Saturday 8 April 2023

What cosmic speed limit?

Complications re:Darwinism's "simple beginning"

James Tour on Origin-of-Life Dealbreakers

Evolution News

On a new episode of ID the Future, distinguished synthetic organic chemist James Tour of Rice University explains why the goal of synthesizing life from non-life in conditions similar to those of the early Earth appears further away than ever. It’s not an illusion, he explains. The illusion was how close OOL researchers thought they were 50-70 years ago. They were never close, and the more we learn about how mind-bogglingly sophisticated even the simplest cells are, and how the complexity is essential for biological life, the more we realize just how far we are from constructing a plausible scenario for the mindless origin of the first life.

Tour points out that even granting a great deal of intelligent design in the form of the highly skilled and interventionist work of the origin-of-life researchers in the lab, they still can’t engineer into existence all the key building blocks of a living cell. What if you handed them all the building blocks in the right proportions? They’re still nowhere near being able to intelligently design those ingredients into a living cell, Tour says. It has to do with what’s termed the interactome — that is, all the interdependent molecular interactions in a particular cell, many of which may initially appear unimportant but turn out to be crucial.

Tour doesn’t argue that researchers will never be able to design a cell from non-living matter. He does say that if it is achieved, it will be well into the future. What will such an achievement underscore? As host Casey Luskin emphasizes, it will highlight the creative power of intelligent agency.

Download the podcast or listen to it Here. The occasion for Dr. Tour’s conversation with Dr. Luskin is Tour’s essay in a new Book now available for free download, Science and Faith in Dialogue. For more from Dr. Tour, check out his Website and his YouTube Channel.

Friday 7 April 2023

Yet one more rant on the utter absurdity of Christendom's Trinity dogma.

Imagine a book with three Chapters,the subject of each chapter is a complete up to the moment understanding Chemistry. That's right if one diligently studies any of the three chapters of our hypothetical book he would become an expert on the subject of chemistry. Also having studied any of the three chapters none of the remaining chapters could contribute any further understanding of the aforesaid subject to our reader .

Let's say that this book alone contained this up to the moment understanding of chemistry.

If all of these premises be accepted as true, how could the claim that that any particular chapter of this book is necessary re: a complete understanding of chemistry be taken seriously?

Would this book in its entirety be any more valuable re: an up to the moment knowledge of chemistry than any of its chapters?

Would any worthwhile refutation be possible of the observation that this book is a couple of chapters too long?

More cause for despair re:Darwinism's "simple beginning"

Do Present Proposals on Chemical Evolutionary Mechanisms Point Toward the First Life?

James M Tour

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series of excerpts from chapters in the recent book, Science and Faith in Dialogue, edited by Frederik van Niekerk and Nico Vorster. You can download a full copy of the book for free by going here

Abiogenesis is the prebiotic process wherein life, such as a cell, arises from non-living materials such as simple organic compounds. Long before evolution could even begin, the origin of the first life, that first cell, would have arisen from some simpler non-living molecules. On Earth, the essential molecules for life as we know it are carbohydrates (also called sugars or saccharides), nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins (polymers of amino acids). Described in this chapter is the process by which organic synthesis is performed and the considerations that are generally required to synthesize a complex system where many molecular parts come together to operate concertedly. This will be demonstrated in the synthesis of nanomachines.

Then some proposals that others have espoused for the synthesis of carbohydrates and carbohydrate- bearing nucleotide bases will be considered, from a prebiotic milieu. The obstacles to the much more difficult task of having the molecular building blocks assemble into a functional system will be briefly mentioned. The scientifically unknown entities that have been proposed to have seeded life on Earth, such as a design agent or panspermia, are not considered. An opinion showing that the strongest evidence against the proposals of current prebiotic research is the researchers’ own data will be rendered. The current proposals can prevent the discovery of scientific solutions in the field as they seem to be directing researchers down paths of futility despite hyperbolic claims to the contrary.

Paths of Futility

Any account of the origin of the first form of life must include a mechanism for the generation of the chemicals needed for life and then for how life arose from those pre-existing non-living chemicals. Abiogenesis proposals attempt to explain how chemical processes transformed pre-existing non-living chemicals into more complex information-bearing molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. For an account of the origin of life to be realistic, there must be chemical processes that can successfully arrange simple organic compounds into complex biologically relevant macromolecules and living cells. Life requires carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. But what is the chemistry behind their origin? What is the origin of metabolism, or of the information-storage and processing systems that depend on these complex biochemical compounds?

Working in synthetic chemistry, building relatively simple nanomachines, has led to being sceptical of proposals for the origin of the requisite chemical building blocks necessary for life. Some biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for the synthesis of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, or nucleic acids. They have been grossly misinformed. Others think that, if not yet known, such chemical pathways will soon be identified. To me, these biologists are naively optimistic. What they hope for will not happen anytime soon.

And no wonder: few biologists have ever synthesized a complex molecule ab initio. Experience with organic synthesis leads to suggesting that chemistry acting on its own simply does not do what it would need to do to generate the biologically relevant macromolecules, let alone the complex nanosystems in a living cell. The reasons for this skepticism are further explained in more detail.

Lessons from Synthetic Chemistry

The process of molecular design and synthesis in general, what it takes to successfully build a molecule to perform a particular function, is discussed at the start. The initial design is important. Sometimes molecular designs are computer-assisted, but more often than not, the initial steps are noted on paper. A target must first be drawn or otherwise designated. This is no trivial task. In some cases, chemists have seen the target in a related system; in other cases, they guess the target’s properties on the basis of its molecular weight, its shape, the moieties appended to the main backbone and its functional capacities.

Once a target is selected, retrosynthesis is next, whether on paper or on a computer screen. Placing the target at the top, the chemist draws an inverted tree (or graph), one step down at a time, into multiple branch points, until a level where starting materials are at hand is reached. The inverted tree is then pruned. Certain branches lead to dead-ends. They are lopped off. Further refinement of various routes leads to a set of desired paths; these are the routes that can be attempted in the laboratory.

A Target and a Path

Given a target and a path to get there, the synthetic chemist must now try a number of chemical permutations. Each step may need to be optimized, and each step must be considered with respect to specific reaction site modifications and different reaction rates.

What is desired is often ever so slightly different in structure from what is not. If Product A is a mirror image of Product B, one left-handed and the other right-handed, separation becomes a time-consuming and challenging task, one requiring complementary mirror-image structures. Many molecules in natural biological systems are homochiral, meaning only left-handed or right-handed molecules are used, not both. Their mirror images cannot do their work. In addition, few reactions ever afford a 100 percent yield; few reactions are free of deleterious by-products. Purification is essential. If by-products are left in the reaction, they result in complex mixtures that render further reactions impossible to execute correctly.

After purification, a number of different spectroscopic and spectrometric methods must be used to confirm the resulting molecular structures. In case the wrong molecular intermediate is made, the synthetic chemist quickly learns, and all subsequent steps are compromised.

Finally, intermediate products are often unstable in air, sunlight or room light, or water. Synthetic chemists must work in seconds or minutes to prevent destructive natural processes or chemical reactions from taking over.

Read the rest by downloading a free copy of Science and Faith in Dialogue here

Another look at the king of the planets.

The James Webb Chronicles.

Why JEHOVAH'S law demands that Jesus Christ be sinless man and not God-man

1Corinthians15:17NIV"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. "

So the above verse clearly states that if the PERSON identified as Christ Jesus in scripture did not truly die and was not truly resurrected no redemption from sin would be possible.

If the person identified as Jesus Christ in scripture is the uncreated only true God he cannot also be a creature according to scripture, indeed he cannot even resemble any created object, according to scripture.

Romans ch.1:22,23NIV"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."

It is stupid,according to JEHOVAH'S word, to even think that JEHOVAH would outwardly resemble a man to say nothing of being fully human

More to the point if the person called Jesus in scripture was the uncreated God of scripture he would not be subject to death

Psalms ch.90:2NIV"Before the mountains were born

or you brought forth the whole world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God."

1Timothy ch.1:17NIV"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

The Lord JEHOVAH was always ,is always ,will always be immortal.

According to scripture,hence can never die and thus can never be resurrected.

No wonder then that the scriptures tell us:

1Corinthians ch.15:21NIV"For since death came through a man(not God-man), the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man(not God-man)."

Thursday 6 April 2023

Anthropomorphized Darwinism?

About Those Placental Regulatory Genes

Cornelius G Hunter

Last time we noted the teleological ideas and language used to describe the hypothetical evolution of several genes that are expressed for a mere few hours, in the early development stages of many placental mammals. And by early we mean when we consist of only 8-16 cells. The teleology is not a mere slip-up. As we have documented many times, it is a common thread running throughout the genre of evolutionary literature. It is needed to make sense of the data, because evolution doesn’t.

That teleological language appeared in an article about the research. Not too surprisingly, teleological language also appears in the research journal paper as well. To wit:

A small number of lineage-specific tandem gene duplications have occurred, and these raise questions concerning how evolutionarily young homeobox genes are recruited to new regulatory roles. For example, divergent tandem duplicates of the Hox3 gene have been recruited for extra-embryonic membrane specification and patterning in dipteran and lepidopteran insects, a large expansion of the Rhox homeobox gene family is deployed in reproductive tissues of mouse, and duplicates of TALE class genes are expressed in early development of molluscs.

Two of the evolutionists’ favorite words are “recruited” and “deployed.” They sound so active. What better way to obviate the rather awkward problem that, if evolution is true, all biological variation must be random with respect to fitness (a claim which, by the way, has been falsified so many times we stopped counting). Evolutionists nonetheless continue to spread this fake news.

And no teleological idea would be complete with the mandatory infinitive form (“for … specification and patterning”)

Politics and nationalism are just false Gods.

Revelation ch.13:4NIV"People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”"

Revelation ch.13:4NIV"ALL inhabitants of the earth (not a mere handful of "deluded cultists") will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. "

Politics and nationalism are Just other false Gods.

Revelation ch.3:6NIV"Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

What is meant by 'Son of God'?

Acts17:28KJV"For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (or he is our Father)"

Luke 3:38NIV"the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."

John 6:57NKJV "57As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father(i.e the Father caused me to live), so(in the same manner) he who feeds on Me will live because of Me."

Luke 1:35NKJV"The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."

Acts13:33NKJV"God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm:

‘You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You.’" note please that JEHOVAH'S restoring of his Son's life is spoken of as his begetting him anew.

Proverbs8:22NJB"Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works."

To be clear JEHOVAH'S Wisdom is eternal hence uncreated like its possessor. Thus the passage speaks of the initial expression of this wisdom and not the wisdom itself.

Proverbs8:30NJB"I was beside the master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence,"

Then this living derivative of JEHOVAH'S Wisdom proceeds to glorify its source by doing praiseworthy work.

Colossians1:15_16NJB"He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation,

16 for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him."

1Corinthians1:24NIV"but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

He is called logos one of the meanings of which is logic. He is JEHOVAH'S living rebuttal to those who accuse him of being a poor Father. He can only serve this purpose If he is truly a Son i.e owes his life/existence to his Father.

The supremacy of the Father permeates he scriptures II

John8:54NIV"If I glorify myself ,my glory means nothing. My Father,is the ONE who glorifies me." Once more Jesus identifies his Father as the one God of Israel. For Jesus and his fellow Jews the Father and the God were identical,the father was not a member of a collective deity. And can we even conceive of the Father claiming that if he glorified himself his glory would be nothing.(btw why is the Holy Spirit not glorifying him)

John:6NIV"I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Here again we see that the Father and the God are the same person. Unless we wish to claim that Jesus is merely mediator between man and a subsisting member of the God. Also if all members of this Godhead are truly co-equal why is it that only the Father requires a mediator and the Son and the spirit don't.

John ch.14:28"You heard me say,"I am going away and am coming back to you." If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father,for the Father (the God) is greater than I" The Son's plain declaration that the person identified as the Father is greater than the person identified as the Son really ought to be the end of the matter,unfortunately we have had to witness the most cringe inducing mental gymnastics in connection with this text.

Hebrews ch.6:13NIV"When (the)God made his (third person singular)promise to Abraham since there was no one greater for him to swear by.." God is immutable, so the apostle's declaration holds true at all times and in all places.

John ch.6:57NIV"Just as (in the same manner that) the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father (or the Father caused me to live),so (or in like manner) the one who feeds on me will live because of me." If someone else caused one to live then one is most certainly not the one God of scripture. And the comparison with the way Christ will resurrect faithful followers should be a safeguard against attempts to needlessly mystify the verse. But who caused the Son to live The Father (i.e the God).

Luke ch.18:19NIV""why do you call me good" Jesus answered" no one is good_except (the)God alone."" Here is another verse that really ought to be as plain as day as to its meaning ,but regarding which Christendom's theologians have elected for the most appalling mental contortions rather than the plain reading of the text. The Father is good in a way that distinguishes him from even the very best of his Sons. And this distinction is a transcendent one.

Wednesday 5 April 2023

Emperor Qin's tomb: a brief history.

Playing God(again)

Pleistocene Park: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Rob Sheldon

Popular Mechanics reports, “Bringing Back the Wooly Mammoth Is One Big Genetic Gamble, Scientists Say.” Pleistocene Park, as it’s called, is the brainchild of Sergey Zimov in 1997, 50 square miles of Siberia are to be returned to the Pleistocene — 25,000 years ago, during the Ice Age. (See sources here, here, here, and here.)

But how, and why? Strangely, as glaciers slowly ground over North America, producing the Great Lakes, Siberia sported vast grasslands in which the apex herbivore was the wooly mammoth. Like the bison of the American plains, the mammoth modified its environment to remove the trees and keep it a productive grassland, the “mammoth steppe.” The last mammoth died on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, some 4,000 years ago. But not before leaving frozen carcasses in the permafrost of Siberia, which were so well preserved that we have stories of stranded explorers subsisting on mammoth steaks. It is to these ancient TV dinners that we owe the rediscovery of the genome of an extinct species of cold-adapted elephant.

Well, in recreating an extinct species, what else would researchers choose — the passenger pigeon that crowded the Appalachian forests, the thylacine wolf that preyed on Australian marsupials, or the half-zebra quagga that had roamed the South African plains? For all these animals, their habitat had been taken over by humans, and it is doubtful that they would ever survive in the wild again. But the mammoth lived in Siberia, in one of the least inhabited places on earth, and likely to stay uninhabited. If ever there was a place to regain prehistoric paradise, this was it.

Getting Started

How is one to restart an extinct species? Isn’t this the chicken-and-egg problem in spades?

The idea is to recreate some of the DNA from the sequencing of frozen mammoths, and inject it into an Asian elephant egg to produce a half-elephant half-mammoth hybrid. Once a viable embryo is made, further CRISPR-Cas9 splicing can increase the percentage of mammoth DNA to produce 3/4 and 7/8 “mammophants.” Then by degrees one approaches true mammoths. Many challenges present themselves, not least is finding which hybrids are viable and which are stillborn. The gestation of an Asian elephant is 22 months and many trials are needed. This will be an expensive and lengthy process.

Wouldn’t one of the other extinct species be a whole lot easier to recreate? Why choose a mammoth?

A Mission to Save the Planet

Zimov doesn’t want to just recreate the Pleistocene, but in an echo of the commercial possibilities outlined in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, he wants to save the planet. In a world devoid of religion, global climate change (GCC) has risen to fill the need. The earth has a fever, and billions of dollars are being spent on antipyretics such as lithium batteries, giant windmills, carbon dioxide sequestration, and hydrogen fuels. If Zimov can link up to this powerful liturgy, his funding, if not his park, will be secure. And so he proposed that mammoths did not just spread poop across the steppe, distributing micronutrients, but they also cooled the planet, hence, the Ice Age.

How could a mammoth cool the planet, by flapping its ears?

That’s a peculiar feature of permafrost. It’s cold 365 days of the year. Cold enough that the methane gas, produced by methanogen bacteria slowly decomposing plant material, can form a special water ice mixture called a “clathrate.” Think of this as God’s bottled gas supply, existing in the bottom of oceans near gas seeps and in the polar permafrost. The GCC liturgy views methane as a powerful greenhouse gas, despite the fact that more abundant water vapor has already blocked all the infrared radiation that methane might potentially block, and despite the fact that methane is destroyed by ultraviolet light in less than a year. So GCC computer divinations warn the devout that should global warming begin to melt the permafrost, it would release all the methane and cause the runaway heat death of the planet.

Zimov Saw His Chance

Yet clones have no mothers, and surrogate wombs are either tanks or female African elephants. Like the elephant Horton in Dr. Seuss’ children’s book, this work will not hatch mammoths, but at best, elephants.

More to the genetics point, the same technologies would make even more profit for the breeding of humans. The success of Pleistocene Park would be rapidly transformed into Brave New World.

The carbon atom:foundation of life.

Crowdsourced smarts vs. crowdsourced stupidity.

Yet another slippery slope?

In Belgium, Subjectivity Triumphs Over Biology

Wesley J Smith

We live in an irrational age. Germany allows people to change their gender once a year simply by filing out an official form. And now, Belgium is about to allow people to change gender — apparently, whenever they want.

The Belgian supreme court previously ruled that requiring people to identify as male or female violated the equality of people who don’t see themselves as exclusively either. So, a new law will be passed allowing ongoing fluidity of gender identity which will be officially recognized by submitting a simple form. From the Sudinfo story (Google translation):

The principle of irrevocability as well as the procedure before the family court are abolished, announced the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne in a press release. . . . This means that people will be allowed to change their gender and first name several times.

Similarly, the procedure before the family court will also be abolished. It will therefore always be possible to change the sex registration or first name with the registrar, following the same simple procedure as for the first change . . .

“It is important that the rights of transgender people are respected and that they can change their sex registration based on their gender identity, without unnecessary or nit-picking procedures. The Constitutional Court has rightly pointed out that the original law is insufficient in this area. We now want to remedy this situation with this bill, so that transgender people are recognized for who they are,” the minister said.

Apparently, even if “who they are” continually shifts.

Civilization-Destroying Stuff

This is civilization-destroying stuff. Not because of the transgender issue per se, but because it represents the triumph of the subjective.

A society based primarily on feelings over thought will be, by definition, profoundly unstable. Our emotions are ephemeral. If I “feel” I am male today, and female tomorrow, and neither the next day — and the law and culture must accommodate my current emotional state — rationality as the basis of society will shatter.

Why is this, Wesley? Transgendered people are a tiny minority of the population.

Because rule by irrationality won’t be limited to gender dysphoria. The attitude will metastasize throughout the depth and breadth of society and culture, eventually corroding our most fundamental institutions and societal structures. As the ancient wisdom has it, a house built on sand cannot stand.

Tuesday 4 April 2023

Still able to cheat?

Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation

ABC News Australia

Paralympic athletes and high-ranking officials have expressed alarm at what they say is widespread and growing cheating, calling for urgent action to salvage the credibility of the Games – one of the world's most-watched sporting events.

Key points

The International Paralympic Committee is reviewing its code for classifying competitors

Officials told the review an independent body was needed to deal with cheating

Classifiers said coaches and national sporting bodies must also be held to account

A Four Corners investigation this week revealed how Paralympic athletes are deliberately exaggerating their impairments to improve their chances of winning medals, sometimes with the tacit approval or even encouragement of coaches.

At the heart of the issue is a classification system meant to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.

But Paralympians and senior classifiers from around the globe have told a current International Paralympic Committee (IPC) review how easy it is to exploit flaws in the current system and expressed their despair at the movement's apparent impotence in the face of the cheating.

In comments to the IPC's review of its athlete classification code, Frenchman Richard Perot, the Chair of the Para Badminton Athletes' Commission, wrote that the practice of misrepresenting impairments, known as intentional misrepresentation, was "the biggest threat and … weakness of our system".

He said the difficulty of proving intentional misrepresentation and the fact that penalties were so rarely handed out "tends to promote cheating as the ratio [of] little risk of sanction vs big chance of winning medals is in the favour of cheaters".

"If the community knows there are little chances of sanction, then people will cheat more and more," he said.

In 2016, the IPC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but found there was not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoing.

Most recently, Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar was banned from participating in Paralympic events for two years after the Board of Appeal of Classification found that he intentionally misrepresented his abilities when he presented for classification at the Tokyo Paralympics.

'No repercussions' for cheating, official says

In an IPC document from last year, produced as part of the ongoing classification review, more than 100 current and former competitors and officials from multiple sports and impairment classes detail their concerns with the current system.

The New Zealand-based official Ruth McLaren, who advises World Para Swimming on classification, described a "sense of powerlessness" in the face of "the increasing incidence of … intentional misrepresentation".

"Despite our best efforts, we are never able to get our evidence to the point where we can enforce these parts of the rules … " she wrote.

"This essentially means there are currently no repercussions [for intentional misrepresentation], and athletes and coaches are aware of this and are using this to their advantage."

She said classifiers should have the mandate to carry out random checks of athletes' classification, similar to drug testing.

She also called for "protection for classifiers/ volunteers from threats, bullying and abuse from athletes and coaches as this remains an ongoing issue".

US paralympic rower Laura Goodkind told the review: "It's become clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field."

Goodkind said some athletes decided "to cheat during classification because they know they'll perform better in a certain class".

She said other athletes with spinal cord injuries were being classified early in their recovery, knowing their function would "vastly improve" over time.

Misrepresentation on the rise, official says

Dia Pernot, the head of classification for World Para Nordic skiing, said classifiers needed a clear and formal system to report misrepresentation.

"Intentional Misrepresentation appears to be increasing," she wrote.

Dr Pernot said coaches of national sporting federations might be coaching their athletes to misrepresent their abilities.

"In these cases, there needs to be disciplinary action against the coach, team and [national sporting federation].

"The athlete may themselves be an "innocent" victim of their coach."

Carlos Henrique Prokopiak Garletti, a Brazilian paralympic shooter, ophthalmologist and visual impairment classifier, said national Paralympic committees should be held responsible for misrepresentations by their athletes.

"[It is] not rare to find athletes performing way better than the expected performance for their visual class," he wrote.

He said classifiers should be given the power to lodge protests over athlete classifications.

Under the current rules, only national bodies and international federations may make protests.

Another vision impairment classifier, Tania Jain, called for a tougher approach to intentional misrepresentation.

"I feel that we need to be more strict with it," she wrote.

"Sometimes we just mark an athlete NE [Not Eligible] but don't put intentional misrepresentation."

Calls for independent body to combat cheating

Winnie Timans, a consultant on classification to Germany's Paralympic committee, said the biggest challenge was trust in the classification system.

"Classification, being the cornerstone of para sport, should be transparent and trustworthy," she wrote.

She is one of a number of officials who have called for an independent body to detect and deal with the growing number of intentional misrepresentation (IM) cases.

"Disciplinary actions must be taken against athletes and support personnel that conduct IM," she wrote.

"An independent body with the resources to clear these cases would help in the development of trust in the classification systems.

"There should also be clearer pathways [on] how IM can be identified and which kind of information can count in terms of evidence for IM."

Paralympics Australia's classification manager, Cathy Lambert, also called for an independent body to investigate and respond to allegations of intentional misrepresentation, similar to the role the World Anti-Doping Agency plays on drugs in sport.

She recommended regular spot testing of athletes be considered, along with stronger provisions for whistleblowers and greater sharing of data and intelligence between sports.

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Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation

Four Corners /

By Hagar Cohen, Alex McDonald, Alice Mulheron and Dan Harrison, ABC Investigations

Posted 17h ago17 hours ago, updated 12h ago12 hours ago

Three medals, one gold, one silver and one bronze sit on a wooden surface. They have purple ribbon and the Paralympic logo.

The Paralympic Games is the third-largest sporting event in the world by tickets sold.(Four Corners)

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Key points:

The International Paralympic Committee is reviewing its code for classifying competitors

Officials told the review an independent body was needed to deal with cheating

Classifiers said coaches and national sporting bodies must also be held to account

At the heart of the issue is a classification system meant to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.

Flame burns inside the Paralympic Cauldron, a structure made of multiple curved metal pieces.

The Paralympic flame at the closing ceremony for the Tokyo Games.(AAP: Thomas Lovelock)

"If the community knows there are little chances of sanction, then people will cheat more and more," he said.

A man looks at the camera with a neutral expression and his arms crossed.

Mr Perot says the current approach to intentional misrepresentation is not working.(Badminton World Federation)

In 2016, the IPC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but found there was not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoing.

'No repercussions' for cheating, official says

"Despite our best efforts, we are never able to get our evidence to the point where we can enforce these parts of the rules … " she wrote.

"This essentially means there are currently no repercussions [for intentional misrepresentation], and athletes and coaches are aware of this and are using this to their advantage."

An overheard view of a running track with with Paralympics logo. Eight runners can be seen racing in lanes of the track.

The classification system is designed to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.(AAP: Joel Marklund)

She said classifiers should have the mandate to carry out random checks of athletes' classification, similar to drug testing.

She also called for "protection for classifiers/ volunteers from threats, bullying and abuse from athletes and coaches as this remains an ongoing issue".

US paralympic rower Laura Goodkind told the review: "It's become clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field."

Goodkind said some athletes decided "to cheat during classification because they know they'll perform better in a certain class".

A person, wearing a white cap with a USA logo, looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression and their arms crossed.

Goodkind competed at the Rio and Tokyo Paralympic Games.(Facebook: US Rowing)

She said other athletes with spinal cord injuries were being classified early in their recovery, knowing their function would "vastly improve" over time.

Misrepresentation on the rise, official says

Dia Pernot, the head of classification for World Para Nordic skiing, said classifiers needed a clear and formal system to report misrepresentation.

"Intentional Misrepresentation appears to be increasing," she wrote.

Dr Pernot said coaches of national sporting federations might be coaching their athletes to misrepresent their abilities.

"In these cases, there needs to be disciplinary action against the coach, team and [national sporting federation].

"The athlete may themselves be an "innocent" victim of their coach."

An unidentifiable person in a wheelchair rugby chair with a reinforced front bumper, holds a white ball.

The IPC's review of the athlete classification code was announced two years ago.(Four Corners)

"[It is] not rare to find athletes performing way better than the expected performance for their visual class," he wrote.

He said classifiers should be given the power to lodge protests over athlete classifications.

Under the current rules, only national bodies and international federations may make protests.

The words 'International Paralympic Committee' and the IPC logo, on the side of a white wall of a building.

The International Paralympic Committee's headquarters in Bonn, Germany.(Four Corners)

Another vision impairment classifier, Tania Jain, called for a tougher approach to intentional misrepresentation.

"I feel that we need to be more strict with it," she wrote.

"Sometimes we just mark an athlete NE [Not Eligible] but don't put intentional misrepresentation."

YOUTUBEGaming the Games: The scandal threatening the Paralympics

Calls for independent body to combat cheating

Winnie Timans, a consultant on classification to Germany's Paralympic committee, said the biggest challenge was trust in the classification system.

"Classification, being the cornerstone of para sport, should be transparent and trustworthy," she wrote.

Wheelchair races compete along a road lined with traffic cones.

Several officials told the review the classification system needed to be more transparent.(Four Corners)

She is one of a number of officials who have called for an independent body to detect and deal with the growing number of intentional misrepresentation (IM) cases.

"Disciplinary actions must be taken against athletes and support personnel that conduct IM," she wrote.

"An independent body with the resources to clear these cases would help in the development of trust in the classification systems.

"There should also be clearer pathways [on] how IM can be identified and which kind of information can count in terms of evidence for IM."

Do you have a story tip?

Email Hagar Cohen at Hagarcohenabc@protonmail.com and cohen.hagar@abc.net.au.

She recommended regular spot testing of athletes be considered, along with stronger provisions for whistleblowers and greater sharing of data and intelligence between sports.

A sign that reads 'Paralympics Australia' has its logo and the Paralympic Games logo. Out of focus in the foreground is a weight

Paralympics Australia's classification manager backed calls for an independent body to handle allegations of intentional misrepresentation.(Four Corners)

The IPC's classification code review process started in 2021 and is scheduled to run for three years.

In a statement to the ABC, the IPC said the purpose of the review was "to further improve classification as a whole and address topics that have been raised by stakeholders, including IPC member organisations and the athlete community".

"Intentional misrepresentation is one of several topics that the IPC and stakeholders have discussed in detail during the review process and will be addressed in the new code…" it said.

"The IPC strongly encourages senior officials and classifiers who have concerns regarding classification to share them with their respective International Federation so that they can be looked into and appropriate action taken.

"The IPC and all International Federations treat intentional misrepresentation as a very serious offence. It is one that can lead to a suspension of up to four years for an athlete and/or athlete support personnel for a first offence and a lifetime suspension for repeat offenders."

'Change needs to happen now'

A new classification code is not expected to be implemented until after the summer and winter Paralympic Games, to be held in Paris in 2024 and in Milan and the Italian ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo in 2026.

But Francesca Cipelli, who competed in athletics for Italy in the Tokyo Paralympics, told the IPC review more urgent action was needed.

Cipelli, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was 10 years old, competes in the T37 classification, one of a number of classifications for athletes with coordination impairments.

She said because of flaws in the classification system, she was competing against athletes with cerebral palsy whose impairments had less impact on their sporting performance than hers.

"The Paralympics were created to ensure equal competition between athletes with the same disability, while currently in the brain injury standing categories, this is not happening," she wrote.

"I'll probably never win [a medal] in the current T37 category which I'm in … because my competitors are much stronger than me because their disability affects them in a slighter way than mine does."

Cipelli said the IPC risked losing its credibility if the existing categories were not reorganised before the Paris Games next year.

"This is a real emergency; the change needs to happen now."

Monday 3 April 2023

The science on U.F.Os?

Just another false God?

A lamb with the voice of a dragon?

In search of the metropolis.

A man called horse?

Sunday 2 April 2023

George Orwell: a brief history.

When it's cruel to be "kind"

Freeing Captured Orca Could Be Cruel

Wesley J Smith

One of my favorite stories in The Little Prince has to do with a fox that the Little Prince tames. When the time comes for the Little Prince to leave him, the fox is very sad. Why? “Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

More than 50 years ago, an orca juvenile was separated from its pod, captured, and sent to the Miami Seaquarium. She has lived her entire life there.

Now, after years of protest pressure, Tokitae — aka Lolita — is to be freed. From the New York times story:

The killer whale Lolita, which has entertained generations of visitors with colossal leaps and sloppy belly flops that splashed crowds at the Miami Seaquarium, will be returning to her native waters after more than 50 years in captivity, the owner of the marine life aquarium and Miami-Dade County officials said.

The plan to release the orca — also known as Tokitae — is the result of a “binding agreement” among The Dolphin Company, which operates the Seaquarium, Miami-Dade County and animal rights advocates, the company said. The move comes after an outcry from those who complained for years that an animal from the ocean should not be kept in a small tank.

Is this really a kindness? The Seaquarium is the only home Tokitae knows. As the story notes, she can’t fish anymore and will have to be trained to fend for herself. She could starve if training in that regard does not go well. Moreover, orcas are social animals. Lolita could end up alone, not part of a pod, perhaps an object of predation because of her advanced age. (An orca’s life span tops out at about 50 years.)

I understand the motive, but this could be a case of ideology trumping actual animal welfare. And I can’t help thinking of the Little Prince’s fox.

Darwin's theory of devolution?

Michael Behe on Why Lenski’s Experiments Show Devolution, Not Evolution

Evolution News

On a classic episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe reviews the well-known Long Term Evolution Experiment at Michigan State, where evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski’s team was initially excited to see what they thought was a new species of E. coli forming in their flasks. As Behe has written here at Evolution News, one flask of E. coli in Lenski’s experiment evolved the ability to metabolize (“eat”) citrate in the presence of oxygen. But along with it came multiple mutations breaking genes, degrading genetic information, and ultimately increasing the bacteria’s death rates. It all goes to support Behe’s thesis in his book Darwin devolves : evolution is good at creating niche advantages by breaking things; it isn’t good at building fundamentally novel forms, the very thing the grand narrative of modern evolutionary theory purports that it does. Download the podcast or listen to it Here

Saturday 1 April 2023

Reductive materialists are still trying to have their cake and eat it too.

Dangerous Skating: Kauffman, Jaeger, and Roli on the Need for a New Teleology

Paul Nelson

Here is a fascinating article: “How Organisms Come to Know the World: Fundamental Limits on Artificial General Intelligence,” by Andrea Roli, Johannes Jaeger, and Stuart A. Kauffman, writing in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Notice how closely the authors skate to a robust teleology:

Our insights put rather stringent limitations on what traditional mechanistic science and engineering can understand and achieve when it comes to agency and evolutionary innovation. This affects the study of any kind of agential system — in computer science, biology, and the social sciences — including higher-level systems that contain agents, such as ecosystems or the economy. In these areas of investigation, any purely formal approach will remain forever incomplete. This has important repercussions for the philosophy of science: the basic problem is that, with respect to coming to know the world, once we have carved it into a finite set of categories, we can no longer see beyond those categories. The grounding of meaning in real objects is outside any predefined formal ontology. The evolution of scientific knowledge itself is entailed by no law. It cannot be formalized…What would such a meta-mechanistic science look like? This is not entirely clear yet. Its methods and concepts are only now being elaborated…But one thing seems certain: it will be a science that takes agency seriously. It will allow the kind of teleological behavior that is rooted in the self-referential closure of organization in living systems.

All three authors insist on their naturalistic bona fides. That’s understandable. Openly breaking with naturalism can get one dispatched to the gulag of intelligent design. For most scholars, that is a one-way trip to academic Siberia.

So, to use a musical metaphor, I simply enjoy this trio’s lyrical melody, and ignore the “Just naturalism!” squawks when they occur.

For sale: immortal evil?

Pre-Order Immortality Now! (It’s Only 8 Years Away, Apparently)

Evolution News

Ray Kurzweil, former Google engineer, thinks that humanity is a mere “eight years away” from achieving immortality. No, he’s not a spiritual leader predicting the eschaton. He’s not telling you to seek union with God and achieve immortality the old-fashioned way. He thinks we’ll be able to live forever via age-reversing “nanobots.” These “tiny robots” will correct damaged cells and make us immune to disease, thus leading to radically increased human longevity. Stacy Liberatore writes at the Daily Mail,

Now the former Google engineer believes technology is set to become so powerful it will help humans live forever, in what is known as the singularity.

Singularity is a theoretical point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution, LifeBoat reports. Kurzweil, an author who describes himself as a futurist, predicted that technological singularity would happen by 2045, with AI passing a valid Turing test in 2029. It is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. He said that machines are already making us more intelligent and connecting them to our neocortex will help people think more smartly. Contrary to the fears of some, he believes that implanting computers in our brains will improve us. ‘We’re going to get more neocortex, we’re going to be funnier, we’re going to be better at music. We’re going to be sexier’, he said. ‘We’re really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.’

STACY LIBERATORE, HUMANS WILL ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY IN EIGHT YEARS, SAYS FORMER GOOGLE ENGINEER | DAILY MAIL ONLINE

Efforts to increase biological longevity (if not total immortality) are funded at places like Altos Labs, which both Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are involved in. Peter Biles covered Altos Labs and similar operatives in this piece here, and considered the following questions: Who could afford the technology? Are the futurists delusional in thinking we can actually achieve immortality?

On a more philosophical note, greater length of physical life doesn’t solve the more fundamental, existential questions of meaning and purpose that we all have as human beings. Would living forever in a utopian technological society really be as great as the transhumanists insist?

PS.What technology's evangelists never seem to take into account is that given the tragedy of the human condition technological advancements are just as likely to empower criminality and tyranny as beneficence . For example if the proponents of the technological singularity are to be taken seriously, soon we would not merely have to worry about criminal syndicates hacking our machines but hacking us.

Friday 31 March 2023

Explosions are the rule in the fossil record?

Fossil Friday: The Triassic Explosion of Marine Reptiles

Gunter Bechly

Last week I reported about the abrupt origin of ichthyosaurs in the Early Triassic. However, ichthyosaurs are not the only marine reptiles that appeared abruptly in the Early Triassic. Actually, there are 15 (!) different families of marine reptiles that appear as if out of nowhere in Triassic deposits, while none of them or any putative precursors are known from the preceding Permian period. All aquatic reptiles from the Permian (McMenamin 2019), such as mesosaurs, are clearly unrelated (Laurin & Piñeiro 2017, MacDougall et al. 2018).

The new marine reptile groups appearing in the Triassic include, for example, plesiosaurs, placodonts (like the featured Psephoderma), nothosaurs, thalattosaurs, hupehsuchians, nasorostrians, ichthyopterygians, pleurosaurids, and enigmatic forms like Atopodentatus as well as marine turtles and marine crocodiles (thalattosuchians) (Motani 2009). Twitchett & Foster (2012: fig. 5) showed that these 15 families appeared within 9 million years “from obscure origins in the Early Triassic.” It is not like we Darwin critics make this stuff up. We just look at all the evidence and draw our conclusions from conflicting data that Darwinists prefer to ignore or explain away with ever more ad hoc hypotheses.

References

Laurin M & Piñeiro GH 2017. A Reassessment of the Taxonomic Position of Mesosaurs, and a Surprising Phylogeny of Early Amniotes. Frontiers in Earth Science 5:88, 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2017.00088

MacDougall MJ, Modesto SP, Brocklehurst N, Verriere A, Reisz RR & Fröbisch J 2018. Response: A Reassessment of the Taxonomic Position of Mesosaurs, and a Surprising Phylogeny of Early Amniotes. Frontiers in Earth Science 6:99, 1–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2018.00099

McMenamin M 2019. Permian Aquatic Reptiles. PaleoXiv July 11, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31233/osf.io/wb6h7

Motani R 2009. The Evolution of Marine Reptiles. Evolution: Education and Outreach 2, 224–235. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-009-0139-y

Twitchett RJ & Foster WJ 2012. Post-Permian Radiation. eLS 2012, 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/

Thursday 30 March 2023

And that's Ms.Great salt lake to you.

Let’s Declare the Great Salt Lake a Person?

Wesley J Smith

The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat.

The concept has now been advocated in a major opinion piece in the New York Times. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is shrinking — a legitimate problem worthy of focused concern and remediation. Utah native and Harvard Divinity School’s writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams — who focuses on “the spiritual implications of climate change” — makes a strong case that the lake is in trouble.

A Conservationist Approach

Her proposed remedies reflect a proper conservationist approach worthy of being debated:

Scientists tell us the lake needs an additional one million acre-feet per year to reverse its decline, increasing average stream flow to about 2.5 million acre-feet per year. A gradual refilling would begin. Two-thirds of the natural flow going into the lake is currently being diverted: 80 percent of that diversion by agriculture, 10 percent by industries and 10 percent by municipalities. Water conservation provides a map for how to live within our means. We can create water banks and budgets where we know how much water we have and how much water we spend. Public and private green turf can be retired.

If only Williams had stopped there. Alas, she plunges into environmental radicalism, urging that the Great Salt Lake be declared a person and granted rights. She quotes ecologist Ben Abbott to the effect that the lake owns its water:

“If we believe in the Western water doctrine of ‘first in time, first in rights,’ then the water law of prior appropriation says these water rights originally belonged to her as a sovereign body,” said Mr. Abbott.

Nature-Worship Mysticism

Please. This is nature-worship mysticism. The Great Salt Lake is a geological feature. It is not a living being. It is not sentient. It cannot own anything.

Nor should it be granted human-style rights. But don’t tell that to Williams:

The Rights of Nature is now a global movement granting personhood to rivers, mountains and forests. In Ecuador, they have granted constitutional rights to Pachamama, Earth Mother.

In the United States, Lake Erie was granted personhood in 2019, allowing citizens to sue on behalf of the lake. Although this right was invalidated by a federal judge, this is the new frontier of granting legal status to a living world. Why not grant personhood rights to Great Salt Lake, which in 2021 was voted “Utahn of the Year” in The Salt Lake Tribune? This is not a radical but a rational response to an increasingly wounded Earth.

Wrong. It is radical. And it is profoundly subversive of Western civilizational values:

Nature rights violates human exceptionalism: Human exceptionalism appeals to our exclusive capacity for moral agency. Only human beings have duties, one of which is to be responsible stewards of the environment and to leave a verdant world to those who come after us. That duty is expressed by conservation efforts and proper environmental regulations. In contrast, nature-rights ideology rejects the traditional hierarchy of life. In rightists’ view, humans are no more important than any other species or life form and, it increasingly seems, even non-animate features of the natural world. Those approaches — conservation versus rights — are profoundly different and would have equally divergent consequences.

Nature rights devalues the vibrancy of rights: Granting rights to nature means that everything is potentially a rights-bearer. If everything has rights, one could say that nothing really does. At best, nature rights would devalue the concept in much the same way that wild inflation destroys the worth of currency. Indeed, if a squirrel or mushroom and all other earthly entities somehow possess rights, the vibrancy of rights withers.

Nature rights would be incapable of nuanced enforcement: A conservation approach allows the natural world to be harnessed for human benefit, mediated by our responsibilities to engage in proper environmental policies and practices. In contrast, nature rights would have all the nuance of handcuffs that could never be unlocked. Under such a regime, nuanced husbandry practices would yield to the “right” of “nature” to “exist and persist.” The human benefit from our use of the natural world would, at most, receive mere equal consideration to the impacted aspect of nature’s rights — and this would be true no matter how dynamic and otherwise thriving the potentially impacted aspects of nature might be.

Nature rights is unnecessary to proper environmental protection: We can provide robust safeguards for the environment without the subversion of granting rights outside the human realm. Yellowstone National Park, for example, is one of the great wonders of the world. It has been splendidly protected since 1872 (when it was made a national park) and in a manner that has protected its pristine beauty and allowed people to enjoy its incredible marvels — without declaring Old Faithful a “person” entitled to enforceable rights.

Consequences of the Rights Approach

When we dig to the intellectual core of the movement, we find that the controversy isn’t about “rights” at all. Rather, we are having an epochal debate about the scope, nature, and extent of our responsibilities toward the natural world. The rights approach would impose such extreme duties on us we would hurt ourselves.

So, by all means, act to protect the Great Salt Lake. But turn it into a “person” with enforceable rights? Absolutely not!

Hideki Tojo : a brief history.

Resistance is futile?

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Saturday 8 April 2023

James Tour on Origin-of-Life Dealbreakers

Friday 7 April 2023

Do Present Proposals on Chemical Evolutionary Mechanisms Point Toward the First Life?

Thursday 6 April 2023

About Those Placental Regulatory Genes

Wednesday 5 April 2023

Pleistocene Park: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

In Belgium, Subjectivity Triumphs Over Biology

Tuesday 4 April 2023

Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation

Monday 3 April 2023

Sunday 2 April 2023

Freeing Captured Orca Could Be Cruel

Michael Behe on Why Lenski’s Experiments Show Devolution, Not Evolution

Saturday 1 April 2023

Dangerous Skating: Kauffman, Jaeger, and Roli on the Need for a New Teleology

Pre-Order Immortality Now! (It’s Only 8 Years Away, Apparently)

Friday 31 March 2023

Fossil Friday: The Triassic Explosion of Marine Reptiles

Thursday 30 March 2023

Let’s Declare the Great Salt Lake a Person?

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