Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 94

Researchers: Genetic mutation against malaria is not random

The study concerned higher rates of anti-malaria mutations that, when present in two copies, leads to sickle cell disease. Ghanaian men were more likely to have the mutation than European men. The researchers thought this was not due to chance.

New research challenges the overarching assumption that genetic mutations occur randomly and are then either kept or discarded by natural selection. In the study, published January 14 in Genome Research, scientists found that the rate of a specific mutation with important health implications is nonrandom, occurring more or less often in different populations that have experienced specific environmental pressures over the course of generations…

Because the study focused on sperm samples, which are equivalent to a single generation, natural selection and genetic drift had no influence on the prevalence of mutations, Livnat tells The Scientist. And given the medical importance of the mutation exhibiting increased occurrence in the African cohort, Livnat says the results “raise a fundamental challenge to the notion of random mutation.”

Dan Robitzski, “Study: Sickle Cell Mutation Driven by Pressure, Not Random Chance” at The Scientist (March 17, 2022)

Robitzski goes onto report that this finding is not popular with researcher Adi Livnat’s colleagues.

But Livnat is standing his ground:

“I do not think it is a coincidence that the HbS mutation, which provides protection against malaria, originates de novo more frequently in sub-Saharan Africans than in Europeans,” Livnat says. “I also do not think it is a coincidence that it originates more frequently in the gene where it provides this protection compared to the nearly identical nearby delta globin gene, where precisely the same mutation could happen but would not provide protection.”

Dan Robitzski, “Study: Sickle Cell Mutation Driven by Pressure, Not Random Chance” at The Scientist (March 17, 2022)

The paper is open access.

ID proponent Michael Behe, of course, discusses the malaria–sickle cell situation at some length in Edge of Evolution. We hope that’s not enough to shut down the discussion or endanger Livnat’s career.

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“Almost unbelievable” instances of horizontal gene transfer…

Bdelloid rotifers have a gene catured, we are told, from bacteria 60 million years ago:

This discovery marks the first time that a horizontally transferred gene—that is, a gene acquired from another organism not through sexual reproduction—has been shown to reshape the gene regulatory system in a eukaryote.

“This is very unusual and has not been previously reported,” Arkhipova said. “Horizontally transferred genes are thought to preferentially be operational genes, not regulatory genes. It is hard to imagine how a single, horizontally transferred gene would form a new regulatory system, because the existing regulatory systems are already very complicated.”

“It’s almost unbelievable,” said co-first author Irina Yushenova, a research scientist in Arkhipova’s lab.

Yushenova explained how this process would have occurred: “Just try to picture, somewhere back in time, a piece of bacterial DNA happened to be fused to a piece of eukaryotic DNA. Both of them became joined in the rotifer’s genome and they formed a functional enzyme. That’s not so easy to do, even in the lab, and it happened naturally. And then this composite enzyme created this amazing regulatory system, and bdelloid rotifers were able to start using it to control all these jumping transposons. It’s like magic.” Diane Kenney, University of Chicago,

“New DNA Modification System Discovered in Animals – “It’s Almost Unbelievable”” at SciTechDaily (March 14, 2022)

Terms like “almost unbelievable” and “magic” are rare in science. One can’t help wondering whether they are code for “This isn’t what Darwinian evolution would teach us to expect but we can’t talk about that, of course.”

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read:

Animal DNA modifier captured from bacteria 60 million years ago (same story which continues to raise questions)

Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more

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Neil Thomas on how Darwin’s Origin of Species came to be madly adored

Really, it wasn’t the science:

One particularly intriguing, not to say perplexing aspect of the ongoing reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species is the way in which a work almost universally vilified by accredited scientific reviewers in the 1860s should over the next century and a half have become promoted to the status of biological gospel. What could possibly account for such a discrepancy in perception on the part of cohorts of persons separated chronologically yet otherwise sharing a remarkably similar intellectual profile in terms of scientific and scholarly distinction? The following observations, in a series at Evolution News, will seek pointers towards an understanding of what on the face of it seems to be an unaccountable disparity.

Neil Thomas, “Origin of Species: From Discussion Document to Nihilist Dogma” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 17, 2022)

Darwinism was never very good at explaining the world of nature as such. It provided a fashionable basis for atheism in a world otherwise dominated by finely tuned laws. Thomas provides a fine tour of the nineteenth century in which that was just the thing many were looking for.

Note: This is the first article in Thomas’s Victorian Crisis of Faith series. Read all the articles to date here.

You may also wish to read:

At Evolution News: Darwin and the ghost of Epicurus. One way of looking at it: Darwinism enabled thinkers to retain the thought of Epicurus and Lucretius when, in general, the thinkers themselves were forgotten.

and

Neil Thomas on Darwinism’s place in the Victorian culture wars. Anyone familiar with popular science writing on evolution will see what Thomas means here. Darwinism is introduced as a hypothesis/theory but then treated as a dogma/article of faith — and (this is emotionally very important) a way of segregating the Smart People from the Yobs and Yayhoos. Appeals to science-based analysis fall on deaf ears because the dogma has become what “science” now means.

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Academic freedom in the real world…

Science prof Jerry Bergman notes a tendency in academic freedom court cases: “In all cases when information interpreted as favorable to a theistic worldview was presented in the classroom, the ruling went against the instructor, while in all cases critical of Intelligent Design and/or theism, U.S. courts ruled in favor of the teacher.”

Advancement of all forms of knowledge depends on the right to freely search for the truth and the unhindered ability to disseminate the results. For this reason, academic freedom is universally regarded as a central requirement of a free society and a prerequisite for social and scientific advancement. Although college instructors are considered to have more academic freedom than high school teachers, litigation does not support this claim in the area of religious speecti. Ttiere is little difference in legal rulings at any academic level. In all cases when information interpreted as favorable to a theistic worldview was presented in the classroom, the ruling went against the instructor, while in all cases critical of Intelligent Design and/or theism, U.S. courts ruled in favor of the teacher. In all cases it was the teacher who appealed to the courts claiming that academic freedom was denied, not the institution. Ruling that academic freedom does not reside in the teacher, but rather in the institution, goes against the very definition and purpose of academic freedom

Sounds like evidence isn’t the issue here. The issue is upholding the philosophy of the ruling class, whatever it is.

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Trust the Science! and see where it gets you: The disgraced New York State governor COVID-19 edition

Andrew Cuomo begins to face the music as — very, very slowly, we may be sure –- the story of thousands of needless senior deaths in his state during the pandemic comes to light:

● 15 March 2022: NY State Comptroller Confirms Cuomo’s Cover-Up of COVID Nursing Home Deaths

This report may be one of the first times the New York Times has broken a story related to Andrew M. Cuomo’s COVID nursing home deaths scandals. In this case, the NYT reports on the New York’s State Comptroller’s audit of New York’s COVID nursing home deaths records, which confirms Cuomo’s administration exerted influence to conceal the full extent of COVID deaths that occurred during the period Cuomo’s deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

● 16 March 2022 N.Y. audit finds Cuomo team undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths by over 4,000:

State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s audit, released Tuesday, found the administration undercounted deaths by 4,071 from April 2020 to February 2021, with 13,147 deaths occurring but only 9,076 reported.

It failed to report 50% of deaths between April 15, 2020, and May 2, 2020, a critical period of the pandemic when Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who was forced to resign last year amid sexual harassment allegations, was trumpeting his response to the virus.

Cuomo got an Emmy for his expert handling of the media elements of the crisis, later revoked in a Me Too scandal…

So, along with “Stop listening to corrupt science claims,” how about we also stop listening to corrupt media claims?

Meanwhile, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor took the risk of writing about the nursing home deaths back when Cuomo was Cool — when Andrew Cuomo was actually a big HERO (the cool dude with the loose mood …) at the TV network worked for:

● Why did New York State issue a policy that killed elderly patients during the pandemic? For all practical purposes, the government directive was essentially an order to spread COVID to people in nursing homes. This is the worst thing medical authorities have done in the US since the Tuskegee scandal, when black Americans were not given penicillin to treat disease. (Michael Egnor)

● Explosive new information about New York’s mass COVID deaths. Michael Egnor: In a video conference, perhaps accidentally, a health official blurted out the deadly policy and the reasoning behind it. Fearing political pushback, New York officials took steps to conceal from the federal government the policy that doomed thousands of seniors. (Michael Egnor)

Not only was all that ignored but, when Cuomo was finally forced out of office, it, was over Me Too offenses which — however grievous — surely don’t come up to sending thousands of people to their deaths!

So, some additional assessment:

● Media try but fail to learn from their romance with Cuomo. Revoking Cuomo’s Emmy, amid facile self-reproach, is hardly a substitute for unpacking the bigger facts of what the recently resigned New York governor did wrong. New York State’s COVID-19 policies, under Cuomo, credibly caused thousands of seniors to die unnecessarily. Why wasn’t that news? Why isn’t it now?

Essentially, COVID enabled the“Trust the Science!” elite to parade their Virtue at the expense of the lives of many others. If you, gentle reader, are one of the “others,” we suggest you don’t forget that. And don’t expect to hear much of this in the Cool media either because it mainly affects people who Don’t Matter.

While we’re here, more COVID fallout:

Bronx apartment block building where blaze killed 17 ‘was due for inspection but it never took place because officers were transferred to check if restaurants were following COVID rules’. Priorities.

9 in 10 COVID deaths are in vaccinated people. No big deal; that’s just what happens when you vaccinate a lot of people. But it is a good reason not to conduct a Reign of Terror against the unvaxxed.

Canadians Were ‘Persuaded to Fear COVID-19 Too Much’: Constitutional Rights Group. Actually we were subjected to an insane regime of fright, politically convenient for some. The worst outcome will be if the people who kept the fright going for so long face no social penalties. There should be some outcome for Chicken Little…

Chaser: Canada lifting pre-arrival COVID-19 testing requirement as of April 1. Yeh. Even the mighty Mackenzie winds somewhere out to sea — and even the greatest Crazy …

But now, what about all the media in many countries whose hind ends were parked firmly on the panic button all this time? Readers may be glad to know that some of them too are facing some thoughtful (to them, perhaps, dreadful) questions: “Feds’ Narrative for Invoking Emergencies Act on Convoy Protests ‘Faulty’ as CBC Retracts Second Story, Says Tory MP”

With Canada’s public broadcaster CBC retracting a second story about the Freedom Convoy, Conservative MP and party leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis says the government should also make amends about invoking the Emergencies Act.

“With even the CBC now admitting that some of their main narratives about the convoy and who was behind it were false, the government should admit the reasoning behind the emergencies act was also faulty and the freezing of Canadians funds was illegitimate,” Lewis tweeted on March 15.

So a wholly government-funded medium was caught telling stretchers about the citizens who are forced to fund it? With disastrous consequences to those citizens? Blow us away with amazement! Then file under: Why government should never fund media.

Trust the Science! is part of a much larger corrupt structure that needs a lot of retirement planning and plenty of unplanned obsolescence.

Meanwhile:

If it sounds unbelievable, don’t believe it.
When in doubt, doubt.
Know the location of the exits.

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L&FP, 53: Mackie’s concession regarding the deductive form argument from evil against the existence of God (answering CD et al.)

It seems there is still a feeling in some atheistical quarters that Mackie’s formulation of the deductive argument from evil has withstood Plantinga’s challenge. This recently came up here at UD. and led to an exchange:

PART A: THE EXCHANGE IN THE MAGAZINE BIAS THREAD

CD, 183: >>KF @ 174
I found this an interesting aside:

So, in an era with the Plantinga free will defence — as opposed to theodicy — on the table, what can be offered that makes God a suspect notion? ________

I think claims that Plantinga defeated the logical problem of evil are wildly exaggerated, if not downright wrong. For an excellent discussion of this, Raymond Bradley’s article is a must: The Free Will Defense Refuted and God’s Existence Disproved
https://infidels.org/library/modern/raymond-bradley-fwd-refuted/>>

My immediate response was:

KF, 190: >>[R]ight at outset, [Bradley presents] a strawman which seems to pivot on misunderstanding differences between defence and theodicy, as well as misunderstanding the difference freedom brings . . . inter alia the possibility of love thus of virtue and the possibility of actual reason:

Plantinga, however, ignores clauses (a) and (c), and targets only clause (b), that involving God’s omnipotence. He sketches a scenario according to which God did his best to create a world without evil but had his plans thwarted by the freedom-abusing creatures he had created. “Given these conditions,” he argues, God could not have created a world free of evil. This “despite” his omnipotence. True, moral and natural evil exists. But that’s up to us, and Satan, respectively. It isn’t “up to God.” So Plantinga claims.

Nope.

Here is a summary, note, an outline:

Plantinga’s free-will defense, in a skeletal form, allows us to effectively address the problem. For, it is claimed that the following set of theistic beliefs embed an unresolvable contradiction:

1. God exists
2. God is omnipotent – all powerful
3. God is omniscient – all-knowing
4. God is omni-benevolent – all-good
5. God created the world
6. The world contains evil

[–> Notice, NOT ignored, that is false, and in context willfully misleading]

To do so, there is an implicit claim that, (2a) if he exists, God is omnipotent and so capable of — but obviously does not eliminate — evil. So, at least one of 2 – 5 should be surrendered. But all of these claims are central to the notion of God, so it is held that the problem is actually 1.

[–> again, not ignored]

Therefore, NOT-1: God does not exist.

However, it has been pointed out by Plantinga and others that:

2a is not consistent with what theists actually believe: if the elimination of some evil would lead to a worse evil, or prevent the emergence of a greater good, then God might have a good reason to permit some evil in the cosmos.

[–> Notice, the issue of misunderstanding]

Specifically, what if “many evils result from human free will or from the fact that our universe operates under natural laws or from the fact that humans exist in a setting that fosters soul-making . . . [and that such a world] contains more good than a world that does not” ?

In this case, Theists propose that 2a should be revised: 2b: “A good, omnipotent God will eliminate evil as far as he can without either losing a greater good or bringing about a greater evil.” But, once this is done, the alleged contradiction collapses.

Further, Alvin Plantinga – through his free will defense — was able to show that the theistic set is actually consistent. He did this by augmenting the set with a further proposition that is logically possible (as opposed to seeming plausible to one who may be committed to another worldview) and which makes the consistency clear. That proposition, skeletally, is 5a: “God created a world (potentially) containing evil; and has a good reason for doing so.” Propositions 1, 2b, 3, 4, and 5a are plainly consistent, and entail 6.

[–> if p1, p2 . . . pn are alleged to be inconsistent but if augmented by e become clearly consistent, p1 through pn are necessarily consistent already]

The essence of that defense is:

“A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures . . . God can create free creatures, but he can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For . . . then they aren’t significantly free after all . . . He could only have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.” [NB: This assumes that moral good reflects the power of choice: if we are merely robots carrying out programs, then we cannot actually love, be truthful, etc.] [From: Clark, Kelley James. Return to Reason. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 69 – 70, citing Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil, (Eerdmans, 1974), p. 30.]

So, the attempted dismissal fails.

The deductive or logical form problem of evil fails, and with the goods of reason, love, virtue and redemption etc, the inductive form is countered. The existential form is a matter of counselling, not logic.>>

In the course of my arguing, I referred to Mackie’s concession, which CD doubted was real, on grounds of lacking documentation. On seeing the onward path of discussion, I thought it advisable to lay that out, and note that after a day or so, it is buried with hardly a comment, save for EDTA’s thank you. I think this is important enough to view as dealing with a key logic issue and worthy of headlining for record, so:

KF, 407: >>I have decided, on observing the onward exchanges, that it is worth some time to respond regarding Mackie’s concession, as it draws out some of the underlying patterns and issues in the exchanges here and elsewhere.

Let us therefore notice, from Mackie’s post humous The Miracle of Theism, the guarded, reluctant retraction of the earlier confident argument that the logical form of the problem of evil was decisive against theism. That is, in two separate passages:

[W]e can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another. [–> explicitly, a concession, and a big one] But whether this offers a real solution of the problem is another question. [p. 154] . . . .

[A]ll forms of the free will defence fail [–> really? We shall see . . . ], and since this defence alone had any chance of success there is no plausible theodicy on offer [–> note improper conflation of a defense with theodicy]. We cannot, indeed, take the problem of evil as a conclusive disproof of traditional theism, [–> the buried headline and lead!] because, as we have seen, there is some flexibility in its doctrines, and in particular in the additional premisses needed to make the problem explicit. [–> a key point of Plantinga was that the alleged contradiction was not explicit so an implied or invited premise had to be identified] There may be some way of adjusting these which avoids an internal contradiction with-out giving up anything essential to theism.

[–> better, atheists etc have not found such an additional premise: a necessary truth or a construct acceptable to theists as what informed theists actually believe and so the logical form of the problem of evils as advertised for centuries by atheists etc, fails to deliver as advertised]

But none has yet been clearly presented [–> he disputes Plantinga], and there is a strong presumption

[–> not, demonstration! He confesses to a faith commitment here as he cannot claim a proof]

that theism cannot be made coherent without a serious change in at least one of its central doctrines. [p. 176] [J L Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (1982, i.e. post mortem), pp. 154, 176.]

We can readily see:

1: that he has indeed conceded the logical problem of evil, and we can discern his general attitude to philosophical theism from his term, “doctrines,” a term that obviously suggests dogmas and dogmatism, when premises would be more apt — so we must discount for that attitude in parsing his concession.

2: As he tries to dismiss theodicies, only defenses are on offer, but he will not here call Plantinga by name.

3: When he speaks of “flexibility” and “the additional premisses needed to make the problem [of evil] explicit” he clearly implies that Plantinga is right to note that there is no explicit contradiction, and that

4: to get a contradiction, additional propositions are needed, which need to be necessarily true and/or acceptable to academically serious ethical theists — on pain of, yes, strawman fallacy (a, sadly, commonly encountered problem).

5: That Mackie manifestly cannot produce such a necessary or acceptable augmenting proposition — or he would triumphantly announce it — tells the rest of the story. For, instead,

6: he is forced to concede, tellingly, “We cannot, indeed, take the problem of evil as a conclusive disproof of traditional theism” . . . in short, the original claim that that had happened, has failed.

7: Which is all we need to know the true balance on the merits, despite his assertions that Plantinga’s arguments fail. For,

8: had he a decisive refutation, Mackie would not have had to leave the door open like that.

9: No wonder, then, that we can see how, Michael Palmer, in The Atheist’s Primer, admits:

Mackie, in his The Miracle of Theism (1982) concedes that Plantinga has shown how God and evil can co-exist – that he has successfully resolved a logical problem

[–> oh, nothing more than showing among professional philosophers that the claimed irrefutable incoherence and impossibility of God due to the logical form of the problem of evil fails; grade D, work harder!]

– but that the substantive issue still remains unanswered. After all, as Plantinga himself has made clear, a defence is not a theodicy,

[–> but it opens up reasonable confidence in God and a possible way to better understand his key attributes, so too the value of our responsible, conscience guided freedom to reason, decide, love, know etc]

and the reason why evil exists at all still remains to be explained.[Lutterworths (2012), p. 64.]

. . . so, too, we see in the Oxford Handbook of Atheism, the almost in passing remark:

Planting stipulates that, in order to show theism to be self-contradictory and thus irrational, the burden is on the non-theistic critic to utilize propositions that are essential to theism, or necessarily true, or logical consequences of such propositions [–> another way to be necessary]. Clearly, there is no logical problem for the theist if he is not committed to each proposition in the [theistic] set [as presented and/or augmented by atheologians] or if the set does not really entail a contradiction. The logical argument faded as theists were generally successful in rejecting the assumption that free will is compatibilist in nature as well as the assumption that God must eliminate all evil [to be good, omnipotent and omniscient]. Mackie’s concession, however, comes short of full surrender:

[W]e can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another. But whether [the Free Will Defence] offers a real solution of the problem is another question. (1982: 154)

Following this admission, most thinkers transitioned to the evidential argument from evil while some continued searching for a viable logical argument.[Oxford (2013), eds Bullivant & Ruse, in Ch. 5, “The Problem of Evil,” by Michael L. Peterson.]

and, in a recent Reddit post, by u/deleted under the r/DebateReligion subreddit, essentially the same admission is given as the majority view of relevant philosophers:

The logical problem of evil was supposed to show that a three-trait god (all-knowing, all-powerful, maximally-good) was logically impossible. After Plantinga vs. Mackie, I think most philosophers would agree that Plantinga at least showed there was no logical impossibility.

However, there still probably remained a great unlikelihood,

[–> actually not, as once God is a serious candidate necessary being, once such is credibly possible he is credibly actual. Further, those who object based on inductive forms, are apparently in effect attaching themselves to a compatibilist form of determinism, which is hugely controversial and arguably self referentialy incoherent. For, they assume the credibility of their own reasoning but imply or invite that our apparent freedom, responsibility and rationality, thus ability to credibly argue and know are in fact driven and controlled by antecedent forces that are irrelevant to our choosing and predetermine our behaviour, thought, argument etc. If they do not, they need to explain ______ including why the Atheist’s Handbook argues in that light.]

and that unlikelihood is known as the evidential problem of evil . . .

10: So, we freely conclude that the holder of the field is Plantinga’s: [2b:] “A good, omnipotent God will eliminate evil as far as he can without either losing a greater good or bringing about a greater evil.”

11: This directly shows that the theistic set is coherent as if there is a good reason to do so an utterly wise God would know it and an utterly good God would act to gain in creation a whole new category of virtue due to genuine, significant freedom to love, reason, think, warrant, know and decide. That is,

12: We see [5a:] “God created a world (potentially) containing evil; and has a good reason for doing so.” Where,

13: the notion that significant freedom can be antecedently programmed and determined — compatibilism — is false on its face. Which, arguably, is tantamount to transworld depravity: no world with significantly free thus ought guided creatures capable of moral, intellectual and cultural good is possible in which across the span of reality all such creatures at all times only use freedom to the good. (And yes, equally arguably for Judaeo-Christian theism, heaven is part of a package deal, with an associated world of soul test.) So,

14: the logical form of the problem of evils is dead and conceded to be dead.

15: As noted, the inductive form faces two key challenges,

[a] coherently defining good/evil without implying that the world/reality root is indeed recognisably the inherently good, utterly wise, necessary and maximally great being and creator God of generic ethical theism; also

[b] arguing without self referentially reducing our rational, responsible, morally governed significant freedom to grand delusion or utter dubiousness.

16: Objectors to the God of ethical theism are therefore invited to answer the challenges __________ and/or to explain why the Mackie concession fails __________ . (Predictably, hard to do or it would have been done by 1981 by the leading modern proponent of the attempt to refute theism by appealing to the repulsiveness of evil.)>>

Forty years after it was made, Mackie’s concession still stands. We can fairly conclude, the deductive form problem of evil meant to imply that God is an impossible being, has failed and is unlikely to be resurrected. The inductive form, faces the double challenges of defining evil vs good, and of self referential implications of compatibilism or other views that imply undermining of rational, responsible freedom. For the existential form, go find good pastoral counselling. END

PS, in a related thread, definitions were provided for evil and for good. In reverse order as good is prior — and is oddly hard to find well addressed as definition online:

KF, Argu’t from evil thread, 135: >>I see the defining of the good is something hard to find online, a bad sign for what our day is like, one can find discussion of evil far more than discussion of the good. Okay, let’s do a rough cut:

good or goodness first speaks to moral and/or aesthetic perfection and/or purity or the approach thereto, includes beneficence [and especially loving compassion and generosity], can express fitness or aptness for purpose [or superior performance], exemplary state or conduct or performance, or can relate to things or states of affairs that reflect such and related things. A good mango tree gives good fruit, often in this region the Julie is the standard of perfection or at least of reference; though I take the Bombay as preferable absent the defect of being thin skinned and prone to wrigglers (hence the eat it in the dark joke). A good tool is apt to carry out a job effectively if rightly used. A good island is happily situated, well watered, lush, has wonderful beaches etc. A good person is of exemplary conduct; Jesus of Nazareth is perhaps the generally accepted yardstick. A good God is one who is supreme in perfections and especially in moral excellence and generous beneficence, letting his rain fall on the just and the unjust, etc. A good creature is moving towards fulfillment of its due ends, especially where that is more than the mere common average. And much more. We here see that yardstick examples help us flesh out our concept and this then controls discussion as what cuts across key cases will be error.

Notice, good vs evil brings in the issue of purpose, achievement or progress towards that, and even perfection, purity, beneficence, example and more.>>

Then, to define evil i/l/o the classic brief definition:

KF, 134, but cf. 87 and OP: >>The classic understanding that

evil is a parasitical distortion, frustration, perversion, privation of the good out of its due and often naturally evident end, is antecedent to its chaotic consequences or repulsiveness etc. That classic understanding identifies that evil is not a primary entity that you can order by the boxcar load etc. It is instead, a failing to be aligned with due end, which then leads to recognising that due ends are embedded in our world. Thus, we see a way to recognise the good.

Yes, we can and do recognise the evil from its chaotic and destructive, repulsive consequences — famously in a form of the Categorical imperative, or from capital cases in point such as Nazism and Communism as they played out in living memory then from family resemblance and from seeing degrees and escalations, but that is different from identifying its substantial nature. this is not merely about word usage, we are dealing here with the is-ought gap as enconscienced creatures, where that gap can only be properly and effectively bridged in the root of reality.>>

These concepts are also foundational.

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Can the Cambrian Explosion be explained away by the earlier Ediacaran Explosion?

No, but it does help keep the Darwinpatter going:

Lukas Ruegger is the personable new intelligent design “explainer” whose videos take an approach similar to Khan Academy’s. The latter’s offering on evolution is replete with junk science, as Casey Luskin has detailed. Ruegger’s treatment of the subject is much better, and I appreciate his clarity and brevity. In the first entry in his Basics of Intelligent Design Biology series, he introduced problems with reconciling Darwinian gradualism with the fossil record, especially the Cambrian explosion which is FAR from gradual. Now he shows why attempts to smooth over the contradictions have only made them worse. Watch Episode 2 of the series here, “Still NO Fossils?”

David Klinghoffer, “Lukas Ruegger on the “Ediacaran Explosion”— No Solution to the Cambrian Puzzle” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 16, 2022)

Are there transitional forms and Precambrian fossils which reveal the evolution of the diverse animal phyla that appear in the Cambrian explosion? The history of paleontology shows the answer is no! As paleontologists have learned more about the fossil and geological record, the challenge of the Cambrian explosion to Darwinian theory has only increased.

This video is part of “Basics of Intelligent Design Biology,” a video series reviewing scientific problems with the Darwinian (and neo-Darwinian) evolution of animal life. The first four episodes (season 1) will review the basics of the Cambrian explosion and failed evolutionary attempts to explain it using Precambrian fossils, punctuated equilibrium, and the tree of life.

This series is a partnership between Discovery Institute and Lukas Ruegger, creator of the Deflate YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/Deflate2020), which has lots of great content dealing with science-faith questions and intelligent design.

Here’s the first item in the series, on Darwin’s “tree of life”:

Darwin’s tree of life is just… ground cover? “Charles Darwin himself predicted that countless intermediate animal forms must exist within the fossil record, given that organisms gradually evolved from one species into the next. However, what the fossil record actually shows is the exact opposite, namely, that whenever new species appear, they do so suddenly and without evidence of precursory forms in the geological record.”

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At Mind Matters News: John Horgan at Scientific American: Does quantum mechanics kill free will?

Physicists take sides: Sabine Hossenfelder thinks superdeterminism enables quantum mechanics to kill free will; George Ellis disagrees:

One of the most interesting science writers of our era is John Horgan, who has managed to infuriate so many of the right people (to infuriate) while giving the rest of us something to ponder. In a recent column in Scientific American he takes on the question of whether quantum mechanics (quantum physics) rules out free will.
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Einstein’s suggestion that the moon “would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord” doesn’t really resolve anything because the moon isn’t thinking anything at all. For that matter, few ponder whether particles, viruses, or termites have free will. The problem is making arguments against free will coincide with human experience. Nor can we simply say, “People just want to believe they have free will”. Sometimes we want to believe that. But other times (when we are looking for excuses).

We don’t want to believe that.

Horgan sides, somewhat tentatively, with free will. He notes that humans are more than just heaps of particles. Higher levels of complexity enable genuinely new qualities. What humans can do is not merely a more complex version of what amoebas can do — in turn, a more complex version of what electrons can do. Greater complexity can involve genuinely new qualities. A philosopher would say that he is not a reductionist.

But that also means that mental phenomena are a reality. Materialists won’t stay comfortable with that for long. We haven’t heard the last of this debate.

News, “At Scientific American: Does quantum mechanics kill free will” at Mind Matters News (March 16, 2022)

Takehome: Horgan’s arguments against superdeterminism work quite well but they require a world in which the human mind really exists. Is he prepared to go there?

Mind Matters News offers a number of articles on free will by neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor including

Can physics prove there is no free will? No, but it can make physicists incoherent when they write about free will. It’s hilarious. Sabine Hossenfelder misses the irony that she insists that people “change their minds” by accepting her assertion that they… can’t change their minds.

Does “alien hand syndrome” show that we don’t really have free will? One woman’s left hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Did it? Alien hand syndrome doesn’t mean that free will is not real. In fact, it clarifies exactly what free will is and what it isn’t.

But is determinism true? Does science show that we fated to want whatever we want? Modern science—both theoretical and experimental—strongly supports the reality of free will.

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Nature isn’t symmetrical; But is that the price of variety?

How would there be creativity without variety?:

Interestingly, some honeybees (45% to be exact) tend to naturally favour one of their sides, right or left, when flying. They showed a distinct bias when made to choose between flying through two holes, and researchers think that this kind of bias might help the colony as a whole, because it could result in the rapid travel of the group of bees through a cluttered environment.

At ground level, there’s a form of movements known as ‘asymmetric gaits’, where the timing of footfalls is unevenly spread. Galloping is one such example, and it turns out that animals evolved the ability to coordinate their limbs independently around 472 million years ago (mya), long before life emerged on land.

Imma Perfetto, “Is there asymmetry in nature?” at Cosmos Magazine (March 11, 2022)

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Paper at PNAS challenges universal common descent

But that’s like challenging the Trinity at an orthodox Christian church. On the other hand, one of the people involved, Sara Imari Walker, is one of those free spirits at Arizona State University:

Known examples of life all share the same core biochemistry going back to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), but whether this feature is universal to other examples, including at the origin of life or alien life, is unknown. We show how a physics-inspired statistical approach identifies universal scaling laws across biochemical reactions that are not defined by common chemical components but instead, as macroscale patterns in the reaction functions used by life. The identified scaling relations can be used to predict statistical features of LUCA, and network analyses reveal some of the functional principles that underlie them. They are, therefore, prime candidates for developing new theory on the “laws of life” that might apply to all possible biochemistries…

“A critical question is whether the universality classes identified herein are a product of the shared ancestry of life. A limitation of the traditional view of biochemical universality is that universality can only be explained in terms of evolutionary contingency and shared history, which challenges our ability to generalize beyond the singular ancestry of life as we know it. Indeed, a set of closely related genomes will, by definition, share a high degree of universality in component enzyme functions. Phylogenetic effects would be a concern here too if we were claiming universality in terms of a specific set of unique enzyme functions as these then could be attributed to oversampling highly related genomes. Instead, we showed here that universality classes are not directly correlated with component universality, which is indicative that it emerges as a macroscopic regularity in the large-scale statistics of catalytic functional diversity. Furthermore, EC [enzyme class] universality cannot simply be explained due to phylogenetic relatedness since the range of total enzyme functions spans two orders of magnitude, evidencing a wide coverage of genomic diversity.”

Gagler, D. C., Karas, B., Kempes, C. P., Malloy, J., Mierzejewski, V., Goldman, A. D., Kim, H., & Walker, S. I. (2022). Scaling laws in enzyme function reveal a new kind of biochemical universality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(9), e2106655119.

The underlying issue may well be this: With the James Webb Space Telescope headed off to survey countless exoplanets, astrobiology (search for extraterrestrial life) is becoming cool. A strict neo-Darwinian approach, as in “All life unearth arose from a single cell” is, at best, inconvenient. At worst, a true bummer. The astrobiologist is going to be much happier with “prime candidates for developing new theory on the ‘laws of life’ that might apply to all possible biochemistries…” Life lesson: Researchers will sacrifice Darwinism pretty quickly when it is an actual impediment.

The paper is open access.

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