The Watchtower Society's Commentary on tithes.

 TITHE 

A tenth part or 10 percent given or paid as a tribute, especially for religious purposes.

The Bible tells of two instances prior to the setting up of the Law covenant in which a tenth part of possessions were paid to God or to his representative. The first of these was on the occasion when Abraham gave Melchizedek one-tenth of the spoils of his victory over Chedorlaomer and his allies. (Gen. 14:18-20) The apostle Paul cites this incident as proof that Christ’s priesthood according to the manner of Melchizedek is superior to that of Levi, since Levi, being in the loins of Abraham, paid tithes, in effect, to Melchizedek. (Heb. 7:4-10) The second case concerned Jacob, who vowed at Bethel to give one-tenth of his substance to God.—Gen. 28:20-22.

However, these two accounts are merely instances of voluntarily giving one-tenth. There is no record to the effect that Abraham or Jacob commanded their descendants to follow such examples, thereby establishing a religious practice, custom or law. It would have been superfluous for Jacob, if already under a compulsory obligation to pay tithes, to vow to do so, as he did. It is therefore evident that the tithing arrangement was not a custom or a law among the early Hebrews. It was instituted with the inauguration of the Law covenant, not before. 

MOSAIC TITHING LAWS 

Jehovah gave Israel tithing laws for definite purposes, apparently involving the use of two tenths of their annual income, except during the sabbath years, when no tithe was paid, since no income was anticipated. (Lev. 25:1-12) However, some scholars believe there was only one tithe. Such tithes were in addition to the firstfruits they were under obligation to offer to Jehovah.—Ex. 23:19; 34:26.

The first tithe, consisting of one-tenth of the produce of the land and fruit trees and (evidently of the increase) of the herds and flocks, was brought to the sanctuary and given to the Levites, since they had no inheritance in the land but were devoted to the service of the sanctuary. (Lev. 27:30-32; Num. 18:21, 24) The Levites, in turn, gave a tenth of what they received to the Aaronic priesthood for their support.—Num. 18:25-29.

Evidently the grain was threshed and the fruit of the vine and of the olive tree was converted into wine and oil before tithing. (Num. 18:27, 30; Neh. 10:37) If an Israelite wished to give money instead of this produce, he could do so, provided he added an additional fifth to the valuation. (Lev. 27:31) But it was different with the flock and the herd. As the animals came out of the pen one by one through a gate, the owner stood by the gate with a rod and marked every tenth one as the tithe, without examination or selection.—Lev. 27:32, 33.

It seems there was an additional tithe, a second tenth, set aside each year for purposes other than the direct support of the Levitical priesthood, though the Levites shared in it. Normally it was used and enjoyed in large measure by the Israelite family when assembling together at the national festivals. In cases where the distance to Jerusalem was too great for the convenient transport of this tithe, then the produce was converted into money and this, in turn, was used in Jerusalem for the household’s sustenance and enjoyment during the holy convention there. (Deut. 12:4-7, 11, 17, 18; 14:22-27) Then, at the end of every third and sixth years of the seven-year sabbatical cycle, this tithe, instead of being used to defray expenses at the national assemblies, was set aside for the Levites, alien residents, widows and fatherless boys in the local community.—Deut. 14:28, 29; 26:12.

These tithing laws binding on Israel were not excessive. Nor should it be overlooked that God promised to prosper Israel by opening “the floodgates of the heavens” if his tithing laws were obeyed. (Mal. 3:10; Deut. 28:1, 2, 11-14) When the people became negligent as to tithing, the priesthood suffered, for the priests and Levites were forced to look to secular work and consequently neglected their ministerial services. (Neh. 13:10) Such unfaithfulness tended to bring about a decline in true worship. Sadly, when the ten tribes fell away to calf worship they used the tithe to support that false religion. (Amos 4:4, 5) On the other hand, when Israel was faithful to Jehovah and under the rule of righteous administrators, tithing for the Levites was restored, and true to Jehovah’s promise, there were no shortages.—2 Chron. 31:4-12; Neh. 10:37, 38; 12:44; 13:11-13. 

Under the Law there was no stated penalty to be applied to a person’s failing to tithe. Jehovah placed all under a strong moral obligation to provide the tithe; at the end of the three-year tithing cycle they were required to confess before Him that the tithe had been paid in full. (Deut. 26:12-15) Anything wrongfully withheld was viewed as something stolen from God.—Mal. 3:7-9.

By the first century C.E., the Jewish religious leaders, particularly among the scribes and Pharisees, made a sanctimonious show of tithing and other outward works, in a form of worship, but their hearts were far removed from God. (Matt. 15:1-9) Jesus reproved them for their selfish, hypocritical attitude, calling attention to their being meticulous to give a tenth even of “the mint and the dill and the cummin”—something they should have done—yet at the same time disregarding “the weightier matters of the Law, namely, justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Matt. 23:23; Luke 11:42) By way of illustration, Jesus contrasted the Pharisee who boastfully felt self-righteous because of his own works of fasting and tithing, with the tax collector who, though considered as nothing by the Pharisee, humbled himself, confessed his sins to God and begged for divine mercy.—Luke 18:9-14. 

NO TITHING FOR CHRISTIANS 

At no time were first-century Christians commanded to pay tithes. The primary purpose of the tithing arrangement under the Law had been to support Israel’s temple and priesthood; consequently the obligation to pay tithes would cease when that Mosaic law covenant came to an end as fulfilled, through Christ’s death on the torture stake. (Eph. 2:15; Col. 2:13, 14) It is true that Levitical priests continued serving at the temple in Jerusalem until it was destroyed in 70 C.E., but Christians from and after 33 C.E. became part of a new spiritual priesthood that was not supported by tithes.—Rom. 6:14; Heb. 7:12; 1 Pet. 2:9.

As Christians they were encouraged to give support to the Christian ministry both by their own ministerial activity and by material contributions. Instead of giving fixed, specified amounts to defray congregational expenses, they were to contribute “according to what a person has,” giving “as he has resolved in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Cor. 8:12; 9:7) They were encouraged to follow the principle: “Let the older men who preside in a fine way be reckoned worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard in speaking and teaching. For the scripture says: ‘You must not muzzle a bull when it threshes out the grain’; also: ‘The workman is worthy of his wages.’” (1 Tim. 5:17, 18) However, the apostle Paul set an example in seeking to avoid bringing an undue financial burden on the congregation.—Acts 18:3; 1 Thess. 2:9. 

A good listener?

 Cats Recognize and Respond to Our Voices 

Denyse O'Leary 

Do cats care whether we talk to them or not? In a recent study, animal cognition experts found that cats may change their behavior when their “humans” are talking in a tone directed to them. But they don’t react the same way to a stranger who is talking that way or when the voice is directed elsewhere. Charlotte de Mouzon and colleagues from Université Paris Nanterre (Nanterre, France) investigated the way 16 cats reacted to “pre-recorded voices from both their owner and that of a stranger when saying phrases in cat-directed and human adult-directed tones.” With adult-directed tones, no “endearing” kitty talk is used. It might not be clear who the intended recipient of the message is, apart from what is being said: 

The authors investigated three conditions, with the first condition changing the voice of the speaker from a stranger’s voice to the cat’s owner. The second and third conditions changed the tone used (cat-directed or adult-directed) for the cat’s owner or a stranger’s voice, respectively. The authors recorded and rated the behavior intensity of cats reacting to the audio, checking for behaviors such as resting, ear moving, pupil dilation, and tail moving, amongst others.

SPRINGER, “CATS DISTINGUISH BETWEEN SPEECH DIRECTED AT THEM AND HUMANS” AT PHYS.ORG (OCTOBER 24, 2022); THE PAPER REQUIRES A FEE OR SUBSCRIPTION.

So What Happened? 

 Ten of the 16 cats decreased their behavior intensity when they heard three audio clips of a stranger calling them by name. But once they heard their owner’s voice, the cats turned their ears to the speakers and moved around the room more — and their pupils dilated. Not surprisingly, the researchers concluded that the cats recognized the voices of people they knew.

The second test involved ten cats, eight of which had been in the first test. They “decreased their behavior” (quit paying much attention) when their owners were speaking in an adult-directed tone. But they “significantly increased their behavior” (started paying more attention) when they heard that same owner speaking in the cat-directed tone. The cats — not surprisingly — did not change their behavior when a stranger’s voice was played in either tone. Conclusions?: 

The authors suggest that their findings bring a new dimension to cat-human relationships, with cat communication potentially relying on experience of the speaker’s voice. They conclude that one-to-one relationships are important for cats and humans to form strong bonds.

SPRINGER, “CATS DISTINGUISH BETWEEN SPEECH DIRECTED AT THEM AND HUMANS” AT PHYS.ORG (OCTOBER 24, 2022). 

One difficulty we face when trying to determine what a cat “can” or “can’t” understand is that the cat handles information differently from the dog — and it is natural for us to compare cats with dogs, especially in matters like intelligence or capacity for relationship. 

A Small Lone Predator 

The dog, in a natural state, hunts with other dogs. Communication is essential for success. The cat, by contrast, is a small lone predator who operates by stealth. He takes great care to conceal any information as to his presence until his prey is firmly in his power. In fact, many domestic cats will hide and conceal symptoms of their own pain and sickness because they are prey as well as predators. So determining what the cat actually knows is a more complex business than determining what a dog actually knows (for one thing, the dog may be much more anxious to tell you).

And it turns out that cats know more than many have supposed. For example, they know the names of other cats who live in the same household. But, of course, that’s information cats need.

For example, “FLUFFY! It’s time for your PILL!” is a piece of information that Fluffy’s housemate Tabby may understand quite well, in terms of its outcome (Fluffy is chased into the basement and cornered in the furnace room by a human clutching a pill). But Tabby, characteristically, stays well away from the whole business. Thus we would need artful research methods to show that Tabby does in fact know whether a particular “cat talk” communication was or was not directed at him and whether he knows what it means.

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

The "gentleman's game" : a brief history.

cricket:

By Marcus K. Williams 

cricket, England’s national summer sport, which is now played throughout the world, particularly in Australia, India, Pakistan, the West Indies, and the British Isles. 

Cricket is played with a bat and ball and involves two competing sides (teams) of 11 players. The field is oval with a rectangular area in the middle, known as the pitch, that is 22 yards (20.12 metres) by 10 feet (3.04 metres) wide. Two sets of three sticks, called wickets, are set in the ground at each end of the pitch. Across the top of each wicket lie horizontal pieces called bails. The sides take turns at batting and bowling (pitching); each turn is called an “innings” (always plural). Sides have one or two innings each, depending on the prearranged duration of the match, the object being to score the most runs. The bowlers, delivering the ball with a straight arm, try to break (hit) the wicket with the ball so that the bails fall. This is one of several ways that the batsman is dismissed, or put out. A bowler delivers six balls at one wicket (thus completing an “over”), then a different player from his side bowls six balls to the opposite wicket. The batting side defends its wicket. 

There are two batsman up at a time, and the batsman being bowled to (the striker) tries to hit the ball away from the wicket. A hit may be defensive or offensive. A defensive hit may protect the wicket but leave the batsmen no time to run to the opposite wicket. In that case the batsmen need not run, and play will resume with another bowl. If the batsman can make an offensive hit, he and the second batsman (the nonstriker) at the other wicket change places. Each time both batsmen can reach the opposite wicket, one run is scored. Providing they have enough time without being caught out and dismissed, the batsmen may continue to cross back and forth between the wickets, earning an additional run for each time both reach the opposite side. There is an outside boundary around the cricket field. A ball hit to or beyond the boundary scores four points if it hits the ground and then reaches the boundary, six points if it reaches the boundary from the air (a fly ball). The team with the highest number of runs wins a match. Should both teams be unable to complete their number of innings before the time allotted, the match is declared a draw. Scores in the hundreds are common in cricket.

Matches in cricket can range from informal weekend afternoon encounters on village greens to top-level international contests spread over five days in Test matches and played by leading professional players in grand stadiums. 

History 

Cricket is believed to have begun possibly as early as the 13th century as a game in which country boys bowled at a tree stump or at the hurdle gate into a sheep pen. This gate consisted of two uprights and a crossbar resting on the slotted tops; the crossbar was called a bail and the entire gate a wicket. The fact that the bail could be dislodged when the wicket was struck made this preferable to the stump, which name was later applied to the hurdle uprights. Early manuscripts differ about the size of the wicket, which acquired a third stump in the 1770s, but by 1706 the pitch—the area between the wickets—was 22 yards long.

The ball, once presumably a stone, has remained much the same since the 17th century. Its modern weight of between 5.5 and 5.75 ounces (156 and 163 grams) was established in 1774. 

The primitive bat was no doubt a shaped branch of a tree, resembling a modern hockey stick but considerably longer and heavier. The change to a straight bat was made to defend against length bowling, which had evolved with cricketers in Hambledon, a small village in southern England. The bat was shortened in the handle and straightened and broadened in the blade, which led to forward play, driving, and cutting. As bowling technique was not very advanced during this period, batting dominated bowling through the 18th century. 

The earliest reference to an 11-a-side match, played in Sussex for a stake of 50 guineas, dates from 1697. In 1709 Kent met Surrey in the first recorded intercounty match at Dartford, and it is probable that about this time a code of laws (rules) existed for the conduct of the game, although the earliest known version of such rules is dated 1744. Sources suggest that cricket was limited to the southern counties of England during the early 18th century, but its popularity grew and eventually spread to London, notably to the Artillery Ground, Finsbury, which saw a famous match between Kent and All-England in 1744. Heavy betting and disorderly crowds were common at matches. 

The aforementioned Hambledon Club, playing in Hampshire on Broadhalfpenny Down, was the predominant cricket force in the second half of the 18th century before the rise of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London. Formed from a cricket club that played at White Conduit Fields, the club moved to Lord’s Cricket Ground in St. Marylebone borough in 1787 and became the MCC and in the following year published its first revised code of laws. Lord’s, which was named after its founder, Thomas Lord, has had three locations over its history. Moving to the current ground in St. John’s Wood in 1814, Lord’s became the headquarters of world cricket.

In 1836 the first match of North counties versus South counties was played, providing clear evidence of the spread of cricket. In 1846 the All-England XI, founded by William Clarke of Nottingham, began touring the country, and from 1852, when some of the leading professionals (including John Wisden, who later compiled the first of the famous Wisden almanacs on cricketing) seceded to form the United All-England XI, these two teams monopolized the best cricket talent until the rise of county cricket. They supplied the players for the first English touring team overseas in 1859.

Technical development 

Until early in the 19th century all bowling was underhand, and most bowlers favoured the high-tossed lob. Next came “the round-arm revolution,” in which many bowlers began raising the point at which they released the ball. Controversy raged furiously, and in 1835 the MCC rephrased the law to allow the hand to be raised as high as the shoulder. The new style led to a great increase in pace, or bowling speed. Gradually bowlers raised the hand higher and higher in defiance of the law. Matters were brought to a head in 1862 when an England team playing against Surrey left the field at London’s Kennington Oval in protest over a “no ball” call (i.e., an umpire’s decision that the bowler has thrown an illegal pitch). The argument centred on whether the bowler should be allowed to raise his arm above the shoulder. As a result of this controversy, the bowler was in 1864 officially accorded liberty to bowl overhand (but not to cock and straighten the arm). This change dramatically altered the game, making it yet more difficult for a batsman to judge the ball. Already a bowler was allowed to take a running start from any direction and for any distance. Once the bowler was allowed to release overhand, the ball could then reach speeds above 90 mph (145 km/hr). Though this is not as fast as the pitching speed in baseball, cricket has an additional twist in that the ball is usually delivered so as to bounce on the pitch (field) before the batsman can hit it. Thus, the ball may curve to the right or the left, bounce low or high, or spin toward or away from the batsman. 

Batsmen learned to protect themselves with pads and batting gloves, and a cane handle increased the resilience of the bat. Only the best batsmen, however, could cope with fast bowling, because the poor condition of most pitches made it yet more difficult for a batsman to predict the motion of the ball. As the grounds improved, however, batsmen grew accustomed to the new bowling style and went on the offensive. Other new bowling styles were also discovered, causing batsmen to adjust their technique further. 

In the early 20th century so many runs were being scored that debate ensued on reforming the “leg-before-wicket” law, which had been introduced in the 1774 laws to prohibit a batsman from using his body to prevent the ball from hitting his wicket. But the heavy scores were actually due to the performances of several outstanding batsmen, such as W.G. Grace, Sir John Berry Hobbs, and K.S. Ranjitsinhji (later the maharaja of Nawanagar). This was cricket’s golden age.

In the 20th century there was a series of attempts to aid the bowler and quicken the tempo of the game. Nevertheless, the game by the mid-20th century was characterized not by overwhelming offense but by defensive play on both sides and by a slow pace. In an attempt to shore up a declining fan base, one-day, or limited-overs, cricket was introduced. One-day cricket had first been played internationally when, after a Test match was rained out for the first days, on the last scheduled day of play a limited-overs match was held in order to give the fans some game to watch. The response was enthusiastic, and one-day cricket came into being. In this version of cricket the limited number of overs (usually 50 per side) leads to a faster paced though much-altered game. In one-day cricket there are some restrictions on placement of fielders. This led to new batting styles, such as the paddle shot (wherein the ball is hit behind the wicket because there are usually no fielders there) and the lofted shot (where the batsman tries to hit the ball past the fielders and over their heads). Twenty20 (T20), a style of one-day cricket consisting of 20 overs per side, debuted in 2003 and quickly became an international sensation. The first Twenty20 world championship was held in 2007, and one-day cricket, particularly Twenty20, became more popular than Test matches worldwide, although Test cricket retained a large following in England. The pace of Test matches increased dramatically in the late 20th century with the introduction of new bowling strategies. 

Organization of sport and types of competition

County and university cricket 

Some of the earliest organized cricket matches were between amateur and professional players. From 1806 (annually from 1819) to 1962, the Gentlemen-versus-Players match pitted the best amateurs against the best professionals. The series was ended in 1962 when the MCC and the counties abandoned the distinction between amateurs and professionals. Other early cricket matches took place between British universities. The Oxford-versus-Cambridge match, for example, has been played mainly at Lord’s since 1827 and became a high point of the summer season in London. 

University cricket was a kind of nursery for county cricket—i.e., matches between the various counties of England. Although the press acclaimed a “champion county” (Sussex) as early as 1827, qualification rules for county cricket were not laid down until 1873, and it was only in 1890 that the format of the county championship was formalized by the counties themselves. Gloucestershire dominated the 1870s, thanks to W.G. Grace and his brothers E.M. and G.F. Grace. From the 1880s to World War I, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Kent, and Middlesex constituted the Big Six that dominated county cricket. After World War I the northern counties, led by Yorkshire and Lancashire, largely professional teams, were the leaders. Surrey, with seven successive championships, dominated in the 1950s and Yorkshire in the 1960s, followed by Kent and Middlesex in the 1970s. The 1980s were dominated by Middlesex, Worcestershire, Essex, and Nottinghamshire. Other counties in first-class county cricket are Leicestershire, Somerset, Hampshire, Durham, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Northamptonshire, and Glamorgan.

After a postwar boom, slow play and lower numbers of runs characterized the 1950s, and this defensive nature of county cricket led to progressively decreased attendance. In the 1960s the MCC and the counties introduced a one-day knockout competition—called the Gillette Cup (1963–1980), the NatWest Bank Trophy (1981–2000), the C&G Trophy (2000–06), and the Friends Provident Trophy (2006–09)—and a separate Sunday afternoon league (the two competitions were merged in 2010 as the Clydesdale Bank 40), which revived public interest, although most counties remained dependent financially on proceeds from football pools and money received from Test matches and broadcasting fees. The immediate registration of overseas players was permitted, and each county, as of the early 1980s, was allowed one such player, who could, however, still play for his national team. The change worked well for the counties, and it also strengthened the national teams for whom those players appeared. In county cricket, bonus points were created to encourage batsmen and bowlers to play less defensively, and from 1988, to help the development of young batsmen and spin bowlers, four-day games increasingly replaced the three-day format. The longer game gives batsmen more time to build an innings and relieves them of the pressure to score runs quickly. Spin bowlers benefit from the longer game because the pitch wears as the game progresses and permits greater spin. 

The Cricket Council and the ECB 

A reorganization of English cricket took place in 1969, resulting in the end of the MCC’s long reign as the controlling body of the game, though the organization still retains responsibility for the laws. With the establishment of the Sports Council (a government agency charged with control of sports in Great Britain) and with the possibility of obtaining government aid for cricket, the MCC was asked to create a governing body for the game along the lines generally accepted by other sports in Great Britain. The Cricket Council, comprising the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB), the National Cricket Association (NCA), and the MCC, was the result of these efforts. The TCCB, which amalgamated the Advisory County Cricket Committee and the Board of Control of Test Matches at Home, had responsibility for all first-class and minor-counties cricket in England and for overseas tours. The NCA consisted of representatives from clubs, schools, armed services cricket, umpires, and the Women’s Cricket Association. In 1997 there was another reorganization, and the TCCB, the NCA, and the Cricket Council were all subsumed under the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). 

International cricket 

International cricket in the early part of the 20th century was dominated by the original members of the Imperial Cricket Conference, England, Australia, and South Africa. Later renamed the International Cricket Conference and then the International Cricket Council, the ICC gradually took over more responsibility for the administration of the game and shifted its power base from west to east. When in 2005 the ICC moved its offices from Lord’s in London—home of the MCC, the game’s original rulers and still its lawmakers—to Dubai, the shift away from the old ways of governance was complete. The priorities of the game changed too. By the turn of the 21st century, only Australia and England still played Test cricket to full houses. Everywhere else, and particularly in India and Pakistan, crowds flocked to see limited-overs internationals. Test cricket became almost an afterthought. Although the power to change the laws of the game have remained with the MCC, the ICC developed its own Code of Conduct for players, officials, and administrators, which sets out disciplinary procedures and protects the spirit of the game. It also organized major international tournaments, including the one-day and Twenty20 World Cups and the Champions Trophy. In 2000 the ICC set up the Anti-Corruption Unit (renamed the Anti-Corruption Unit and Security Unit in 2003) to combat the growing threat of illegal gambling and match fixing. At the beginning of the 2010s, the ICC had 10 full members and dozens of associate and affiliate members. 

One of the founding members of the ICC, Australia remains one of its most powerful countries both on and off the field. The history of cricket in Australia dates to 1803 when the game was introduced by the crew of a British ship. The first intercolonial match took place in 1851 between Victoria and Tasmania, and by the end of the 19th century teams from England were touring Australia regularly. The first official Test match was played in Melbourne in 1877 by Australia and England, beginning the oldest rivalry in international cricket, a series that became known as The Ashes (see Test Matches below).

Cricket is played throughout Australia, and matches are ferociously competitive at every level. All the great Australian players from Sir Don Bradman to Shane Warne developed their skills in club cricket before graduating to the state and national teams, and the Australian style of cricket is marked by aggressiveness with bat, ball, and, often, voice in an attempt to intimidate opponents. Through the 20th century, Australia produced a series of outstanding teams, and the country dominated international cricket into the new century, winning three successive one-day World Cups (1999–2007) and twice recording runs of 16 consecutive Test victories (1999–2001 and 2005–08). In 2005 England’s Test victory over Australia, the first since 1987, was celebrated with an open-top bus ride through the city of London 

In June 2000 Bangladesh became the 10th country to be accorded full Test status. It played its first Test match in November of that year, against India in Dhaka. Known as the Tigers, the Bangladeshi team struggled to perform at the highest level, winning only three of its first 68 Tests. However, Bangladesh has defeated the nine countries that preceded it to Test status in one-day matches, a feat completed with a victory over England in Bristol in 2010. Bangladesh’s first appearance in an international tournament had come in England in the ICC Trophy competition for associate members in 1979. In 1997 Bangladesh won the trophy and qualified for the 1999 World Cup, beating Pakistan in the group stages. A domestic first-class tournament between six regional teams was established in 2000–01. Since Bangladesh gained Test status, cricket arguably has become the most popular sport in the country. 

Cricket is played in every corner of India, on city streets, in village fields, and on maidans—open playing fields, the largest of which (such as the Azad, Cross, and Oval maidans in South Mumbai) can host dozens of overlapping matches. Historically, Indian cricketers have displayed a good eye and strong wrists, and Indian batsmen, most notably Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar, have been some of the most productive and stylish in the history of cricket. The dry flat pitches of the subcontinent have also traditionally produced high-class spin bowlers.

The origins of the game in India date to the 18th century. A touring team led by the English gentleman cricketer Lord Hawke played a match against the “All India” team in January 1893. India played its first Test in 1932 and waited 20 years for its first Test victory, against England in Madras (now Chennai). The game developed so fast in India, however, that by the end of the 20th century India was one of the world’s foremost cricketing countries. With the growth of the Indian Premier League in the early 21st century, it became the undisputed home of Twenty20 cricket and the financial hub of the international game, though the popularity of Test cricket has declined dramatically in India. India’s prominence in one-day cricket was further confirmed when it won the Cricket World Cup in 2011. 

Cricket has always taken second place to rugby in the sports priorities of New Zealanders, but, as in Australia, the game has a strong national structure in New Zealand. The long history of domestic cricket in the country is often dated from the first representative interprovincial match, between Auckland and Wellington, in 1860, though there is evidence that unofficial matches between provinces were played in New Zealand decades earlier. The NZ Cricket Council was formed in 1894 and was admitted to full membership of the ICC in 1926. With only a small base of players on which to draw, New Zealand has always struggled to compete with England and Australia in Test cricket. As in most cricketing countries, the one-day game has proved more popular in New Zealand. In Richard Hadlee, who was knighted in 1990, the country produced one of the greatest cricketers of any era. 

The development of cricket in Pakistan has been chaotic, quixotic, and exotic in roughly equal measure. Under the leadership of Imran Khan, Pakistan won the 1992 World Cup, but often its cricket was blighted by political interference and scandal. A low point was reached in 2010: To begin with, the national team was in virtual exile, unable to persuade other countries to play in Pakistan for fear of terrorist attacks in the wake of an assault in Lahore on the visiting Sri Lankan team bus in March 2009 that left six policemen dead and several players injured. Moreover, three members of the Pakistani team touring England were involved in allegations of “spot fixing”—that is, fixing the results of certain bowls in return for money—and were banned by the ICC. Huge profits could be made in illegal betting markets in Asia by predicting the results of individual bowls. Only a few years earlier several Pakistan players also had been banned as a result of investigations over match fixing. Yet Pakistan has also produced a host of talented cricketers such as Khan, Wasim Akram, Abdul Qadir, and Inzamam-ul-Haq and has proved itself adept at Twenty20 cricket, winning the T20 World Cup in 2009. 

South Africa played its first Test, against England in Port Elizabeth, as early as in 1889. Cricket has been at the heart of the country’s sporting culture ever since. When South Africa was banned from the ICC from 1970 to 1991 because of its apartheid policies, cricket administrators worked quietly to integrate nonwhite players into the system, which was based largely on traditional all-white schools and state teams. When apartheid was abolished, cricket was far more prepared to cope with the social and political changes than was rugby union. Makhaya Ntini, a world-class fast bowler, who made his international debut for South Africa in 1998 and played in more than 100 Tests, served as a role model for the new generation of black cricketers. On the other hand, in 2000 Hansie Cronje, the captain of South Africa, was banned for match fixing in a scandal that brought into question the integrity of South African cricket. It was not until 2003, when South Africa hosted a successful World Cup, that the rehabilitation of country’s cricketing reputation was complete. South Africa has always been a great exporter of cricketers, mainly to England. Allan Lamb and Robin Smith were prominent members of the England team in the 1980s and ’90s; Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott were mainstays of the Ashes-winning side of 2010. 

Even before Test status was awarded to Sri Lanka in 1981, the island country was a popular destination for touring teams, particularly for English teams on the way to Australia by boat. Given the disadvantages of its relatively small population and of the civil war that disrupted life on the island for three decades, Sri Lanka developed into a top cricketing country with surprising speed. In 1996 it won the World Cup, beating Australia in the final by playing aggressive, innovative cricket under the inspired leadership of Arjuna Ranatunga. The victory instilled belief in a new generation of players that included Sanath Jayasuriya; Mahela Jayawardene, an elegant and aggressive batsmen; and Muttiah Muralitharan, who in 2010 became the first bowler to take 800 Test wickets. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 devastated the cricket-playing regions of southern Sri Lanka, including the Test match ground at Galle, and took the lives of many promising young players. Nonetheless, Sri Lanka recovered to reach the World Cup final again in 2007. Calamity struck again in 2009, when the Sri Lankan team’s bus was attacked by terrorists on the way to the ground for the second Test against Pakistan in Lahore. 

Cricket has been a unifying force in the Caribbean since the West Indies became the fourth Test-playing side in 1928. The islands have generally played other sports as independent countries, but British colonial influence contributed to the formation of a united regional team. For a time in the 1970s and ’80s, when the West Indian team featured a quartet of fast bowlers—led by Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, and Joel Garner—and batsmen of the destructive capacity of Sir Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, the West Indies were virtually unbeatable. Blessed with an abundance of talented players and true pitches, Caribbean cricket has always been played with an unorthodox flourish, seen most clearly in the batsmanship of Sir Garfield Sobers, Richards, and Brian Lara.

In the 21st century cricket declined in popularity in the West Indies, a result of a lack of strong administrative leadership and because of the increasing appeal of potentially more lucrative sports such as athletics (track and field), football (soccer) and basketball. After playing in the finals of the first three World Cups (1975, 1979, and 1983) and winning the first two, the West Indian team failed—with the exception of 1996—to reach even the knockout stage of subsequent World Cups, including in 2007, as the host of the event. 

Until Test status was granted to Zimbabwe in 1992, the country’s best cricketers, such as Colin Bland, played for South Africa. Indeed, the history of the cricket in the two countries has been inextricably linked. Long before the newly independent and renamed Zimbabwe became an associate member of the ICC in 1980, teams representing its Rhodesian forerunner states had participated in the Currie Cup, the South African domestic first-class tournament (first in 1904–05, then in the early 1930s, and again after World War II). Competing in its first World Cup in 1983, Zimbabwe surprised the world by beating Australia, yet Graeme Hick, arguably the country’s best batsman, left shortly thereafter to play for England.

Zimbabwean cricket in the early 21st century has been marked by chaotic administration and political interference. In 2004 Heath Streak was sacked as captain of the national team, precipitating a crisis from which Zimbabwe took years to emerge, including an exile from Test cricket that began in 2006 and ended in 2011. The country’s political volatility during this period had much to do with the situation. In the 2003 World Cup, for example, England forfeited its match in Zimbabwe, citing security concerns. During the same tournament, two Zimbabwe players, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga, wore black armbands to “mourn the death of democracy” in their country. 

The first Test match, played by two national teams, was between Australia and England in Melbourne in 1877, with Australia winning. When Australia again won at the Oval at Kennington, London, in 1882, the Sporting Times printed an obituary notice announcing that English cricket would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia, thus creating the “play for the Ashes.” The Ashes, kept in an urn at Lord’s irrespective of which country is victorious, are supposed to be those of a bail burned on the England tour of Australia in 1882–83. For the rest of the 19th century, the two countries met almost yearly. With W.G. Grace, the greatest cricketer of Victorian England, on its side, England was often too strong for the Australians, though Australia had the greatest bowler of this era in F.R. Spofforth and the first of the great wicketkeepers in J.McC. Blackham. 

On the hunt for a bridge between micro and macroevolution.

 An Evolutionist Searches for Missing Evidence 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

Jon Perry is a filmmaker and science educator who produces educational videos for the YouTube channel Stated Clearly. His main focus is defending and explaining evolution, with an emphasis on persuading “Bible Belt” folks, “creationists,” and “religious people.” See his interview here: 

Perry’s videos are clear and easy to watch, handsomely illustrated, relatively jargon-free, and have brought him a wide circle of scientific advisors, including such familiar names as P. Z. Myers, Joanna Masel, Hans Thewissen, Phillip Gingerich, and David Deamer.

That’s background. A recent Twitter thread from Perry is worth a look. As he puts it, Perry is seeking evidence of “single mutations of large phenotypic effect in animals.” The examples provided by his respondents — e.g., loss of structures, changes in coat color — are interesting, Perry allows, but not on point. Then his exchange with biologist Stuart Newman, a “Third Way” evolutionary theorist who doubts neo-Darwinian theory, devolves into rhetorical heat, as you can see below:

Perry is looking for the experimental or observational evidence to corroborate what he thinks the fossil record shows, namely, the rapid origin of anatomical novelties (e.g., bat wings, whale flippers, the Cambrian Explosion of new body plans). The obvious problem? Following the rise of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in the 1930s, “single mutations of large phenotypic effect” were scorned by the mainstream of evolutionary biology as evidentially unsupported saltationism, and pushed to the periphery of acceptable topics for research. Or beyond that border: Stephen Jay Gould, in his introduction to the 1982 reissue of Richard Goldschimdt’s The Material Basis of Evolution (Yale, 1940) recounted how the very name “Goldschmidt” became a byword and laughing stock for properly trained biologists.

So we wish Perry well in his search for the missing evidence. The fact is, he wouldn’t have to ask around, on Twitter, if that evidence existed. He could just look it up for himself, and/or everyone would already know about the evidence, and there’d be no point in producing the video.

By the way, Newman’s question to Perry — what is the scenario for the origin and diversification of birds — is strikingly similar to the question Goldschmidt asks at the end of the introduction (pp. 6-7) to The Material Basis of Evolution. 

And still yet more on the fossil record's antiDarwinian bias.

Fossil Friday: Ludodactylus and the Origin of Pterosaurs

Günter Bechly 

This Fossil Friday I want to show you a very well-preserved skull of a giant pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation, which is about 115 million years old. I could photograph this specimen at a German trader’s collection in 2008, unfortunately only with a poor camera in low resolution. This fossil most likely belongs to the ornithocheirid species Ludodactylus sibbicki, which is otherwise only known from the holotype specimen (Frey et al. 2003, Unwin & Martill 2007). The holotype lacked the distal portion of the head crest, so that this yet undescribed specimen, which is here figured for the first time ever, finally shows how this crest really was shaped. The skull is 53.5 cm long and the estimated wing span of this species was up to 4 meters (Unwin & Martill 2007). These animals probably fed on fish on the open sea, similar to living albatrosses.

Pterosaurs had a unique construction of their wings, which were mainly supported by an enormously enlarged fourth finger. This is very different from the construction of the wings in bats and birds. Pterosaurs appear abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record of the Upper Triassic (Norian), about 227–208 million years ago, with eopterosaurs like Preondactylus and Carniadactylus. Pterosaurs are believed to be relatives to Late Triassic “reptiles” like Lagerpetidae (Ezcurra et al. 2020, Kammer et al. 2020, Baron 2021), and the enigmatic Scleromochlus (Benton 1999,  Bennett 2020, Foffa et al. 2022). However, those reptiles fail to show even the slightest adaptations for gliding or flying, or any trace of incipient pterosaur wings. Even the relationship of these fossils is highly disputed, e.g., with Bennet (2020) in his extensive study strongly rejecting any closer relationship of Scleromochlus with pterosaurs, while Foffa et al. (2022) strongly affirms it, which was celebrated in the media as “Scottish fossil revealed to be pterodactyl ancestor” (Gill 2022).

A Lack of Transitional Fossils

Outside of Darwinian fantasy land, we indeed lack any transitional fossils that would document an assumed gradual evolutionary development of characteristic pterosaur wings. In my view this strongly suggests that the transition happened very quickly as an abrupt saltation rather than mediated by hundreds of transitional species, for which there is not a shred of empirical evidence. Such saltations could not be explained by an unguided neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations, but would require a massive infusion of new genetic and epigenetic information from outside the system. Therefore, the abrupt origin of pterosaurs clearly points to intelligent design as the best explanation. 

References 

Baron MG 2021. The origin of Pterosaurs. Earth-Science Reviews.221: 103777, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103777

Bennett SC 2020. Reassessment of the Triassic archosauriform Scleromochlus taylori: neither runner nor biped, but hopper. PeerJ 8: e8418, 1–77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8418

Benton MJ 1999. Scleromochlus taylori and the origin of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 354(1388), 1423–1446. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1999.0489

Ezcurra MD, Nesbitt SJ & Bronzati M et al. 2020. Enigmatic dinosaur precursors bridge the gap to the origin of Pterosauria. Nature 588(7838), 445–449. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3011-4

Foffa D, Dunne EM & Nesbitt SJ et al. 2022. Scleromochlus and the early evolution of Pterosauromorpha. Nature 610(7931), 313–318. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05284-x

Frey E, Martill DM & Buchy M-C 2003. A new crested ornithocheirid from the Lower Cretaceous of northeastern Brazil and the unusual death of an unusual pterosaur. pp. 55–63 in: Buffetaut E & Mazin J-M (eds). Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs. Geological Society of London – Special Publications. Vol. 217. [Google Books]

Gill V 2022. Scottish fossil revealed to be pterodactyl ancestor. BBC News October 6, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63146271

Kammerer CF, Nesbitt SJ, Flynn JJ, Ranivoharimanana L & Wyss AR 2020. A tiny ornithodiran archosaur from the Triassic of Madagascar and the role of miniaturization in dinosaur and pterosaur ancestry. PNAS 117(30), 17932–17936. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916631117

Unwin DW & Martill DM 2007. Pterosaurs of the Crato Formation. pp 475–524 in: Martill DM, Bechly G & Loveridge RF (eds). The Crato Fossil Beds of Brazil: Window into an Ancient World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK), xvi+625 pp.

   

 

Coptic John Ch.1 vrs.1-18 and eisegesis.

Coptic John 1:1-18 

Eisegesis refers to interpreting a text by reading into it one's own ideas, or other ideas foreign to the text itself. Some apologists continue in a futile attempt to do that with Coptic John 1:1c.

For example, it is claimed that the indefinite ou.noute of Coptic John 1:1c should be translated as 'the one and only God,' because the indefinite article denotes unity, not 'a god.' As a "proof," 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 are quoted, where ou.noute n.ouwt is usually rendered as "one God."

But that is erroneous eisegesis. It is a blatant attempt to read philosophical dogma into Coptic grammar. The Coptic indefinite article ou does not of itself 'denote unity.' It simply means "a" when bound with a common or count Coptic noun like noute, "god." The Coptic text of the New Testament contains hundreds of examples that prove this. (For example, see Coptic Acts 28:6, where the anarthrous Greek theos is rendered by ou.noute in Sahidic (Sahidica) and ou.nouti in the Coptic Bohairic version. Horner and Greek-based English versions including the KJV render this as "a god.")

Further, it is not the Coptic indefinite article ou that means "one," but the bound idiom ou______n.ouwt. This idiom literally means "a single, an only," and is used in Coptic to denote "one," adjectivally: "one god," "one man," "one spirit," etc. (For example, see Coptic Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 6:16, 17)

Therefore, ou.noute n.ouwt simply means "one god." It is the context, not the grammar, of 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 that mandates the translation "one God" because the specific and definite reference in those verses is p.eiwt, "the Father," whom the Lord Jesus identifies as p.noute m.me m.mauaa.F , "the true God alone" (John 17:3 Horner), "the only true God."

Neither the grammar nor meaning of Coptic 1 Corinthians 8:6 or Ephesians 4:6 is the same as Coptic John 1:1c, so those verses cannot be used to exegete Coptic John 1:1c. Whereas ou.noute n.ouwt means a single god, i.e, "one god" or "one God" (in context, with reference to the Father), the fact remains that ou.noute means "a god." It does not mean some philosophical unity that calls for translating it as 'the one and only God.'

It would be far more honest to read Coptic John 1:1c for what it says, instead of trying to import foreign concepts into it.

And what Coptic John 1:1c clearly says is "the Word was a god." Or, if you prefer, "the Word was divine." But definitely not, "the Word was God."

Memra 

Ps. Personally I would grant these eisegetes their contention that John1:1c is stating that the son is one God, just as 1Corinthians 8:6 is stating that the Father is one God, so that I could then have it explained to me just how this rendering helps trinitarians' case.

 

The origin of Man and the design debate IV

 The Human Fossil Record Lacks Intermediaries 

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the fourth post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here.

If  humans evolved from ape-like creatures, what were the transitional species between the ape-like hominins discussed earlier in this series and the truly human-like members of the Homo genus found in the fossil record? There aren’t any good candidates. 

The Demise of Homo habilis 

Many have cited Homo habilis (literally “handy man”) as a tool-using species that was a transitional “link” between the australopithecines and Homo.1 But its association with tools is doubtful and appears driven mainly by evolutionary considerations Anthropologist Ian Tattersall calls it “a wastebasket taxon, little more than a convenient recipient.2 for a motley assortment of hominin fossils.”3 Ignoring these difficulties and assuming habilis was a real species, chronology precludes it from being ancestral to Homo: habiline remains postdate the earliest fossil evidence of the genus Homo.4

Morphological analyses further confirm that habilis makes an unlikely “intermediate” between Australopithecus and Homo — and show habilis doesn’t even belong in Homo. An authoritative review in Science by Bernard Wood and Mark Collard found that habilis differs from Homo in terms of body size, shape, mode of locomotion, jaws and teeth, developmental patterns, and brain size, and should be reclassified within Australopithecus.5 A study by Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer and Robert D. Martin in the Journal of Human Evolution found the skeleton of habilis was more similar to living apes than were other australopithecines like Lucy.6 They conclude, “It is difficult to accept an evolutionary sequence in which Homo habilis, with less human-like locomotor adaptations, is intermediate between Australopithecus afaren[s]is…and fully bipedal Homo erectus.”7 Alan Walker and Pat Shipman similarly called habilis “more apelike than Lucy” and remarked, “Rather than representing an intermediate between Lucy and humans, [habilis] looked very much like an intermediate between the ancestral chimp-like condition and Lucy.”8 Hartwig-Scherer explains that habilis “displays much stronger similarities to African ape limb proportions” than Lucy — results she calls “unexpected in view of previous accounts of Homo habilis as a link between australopithecines and humans.”9 

The Link Resurrected? 

The news media might be heavily biased toward evolution, but at least it is predictable. Whenever a new hominin fossil is discovered, reporters seize the opportunity to push human evolution. Thus it was no surprise when news outlets buzzed about the latest “human ancestor” after a new species, Homo naledi, was unveiled in 2015. 

CNN declared, “Homo naledi: New Species of Human Ancestor Discovered in South Africa.”10 The Daily Mail reported, “Scientists Discover Skull of New Human Ancestor Homo Naledi.”11 PBS pronounced, “Trove of Fossils from a Long-Lost Human Ancestor.”12 And so on.

The find is striking because it represents probably the largest cache of hominin bones — many hundreds — ever found. In a field where a single scrap of jaw ignites the community, this is a big deal. But do we know that Homo naledi is a human ancestor, as news outlets declared? Dig into the details, and the answer again is no.

The primary claim about Homo naledi is that it was a “transitional form” or “mosaic” — a small-brained, upright-walking hominin with a trunk similar to the australopithecines, but with human-like hands and feet. But the technical material shows that even some of those supposedly human-like traits have unique features:

The hands showed “a unique combination of anatomy”13 including “unique first metacarpal morphology,”14and long, curved fingers that suggest naledi was, unlike humans, well-suited for “climbing and suspension.”15

Its foot “differs from modern humans in having more curved proximal pedal phalanges, and features suggestive of a reduced medial longitudinal arch,” giving it an overall “unique locomotor repertoire.”16 The foot shows, again, that unlike humans, it was “likely comfortable climbing trees.”17

The technical papers also reveal “unique features in the femur and tibia” — making a hindlimb that “differs from those of all other known hominins.”18 As for the head, “Cranial morphology of H. naledi is unique…”19 Sound familiar? Whatever it was, overall naledi appears quite unique. 

Indeed, the discoverers of naledi called it “a unique mosaic previously unknown in the human fossil record.”20Such terminology should raise a red flag. In the parlance of evolutionary biology, “mosaic” usually means a fossil has a suite of traits that are difficult to fit into the standard evolutionary tree. That is the case here.

In 2010, some of the same scientists who discovered and promoted naledi — a team led by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand — were promoting a different hominin species, Australopithecus sediba, as the intermediate du jure between the australopithecines and Homo. However, sediba and naledi differ in important ways that make them unlikely partners in an evolutionary lineage. Specifically, sediba (classified within Australopithecus) had an advanced “Homo-like pelvis,”21 “surprisingly human teeth,”22 and a “human-like” lower trunk,23 whereas naledi — placed within Homo — bears an “australopith-like” and “primitive” pelvis,24 “primitive” teeth, and a “primitive or australopith-like trunk.”25 An australopithecine with apparently advanced Homo-like features seems a poor candidate to evolve into a member of Homo with primitive australopith-like versions of those same features. Thus, although both sediba and naledi have been said to be a human ancestor — by some of the same people, no less — evolutionarily speaking, traits are evolving in the wrong direction. As one news outlet put it: “Each [sediba and naledi] has different sets of australopith-like and human-like traits that can’t be easily reconciled on the same family tree.”26 

Problems with Chronology and Morphology 

In  any case, sediba cannot be ancestral to Homo because, like habilis, it postdates the origin of our genus and has the wrong morphology.27 Based upon fossil chronology, a 2019 study found that the likelihood that sediba is a human ancestor is less than 0.001.28 Commenting on sediba, Harvard’s Daniel Lieberman said, “The origins of the genus Homoremain as murky as ever,”29 and Donald Johanson remarked, “The transition to Homo continues to be almost totally confusing.”30

Another dubious claim about naledi is that it intentionally buried its dead — a testimony to its supposedly human-like intellect. Burying dead in the cave where it was found would require shimmying through a steep, narrow crevice while dragging a body a long distance in the dark — a physically challenging task for any hominin of any level of intelligence. For many reasons, multiple scientists — including two of Berger’s colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand — dispute the intentional burial hypothesis.31 Alison Brooks of George Washington University observed that claims of intentional burial are “so far out there that they really need a higher standard of proof.”32

But the deathblow to claims for Homo naledi as an ancestral or transitional fossil is its age. When first published, naledi‘s promoters suggested, on the basis of evolutionary considerations rather than geological evidence, that it lived 2–3 million years ago. But at that time the fossils hadn’t been dated geologically. Carol Ward of the University of Missouri warned, “Without dates, the fossils reveal almost nothing about hominin evolution.”33 This didn’t stop paleoanthropologists from speculating, predicting that naledi lived 2–3 million years ago and “represents an intermediate between Australopithecus and Homo erectus.”34 In 2017, Homo naledi‘s remains were dated to the “surprisingly” and “startlingly young” age of 236,000–335,000 years35 — an order of magnitude younger than the age predicted by evolutionary considerations, and far too young to be ancestral to our species. Anthropologist James Kidder candidly admitted, “Nearly everyone in the scientific community thought that the date of the Homo naledi fossils, when calculated, would fall within the same general time period as other primitive early Homo remains. We were wrong.”36

Many cautioned against the hype over naledi,37 and its trajectory resembles other hominins for which hyped claims of transitional or ancestral status eventually failed. When evaluating media claims of the newest human ancestor, a dose of healthy skepticism is warranted. 

Notes 

1)See Alan Walker and Pat Shipman, Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996), 133.

2)Jeffrey Schwartz and Ian Tattersall, “Defining the Genus Homo,” Science 349 (August 28, 2015), 931-932.

3)Ian Tattersall, “The Many Faces of Homo habilis,” Evolutionary Anthropology 1 (1992), 33-37.

4)See F. Spoor et al., “Implications of New Early Homo Fossils from Ileret, East of Lake Turkana, Kenya,” Nature 448 (August 9, 2007), 688-691; Seth Borenstein, “Fossils Paint Messy Picture of Human Origins,” NBC News (August 8, 2007), https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20178936 (accessed October 26, 2020).

5)Wood and Collard, “The Human Genus”; see also Mark Collard and Bernard Wood, “Defining the Genus Homo,” in Handbook of Paleoanthropology, 2107-2144.

6)Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer and Robert Martin, “Was ‘Lucy’ More Human than Her ‘Child’? Observations on Early Hominid Postcranial Skeletons,” Journal of Human Evolution 21 (1991), 439-449.

7)Hartwig-Scherer and Martin, “Was ‘Lucy’ More Human than Her ‘Child’?”

8)Walker and Shipman, Wisdom of the Bones, 132, 130.

9)Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer, “Apes or Ancestors?” Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design, ed. William A. Dembski (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 226.

10)David McKenzie and Hamilton Wende, “Homo naledi: New Species of Human Ancestor Discovered in South Africa,” CNN (September 10, 2015), http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/africa/homo-naledi-human-relative-species/ (accessed October 26, 2020).

11)Rachel Reilly, “Is This the First Human? Extraordinary Find in a South African Cave Suggests Man May Be Up to 2.8 Million Years Old,” Daily Mail(September 10, 2015), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3228991/New-species-ancient-human-discovered-Fossilised-remains-15-bodies-unearthed-South-African-cave.html (accessed October 26, 2020). 

12)Trove of Fossils from a Long-Lost Human Ancestor Is Greatest Find in Decades,” PBS Newshour (September 10, 2015), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-family (accessed October 26, 2020).

13)University of the Witwatersrand, “The Hand and Foot of Homo naledi,” ScienceDaily (October 6, 2015), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151006123631.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

14)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa,” eLife 4 (2015), e09560.

15)Tracy Kivell et al., “The Hand of Homo naledi,” Nature Communications 6 (October 6, 2015), 8431.

16)W.E.H. Harcourt-Smith et al., “The Foot of Homo naledi,” Nature Communications 6 (October 6, 2015), 8432.

17)American Museum of Natural History, “Foot Fossils of Human Relative Illustrate Evolutionary ‘Messiness’ of Bipedal Walking,” ScienceDaily(October 6, 2015), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151006131938.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

18)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo.”

19)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo.”

20)Harcourt-Smith et al., “The Foot of Homo naledi.”

21)Kate Wong, “First of Our Kind,” Scientific American (November 1, 2012), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-of-our-kind-2012-12-07/ (accessed October 26, 2020). See also Brandon Bryn, “Australopithecus sediba May Have Paved the Way for Homo,” AAAS News (September 8, 2011), http://www.aaas.org/news/science-australopithecus-sediba-may-have-paved-way-homo (accessed October 26, 2020).

22)Ann Gibbons, “A Human Smile and Funny Walk for Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340 (April 12, 2013), 132-133. See also Nadia Ramlagan, “Human Evolution Takes a Twist with Australopithecus sediba,” AAAS News (April 11, 2013), http://www.aaas.org/news/science-human-evolution-takes-twist-australopithecus-sediba (accessed October 26, 2020). 

23)Peter Schmid et al., “Mosaic Morphology in the Thorax of Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340 (April 12, 2013), 1234598; Charles Choi, “Humanity’s Closest Ancestor Was Pigeon-Toed, Research Reveals,” LiveScience (April 11, 2013), https://www.livescience.com/28656-closest-human-ancestor-was-pigeon-toed.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

24)Caroline Vansickle et al., “Primitive Pelvic Features in a New Species of Homo,” The 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 2016, http://meeting.physanth.org/program/2016/session39/vansickle-2016-primitive-pelvic-features-in-a-new-species-of-homo.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

25)Berger et al., “Homo naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo.”

26)Ed Yong, “6 Tiny Cavers, 15 Odd Skeletons, and 1 Amazing New Species of Ancient Human,” The Atlantic (September 10, 2015), http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/ (accessed October 26, 2020).

27)Andrew Du and Zeresenay Alemseged, “Temporal evidence shows Australopithecus sediba is unlikely to be the ancestor of Homo,” Science Advances5 (May 8, 2019), eaav9038; Tim White, “Five’s a Crowd in Our Family Tree,” Current Biology 23 (February 4, 2013), R112-R115; William Kimbel, “Hesitation on Hominin History,” Nature 497 (May 30, 2013), 573-574; Gibbons, “Human Smile and Funny Walk for Australopithecus sediba”; Gibbons, “Who Was Homo habilis?” Science 332 (June 17, 2011), 1370-1371; Nicholas Wade, “New Fossils May Redraw Human Ancestry,” New York Times (September 8, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/science/09fossils.html (accessed October 26, 2020); John Noble Wilford, “Some Prehumans Feasted on Bark instead of Grasses,” New York Times (June 27, 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/science/australopithecus-sediba-preferred-forest-foods-fossil-teeth-suggest.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

28)Du and Alemseged, “Temporal evidence shows Australopithecus sediba is unlikely to be the ancestor of Homo.” 

29)Carl Zimmer, “Yet Another ‘Missing Link,’” Slate (April 8, 2010), http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/04/yet_another_missing_link.single.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

30)Michael Balter, “Candidate Human Ancestor from South Africa Sparks Praise and Debate,” Science 328 (April 9, 2010), 154-155.

31)See Kate Wong, “Debate Erupts over Strange New Human Species,” Scientific American (April 8, 2016), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-erupts-over-strange-new-human-species/ (accessed October 26, 2020); Tanya Farber, “Professor’s Claims Rattle Naledi’s bones,” Sunday Times (April 24, 2016), http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/04/24/Professors-claims-rattle-Naledis-bones (accessed October 26, 2020); Aurore Val, “Deliberate Body Disposal by Hominins in the Dinaledi Chamber, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa?,” Journal of Human Evolution 96 (2016), 145-148.

32)Kate Wong, “Mysterious New Human Species Emerges from Heap of Fossils,” Scientific American (September 10, 2015), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mysterious-new-human-species-emerges-from-heap-of-fossils/ (accessed October 26, 2020). 

33)Quoted in Yong, “6 Tiny Cavers.” 

34)University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, “Ancient ancestor of humans with tiny brain discovered,” ScienceDaily (September 10, 2015), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150910084610.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

35)University of the Witwatersrand, “Homo naledi’s surprisingly young age opens up more questions on where we come from,” ScienceDaily (May 9, 2017), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170509083554.htm (accessed October 26, 2020). See also Dirks et al., “The age of Homo naledi and associated sediments in the Rising Star Cave, South Africa,” eLife 6 (2017), e24231.

36)James Kidder, “What Homo Naledi Means for the Study of Human Evolution,” BioLogos (May 30, 2017), http://biologos.org/blogs/guest/what-homo-naledi-means-for-the-study-of-human-evolution (accessed October 26, 2020).

37)See Chris Stringer, “Human Evolution: The Many Mysteries of Homo naledi,” eLife 4 (2015), e10627; Daniel Curnoe, “What About Homo naledi’s Geologic Age?,” Phys.org (September 15, 2015), http://phys.org/news/2015-09-opinion-homo-naledi-geologic-age.html (accessed October 26, 2020). 

The origin of Man and the design debate. III

Australopithecines and Retroactive Confessions of Ignorance 

Casey Luskin  

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the third post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here. 

Many paleoanthropologists believe that the later hominins called australopithecines were upright-walking and ancestral to our genus Homo. Dig into the details, however, and ask basic questions like Who?, Where?, and When?, and there is much controversy. As one paper noted, “there is little consensus on which species of Australopithecus is the closest to Homo,”1 if any. Even the origin of genus Australopithecus itself is unclear.

Retroactive Confessions of Ignorance 

In 2006, National Geographic ran a story titled “Fossil Find Is Missing Link in Human Evolution, Scientists Say,”2 reporting the discovery of what the Associated Press called “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.”3 The fossils, belonging to species Australopithecus anamensis, were said to link Ardipithecus to its supposed australopithecine descendants. 

What exactly was found? According to the technical paper, the claims were based upon canine teeth of intermediate “masticatory robusticity.”4 If a few teeth of intermediate size and shape make “the most complete chain of human evolution so far,” then the evidence for human evolution must be indeed quite modest.

Besides learning to distrust media hype, there is another lesson here. Accompanying the praise of this “missing link” were retroactive confessions of ignorance. That’s where evolutionists acknowledge a severe gap in their model only after thinking they have found evidence to plug that gap. Thus, the technical paper reporting these teeth admitted, “Until recently, the origins of Australopithecus were obscured by a sparse fossil record” and noted, “The origin of Australopithecus, the genus widely interpreted as ancestral to Homo, is a central problem in human evolutionary studies.”5

Evolutionists who retroactively confess ignorance risk that the evidence that supposedly filled the gap may not prove very convincing. This seems to be the case here, where a couple of teeth were all that stood between an unsolved “central problem in human evolutionary studies” — the origin of australopithecines — and “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.” Moreover, we’re left with admissions that the origin of australopithecines is “obscured.” 

Australopithecines Are like Apes 

and curved fingers, relatively long arms, and funnel-shaped chest.”8 It further reported “good evidence” from Lucy’s hand-bones that her species “‘knuckle-walked,’ as chimps and gorillas do.”9 A New Scientist article adds that Lucy appears well-adapted for climbing, since “Everything about her skeleton, from fingertips to toes, suggests that Lucy and her sisters retain several traits that would be very suitable for climbing in trees.”10 Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin argue that A. afarensis and other australopithecines “almost certainly were not adapted to a striding gait and running, as humans are.”11 They recount paleontologist Peter Schmid’s striking surprise upon realizing Lucy’s nonhuman qualities: “What you see in Australopithecus is not what you’d want in an efficient bipedal running animal.”12

As for Lucy’s pelvis, many claim it indicates bipedal locomotion, but Johanson and his team reported it was “badly crushed” with “distortion” and “cracking” when first discovered.13 These problems led one paper to propose Lucy’s pelvis appears “different from other australopithecines and so close to the human condition” due to “error in the reconstruction…creating a very ‘human-like’ sacral plane.”14 Another paper concluded that a lack of clear fossil data prevents paleoanthropologists from making firm conclusions about Lucy’s mode of locomotion: “The available data at present are open to widely different interpretations.”15 

More Differences from Humans 

Other studies confirm australopithecine differences from humans, and similarities with apes. Their inner ear canals — responsible for balance and related to locomotion — are different from Homo but similar to great apes.16 Traits like their ape-like developmental patterns17 and ape-like ability for prehensile grasping by their toes18 led a Nature reviewer to say that “ecologically they [australopithecines] may still be considered as apes.”19 Another analysis in Nature found the australopithecine skeleton shows “a mosaic of features unique to themselves and features bearing some resemblances to those of the orangutan,” and concluded that “the possibility that any of the australopithecines is a direct part of human ancestry recedes.”20 A 2007 paper reported “[g]orilla-like anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis mandibles,” which was “unexpected,” and “cast[s] doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor.”21

Paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello states that when it comes to locomotion, “[a]ustralopithecines are like apes, and the Homo group are like humans. Something major occurred when Homo evolved, and it wasn’t just in the brain.”22 The “something major” was the abrupt appearance of the human-like body plan — without direct evolutionary precursors in the fossil record. 

Notes 

1)Henry McHenry and Katherine Coffing, “Australopithecus to Homo: Transformations in Body and Mind,” Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (2000), 125-146.

2)John Roach, “Fossil Find Is Missing Link in Human Evolution, Scientists Say,” National Geographic News (April 13, 2006), https://web.archive.org/web/20060423155712/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0413_060413_evolution.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

3)Seth Borenstein, “Fossil Discovery Fills Gap in Human Evolution,” NBC News (April 12, 2006), https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna12286206 (accessed October 26, 2020). 

4)See Tim White et al., “Asa Issie, Aramis, and the Origin of Australopithecus,” Nature 440 (April 13, 2006), 883-889.

5)White et al., “Asa Issie, Aramis, and the Origin of Australopithecus.”

6)Bernard Wood, “Evolution of the Australopithecines,” The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, eds. Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 231-240.

7)Wood, “Evolution of the Australopithecines.”

8)Mark Collard and Leslie Aiello, “From Forelimbs to Two Legs,” Nature 404 (March 23, 2000), 339-340.

9)Collard and Aiello, “From Forelimbs to Two Legs.” See also Brian Richmond and David Strait, “Evidence That Humans Evolved from a Knuckle-Walking Ancestor,” Nature 404 (March 23, 2000), 382-385.

10)Jeremy Cherfas, “Trees Have Made Man Upright,” New Scientist 97 (January 20, 1983), 172-177. 

11)Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (New York: Anchor, 1993), 195.

12)Leakey and Lewin, Origins Reconsidered, 193-194.

13)Donald Johanson et al., “Morphology of the Pliocene Partial Hominid Skeleton (A.L. 288-1) From the Hadar Formation, Ethiopia,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 57 (1982), 403-451.

14)François Marchal, “A New Morphometric Analysis of the Hominid Pelvic Bone,” Journal of Human Evolution 38 (March 2000), 347-365.

15)M.M. Abitbol, “Lateral View of Australopithecus afarensis: Primitive Aspects of Bipedal Positional Behavior in the Earliest Hominids,” Journal of Human Evolution 28 (March 1995), 211-229 (internal citations removed).

16)Fred Spoor et al., “Implications of Early Hominid Labyrinthine Morphology for Evolution of Human Bipedal Locomotion,” Nature 369 (June 23, 1994), 645-648.

17)Timothy Bromage and M. Christopher Dean, “Re-Evaluation of the Age at Death of Immature Fossil Hominids,” Nature 317 (October 10, 1985), 525-527.

18)Ronald Clarke and Phillip Tobias, “Sterkfontein Member 2 Foot Bones of the Oldest South African Hominid,” Science 269 (July 28, 1995), 521-524.

19)Peter Andrews, “Ecological Apes and Ancestors,” Nature 376 (August 17, 1995), 555-556.

20)C.E. Oxnard, “The Place of the Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt?” Nature 258 (December 4, 1975), 389-395. 

21)Yoel Rak, Avishag Ginzburg, and Eli Geffen, “Gorilla-Like Anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis Mandibles Suggests Au. afarensis Link to Robust Australopiths,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (April 17, 2007), 6568-6572.

22)Leslie Aiello, quoted in Leakey and Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human, 196. See also Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, “The Human Genus,” Science 284 (April 2, 1999), 65-71. 

 

Phillipians2:5,6 and the trinity.

 Phillipians2:5,6NASB"5Have this attitude [e]in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be [f]grasped," 

Some claim that this proves that the apostolic church had already accepted the trinity or at the very very least that Jesus was the God of the bible in some way. 

 

 Some questions I always have to ask about so called trinitarian proof texts are, why the coyness?  If Jesus is the only true God,why don't the bible writers simply say it in plain language ? After all there was (is)never any debate as to Godhood of the God and Father of Jesus . The scriptures are quite clear that the God of Jesus is the most high God.

John10:29NASB"My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; ..." 

Note the God of Jesus is Greater than ALL (not many,not most) 

Acts3:13NASB"13The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His [d]servant Jesus,..." 

JEHOVAH is God and Lord of Jesus and the nation of Israel stated in so many words. 

Does it ever bother trinitarians that in contrast to such straightforward declarations re: the supremacy of the God and Father of Jesus , we always have to indulge in these farfetched contrivances in order to extract some vague similitude of their dogma from the Holy Scriptures.  So let us now prayerfully let the bible speak for itself re:phillipians2:5,6. We(Christians) are first urged to have the same attitude that Christ always has. What attitude is that? To consider ourselves equal to our God? If he is equal to God he is not bound by law to obey God. Thus his obedience would not be a matter of righteousness. He would remain righteous whether he cooperated with God or not.  Thus his cooperating with his God would be considered a favor with no legal merit accruing to him. And of course if he acquired no legal merit for himself he could impute none to us. Surely this is the opposite of the point the writer is trying to make. The word rendered existed in the passage is 'huparchon' some have attempted to suggest that this means that Christ has always existed in the (Morphe) form of JEHOVAH. According to strong's 'huparchon' means 

"From hupo and archomai; to begin under (quietly)" 

 Unsurprisingly then this word is NEVER used of JEHOVAH in either the Greek new testament or the Greek  old testament. 

It is however used of Man.

1Corinthians11:7NKJV"7For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is (Huparchon)the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man." 

Thus the use of the word 'Huparchon' suggest the inverse of what some trinitarian apologists claim it does. 

Some have also desperately attempted to conscript the word 'morphe' rendered form in the NASB. Thus they claim that 'morphe' means that he possessed the very nature of the supreme being and thus was the supreme being or in some kind of mystical union with the supreme being. 

Strong's 3444" Perhaps from the base of meros (through the idea of adjustment of parts); shape; figuratively, nature -- form." 

Thus being in the 'morphe' of the God (not merely the Father) does not make one identical to the God,indeed it seems trite to point out that the God existed in the form of the God. 

   Isaiah44:13NASB" craftsman of wood extends a measuring line; he outlines it with a marker. He works it with carving knives and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form(Morphe) of a man, like the beauty of mankind, so that it may sit in a house. " 

  Obviously the prophet was not suggesting that this artesan's carvings possessed the very nature of a man. Surely if he possessed such capabilities he would claim Godhood for himself. 

Thus yet another farfetched attempt by Trinitarians to read their absurdity into the scriptures fails

Physics: better at describing than explaining reality?

 Can Physics Account for Our Whole Reality? 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

If only we could reduce the world to an equation — preferably one that is solvable — many think we would understand life better.

University of Durham philosopher Nancy Cartwright takes issue with that, arguing that the universe is “beautifully dappled, and requires a dappled science to explain it.” She is the author, most recently, of A Philosopher Looks at Science (Cambridge University Press, 2022). And she says,

If physics is to have total dominion, she must not only help out with chemical bonding, signal transmission in neurons, the flow of petrol in a carburettor, and the like. She must be able in principle to entirely take over the disciplines that usually study these things, to explain and predict the rise in teenage pregnancies, the current level of inflation, the Protestant Reformation, and the fate of migrants crossing the channel. Plus, she must be able to get me off the hook for shouting at my daughter: after all, I was just obeying the laws of physics.

NANCY CARTWRIGHT, “PHYSICS CAN’T DEAL WITH REALITY’S COMPLEXITY” AT IAI. NEWS (OCTOBER 17, 2022) 

Now that She Mentions It 

Pop psychology has indeed featured many theories that tie together disparate phenomena like inflation, the Reformation, and shouting at loved ones. It’s comparatively easy to link very complex events to one another if we are allowed to choose any link we wish. Some might link Hurricane Ian with municipal elections in Vancouver and with high-starch diets in Texas. It takes creativity but many people have plenty of that. 

Physics sets itself a harder goal: showing the numbers (serious numbers, not pop stats) and a rigorous theory behind them. That necessarily means leaving out a great deal, assuming that what is omitted is subsumed in the theory. But is it? 

The idea of physics as queen of all that happens has powerful implications about just what the world we live in must be like. It must be a world made up entirely of the basic entities of physics — fundamental particles, curved space-time and the like — entities that have only the mathematical features that physics equations describe, features that often have no names of their own other than the names of the mathematical objects that are supposed to represent them, like the “quantum state vector” and the “metric tensor” of general relativity. The world has to be that way since these are the kinds of features that physics can rule.

NANCY CARTWRIGHT, “PHYSICS CAN’T DEAL WITH REALITY’S COMPLEXITY” AT IAI. NEWS (OCTOBER 17, 2022) 

The World We Live In 

Cartwright offers an alternative approach: 

Instead of supposing that physics must be queen of all we survey, I recommend we construct our image of what an ultimate science might be like on the basis of what current science is like when it is most successful, from putting people on the moon to devising and carrying out a plan for the complete evacuation of the Royal Marsden Hospital (which took just 28 minutes when called into play by a gigantic fire, 2 January 2008)… This is a world in which irritability, generosity and social exclusion can affect what happens just as gravity and electromagnetic repulsion can.

NANCY CARTWRIGHT, “PHYSICS CAN’T DEAL WITH REALITY’S COMPLEXITY” AT IAI. NEWS (OCTOBER 17, 2022) 

As she says, that’s the world we actually live in, a world of many tiny, intersecting worlds where causes can include anything from fundamental physics to social psychology.

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

Ps. That's the problem with reductionist physicalism (and reductionist spiritualism) it presumes that describing =explaining and that explaining = explaining away.

Why Christendom remains Christ's archenemy.

 How the Russian Orthodox Church is Helping Drive Putin’s War in Ukraine 

BY GERALDINE FAGAN APRIL 15, 2022 7:00 AM EDT

Fagan is the author of Believing in Russia—Religious Policy after Communism 

To Vladimir Putin, Orthodox Christianity is a tool for asserting Moscow’s rights over sovereign Ukraine. In his February televised address announcing the recent invasion of Ukraine, he argued the inhabitants of that “ancient Russian land” were Orthodox from time immemorial, and now faced persecution from an illegitimate regime in Kyiv.

Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most tangible cultural bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The gilded domes of Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves and St. Sophia Cathedral have beckoned pilgrims from across both lands for nigh on a thousand years. 

With religious rhetoric, Putin taps into a long tradition that imagines a Greater Russia extending across present-day Ukraine and Belarus, in a combined territory known as Holy Rus’. Nostalgic for empire, this sees the spiritual unity of the three nations as key to Russia’s earthly power as an exceptional civilization. Encouraged by Putin’s “special operation,” Russian Orthodox nationalists are excitedly recalling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk fortold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”

Putin is not the first modern Moscow ruler to co-opt this idea in seeking to consolidate secular power. During the darkest hours of World War Two, Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church—having almost bled it dry—and replaced the communist Internationale with a new national anthem. Its lyrics asserted that the Soviet Union was “unbreakable, welded together forever by Great Rus’.”

Around 2007 the Kremlin further advanced the allied concept of Russky Mir, or the Russian World, initially a soft power project aimed at promoting Russian culture worldwide and likened by Patriarch Kirill to the British Commonwealth. Putin, however—unsettled by mass protests against his authoritarian regime in 2011-12 as well as those that toppled his vassal in Ukraine in 2013-14—has since twisted both Holy Rus’ and the Russian World to serve a more violent agenda.

Outsized emphasis now goes to Russia’s tradition of warrior saints. It was by remarkable coincidence, Putin told thousands of flag-waving supporters at a recent Moscow stadium rally, that the military operation in Ukraine commenced on the birthday of Saint Theodore Ushakov, an eighteenth-century Russian naval commander famed for never losing a single battle. “He once said, ‘This threat will serve to glorify Russia,’” Putin enthused. “That was the case then, is now, and ever shall be! 

Cast aside is an alternative Christian holy tradition of defiant passive resistance, exemplified by the first saints to be canonized in medieval Rus’, the Kyiv princes Boris and Gleb, who accepted martyrdom at the hands of their brother. “They gave up without a fight,” Putin once remarked in disgust. “This cannot be an example for us.” With the attack on Kyiv’s current ruler, even small acts of Christian pacifism by Russians are quashed. A remote village priest was fined hundreds of dollars for publicly refusing to support the war and thus “call black—white, evil—good.” A young woman was detained outside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral for holding up a simple sign bearing the biblical commandment, “Thou shallt not kill.”  

In this Putin can count on the backing of a body of jingoistic opinion now dominating the Church hierarchy. Flanked by medal-laden Defense Minister Shoigu at the 2020 consecration of a cavernous black and green military cathedral, Patriarch Kirill prayed that Russia’s armed forces would never suffer defeat. This March, on the very same spot where Pussy Riot made their infamous protest against cozy Church-Kremlin ties a decade ago, the Patriarch presented an icon to the head of Russia’s National Guard—the same unit now reportedly suffering heavy losses in Ukraine—in the hope that this would “inspire new recruits taking their oath.” 

Kirill is not an outlier in his support for the war, as no senior cleric inside Russia has expressed dissent. “Everything the president does is right,” one archbishop told local news agency Regnum in late March. “Speaking as a monarchist, I would personally place a crown upon Putin’s head if God granted the opportunity.” Similar fervor is found among respected Moscow parish priests. “Russian peacekeepers are conducting a special operation in order to hold Nuremberg trials against the whole of Europe,” one preached during a recent sermon, as he denied reports of civilian casualties. “What is the West able to produce? Only ISIS and ne

To Vladimir Putin, Orthodox Christianity is a tool for asserting Moscow’s rights over sovereign Ukraine. In his February televised address announcing the recent invasion of Ukraine, he argued the inhabitants of that “ancient Russian land” were Orthodox from time immemorial, and now faced persecution from an illegitimate regime in Kyiv.

Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most tangible cultural bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The gilded domes of Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves and St. Sophia Cathedral have beckoned pilgrims from across both lands for nigh on a thousand years

With religious rhetoric, Putin taps into a long tradition that imagines a Greater Russia extending across present-day Ukraine and Belarus, in a combined territory known as Holy Rus’. Nostalgic for empire, this sees the spiritual unity of the three nations as key to Russia’s earthly power as an exceptional civilization. Encouraged by Putin’s “special operation,” Russian Orthodox nationalists are excitedly recalling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk fortold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”

Putin is not the first modern Moscow ruler to co-opt this idea in seeking to consolidate secular power. During the darkest hours of World War Two, Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church—having almost bled it dry—and replaced the communist Internationale with a new national anthem. Its lyrics asserted that the Soviet Union was “unbreakable, welded together forever by Great Rus’.”

Around 2007 the Kremlin further advanced the allied concept of Russky Mir, or the Russian World, initially a soft power project aimed at promoting Russian culture worldwide and likened by Patriarch Kirill to the British Commonwealth. Putin, however—unsettled by mass protests against his authoritarian regime in 2011-12 as well as those that toppled his vassal in Ukraine in 2013-14—has since twisted both Holy Rus’ and the Russian World to serve a more violent agenda.

Outsized emphasis now goes to Russia’s tradition of warrior saints. It was by remarkable coincidence, Putin told thousands of flag-waving supporters at a recent Moscow stadium rally, that the military operation in Ukraine commenced on the birthday of Saint Theodore Ushakov, an eighteenth-century Russian naval commander famed for never losing a single battle. “He once said, ‘This threat will serve to glorify Russia,’” Putin enthused. “That was the case then, is now, and ever shall be!”

Cast aside is an alternative Christian holy tradition of defiant passive resistance, exemplified by the first saints to be canonized in medieval Rus’, the Kyiv princes Boris and Gleb, who accepted martyrdom at the hands of their brother. “They gave up without a fight,” Putin once remarked in disgust. “This cannot be an example for us.” With the attack on Kyiv’s current ruler, even small acts of Christian pacifism by Russians are quashed. A remote village priest was fined hundreds of dollars for publicly refusing to support the war and thus “call black—white, evil—good.” A young woman was detained outside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral for holding up a simple sign bearing the biblical commandment, “Thou shallt not kill"

In this Putin can count on the backing of a body of jingoistic opinion now dominating the Church hierarchy. Flanked by medal-laden Defense Minister Shoigu at the 2020 consecration of a cavernous black and green military cathedral, Patriarch Kirill prayed that Russia’s armed forces would never suffer defeat. This March, on the very same spot where Pussy Riot made their infamous protest against cozy Church-Kremlin ties a decade ago, the Patriarch presented an icon to the head of Russia’s National Guard—the same unit now reportedly suffering heavy losses in Ukraine—in the hope that this would “inspire new recruits taking their oath.”

Kirill is not an outlier in his support for the war, as no senior cleric inside Russia has expressed dissent. “Everything the president does is right,” one archbishop told local news agency Regnum in late March. “Speaking as a monarchist, I would personally place a crown upon Putin’s head if God granted the opportunity.” Similar fervor is found among respected Moscow parish priests. “Russian peacekeepers are conducting a special operation in order to hold Nuremberg trials against the whole of Europe,” one preached during a recent sermon, as he denied reports of civilian casualties. “What is the West able to produce? Only ISIS and neofascism.”

This priest concluded his sermon with the hope that Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Georgia would be reunited with Russia, in addition to Ukraine. But if Putin is looking to burnish his legacy as gatherer of historical Russian lands, there is a problem. The inhabitants of Ukraine are not interested in being “liberated” by his operation to “de-Nazify” their country. “The Russian World has arrived!” one woman shouted sarcastically as she filmed invading troops facing off against a crowd of angry locals just 20 miles from Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia. “We are not waiting for you, so get out of here!” Within hours of the first missile strikes on February 24, even the the Orthodox Church in Ukraine that is under the Patriarch of Moscow turned indignantly to Putin. “We ask that you stop this fratricidal war immediately,” 

Metropolitan Onuphry implored. “Such a war has justification before neither God nor man.” 

Putin’s is thus a spiritual, as well as military, misadventure. Similar to Stalin’s pivot at the lowest point in World War Two, his reliance upon the Orthodox Church over the last decade smacks of desperation. It hardly stems from personal commitment to the faith: while projected as a believer from the beginning of his presidency, for more than a decade Putin largely rebuffed the Church’s policy goals—such as mandatory classes on Orthodoxy in public schools—until his need for autocratic symbolism prevailed after his return to the presidency in 2011-12. Throughout his rule he has consistently spoken and behaved at odds with normative Orthodox Christian behavior, such as by claiming that choice of faith is unimportant since all religious categories are human invention, or when awkwardly greeting Patriarch Kirill with the gestures reserved for venerating a sacred relic or icon.

Bellicose rhetoric from Orthodox clerics does resonate with some devout Russians, but this is a narrow swath of the population. While a 2019 national poll found that over 60 percent of Russians older than 25 identify as Orthodox, those attentive to institutional Church life—such as by attending Easter worship services—amount to only a few percent. The same poll found a precipitous drop in those identifying as Orthodox among the 18-24 age group—just 23 percent. 

This contrasts starkly with Ukraine, where a quarter of the population attends Easter services and a majority of 18-24 year-olds define as believers. Swift and total alienation of millions of Ukrainian Orthodox is a colossal price for Patriarch Kirill to pay for loyalty to Putin, Ukraine being where a third of his parishes and monasteries are located. The Patriarch’s international standing is also shot, as Orthodox abroad not gagged by the Kremlin’s new ban on criticism of the Russian armed forces have condemned the war—including Kirill’s own bishops in Estonia and Lithuania—along with Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead of a Russian World, the Moscow Patriarch may soon find his authority stopping at the borders of the Russian Federation.

The Church’s dwindling reach thus means that Putin cannot use it to restore the age-old dream of an expanded Holy Rus’. Approaching 70, however, Russia’s president has no long-term ambition to consolidate Orthodox spirituality—only his personal grip on power for however many more years God grants him. 

Ps. My one problem with this article is the singling out of the Russian church. The fact is that while giving lip service to peace the churches of Christendom have given support(much of it active support) to both sides of this fratricidal stupidity.