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Thursday 3 August 2023
Loaded dice?
A Debate on the “Randomness” of Mutation
Biologist Greg Monroe at UC Davis started a Twitter thread, beginning with the question:
Are mutations random?
Here is a brief survey of groundbreaking mechanistic work that all evolutionary biologists should be familiar with.
The historical wellspring of randomness in evolutionary theory is Darwin’s own insistence on “chance” at the causal foundations of life. This passage, from a May 1860 Letter to Asa Gray, can hardly be improved upon as an expression of his metaphysical commitments
There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope & believe what he can.
Note the entanglement with theology here — or rather, not “entanglement,” but full embedding.
My challenge to nincsnevem
Don't hide behind anonymity Nincsnevem. If you coming here demonstrate you putative superior understanding scriptures why hide your hide your identity. Surely you'd want to claim the fame of your marvelous beat down of this JW upstart. But remember sola Scriptura.
The thumb print of JEHOVAH: Embryonic edition
The Genius of the Fetal Circulatory System
Last week, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world. It is difficult to imagine a more profound testimony to design than the delivery of a fully developed baby that, only nine months ago, was a single cell. The degree of regulatory control and informational complexity of the process that drives embryonic development is far beyond human comprehension. Few biological phenomena are as gripping and awe-inspiring as the process of reproduction and the development of a baby in utero. The signature of design here is unmistakable, for so much of the process — from conception to delivery — depends on foresight and planning.
Up until birth when our son took his first breath, he was fully dependent for his oxygen supply upon the flow of maternal blood through the placenta and umbilical cord. Following his delivery, I was handed a pair of scissors by the midwife and invited to cut the umbilical cord. By doing so, I was severing our son’s connection to his mother’s blood and thus to his supply of oxygen. The placenta was also delivered momentarily after his birth, having served its task. As he made the transition from dependence on the placenta and umbilical cord for gas exchange to breathing outside of the uterus, he needed oxygen — and quickly. Moreover, the flow of blood in the umbilical vein must immediately be turned off. The changes that have to take place in the baby’s lungs and heart must happen rapidly, or the consequence will be fatal. Here, I will review the differences between the circulatory systems of the fetus and infant, describe the changes that must rapidly take place, and offer an evaluation of the respective merits of evolution and design. The information that follows is well-established and can be found in any decent textbook on anatomy and physiology. This material is also covered by medical physician and president of the UK Centre for Intelligent Design Dr. David Galloway, in his book, Design Dissected — Is the Design Real? A Clinical Look at Life’s Complexity, Design, and Ultimate Causation, a book that I highly recommend.1 Dr. Galloway also discusses it in this episode of the ID the Future podcast.
The Circulatory System After Birth
After birth, the circulatory system follows a recognized pathway, memorized by every biomedical student. If this is unfamiliar territory, than I suggest consulting the following diagram of the heart as you read.
Deoxygenated blood enters the right side of the heart through two veins — the superior vena cava and the inferior vena cava. The superior vena cava brings deoxygenated blood from the upper body, and the inferior vena cava brings deoxygenated blood from the lower body. The deoxygenated blood from both veins enters the right atrium, which is the upper-right chamber of the heart. As the right atrium contracts, it pushes the deoxygenated blood through the tricuspid valve and into the right ventricle, which is the lower-right chamber of the heart. The purpose of these valves is to prevent the backflow of blood, ensuring that it flows in only one direction. Upon contraction of the right ventricle, deoxygenated blood is forced through the pulmonary valve and into the pulmonary artery, where it is carried away from the heart towards the lungs. In the lungs, the blood travels through the capillaries surrounding tiny air sacs called alveoli. Oxygen diffuses from the alveoli into the blood, while carbon dioxide moves from the blood into the alveoli for eventual exhalation.
The oxygenated blood from the lungs returns to the heart via four pulmonary veins and enters the left atrium. The left atrium contracts, pushing the oxygenated blood through the mitral valve into the left ventricle, the lower-left chamber of the heart. Forceful contraction of the left ventricle pumps the oxygenated blood through the aortic valve and into the aorta, the main artery of the body. The aorta carries the oxygenated blood away from the heart and distributes it to various organs and tissues throughout the body through small arteries, where it deposits oxygen and nutrients. As the oxygen is used up and waste products like carbon dioxide are produced, the blood becomes deoxygenated again and returns to the heart to repeat the cycle.
The State of the Fetal Lungs
What are the main differences between the circulatory system possessed by the infant (and adult), reviewed above, and that of the fetus in the uterus? Most importantly, the lungs are not yet active in gas exchange, and in fact are filled with fluid known as fetal lung fluid. This fluid helps the growth and development of the lungs, and also prevents the air sacs (alveoli) from collapsing due to the external pressure in the womb. Around the 24th to 28th week of gestation, the fetal lungs begin producing a substance called surfactant, a complex mixture of lipids and proteins that reduce surface tension in the alveoli, preventing them from collapsing during each breath. The production of surfactant is essential for the lungs to become functional after birth. The fetal lungs also contribute to the production and maintenance of amniotic fluid. As the fetus swallows amniotic fluid, some of it is taken up by the fetal lungs. This fluid is then processed and excreted back into the amniotic sac. This process helps in the development of the digestive and respiratory systems and maintains the appropriate volume of amniotic fluid for the fetus to move and grow.
Supplying the Fetus with Oxygen
Since the lungs are not active in gas exchange during pregnancy, how is the fetus supplied with oxygen? The fetus is connected to the mother’s circulatory system through the placenta, a specialized organ that forms inside the uterus and serves as the interface between the maternal and fetal blood supplies. Oxygen-rich blood from the mother’s circulatory system enters the placenta through the maternal arteries. The fetus’s blood and that of the mother never mix. The placenta contains numerous small blood vessels called villous capillaries, which have thin walls that allow for efficient gas exchange. Oxygen molecules diffuse from the maternal blood into the placental villous capillaries due to the concentration gradient. Once oxygen diffuses into the villous capillaries, it binds to hemoglobin in the fetal blood, causing the fetal blood to become oxygenated. The oxygenated blood from the placenta is carried back to the fetus through the umbilical vein, one of the three blood vessels present in the umbilical cord. The umbilical vein carries oxygenated blood rich in nutrients from the placenta to the fetal liver. A portion of the oxygenated blood in the umbilical vein bypasses the fetal liver through a short blood vessel called the ductus venosus. The ductus venosus directs this oxygenated blood to the inferior vena cava which carries blood to the right atrium of the fetal heart.
In the fetal heart, there is a temporary opening between the right and left atria called the foramen ovale. This opening allows a portion of the oxygenated blood from the right atrium to pass directly into the left atrium. By bypassing the non-functional fetal lungs, the foramen ovale helps to direct oxygenated blood to the rest of the body more efficiently. The oxygenated blood that flows into the right ventricle is pumped into the pulmonary artery. However, since the fetal lungs are non-functional, a shunt called the ductus arteriosus diverts this oxygenated blood away from the pulmonary circulation and directly into the descending aorta, which supplies oxygenated blood to the lower body. Deoxygenated blood from the fetal organs and tissues is collected in the two umbilical arteries, which carry it back to the placenta for reoxygenation and removal of waste products.
Changes in the Lungs
What changes must take place at birth to successfully make the switch from dependence upon the placenta to breathing air? The first major change pertains to the lungs, which remain collapsed and inactive until birth. The first breath that a baby takes after delivery triggers a series of physiological changes in the lungs, leading to the inflation of the alveoli and the initiation of respiratory function. As the baby passes through the birth canal, the chest is squeezed. This pressure change and compression of the chest help expel some of the fluid present in the airways and lungs. As the baby emerges into the outside world, there are significant changes in the level of carbon dioxide and oxygen in its bloodstream. During labor, the baby continues to receive oxygen from the mother’s placenta. After birth, however, the placental circulation is cut off, leading to a decrease in oxygen supply. This decrease in oxygen levels and the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream are sensed by specialized chemoreceptors in the baby’s body. As the baby comes into contact with the cold air and the environment, its skin and nerve endings are stimulated, leading to reflexive responses, including gasping and taking the first breath. Stretch receptors in the lungs send signals to the brainstem, which, in turn, inhibits the respiratory centers that control breathing. This reflex prevents excessive expansion of the lungs and maintains proper lung function. If these stretch receptors fail, the result can be overinflation of the alveoli during inhalation, resulting in alveolar rupture and collapse.
As the lungs expand, the fetal lung fluid is pushed out, and absorbed or expelled from the baby’s airways. After birth, the fetal lung fluid is gradually cleared from the lungs and, with the help of surfactant, the lungs begin to perform the essential function of gas exchange. The transition from the non-functional fetal lung state to the fully functional adult lung state is one of the most crucial physiological changes that occur during the birth process.
Closure of the Foramen Ovale
As previously mentioned, there is a temporary opening between the right and left atria called the foramen ovale, which allows a portion of the oxygenated blood from the right atrium to pass directly into the left atrium, bypassing the nonfunctional fetal lungs. As the baby takes its first breath, the lung expansion and the increased oxygenation of the blood trigger changes in the pressure dynamics of the heart. The increased oxygenated blood returning from the lungs to the left atrium increases the left atrial pressure, while the reduced flow of deoxygenated blood from the body to the right atrium decreases the right atrial pressure. These changes in pressure cause the flexible tissue flap that covers the foramen ovale, known as the septum primum, to close the opening. The septum primum fuses with the septum secundum, a rigid membrane-like structure, effectively sealing the foramen ovale and creating a solid partition between the two atria. This separation prevents the mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, ensuring that all blood flows through the pulmonary circulation to be oxygenated by the lungs.
Closure of the Ductus Arteriosus
As described in the foregoing, the ductus arteriosus is a short blood vessel that connects the pulmonary artery to the descending aorta, bypassing the non-functional fetal lungs. This shunt allows a portion of the blood leaving the right ventricle to flow directly into the systemic circulation. After birth, as the baby takes its first breath and the lungs expand, the oxygen levels in the bloodstream increase significantly. The increased oxygen levels lead to the constriction and eventual closure of the ductus arteriosus. Within 12 to 24 hours following birth, the ductus arteriosus undergoes a process called functional closure, where the smooth muscle in the vessel wall contracts and closes off the passageway. Over the next two or three weeks, the ductus arteriosus undergoes permanent closure through fibrosis and eventually becomes a ligament called the ligamentum arteriosum.
The location of the foramen ovale and ductus arteriosus, and their state in the fetal and newborn heart respectively, are illustrated in the following figure.
Darwin or Design?
These changes in the lungs, valves, and vascular structures during the birth process are critical for the baby’s successful transition to the outside world and the establishment of a fully functional, non-shunted circulatory system. By effectively closing the foramen ovale and the ductus arteriosus, the baby’s heart and circulatory system are ready to assume the roles of efficient gas exchange through the lungs and the delivery of oxygenated blood to all organs and tissues, supporting the baby’s independent life outside the womb.
Medical physician Dr. David Galloway remarks,
Beyond the amazing physiology, we come to a second conundrum. Clearly a system like this has to work straight out of the blocks. If any significant component failed for whatever reason, anatomical anomaly, biochemical error or signaling failure, not only would the various changes be jeopardized, but the very survival of the newly-born infant would be seriously threatened. The amazing truth is that thousands of babies navigate this dangerous territory, every minute of every day. So, given our current understanding of the origin of complex systems in biology, how might such an exquisite arrangement have developed?2
This is a good question, and it does seem to be quite implausible that such a system could have arisen through a trial-and-error step-wise process such as that envisioned by neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. On the other hand, complex systems where multiple things have to work together simultaneously is precisely what we might expect on the supposition of design.
Notes
Galloway, D. Design Dissected — Is the Design Real? A Clinical Look at Life’s Complexity, Design, and Ultimate Causation (John Ritchie Publishing, 2021).
Ibid., 137-138.
Teleology: A dirty word no more,?
On the BBC, a New Openness to Teleology in Biology?
Dr. Richard Buggs is a plant biologist and professor of evolutionary genomics at Queen Mary University of London. Writing for Ecology & Evolution, he reviews an episode on BBC Two of a science series, Earth, singling out the host, Chris Packham. It’s a great review on a very surprising new openness in nature documentaries like this to non-Darwinian processes and teleology in the history of life.
As Buggs writes:
[Packham’s] view of evolution is non-Darwinian. He does not speak of evolution as a purposeless natural process with no end in mind. He speaks of it as a process that is intended and has direction.
Packham consistently anthropomorphises plants, speaking of them as if they have agency and intention. “Plants aren’t the type to give up easily,” they “developed a new trick,” “they were ready to start conquering the world”. The first trees were “the epitome of everything that plants had learned.” They “even communicate with one another” through fungal networks.
Initially I thought Packham’s anthropomorphising was just a figure of speech, but by the end of the episode it seemed more than this. I concluded that he must have a teleological, non-Darwinian, view of evolution, as no doubt many of his viewers also do. He does not view the greening of the planet as a purposeless, unintended process, but one that was striven for and aimed at. Though he ascribes the agency behind this to the plants, what he says could be consistent with a broader, more cosmic view of purpose in the universe.
Indeed, Packham goes further than ascribing purpose to plants. He describes the world around us as “This bountiful, blooming miracle.” Early photosynthesisers are described as “something miraculous”. A “wonder material led to the creation of biological machines”. Asteroid bombardment of earth is “a celestial intervention”. Plant-fungal interactions are “a match made in heaven”.
The blurb for the episode on the BBC iPlayer website reads “Chris Packham tells the miraculous story of how plant life turned Earth from a barren rock into a vibrant green world”.
It is hard to tell if these references to miracles are just figures of speech, or deliberately suggestive of divine activity. At the very least, the BBC is leaving room for those viewers who do believe in God to see a divine hand in the events described. Packham is not imposing theism upon viewers, but neither is he advocating atheism.
Read the rest here. I very much hope (but remain skeptical) that this will not remain a rare exception to the rule but will become a new trend that would feel like a breath of fresh air amidst all the materialist and atheist propaganda in popular science media.
Wednesday 2 August 2023
Foresight +Hindsight= design?
In Life, Checkpoints and Error Correction Defy Darwinian Explanations
John Coley at Northeastern University wants to help his biology students “avoid misconceptions about science.” It’s wrong to state, “Zebras developed stripes to avoid predators,” he explains at Phys.org.
[E]volution doesn’t involve “forward thinking,” or intention — ancestral zebras didn’t sprout stripes to blend in with their surroundings. Rather, given a population of zebra-like animals varying in stripedness, those with abundant verticals had a selective advantage over their plainer relatives: Hence, they were more successful at reproducing, and over time, the stripes prevailed
Whether this after-the-fact story does any better in explaining zebras is an interesting question. Why should we accept that stripes emerged as a “given”? If stripes provide a selective advantage, why aren’t all prey animals striped, for example horses and cows? Besides, not all zebra stripes are vertical. It’s doubtful that Coley’s story is any less a “misconception” than the alternative he warns against.
But what if biologists were to find a multi-step process that exhibits “forward thinking”? Can evolution account for that? And what if a process shows backward thinking — the ability to recognize that a problem has occurred, and fix it? Let’s examine some cases in the living cell and consider the implications.
Forward Thinking: Checkpoints
Cell division is a carefully choreographed process. Huge amounts of genetic information have to be duplicated with high fidelity. Organelles have to divide and move. Chromosomes have to form and align on a structure called the mitotic spindle. The nuclear membrane has to break down on cue. Molecular “lassos” have to pull the chromosomes apart. After they separate, a molecular cinch has to form on the right axis and tighten, dividing the single cell into two identical copies. It’s a marvel to watch under a microscope.
To ensure fidelity, the cell has a number of “checkpoints” during mitosis. These are go or no-go decision points, where signals give the green light to proceed, or yell “Stop!” if a problem has occurred, or if required elements are not in place. If severe enough, a no-go decision can trigger programmed cell death (apoptosis).
One example of checkpoints is described in news from Johns Hopkins. The title of the article is instructive: “Cellular Sentinel Prevents Cell Division When the Right Machinery Is Not in Place: Machinery Helps Guide Chromosomes During Division.” A research team examined one particular checkpoint mechanism: a protein that counts centrioles.
For cell division to be successful, pairs of chromosomes have to line up just rightbefore being swept into their new cells, like the opening of a theater curtain. They accomplish this feat in part thanks to structures called centrioles that provide an anchor for the curtain’s ropes. Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently learned that most cells will not divide without centrioles, and they found out why: A protein called p53, already known to prevent cell division for other reasons, also monitors centriole numbers to prevent potentially disastrous cell divisions.
Mutations to p53, in fact, are implicated in cancer — a situation where the checkpoint mechanism is broken, leading to uncontrolled cell division. This protein almost seems sentient in its ability to monitor multiple situations:
P53 was already known to monitor many things, like DNA damage and having the wrong number of chromosomes, that make division dangerous for cells,” says Andrew Holland, Ph.D., an assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We’ve discovered one more item on its checklist: centriole number.”
Here’s another example from the University of Basel: “Two are better than one — another checkpoint enzyme for flawless cell division.”
Each day, the cells of the human divide billions of times; this also requires duplication of their genetic information. Errors in cell division can cause tumor formation, and an exact segregation of the DNA (chromosomes) is therefore essential to ensure the health of the whole organism. Prof. Erich Nigg’s research group at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has demonstrated that the enzyme Plk1 plays a significant role in monitoring the segregation of chromosomes.
Plk1 has checkpoint function
The segregation of the 23 chromosome pairs of human cells only occurs when all parameters are correct. This is ensured by a surveillance process, a so-called checkpoint. Central to this checkpoint is an inhibitor formed on the chromosomes, called mitotic checkpoint complex (MCC), which prevents cell division until all settings on the mitotic spindle, the chromosome segregation apparatus, are correct. “Just like the enzyme Mps1, Plk1 also ensures the assembly of the MCC and finally the inhibition of cell division,” says the first author Conrad von Schubert. “Plk1 thus also has a checkpoint function and consequently safeguards chromosome segregation.”
These are just two illustrations of many safeguards in the cell. If you think about human monitors, like traffic cops or inspectors, they are aware of the downstream consequences of failure to meet requirements. Robots and machines can also be programmed to detect contraband or errors. The robot may be “dumb,” but whoever programmed it had to know; he or she had to have “forward thinking” and plan for the errors or failures to meet requirements.
Backward Thinking: Error Correction
Error-correction strategies exhibit backward monitoring: the ability to detect that a failure has occurred and take appropriate action. This assumes the ability to see what should have happened, and to understand the consequences of letting the failure go uncorrected.
There are numerous repair mechanisms in the cell. One was described in news from Lomonosov Moscow State University, “Novel DNA repair mechanism brings new horizons.” Notice the design words in the first sentence. “The DNA molecule is chemically unstable, giving rise to DNA lesions of different nature,” the article begins. “That is why DNA damage detection, signaling and repair, collectively known as the DNA damage response, are needed.” The article shows that this is another irreducibly complex program:
During the transcription of information (its rewriting into RNA) the RNA polymerase enzyme “rides” on the DNA chain, and stops when it finds the break. Like a proofreader of a text, RNA polymerase after it is stalled, triggers a cascade of reactions, resulting in the repair enzymes fixing the damaged area. At the same time, the RNA polymerase cannot detect discontinuities present in the other DNA strand.
The scientists found that the machinery can, in fact, proofread the opposite strand from where the break occurred. In their broken English, the Russian scientists could hardly avoid anthropomorphic language:
It turned out that only in nucleosomes, rather than in the histone-free DNA, the enzyme stopped, when the break was present in the other DNA strand. Wherein it did not stop before the break, but immediately after it. It was difficult enough to understand the mechanism that allows it to notice the damage at the “back” of RNA polymerase, as if it had “eyes on the back of the head”, although, obviously, it does not have neither one nor the other.
They went on to find a mechanistic explanation for the processes. But did they find an evolutionary mechanistic explanation? Only in terms of the lack of evolution (e.g., purifying selection):
This is just one of many processes in the DNA damage response repertoire. Damage response is a backward strategy for robustness, as we know by analogy from fire departments, medicine, and error-correcting algorithms in software. Entities don’t have to be sentient to exhibit this kind of strategic behavior; it can be programmed.
“Just in Case” Thinking: Spare Parts
Here’s an item from the American Chemical Society that simultaneously demonstrates design and debunks the myth of “junk DNA”
Carrying around a spare tire is a good thing — you never know when you’ll get a flat. Turns out we’re all carrying around “spare tires” in our genomes, too. Today, in ACS Central Science, researchers report that an extra set of guanines (or “G”s) in our DNA may function just like a “spare” to help prevent many cancers from developing.
It was thought that “G quadruplexes” were “genetic insults” needing repair. The cell is smarter than they thought:
The researchers scanned the sequences of known human oncogenes associated with cancer, and found that many contain the four G-stretches necessary for quadruplex formation and a fifth G-stretch one or more bases downstream. The team showed that these extra Gs could act like a “spare tire,” getting swapped in as needed to allow damage removal by the typical repair machinery. When they exposed these quadruplex-forming sequences to oxidative stress in vitro, a series of different tests indicated that the extra Gs allowed the damages to fold out from the quadruplex structure, and become accessible to the repair enzymes. They further point out that G-quadruplexes are highly conserved in many genomes, indicating that this could be a factory-installed safety feature across many forms of life.
We can ask, if a manufacturer decides to include a spare tire with a car, what are they thinking? The driver may go for years without a flat. The driver may never need the spare. The manufacturer is looking beyond immediate survival needs. This is “what-if” strategizing. It requires looking both forward and backward: planning ahead for a contingency, and providing equipment and a mechanism for repair if it occurs.
Natural selection cannot do that. It can only respond to the here and now. Once again, too, we see that the mechanism is “highly conserved” across many forms of life. “Factory-installed safety feature” — what a great phrase!
Unthinking: Darwinian Explanations
As we see, living cells employ forward-thinking and backward-thinking strategies. Both strategies require planning outside the immediate situation; they have to “know” the consequences of not meeting requirements or allowing defects to go uncorrected.
Can an evolutionist explain this? Someone like Coley might say, “Given that proteins emerge, the ones that had this ability prevailed.” This ignores the question of how a complex checkpoint mechanism or repair team arose in the first place. It also fails to show how one checkpoint could emerge in a series of checkpoints, any one of which has go or no-go decision-making ability for the cell. Yet without the safeguards, the cell’s lineage would quickly go extinct in a morass of errors. It’s unsatisfying to hear the evolutionist look at complex processes in a cell involving purposeful sequences and responses and say dismissively, “Well, if it didn’t evolve that way, it wouldn’t survive.”
Be it a Rube Goldberg device or a robotic assembly line, any process involving a sequence of events that must occur without error to succeed we know from experience involved planning by a mind. In no case do the parts emerge by unguided processes, because the system cannot work without every part being already in place. For these reasons, we can say that checkpoints and error correction provide not only negative evidence against unguided processes, but positive evidence for intelligent design.
Tuesday 1 August 2023
Restoring the divine name in the N.T the Watchtower Society's Commentary.
The Restoration of the Divine Name in the “New Testament”
Tetragrammaton, appeared in the Hebrew manuscripts of the “Old Testament.” (See Appendixes A4 and A5.) The divine name also appeared in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the “Old Testament” that was widely used in the first century C.E. At that time, the divine name was represented in the Septuagint by either the Hebrew characters (YHWH) or the Greek transliteration of those characters (IAO). Some portions of manuscripts of the Septuagint from the first century C.E. and earlier still exist today, and they prove this fact. So when the inspired writers of the “New Testament” quoted from the “Old Testament,” they must have seen the Tetragrammaton, whether they were quoting directly from the Hebrew text of the “Old Testament” or the Greek translation of that text, the Septuagint.
Today, however, no manuscripts of the “New Testament” from the first century C.E. are available for us to examine. So no one can check the original Greek manuscripts of the “New Testament” to see whether the Bible writers used the Tetragrammaton. The Greek manuscripts of the “New Testament” that would have a bearing on this issue are copies that were made from about 200 C.E. onward. The more complete manuscripts are from the fourth century C.E., long after the originals were composed. However, sometime during the second or early third century C.E., a practice had developed where those copying the manuscripts either replaced the Tetragrammaton with a title such as Lord or God or copied from manuscripts where this had already been done.a
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The Restoration of the Divine Name in the “New Testament”
Nash Papyrus, dated from the second or first century B.C.E.
Nash Papyrus, dated from the second or first century B.C.E., showing portions of Exodus and Deuteronomy. The divine name appears a number of times in the Hebrew text.
When Jesus and his apostles were on earth, the divine name, or Tetragrammaton, appeared in the Hebrew manuscripts of the “Old Testament.” (See Appendixes A4 and A5.) The divine name also appeared in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the “Old Testament” that was widely used in the first century C.E. At that time, the divine name was represented in the Septuagint by either the Hebrew characters (YHWH) or the Greek transliteration of those characters (IAO). Some portions of manuscripts of the Septuagint from the first century C.E. and earlier still exist today, and they prove this fact. So when the inspired writers of the “New Testament” quoted from the “Old Testament,” they must have seen the Tetragrammaton, whether they were quoting directly from the Hebrew text of the “Old Testament” or the Greek translation of that text, the Septuagint.
Today, however, no manuscripts of the “New Testament” from the first century C.E. are available for us to examine. So no one can check the original Greek manuscripts of the “New Testament” to see whether the Bible writers used the Tetragrammaton. The Greek manuscripts of the “New Testament” that would have a bearing on this issue are copies that were made from about 200 C.E. onward. The more complete manuscripts are from the fourth century C.E., long after the originals were composed. However, sometime during the second or early third century C.E., a practice had developed where those copying the manuscripts either replaced the Tetragrammaton with a title such as Lord or God or copied from manuscripts where this had already been done.a
That practice creates a special challenge for anyone who translates the “New Testament.” For example, when a translator examines an “Old Testament” quotation in the Greek text of the “New Testament,” he will not see the Tetragrammaton anywhere in the Greek text from which he is translating. However, he should be aware of two basic facts: (1) The original quotation from the “Old Testament” may contain the Tetragrammaton, and (2) the Greek text that he is using is based on manuscripts from a period of time when copyists regularly substituted titles for the divine name. Realizing this, he must make an important decision. Will he follow the Greek text that uses Kyʹri·os or The·osʹ instead of the Tetragrammaton, or will he endeavor to ascertain where the Tetragrammaton would have appeared in the original Greek manuscripts?
The basic question that needs to be answered is this: Since the
Tetragrammaton appeared in the original Hebrew text that was being quoted by the first-century Bible writers, did those writers deliberately substitute the word Kyʹri·os or The·osʹ for the Tetragrammaton each time they quoted from the “Old Testament”? Throughout the centuries, numerous Bible translators have concluded that such a substitution would not have taken place. Therefore, such translators have felt compelled to restore the divine name in their translations of the “New Testament.” The translators of the Christian Greek Scriptures of the New World Translation agree with that viewpoint.b
WHERE SHOULD THE DIVINE NAME BE RESTORED?
The following two sections of Appendix C list the verses where the name Jehovah occurs in the main text of the Christian Greek Scriptures of the New World Translation.c Appendix C2 lists verses that contain either direct quotations from or indirect references to scriptures that use the Tetragrammaton in the original Hebrew text of the “Old Testament.” Appendix C3 lists verses that do not contain a direct quotation from the “Old Testament” and provides reasons for restoring the divine name in those verses.
Appendix C4 provides a list of some of the translations of the “New Testament” that have restored the divine name in various verses.d (These are referred to in Appendixes C2 and C3.) Not only have some of these translations restored the divine name in direct quotations from the “Old Testament” but they have also restored that name in other verses where the context or other factors give a valid reason for doing so. None of these translations have been produced by Jehovah’s Witnesses.e Included in these are a number of translations that were made into Hebrew, as well as those made into many other languages. For ease of reference, these have been designated by the letter J followed by a number. For a list of over 120 languages and dialects in which the divine name can be found in the main text of the “New Testament,” or the Christian Greek Scriptures, see Appendix A5.
An even more explosive Cambrian explosion?
Taphonomy Study Shortens Fuse for the Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian Explosion problem to Darwinian evolution is well known to our readers, having been explicated by Stephen Meyer in his NY Times bestseller, Darwin’s Doubt. Objections to the case for intelligent design of the Cambrian phyla were answered in Debating Darwin’s Doubt in 2015, and we regularly post updates about the Cambrian Explosion. Since Darwin himself, evolutionists have wrestled with the question: how could 16 or more complex animal body plans arise in the geological blink of an eye? If Darwin’s theory were true, where is the evidence for ancestors in the Precambrian fossil record?
Faith in (Missing) Fossils
Evolutionary paleontologists have been trusting that the missing Cambrian ancestors did indeed exist, because genetic estimates put their origins hundreds of millions of years before the explosion. They admit fossils are lacking, but the molecular clock seemed to provide evidence for a long fuse leading up to the Cambrian radiation. Perhaps fossils of the ancestors would turn up some day to validate the molecular clock. The ancestral forms might have been too small to show up, or the material they were buried in was not suitable for preservation.
To investigate that last possibility, researchers at Oxford University led by Dr. Ross P. Anderson examined the taphonomic potential of Neoproterozoic (Precambrian) sediments from around the world. Their work is published (open access) in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. News from Oxford calls it “the most thorough assessment to date of the preservation conditions that would be expected to capture the earliest animal fossils.”
The ‘molecular clock’ method, for instance, suggests that animals first evolved 800 million years ago, during the early part of the Neoproterozoic era (1,000 million years ago to 539 million years ago). This approach uses the rates at which genes accumulate mutations to determine the point in time when two or more living species last shared a common ancestor. But although rocks from the early Neoproterozoic contain fossil microorganisms, such as bacteria and protists, no animal fossils have been found.
This posed a dilemma for palaeontologists: does the molecular clock method overestimate the point at which animals first evolved? Or were animals present during the early Neoproterozoic, but too soft and fragile to be preserved?
Anderson’s team first examined the mineralogy of the twenty best Cambrian fossil sites, such as the Burgess Shale. Using three analytical techniques, they determined that Burgess-Shale-Type (BST) rocks, notably Cambrian mudstones, are enriched in certain clays that appear responsible for the exceptional preservation. Then they asked if any Neoproterozoic rocks have similar BST mineralogy. Most do not, they concluded. But three of them do: one in Nunavut (Canada), one in Siberia, and one in Norway. These sites are assigned dates of 800 to 789 mya in the Tonian period.
Given that BST conditions preserve small, soft, and fragile animals in the Cambrian, a lack of widely accepted animal fossils in Neoproterozoic successions, even if BST preservation occurred, would suggest a real absence of animals at that time.
Guess the Result
No Cambrian animal ancestors were found in the three sites.
Microanalytical study of direct clay-microfossil associations from three of the most biodiverse Neoproterozoic mudstones, the ∼1000-million-year-old Lakhanda Group (Siberia, Russia), and the ∼800-million-year-old Svanbergfjellet (Svalbard, Norway) and Wynniatt (Nunavut, Canada) formations, suggests that the role of BST preservation promoted by clays was as important in some Neoproterozoic as in Cambrian settings. These three deposits preserve multicellular and filamentous microorganisms, as well as forms with complex spines/processes that appear to be more fragile than typical spheroidal organic-walled forms common in Neoproterozoic assemblages. Elemental (EDS) and mineralogical mapping (synchrotron-based infrared microspectroscopy) revealed enrichments of kaolinite immediately adjacent to cell walls and forming protective haloes around the fossils.
Similarities in the distribution of clays in fossils from these three Neoproterozoic deposits and those from the Burgess Shale suggest that, in both cases, clays attached to or precipitated on decaying tissues, and that conditions conducive to BST preservation were available in both time periods. The diversity of fossil organisms and biopolymers preserved in this way shows no phylogenetic bias. Burgess Shale fossils representing stem taxa from a variety of groups (Canadia – annelid, Marrella and Opabinia – euarthropods, Ottoia – priapulid, Pikaia – chordate) are associated with kaolinite. Tonian microfossils associated with kaolinite include a chlorophyte, other undetermined eukaryotes, and probable cyanobacteria, organisms composed of a variety of biopolymers. However, no metazoan fossils have been reported from these Neoproterozoic deposits.
Their conclusion: animal ancestors “had not evolved by this time.”
Animal Affinities
Another constraint can be set at the Ediacaran period (600 to 574 mya). Most Ediacaran sites are of sandstone but show good taphonomic potential, as exemplified by detailed fossils of Dickinsonia, Kimberella and frondose organisms. The animal affinities of these are doubted, but the fossils prove that the mineralogy could have preserved Cambrian ancestors, had they existed.
Comparing the role of clays in the preservation of Cambrian and Neoproterozoic soft-bodied fossil assemblages highlights the value of taphonomic data in substantiating the absence of animals. We have presented a new maximum constraint on animals of ∼789 Ma (Tonian), while unambiguous fossils from the Ediacara Biota place a minimum constraint at ∼574 Ma
Based on Assumptions
Delicately stated, but here’s the rub: to reconcile the conflict, the molecular clock will have to give. Fossils can be held in the hand and photographed. The molecular clock is based on assumptions of mutation rates. Fossils should calibrate the molecular clock, not the other way around.
This provides the first “evidence for absence” and supports the view that animals had not evolved by the early Neoproterozoic era, contrary to some molecular clock estimates.’
If the animal ancestors were not there 800 mya, and still not there 574 mya in the best possible taphonomic conditions, what are the chances they will be found in between? Slim to none is a common-sense guess. Otherwise, evolutionists are left with ghost stories: the animals appeared but left no trace. A similar argument can be made about the time between the Ediacaran and the Cambrian, since fossil animal ancestors are missing in that range, too. Science is supposed to be about what can be observed, not what is necessary to keep a popular theory from being falsified.
A reasonable conclusion from this paper is that the molecular clock is wrong, and there were no animal ancestors in Precambrian strata. This removes the “long fuse” argument and puts more bang in the Cambrian Explosion.
Coptic John ch.1:1
The Sahidic Coptic Indefinite Article at John 1:1
“The use of the Coptic articles, both definite and indefinite, corresponds closely to the use of the articles in English.” – Thomas O. Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic, page 5 (my emphasis)
What is the primary difference? Lambdin continues: “Indefinite nouns designating unspecified quantities of a substance require an indefinite article in Coptic where there is none in English.” Further, “abstract nouns such as *me*, truth, often appear with either article, where English employs no article.” (page 5)
These are the distinctions that some apologists would make of great consequence when faced with the indefinite article at Coptic John 1:1c. But making an issue of this is a smokescreen that hides either ignorance or outright deception. Why? Because these exceptions have absolutely nothing to do with Coptic John 1:1c. Why not? Because the noun used here, *noute*, god, does not fall into either of the categories mentioned above. *Noute* is not a noun designating quantities of a substance. It is not an abstract noun. Rather, it is a regular Coptic noun which, joined with the Sahidic Coptic indefinite article, *ou*, is usually translated by means of the English indefinite article “a”.
Lambdin gives two examples of this usage quite early in his grammar book. For example, on page 17 he gives the sentence *n ounoute an pe*, translatled in the key as “He is not a god.” On page 18 we have the sentence *ntof ounoute pe*, which Lambdin translates as “He is a god.” Not “he is God.” Not “he is Divine.” But, “he is a god.” This same indefinite article – regular noun construction is found at Coptic John 1:1c: *auw neunoute pe pSaje*
Therefore, there are sound grammatical reasons for rendering Sahidic Coptic John 1:1c by what it actually and literally says, “a god was the Word.” (Note: In Coptic, the "e" in *ne* is elided with the "o" in *ou* giving neunoute instead of neounoute when the words are spelled together.)
Nothing is gained by verbose, philosophical attempts at explaining that "a god was the Word" is not what the Coptic text “means.” That’s clearly what it says, so why should that not be what it means? To impute a different meaning to what the Coptic text actually says is eisegesis, not exegesis. It is special pleading of the worst kind. It is bringing theological suppositions into the Coptic text that the text itself does not support.
True, the Coptic text is a translation of the Koine Greek text of John 1:1c , but that text also can be translated literally to say “a god was the Word.” The Sahidic Coptic translators were translating the Greek text as they understood it, from the background of 500 years of Koine Greek influence in Egypt.
The challenge to those scholars and apologists who argue for a qualitative or definite reading for Coptic John 1:1c is that they have the burden of proof to show clearly, by Scripture references, where else the Sahidic Coptic indefinite article before the noun *noute*, god, has a qualitative or definite meaning.
Until they find such verses, their arguments are hollow, shallow, irrelevant, and immaterial.
It is not sufficient to merely suppose and guess that the Sahidic Coptic indefinite article before a regular noun has qualitative or definite significance. Show the proof from the Coptic Scriptures.
On the other hand, there are many verses in just the Gospel of John alone where the Sahidic Coptic indefinite article, joined to a regular noun like *noute*, god, is translated with the English indefinite article “a” in Reverend George Horner’s classic English translation of the Sahidic Coptic text, as well as in other Sahidic Coptic literature that has been translated into English.
In simple terms: Apologists and scholars, don’t continue to give us your theological biases, disguised as grammatical treatments. Don’t continue to throw up verbose smokescreens in attempts to hide the truth of what the Sahidic Coptic text says. Your arguments are built on sand.
Show us the proof of your assertions from actual Sahidic Coptic New Testament verses, if you have any.
Memra at 9:02 AM
Against Nincsnevem XXI
Nincsnevem:The apostle Paul not only taught in his letters about Jesus that he "had a prehuman existence", but also that he existed in the form of God (no one ever claimed this about angels)
Actually the angels are called Gods see Psalms ch.8:5 . Sons of God Job ch.38:4-7
Nincsnevem:and used the term THEOS for the Son completely freely, all this to the congregations made of gentiles freshly converted from paganism in letters written
Moses is called God by JEHOVAH Himself also the divinely appointed princes of the ancient Hebrew nation are called God
Exodus ch.7:1 KJV"And the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet."
Psalms ch.82:6KJV"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High."
Nincsnevem:without making it clear that this particular THEOS really only means archangel.
He made it clear that this particular has a God above him and thus is not the most high God 2Corinthians ch.1:3, Ephesians ch.1:3,Ephesians ch.1:17 etc. Thus contrary to the Nicene Creed the the Father of Christ is both a distinct and infinitely higher God than the Logos.
Moreover, if we also attribute the letter to the Hebrews to the apostle Paul, then it becomes clear already in the first chapter that the Son cannot be an angel.
No what becomes clear to a pair of unbiased eyes is that the Son was MADE better than angels in a particular respect
Hebrews ch.1:4KJV"Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."
Hebrews ch.1:5NIV"For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?"
At acts ch.13:33 Paul uses this verse in referring to Jesus' resurrection so it was via this resurrection that his God and Father made him better the angels. Before his resurrection though he was made lower than the angels a thing not possible for the immutable God.
Hebrews ch.2:9KJV"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man."
Being distinguished from the angels in a certain aspect does necessarily imply that he cannot be called an angel in some respect
At Hebrews ch.1:1,2 Jesus is distinguished from the prophet's yet we know that he himself is a prophet.
Acts ch.3:22KKJV"For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the LORD your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you."
I never said that the Church "went beyond" the Bible, but probably your denomination also preaches as doctrines that are not explicitly in the Bible, but were formed by reading several passages of the Bible together, through INTERPRETATION.
What the brothers endeavor to do is to allow the bible to speak for itself there is no infant baptism unlike the Catholic church and only those who demonstrate total commitment to JEHOVAH'S cause are allowed to get baptised. We were never taught to view our leaders as prophets or saints. Our conviction comes from our own PERSONAL study of scriptures and the way such confirms the brothers total determination to let the Bible speak for itself and JEHOVAH'S Blessing on that determination.
It is still not clear where in the New Testament it is prophesied that as soon as the apostles die, the ekklesia can close the curtain, see you in 1800 years...
And it is equally unclear to me what relevance that query has to this discussion. The brothers have never taught that those Judged to be through Christians "wheat" will disappear during the apostasy but that will be intermingle with and vastly out numbered by False Christians including false teachers ,"weeds"
The bible states that nearing/ during the endtimes their would be a separating of the true from the false and a gathering of them both and then a Judgment.
See Matthew ch.13:25-30
The intermingling with the weeds is why the end time cleansing mentioned at Daniel ch.12:8-10 proves necessary.
Daniel ch.12:10KJV"Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand. "
File under "Well said" XCVI
" I am thankful to everyone who said no to me, it's because of them that I did it myself."
Albert Einstein
Monday 31 July 2023
Further evidence that ID is already mainstream science.
Explanations Reported by Mainstream Science, Design Inference Continues to Factor
Intelligent design continues to make news, even if not by that name. Mainstream academic journals continue to disparage ID while, at the same time, finding it useful. This is not to say they are entertaining the God Hypothesis, at least so far. But the Design Filter does not require theology, revealed or natural. It simply tries to distinguish among purposeful activity, natural law, and chance. ID is a rigorous application of the intuition we all engage in daily whenever we try to figure out if a phenomenon was intentional or if it just happened. Here I will update several categories I’ve reported on before.
SETI
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) does not require atheism, but in practice, many of its adherents are fervent in their philosophical naturalism and their embrace of Darwinian evolution. If life evolved here, they reason, it must have happened in many other locations throughout the universe where conditions are suitable for advanced life.
We should distinguish SETI from astrobiology and UFOlogy, because SETI is concerned with intelligent life. And despite all the news about UAPs (“unidentified anomalous phenomena” — the new term for UFOs), most SETI advocates discount the notion that space aliens have traveled from the stars to Earth in physical craft. Sociologist Barry Markovsky from the University of South Carolina discounts the “UFO buzz” as due to psychological traits among believers. At The Conversation July 17, he urged readers to trust the real scientists.
For a scientist familiar with the issues, skepticism that UFOs carry alien beings is wholly separate from the prospect of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence have a number of ongoing research projects designed to detect signs of extraterrestrial life. If intelligent life is out there, they’ll likely be the first to know.
Any being that could build vehicles that do what they are alleged to do, violating laws of physics as we understand them, would certainly pass the design filter if verified. But since UFOlogy remains outside the mainstream, we will focus only on serious SETI that looks for signals or artifacts indicating purposeful activity by intelligent minds. At its basis, SETI relies on the design inference, even though its leading advocates would denounce intelligent design for philosophical reasons.
At Universe Today, Brian Koberlein declared, “Now SETI Researchers can be Sure” that signals came from space, not from Earth. The design inference can be seen in his intuitive discrimination of natural and artificial signals.
In radio astronomy, there are lots of natural radio signals to observe. The glow of hydrogen gas, the swirl of electrons along a magnetic field, or the pop-pop-pop of pulsars. These signals usually have a very naturalcharacter to them, so astronomers can distinguish them from the artificial chirps and chatters of terrestrial sources. But when you’re looking for the signals of alien civilizations, things can get more tricky. They should have an artificial character similar to the radio signals of humans. So how can astronomers distinguish between the distant artificial signal and the local ones?
It’s not an easy challenge. Even natural signals can be confused with artificial ones.
He reported on a new method determined by the Breakthrough Listen project to rule out interference from our home planet. The ability depends on discerning signals with which we are familiar: those intentionally sent by the activity of minds.
Robert Sanders at UC Berkeley engaged in the same “discriminatory” thoughts, “distinguishing a signal from ET” so that we are not “spoofed” by a one-off event. As principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen, Andrew Siemion came up with a technique called scintillation to identify signals emanating from the interstellar medium (ISM) far from Earth. Some local sources of radio interference have fooled SETI researchers before.
Siemion and his colleagues realized, however, that real signals from extraterrestrial civilizations should exhibit features caused by passage through the ISM that could help discriminate between Earth- and space-based radio signals. Thanks to past research describing how the cold plasma in the interstellar medium, primarily free electrons, affect signals from radio sources such as pulsars, astronomers now have a good idea how the ISM affects narrowband radio signals. Such signals tend to rise and fall in amplitude over time — that is, they scintillate. This is because the signals are slightly refracted, or bent, by the intervening cold plasma, so that when the radio waves eventually reach Earth by different paths, the waves interfere, both positively and negatively.
At Live Science, David Delgado Shorter worried that contact could result in genocide against earthlings. That inference came from the history of human conquest. It depends on ascribing similar “ethics” to other minds.
Hexagons Update
Last Year I evaluated whether hexagons in nature imply intelligent design. The answer was, “sometimes.” When bees make hexagonal lattices out of beeswax, I said, that had to be driven by coded information. This becomes even more apparent when scientists observe the ability of honeybees and wasps to adjust the diameter of the hexagons, and join them together, to accommodate size differences from one side to the other. Based on findings from Auburn University, Science Daily says,
Theresearchers found that wasps and bees used similar building techniques at the transition between small and large cells: if the size difference was minor, the insects built intermediate-sized hexagonal cells in between, but when the size difference was more pronounced, they built pairs of five- and seven-sided cells at the join. A mathematical model of the hexagonal comb structure generated a similar pattern of intermediate-sized and pentagonal/heptagonal cells at the transition between different cell sizes, indicating that the observed structure is based on fundamental geometric rules.
Whether one wishes to accept the “convergent evolution” tale to explain this is another matter. The authors of the scientific paper in PLOS Biology, though evolutionists, agree that the insects’ “architectural tricks” look like amazing “architectural solutions to nest-building problems.”
Fairy Circles Update
Causation is important in science. Instead of chalking up phenomena to chance, scientists seek to understand the causes behind them. For over four decades, scientists have been trying to figure out what created equally spaced circles in the Namib desert. Intelligent design was unlikely; one would have to invoke the aforementioned space aliens to explain that and the debunked crop circle craze. Two leading theories have competed: natural self-organization (here), or the work of termites (here).
Score another win for the termite theory. This month, researchers at the University of Hamburg claim to have “confirmed” that termites are the cause of the fairy circles in the Namib Desert. After observing sand termites in 1,700 fairy circles in Africa, Norbert Jürgens and Alexander Gröngröft “now refute the central arguments” of the self-organization theory, showing that the termites organize the sand grains to hold water for long-term storage.
“The horizontal water transports over metres in a few days assumed by the representatives of self-regulation are physically impossible according to current knowledge. The debate about opposing interpretations of a biological phenomenon is thus surprisingly decided by physics, in this case soil physics,” says Jürgens. “The soil moisture measurements on the fairy circles and the soil hydraulic properties of the sand found in the laboratory thus rule out the self-regulation hypothesis as an explanation for the fairy circles. The cause for the formation of the fairy circles is thus clear – it is the sand termites that secure a considerable survival advantage through soil moisture storage.”
No response from the opposition has been seen yet, so it’s not known if they will call their bluff or acquiesce to the new causal explanation. If the termite theory wins, then ID still has a role — not to allege that termites are capable of conscious thought — but as Eric Cassell argues in Animal Algorithms, instincts that show purposeful activity for function imply programming just as much as robotic activity does. These termites may not be thinking about organizing sand grains for water storage. Their collective behavior, though, shows them acting with foresight and intention as if programmed to do so.
Speaking of regularly spaced circles, I observed something similar in southern Utah from a helicopter in 2019 (see the photo at the top). If any aspiring ID researcher wishes to practice the design inference and determine if they are natural or artificial, the coordinates are 37° 0’55.92″N, 112°20’2.67″W.
Saying we don't know in more than so many words.
In Some Science Contexts, “Emergence” Really Means “We Don’t Know How”
For some purposes, “emergence” is just another word in the dictionary. For example, ”caterpillar emergence” (emphasis added) means just that: Caterpillars exiting their eggs.
But there is a sneakier way the word is sometimes used in science contexts: It’s a way of pretending we know something we don’t or that something can happen in a certain way — but we have no evidence for that.
Consider Three Illustrations
First:
Abiotic emergence of ordered information stored in the form of RNA is an important unresolved problem concerning the origin of life.
TOTANI, T. EMERGENCE OF LIFE IN AN INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE. SCI REP 10, 1671 (2020).
When used with respect to the origin of life, emergence is intended to convey the idea that life simply started to form without any intelligence in the universe directing it. The author is willing to admit that this is “an important unresolved problem” but the word “emergence” encourages us to think of it as like the caterpillar bursting out of the egg — forgetting that, in this case, the origin of the egg and other life forms is precisely what we wish to account for.
The study of human evolution has become particularly focussed on the emergence of language and human consciousness with respect to the social behaviour and mental capacities of our closest relatives: the apes.
JONKER, A. THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN MIND A SPECULATION ON THE EMERGENCE OF LANGUAGE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. ACTA BIOTHEOR 36, 129–177 (1987).
this example, “emergence” encourages us to consider the gradual origin of human language and consciousness from the social and mental capacities of apes as both plausible and scientific. It fuzzes over the fact that we have no idea how these things emerged and enables speculation to sound like a sort of fact.
And the third illustration?
Meanwhile, the categorization of types of religion (e.g., as polytheism, henotheism, or other) continued to stimulate attempts at a deeper understanding of the emergence of monotheism.
NINIAN SMART, THE EDITORS OF ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANICA, “HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF RELIGION” – BRITANNICA
Emergence here subtly encourages us to adopt biological evolutionary theory as a model for understanding monotheism. That is, we are not supposed to see monotheism as an initiative from the outside, suddenly appearing, as in: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.’” (Genesis17:1) The choice of emergence is not a question of evidence but of what is permitted to count as an explanation.
In that sense, emergence permits the improbable to be considered probable for the purposes of sounding like science without providing any actual science.
These types of uses of the word and the underlying concepts that enable them have attracted criticism from varying perspectives. Here are two:
Emergence” Is a Prayer Trying to Be an Explanation
Yervant Kulbashian, who leads an applied AI team at a robotics company, doesn’t like the term, especially as applied to artificial intelligence:
Emergence can only be ascribed to a phenomenon in retrospect, once you already know what has “emerged”. The higher-level properties that emerge are qualitatively different from those at the lower-level — otherwise it wouldn’t be “emergence”. So by necessity they could not have been predicted from the lower-level ones. The properties of “intelligence” could not have been logically foreseen from the properties of neurons unless you had already observed that property emerge in a similar substrate. And even then it’s just a guess that is likely to be wrong given the complexity of the interactions involved; small differences can easily invalidate the hypothesis. In both cases emergence gives no new information: when explaining existing examples it gives you no new insights about the processes except that they happen; and when predicting unknown behaviours it gives very poor guarantees that anything you expect to happen will do so.
Emergence is only really valid as a general metaphysical classification of certain phenomena. It’s a metaphysical category, like “cause”, “effect” or “change”. Using the word when explaining cognition is not wrong per se, it just has no real meaning or explanatory force. It’s like having a theory of “thing-happened-ness” — it’s correct, but void of content.
Y. KULBASHIAN, “EMERGENCE” ISN’T AN EXPLANATION, IT’S A PRAYER,” MEDIUM, JULY 15, 2023
He adds that the term is used in AI development “whenever someone encounters a phenomenon in the human mind and has no idea how to even start explaining it (e.g. art, socialization, empathy, transcendental aesthetics, DnD, etc).”
Emergence has nothing to do with the whole being more than its parts. Instead, it calls our attention to behavioural outcomes that reveal themselves at the level of the whole rather than at the level of the parts, but this is not the same as the creation of an inequality of wholes and parts. Don’t fall prey to the lure of mystical interpretations, fanciful explanations, or hand-waving. Instead, see emergence for what it truly is — the system’s behaviour emerging from the interactions of its constituent elements.
DEREK CABRERA, “THE ABSURDITY OF EMERGENCE,” IAI.TV, JULY 26, 2023.
No. That ship sailed a long time ago. For example, the people who talk about the emergence of human consciousness and language would be only too happy to show how they arose from ape behavior. Trouble is, they can’t. “Emergence” is a way around admitting a reality that mocks their devoutly held promissory materialism.
Promissory materialism is the future facts that must turn out to be the case if materialism is true. We should, on that view, find materialist explanations for the origin of life, mind, and religion any day now. No day that we recognize that we can’t do so can even be contemplated.
And that is where emergence stands bravely in the gap.
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