evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-13--For Fire, Nature Obliges Us with Rapid Reflexes

Editor ’ s note : We are pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton ’ s book , Fire-Maker : How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet , from Discovery Institute Press .
Find the whole series here .
Dr. Denton ’ s forthcoming book , TheMiracle of the Cell , will be published in September .
There is another condition that must be satisfied if an organism the size of Homo sapiens is to stand tall and intelligently manipulate the environment and handle fire .
Yes , we must be the right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we must have muscles sufficiently powerful to resist gravity and raise us off the ground .
But , in addition , our muscular activity must be finely controlled .
This necessitates fast reflexes and fast nerve conduction velocities .
Fortuitously , nature obliges again .
Catching a ball , rowing a canoe , dodging a wave as it breaks on the shore , blinking an eye to prevent small objects from impacting on the cornea , coordinating the various muscles groups involved in movement , coordinating eye movements to maintain focus on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while walking or running , handling and manipulating moving embers of a fire — all these require rapid reflexes .
Your Eye on the Ball One area where very fast nerve conduction is vital is vision , more specifically , in keeping the eyes fixed on some object in the field of vision while in motion .
With each step , the head moves and so do the eyes .
If it were not for speed of what is known as vestibular-ocular reflex ( VOR ) , vision in motion would be impossible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeping the eyes on a target that necessitates very fast nerve conduction .
Just keeping our balance when we walk requires continual second-by-second assessments of the position of the limbs in space and continual simultaneous coordinated contraction and relaxation of different muscle groups .
Patients with the disease hereditary spastic paraplegia , for example , have slow nerve conduction speeds due to degeneration of the peripheral afferent nerves carrying sensory information to the brain .
This causes them to have great difficulty balancing and walking.1 The rapid reflexes necessary for an organism the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finely coordinated motor activities ( especially for very fast reflexes like the VOR ) are only possible because the speed of nerve conduction in vertebrates is very rapid .
Nerve conduction speeds in different organism vary over more than three orders of magnitude , from 10 centimeters per second in simple invertebrates to a maximum of 120 meters per second in the nervous system of mammals.2 Obviously the fine control and coordination of muscular activity and motion is only possible because such relatively rapid speeds of nerve impulse conduction are in fact possible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rapid reflexes in animals of our size .
But just fast enough !
No less than muscle power , the speed of nerve conduction imposes an absolute limit on the maximum size that an animal can attain .
No animal can be 100 meters long and at the same time be nimble .
Even at the fastest conduction speeds , in a 100-meter long organism , a nerve impulse will take two seconds to travel from the brain to its extremities and back .
An organism our size could never handle fire or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world if the maximum speed of nerve conduction was ten or a hundred times less .
Indeed , we would probably be unable to function in any way imaginable to us .
• Jorik Nonnekes , Mark de Niet , Lars B. Oude Nijhuis , Susanne T. de Bot , Bart P. C. van de Warrenburg , Bastiaan R. Bloem , Alexander C. Geurts , Vivian Weerdesteyn , “ Mechanisms of Postural Instability in Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia , ” Journal of Neurology 260 , no .
9 ( September 2013 ) : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ M. Weatherby , April D. Davis , Daniel K. Hartline , Petra H. Lenz , “ The Need for Speed .
II .
Myelin in Calanoid Copepods , ” Journal of Comparative Physiology .
A , Sensory , Neural , and Behavioral Physiology 186 , no .
4 ( April 2000 ) : 347–357 .

Photo credit: Andrea Bertozzini on Unsplash.
Editor’s note: We are pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton’s book, Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, from Discovery Institute Press. Find the whole series here. Dr. Denton’s forthcoming book, TheMiracle of the Cell, will be published in September.
There is another condition that must be satisfied if an organism the size of Homo sapiens is to stand tall and intelligently manipulate the environment and handle fire. Yes, we must be the right size and android design; yes, we must have muscles sufficiently powerful to resist gravity and raise us off the ground. But, in addition, our muscular activity must be finely controlled. This necessitates fast reflexes and fast nerve conduction velocities. Fortuitously, nature obliges again.
Catching a ball, rowing a canoe, dodging a wave as it breaks on the shore, blinking an eye to prevent small objects from impacting on the cornea, coordinating the various muscles groups involved in movement, coordinating eye movements to maintain focus on a moving object or to compensate for motion while walking or running, handling and manipulating moving embers of a fire — all these require rapid reflexes.
Your Eye on the Ball
One area where very fast nerve conduction is vital is vision, more specifically, in keeping the eyes fixed on some object in the field of vision while in motion. With each step, the head moves and so do the eyes. If it were not for speed of what is known as vestibular-ocular reflex (VOR), vision in motion would be impossible.
But it’s not just keeping the eyes on a target that necessitates very fast nerve conduction. Just keeping our balance when we walk requires continual second-by-second assessments of the position of the limbs in space and continual simultaneous coordinated contraction and relaxation of different muscle groups. Patients with the disease hereditary spastic paraplegia, for example, have slow nerve conduction speeds due to degeneration of the peripheral afferent nerves carrying sensory information to the brain. This causes them to have great difficulty balancing and walking.1
Just Fast Enough!
The rapid reflexes necessary for an organism the size of a human to carry out finely coordinated motor activities (especially for very fast reflexes like the VOR) are only possible because the speed of nerve conduction in vertebrates is very rapid. Nerve conduction speeds in different organism vary over more than three orders of magnitude, from 10 centimeters per second in simple invertebrates to a maximum of 120 meters per second in the nervous system of mammals.2 Obviously the fine control and coordination of muscular activity and motion is only possible because such relatively rapid speeds of nerve impulse conduction are in fact possible. This is fast enough to enable rapid reflexes in animals of our size. But just fast enough! No less than muscle power, the speed of nerve conduction imposes an absolute limit on the maximum size that an animal can attain. No animal can be 100 meters long and at the same time be nimble. Even at the fastest conduction speeds, in a 100-meter long organism, a nerve impulse will take two seconds to travel from the brain to its extremities and back. An organism our size could never handle fire or undertake any sophisticated manipulation or exploration of the world if the maximum speed of nerve conduction was ten or a hundred times less. Indeed, we would probably be unable to function in any way imaginable to us.
Tomorrow, “A Crucial Design Difference in Vertebrate Nerves.”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-14--“Morality Pills”: Ethicist Calls for Drugs to Solve COVID Non-Compliance

In an article for The Conversation , ethics professor Parker Crutchfield proposes a solution for widespread opposition and/or non-compliance to government mandates dealing with COVID-19 : give people chemicals , “ morality pills , ” to make them more cooperative .
He observes : Whatever one thinks about government mandates relating to the coronavirus , Crutchfield ’ s “ solution ” is worse than the problem .
Crutchfield , who teaches at Western Michigan University , argues that we should employ hormones and other drugs to “ morally enhance ” people .
The idea has been promoted widely within the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to evolve humans to a higher level .
There are many problems with this dehumanizing vision , and in the last chapter of my book , The Death of Humanity : And the Case for Life , I discuss these at length .
Here is a brief run-down .
First , “ moral enhancement ” is based on shaky science .
It is based on the idea that human behavior is genetically determined , which is a highly controversial position .
Further , as Crutchfield himself explains in this article , some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be more problematic than the behavior one is trying to change .
Oxytocin , one of the darling hormones proposed by those pushing “ moral enhancement , ” seems to promote cooperation in the in-group , but hostility toward the out-group .
Thus it may actually increase conformity to one ’ s own society , but perhaps increase racism .
Do we really want to increase conformity to COVID-19 regulations , if it increases racism ?
Second , transhumanists have no basis for any objective morality , so whenever they talk about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for whatever they personally think is moral .
If other people disagree with their moral vision , then there is no way to adjudicate ( other than by reference to who has the power to impose their morality on others — the Nietzschean solution ) .
This means that whatever “ morality pills ” are administered to the public will be to impose the moral vision of the technocratic elite , rather than to promote objective moral standards .
Third ( and flowing from the second point ) , because morality is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ higher ” morality ( or “ higher ” anything ) in the evolutionary process .
“ Higher ” implies teleology , and if transhumanists want to be consistent with their materialistic version of evolution , they can not embrace any notion of “ higher , ” because there is no goal ( telos ) toward which anything is moving .
Once again , this means that the goals of the transhumanists are completely subjective , subject to the whim to those who can impose their will on others .
Finally , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ moral enhancement , ” how can we trust them to bioengineer “ moral enhancement ” ?
What if the technocrats are in need of “ moral enhancement , ” too ?
The whole idea presupposes that the technocrats who call the shots have their moral acts together and can tell everyone else how to become moral .
It assumes that the intellectual elites are more moral than others in our society .
Some , like myself , think the opposite is true — the intellectual elites of our society have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anyone needs “ moral enhancement , ” it is them .
Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University , Stanislaus ; Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute ’ s Center for Science & Culture ; and author of The Death of Humanity : And the Case for Life and other books .

Photo credit: rottonara via Pixabay.
In an article for The Conversation, ethics professor Parker Crutchfield proposes a solution for widespread opposition and/or non-compliance to government mandates dealing with COVID-19: give people chemicals, “morality pills,” to make them more cooperative. He observes:
COVID-19 is a collective risk. It threatens everyone, and we all must cooperate to lower the chance that the coronavirus harms any one individual. Among other things, that means keeping safe social distances and wearing masks. But many people choose not to do these things, making spread of infection more likely.
Whatever one thinks about government mandates relating to the coronavirus, Crutchfield’s “solution” is worse than the problem.
The Case for “Moral Enhancement”
Crutchfield, who teaches at Western Michigan University, argues that we should employ hormones and other drugs to “morally enhance” people. The idea has been promoted widely within the transhumanist movement, a movement that wants to evolve humans to a higher level. There are many problems with this dehumanizing vision, and in the last chapter of my book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, I discuss these at length. Here is a brief run-down.
First, “moral enhancement” is based on shaky science. It is based on the idea that human behavior is genetically determined, which is a highly controversial position. Further, as Crutchfield himself explains in this article, some of the hormones might produce unintended consequences that could be more problematic than the behavior one is trying to change. Oxytocin, one of the darling hormones proposed by those pushing “moral enhancement,” seems to promote cooperation in the in-group, but hostility toward the out-group. Thus it may actually increase conformity to one’s own society, but perhaps increase racism. Do we really want to increase conformity to COVID-19 regulations, if it increases racism?
A Nietzschean Solution
Second, transhumanists have no basis for any objective morality, so whenever they talk about promoting morality, they are merely pushing for whatever they personally think is moral. If other people disagree with their moral vision, then there is no way to adjudicate (other than by reference to who has the power to impose their morality on others — the Nietzschean solution). This means that whatever “morality pills” are administered to the public will be to impose the moral vision of the technocratic elite, rather than to promote objective moral standards.
Third (and flowing from the second point), because morality is not objective, there is no such thing as “higher” morality (or “higher” anything) in the evolutionary process. “Higher” implies teleology, and if transhumanists want to be consistent with their materialistic version of evolution, they cannot embrace any notion of “higher,” because there is no goal (telos) toward which anything is moving. Once again, this means that the goals of the transhumanists are completely subjective, subject to the whim to those who can impose their will on others.
Finally, if people are really in such need of “moral enhancement,” how can we trust them to bioengineer “moral enhancement”? What if the technocrats are in need of “moral enhancement,” too? The whole idea presupposes that the technocrats who call the shots have their moral acts together and can tell everyone else how to become moral. It assumes that the intellectual elites are more moral than others in our society. Some, like myself, think the opposite is true — the intellectual elites of our society have been promoting immorality for decades, and if anyone needs “moral enhancement,” it is them.
Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus; Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture; and author of The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life and other books.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-14--Intelligent Design and COVID-19: Take a Seat for This Criticism

I have been replying to criticisms of ID scientists by historian Adam Shapiro ( see here and here ) .
You had better take a seat for Shapiro ’ s next assertion : .. there has been no indication that the government has looked to intelligent design research nor consulted any intelligent design–favoring scientists to address the pandemic… On May 4 , National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci gave an interview in which he stated : “ A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evolved in nature and then jumped species.
” But , of course , every scientist who has addressed the question of design or no design in the COVID-19 virus has been doing intelligent design research .
Anderson et al .
( 2020 ) used a benchmark for known specific methods of human bioengineering , compared the spike protein to that benchmark , and found that it fell short .
Surely more work remains to be done , but if that wasn ’ t ID reasoning , what is ?
These scientists are using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viral genome for markers of complex specified information that could not be present without human intervention .
All questions about the possibility of human-designed origin of COVID are intelligent design questions .
And these scientists , who are doing excellent implicit design research , draw conclusions about the design of the virus based on the evidence to which they have access , which is considerably more than the limited evidence that , again as far as I am personally aware , the small cadre of explicit ID scientists have available to them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeping with the best tradition of intelligent design research , which comprises most biological research since antiquity , ID researchers are staying within the bounds of the evidence available to them .
They refrain from drawing conclusions — scientific in form but political in nature — based on insufficient evidence .
ID , Adam Shapiro thinks , could redeem itself as being “ apolitical ” precisely by playing politics with science .
It is remarkable indeed that Dr. Shapiro — a historian of science — berates ID scientists for not reaching conclusions in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he fails to recognize the mountain of intelligent design research being conducted on the origin of COVID-19 in leading laboratories all over the world .

Image: Fusion Medical Animation, via Unsplash.
I have been replying to criticisms of ID scientists by historian Adam Shapiro (see here and here). You had better take a seat for Shapiro’s next assertion:
.. there has been no indication that the government has looked to intelligent design research nor consulted any intelligent design–favoring scientists to address the pandemic… On May 4, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci gave an interview in which he stated: “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it [the SARS-CoV-2 virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
But, of course, every scientist who has addressed the question of design or no design in the COVID-19 virus has been doing intelligent design research. Anderson et al. (2020) used a benchmark for known specific methods of human bioengineering, compared the spike protein to that benchmark, and found that it fell short. Surely more work remains to be done, but if that wasn’t ID reasoning, what is?
These scientists are using the principle of fine-tuning to assess the viral genome for markers of complex specified information that could not be present without human intervention. All questions about the possibility of human-designed origin of COVID are intelligent design questions. And these scientists, who are doing excellent implicit design research, draw conclusions about the design of the virus based on the evidence to which they have access, which is considerably more than the limited evidence that, again as far as I am personally aware, the small cadre of explicit ID scientists have available to them.
The Best Tradition of Intelligent Design
In keeping with the best tradition of intelligent design research, which comprises most biological research since antiquity, ID researchers are staying within the bounds of the evidence available to them. They refrain from drawing conclusions — scientific in form but political in nature — based on insufficient evidence. ID, Adam Shapiro thinks, could redeem itself as being “apolitical” precisely by playing politics with science. It is remarkable indeed that Dr. Shapiro — a historian of science — berates ID scientists for not reaching conclusions in the absence of adequate evidence — while he fails to recognize the mountain of intelligent design research being conducted on the origin of COVID-19 in leading laboratories all over the world.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-14--A Crucial Design Difference in Vertebrate Nerves

Editor ’ s note : We are pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton ’ s book , Fire-Maker : How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet , from Discovery Institute Press .
Find the whole series here .
Dr. Denton ’ s forthcoming book , The Miracle of the Cell , will be published in September .
In addition to fast conduction speeds , there is another criterion that must be satisfied for nerves to be fit to coordinate muscle activity in organisms like ourselves .
Each muscle is innervated by hundreds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nerve fibers .
As Schmidt-Nielsen points out , “ vertebrate muscles… are controlled by nerves that carry hundreds or thousands of single axons ” ( nerve fibers ) .1 These are between 5 and 20 microns in diameter.2 Clearly , if these individual axons had to be much bigger for some reason to attain the necessary speeds of 120 meters per second , this would necessitate “ nerve trunks of inordinate size.
” 3 For example , if vertebrate nerve fibers had to be the size of the fast conducting axons of invertebrates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in diameter ( fifty times the diameter of the fastest axons in mammals ) , then the nerve cords in mammals would be simply too large to fit into the body .
As Schmidt-Nielsen points out , the optic nerve in humans has a diameter of three millimeters ; if it were to contain the same number of fibers the size of large invertebrate axons conducting at the same speed as those in the optic nerve , this would require a diameter of 300 millimeters or 12 inches — larger than the head.4 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the arm would have to be larger than the arm !
The reason that vertebrate nerves can attain such high conduction speeds and remain far smaller than invertebrate nerves is because of a crucial design difference that permits the very rapid conduction of impulses .
As Schmidt-Nielsen explains , rapidly conducting vertebrate axons are covered in a thin sheath of a fat-like substance , myelin , “ which is interrupted at short intervals to expose the nerve membrane , ” and “ the exposed sites are known as nodes.
” 5 These nodes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fraction of a millimeter up to a few millimeters.6 This design allows for what is termed “ saltatory conduction , ” where the nerve impulse , instead of travelling sedately and continuously down the axon , jumps from node to node , vastly increasing the speed of transmission.7 The great advantage of myelinated axons comes from their small size , which allows a highly complex nervous system with high conduction velocities without undue space occupied by the bundles of nerve fibers that make up the major nerve trunks .
Consideration of the basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the speed of conduction in mammals is close to the maximum possible that is compatible with the electrical properties and general design of cells .
The speed of nerve conduction is determined by a number of biophysical factors , such as the speed that sodium and potassium ions are transported across the lipid bilayer membrane , itself a physical constant .
The existence and characteristics of the membrane are determined by the inherent insulating character of the lipid bilayer that surrounds all animal cells , which is the only structure known that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the cell .
In a counterfactual world in which the speed of nerve conduction was much less than 120 meters per second , or in which the size of axons had to be much more than 20 microns in diameter , beings of our size with our abilities of fine-motor coordination would be impossible .
What this means is that the functioning of the nervous system in humans ( and other mammals ) is entirely dependent on the fact that speeds of 120 meters per second can be achieved with axons of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This allows for nerve trunks that take up very little of the volume of the body , but can carry thousands of nerve messages to the muscles necessary for fine motor control and can carry information back to the central nervous system about heat , pain , touch , and spatial coordination from the various sense organs in the periphery .
Finally , in addition to the unique fitness our size and android design for the mastery of fire and the unique fine tuning of nature which makes out biological being possible , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deep implications of our upright stance .
As Leon Kass comments : We are not just a fire-maker because of our upright stance and android design , but the same unique design played a critical role also in shaping many aspects of our humanity .
Tomorrow , “ Fire and Fitness : A Summary of the Evidence.
” • Schmidt-Nielsen , ( 1997 ) Chapter Eleven .
As the author comments : “ The greatest advantage of myelinated axons comes from their small size , which allows a highly complex nervous system with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the conduits .
Let us say that we wish to increase the conduction velocity 10-fold in a given nonmyelinated fibre .
This would require a 100-fold increase in its diameter , and the volume of nerve per unit length would in turn be increased 10,000-fold.
” • Leon R. Kass , The Hungry Soul : Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature ( New York , Macmillan , 1994 ) , 64 .

Editor’s note: We are pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton’s book, Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, from Discovery Institute Press. Find the whole series here. Dr. Denton’s forthcoming book, The Miracle of the Cell, will be published in September.
In addition to fast conduction speeds, there is another criterion that must be satisfied for nerves to be fit to coordinate muscle activity in organisms like ourselves. Each muscle is innervated by hundreds, if not thousands, of individual nerve fibers. As Schmidt-Nielsen points out, “vertebrate muscles… are controlled by nerves that carry hundreds or thousands of single axons” (nerve fibers).1 These are between 5 and 20 microns in diameter.2 Clearly, if these individual axons had to be much bigger for some reason to attain the necessary speeds of 120 meters per second, this would necessitate “nerve trunks of inordinate size.”3
For example, if vertebrate nerve fibers had to be the size of the fast conducting axons of invertebrates, which are up to a millimeter in diameter (fifty times the diameter of the fastest axons in mammals), then the nerve cords in mammals would be simply too large to fit into the body. As Schmidt-Nielsen points out, the optic nerve in humans has a diameter of three millimeters; if it were to contain the same number of fibers the size of large invertebrate axons conducting at the same speed as those in the optic nerve, this would require a diameter of 300 millimeters or 12 inches — larger than the head.4 And the nerves supplying the muscles of the arm would have to be larger than the arm!
Saltatory Conduction
The reason that vertebrate nerves can attain such high conduction speeds and remain far smaller than invertebrate nerves is because of a crucial design difference that permits the very rapid conduction of impulses. As Schmidt-Nielsen explains, rapidly conducting vertebrate axons are covered in a thin sheath of a fat-like substance, myelin, “which is interrupted at short intervals to expose the nerve membrane,” and “the exposed sites are known as nodes.”5 These nodes are separated from one another by a fraction of a millimeter up to a few millimeters.6 This design allows for what is termed “saltatory conduction,” where the nerve impulse, instead of travelling sedately and continuously down the axon, jumps from node to node, vastly increasing the speed of transmission.7 The great advantage of myelinated axons comes from their small size, which allows a highly complex nervous system with high conduction velocities without undue space occupied by the bundles of nerve fibers that make up the major nerve trunks.
Close to the Maximum
Consideration of the basic characteristics of nerve impulse propagation suggests that the speed of conduction in mammals is close to the maximum possible that is compatible with the electrical properties and general design of cells. The speed of nerve conduction is determined by a number of biophysical factors, such as the speed that sodium and potassium ions are transported across the lipid bilayer membrane, itself a physical constant. The existence and characteristics of the membrane are determined by the inherent insulating character of the lipid bilayer that surrounds all animal cells, which is the only structure known that is fit to serve as the bounding membrane of the cell.
In a counterfactual world in which the speed of nerve conduction was much less than 120 meters per second, or in which the size of axons had to be much more than 20 microns in diameter, beings of our size with our abilities of fine-motor coordination would be impossible. What this means is that the functioning of the nervous system in humans (and other mammals) is entirely dependent on the fact that speeds of 120 meters per second can be achieved with axons of less than 20 microns in diameter. This allows for nerve trunks that take up very little of the volume of the body, but can carry thousands of nerve messages to the muscles necessary for fine motor control and can carry information back to the central nervous system about heat, pain, touch, and spatial coordination from the various sense organs in the periphery.
Implications of an Upright Stance
Finally, in addition to the unique fitness our size and android design for the mastery of fire and the unique fine tuning of nature which makes our biological being possible, it is worth reflecting on the further deep implications of our upright stance. As Leon Kass comments:
Human uprightness is nothing superficial; our peculiar form is reflected in every detail of our deep structure, somatic and… psychic. Upright posture is a matter not merely of static shape, of flat-footed two-leggedness or mere verticality. It also conditions all our relations to the world and colors all our experiences of ourselves acting and suffering in the world.8
We are not just a fire-maker because of our upright stance and android design, but the same unique design played a critical role also in shaping many aspects of our humanity.
Tomorrow, “Fire and Fitness: A Summary of the Evidence.”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-15--How the Body Meets Its Need for Oxygen — A Doctor Explains

On a classic episode of ID the Future , biologist Ray Bohlin interviews physician Howard Glicksman about hemoglobin and the @ @ @ @ @ have enough of it to transport sufficient oxygen to the tissues .
Finely tuned and @ @ @ @ @ gave our ancestors enough oxygen not only to stay alive but to thrive in the @ @ @ @ @ Dr. Glicksman is author of an extended series of posts at Evolution News , “ @ @ @ @ @ the podcast or listen to it here .

Image credit: Vector8DIY, via Pixabay.
On a classic episode of ID the Future, biologist Ray Bohlin interviews physician Howard Glicksman about hemoglobin and the body’s need to have enough of it to transport sufficient oxygen to the tissues. Finely tuned and exquisitely engineered, this system gave our ancestors enough oxygen not only to stay alive but to thrive in the face of grave challenges. Dr. Glicksman is author of an extended series of posts at Evolution News, “The Designed Body.” Download the podcast or listen to it here.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-15--Fire and Fitness: A Summary of the Evidence

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics , as well as with chemistry and biology , and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature .
The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question .
Editor ’ s note : We are pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton ’ s book , Fire-Maker : How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet , from Discovery Institute Press .
Find the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s forthcoming book , The Miracle of the Cell , will be published in September .
The cosmos is fit for life in far more ways than I have touched on in this series .
But the evidence we ’ ve discussed relating to the harnessing of fire is nonetheless instructive .
The same atmosphere that is fit for human respiration and fire ( or combustion ) is also fit in completely different ways for photosynthesis by allowing through just the right light and excluding the dangerous wavelengths in the far UV gamma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So the atmosphere that is fit for fire and human respiration is the very same atmosphere that is fit to produce the necessary reactants — reduced carbon compounds and oxygen — for both fire and respiration in the first place .
Again , the fitness of nature for fire in the ambient temperature range is also highly fortunate .
The temperature range that is fit for organic chemistry and hence for the existence of carbon-based life forms like ourselves is also the temperature range in which water is a liquid , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fit in so many ways for life on Earth .
Adding to the wonder , the very same temperature range is fit for the manipulation of metals , which provided the major stepping-stone on the route to 20th-century technology and civilization .
Nor does the fitness stop at environmental factors .
There are clearly elements of what I call generative fitness in nature that allow for the development of embryos , for example , and for the origin and development of life on Earth.1 Overall , the evidence suggests that the cosmos is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to thrive on a planet like the Earth and to master fire and develop complex advanced technologies .
Surely there could not be an equivalent ensemble of fitness in nature for some other type of life .
Lawrence Henderson made the same point in his classic The Fitness of the Environment when he argued that the sorts of ensembles of fitness that make carbon-based life possible are so absurdly improbable that they are almost certainly unique , without any analogue in any other area of chemistry or physics.2 This implies that if there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of an advanced technology , then they will closely resemble ourselves : carbon-based life forms obtaining their metabolic energy by oxidation and breathing air close in composition to that of the atmosphere of Earth .
Tomorrow : “ Whatever the Cause , We Are No Accident ” • Lawrence Henderson , The Fitness of the Environment ( New York , MacMillan , 1913 ) , 272 and 211 .

Photo: Northwest Crown Fire Experiment, by permission of the USDA Forest Service / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5).
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Science and Engineering 20 (September 1982): 1-36
Editor’s note: We are pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton’s book, Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, from Discovery Institute Press. Find the whole series here. Dr. Denton’s forthcoming book, The Miracle of the Cell, will be published in September.
The cosmos is fit for life in far more ways than I have touched on in this series. But the evidence we’ve discussed relating to the harnessing of fire is nonetheless instructive.
The same atmosphere that is fit for human respiration and fire (or combustion) is also fit in completely different ways for photosynthesis by allowing through just the right light and excluding the dangerous wavelengths in the far UV gamma and X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. So the atmosphere that is fit for fire and human respiration is the very same atmosphere that is fit to produce the necessary reactants — reduced carbon compounds and oxygen — for both fire and respiration in the first place.
Again, the fitness of nature for fire in the ambient temperature range is also highly fortunate. The temperature range that is fit for organic chemistry and hence for the existence of carbon-based life forms like ourselves is also the temperature range in which water is a liquid, the one fluid that is uniquely and supremely fit in so many ways for life on Earth. Adding to the wonder, the very same temperature range is fit for the manipulation of metals, which provided the major stepping-stone on the route to 20th-century technology and civilization.
Nor does the fitness stop at environmental factors. There are clearly elements of what I call generative fitness in nature that allow for the development of embryos, for example, and for the origin and development of life on Earth.1
“Fitness of the Environment”
Overall, the evidence suggests that the cosmos is uniquely fit for beings of our biology to thrive on a planet like the Earth and to master fire and develop complex advanced technologies. Surely there could not be an equivalent ensemble of fitness in nature for some other type of life. Lawrence Henderson made the same point in his classic The Fitness of the Environment when he argued that the sorts of ensembles of fitness that make carbon-based life possible are so absurdly improbable that they are almost certainly unique, without any analogue in any other area of chemistry or physics.2 This implies that if there are intelligent denizens of other worlds possessed of an advanced technology, then they will closely resemble ourselves: carbon-based life forms obtaining their metabolic energy by oxidation and breathing air close in composition to that of the atmosphere of Earth.
Tomorrow: “Whatever the Cause, We Are No Accident”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-16--That Hideous Strength — C. S. Lewis’s Fantasia of Consciousness at 75

Editor ’ s note : Published on August 16 , 1945 , C. S. Lewis ’ s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020 .
This week and next , to mark the book ’ s three-quarter century anniversary , Evolution News presents a series of essays , reflections , and videos about its themes and legacy .
M.D .
Aeschliman ’ s The Restoration of Man : C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism has recently been republished in an updated new edition by Discovery Institute Press and in French @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Seventy-five years ago today , in that momentous year 1945 , C. S. Lewis published the third and final volume in his series of three space-fiction , mythopoeic , dystopian novels , That Hideous Strength .
The novels are hard to categorize and have never reached the levels of popularity of his Narnia chronicles and satirical and apologetic works , but their over-arching philosophical project entails a profound meditation on the character of Western and world history over the previous 150 years but especially during the catastrophic , apocalyptic period 1914-1945 .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dystopias such as the Russian Evgeny Zamyatin ’ s We ( 1924 ) , Aldous Huxley ’ s Brave New World ( 1932 ) and George Orwell ’ s 1984 ( 1949 ) , and also the English Catholic-convert Msgr .
R.H. Benson ’ s apocalyptic fantasy Lord of the World ( 1907 ) ; but it even merits comparisons with first-order philosophical-historical writing in the tradition of Thomas Carlyle ’ s The French Revolution ( 1839 ) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn ’ s Gulag Archipelago ( 1974 ) and with the history and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ North Whitehead , Pierre Duhem , and the great Hungarian refugee scholars Michael Polanyi and Stanley L. Jaki .
The very width of its inter-disciplinary scope and depth of its philosophical-ethical penetration make it a hard book to categorize but are also characteristics of its importance and power as a work of metaphysical fiction .
Himself a wounded veteran of World War I , Lewis delivered in 1943 , in the middle of a second , even vaster and more destructive world war , a series of invited university lectures in the north @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University Press later that year as The Abolition of Man , a dystopian title with an innocuous-sounding , specialist subtitle , Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools .
High claims continue to be made for this short , dense , lucid expository essay ; the outstanding Oxford literary scholar A. D. Nuttall ( 1937-2007 ) , author of one of the finest books of the last fifty years on Shakespeare , wrote of it : “ The argument as it unfolds is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ odd that a work which so thoroughly routs whole volumes of Nietzsche and Sartre is not more widely admired , especially as the style in which it is presented is brilliantly lucid.
” In Lewis ’ s own Preface to That Hideous Strength , he tells us that the novel is “ a ‘ tall story ’ about devilry , though it has behind it a serious ‘ point ’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.
” It is also a uniquely revealing “ ghost story ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalist Deborah Blum ’ s excellent Ghost Hunters : William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death ( 2006 ) .
The novel is a narrative , fictional version of a philosophical anatomy of the satanic dimension and implication of much modern history from 1914 onwards , which Lewis himself had lived through , viscerally as a soldier , intellectually as a scholar , and vicariously as a spectator of world events and as a novelist .
But unlike Brave New World , 1984 , We , or Lord @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a benign vision of human possibility and glimpses of beatitude .
It reminds one of the clairvoyant , apocalyptic psychological and metaphysical insights of Dostoevsky but also contains visions of cosmic , human , and even animal and vegetable harmony that are reminiscent of St. Francis of Assisi , Dante , Spenser , Shakespeare ’ s late romances , Blake , Tolstoy , and G. K. Chesterton ’ s The Man Who Was Thursday .
Albert Schweitzer ’ s “ reverence for life ” and the pious , imaginative ecology of Wendell Berry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if a way to the better there be , it exacts a full look at the worst.
” For Lewis , the great modern apostasy that had led to the 20th-century Armageddons had taken place in the late 19th century with the marriage of Darwinian and Nietzschean thinking that simultaneously produced a calamitous decline in religious-humanist belief in Natural-Law theism and an enormous increase in post-moral cynicism and ruthlessness in the writings of Nietzsche and the emergent ideology of Social Darwinism , whether in its nationalist-fascist-militarist form , a so-called “ scientific-socialist ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fully organized competitive-capitalist form .
In 1992 the literary critic John Carey published The Intellectuals and the Masses : Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia , 1880-1939 , in which he argued that during this whole period in the British Isles only two major writers withstood the glamorous , radically “ enlightened ” appeal of Nietzsche : G. K. Chesterton and Arnold Bennett .
Lewis may well be seen as a disciple of Chesterton , and like him he felt the seismic shift of consciousness away from the often-contested but durable Judaeo-Christian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johnson , Burke , Jane Austen , Dickens , Abraham Lincoln , Frederick Douglass , Lord Acton , and William Jennings Bryan .
A.D. Nuttall astonishingly argues that Lewis ’ s short philosophical treatise The Abolition of Man “ routs whole volumes of Nietzsche and Sartre , ” but that its very lucidity has put modern intellectuals off and led to its undervaluation .
That Hideous Strength attempts to give a vivid narrative picture of how the gigantically potent Darwinian-Nietzschean heresy actually works out in practice , something that Lewis felt was truly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up to 1945 .
In an anti-reductionist 1972 essay on Blake , the combative Cambridge moralist and literary critic F. R. Leavis pointed out that “ Though we have to recognize that Darwin ’ s life testifies to the existence of intelligence and purpose , his theory of evolution offered to dispense with the need for these words ” ( emphasis added ) .
Lewis ’ s novel conveys the idea that the human person is inevitably , almost gravitationally , drawn to some conception of ultimate worth and significance .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chesterton epigrammatically put it , “ when people cease to believe in God is not that they believe in nothing , but that they believe in anything.
” The clairvoyant Dostoevsky saw that the destruction of the orthodox belief in the God-man Jesus Christ led to new divination and deification , the pursuit and celebration of the man-god , “ homo deus , ” foreshadowed by the Marquis de Sade and Max Stirner and Ralph Waldo Emerson , and fully articulate in Nietzsche ’ s conception of the post-moral “ Superman.
” It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , utilitarian , or Promethean-proletarian forms , or eventuate in a simple but thoroughgoing hedonistic egotism as in the Marquis de Sade and Stirner ; but some assumption or assertion of ultimate worth or value , for individuals or groups — nations , races , classes — is inevitable .
Language and conceptualization themselves assume or entail it .
In a brilliant pre-World War I essay “ On Reading , ” Chesterton had intuitively discerned the depth of the Nietzschean threat ( so alluring to his friend George Bernard Shaw ) and had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immoralism to Shakespeare ’ s depiction of the iniquity of the usurper Richard III in his play : what the incipiently mad egotist Nietzsche praised and celebrated , the orthodox Christian Shakespeare deplored and condemned .
Suffering nightmares about his own murders , Richard tries to steel himself and his followers : “ Souls ” is of course ironic , as Richard does not believe in the soul at all , but only in the will .
Richard is a cynical nominalist — “ Conscience is but a word… ” The skeptical , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brilliant sophist ” — G. E. M. Anscombe ) and the French philosophes in the 18th century stripped the emerging natural sciences of their fiduciary rational core , creating a radically reductionist positivism that , as the distinguished contemporary Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski ( 1927-2009 ) put it , “ renounces the transcendental meaning of truth and reduces [ even ] logical values to features of biological behavior.
” In his history of positivist thought , The Alienation of Reason , Kolakowski entitles one chapter “ The Destructive Consequences of Hume ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sub-rational and sub-moral Darwinian idea of “ survival of the fittest ” and Nietzsche ’ s idea of the post-moral will to power produced a predatory mindset that had much to do with the sanguinary tragedies of the century to follow and our own time , as a large scholarly literature has shown .
( Fine recent examples are Richard Weikart ’ s From Darwin to Hitler ( 2004 ) and Yvonne Sherratt ’ s Hitler ’ s Philosophers ( 2013 ) . )
Sherratt notes that Nietzsche ’ s “ infamous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coined the idea of the ‘ Superman , ’ was printed in 150,000 copies during the First World War , and handed out to German soldiers at the front.
” Lewis ’ s Abolition of Man is not a theological work , but a metaphysical argument , a “ brilliantly lucid ” philosophical treatise defending “ the perennial philosophy.
” But That Hideous Strength is simultaneously a science-fiction , mythopoeic , and theological work , with roots in and affinities to Biblical apocalyptic literature , The Odyssey , Dante ’ s Comedy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Gulliver ’ s Travels , and the transcendental visions of William Blake , most luminously in his 1803 “ Auguries of Innocence.
” A key passage for both Blake ’ s visionary poems and Lewis ’ s visionary novels is St. Paul ’ s assertion in the Epistle to the Ephesians : “ It is not against flesh and blood that we [ fight ] ; we have to do with princedoms and powers , with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days , with malign influences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Eph .
6:12 , tr .
Ronald Knox ) .
Blake ’ s late visions are often disappointingly intermittent and obscure , but he was clear in believing that “ The strongest poison ever known comes from Caesar ’ s laurel crown.
” The pursuit of power , without virtue , condemned by Christian thinkers such as St. Paul and St. Augustine as the “ libido dominandi , ” becomes the “ enlightened ” modern will-to-power of Nietzsche and his legion of admirers and disciples , including H. L. Mencken , Clarence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oliver Wendell Holmes in the USA .
Power without goodness , mental and physical force without ethics or justice , is “ that hideous strength.
” “ Malign influences in an order higher than ours ” are depicted in That Hideous Strength .
The force connecting humans with these transcendental influences is ideological or philosophical — by voluntarily opening themselves mentally to post-moral idols of power the intellectuals of the new technocracy , nowadays called “ post-humanists ” or “ transhumanists , ” enter truly “ trans-human ” realms of conceptual and existential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Dr. Faustus , Lewis ’ s “ new class ” of scientific-political “ conditioners ” collaborate with ferocious , predatory potencies in the universe .
Even the popular contemporary futurist Yuval Harari worries today about “ unleashing new post-humanist technologies ” ( Homo Deus , 2016 ) .
Lewis argued the point with particular brilliance in chapter three of The Abolition of Man in 1943 .
Machiavelli ’ s , Marlowe ’ s , and Sade ’ s immoralist assertions have a gruesome , criminal irony — and the first two thinkers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s penetrate higher and deeper in gnomic affirmations of destructive , inhuman effect .
In 1884 he wrote of war : “ one must learn from war…to sacrifice many and to take one ’ s cause seriously enough not to spare human lives.
” With a kind of sick longing , the neurasthenic , intellectual Nietzsche ludicrously celebrates brutal visions of unjust and merciless power .
“ Conscience is but a word that cowards use… ” Lewis ’ s philosophical project in both the expository Abolition of Man and the imaginative That Hideous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the varieties of modern Naturalism can escape self-contradiction and self-refutation — because language , rationality , ethics , and human cognition , conceptualization , intentionality , and identity themselves have metaphysical and supernatural dimensions .
Having vigorously argued against the Pharisaical Bertrand Russell in a notorious 1957 BBC television interview with him , the witty , sardonic moralist Malcolm Muggeridge went on to attack the Oxford logical-positivist philosopher Alfred Ayer in another interview for his glib , nihilistic nominalism , the “ emotivist ” thesis that ethics is never rational but only subjective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Logic , Freddie , I shall never know.
” Nor do we now , in retrospect , except as the manipulative machinations of an elite , obscurantist , sophistical “ inner ring.
” Trained himself at the very highest level in philosophy , like his contemporaries T. S. Eliot and Jacques Maritain , Lewis saw the ascendancy of all forms of modern Naturalism as both self-refuting and catastrophic , “ learnéd foolishness ” often developing into transgressive iniquity .
The Logical Positivists , Russell and Ayer , the Marxists and their scientific-intellectual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ J .
B. S. Haldane , and C. P. Snow in Britain , were contemporary with the vastly influential American philosopher John Dewey ( 1859-1952 ) , whose mind-numbing , tortuously obscure prose style resembles the endless circumlocutions of the depraved “ inner ring ” of intellectuals at the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments ( N.I.C.E . )
at Belbury in That Hideous Strength : like Milton ’ s fallen angels , by their perverse reasoning and language they are all “ in wandering mazes lost ” ( Paradise Lost , II:561 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metaphysics is to say nothing , ” the American philosopher E. A. Burtt argued in 1924 in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science , producing a classic epigram of “ the perennial philosophy.
” Voluble , moralistic Naturalists such as Russell , Dewey , C. P. Snow , and C. H. Waddington , whom Lewis critiques in The Abolition of Man , carried forward the destructive project of Hume and the French philosophes and had no grounds for opposing the Nietzschean-Social Darwinist program that laid waste so much of the 20th century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These concurrent influences make much more of a reality Petrarch ’ s famous poetic lament of 700 hundred years ago about the occlusion of the light and life of reason : “ Ed è si spento ogni benigno lume/Del ciel , per cui s ’ informa umana vita ” — “ And all the kindly lights , by which human life is guided , are extinguished in Heaven ” — “ ‘ Povera e nuda vai , Filosofia , ’ /Dice la turba al vil guadagno intesa.
” — “ ‘ You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ says the crowd , bent on selfish gain.
” ( Sonnet 7 ) Yet it is the very luminosity of Lewis ’ s argument in The Abolition of Man and of his brilliant mythopoeic fable in That Hideous Strength — a fantasia of consciousness and conscience , not of the unconscious and dark will — that continues to give intellectual , moral , and imaginative sustenance 75 years after their first publication .
Philosophy is here properly clothed in her radiant garments , and the kindly lights of Heaven are not extinguished @

Editor’s note: Published on August 16, 1945, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020. This week and next, to mark the book’s three-quarter century anniversary, Evolution News presents a series of essays, reflections, and videos about its themes and legacy.
M.D. Aeschliman’s The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism has recently been republished in an updated new edition by Discovery Institute Press and in French translation by Pierre Téqui in France.
Seventy-five years ago today, in that momentous year 1945, C. S. Lewis published the third and final volume in his series of three space-fiction, mythopoeic, dystopian novels, That Hideous Strength. The novels are hard to categorize and have never reached the levels of popularity of his Narnia chronicles and satirical and apologetic works, but their over-arching philosophical project entails a profound meditation on the character of Western and world history over the previous 150 years but especially during the catastrophic, apocalyptic period 1914-1945. The novel deserves comparison with the more famous dystopias such as the Russian Evgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), and also the English Catholic-convert Msgr. R.H. Benson’s apocalyptic fantasy Lord of the World (1907); but it even merits comparisons with first-order philosophical-historical writing in the tradition of Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution (1839) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (1974) and with the history and philosophy of science as conveyed by Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, and the great Hungarian refugee scholars Michael Polanyi and Stanley L. Jaki. The very width of its inter-disciplinary scope and depth of its philosophical-ethical penetration make it a hard book to categorize but are also characteristics of its importance and power as a work of metaphysical fiction.
Himself a wounded veteran of World War I, Lewis delivered in 1943, in the middle of a second, even vaster and more destructive world war, a series of invited university lectures in the north of England that were published by Oxford University Press later that year as The Abolition of Man, a dystopian title with an innocuous-sounding, specialist subtitle, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. High claims continue to be made for this short, dense, lucid expository essay; the outstanding Oxford literary scholar A. D. Nuttall (1937-2007), author of one of the finest books of the last fifty years on Shakespeare, wrote of it: “The argument as it unfolds is dazzling. It is in a way odd that a work which so thoroughly routs whole volumes of Nietzsche and Sartre is not more widely admired, especially as the style in which it is presented is brilliantly lucid.” In Lewis’s own Preface to That Hideous Strength, he tells us that the novel is “a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.” It is also a uniquely revealing “ghost story” and can be profitably read alongside the science journalist Deborah Blum’s excellent Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (2006).
A Philosophical Anatomy
The novel is a narrative, fictional version of a philosophical anatomy of the satanic dimension and implication of much modern history from 1914 onwards, which Lewis himself had lived through, viscerally as a soldier, intellectually as a scholar, and vicariously as a spectator of world events and as a novelist. But unlike Brave New World, 1984, We, or Lord of the World, it also contains a benign vision of human possibility and glimpses of beatitude. It reminds one of the clairvoyant, apocalyptic psychological and metaphysical insights of Dostoevsky but also contains visions of cosmic, human, and even animal and vegetable harmony that are reminiscent of St. Francis of Assisi, Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare’s late romances, Blake, Tolstoy, and G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Albert Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” and the pious, imaginative ecology of Wendell Berry are more recent examples.
But “if a way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.” For Lewis, the great modern apostasy that had led to the 20th-century Armageddons had taken place in the late 19th century with the marriage of Darwinian and Nietzschean thinking that simultaneously produced a calamitous decline in religious-humanist belief in Natural-Law theism and an enormous increase in post-moral cynicism and ruthlessness in the writings of Nietzsche and the emergent ideology of Social Darwinism, whether in its nationalist-fascist-militarist form, a so-called “scientific-socialist” Communist form, or in the less fully organized competitive-capitalist form. In 1992 the literary critic John Carey published The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939, in which he argued that during this whole period in the British Isles only two major writers withstood the glamorous, radically “enlightened” appeal of Nietzsche: G. K. Chesterton and Arnold Bennett. Lewis may well be seen as a disciple of Chesterton, and like him he felt the seismic shift of consciousness away from the often-contested but durable Judaeo-Christian Natural-Law tradition of figures such as Samuel Johnson, Burke, Jane Austen, Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Lord Acton, and William Jennings Bryan.
The Darwinian-Nietzschean Heresy
A.D. Nuttall astonishingly argues that Lewis’s short philosophical treatise The Abolition of Man “routs whole volumes of Nietzsche and Sartre,” but that its very lucidity has put modern intellectuals off and led to its undervaluation. That Hideous Strength attempts to give a vivid narrative picture of how the gigantically potent Darwinian-Nietzschean heresy actually works out in practice, something that Lewis felt was truly evident during the decades of his life up to 1945. In an anti-reductionist 1972 essay on Blake, the combative Cambridge moralist and literary critic F. R. Leavis pointed out that “Though we have to recognize that Darwin’s life testifies to the existence of intelligence and purpose, his theory of evolution offered to dispense with the need for these words” (emphasis added).
Lewis’s novel conveys the idea that the human person is inevitably, almost gravitationally, drawn to some conception of ultimate worth and significance. “The difficulty that ensues,” G. K. Chesterton epigrammatically put it, “when people cease to believe in God is not that they believe in nothing, but that they believe in anything.” The clairvoyant Dostoevsky saw that the destruction of the orthodox belief in the God-man Jesus Christ led to new divination and deification, the pursuit and celebration of the man-god, “homo deus,” foreshadowed by the Marquis de Sade and Max Stirner and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and fully articulate in Nietzsche’s conception of the post-moral “Superman.” It could take nationalist, racialist, imperialist, utilitarian, or Promethean-proletarian forms, or eventuate in a simple but thoroughgoing hedonistic egotism as in the Marquis de Sade and Stirner; but some assumption or assertion of ultimate worth or value, for individuals or groups — nations, races, classes — is inevitable. Language and conceptualization themselves assume or entail it.
“On Reading”
In a brilliant pre-World War I essay “On Reading,” Chesterton had intuitively discerned the depth of the Nietzschean threat (so alluring to his friend George Bernard Shaw) and had compared Nietzsche’s celebratory, histrionic immoralism to Shakespeare’s depiction of the iniquity of the usurper Richard III in his play: what the incipiently mad egotist Nietzsche praised and celebrated, the orthodox Christian Shakespeare deplored and condemned. Suffering nightmares about his own murders, Richard tries to steel himself and his followers:
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls.
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
Our strong arms be our conscience; swords, our law. Richard III, V, vi, 38-41
“Souls” is of course ironic, as Richard does not believe in the soul at all, but only in the will. Richard is a cynical nominalist — “Conscience is but a word…”
The skeptical, nominalist thinking of Hume (“a brilliant sophist” — G. E. M. Anscombe) and the French philosophes in the 18th century stripped the emerging natural sciences of their fiduciary rational core, creating a radically reductionist positivism that, as the distinguished contemporary Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009) put it, “renounces the transcendental meaning of truth and reduces [even] logical values to features of biological behavior.” In his history of positivist thought, The Alienation of Reason, Kolakowski entitles one chapter “The Destructive Consequences of Hume’s Work.”
A Predatory Mindset
The late 19th-century marriage of the sub-rational and sub-moral Darwinian idea of “survival of the fittest” and Nietzsche’s idea of the post-moral will to power produced a predatory mindset that had much to do with the sanguinary tragedies of the century to follow and our own time, as a large scholarly literature has shown. (Fine recent examples are Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler (2004) and Yvonne Sherratt’s Hitler’s Philosophers (2013).) Sherratt notes that Nietzsche’s “infamous work Zarathustra, in which he had coined the idea of the ‘Superman,’ was printed in 150,000 copies during the First World War, and handed out to German soldiers at the front.”
Lewis’s Abolition of Man is not a theological work, but a metaphysical argument, a “brilliantly lucid” philosophical treatise defending “the perennial philosophy.” But That Hideous Strength is simultaneously a science-fiction, mythopoeic, and theological work, with roots in and affinities to Biblical apocalyptic literature, The Odyssey, Dante’s Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and the transcendental visions of William Blake, most luminously in his 1803 “Auguries of Innocence.” A key passage for both Blake’s visionary poems and Lewis’s visionary novels is St. Paul’s assertion in the Epistle to the Ephesians: “It is not against flesh and blood that we [fight]; we have to do with princedoms and powers, with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days, with malign influences in an order higher than ours” (Eph. 6:12, tr. Ronald Knox). Blake’s late visions are often disappointingly intermittent and obscure, but he was clear in believing that “The strongest poison ever known comes from Caesar’s laurel crown.” The pursuit of power, without virtue, condemned by Christian thinkers such as St. Paul and St. Augustine as the “libido dominandi,” becomes the “enlightened” modern will-to-power of Nietzsche and his legion of admirers and disciples, including H. L. Mencken, Clarence Darrow, Emma Goldman, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the USA. Power without goodness, mental and physical force without ethics or justice, is “that hideous strength.”
“Malign influences in an order higher than ours” are depicted in That Hideous Strength. The force connecting humans with these transcendental influences is ideological or philosophical — by voluntarily opening themselves mentally to post-moral idols of power the intellectuals of the new technocracy, nowadays called “post-humanists” or “transhumanists,” enter truly “trans-human” realms of conceptual and existential reality. Less consciously than Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Lewis’s “new class” of scientific-political “conditioners” collaborate with ferocious, predatory potencies in the universe. Even the popular contemporary futurist Yuval Harari worries today about “unleashing new post-humanist technologies” (Homo Deus, 2016). Lewis argued the point with particular brilliance in chapter three of The Abolition of Man in 1943.
Machiavelli’s, Marlowe’s, and Sade’s immoralist assertions have a gruesome, criminal irony — and the first two thinkers are often ambivalent — but Nietzsche’s penetrate higher and deeper in gnomic affirmations of destructive, inhuman effect. In 1884 he wrote of war: “one must learn from war…to sacrifice many and to take one’s cause seriously enough not to spare human lives.” With a kind of sick longing, the neurasthenic, intellectual Nietzsche ludicrously celebrates brutal visions of unjust and merciless power. “Conscience is but a word that cowards use…”
Self-Contradiction and Self-Refutation
Lewis’s philosophical project in both the expository Abolition of Man and the imaginative That Hideous Strength is to show that none of the varieties of modern Naturalism can escape self-contradiction and self-refutation — because language, rationality, ethics, and human cognition, conceptualization, intentionality, and identity themselves have metaphysical and supernatural dimensions.
Having vigorously argued against the Pharisaical Bertrand Russell in a notorious 1957 BBC television interview with him, the witty, sardonic moralist Malcolm Muggeridge went on to attack the Oxford logical-positivist philosopher Alfred Ayer in another interview for his glib, nihilistic nominalism, the “emotivist” thesis that ethics is never rational but only subjective: “How you ever became Professor of Logic, Freddie, I shall never know.” Nor do we now, in retrospect, except as the manipulative machinations of an elite, obscurantist, sophistical “inner ring.”
“Learnéd Foolishness”
Trained himself at the very highest level in philosophy, like his contemporaries T. S. Eliot and Jacques Maritain, Lewis saw the ascendancy of all forms of modern Naturalism as both self-refuting and catastrophic, “learnéd foolishness” often developing into transgressive iniquity. The Logical Positivists, Russell and Ayer, the Marxists and their scientific-intellectual fellow-travelers such as J. D. Bernal, J. B. S. Haldane, and C. P. Snow in Britain, were contemporary with the vastly influential American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952), whose mind-numbing, tortuously obscure prose style resembles the endless circumlocutions of the depraved “inner ring” of intellectuals at the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) at Belbury in That Hideous Strength: like Milton’s fallen angels, by their perverse reasoning and language they are all “in wandering mazes lost” (Paradise Lost, II:561).
“The only way to avoid metaphysics is to say nothing,” the American philosopher E. A. Burtt argued in 1924 in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, producing a classic epigram of “the perennial philosophy.” Voluble, moralistic Naturalists such as Russell, Dewey, C. P. Snow, and C. H. Waddington, whom Lewis critiques in The Abolition of Man, carried forward the destructive project of Hume and the French philosophes and had no grounds for opposing the Nietzschean-Social Darwinist program that laid waste so much of the 20th century and whose confusions are still with us.
These concurrent influences make much more of a reality Petrarch’s famous poetic lament of 700 hundred years ago about the occlusion of the light and life of reason: “Ed è si spento ogni benigno lume/Del ciel, per cui s’informa umana vita” — “And all the kindly lights, by which human life is guided, are extinguished in Heaven” — “‘Povera e nuda vai, Filosofia,’/Dice la turba al vil guadagno intesa.” — “‘You go poor and naked, Philosophy,’ says the crowd, bent on selfish gain.” (Sonnet 7)
Yet it is the very luminosity of Lewis’s argument in The Abolition of Man and of his brilliant mythopoeic fable in That Hideous Strength — a fantasia of consciousness and conscience, not of the unconscious and dark will — that continues to give intellectual, moral, and imaginative sustenance 75 years after their first publication. Philosophy is here properly clothed in her radiant garments, and the kindly lights of Heaven are not extinguished.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-17--Stephen Meyer and James Tour: Tonight, a Wide-Ranging and Personal Conversation

I ’ ve seen Rice University chemist James Tour and Discovery Institute philosopher of science Stephen Meyer on the same @ @ @ @ @ in a personal interaction .
Tonight they ’ ll meet in a podcast discussion hosted @ @ @ @ @ the origin of life — and more .
It promises to be a surprisingly personal @ @ @ @ @ ll see from this sample : Does life ’ s origin reflect the activity of @ @ @ @ @ blind , purely physical processes alone serve as a fully satisfactory explanation ?
Watch and @ @ @ @ @ find the podcast here at 5 pm Pacific time : Dr. Meyer and Dr. Tour @ @ @ @ @ , contributors to the recent expanded version of a classic from the literature of intelligent @ @ @ @ @ Life ’ s Origin , from Discovery Institute Press .

I’ve seen Rice University chemist James Tour and Discovery Institute philosopher of science Stephen Meyer on the same stage, but never before in a personal interaction. Tonight they’ll meet in a podcast discussion hosted by Dr. Tour, covering the origin of life — and more. It promises to be a surprisingly personal interaction, as you’ll see from this sample:
Does life’s origin reflect the activity of a mind, or do blind, purely physical processes alone serve as a fully satisfactory explanation? Watch and found out. You can find the podcast here at 5 pm Pacific time:
Dr. Meyer and Dr. Tour are, among other distinctions, contributors to the recent expanded version of a classic from the literature of intelligent design, The Mystery of Life’s Origin, from Discovery Institute Press.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-17--The Education of Mark Studdock: A Sociologist Learns the Lessons of The Abolition of Man

Editor ’ s note : Published on August 16 , 1945 , C. S. Lewis ’ s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020 .
This week and next , to mark the book ’ s three-quarter century anniversary , Evolution News presents a series of essays , reflections , and videos about its themes and legacy .
Dr. Cameron Wybrow is a scholar , teacher , and writer with academic and popular publications on a variety of subjects .
He has a particular interest in philosophical and theological critiques of modernity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ S. Lewis .
This post is adapted from Chapter 11 of The Magician ’ s Twin : C. S. Lewis on Science , Scientism , and Society , edited by John G. West .
In the introduction to his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S .
Lewis wrote : “ This is a ‘ tall story ’ about devilry , though it has behind it a serious ‘ point ’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.
” 1 At the time of Lewis ’ s writing of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the non-fictional Abolition of Man had not been out long .
Indeed , it had appeared only in late 1943 , although the lectures on which the book was based had been delivered in February of that year .
It seems that Lewis was working on at least parts of the two works at the same time ( late 1942 to early 1943 ) , and the overlap in themes is evident to readers of the two works , so there is no reason to doubt Lewis ’ s explanation of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the many connections in thought between That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man would require several essays .
In this chapter , I have tried to capture only one set of connections , those which are revealed through the intellectual and spiritual struggle of one of the protagonists of That Hideous Strength , sociologist Mark Studdock .
The Educational Purpose of The Abolition of Man To many readers of the novel , Studdock will not seem like the most obvious choice .
After all , the most striking philosophical ruminations in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in some cases seems taken nearly verbatim from passages in The Abolition of Man — come from the mouths of villainous characters such as Feverstone , Filostrato , and Frost .
Yet Studdock ’ s character takes us closer to the educational purpose of The Abolition of Man than do any of the purely villainous characters , for , while the villainous characters represent the dehumanizing apotheosis of modern technological society , the character of Studdock reveals the banal yet malignant intellectual and moral roots which produce such a society .
In Studdock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the members of a society are educated will determine how the society will turn out .
More specifically , in Studdock we see many of the opinions and attitudes that motivate the authors of “ The Green Book , ” the upper-year high school English text discussed at length in The Abolition of Man .
As Studdock ’ s career ambitions move him deeper and deeper into the intrigues of the N.I.C.E.
, we see him slowly accepting more and more of the implications of the philosophy advocated in The Green Book ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ project of the N.I.C.E.
, we see his repudiation of that philosophy .
In this sense , the story of That Hideous Strength , while being an epic treatment of the problem of modern man , is also the story of the failure of modern education , as illustrated by the case of Mark Studdock .
Tomorrow , “ The Main Argument of The Abolition of Man.
” • C. S. Lewis , That Hideous Strength : A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups ( London and Sydney : Pan , 1983 ) , p. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essay are to this edition , which contains the unabridged text of the original publication [ London : John Lane ( The Bodley Head ) Ltd , 1945 ] .
The references will use the short form of the title ( or , where appropriate , “ Ibid.
” ) , and will include the chapter and section numbers as designated by Lewis , followed by the page numbers of the Pan edition ; e.g.
, That Hideous Strength , ch .
9 , sec .
2 , 187 .

Editor’s note: Published on August 16, 1945, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020. This week and next, to mark the book’s three-quarter century anniversary, Evolution News presents a series of essays, reflections, and videos about its themes and legacy.
Dr. Cameron Wybrow is a scholar, teacher, and writer with academic and popular publications on a variety of subjects. He has a particular interest in philosophical and theological critiques of modernity, and hence in the thought of C. S. Lewis.
This post is adapted from Chapter 11 of The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, edited by John G. West.
In the introduction to his novel That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis wrote: “This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.”1 At the time of Lewis’s writing of this remark (Christmas Eve, 1943), the non-fictional Abolition of Man had not been out long. Indeed, it had appeared only in late 1943, although the lectures on which the book was based had been delivered in February of that year. It seems that Lewis was working on at least parts of the two works at the same time (late 1942 to early 1943), and the overlap in themes is evident to readers of the two works, so there is no reason to doubt Lewis’s explanation of the close relationship between them.
To bring out the many connections in thought between That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man would require several essays. In this chapter, I have tried to capture only one set of connections, those which are revealed through the intellectual and spiritual struggle of one of the protagonists of That Hideous Strength, sociologist Mark Studdock.
The Educational Purpose of The Abolition of Man
To many readers of the novel, Studdock will not seem like the most obvious choice. After all, the most striking philosophical ruminations in That Hideous Strength — with phrasing that in some cases seems taken nearly verbatim from passages in The Abolition of Man — come from the mouths of villainous characters such as Feverstone, Filostrato, and Frost. Yet Studdock’s character takes us closer to the educational purpose of The Abolition of Man than do any of the purely villainous characters, for, while the villainous characters represent the dehumanizing apotheosis of modern technological society, the character of Studdock reveals the banal yet malignant intellectual and moral roots which produce such a society. In Studdock we discern how the way in which the members of a society are educated will determine how the society will turn out. More specifically, in Studdock we see many of the opinions and attitudes that motivate the authors of “The Green Book,” the upper-year high school English text discussed at length in The Abolition of Man. As Studdock’s career ambitions move him deeper and deeper into the intrigues of the N.I.C.E., we see him slowly accepting more and more of the implications of the philosophy advocated in The Green Book; and in his final rejection of the project of the N.I.C.E., we see his repudiation of that philosophy. In this sense, the story of That Hideous Strength, while being an epic treatment of the problem of modern man, is also the story of the failure of modern education, as illustrated by the case of Mark Studdock.
Tomorrow, “The Main Argument of The Abolition of Man.”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-17--A Prophetic Warning Against the Abuse of Science

C. S. Lewis issued a prophetic warning against the dangers of the abuse of science in his novel That Hideous @ @ @ @ @ relevance of Lewis ’ s novel for today in this video commemorating its 75th anniversary @ @ @ @ @ originally on August 16 , 1945 .
This clip is an excerpt from a longer @ @ @ @ @ s Twin : C.S .
Lewis and the Case against Scientism , written and directed @ @ @ @

C. S. Lewis issued a prophetic warning against the dangers of the abuse of science in his novel That Hideous Strength. Learn about the relevance of Lewis’s novel for today in this video commemorating its 75th anniversary:
The novel was published originally on August 16, 1945. This clip is an excerpt from a longer documentary titled The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism, written and directed by John West.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-17--Whatever the Cause, We Are No Accident

Whatever the Cause, We Are No Accident

Editor ’ s note : We have been pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton ’ s book , Fire-Maker : How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet , from Discovery Institute Press .
Find the whole series here .
Dr. Denton ’ s forthcoming book , The Miracle of the Cell , will be published in September .
In the argument I have made in this series , pointing to the remarkable fitness of nature for fire-making , two caveats must be noted .
First , the evidence that the cosmos is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and for our mastery of fire is not to argue that the fitness is specifically for our particular species on our particular planet ( the third rock from the Sun ) .
There may be billions of Earth-like planets in the cosmos , although the search to date by Kepler has not yielded a single planet closely resembling the Earth.1 Second , the unique fitness of nature for life on Earth is a scientific fact , whatever its ultimate causation finally proves to be .
The unique fitness of nature for carbon-based life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an empirical discovery , no matter how many cogent arguments a skeptic might introduce to counter any claim that the fitness is the result of design .
Fitness is a fact whether it is manifest only on Earth or on a myriad of planets throughout the universe , and whether it is the result of design or not !
Whatever the ultimate causation may eventually prove to be , as it stands , the evidence of fitness is at least consistent with the notion that the fine-tuning for life as it exists on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To Explore and to Understand Over a century ago , Alfred Russel Wallace , co-discoverer of natural selection along with Charles Darwin , remarked upon the extraordinary fitness in nature that gifted humanity with the ability to explore and understand our universe .
Speaking of the metals that fire releases from the rocks and which allowed us to do science , he asked : Is it… a pure accident that these metals , with their special physical qualities which render them so useful to us , should have existed on the earth for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apparent or possible use ; but becoming so supremely useful when Man appeared and began to rise towards civilization ?
2 Wallace ’ s view can not be dismissed lightly .
Over the past century , some extraordinary examples of the fitness of certain metals for very specific technological ends have come to light .
In a fact sheet published by the U.S. Geological Survey , the authors point out some of the various uses of the so-called “ rare-earth metals ” : Although the current Zeitgeist would have us believe that humanity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one of a million different possible outcomes that happened to arrive and survive on an unexceptional planet , the evidence examined in this series suggests otherwise — that whatever the causation of the fine tuning , we are no accident of deep time and chance .
On the contrary , as Freeman Dyson famously proclaimed , from the moment of creation “ the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.
” 4 • Sara Seager , “ Searching for Other Earths , ” The New Atlantis ( Fall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Alfred Russel Wallace , The World of Life ( New York : Moffat , Yard and Company , 1916 ) , 388 .
• U.S. Geological Survey , Rare Earth Elements—Critical Resources for High Technology , Gorden B. Haxel , James B. Hedrick , Greta J. Orris , Fact Sheet 087-02 , May 17 , 2005 , http : //pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/ .
• Freeman Dyson , “ Energy in the Universe , ” Scientific American 224 , no .
3 ( September 1971 ) : 50-59 .

Image: United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, by NASA/Joel Kowsky.
Editor’s note: We have been pleased to present a series adapted from biologist Michael Denton’s book, Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, from Discovery Institute Press. Find the whole series here. Dr. Denton’s forthcoming book, The Miracle of the Cell, will be published in September.
In the argument I have made in this series, pointing to the remarkable fitness of nature for fire-making, two caveats must be noted. First, the evidence that the cosmos is uniquely fit for beings of our biology and for our mastery of fire is not to argue that the fitness is specifically for our particular species on our particular planet (the third rock from the Sun). There may be billions of Earth-like planets in the cosmos, although the search to date by Kepler has not yielded a single planet closely resembling the Earth.1 Second, the unique fitness of nature for life on Earth is a scientific fact, whatever its ultimate causation finally proves to be. The unique fitness of nature for carbon-based life and intelligent beings of our biology is an empirical discovery, no matter how many cogent arguments a skeptic might introduce to counter any claim that the fitness is the result of design. Fitness is a fact whether it is manifest only on Earth or on a myriad of planets throughout the universe, and whether it is the result of design or not!
Whatever the ultimate causation may eventually prove to be, as it stands, the evidence of fitness is at least consistent with the notion that the fine-tuning for life as it exists on Earth is the result of design.
To Explore and to Understand
Over a century ago, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection along with Charles Darwin, remarked upon the extraordinary fitness in nature that gifted humanity with the ability to explore and understand our universe. Speaking of the metals that fire releases from the rocks and which allowed us to do science, he asked:
Is it… a pure accident that these metals, with their special physical qualities which render them so useful to us, should have existed on the earth for so many millions of years for no apparent or possible use; but becoming so supremely useful when Man appeared and began to rise towards civilization?2
Wallace’s view cannot be dismissed lightly. Over the past century, some extraordinary examples of the fitness of certain metals for very specific technological ends have come to light. In a fact sheet published by the U.S. Geological Survey, the authors point out some of the various uses of the so-called “rare-earth metals”:
The diverse nuclear, metallurgical, chemical, catalytic, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties of the [rare earth metals] have led to an ever increasing variety of applications. These uses range from mundane (lighter flints, glass polishing) to high-tech (phosphors, lasers, magnets, batteries, magnetic refrigeration) to futuristic (high-temperature superconductivity, safe storage and transport of hydrogen for a post-hydro-carbon economy).3
Although the current Zeitgeist would have us believe that humanity is little more than a cosmic accident, one of a million different possible outcomes that happened to arrive and survive on an unexceptional planet, the evidence examined in this series suggests otherwise — that whatever the causation of the fine tuning, we are no accident of deep time and chance. On the contrary, as Freeman Dyson famously proclaimed, from the moment of creation “the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.”4
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-19--Tour, Meyer: The Mystery of Life Itself

Tour, Meyer: The Mystery of Life Itself

In the context of the COVID pandemic , saving lives is the order of the day .
But I was struck this week by a formulation by the UK ’ s Lord Sumption .
He discussed the priority of saving lives while at the same time not neglecting the importance of preserving “ life itself , ” all the things that make human lives worth living .
I suggest that you read his remarks .
They are a little bit off-topic here , but not entirely .
That ’ s because Rice University chemist James Tour has just released a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quite personal podcast conversation with our Discovery Institute colleague Stephen Meyer .
They speak about many things including their shared Christian faith , and about the mystery of life ’ s origin .
They both contributed to the recently updated edition of The Mystery of Life ’ s Origin , and Meyer deals with that same problem , among others , in his upcoming book , The Return of the God Hypothesis : Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe .
But you know , for all that that the mystery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be an enigma that ’ s even deeper , which Tour and Meyer also discuss .
It ’ s the mystery of “ life itself.
” What is life ?
As Dr. Meyer acknowledges , no one really knows : How is life sustained against the forces of entropy ?
Why can ’ t scientists simply “ turn back on ” even a simple bacterium when it has come to the end of its life ?
Why can ’ t they , even given all the ingredients of life , create the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for life ’ s ultra “ fine-tuning ” ?
And then , what happens when life ceases ?
Meyer reflects on the experience of being in the room when a human being dies .
As he puts it here , “ When life leaves , we don ’ t exactly know what ’ s left , but we know something left and it ’ s not just the physical.
” It is refreshing to see men of science reflect candidly and unabashed not only technical scientific issues but on the ultimate questions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re reminded here , very personal ones .
You will enjoy their interaction .

Photo: Stephen Meyer, a screenshot from "The Science & Faith Podcast - James Tour and Stephen Meyer: Life's Origin: Lab + Information = Mind."
In the context of the COVID pandemic, saving lives is the order of the day. But I was struck this week by a formulation by the UK’s Lord Sumption. He discussed the priority of saving lives while at the same time not neglecting the importance of preserving “life itself,” all the things that make human lives worth living. I suggest that you read his remarks. They are a little bit off-topic here, but not entirely.
That’s because Rice University chemist James Tour has just released a fascinating, scientifically substantive, but also quite personal podcast conversation with our Discovery Institute colleague Stephen Meyer. They speak about many things including their shared Christian faith, and about the mystery of life’s origin. They both contributed to the recently updated edition of The Mystery of Life’s Origin, and Meyer deals with that same problem, among others, in his upcoming book, The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe. But you know, for all that that the mystery of abiogenesis is fundamental, there may be an enigma that’s even deeper, which Tour and Meyer also discuss.
What Is Life?
It’s the mystery of “life itself.” What is life? As Dr. Meyer acknowledges, no one really knows:
How is life sustained against the forces of entropy? Why can’t scientists simply “turn back on” even a simple bacterium when it has come to the end of its life? Why can’t they, even given all the ingredients of life, create the most elementary life from non-life? What accounts for life’s ultra “fine-tuning”? And then, what happens when life ceases? Meyer reflects on the experience of being in the room when a human being dies. As he puts it here, “When life leaves, we don’t exactly know what’s left, but we know something left and it’s not just the physical.”
It is refreshing to see men of science reflect candidly and unabashedly not only on technical scientific issues but on the ultimate questions, which are also, as we’re reminded here, very personal ones. You will enjoy their interaction.