compare Jas 4:3-6.) Along with all of this, there is need for persistence. Jesus said to ‘keep on asking, seeking, and knocking,’ not giving up. (Lu 11:5-10; 18:1-7) He raised the question as to whether, at his future ‘arrival,’ he would find faith in the power of prayer on earth. (Lu 18:8) The seeming delay on God’s part in answering some prayers is not due to any inability nor to a lack of willingness, as the Scriptures make clear. (Mt 7:9-11; Jas 1:5, 17) In some cases the answer must await God’s ‘timetable.’ (Lu 18:7; 1Pe 5:6; 2Pe 3:9; Re 6:9-11) Primarily, however, it is evident that God allows his petitioners to demonstrate the depth of their concern, the intensity of their desire, the genuineness of their motive. (Ps 55:17; 88:1, 13; Ro 1:9-11) At times they must be like Jacob in his wrestling a long time in order to obtain a blessing.​—Ge 32:24-26.

Similarly, while Jehovah God cannot be pressured by numbers into acting, he evidently takes note of the extent of concern shown among his servants as a body, taking action when they collectively show deep concern and united interest. (Compare Ex 2:23-25.) Where apathy or a measure of it exists, God may withhold action. In the reconstruction of Jerusalem’s temple, a project for some time not well supported (Ezr 4:4-7, 23, 24; Hag 1:2-12), there were interruptions and delay, whereas later, in Nehemiah’s reconstruction of the city walls, accomplished with prayer and good support, the work was done in just 52 days. (Ne 2:17-20; 4:4-23; 6:15) Writing the Corinthian congregation, Paul speaks of God’s deliverance of him from danger of death, and he states: “You also can help along by your supplication for us, in order that thanks may be given by many in our behalf for what is kindly given to us due to many prayerful faces.” (2Co 1:8-11; compare Php 1:12-20.) The power of intercessory prayer is regularly stressed, whether by an individual or a collective group. It was in regard to ‘praying for one another’ that James said: “A righteous man’s supplication, when it is at work, has much force.”​—Jas 5:14-20; compare Ge 20:7, 17; 2Th 3:1, 2; Heb 13:18, 19.

Also notable is the frequent ‘pleading’ of one’s case before Jehovah, the Sovereign Ruler. The petitioner presents reasons why he believes the request to be right, evidence of his having a right and unselfish motive, and reasoning to show that there are other factors outweighing his own interests or considerations. These might be that the honor of God’s own name or the good of his people is involved, or they may include the effect on others as a result of God’s action or refusal to act. Appeals may be made to God’s justice, his loving-kindness, his being a God of mercy. (Compare Ge 18:22-33; 19:18-20; Ex 32:11-14; 2Ki 20:1-5; Ezr 8:21-23.) Christ Jesus also ‘pleads’ for his faithful followers.​—Ro 8:33, 34.

The entire book of Psalms consists of prayers and songs of praise to God, its contents illustrating what prayer should be. Among many notable prayers are those by Jacob (Ge 32:9-12), Moses (De 9:25-29), Job (Job 1:21), Hannah (1Sa 2:1-10), David (2Sa 7:18-29; 1Ch 29:10-19), Solomon (1Ki 3:6-9; 8:22-61), Asa (2Ch 14:11), Jehoshaphat (2Ch 20:5-12), Elijah (1Ki 18:36, 37), Jonah (Jon 2:1-9), Hezekiah (2Ki 19:15-19), Jeremiah (Jer 20:7-12; the book of Lamentations), Daniel (Da 9:3-21), Ezra (Ezr 9:6-15), Nehemiah (Ne 1:4-11), certain Levites (Ne 9:5-38), Habakkuk (Hab 3:1-19), Jesus (Joh 17:1-26; Mr 14:36), and Jesus’ disciples (Ac 4:24-30).​—See ATTITUDES AND GESTURES; INCENSE (Significance).