Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 213

April 11, 2021

From Hugh Ross: Language involves biological fine-tuning for human exceptionalism

One reason why human speech communication is so powerful, complex, and efficient is that the human body is anatomically designed for optimal speech communication. The human lungs, larynx, pharynx, vocal cords, mouth, and lips are optimized for uttering a wide range of distinct sounds at a rapid pace. The human brain is designed for complex language capability and for multilingual capability. Human legs and feet are designed to set the arms and hands free from locomotion. Human arms and hands are capable of amazing dexterity and eye-hand coordination and rapid, repetitive movements. The eyes of humans with irises and pupils set against large white spheres (a feature not shared with nonhuman primates) permit signaling between humans over distances of many meters. The human face is capable of a wide range of expressions.

The human body is optimally designed for speech communication involving just a few people in a quiet setting. It also is optimally designed for what researchers call “cocktail party listening.” Cocktail party listening refers to humans gathered in a crowded situation where many people are talking simultaneously in an environment where music and other background sounds interfere with speech recognition. Researchers have noted how well-designed human brains and human bodies are for selective listening.

Hugh Ross, “Does Complex Speech Expression Demonstrate Human Exceptionalism?” at Reasons to Believe (April 5, 2021)

We didn’t realize that anyone listened at cocktail parties. But come to think of it, if you were one of the few people who did listen instead of just talking…

See also: The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly.

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Published on April 11, 2021 20:18

Karsten Pultz on the Church of Darwin in Denmark

(Our Danish correspondent, Karsten Pultz, is the author of Exit Evolution.)

——— ——— ——– ——– ——— ——–

A ninth grade girl from my wife’s youth choir was sitting reading in the church pew before the service was to start. The vicar when passing by asked the girl what she was reading.

“I’m reading this [holding up a copy of Exit Evolution]. “Have you read it?”, she asked. The vicar uttered a most disapproving sound and told her that he was not interested in such crap. And neither did he think she should be.

“But it’s really good, you should read it?” the girl replied.

“No it’s terrible and I would never read it,” the vicar answered angrily.

My wife, who is the organist, was standing just beside the vicar when this exchange of words occurred. One might think that common courtesy should have prevented the good vicar from trashing my book in front of my wife. But no, when encountering critique of evolution the rules of polite discourse are annulled. I think we all know that by now. My wife felt obliged to make a phone call later that Sunday, to comfort the poor choir girl who had been verbally obliterated.

This attitude toward ID is common in the Church of Denmark as a whole. The head of the parish council once told my wife in a polite but disapproving way that what her husband promotes, namely ID, is nothing but creationism, – he had read this “fact” at Wikipedia! My wife has a strong sense that in and around her churches, my ID work is regularly mocked behind her back.

Bestil Exit Evolution på nettet. 198 kr.

In 2018 a vicar working in the church of Denmark was publicly reprimanded by his bishop, for having written in the parish magazine that evolution is not compatible with Christian moral values. In the public debate that followed, professor of theology Svend Andersen from the University of Århus, made it clear that the vicar’s opinion was not one that had a place within the church of Denmark.

The professor’s view seems to be prevalent among the theological elite, and when the university professors have this view it probably explains why vicars in general hold this view too. Priests preaching in the church of Denmark all went to university, so the church is in effect an extension of the academic world.

I’m not sure why there’s such hostility against ID among Danish theologians. But it appears that being part of the academic world requires offering very, very serious allegiance to Darwin, even in the department of theology. I guess someone told the theologians that evolution is science, so any criticism of evolution must necessarily be unscientific. The threat of being accused of holding an unscientific view at a university probably forces the theology professors and students to keep hailing Darwin.

In the city of Århus, we have a conservative, privately funded Bible college and one would think that ID was welcome in such a place. While that may be true, it sadly doesn’t include the college taking a public stand on the issue. Currently, the college has a student who openly and with the full support of the college promotes theistic evolution. This student has also launched a vicious attack on ID, apparently also with the blessings of the leadership.

The attack includes hours of podcasts aimed at Christian college students, featuring outrageous accusations against ID theoriests. Michael Behe, for instance, is claimed to use tricks to lure people to believe in ID and Douglas Axe’s protein research is claimed to be hopelessly outdated. In his effort to smear ID, the theology student — who unfortunately is very popular among his young fellow Christian students — uses without shame arguments gathered from militant atheists like for instance professor Stefaan Blancke. I find this unbelievably weird and concerning.

To these theologians and students of theology, it seems perfectly logical that God directed an undirected process. It also is obvious to them that considering empirical evidence for intelligent design should by all means be avoided. They agree that God designed life, but if you are able to see evidence for design in nature, you are wrong. And why would theologians at all be interested in evidence for intelligent design in nature? Blind faith after all is the best. You are obviously smarter if you hold the view that random mutation produced a nonrandom result when man was created in the image of God.

I’m sorry but I don’t get it!

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Published on April 11, 2021 19:32

Michael Egnor: Here’s why an argument for God’s existence is a scientific argument

The form of reasoning and the type of evidence accepted is the same as with Newton’s theories or Darwin’s, he says.

Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne took after someone writing at the Deseret News who argues that faith and science both play a role in fighting COVID-19. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor is (we could have called this one) not impressed:

An objection commonly raised is that “scientific theories can only involve the natural world and cannot demonstrate the existence of supernatural entities.” But that’s incorrect. The Big Bang, to take an example, was not an event in the natural world. It was a singularity, which means that it is undefined and undefinable both mathematically and in conventional physics. Similarly, a cosmological singularity — for example, a black hole — is also a supernatural entity. That just means it is outside of nature. We never observe black holes just as we never can observe the Big Bang. We can only infer — by inductive reasoning — the existence of supernatural entities such as black holes by their effects in the natural world.

This inductive reasoning is precisely what proofs of God’s existence do. We cannot observe God in this life because he is not part of this world. He is supernatural. But we can observe his effects in the natural world just as we inferred the existence of the Big Bang and black holes by observing their effects. It is the same sort of reasoning.

There is one difference though: the evidence and the logic pointing to God’s existence is overwhelmingly stronger than the evidence and logic supporting any other scientific theory in nature. Aquinas’s First Way proof of God’s existence, for example, has exactly the same structure as any other scientific theory. The empirical evidence is the presence of change in nature. Because infinite regress is logically impossible in an essentially ordered chain of changes, there must be a Prime Mover to begin the process and that is what we call God.

Michael Egnor, “Here’s why an argument for God’s existence is scientific” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: We can observe God’s effects in the natural world just as we inferred the existence of the Big Bang and black holes by observing their effects.

See also: Jerry Coyne just can’t give up denying free will. Coyne’s denial of free will, based on determinism, is science denial and junk metaphysics. (Michael Egnor)

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Published on April 11, 2021 19:01

At Mind Matters News: Why believe atheists about God?

Logic and evidence both point to the existence of God, whatever atheists may think: Michael Egnor addresses three arguments in Steve Meyer’s new book, The Return of the God Hypothesis:

Cosmic fine-tuning: “Dr. Meyer also discusses the remarkable fine-tuning of the physical constants in the universe that is necessary for the existence of life. If any of these physical values were even slightly different, mankind would not have appeared. It is as if Someone were expecting us and rigged the physics of the universe to make sure we were created.”

The typical response from naturalist atheists (people who believe that physical nature is all there is) is to claim that there is a vast set of universes out there, in most of which we could not have been created. But there is no evidence for this vast set of universes.

Egnor notes elsewhere that the concept of a multiverse is not even logical: “Universe” means everything, so “other universes” makes no sense.”

That is, if these “other universes” aren’t part of the whole, they don’t exist. If they are, they must obey the laws of physics — or else it is the atheist’s responsibility to both prove their existence and to come up with some reason why they don’t obey those laws. The merely alleged existence of other universes is not an argument against what we observe.

News, “Why should we believe atheists on the subject of God?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Most atheist arguments involve quibbles with a vast body of logic, evidence, and experience. Listen, sure — but check it out.

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Published on April 11, 2021 18:26

April 10, 2021

Researchers: Earth’s transition to stable oxygen levels took 100 million years longer than believed

During those early boring billion-year stretches, oxygen levels were swinging back and forth, dependent on the health of the cyanobacteria that produced it:

When Earth first formed 4.5 billion years ago, the atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. But 2.43 billion years ago, something happened: Oxygen levels started rising, then falling, accompanied by massive changes in climate, including several glaciations that may have covered the entire globe in ice.

Chemical signatures locked in rocks that formed during this era had suggested that by 2.32 billion years ago, oxygen was a permanent feature of the planet’s atmosphere.

But a new study delving into the period after 2.32 billion years ago finds that oxygen levels were still yo-yoing back and forth until 2.22 billion years ago, when the planet finally reached a permanent tipping point. This new research, published in the journal Nature on March 29, extends the duration of what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event by 100 million years. It also may confirm the link between oxygenation and massive climate swings.

Stephanie Pappas, “Earth nearly lost all its oxygen 2.3 billion years ago” at LiveScience

Of course, one outcome of a shorter period during which oxygen is stable enough for complex life is — the obvious one — that all that bewildering complexity of life had to just sort of fall into place in a shorter period of time. If that’s unlikely, it’s an argument for underlying design.

The paper is closed access.

Great Oxygenation Event:

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Published on April 10, 2021 20:12

At Scientific American: Why we live in a simulation

Given that this item was published April 1, we are pretty sure it’s a hoax but (“We must never doubt Elon Musk again”), curiously, Khan notes:

There is nothing in philosophy or science, no postulates, theories or laws, that would predict the emergence of this experience we call consciousness. Natural laws do not call for its existence, and it certainly does not seem to offer us any evolutionary advantages. There can only be two explanations for its existence. First is that there are evolutionary forces at work that we don’t know of or haven’t theorized yet that select for the emergence of the experience called consciousness. The second is that the experience is a function we serve, a product that we create, an experience we generate as human beings. Who do we create this product for? How do they receive the output of the qualia generating algorithms that we are? We don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, we do create it. We know it exists. That’s the only thing we can be certain about. And that we don’t have a dominant theory to explain why we need it.

Fouad Khan, “Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation” at Scientific American

That’s all true, actually. And no need to trouble Elon Musk in this matter.

Note: There is a name for the belief that we are living in a simulation, the Planetarium Hypothesis. And Elon Musk is onside:

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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Published on April 10, 2021 19:28

C. S. Lewis Society interviews Mike Behe

Author of Darwin Devolves, Edge of Evolution, and Darwin’s Black Box :

The Case for Design in Biology with Dr. Michael Behe

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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Published on April 10, 2021 18:47

Would you believe… that the brain-eye connection evolved 100 million years earlier than believed?

Yes, we thought maybe you would:

The network of nerves connecting our eyes to our brains is sophisticated and researchers have now shown that it evolved much earlier than previously thought, thanks to an unexpected source: the gar fish.

Michigan State University’s Ingo Braasch has helped an international research team show that this connection scheme was already present in ancient fish at least 450 million years ago. That makes it about 100 million years older than previously believed.

“It’s the first time for me that one of our publications literally changes the textbook that I am teaching with,” said Braasch, as assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology in the College of Natural Science.

This work, published in the journal Science on April 8, also means that this type of eye-brain connection predates animals living on land. The existing theory had been that this connection first evolved in terrestrial creatures and, from there, carried on into humans where scientists believe it helps with our depth perception and 3D vision.

Michigan State University, “A Discovery That “Literally Changes the Textbook”” at Neuroscience News

Isn’t this becoming a trend? Textbook Darwinism is surely a hindrance to the student who must learn and regurgitate the “narrative” while, if the interest is there, learning the facts by other means.

Researchers: Microbes have been “at an evolutionary standstill” for 175 million years? Researcher: “The best explanation we have at the moment is that these microbes did not change much since their physical locations separated during the breakup of supercontinent Pangaea, about 175 million years ago,” Stepanauskas said. “They appear to be living fossils from those days. That sounds quite crazy and goes against the contemporary understanding of microbial evolution.”

and

Günter Bechly: Paper says Cambrian Explosion took only 410,000 years From the paper’s media release: Moreover, the scientists’ data series reveal that the development of the fauna took place within a very short period. The transition from the “Ediacara biota” – multi-celled but very simply organisms – to the diverse Cambrian life forms occurred over less than 410,000 years.

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Published on April 10, 2021 18:30

New W.E.Loennig Interview

Here is an interview Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig did recently with Carlo Alberto Cossano of the Italian Intelligent Design organization (https://www.ciid.science), in English with Italian subtitles.

A couple of quotes from the interview: after describing his PhD thesis work in the first 10 minutes he summarizes “The outcome was in full agreement with one of the more important basic predictions of intelligent design theory: mutations usually do not produce any real new information.” Then “So to accept intelligent design and to be critical of evolutionary arguments and put them to the test can be very fruitful for biology and science in general.”

Lönnig also discusses the well-funded attempts at, among other places, his own Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, to speed up evolution in plants using radiation and advanced artificial selection techniques. Lönnig reports that only devolution occurred: the only progress observed before this effort was given up was that the genes that made some plants toxic were damaged, making these plants more useful as animal fodder. He cites experimental evidence that mutation and selection are (as also claimed by Behe) self-limiting.

Lönnig is certainly one of the most knowledgeable (and courageous) ID scientists in the world today. Here is a German TV interview with Lönnig (with English subtitles), and more background information. To those who say intelligent design advocates are only critical of Darwinism because they are just not sufficiently versed in genetics and evolutionary theory, I have a two-word (3?) reply: Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig.

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Published on April 10, 2021 06:16

April 9, 2021

Researchers: Microbes have been “at an evolutionary standstill” for 175 million years

The scientists themselves express genuine astonishment:

It’s like something out of science fiction. Research led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has revealed that a group of microbes, which feed off chemical reactions triggered by radioactivity, have been at an evolutionary standstill for millions of years. The discovery could have significant implications for biotechnology applications and scientific understanding of microbial evolution…

The microbe, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, was first discovered in 2008 by a team of scientists, led by Tullis Onstott, a co-author on the new study. Found in a South African gold mine almost two miles beneath the Earth’s surface, the microbes acquire the energy they need from chemical reactions caused by the natural radioactive decay in minerals. They inhabit water-filled cavities inside rocks in a completely independent ecosystem, free from reliance on sunlight or any other organisms…

Using advanced tools that allow scientists to read the genetic blueprints of individual cells, the researchers examined the genomes of 126 microbes obtained from three continents. Surprisingly, they all turned out to be almost identical.

“It was shocking,” Stepanauskas said. “They had the same makeup, and so we started scratching our heads.”

Scientists found no evidence that the microbes can travel long distances, survive on the surface, or live long in the presence of oxygen. So, once researchers determined that there was no possibility the samples were cross-contaminated during research, plausible explanations dwindled.

“The best explanation we have at the moment is that these microbes did not change much since their physical locations separated during the breakup of supercontinent Pangaea, about 175 million years ago,” Stepanauskas said. “They appear to be living fossils from those days. That sounds quite crazy and goes against the contemporary understanding of microbial evolution.”

What this means for the pace of microbial evolution, which often happens at a much more accelerated rate, is surprising. Many well-studied bacteria, such as E. coli, have been found to evolve in only a few years in response to environmental changes, such as exposure to antibiotics.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, “Living fossils: Microbe discovered in evolutionary stasis for millions of years” at ScienceDaily

If these findings hold up, this will be another paper that Darwinians will need to politely strangle and bury. All those confident pronouncements, and now…

The paper is open access.

See also: Günter Bechly: Paper says Cambrian Explosion took only 410,000 years From the paper’s media release: Moreover, the scientists’ data series reveal that the development of the fauna took place within a very short period. The transition from the “Ediacara biota” – multi-celled but very simply organisms – to the diverse Cambrian life forms occurred over less than 410,000 years.

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Published on April 09, 2021 21:34

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