Monday 30 January 2023

Why the Russian Church remains fuel for JEHOVAH'S wrath.

Religious Repression in Putin’s Russia

While religion was formally abolished under the USSR, under Putin it has been repressed. Consequently, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom identified Russia as one of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

In December 2021, just two months before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s supreme Court dissolved the non-governmental agency (NGO) Memorial, which is the oldest and most respected human rights organization in Russia and an outspoken supporter of religious freedom. Among other activities, the group was compiling a list of those imprisoned for alleged offenses related to religion. The dissolution of Memorial was seen as a warning to other activists, that they too could be prosecuted for speaking out against Putin’s government.

Under the Russian Constitution, though citizens are guaranteed religious freedom, authorities may suspend religious activity in the name of national security. Although the constitution specifically cites extremism as a cause for the suspension of religious freedom, it does not provide a robust definition of which activities could be considered “extremism.”

Additionally, Russia has strict laws on the registration of clergy and places of worship in addition to staunch prohibitions against missionary work. The term “missionary work” is broadly applied to “preaching, praying, disseminating religious materials, and answering questions about religion outside of officially designated sites.” Furthermore, the country has blasphemy laws and has the third-highest blasphemy prosecution rate in the world. Blasphemy is often used as a pretext to suppress the activities of religions other than the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian law technically recognizes Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as the four “traditional” religions. But, only the Russian Orthodox Church is elevated to the role of representing the ideals and faith of Russia, passed down across untold generations . Officially acknowledging the Orthodox Church as being part of the country’s cultural and genetic heritage is significant because not only does it subordinate other religions, but it also subordinates Russia’s non-Slavic ethnic minorities.

Among the 200 ethnic groups living in the Russian Federation. Russian Slavs comprise 77.7% of the population while the remainder is comprised of smaller minorities like Tatars, Ukrainians, and Mari (Volga Finnic ethnic group in the republic of Mari El). Other ethnic groups in the Russian Far East and bordering on Central Asia include Khakas, Yakut, Chechens, Mongolic, and Turkic peoples. Many minority groups are adherents of religions not afforded the protection of “traditional” religions such as Christianity. About 63% of Russia’s population are Orthodox Christian, 7% are Muslim, and 26% identify as agnostic. Buddhists, Jews, other Christians, and animists each comprise about 1% or less of the population.

Religious groups and NGOs have reported ongoing abuses committed by the authorities. Members of groups designated “extremist”, “terrorist”, or “undesirable” have been subjected to investigation, detainment, imprisonment, torture, physical abuse, and/or seizure of property.

Among the groups suffering this type of repression are Islamic groups Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat, and followers of Muslim theologian Said Nursi. The Church of Scientology was closed on the grounds of posing a threat to national security. The Falun Gong spiritual movement was banned for extremism and terrorism. Multiple evangelical Protestant groups have been persecuted with Protestant Christians often being fined for “illegal missionary activity.”

Indigenous religions practiced by some small minorities, such as those in the Russian Far East, are not identified under the law as “traditional religions.” As such, they have suffered a great deal with even less recourse. Vandalism and desecration of sacred sites have been inflicted on the Mari religion and the indigenous Khakas religion (Siberian shamanism and Christianity) while a Yakut shaman who said she would exorcise Vladimir Putin was confined to a mental institution.

Religious Repression in Putin’s Russia

By Antonio Graceffo on January 11, 2023

read5 min

After the Russian invasion of and annexation of Crimea in 2014, religious groups previously legal in Ukraine were subjected to Russian law. Consequently, the Islamic Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars became a banned faith. Even the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Crimea is being persecuted and this has resulted in the confiscation of property belonging to the Cathedral of St. Vladimir and Olga. The Kremlin’s actions against Ukrainian Christians prompted the United States Congress to introduce the Ukraine Religious Freedom Support Act (H.R. 496).

The Russian high court ruled to ban Jehovah’s Witness in 2017, ushering in a period of harassment. To date, there have been more than 1,274 raids of homes belonging to Jehovah’s Witnesses with property confiscated and, in many instances, adherents being arrested. As of 2021, 52 Jehovah’s Witnesses were serving prison sentences. In June 2021, a Russian court sentenced four Jehovah’s Witnesses to 3-5 years in prison citing the Russian government felt that the presence of Jehovah’s Witness threatened the nation’s “civil peace and accord.”

Russia’s Old Believers, a Russian Orthodox denomination which split from the main church in 1666, have called on the Russian government to end its religious persecution of minorities, citing repression of non-Orthodox Christians in Tsarist Russia. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2022 that Russia’s ban of the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith was unlawful.

In 2020, the Russian government discussed religious legislation that would require all clergy who studied abroad to retrain in a Russian college where classes in Russian history and spirituality would be mandatory. This is particularly troubling for Russia’s Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist associations which have depended heavily on overseas educated clergy since the collapse of the USSR. The Catholic church reported that many of their foreign priests and nuns already faced difficulty obtaining work permits and that this new requirement for retraining would most likely force the closure of numerous dioceses.

Another form of religious discrimination has been seen in Putin’s call for conscripts which largely come from the ethnic and religious minority populations since the invasion of Ukraine began. Mongols from Buryatia, many of whom practice Shamanism, were particularly singled out for conscription. The regions that have suffered the highest casualties are Buryatia and the Republic of Dagestan, home to Turkic Muslims and Buryatia. Other predominantly minority regions suffering heavy casualties are the Krasnodar Krai, Bashkortostan, and Volgograd Oblast. As many as 40% of the casualties have been non-Slavic according to some accounts.

Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions of Ukraine with a high concentration of ethnic Russians, have had a long history of violence perpetrated against Christians and non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox communities. Now that these regions are occupied by Russia, religious repression is expected to increase.

Since the days of Tsarist Russia, through the Soviet era, and now, in the Russian Federation, under Vladimir Putin, Jews, Muslims, animists, Shamanists, and Christians who did not follow the Russian Orthodox faith have been oppressed. The fact that faith remains and that these believers have not given up the struggle to practice their religion is, in itself a miracle. The religious beliefs of the Russian people have outlived the Russian Empire and the USSR, and they will outlive Vladimir Putin.

Ps. Revelation 18:24NIV "And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.”"

What breaking some eggs looks like?

Modern day gold rush in the wild east.

The Spectre of Lamarckism looms again?

Blindness in Cave Fish is Due to Epigenetics

Cornelius G Hunter

A recent Paper out of Brant Weinstein’s and William Jeffery’s laboratories on eye development, or the lack thereof, in blind cave fish has important implications for evolutionary theory (paper discussed Here). The study finds that the loss of eyes in fish living in dark Mexican caves is not due to genetic mutations, as evolutionists have vigorously argued for many years, but due to genetic regulation. Specifically, methylation of key development genes represses their expression and with it eye development in this venerable icon of evolution. But the finding is causing yet more problems for evolutionary theory.

Darwin appealed to the blind cave fish in his one long argument for evolution. It is a curious argument in many ways, and the first sign of problems was in Darwin’s presentation where he flipped between two different explanations. At one point he explained the loss of vision in the cave fish as an example of evolutionary change not due to his key mechanism, natural selection. Instead, the Sage of Kent resorted to using the Lamarckian mechanism or law of “use and disuse.” Privately Darwin despised and harshly criticized Lamarck, but when needed he occasionally employed his French forerunner’s ideas.

Elsewhere Darwin hit upon a natural selection-based mechanism for the blind cave fish, explaining that elimination of the costly and unneeded vision system would surely raise the fitness of the hapless creatures.

This latter explanation would become a staple amongst latter day evolutionary apologists, convinced that it mandates the fact of evolution. Anyone who has discussed or debated evolutionary theory with today’s Epicureans has likely encountered this curious argument that because blind cave fish lost their eyes, therefore the world must have arisen by itself.

Huh?

To understand the evolutionary logic, or lack thereof, one must understand the history of ideas, and in particular the idea of fixity, or immutability, of species. According to evolutionists, species are either absolutely fixed in their designs, or otherwise there are no limits to their evolutionary changes and the biological world, and everything else for that matter, spontaneously originated.

Any evidence, for any kind of change, no matter how minor, is immediately yet another proof text for evolution, in all that the word implies.

Of course, from a scientific perspective, the evidence provides precisely zero evidence for evolution. Evolution requires the spontaneous (i.e., by natural processes without external input) creation of an unending parade of profound designs. The cave fish evidence shows the removal, not creation, of such a design.

The celebration of such evidence and argument by Darwin and his disciples reveals more about evolutionists than evolution. That they would find this argument persuasive reveals their underlying metaphysics and the heavy lifting it performs. It is all about religion.

We are reminded of all this with the news of Weinstein’s new study. But we also see something new: The insertion, yet again, of Lamarck into the story. The irony is that the epigenetics, now revealed as the cause of repressed eye development in the cave fish, hearkens back to Lamarck.

Darwin despised Lamarck and later evolutionists made him the third rail in biology. Likewise they have pushed back hard against the scientific findings of epigenetics and their implications.

The environment must not drive biological change.

False.

Well such biological change must not be transgenerational.

False.

Well such inheritance must not be long lasting, or otherwise robust.

False again.

This last failure is revealed yet again in the new blind cave fish findings.

False predictions count. A theory that is repeatedly wrong, over and over, in all of its fundamental expectations, will eventually be seen for what it is.

The rise of epigenetics is yet another such major failure. Evolutionists pushed back against it because it makes no sense on the theory, and that means it cannot now be easily accommodated.

One problem is that epigenetics is complex. The levels of coordination and intricacy of mechanism are far beyond evolution’s meager resources.

It’s not going to happen.

Another problem is the implied serendipity. For instance, one epigenetic mechanism involves the molecular tags places on the tails of the DNA packing proteins called histones. While barcoding often seems to be an apt metaphor for epigenetics, the tagging of histone tails can influence the histone three dimensional structures. It is not merely an information-bearing barcode. Like the tiny rudder causing the huge ship to change course, the tiny molecular tag can cause the much larger packing proteins to undergo conformational change, resulting in important changes in gene accessibility and expression.

This is all possible because of the special, peculiar, structure and properties of the histone protein and its interaction with DNA. With evolution we must believe this just happened to evolve for no reason, and thus fortuitously enabled the rise of epigenetics.

Another problem with epigenetics is that it is worthless, in evolutionary terms that is. The various mechanisms that sense environmental shifts and challenges, attach or remove one of the many different molecular tags to one of the many different DNA or histone locations, propagate these messages across generations, and so forth, do not produce the much needed fitness gain upon which natural selection operates.

The incredible epigenetics mechanisms are helpful only at some yet to be announced future epoch when the associated environmental challenge presents itself. In the meantime, selection is powerless and according to evolution the incredible system of epigenetics, that somehow just happened to arise from a long, long series or random mutations, would wither away with evolution none the wiser.

These are the general problems with epigenetics. In the case of the blind cave fish, however, there is possible explanation. It is a longshot, but since this case specifically involves the loss of a stage of the embryonic development, evolutionists can say that genetic mutations caused changes in the methylating proteins, causing them to be overactive.

This explanation relies on the preexistence of the various epigenetic mechanisms, so does not help to resolve the question of how they could have evolved. What the explanation does provide is a way for evolutionists to dodge the bullet presented by the specter of the cave fish intelligently responding to an environmental shift.

Such teleology in the natural world is not allowed.

So the evolutionary prediction is that these proteins will be found to have particular random changes causing an increase in their methylation function, in particular at key locations in key genes (i.e., the genes associated eye development).

That’s a long shot, and an incredible violation of Occam’s Razor.

My predictions are that (i) this evolutionary prediction will fail just as the hundreds that came before, and (ii) as with those earlier failures, this failure will do nothing to open the evolutionist’s eyes.

Alt-science?

Welcome to Alt-Science

Cornelius G Hunter

Sometimes it’s obvious, as in the case of the scientific research paper that was rejected after it was accepted. While the paper was well accepted and given positive comments from peer reviewers, certain members of the editorial board of a seemingly scientific journal noticed that the results had negative implications for evolution. And so months after the editor had told the authors he was happy “to proceed with publication,” the paper suddenly was, “on further reflection and discussion,” summarily rejected.

And what exactly was the “discussion” about? That “the unspoken implication of the article is that, probabilistically, random undirected evolution is impossible.”

And that, dear scientists, is not allowed.

Random undirected evolution is, by definition, a fact. Break that ground rule, and pay the price. This isn’t about science or truth. This is the alt-science that seeks to control everything from publications and textbooks to careers and funding.

Sunday 29 January 2023

The thumb print of JEHOVAH: OOL Edition.

On the Darwin delusion.

Mama Bear Apologetics Takes on Richard Dawkins

Evolution News

A new episode of ID the Future puts atheist Richard Dawkins’s book Outgrowing God under the microscope and reveals multiple ways his argument smashes up against contrary scientific evidence. Walking us through the critique are author and Mama Bear Apologetics founder Hillary Morgan Ferrer and her co-host, Amy Davison.

Dawkins invokes the beautiful order evident in the murmuration of bird flocks as evidence that complexity can evolve from simple algorithmic rules. But Ferrer explains why the phenomenon of bird murmuration doesn’t even begin to approach what we find when sophisticated engineering order emerges in the growth of embryos. Ferrer also considers the challenges of re-engineering sperm thermoregulation to move from how it works in marine life to how it works in land animals. For a blind process to traverse this evolutionary pathway while maintaining viability at every stage would require — to adapt a line from Alice in Wonderland — six hundred impossible things before breakfast. What about evolving something simpler, such as the bilayer cell membrane, essential for cellular life? No, Ferrer argues. It’s also far too sophisticated to have evolved through a blind evolutionary process. What is needed is the foresight that comes with intelligent design. Tune in to hear Ferrer and Davison rebut these and other pro-evolution arguments from Richard Dawkins.

Download the podcast or listen to it here. To read more from Ferrer and some of her Mama Bear colleagues, pick up their bestselling book Mama Bear Apologetics: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies.

David Berlinski re: human nature.

Man playing God again ,what could go wrong?

Yet more on serendipity's key role in Darwinism.

Protein Mutations Are Highly Coupled

Cornelius G Hunter

A new Study from Michael Harms’ laboratory at the University of Oregon finds that potential amino acid substitutions in protein sequences are highly coupled. That is, if one residue mutates to a new amino acid, the swap impacts the other possible substitutions—they now have a different impact on the protein tertiary structure. As the paper explains:

Proteins exist as ensembles of similar conformations. The effect of a mutation depends on the relative probabilities of conformations in the ensemble, which in turn, depend on the exact amino acid sequence of the protein. Accumulating substitutions alter the relative probabilities of conformations, thereby changing the effects of future mutations. This manifests itself as subtle but pervasive high-order epistasis. Uncertainty in the effect of each mutation accumulates and undermines prediction. Because conformational ensembles are an inevitable feature of proteins, this is likely universal.

This coupling leads to a “profound unpredictability in evolution,” and the authors conclude that “detailed evolutionary predictions are not possible given the chemistry of macromolecules.”

This finding seems to confirm what many evolutionists have said for decades—that evolution is a contingent, not law-like, process:

These [macro]evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible.” – Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1957.

Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes. – Ernst Mayr

What science needs are “plausible scenarios for a fully material universe, even if those scenarios cannot be currently tested.” – Victor Stenger, 2004

any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken. – Stephen Jay Gould

All of this is in direct contradiction to the science, which reveals undeniable patterns in biology that have been repeated over and over. From the pervasive instances of convergence, recurrence, and all kinds of other “ence’s”, to the non adaptive patterns discussed by Michael Denton, the biological is anything but haphazard or random. Clearly, the same solution, for whatever reason, is used repeatedly across a wide range of species, in various patterns.

This is a clear falsification of an evolutionary expectation expressed across many years, and widely held by a consensus of experts.

But there is another problem with these protein findings. In addition to confirming the complexity and coupling of protein folding, the findings also seem to corroborate what theoretical and experimental studies have shown for years, that the fitness landscape of macromolecules in general, and proteins in particular, is rugged.

The problem of evolving a protein is difficult for several reasons. First, protein function drops off rapidly with only a few mutations. Very quickly a protein loses its function as you move away from the native sequence.

Second, random or starting sequences are stuck in a flat and rugged fitness landscape. There is little sign of a the kind of smooth and gradually increasing fitness landscape that would aid evolution’s enormous task of figuring out how proteins could evolve.

These problems are just getting worse, and this new finding a good example of that trend.

Saturday 28 January 2023

JEHOVAH God: friend of science?

Michael Keas Debunks Science-Faith Warfare Myth

Michael Keas

On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid talks with science historian Michael Keas about Keas’s revealing work from ISI Books, Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. “Scientists do love a good story,” says Keas. “Turns out there are plenty of stories we shouldn’t believe, myths about science and Christianity supposedly at war with each other.” He also discusses a future-oriented ET myth that functions as a substitute for traditional religion. Learn more about Keas’s fascinating and informative book. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

No paradise without JEHOVAH.

Dear Transhumanists: Do You Really Want to Live Forever?

Peter Biles

2023 is expected to yield “breakthrough” research in aging treatments, led by the Palo Alto medical company Altos Labs. Jeff Bezos is among the donors of the organization, which notes on its homepage that its mission is “to restore cell health and resilience through cellular rejuvenation programming to reverse disease, injury, and the disabilities that can occur throughout life.”

Not for everyone

A Wired article is optimistic about the direction of the research and compares its potential to the development of antibiotic treatment. Andrew Steele writes:

In 2023, early success of these treatments could kickstart the greatest revolution in medicine since the discovery of antibiotics. Rather than going to the doctor when we’re sick and picking off age-related problems like cancer and dementia in their late stages when they’re very hard to fix, we’ll intervene preventively to stop people getting ill in the first place—and, if those treadmill-shredding mice are anything to go by, we’ll reduce frailty and other problems that don’t always elicit a medical diagnosis at the same time.”

ANDREW STEELE, A DRUG TO TREAT AGING MAY NOT BE A PIPE DREAM | WIRED

Others are worried that even if such medical breakthroughs were achieved, they would only be available to those who seem to have the most vested interest in biological longevity: the wealthy and powerful. Maggie Harrison writes at Futurism:

Seeing as how neither wealth nor power, political or otherwise, are historically something that folks are too keen to share, it’s not exactly outlandish to assume that the already-rich makers of such a miracle drug or device might employ some hefty gatekeeping efforts.”

MAGGIE HARRISON, EXPERTS WORRIED ELDERLY BILLIONAIRES WILL BECOME IMMORTAL, COMPOUNDING WEALTH FOREVER (FUTURISM.COM)

Bezos at the helm

It sounds almost too dystopian to be making headlines, but this kind of research is well funded and gaining traction among prominent researchers across the world. If Jeff Bezos is at the donor helm, chances are the research won’t be in want of extra cash. Interestingly, one of Altos Labs’ leaders is the man responsible for developing the AI that defeated a human in the game “Go.” He’s quoted in his profile:

“I joined Altos Labs because of the unique opportunity to team up with world-class biologists and explore how AI and Machine Learning can be used to understand and control biological processes with the goal of maintaining and restoring the health of our cells.”

ALTOS LABS | THORE GRAEPEL, SVP, COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND MACHINE LEARNING

Altos Labs’ vision isn’t too far removed from that of the transhumanists who want to computerize human consciousness. For them, however, longevity is a junior varsity goal — what we really need is a way to live forever. Harrison quips at the end of her article, “Anyway. See you in MetaHeaven, where we sacrifice our data to our meat-smoking Lord Zucko in exchange for eternal algorithmic life.”

While perhaps the end goal of biological longevity remains distant, the race for an even longer and healthier life is well underway. Could the results ever be democratized? Would only some people benefit from these “groundbreaking” advances? Who knows. In any case, one question we sometimes neglect is whether the longevity of life is worth it when one’s spiritual, emotional, and mental quality of life is wanting.

A Life of Meaning

In his review of Dr. Randall Smith’s new book, From Here to Eternity, Auguste Meyrat writes:

Even granting the assumption that technology will somehow enable immortality, Smith points out how this still doesn’t resolve the matter of meaning. Working through the implications of a life without end, he concludes that such “immortals” are doomed to a meaningless cycle of events in which nothing lasts. In this way transhumanists run into the same challenge as the ancient pagans, whose version of the afterlife also fell short of transcendence — that is, a fuller life on a higher plane of existence, not simply living the same way indefinitely.

AUGUSTE MEYRAT, REMEMBERING OUR MORTALITY IN A DEATH-AVERSE CULTURE – ACTON INSTITUTE POWERBLOG

For Meyrat and Smith, biological longevity and technological immortality would be terrible because we’d be so bored. We’d still have an existential problem to solve. A life of meaning is what we truly need, and perhaps what we most deeply desire.

Friday 27 January 2023

Where success is an orphan.

The fossil record continues to troll Darwinism.

Fossil Friday: Elephants and the Abrupt Origin of Proboscidea

Günter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features the iconic Deinotherium (16.9-0.78 mya) since today we look into the last order of afrotherian mammals, the Proboscidea and their putative fossil relatives. Proboscideans include the living and fossil elephants such as mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, stegodonts, and deinotheres. The fossil record of proboscideans is very extensive with about 50 genera with 185 species. It includes isolated teeth as well as complete skeletons with numerous early representatives from the Paleogene (Tassy 1990, McKenna & Bell 1997, Shoshani & Tassy 2005, Sanders et al. 2010). These fossils certainly provide significant information about the history and development of proboscideans (Tassy & Shoshani 1988, Tassy 1990, Shoshani & Tassy 1996, 2005, Shoshani 1998, 2001, Gheerbrant 2009, Gheerbrant & Tassy 2009, Begum 2021, Cantalapiedra et al. 2021). For our purpose we will ignore all of the later radiations of elephant-like mammals and will focus on the earliest representatives of the first radiation. So, when do proboscideans first appearance in the fossil record?

Oldest and Most Primitive

The oldest and most primitive assumed proboscidean is Eritherium azzouzorum from Sidi Chennane in the Ouled Abdoun Basin of Morocco (Gheerbrant 2009, Gheerbrant et al. 2012, Schmitt & Gheerbrant 2016). This outcrop is of Middle Paleocene (Selandian, 61.7-58.7 mya) age of almost 60 million years, which makes it the oldest known placental mammal locality in Africa. Eritherium was a relatively small animal, only about the size of a fox, and without a trunk or tusks. It did not really look like an elephant at all, and indeed there is a problem with its alleged proboscidean affinity: in some more recent phylogenetic studies, Eritherium is resolved outside of Proboscidea as a more basal paenungulate (Cooper et al. 2014, Rose et al. 2019), but it was confirmed as basal proboscidean by Gheerbrant et al. (2014, 2016) and Schmitt & Gheerbrant (2016)

Pretty much undisputed is Phosphatotherium escuilliei from the Early Eocene (earliest Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) of the Ouled Abdoun Basin in Morocco (Gheerbrant et al. 1996, 2005a, Shoshany & Tassy 2005, Sanders et al. 2010), which represents the next oldest and second most primitive proboscidean (Gheerbrant et al. 2005a, Schmitt & Gheerbrant 2016). There was one little problem, though, which is the fact that the precise location of its discovery is unknown, because the holotype fossil was acquired from a commercial fossil dealer. The original description by Gheerbrant et al. (1996) admits this but says that an “unambiguous Thanetian age” is documented by the attached phosphatic matrix and the associated shark teeth, which are index fossils for an Upper Paleocene (Thanetian) layer that lacks Ypresian taxa. This “unambiguous” evidence apparently was not so unambiguous after all, because these very phosphatite layers were later recognized as earliest Ypresian by Gheerbrant et al. (2001, 2003), and the Ypresian age was also confirmed by later discovered new material of Phosphatotherium (Gheerbrant et al. 2005a).

Daouitherium rebouli is another primitive proboscidean from the Early Eocene (earliest Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) of the Ouled Abdoun Basin in Morocco (Gheerbrant et al. 2002, Shoshany & Tassy 2005, Sanders et al. 2010). The original describers mentioned that the discovery of Daouitherium documents “an unexpected early diversity of proboscideans and of the old origin of the order” (Gheerbrant et al. 2002).

Numidotherium koholense was described from the Early Eocene (Ypresian) from El Kohol in Algeria (Mahboubi et al. 1984, Court 1995, Shoshani & Tassy 1996, Sanders eat al. 2010). A second species N. savagei was described by Court (1995) from the Upper Eocene (Bartonian, 40.4-33.9 mya) of southern Libya.

Last but not least, there is Khamsaconus bulbous, which was described from a single molar tooth from the Ypresian (55.8-48.6 Mya) of south Morocco. It was initially attributed to the louisinine “condylarths” thus in the possible relationship of the elephant shrew order Macroscelidea (Sudre et al. 1993; also see Bechly 2022c). Most later works rather considered this taxon as a very primitive and small early proboscidean (Gheerbrant et al. 1998, 2002, 2005a, 2012, Gheerbrant 2009, Sanders et al. 2010), but sometimes only with a question mark because the taxon is very poorly known.

One of the best-known early proboscideans is the somewhat younger genus Moeritherium, of which six species have been described. The earliest species is M. chehbeurameuri from the Bartonian of Algeria, which is 40.4-33.9 million years old (Delmer et al. 2006). Moeritheriumis quite remarkable for its very elongate body shape, which is certainly a derived trait that excludes Moeritherium from the direct ancestry of later proboscideans. The similarities between Moeritherium and the “walking sea cow” Protosiren led Andrews (1906) to first suggest a close relationship of elephants and sea cows, which later became generally recognized as the Tethytheria clade (McKenna 1975, Asher et al. 2003, Nishihara et al. 2005, Seiffert 2007, Tabuce et al. 2007, 2008, Asher & Seiffert 2010, O’Leary et al. 2013). Similar adaptations were considered by some experts as indicating a common semi-aquatic ancestor for these two mammal orders (Gaeth et al. 1999, Thewissen et al. 2000, Shoshani & Tassy 2005, Asher & Seiffert 2010).

Barytherium grave is the youngest of the primitive proboscideans and was discovered at the Eocene/Oligocene Fayum Depression in Egypt (33.9-28.4 mya) (Andrews 1906, Shoshani & Tassy 1996, Sanders et al. 2010), which also yielded other early proboscideans like Moeritherium, Phiomia, and Palaeomastodon.

None of these early proboscideans shows the strange phenomenon of horizontal tooth displacement that is found in more modern elephants and independently originated three times within Tethytheria (Shoshani 2001; also see Bechly 2022a). It is also worth noting that the phylogenetic relationships and classification within Proboscidea proved to be a quite controversial issue (Tassy 1988, Tassy & Shoshani 1988, Court 1995), which is hardly a big surprise as it seems to apply to most issues of higher phylogeny in all groups of organisms.

Embrithopoda

Embrithopoda is an enigmatic extinct group of large mammals from the Paleogene of the Old World, of which the best-known member is the iconic Arsinoitherium from the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene of Northern Africa. Even though Arsinoitherium resembled a rhino, most experts considered Embrithopoda as tethytherians within Afrotheria (see Erdal et al. 2016: tab. 2), and maybe even close relatives of proboscideans (Benoit et al. 2013, Avilla & Mothé 2021). However, the most recent studies rather suggest that embrithopods occupy a more basal position as sister group to all other Tethytheria (Erdal et al. 2016, Gheerbrant et al. 2018, 2021), so that the derived similarities with proboscideans have to be considered as convergences (also see Gheerbrant et al. 2005a and Benoit et al. 2013). The allegedly oldest fossil record for this group is Stylophus minor from the Early Eocene (Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) Grand Daoui area in Morocco (Gheerbrant et al. 2018).

Anthracobunia

The Anthracobunia is a group of primitive perissodactyl-like mammals and includes the extinct families Cambaytheriidae and Anthracobunidae from the Early Eocene (55.8-48.6 Mya) of India and Pakistan (Wells & Gingerich 1983, Rose et al. 2006, 2014, 2019; also see Dunn 2020), and according to some workers may\ even include the extinct Desmostylia we discussed last week (Cooper et al. 2014, Rose et al. 2019, Gheerbrant et al. 2021; also see Bechly 2023b). Some scientists considered anthracobunids as tethytherians (Wells & Gingerich 1983, Ginsburg et al. 1999, Ducrocq et al. 2000, Rose et al. 2006, Tabuce et al. 2007, and Gheerbrant et al. 2014) and some other authors even considered them as basal proboscideans (Gingerich et al. 1990, Shoshani et al. 1996, Thewissen et al. 2000, Gheerbrant et al. 2005b, Asher & Seiffert 2010, Erdal et al. 2016), which would make them contemporaneous with some of the earliest proboscideans in Africa (Asher et al. 2003). Shoshany & Tassy (2005) preferred to exclude anthracobunids from Proboscidea until additional evidence becomes available, and Tabuce et al. (2008) mentioned that “the hypothesis that some extinct taxa (desmostylians, embrithopods and anthracobunids) are included in tethytheres is less supported, because the characters used to include them within tethytheres are homoplastic and/or of ambiguous distribution.” Indeed, more recent studies by Cooper et al. (2014), Gheerbrant et al. (2016), and Rose et al. (2014, 2019) unambiguously placed them outside Afrotheria in the stem group of odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla). This also makes much more sense from a paleobiogeographic point of view, as all anthracobunids were found in East Asia.

As I discussed in my article on fossil sea cows (Bechly 2023b), Ishatherium subathuensiswas described by Sahni & Kumar (1980) and Sahni et al. (1980) from the early Eocene (Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) Subhatu Formation in the Himalayas. It was described as the oldest known sirenian but only a few authors concurred with this interpretation (Sereno 1982). Domning et al. (1982) questioned the sirenian affinity as well as the dating. Indeed, most other experts think that it could as well be an anthracobunid perissodactyl or a moeritheriid proboscidean (Wells & Gingerich 1983, Domning et al. 1986, Zalmout et al. 2003, Rose et al. 2019), but Cooper et al. (2014) excluded Ishatherium from Anthracobunidae.

Radinskya and Phenacolophus

Both genera have been considered as putative Paenungulata and Tethytheria related to Embrithopoda (McKenna & Manning 1977, McKenna & Bell 1997). Asher et al. (2003)mentioned that “if the hypothesized relation between Arsinoitherium and phenacolophids in the Embrithopoda is correct (McKenna and Manning, 1977), then crown afrotheres are also represented by Paleocene taxa from Central Asia,” which of course would be problematic. The cladistic studies by Gheerbrant et al. (2005a, 2014) confirmed Phenacolophus as a sister group to Embrithopoda in Paenungulata, but resolved Radinskya as sister group to Perissodactyla. More recent studies (Gheerbrant et al. 2016, 2021) even excluded both genera from Afrotheria and instead placed them in the stem group of odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla), just like anthracobunids and possibly desmostylians, which makes much more sense biogeographically. But here is the more general question: Isn’t it strange that two totally unrelated groups like elephants and odd-toed ungulates, which belong to different supergroups like Afrotheria and Laurasiatheria, seem to have so many similarities, that it is difficult to place some extinct groups and even some recent groups like hyraxes (Bechly 2023a) closer to one or the other? Is that what Darwinism would predict? Of course not! Is it instead what intelligent design theory would predict? Indeed it is. Just add two and two together yourself.

Ocepeia and Abdounodus

There are two more taxa that are often discussed in the context of proboscidean phylogeny and evolution, which are the two species Abdounodus hamdii and Ocepeia daouinensisdescribed by Gheerbrant et al. (2001) from the Middle Paleocene (Selandian, 61.7-58.7 mya) phosphatic beds of Ouled Abdoun in Morocco, a fossil locality that also produced some of the earliest fossil proboscideans (see above). They were considered to be the first condylarth-like mammals from Africa and related to Perissodactyla and Paenungulata, which now are attributed to different supergroups of placental mammals. Later studies by the same authors suggested a possibly affinity with aardvarks or basal paenungulates (Gheerbrant et al. 2014, 2016). Abdounodus and Ocepeia have meanwhile been confirmed as basal Paenungulata by several phylogenetic studies (Gheerbrant et al. 2018, Avilla & Mothé 2021).

We can conclude that, apart from the usual mess of incongruent phylogenies, it is an undeniable fact that Proboscidea appeared abruptly in the Late Paleocene / Early Eocene with a surprising early diversity (Gheerbrant et al. 2002). Moreover, there are anatomical discontinuities between the distinct radiations of early lophodont proboscideans and later elephant-like forms (Tassy 1988, 1990, Begum 2021, Cantalapiedra et al. 2021). Herewith we have completed our review of the afrotherian mammal orders and can move on to the next mammalian supergroup, called Euarchontoglires, which includes primates, tree shrews, colugos, hares, rabbits, and pikas. Since we have already dealt with the origins of primates (Bechly 2022b), we will look into the fossil history of tree shrews next Fossil Friday.

The God hypothesis redux?

File under "well said," LXXXIX

"“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”"

Plato

One old NY home's brief architectural history.

The Houdini of the animal kingdom?

More on the origin of life re:the design debate

Thursday 26 January 2023

Science vs. Chance and necessity of the gaps.

Another Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist for Intelligent Design

David Klinghoffer

Earlier this week, John West Reported on a major new exhibition on faith and science in Washington, DC, tackling the question of whether the Bible impeded or inspired the rise of modern science. (Judging from the historical record, “inspired” is clearly the correct answer.) In the article, he mentioned another Nobel Prize-winning scientist who endorsed the idea of an intelligent design behind the universe, using that phrase explicitly. This was news to me. He is physicist Arthur Holly Compton

Compton’s remark was, “The chance of a world such as ours occurring without intelligent design becomes more and more remote as we learn of its wonders.” Interesting. He said that in 1940.

From the Wikipedia article

Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a sensational discovery at the time: the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted.

Compton joins fellow Nobel Prize-winning physicists Charles Townes (UC Berkeley) and Brian Josephson (Cambridge University) who have likewise come out for ID as a legitimate interpretation of the scientific evidence. (Townes passed away in 2015.) To those names you could add two more, Sir John B. Gurdon (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) and Gerhard Ertl (Nobel Prize in Chemistry) who, along with Dr. Josephson, endorsed the Discovery Institute Press book by chemist and ID proponent Marcos Eberlin, Foresight ,how the chemistry of life reveals planning and purpose

"Species" as a social construct?

Biologist Advocates Biology Without Species; What Could Go Wrong?

Evolution News

Like defining the term “life,” defining the biological category “species” has been the subject of interminable debate. Literally dozens of definitions of “species” exist, which is probably best explained by the ineliminable role of philosophy in the debate. When differing philosophies are competing, any definition represents an act of war (so to speak) — laying a claim to the whole conceptual territory by trying to drive out the competitors using semantic fiat.

So what is the definitional equivalent of the ultimate act of war? Blow the concept “species” to smithereens. Just say that species don’t exist — at all. One cannot define what does not exist. To complete the act of destruction, coin a term such as “speciesism” to attach as a pejorative to one’s opponents. They are the baddies who insist that the unreal (i.e., the standard taxonomic category of species) actually exists out there in the world.

From the Latin

The sober name for this “blow it to bits” approach is radical nominalism. “Nominal” comes from the Latin root for name (nomen). On this view, species are artificial categories, on which, for our own purposes, we hang names. Darwin promoted radical nominalism in the Origin of Species (1859, p. 52):

I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.

Radical nominalism didn’t fare very well in the 20th century, however, mainly because evolutionary biologists found they needed a category with some correspondence to real groups, out there in the nature, simply to have a coherent science of living things. But the blow-it-to-bits approach never went away.

A Program of Radical Nominalism

Recently, biologist Brent Mishler at UC Berkeley and his colleagues have laid out a full program of radical nominalism, presented in two open access volumes:

Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries

What, if anything are species.

So what is real, according to Mishler? Only phylogeny — the tree of evolutionary descent. We slice the tree into arbitrary units of description, but ALL the units, including the species, are unreal.

Sigh. A long sigh. Biology without species? Like chemistry without the periodic table.

Anyway, thanks to Mishler and his publishers for making the texts open access.

Looks like the revolution will be televised after all?

Serendipity, thy name is Darwinism?

Andreas Wagner: Genetic Regulation Drives Evolutionary Change

Cornelius G Hunter

A Hall of Mirrors

A new paper from Andreas Wagner and co-workers argues that a key and crucial driver of evolution is changes to the interaction between transcription factor proteins and the short DNA sequences to which they bind. In other words, evolution is driven by varying the regulation of protein expression (and a particular type of regulation—the transcription factor-DNA binding) rather than varying the structural proteins themselves. Nowhere does the paper address or even mention the scientific problems with this speculative idea. For example, if evolution primarily proceeds by random changes to transcription factor-DNA binding, creating all manner of biological designs and species, then from where did those transcription factors and DNA sequences come? The answer—that they evolved for some different, independent, function; itself an evolutionary impossibility—necessitates astronomical levels of serendipity. Evolution could not have had foreknowledge. It could not have known that the emerging transcription factors and DNA sequence would, just luckily, be only a mutation away from some new function. This serendipity problem has been escalating for years as evolutionary theory has repeatedly failed, and evolutionists have applied ever more complex hypotheses to try to explain the empirical evidence. Evolutionists have had to impute to evolution increasingly sophisticated, complex, higher-order, mechanisms. And with each one the theory has become ever more serendipitous. So it is not too surprising that evolutionists steer clear of the serendipity problem. Instead, they cite previous literature as a way of legitimizing evolutionary theory. Here I will show examples of how this works in the new Wagner paper.

The paper starts right off with the bold claim that “Changes in the regulation of gene expression need not be deleterious. They can also be adaptive and drive evolutionary change.” That is quite a statement. To support it the paper cites a classic 1975 paper by Mary-Claire King and A. C. Wilson entitled “Evolution at two levels in humans and chimpanzees.” The 1975 paper admits that the popular idea and expectation that evolution occurs by mutations in protein-coding genes had largely failed. The problem was that, at the genetic level, the two species were too similar:

The intriguing result, documented in this article, is that all the biochemical methods agree in showing that the genetic distance between humans and the chimpanzee is probably too small to account for their substantial organismal differences.

Their solution was to resort to a monumental shift in evolutionary theory: evolution would occur via the tweaking of gene regulation.

We suggest that evolutionary changes in anatomy and way of life are more often based on changes in the mechanisms controlling the expression of genes than on sequence changes in proteins. We therefore propose that regulatory mutations account for the major biological differences between humans and chimpanzees.

In other words, evolution would have to occur not by changing proteins, but by changing protein regulation. What was left unsaid was that highly complex, genetic regulation mechanisms would now have to be in place, a priori, in order for evolution to proceed.

Where did those come from?

Evolution would have to create highly complex, genetic regulation mechanisms so that evolution could occur.

Not only would this ushering in of serendipity to evolutionary theory go unnoticed, it would, incredibly, be cited thereafter as a sort of evidence, in its own right, showing that evolution occurs by changes to protein regulation.

But of course the 1975 King-Wilson paper showed no such thing. The paper presupposed the truth of evolution, and from there reasoned that evolution must have primarily occurred via changes to protein regulation. Not because anyone could see how that could occur, but because the old thinking—changes to proteins themselves—wasn’t working.

This was not, and is not, evidence that changes in the regulation of gene expression can be “adaptive and drive evolutionary change,” as the Wagner paper claimed.

But this is how the genre works. The evolution literature makes unfounded claims that contradict the science, and justifies those claims with references to other evolution papers which do the same thing. It is a web of deceit.

Ultimately it all traces back to the belief that evolution is true.

The Wagner paper next cites a 2007 paper that begins its very first sentence with this unfounded claim:

It has long been understood that morphological evolution occurs through alterations of embryonic development.

I didn’t know that. And again, references are provided. This time to a Stephen Jay Gould book and a textbook, neither of which demonstrate that “morphological evolution occurs through alterations of embryonic development.”

These sorts of high claims by evolutionists are ubiquitous in the literature, but they never turn out to be true. Citations are given, and those in turn provide yet more citations. And so on, in a seemingly infinite hall of mirrors, where monumental assertions are casually made and immediately followed by citations that simply do the same thing.

Wednesday 25 January 2023

The end of science?

Paul Nelson Diagnoses the Decline of “Groundbreaking Science”

Paul Nelson

On a new episode of ID the Future, philosopher of science Paul Nelson talks with host Rob Crowther about a new paper in Nature making waves in the scientific community, “Papers and Patents Are Becoming Less Disruptive Over Time.” According to Michael Park and his fellow researchers, the rate of groundbreaking scientific discoveries is declining while the percentage of consolidating (or incremental) science is coming to dominate. Is the spirit of groundbreaking scientific discovery withering, and if so, why? Nelson notes a 1997 book by John Horgan, The End of Science. Nelson credits Horgan for seeing the trend a generation ahead of the Park paper, but Nelson breaks with Horgan on the diagnosis. Horgan posits that groundbreaking science is declining because we have already made most of the big breakthroughs there are to make. Nelson begs to differ. He suggests the problem lies elsewhere and likely is multifaceted. He offers analysis and a prescription for reinvigorating the scientific enterprise in the 21st century.

Download the podcast or listen to it here

Us who?

Genesis1:26NIV"Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, a and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”"

Who is the us(1st person plural) mentioned in this verse. Well the speaker is the Lord JEHOVAH so he is the principal referent but the pronoun necessarily refers to at least one other said to be in the image (Grk eikon) of JEHOVAH according to strong's eikon is a figure/copy of an original. What does that entail in the case of JEHOVAH well we note that mankind's being in the likeness of God put them above the remainder of the physical creation. So man with his mental, moral and spiritual attributes that facilitate a filial relationship with his creator is a baseline as to what would it would mean for a creature to be in the image and likeness of JEHOVAH.

For further confirmation consider

Genesis9:3,4NIV"everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

4“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it."

Note the hierarchy the senseless non- living ground is not even mentioned. The plants can be used as food by man and his livestock in a sustainable way.

Although permitted to supplement their diet with meat. There was to be no wanton slaughter of these subhuman souls . The blood of whatever animals were used as food was to be drained as a gesture of respect to the giver of all life.

Man though was on another level entirely:

Genesis9:6NIV"“Whoever sheds human blood,

by humans shall their blood be shed;

For in the image of God

has God made mankind."

Thus no creature below the level of Mankind could be spoken of as being in the image and likeness of God. Thus we are compelled to look to the superhuman realm for a creature that can be spoken of as being like God, one who would be considered a God by humans who might encounter him. One who could consciously give a positive response to the command to make man in his image. With man as a baseline we cannot give consideration to any impersonal abstraction or force. Only a Son like man is would fit the role.

Genesis3:22NIV"And the Lord God said, “The man has now become LIKE one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”"

Again suggesting a privileged Son with delegated authority to make law/regulation.

After acting as JEHOVAH'S representative and executing JEHOVAH'S judgment on mankind note the appearance of superhuman representatives of mankind's creator.

Genesis3:24NIV"After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side e of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life."

Note also:

Genesis3:8NIV"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was WALKING in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. "

And:

Genesis11:5-7NIV"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”"

Obviously JEHOVAH'S descent from the heavenly realm was by proxy with Superhuman messengers serving as representatives authorized to speak and act on their Lord's behalf.

Doubtless any from among these who would be invited to serve as JEHOVAH'S instrument in forming a home for man and then man himself. Would he of an exceptionally privileged station it would not be surprising at all if he were found to be the chief of these superhuman sons of JEHOVAH.

Yet another Darwinian just so story bites the dust?

Darwin, We Have a Problem: Horse Teeth Are Not Less Evolved

David Coppedge

It was a perfect Darwinian tale. The evidence was right there in the fossils. Teeth evolved to have higher crowns in ruminants (e.g., cattle, sheep, antelopes, deer, giraffes) over time, because the rise of grasslands caused more tooth abrasion and required more durability. Evolution met the need and provided the dental and digestive toolkits for the evolving diet. Here’s how it was told, according to Gordon D. Sanson in a PNAS commentary:

The rise and spread of grasslands on different continents during the Tertiary coincided with the appearance of dental characters assumed to be adaptations for eating grass. The dogma was, and largely still is, that grasses are particularly tough and abrasive compared to the ancestral diet of woodland plants. Grasses have long been thought to be particularly abrasive because of their high levels of endogenous silica bodies (phytoliths) although exogenous dust or grit on the surface of grass leaves can also cause tooth wear. Grass-eaters evolved very durable teeth with sacrificial high crowns that could endure high levels of wear (Fig. 1). The teeth also developed highly folded and more complex enamel ridge patterns, assumed to be necessary for chewing a tough fibrous diet. There were other adaptations associated with moving onto grasslands, including changes in locomotory morphology, herd behavior, and body size, but the linkage between tooth form and function and the changing biomechanical properties of the diet are of interest here. It is a particularly rich story because teeth, being so hard and durable, are well preserved in the fossil record.

In addition, ruminants evolved forestomachs that wash and sort some of the grit from the grass, allowing the animals to regurgitate the food, chew the cud, and break down the bolus into finer particles. This provided an “inadvertent advantage” over mammals that didn’t evolve a forestomach, like horses.

A Difficulty with Tooth Evolution

Alas, an earlier paper in PNAS by Valerio et al. raised a difficulty with the tooth evolution story. As evolutionists, these agricultural scientists agreed with part of the tale. It appears true that cattle and other ruminants sort out the dirt and grit in the forestomach. The team proved this in a series of experiments. The sorting mechanism does appear to reduce wear on a cow’s teeth.

Many reasons have been suggested for the evolutionary success of the highly diverse clade of ruminants. Ruminants have evolved a forestomach physiology that leads to unparalleled chewing efficacy for mammals of their size, with an extreme particle size reduction. This is due to a well-documented particle sorting mechanism in their forestomach that is based on the density of the forestomach content, which floats/sediments in a liquid medium. This mechanism should, inadvertently, also wash off a large proportion of grit and dust before the material is regurgitated for rumination. Here, we show in live animals that this suspected washing actually takes place.

Sanson thought about this finding. He put the new evidence alongside the old evolutionary story and started asking questions. Recalling Kuhn’s philosophy of science, he wondered if biologists had been defending a paradigm without questioning its assumptions. If so, they’ve been doing it for a century and a half!

It is inevitable that we conduct research within the lens of existing paradigms, but Thomas Kuhn argued that reevaluation of assumptions encourages paradigm shifts. For over 150 y, the coevolution of grasses and large mammalian herbivores has interested biologists and has become a classic textbook paradigm of adaptation. Valerio et al.’s contribution prompts a fresh look at the assumptions underlying this paradigm. … Valerio et al.’s paper raises questions that are worth unpacking.

A simple observation should have perturbed the story long ago: horses are not ruminants. They eat grass but do not chew the cud. Why do equids appear so well adapted to grazing? Like ruminants, they can eat grass for eight hours a day and live long, healthy lives.

Is rumination a greater advantage than tooth complexity in avoiding wear?

Is crown height (hypsodonty) more advantageous than reduction of particle size in food?

Are grasses more abrasive than other plant diets? There is “little evidence” for this, Sanson asserts.

Did hypsodonty precede the emergence of grasslands? Apparently not in South America.

Are geological particles (e.g., volcanic ash) more abrasive than grass phytoliths?

To what extent do grasses accumulate more exogenous sources of grit (e.g., wind-borne sediments) than the endogenous grit in grass phytoliths? Where is the true grit?

Are high crowns more adaptive than enamel ridge complexity?

Do all ruminants benefit the same from the forestomach sorting mechanism if they ingest different quantities of grit?

Most importantly, “What is the driver for the evolution of tooth enamel complexity, durability, or cutting efficiency or effectiveness, or both?”

A Simplistic Scenario

Here’s a sample of Sanson ruminating on the complexities of these issues. They weaken, if not undermine, the simplistic evolutionary scenario.

The cause of abrasion has become more contentious since several studies have questioned the hardness of plant phytoliths and consequently their capacity to wear tooth enamel. However, even if plant phytoliths do contribute to enamel wear, it has been estimated that African buffalo may consume between 10 and 28 kg of grit and 300 and 400 kg of endogenous silica per year depending on the soil type. A fifteen-year-old buffalo on granite soils might have chewed over 200 million times on a diet containing about 6,000 kg of silica, 14 times the amount of grit on the food. These are formidable quantities and attest to the durability of teeth and the necessity for high crowns. With the potential for such quantities of abrasives in the diet, does any inadvertent advantage become less important in grazers if the wear from endogenous silica swamps the wear from exogenous grit? On the other hand, if browsing ruminants consume lower grit levels but virtually no silica, they may have a relatively higher inadvertent advantage. The relative contribution of endogenous to exogenous abrasives needs to be systematically measured over diets, seasons, and soil types and integrated with studies on chewing behavior.

Sanson remarks, “Arguably, Valerio et al. inadvertently highlight just how much we do not know about chewing, which is such a vital part of food mechanical preparation that a large herbivore might invest 8 h a day in the activity.” Then he proceeds to ask more questions:

Ruminant teeth must deal with fresh abrasive food on ingestion and softened, washed, and sorted food on rumination, possibly engaging with a wider range of biomechanical properties than a nonruminant. A horse must accommodate unwashed and unsorted food particles. Why then are the teeth so similar in many ways and why does the fundamental paradigm still make sense when the assumptions may not be so robust after all?Are the biomechanical properties relevant? Diet toughness is often considered in terms of the energy required to chew the food, but that may not be a limiting factor. Rather toughness might affect how the food locally resists fracture and flows along the basins between the complex enamel ridges when chewed.

On he goes, questioning assumptions that have supported a paradigm for a century and a half. Darn Valeria et al.! They just made it tougher to chew the Darwinian story.

Valerio et al. suggest an added level of complexity. Their perspective, as agricultural and veterinary scientists familiar with the intricate workings of the ruminant’s digestive system, bears on the assumptions made by paleontologists about the coevolution of grasses and grazers. Unraveling the selective forces that have led to the patterns of dental evolution has just become more difficult.

Unnecessary Difficulty

The difficulty lies in the narrative, not the evidence. Each mammal — ruminant or not — is living well in its habitat, because it has the right tools for the job. We don’t see horses or cows keeling over in the grass from starvation, suffering from worn-out teeth in aging gums. Ranchers have more horse sense than this; they can tell a horse’s age by looking at its teeth, even if they are courteous enough to avoid looking a gift horse in the mouth. Retired horses put out to pasture continue to graze and usually die of other causes than tooth loss. The cows are not laughing at them, mooing that they should have evolved forestomachs.

Isn’t that the motivation that causes so many evolutionary tales to fall? In their myth of progress, they envision animals emerging with more complexity over millions of years. Their “universal tree of life” icon starts at a single root and branches out in all directions, each branch “innovating” the tools necessary for whatever creature happens along. Innovations emerge because of “selective forces” that impel them toward solutions for the challenges that the environment throws at them. It’s such a blissful scenario. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

Evolutionists have been chewing this cud for too long, assuming that Darwin’s magical “selective forces” have the true grit to deal with gritty grass. Time to change the channel and watch The Way Things Work.

Greetings to our new robot overlords?

On the fallacious reasonings of reductive spiritualists.

Our souls must be concretely distinct from our bodies because we are capable of abstract thinking on morals and math and the like? Really? Or our souls are concretely distinct from our bodies because though the material making up our bodies constantly changes our inner identity does not?

Are we capable of abstract thinking from the womb? Why not? Why would our concretely distinct souls be limited in any way by the size or state of development of our brains? In as much as those making these arguments claim that we don't need a brain at all to do abstract thinking and moral reasoning. But some of us beg to differ.

Is there a dog heaven? Because the notion of a continuous self despite a changing body can also be employed to argue for a concretely distinct dog self that would exist after the death of the the dog body. But most of those making these kinds of "arguments" would likely balk at such a thought.

Here is the thing about the so called near death experiences that many are left to depend on for virtually the entirety of their reasoning for the reductive spiritualism paradigm. These are not post death experiences. If I want to know what the experience of living in Venezuela is like I'm not going to rely on a source who has live his whole life in Guyana because the two countries share a border. A near Venezuela experience is not the same as a actual Venezuela experience. Ninety five plus percent of those who experience near death trauma recall no such NDEs. Why not? Are some souls more reductive than most?

Most of those so called NDEs yield unverifiable/unreliable information. That's right reductive spiritualists are left relying on an anomalous finding within an anomaly for virtually the entirety of their argument. The sacred text provides an alternative explanation for this anomalous anomaly. We note that necromancy was forbidden on pain of death by our loving heavenly Father the Lord JEHOVAH. Why? There are malignant superhuman intelligences who have a stake in turning men away from the one true hope for the dead i.e the resurrection.

Job14:14,15NIV"If someone dies, will they live again?

All the days of my hard service

I will wait for my renewal b to come.

1 5You will call and I will answer you;

you will long for the creature your hands have made.

Would a re-imprisonment of ones freed spirit soul in a body of flesh that hampers rather than enhances its powers be something to look forward to?

Job was rather hoping in JEHOVAH to live AGAIN. A very different hope to some mysterious afterlife.

But of course to actually be resurrected one must first actually die.

1Corinthians15:35,36NIV"But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. "

So either there is an afterlife or there is a resurrection,one can't have it both ways.

On post modernism.

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