evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-31--Biology’s “Best-Kept Secret” — Alfred Wallace’s Classic Is Out Now in a New Edition

On the subject of evolution , the scientific “ consensus ” depends on maintaining the public ’ s forgetfulness of Charles Darwin ’ s great partner , rival , and challenger .
What , indeed , do Professor James T. Costa , Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller , BioLogos president Deborah Haarsma , and evolution historian Peter J. Bowler all have in common ?
Answer : they all want to obscure the fact that Alfred Russel Wallace , who co-discovered the theory of natural selection independently of Darwin , solved the problem of evolution by redefining it as “ directed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ descent.
” These Darwin devotees and Darwinian theists would have you believe that , as the source of biological invention , purely stochastic and mindless processes were “ proven ” with the Origin of Species ( 1859 ) and Descent of Man ( 1871 ) , and that these are the only ones worthy of serious discussion today .
For them only chance and necessity count as scientific explanations .
But more than a century ago Wallace challenged such reductionism with The World of Life : A Manifestation of Creative Power , Directive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opus devoted to genuine teleology in nature .
Now a thoroughly updated introduction with a new preface by William A. Dembski , presents a definitive abridged edition of The World of Life , Wallace ’ s crowning achievement that today ’ s Darwinists would prefer you not see .
Edited by science historian Michael Flannery , Intelligent Evolution : How Alfred Russel Wallace ’ s World of Life Challenged Darwinism is now available ( in print and e-book formats ) in a new edition thoroughly updated to take advantage of the latest scholarship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ archeology , and anthropology .
The book cuts through the confusions and conflations burdening the current evolution controversy , and no one who reads it will look at biological origins again in quite the same way .
As Dembski states in his foreword : To find out exactly how and why , order your copy today .
Wallace can be claimed as a forerunner of modern intelligent design theory .
To understand ID , and to grasp the depth of the case it makes , you need to appreciate the thought of Alfred @ @

Alfred Russel Wallace, by London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company (active 1855-1922) / Public domain.
On the subject of evolution, the scientific “consensus” depends on maintaining the public’s forgetfulness of Charles Darwin’s great partner, rival, and challenger.
What, indeed, do Professor James T. Costa, Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, BioLogos president Deborah Haarsma, and evolution historian Peter J. Bowler all have in common? Answer: they all want to obscure the fact that Alfred Russel Wallace, who co-discovered the theory of natural selection independently of Darwin, solved the problem of evolution by redefining it as “directed, detectably designed, and purposeful common descent.”
These Darwin devotees and Darwinian theists would have you believe that, as the source of biological invention, purely stochastic and mindless processes were “proven” with the Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), and that these are the only ones worthy of serious discussion today. For them only chance and necessity count as scientific explanations.
Reductionism Challenged
But more than a century ago Wallace challenged such reductionism with The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose, his magnum opus devoted to genuine teleology in nature.
Now a thoroughly updated introduction with a new preface by William A. Dembski, presents a definitive abridged edition of The World of Life, Wallace’s crowning achievement that today’s Darwinists would prefer you not see. Edited by science historian Michael Flannery, Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russel Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism is now available (in print and e-book formats) in a new edition thoroughly updated to take advantage of the latest scholarship in history, biology, linguistics, archeology, and anthropology.
A Forerunner of Intelligent Design
The book cuts through the confusions and conflations burdening the current evolution controversy, and no one who reads it will look at biological origins again in quite the same way. As Dembski states in his foreword:
As told here, the best-kept secret of most biology textbooks is exposed: Darwinian evolution and its modern synthesis is a paradigm in tatters. And the situation has gotten appreciably worse, not better, for this beleaguered theory.
To find out exactly how and why, order your copy today. Wallace can be claimed as a forerunner of modern intelligent design theory. To understand ID, and to grasp the depth of the case it makes, you need to appreciate the thought of Alfred Wallace.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-31--Research Reveals Biological Design in the Sensing and Manipulation of Force

A tiny spider has been found that can launch itself at 10 times the speed that would make a test pilot black out .
And if that isn ’ t amazing enough , it builds its own catapult out of web material that can tolerate sustained tension for hours and days .
The story of the “ slingshot spider ” of Peru is told by Georgia Tech .
Scientists measured this spider ’ s acceleration at 100 times that of a cheetah , with a force of 130 Gs .
How this one-millimeter spider has mastered physics baffles even the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Peru to watch it in its native habitat .
Another mystery is how the spider patiently holds the web while waiting for food to fly by .
Alexander and Bhamla estimated that stretching the web requires at least 200 dynes , atremendous amount of energy for a tiny spider to generate .
Holding that for hours could waste a lot of energy .
“ Generating 200 dynes would produce tremendous forces on the tiny legs of the spider , ” Bhamla said .
“ If the reward is a mosquito at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worth it ?
We think the spider must be using some kind of trick to lock its muscles like a latch so it doesn ’ t need to consume energy while waiting for hours.
” [ Emphasis added . ]
Think of the design requirements for this feat : mastery of materials science , mastery of potential energy to stretch the web and latch it in a cocked position , ability to target fast-moving prey , mastery of ballistics , possessing a body able to withstand exceptional acceleration , and ability to wrap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after a dizzying flight .
This is a spider with a PhD in both physics and engineering !
Another example of biological design in the use of force is seen in the flight of the wandering albatross .
This bird is “ fine tuned to wind conditions , ” say engineers at the University of Liverpool .
Using data loggers attached to the birds ’ legs , the scientists found that the male albatross , which is 20 percent larger than the female , knows how to take advantage of wind gusts to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ largest wingspan belongs to the California condor .
Those birds are known to launch themselves off cliffs or tree branches or run downhill to get airborne .
Then they can stay aloft by gliding on thermals .
Scientists can only guess at the mastery of physics of some extinct flyers .
Some fossil birds like Pelagonis sandersi had a wingspan almost double that of the wandering albatross — 6.4 meters , almost 24 feet !
And then there are pterosaurs ( flying reptiles ) ; some were as big as giraffes .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wingspan up to 43 feet , could launch itself up into the air in one second from a standing position ( see Live Science ) .
If so , the feat required design not only in the muscles to achieve sufficient acceleration but also in the lightweight but sturdy bones that could withstand forces of flight .
Indeed , some of the largest dinosaurs may have had specialized bones that were both strong and lightweight to handle the forces of merely standing and walking on the ground , according to New Scientist .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ has mastered the use of force all the way down to the nano scale .
A paper in PNAS on describes the properties of talin , “ an adaptor protein that transduces mechanical signals into biochemical cues by recruiting a network of protein ligands in a force-dependent way.
” This example complements our earlier article about mechanotransduction .
Once again , fine tuning of forces and materials is found , but this time at a scale that is orders of magnitude smaller .
Talin ’ s job as an “ exquisite force sensor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ together inside the cell .
This enzyme senses motions of neighboring cells or the extracellular matrix .
Somehow , talin deconvolves this noisy signals of motion into recognizable oscillations at particular frequencies and knows how to respond .
Its spring-like domains unfold so that other molecules can attach , and then it binds them together .
It is a truly remarkable reaction that differs from other types of mechanosensing , opening the door for more discoveries in biophysics at the molecular scale : In the case of talin , the implications for design @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of in the paper is the “ time-dependent evolution ” ( unfolding ) of the vibrations that talin senses : i.e.
, the behavior of the oscillations from initiation to damping .
That ability implies even more design than a simple response to a vibration .
It implies that talin can recognize encoded information both in the signal strength and in its behavior in time , and respond accordingly by unfolding the appropriate domain for binding to other protein parts .
The three authors from Columbia University describe the actions of this enzyme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mechanotransduction.
” These examples of biological mastery of force are not miracles ; they are subject to the laws of physics and obey the laws of physics .
But wow , do they know how to take advantage of the laws of physics !
From the mightiest dinosaur , to the largest birds , to the tiniest spider , to molecules in the cell , biological designs show how to push the limits of the possible .
Such exceptional applications of materials and forces rightly excite our wonder and admiration .

Photo: A slingshot spider, by Lawrence E. Reeves, via George Institute of Technology/EurekAlert!
A tiny spider has been found that can launch itself at 10 times the speed that would make a test pilot black out. And if that isn’t amazing enough, it builds its own catapult out of web material that can tolerate sustained tension for hours and days. The story of the “slingshot spider” of Peru is told by Georgia Tech. Scientists measured this spider’s acceleration at 100 times that of a cheetah, with a force of 130 Gs. How this one-millimeter spider has mastered physics baffles even the engineers who traveled six hours by boat in Peru to watch it in its native habitat.
Another mystery is how the spider patiently holds the web while waiting for food to fly by. Alexander and Bhamla estimated that stretching the web requires at least 200 dynes, atremendous amount of energy for a tiny spider to generate. Holding that for hours could waste a lot of energy. “Generating 200 dynes would produce tremendous forces on the tiny legs of the spider,” Bhamla said. “If the reward is a mosquito at the end of three hours, is that worth it? We think the spider must be using some kind of trick to lock its muscles like a latch so it doesn’t need to consume energy while waiting for hours.” [Emphasis added.]
Think of the design requirements for this feat: mastery of materials science, mastery of potential energy to stretch the web and latch it in a cocked position, ability to target fast-moving prey, mastery of ballistics, possessing a body able to withstand exceptional acceleration, and ability to wrap the prey and consume energy from it after a dizzying flight. This is a spider with a PhD in both physics and engineering!
Pushing the Boundaries of Flight
Another example of biological design in the use of force is seen in the flight of the wandering albatross. This bird is “fine tuned to wind conditions,” say engineers at the University of Liverpool.
With a wingspan of over three meters — the largest of any bird alive today — the wandering albatross can fly thousands of miles, even around the world, gliding for long periods in search of fish or squid. Birds search for prey in flight and capture it after landing on the sea surface. Due to their long wings, taking off from the sea surface is by far their most energetically demanding activity, requiring four times more energy than gliding flight.
Using data loggers attached to the birds’ legs, the scientists found that the male albatross, which is 20 percent larger than the female, knows how to take advantage of wind gusts to get launched. On land, the largest wingspan belongs to the California condor. Those birds are known to launch themselves off cliffs or tree branches or run downhill to get airborne. Then they can stay aloft by gliding on thermals.
Scientists can only guess at the mastery of physics of some extinct flyers. Some fossil birds like Pelagonis sandersi had a wingspan almost double that of the wandering albatross — 6.4 meters, almost 24 feet! And then there are pterosaurs (flying reptiles); some were as big as giraffes. Some scientists think Quetzalcoatlus northropi, with a wingspan up to 43 feet, could launch itself up into the air in one second from a standing position (see Live Science). If so, the feat required design not only in the muscles to achieve sufficient acceleration but also in the lightweight but sturdy bones that could withstand forces of flight. Indeed, some of the largest dinosaurs may have had specialized bones that were both strong and lightweight to handle the forces of merely standing and walking on the ground, according to New Scientist.
Force Mastery All the Way Down
Biology has mastered the use of force all the way down to the nano scale. A paper in PNAS on describes the properties of talin, “an adaptor protein that transduces mechanical signals into biochemical cues by recruiting a network of protein ligands in a force-dependent way.” This example complements our earlier article about mechanotransduction. Once again, fine tuning of forces and materials is found, but this time at a scale that is orders of magnitude smaller.
These force cues have a complex nature, oscillate in time with different frequency components, and are often embedded in noise. However, most assays to explore the mechanics of force-sensing proteins rely on simple perturbations, such as constant or ramped forces. Here, we use our magnetic tweezers design to subject single talin domains to oscillatory forces and external mechanical noise. We show that talin ignores random external fluctuations but synchronizes its folding dynamics with force oscillations in a frequency-dependent way. We hypothesize that this finely tuned response could underpin talin force-sensing properties.
Talin’s job as an “exquisite force sensor” is to grab and hold parts together inside the cell.
Talin is a mechanosensing hub protein in focal adhesions, which cross-links transmembrane integrins with the active F-actin filaments and recruits several binding proteins to control the function and fate of this organelle. For example, vinculin binds to cryptic helices in mechanically unfolded talin domains, subsequently recruiting actin filaments that reinforce the cellular junction. Hence, talin transduces mechanical forces through its folding dynamics.
This enzyme senses motions of neighboring cells or the extracellular matrix. Somehow, talin deconvolves this noisy signals of motion into recognizable oscillations at particular frequencies and knows how to respond. Its spring-like domains unfold so that other molecules can attach, and then it binds them together. It is a truly remarkable reaction that differs from other types of mechanosensing, opening the door for more discoveries in biophysics at the molecular scale:
Although initially formulated in the context of nonlinear physics, stochastic resonance has been demonstrated in a broad range of biological systems, with particular emphasis as a sensory mechanism in mechanoreceptors, like the crayfish hair cells, the cricket cercal system, or the vestibular and auditory system. Interestingly, in all of these examples, signal transduction involves the activation of gated ion channels, which convert mechanical perturbations into electrophysiological signals. However, mechanotransduction also involves biochemical signaling, where force stimuli trigger downstream signaling pathways through a complex network of interacting proteins. In this sense, it remains to be explored whether stochastic resonance could also play a role in mechanotransduction pathways that involve ligand binding to force-bearing proteins instead of gating of mechanosensitive channels.
In the case of talin, the implications for design are clear:
Mechanical signal transduction relies on the robust and finely tuned response of molecular force sensors.Mechanical information is encoded in both the amplitude of the signal and its time-dependent evolution. Hence, both components must be accurately deciphered and interpreted by cellular force sensors.
The only evolution spoken of in the paper is the “time-dependent evolution” (unfolding) of the vibrations that talin senses: i.e., the behavior of the oscillations from initiation to damping. That ability implies even more design than a simple response to a vibration. It implies that talin can recognize encoded information both in the signal strength and in its behavior in time, and respond accordingly by unfolding the appropriate domain for binding to other protein parts. The three authors from Columbia University describe the actions of this enzyme as a “tuning fork of cellular mechanotransduction.”
No Miracles Here
These examples of biological mastery of force are not miracles; they are subject to the laws of physics and obey the laws of physics. But wow, do they know how to take advantage of the laws of physics! From the mightiest dinosaur, to the largest birds, to the tiniest spider, to molecules in the cell, biological designs show how to push the limits of the possible. Such exceptional applications of materials and forces rightly excite our wonder and admiration.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-01--Andrew Sullivan, Meet Richard Sternberg

Andrew Sullivan, Meet Richard Sternberg

There ’ s an outcry on behalf of journalist Andrew Sullivan today over how he was canceled by New York Magazine , where he had a writing perch .
His offense was publishing an excerpt from Charles Murray ’ s controversial book The Bell Curve — 25 years ago in The New Republic .
I may not be sympathetic to the argument about race and genetics in Murray ’ s book , but I am sympathetic to Sullivan and the way he is still being punished for his editorial decision .
It reminds me of my own point of entry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2004 , writing about biologist Richard Sternberg ’ s own canceling at the Smithsonian for publishing a peer-reviewed biology journal article by philosopher of science Stephen Meyer .
Sternberg was a researcher and editor with an open mind to intelligent design .
That was his crime .
You can read about what happened to him at the Free Science website .
A New York Times writer profiled Sullivan and still holds his feet to the flame because of Murray — again , something that happened a quarter century back .
Rod Dreher , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Here ’ s the important thing about this Times attempted hit job on Andrew Sullivan : he refused to say what they wanted him to say , and for that , he deserves the support of all of us who value free thought and free expression , even if we think he ’ s wrong about this issue .
I mean , think about it : Sullivan is one of the most interesting and ( because of his role in the gay marriage issue ) influential journalists of his generation , and now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in journalism with his substack — but the Times dispatched a writer to interview him , who made the center of his piece Sullivan ’ s refusal to repent for an issue of a magazine he edited twenty-five years ago .
Times media columnist Ben Smith declares him not worth defending because of something published when Ben Smith ( b .
1976 ) was eighteen years old .
What a chickensh*t move .
I hope this gets Sully 50,000 more subscribers ( you can become one here ) .
The left media mafia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to silence , smear , and otherwise discredit anyone who violates its orthodoxies — and that often means the most interesting and provocative writers .
One can ’ t help but agree .
Now , let me clear : There is NO RELATIONSHIP between Murray ’ s argument and Meyer ’ s .
In fact they are opposites — one materialist and evolutionary , the other teleological and finding purpose in biology , not to mention affirming the exceptionalism of universal human dignity .
But this is another illustration of what Michael Egnor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the “ canary in the coal mine ” when it comes to cancel culture .
ID scientists were being bullied and silenced by the censors , in academia and the media , already decades ago .
Some wider acknowledgment of that fact would be healthy and welcome .

Photo: Richard Sternberg, by Nathan Jacobson.
There’s an outcry on behalf of journalist Andrew Sullivan today over how he was canceled by New York Magazine, where he had a writing perch. His offense was publishing an excerpt from Charles Murray’s controversial book The Bell Curve — 25 years ago in The New Republic. I may not be sympathetic to the argument about race and genetics in Murray’s book, but I am sympathetic to Sullivan and the way he is still being punished for his editorial decision.
Bullied by the Smithsonian
It reminds me of my own point of entry into the intelligent design debate, in 2004, writing about biologist Richard Sternberg’s own canceling at the Smithsonian for publishing a peer-reviewed biology journal article by philosopher of science Stephen Meyer. Sternberg was a researcher and editor with an open mind to intelligent design. That was his crime. You can read about what happened to him at the Free Science website.
A New York Times writer profiled Sullivan and still holds his feet to the flame because of Murray — again, something that happened a quarter century back. Rod Dreher, among other commentators, is outraged:
Here’s the important thing about this Times attempted hit job on Andrew Sullivan: he refused to say what they wanted him to say, and for that, he deserves the support of all of us who value free thought and free expression, even if we think he’s wrong about this issue. I mean, think about it: Sullivan is one of the most interesting and (because of his role in the gay marriage issue) influential journalists of his generation, and now he is once again pioneering new paths in journalism with his substack — but the Times dispatched a writer to interview him, who made the center of his piece Sullivan’s refusal to repent for an issue of a magazine he edited twenty-five years ago. Times media columnist Ben Smith declares him not worth defending because of something published when Ben Smith (b. 1976) was eighteen years old. What a chickensh*t move. I hope this gets Sully 50,000 more subscribers (you can become one here). The left media mafia is going to do whatever they can to silence, smear, and otherwise discredit anyone who violates its orthodoxies — and that often means the most interesting and provocative writers.
Canary in the Coal Mine
One can’t help but agree. Now, let me clear: There is NO RELATIONSHIP between Murray’s argument and Meyer’s. In fact they are opposites — one materialist and evolutionary, the other teleological and finding purpose in biology, not to mention affirming the exceptionalism of universal human dignity. But this is another illustration of what Michael Egnor and others have said: intelligent design was the “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to cancel culture. ID scientists were being bullied and silenced by the censors, in academia and the media, already decades ago. Some wider acknowledgment of that fact would be healthy and welcome.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-01--Only Wallace’s “Intelligent Evolution” Can Explain the Kingdoms of Speech and Faith

The new edition of Intelligent Evolution : How Alfred Russel Wallace ’ s World of Life Challenged Darwinism , edited by science historian Michael Flannery , is out this week .
It sheds light on what would be , in a Darwinian perspective alone , unfathomable mysteries in exceptional human capacities — like speech , and faith .
In 2016 the late great journalist , novelist , and social commentator Tom Wolfe wrote The Kingdom of Speech and exposed Darwin ’ s unsolved riddle , or one of them anyway : namely , how did humans by means of natural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communication ?
The answer : we didn ’ t .
It was a product inherent in us , what Alfred Russel Wallace , Darwin ’ s partner and challenger , said it was all along , an intrinsic part of human exceptionalism .
Until recently this fact about speech simply couldn ’ t be confirmed , at least until 2008 when Daniel L. Everett published his findings working with the Amazonian Pirahã people .
What the Pirahã taught us is that people invented language .
Evolution — whether by natural selection , kin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t produce it .
Darwin couldn ’ t explain human speech because he refused to find it in unique human capacities .
For Wolfe , this unique acquisition of speech by humans is telling .
Just compare apes and humans at their greatest level playing field — at rest .
While apes lay in crudely constructed leaf mats in the forest , people sleep on hi-tech mattresses surrounded by even higher-tech contrivances of modern convenience .
Why the difference .
It ’ s grunts versus speech .
Wolfe exclaims , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into man is like saying that Carrera marble evolved into Michelangelo ’ s David .
Speech is what man pays homage to in every moment he can imagine.
” The kingdom of faith posed a similar conundrum for Darwin .
To him , God didn ’ t produce human society , human society produced god , allegedly a product of acquired social instincts .
“ The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator , ” wrote Darwin in the Descent of Man , “ does not seem to arise in the mind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long-continued culture.
” But religion , like speech , sets humanity apart from the beasts .
It is a separation that , for Wallace , always remained unbridgeable .
Interestingly , an archeological site in Turkey , Göbekli Tepe , now has done for the kingdom of faith what Wolfe has done for speech .
How so ?
Read all about it in appendix c to Intelligent Evolution , “ Wallace v. Darwin on Religion and Humanity : What We Now Know About the Kingdom of Faith.
” Order your copy today !

Photo: David, by Michelangelo / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0).
The new edition of Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russel Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism, edited by science historian Michael Flannery, is out this week. It sheds light on what would be, in a Darwinian perspective alone, unfathomable mysteries in exceptional human capacities — like speech, and faith.
In 2016 the late great journalist, novelist, and social commentator Tom Wolfe wrote The Kingdom of Speech and exposed Darwin’s unsolved riddle, or one of them anyway: namely, how did humans by means of natural selection alone develop language and sophisticated verbal communication? The answer: we didn’t. It was a product inherent in us, what Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s partner and challenger, said it was all along, an intrinsic part of human exceptionalism.
Until recently this fact about speech simply couldn’t be confirmed, at least until 2008 when Daniel L. Everett published his findings working with the Amazonian Pirahã people. What the Pirahã taught us is that people invented language. Evolution — whether by natural selection, kin selection, or some other selection — didn’t produce it. Darwin couldn’t explain human speech because he refused to find it in unique human capacities.
A Unique Acquisition
For Wolfe, this unique acquisition of speech by humans is telling. Just compare apes and humans at their greatest level playing field — at rest. While apes lay in crudely constructed leaf mats in the forest, people sleep on hi-tech mattresses surrounded by even higher-tech contrivances of modern convenience. Why the difference. It’s grunts versus speech. Wolfe exclaims, “Speech! To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrera marble evolved into Michelangelo’s David. Speech is what man pays homage to in every moment he can imagine.”
The kingdom of faith posed a similar conundrum for Darwin. To him, God didn’t produce human society, human society produced god, allegedly a product of acquired social instincts. “The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator,” wrote Darwin in the Descent of Man, “does not seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.”
But religion, like speech, sets humanity apart from the beasts. It is a separation that, for Wallace, always remained unbridgeable. Interestingly, an archeological site in Turkey, Göbekli Tepe, now has done for the kingdom of faith what Wolfe has done for speech. How so? Read all about it in appendix c to Intelligent Evolution, “Wallace v. Darwin on Religion and Humanity: What We Now Know About the Kingdom of Faith.” Order your copy today!


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-01--Design Gets Down and Dirty — Complex Specified Information in Electric Mud

Something has been right under scientists ’ noses , and they hadn ’ t seen it — till now .
Oh , they have known about bacteria for centuries , ever since Antony van Leeuwenhoek first glimpsed them in his homemade microscopes .
Bacteria have been extensively classified and sequenced now .
We know about their internal organelles , their genomes , and their interactions .
But what came to light as recently as a decade ago is truly astonishing : some bacteria can join end to end to form cables that conduct electricity .
So-called “ cable bacteria ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in February 2016 as potential agents of earth ’ s habitability .
Cables of specialized microbes , extending several centimeters , appear to transfer electrons that operate the metabolism of other organisms living in deep sea sediments , and simultaneously prevent buildup of toxic wastes .
Since then , living electrical wires are turning up everywhere .
Elizabeth Pennisi , writing in Science Magazine ’ s special issue on “ mud ” as “ one of Earth ’ s most ubiquitous substances , ” describes the disbelief among some scientists on hearing Lars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had found chains of bacteria conducting electricity in the “ black , stinky mud ” he had collected from a harbor in Denmark .
Within days in his lab , the heavy doses of hydrogen sulfide in his mud samples disappeared , and so did the stink .
Startled , he discovered that what he named “ cable bacteria ” were transferring electrons from the oxygen-deprived lower layers to the surface , allowing bacteria deeper in the mud to metabolize organic matter and get rid of hydrogen sulfide waste .
In her article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Pennisi says , Now that they are believers , these and other scientists are finding that cable bacteria are almost as ubiquitous as mud itself .
The article ’ s lead photo shows a cross-section of mud with networks of strands , but these are not fungal hyphae one might find in garden soil .
These are much thinner .
“ Threads of electron-conducting cable bacteria can stretch up to 5 centimeters from deeper mud , ” the caption reads , “ where oxygen is scarce and hydrogen sulfide is common , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Basically , the deep organisms send electrons gained by “ eating ” organic matter up the cables to the top , and donate the electrons to oxygen and hydrogen , yielding water .
This prevents buildup of toxic hydrogen sulfide .
Similar oxidation-reduction ( redox ) reactions are the basis of all metabolism .
It might seem at first that these bacteria are acting selfishly , using a clever electrical trick to get food and eliminate waste .
But when researchers started looking at the big picture , they saw a cooperative ecosystem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the one whose first reaction was to call Nielsen ’ s theory “ complete nonsense , ” has come around .
“ We are seeing way more interactions within microbes and between microbes being done by electricity , ” Meysman says .
“ I call it the electrical biosphere.
” Working together , Nielsen and Meysman found out more details about these bacteria .
They build a cylindrical sheath , possibly made of protein , within which the bacteria line up .
These cylinders contain up from 17 to 60 protein “ wires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cell through the sheath .
Many thousands of microbes can make up a single wire .
The resulting cables conduct a current of electricity that , while not as efficient as copper wires , “ are on par with conductors used in solar panels and cellphone screens , as well as the best organic semiconductors.
” The other type of conductive microbe has been found almost everywhere microbiologists have looked .
The infographic in Pennisi ’ s article shows that “ nanowire bacteria ” have a different structure but do the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organic compounds travel along “ protein nanowires ” to electron-accepting substances or cells .
The nanowires are much shorter , on the order of 20 to 50 nanometers , but they can sprout from multiple parts of a bacterial membrane , probing the surrounding soil to connect the “ terminals ” of electrical currents that power their metabolism .
But proteins were thought to be insulators ; how can they conduct electricity ?
Nanowire conductance is not well understood , but it may have to do with sequences of amino acids bearing ring-shaped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cables help the bacteria , but they also help other organisms .
Without them , only the surface layers of soils and sediments would be viable , because toxic waste products would accumulate in the deeper , oxygen-deprived layers .
These wires are “ making mud more habitable for other life forms , ” Pennisi says .
It is also becoming apparent that they are natural clean-up agents in some ecosystems .
Cable bacteria and protein nanowires are turning up everywhere , in both freshwater and saltwater .
For example , they have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tubes on the seafloor , probably helping make the tubes more habitable for the occupants .
Pennisi catalogs some of the many roles that these electrically conductive bacterial cables play in nature .
By creating gradients pH gradients , they undoubtedly play important roles in geochemical cycles involving elements and molecules as diverse as methane , arsenic , manganese , and iron .
They may even be playing roles in the biofilms that form around our teeth !
Whether that is good or bad remains to be seen , but Nielsen remarks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what we ’ re dealing with here.
” As scientists learn more about electrically conducting microbes , we can expect more startling revelations about how central their roles are to global habitability .
For example , In separate but related findings , scientists are discovering more evidence that microbes really get around .
At The Conversation , Predrag Slijepcevic writes that “ Bacteria and viruses are travelling the world on highways in the sky ” ( see also , “ Information Storage — In the Cloud ( s ) ” ) .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the University of New South Wales report , “ Microbes living on air [ is ] a global phenomenon , ” even in polar climates where almost nothing grows .
Most likely they influence carbon fixation and global climate .
“ There are whole ecosystems probably relying on this novel microbial carbon fixation process , ” the senior author said , “ where microbes use the energy obtained from breathing in atmospheric hydrogen gas to turn carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into carbon — in order to grow.
” With all these benefits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that some would be thinking up biomimetic applications .
A companion piece in the special issue of Science , also by Pennisi , has the provocative title , “ Next up : a phone powered by microbial wires ?
” There ’ s actually enough energy in moisture in the air , researchers have shown , to power a cellphone with genetically modified bacterial nanowire films .
How ’ s that for “ a revolutionary technology to get renewable , green , and cheap energy ” in today ’ s energy-conscious society ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are living organisms with molecular machines built by and storing information in coded form .
That means that even mud is loaded with complex specified information — what a thought !
Pennisi comments , “ Bacteria that conduct electricity are transforming how we see sediments.
” It puts a new positive spin on “ clear as mud.
” There is no lack of clarity , however , in the conclusion that rapid , efficient , global ecosystem engineering through electrical cables sounds like a designing mind had the foresight to think of everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life to flourish .

Photo credit: Daniel Sturgess via Unsplash.
Something has been right under scientists’ noses, and they hadn’t seen it — till now. Oh, they have known about bacteria for centuries, ever since Antony van Leeuwenhoek first glimpsed them in his homemade microscopes. Bacteria have been extensively classified and sequenced now. We know about their internal organelles, their genomes, and their interactions. But what came to light as recently as a decade ago is truly astonishing: some bacteria can join end to end to form cables that conduct electricity.
So-called “cable bacteria” were mentioned briefly on Evolution News back in February 2016 as potential agents of earth’s habitability. Cables of specialized microbes, extending several centimeters, appear to transfer electrons that operate the metabolism of other organisms living in deep sea sediments, and simultaneously prevent buildup of toxic wastes. Since then, living electrical wires are turning up everywhere.
A Special Issue on Mud
Elizabeth Pennisi, writing in Science Magazine’s special issue on “mud” as “one of Earth’s most ubiquitous substances,” describes the disbelief among some scientists on hearing Lars Peter Nielsen announce in 2009 that he had found chains of bacteria conducting electricity in the “black, stinky mud” he had collected from a harbor in Denmark. Within days in his lab, the heavy doses of hydrogen sulfide in his mud samples disappeared, and so did the stink. Startled, he discovered that what he named “cable bacteria” were transferring electrons from the oxygen-deprived lower layers to the surface, allowing bacteria deeper in the mud to metabolize organic matter and get rid of hydrogen sulfide waste. In her article, “The Mud Is Electric,” Pennisi says,
When Nielsen first described the discovery in 2009, colleagues were skeptical. Filip Meysman, a chemical engineer at the University of Antwerp, recalls thinking, “This is complete nonsense.” Yes, researchers knew bacteria could conduct electricity, but not over the distances Nielsen was suggesting. It was “as if our own metabolic processes would have an effect 18 kilometers away,” says microbiologist Andreas Teske of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. [Emphasis added.]
Now that they are believers, these and other scientists are finding that cable bacteria are almost as ubiquitous as mud itself.
But the more researchers have looked for “electrified” mud, the more they have found it, in both saltwater and fresh. They have also identified a second kind of mud-loving electric microbe: nanowire bacteria, individual cells that grow protein structures capable of moving electrons over shorter distances… These nanowire microbes live seemingly everywhere — including in the human mouth.
The article’s lead photo shows a cross-section of mud with networks of strands, but these are not fungal hyphae one might find in garden soil. These are much thinner. “Threads of electron-conducting cable bacteria can stretch up to 5 centimeters from deeper mud,” the caption reads, “where oxygen is scarce and hydrogen sulfide is common, to surface layers richer in oxygen.” Basically, the deep organisms send electrons gained by “eating” organic matter up the cables to the top, and donate the electrons to oxygen and hydrogen, yielding water. This prevents buildup of toxic hydrogen sulfide. Similar oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions are the basis of all metabolism.
Global Roles of Electric Mud
It might seem at first that these bacteria are acting selfishly, using a clever electrical trick to get food and eliminate waste. But when researchers started looking at the big picture, they saw a cooperative ecosystem coming into focus.
The discoveries are forcing researchers to rewrite textbooks; rethink the role that mud bacteria play in recycling key elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus; and reconsider how they influence aquatic ecosystems and climate change.
Filip Meysman, the one whose first reaction was to call Nielsen’s theory “complete nonsense,” has come around. “We are seeing way more interactions within microbes and between microbes being done by electricity,” Meysman says. “I call it the electrical biosphere.”
Cable Structure
Working together, Nielsen and Meysman found out more details about these bacteria. They build a cylindrical sheath, possibly made of protein, within which the bacteria line up. These cylinders contain up from 17 to 60 protein “wires” where electrons are passed from cell to cell through the sheath. Many thousands of microbes can make up a single wire. The resulting cables conduct a current of electricity that, while not as efficient as copper wires, “are on par with conductors used in solar panels and cellphone screens, as well as the best organic semiconductors.”
The other type of conductive microbe has been found almost everywhere microbiologists have looked. The infographic in Pennisi’s article shows that “nanowire bacteria” have a different structure but do the same job. Electrons gained from oxidation of organic compounds travel along “protein nanowires” to electron-accepting substances or cells. The nanowires are much shorter, on the order of 20 to 50 nanometers, but they can sprout from multiple parts of a bacterial membrane, probing the surrounding soil to connect the “terminals” of electrical currents that power their metabolism. But proteins were thought to be insulators; how can they conduct electricity? Nanowire conductance is not well understood, but it may have to do with sequences of amino acids bearing ring-shaped R-groups, called pilins.
Shared Benefits
These nanoscopic cables help the bacteria, but they also help other organisms. Without them, only the surface layers of soils and sediments would be viable, because toxic waste products would accumulate in the deeper, oxygen-deprived layers. These wires are “making mud more habitable for other life forms,” Pennisi says. It is also becoming apparent that they are natural clean-up agents in some ecosystems.
Cable bacteria and protein nanowires are turning up everywhere, in both freshwater and saltwater. For example, they have been observed in the sides of worm tubes on the seafloor, probably helping make the tubes more habitable for the occupants.
Nanowire bacteria are even more broadly distributed. Researchers have found them in soils, rice paddies, the deep subsurface, and even sewage treatment plants, as well as freshwater and marine sediments. They may exist wherever biofilms form, and the ubiquity of biofilms provides further evidence of the big role these bacteria may play in nature.
Pennisi catalogs some of the many roles that these electrically conductive bacterial cables play in nature. By creating gradients pH gradients, they undoubtedly play important roles in geochemical cycles involving elements and molecules as diverse as methane, arsenic, manganese, and iron. They may even be playing roles in the biofilms that form around our teeth! Whether that is good or bad remains to be seen, but Nielsen remarks, “It is dizzying to think about what we’re dealing with here.”
Global Ecosystem Engineers
As scientists learn more about electrically conducting microbes, we can expect more startling revelations about how central their roles are to global habitability. For example,
The microbes also alter the properties of mud, says Sairah Malkin, an ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “They are particularly efficient … ecosystem engineers.” Cable bacteria “grow like wildfire,” she says; on intertidal oyster reefs, she has found, a single cubic centimeter of mud can contain 2859 meters of cables, which cements particles in place, possibly making sediment more stable for marine organisms.
In separate but related findings, scientists are discovering more evidence that microbes really get around. At The Conversation, Predrag Slijepcevic writes that “Bacteria and viruses are travelling the world on highways in the sky” (see also, “Information Storage — In the Cloud(s)”). And some live on air. Researchers at the University of New South Wales report, “Microbes living on air [is] a global phenomenon,” even in polar climates where almost nothing grows. Most likely they influence carbon fixation and global climate. “There are whole ecosystems probably relying on this novel microbial carbon fixation process,” the senior author said, “where microbes use the energy obtained from breathing in atmospheric hydrogen gas to turn carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into carbon — in order to grow.”
Design Promotes Design
With all these benefits coming to light, it was inevitable that some would be thinking up biomimetic applications. A companion piece in the special issue of Science, also by Pennisi, has the provocative title, “Next up: a phone powered by microbial wires?”
One potential use is to detect and control pollutants. Cable microbes seem to thrive in the presence of organic compounds, such as petroleum, and Nielsen and his team are testing the possibility that an abundance of cable bacteria signals the presence of undetected pollution in aquifers. The bacteria don’t degrade the oil directly, but they may oxidize sulfide produced by other oil-eating bacteria. They might also aid cleanup; sediments recover faster from crude oil contamination when they are colonized by cable bacteria, a different research team reported in January in Water Research. In Spain, a third team is exploring whether nanowire bacteria can speed the cleanup of polluted wetlands. And even before nanowire bacteria were shown to be electric, they showed promise for decontaminating nuclear waste sites and aquifers contaminated with aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene or naphthalene.
There’s actually enough energy in moisture in the air, researchers have shown, to power a cellphone with genetically modified bacterial nanowire films. How’s that for “a revolutionary technology to get renewable, green, and cheap energy” in today’s energy-conscious society?
Down and Dirty
Bacteria, it is worth emphasizing, are living organisms with molecular machines built by and storing information in coded form. That means that even mud is loaded with complex specified information — what a thought! Pennisi comments, “Bacteria that conduct electricity are transforming how we see sediments.” It puts a new positive spin on “clear as mud.”
There is no lack of clarity, however, in the conclusion that rapid, efficient, global ecosystem engineering through electrical cables sounds like a designing mind had the foresight to think of everything that a habitable planet would need for life to flourish.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-02--Why Intelligent Design Had to Be the First to Face the Guillotine

Proponents of intelligent design had explored cancel culture long before the phrase became well known .
From Richard Sternberg to Stephen Meyer to Douglas Axe to Günter Bechly to ( deep breath ) Scott Minnich to Eric Hedin to David Coppedge and many others — before shouting down , policing , and punishing disfavored ideas were recognized by many as a rising curse in academic life , ID scientists knew it all too well .
How did we get here ?
Tony Woodlief has an insightful article in the Wall Street Journal .
As he argues , the origins of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Citing the political scientist Willmoore Kendall , who taught William F. Buckley at Yale , he says that an excessive insistence on academic freedom in past decades contained the seeds of that freedom ’ s own destruction .
Buckley alluded to this in the subtitle of his first book , God and Man at Yale : The Superstitions of “ Academic Freedom.
” The paradox comes when , in an “ absolutist ” manner , you extend unlimited free speech to its own worst enemies .
And you get there by imagining that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the political theorist Willmoore Kendall predicted in the 1950s , a community that treats every idea as ultimately refutable will eventually conclude that no real truth exists .
And once that happens , he reasoned , a formerly “ open society ” will “ overnight become the most intolerant of possible societies and , above all , one in which the pursuit of truth .
.
.
can only come to a halt.
” When no dogma can finally be put to rest , it becomes easier — almost obligatory — to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not based on their reasonableness or coherence , but by how much they tickle the ears of the in-crowd .
Harder truths become offensive .
The only intolerable citizen , in such a regime , is the one whose belief in truth compels him to attack beliefs he believes to be false even if his attacks disturb the equanimity of the establishment .
His criticism becomes too hurtful — even a form of “ violence.
” For the safety of the community , he must be cast out… .
Such is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beyond the pale ; we abandon the firm ground necessary to call evil by its rightful name .
This is why ideas inimical to free speech — Marxism and its identitarian offshoots — receive perennially fresh hearings under various guises in departments ranging from gender studies to philosophy to English .
Adherents of these ideologies have no problem denying speech to their opponents .
Our commitment to granting every idea space to bloom has ironically yielded speech codes , safe zones and purges of independent-minded scholars .
Now this illiberalism is boiling over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other university-heavy cities .
Portland , Oregon , is the new Marxism triumphant .
In wondering about the ongoing chaos in the streets of the city to our south , I had not thought of the fact that Portland is so “ university-heavy.
” But of course it is .
My older daughter is applying to colleges this year and she gets a letter from the University of Portland what seems like every other day .
As I joked to her , in seeking a scholarship , she should indicate in her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Rioting and Looting .
For her senior project on Arson , entitled “ Barbecue Night , ” she will burn down the cafeteria .
With free speech in flames , as Woodlief reminds us , mere “ bromides ” about academic freedom can ’ t help much .
Roger Kimball cited Kendall to a similar effect in an incisive piece in The New Criterion .
From “ Restoring the lost consensus ” : Kendall saw deeply into the dialectic of disagreement and free speech .
It is understandable that conservatives should react @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The criminalization of policy differences that underwrites woke culture is an alarming development .
But I think that Kendall was right when he contended that “ by no means are all questions open questions.
” To explain this , Kendall points out that all societies are founded on a “ consensus , ” what he calls “ a hard core of shared beliefs.
” This is especially true , he notes , for the United States , whose founding principles are of recent vintage and are clearly and deliberately set forth .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Kendall acknowledges , but only “ within limits set by the basic consensus.
” Should that consensus be challenged by something “ with genuine civil war potential , ” the proper response is not debate but interdiction… .
Kendall was writing at a moment when international Communism posed an existential threat to the United States .
With that in mind , he argued , “ Some questions involve matters so basic to the consensus ” that , in declaring them open , a society would in effect “ abolish itself [ and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outlined two views of free speech .
The first , dedicated to the proposition that “ no truth in particular is true , ” holds that all questions are open and that no one position is to be preferred to another .
The second view , his view , turns on two words : “ We ” and “ truth , ” as in the phrase “ We hold these truths ” from the Declaration of Independence .
The identity of that “ We ” and the substance of those truths mark the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science Stephen Meyer has pointed out here , the Declaration goes on immediately to list among the “ truths ” that “ we told ” the proposition of a design underlying nature : “ that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
” That is Jefferson ’ s very first truth .
He was even more explicit about it in a letter to John Adams .
On Independence Day , it ’ s appropriate to review the sources of our rights as citizens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more basic than any other , yet that receives less than the attention it deserves .
I refer to the idea that there is an intelligent creator who can be known by reason from nature , a key tenet underlying the Declaration of Independence — as well as , curiously , the modern theory of intelligent design .
The birth of our republic was announced in the Declaration through the pen of Thomas Jefferson .
He and the other Founders based their vision on a belief in an intrinsic human dignity , bestowed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to the design and in the image of a purposeful creator .
Marxism and Darwinism are joined at the hip , as Hannah Arendt recognized in The Origins of Totalitarianism .
In Wesley J. Smith ’ s phrase , in the present cultural moment , we have witnessed “ the French Revolution attacking the American Revolution.
” Back in June I predicted to my family that the Revolution would , before long , turn on the great monuments like those to Thomas Jefferson .
Of course it would .
Yesterday , my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s not surprising that the first idea to find its head on the guillotine would be intelligent design .
The idea of design , the heart of the American “ consensus , ” its hardest “ hard core , ” was the leading truth that Jefferson enunciated in the Declaration .
Naturally , it had to be the first to go .

Image credit: Execution of Marie Antoinette, Unknown author / Public domain.
Proponents of intelligent design had explored cancel culture long before the phrase became well known. From Richard Sternberg to Stephen Meyer to Douglas Axe to Günter Bechly to (deep breath) Scott Minnich to Eric Hedin to David Coppedge and many others — before shouting down, policing, and punishing disfavored ideas were recognized by many as a rising curse in academic life, ID scientists knew it all too well. How did we get here?
The Paradox of Free Speech
Tony Woodlief has an insightful article in the Wall Street Journal. As he argues, the origins of speech bullying are laden with paradox. Citing the political scientist Willmoore Kendall, who taught William F. Buckley at Yale, he says that an excessive insistence on academic freedom in past decades contained the seeds of that freedom’s own destruction. Buckley alluded to this in the subtitle of his first book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom.” The paradox comes when, in an “absolutist” manner, you extend unlimited free speech to its own worst enemies. And you get there by imagining that all ideas are created equal.
From “Free Speech Absolutism Killed Free Speech”:
As the political theorist Willmoore Kendall predicted in the 1950s, a community that treats every idea as ultimately refutable will eventually conclude that no real truth exists. And once that happens, he reasoned, a formerly “open society” will “overnight become the most intolerant of possible societies and, above all, one in which the pursuit of truth . . . can only come to a halt.” When no dogma can finally be put to rest, it becomes easier — almost obligatory — to do whatever we like. Ideas are evaluated, not based on their reasonableness or coherence, but by how much they tickle the ears of the in-crowd. Harder truths become offensive. The only intolerable citizen, in such a regime, is the one whose belief in truth compels him to attack beliefs he believes to be false even if his attacks disturb the equanimity of the establishment. His criticism becomes too hurtful — even a form of “violence.” For the safety of the community, he must be cast out…. Such is the way of things when no idea is beyond the pale; we abandon the firm ground necessary to call evil by its rightful name. This is why ideas inimical to free speech — Marxism and its identitarian offshoots — receive perennially fresh hearings under various guises in departments ranging from gender studies to philosophy to English. Adherents of these ideologies have no problem denying speech to their opponents. Our commitment to granting every idea space to bloom has ironically yielded speech codes, safe zones and purges of independent-minded scholars. Now this illiberalism is boiling over from campuses into the streets of Portland and other university-heavy cities.
Portland, Oregon, is the new Marxism triumphant. In wondering about the ongoing chaos in the streets of the city to our south, I had not thought of the fact that Portland is so “university-heavy.” But of course it is. My older daughter is applying to colleges this year and she gets a letter from the University of Portland what seems like every other day. As I joked to her, in seeking a scholarship, she should indicate in her application that she plans to double major in Rioting and Looting. For her senior project on Arson, entitled “Barbecue Night,” she will burn down the cafeteria.
“Bromides” to the Rescue?
With free speech in flames, as Woodlief reminds us, mere “bromides” about academic freedom can’t help much. Roger Kimball cited Kendall to a similar effect in an incisive piece in The New Criterion. From “Restoring the lost consensus”:
Kendall saw deeply into the dialectic of disagreement and free speech. It is understandable that conservatives should react to woke intolerance by celebrating free speech. The criminalization of policy differences that underwrites woke culture is an alarming development. But I think that Kendall was right when he contended that “by no means are all questions open questions.” To explain this, Kendall points out that all societies are founded on a “consensus,” what he calls “a hard core of shared beliefs.” This is especially true, he notes, for the United States, whose founding principles are of recent vintage and are clearly and deliberately set forth. Freedom of thought and expression are important, Kendall acknowledges, but only “within limits set by the basic consensus.” Should that consensus be challenged by something “with genuine civil war potential,” the proper response is not debate but interdiction…. Kendall was writing at a moment when international Communism posed an existential threat to the United States. With that in mind, he argued, “Some questions involve matters so basic to the consensus” that, in declaring them open, a society would in effect “abolish itself [and] commit suicide.” Accordingly, Kendall outlined two views of free speech. The first, dedicated to the proposition that “no truth in particular is true,” holds that all questions are open and that no one position is to be preferred to another. The second view, his view, turns on two words: “We” and “truth,” as in the phrase “We hold these truths” from the Declaration of Independence. The identity of that “We” and the substance of those truths mark the limits of interrogation.
Thomas Jefferson and Intelligent Design
As philosopher of science Stephen Meyer has pointed out here, the Declaration goes on immediately to list among the “truths” that “we hold” the proposition of a design underlying nature: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” That is Jefferson’s very first truth. He was even more explicit about it in a letter to John Adams.
From, “Thomas Jefferson’s Embrace of Intelligent Design”:
On Independence Day, it’s appropriate to review the sources of our rights as citizens. There is one source that is more basic than any other, yet that receives less than the attention it deserves. I refer to the idea that there is an intelligent creator who can be known by reason from nature, a key tenet underlying the Declaration of Independence — as well as, curiously, the modern theory of intelligent design. The birth of our republic was announced in the Declaration through the pen of Thomas Jefferson. He and the other Founders based their vision on a belief in an intrinsic human dignity, bestowed by virtue of our having been made according to the design and in the image of a purposeful creator.
To the Guillotine
Marxism and Darwinism are joined at the hip, as Hannah Arendt recognized in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Wesley J. Smith’s phrase, in the present cultural moment, we have witnessed “the French Revolution attacking the American Revolution.” Back in June I predicted to my family that the Revolution would, before long, turn on the great monuments like those to Thomas Jefferson. Of course it would. Yesterday, my prediction was borne out.
In retrospect, it’s not surprising that the first idea to find its head on the guillotine would be intelligent design. The idea of design, the heart of the American “consensus,” its hardest “hard core,” was the leading truth that Jefferson enunciated in the Declaration. Naturally, it had to be the first to go.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-02--On the Swamidass Hypothesis — The Cheese Stands Alone

Joshua Swamidass wonders why I reviewed The Genealogical Adam and Eve ( GAE ) unfavorably .
Other ID advocates , he notes , such as Sean McDowell or Walter Bradley , liked the book .
And scientists not explicitly affiliated with ID , such as the UK botanist and geneticist Richard Buggs , or Rice University synthetic chemist James Tour , also liked it .
Indeed , they did .
Buggs said that Swamidass might be nominated for a Templeton Prize .
Tour put him on the list for a Nobel Peace Prize .
With respect to GAE ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were diplomatically neutral or politely non-committal .
Read their comments , at the links above , and you ’ ll see what I mean .
What they did not do — what no one , to my knowledge , has done yet — is agree that the GAE scenario is true , in the everyday scientific usage of the best supported hypothesis among the candidates , consistent with all the evidence .
Not even Swamidass himself , the author of the GAE hypothesis , will say that .
So we have a lonely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the room , which no one , including its author , will own as true ( meaning , as noted above , will put forward as the best established in the array of possible hypotheses for human origins ) .
The cheese — the GAE hypothesis — stands alone .
The question is why .
When an author says , in effect , “ Here is a hypothesis about the origin of Homo sapiens which needs your serious attention , but I , who came up with the idea , am not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is actually the case , ” something puzzling is afoot .
Darwin wasn ’ t so cagey .
Nor are Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne .
Nor is Michael Behe , or Stephen Meyer .
I agree with the latter two about the empirical detectability of design , and disagree with the former three about common descent and natural selection , but I greatly respect all five for following the counsel of Matthew 5:37 .
“ Let your Yes be Yes and your No , No.
” Evolutionary or ID theorists who defend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ i.e , as “ true , ” in the everyday sense sketched above , give one something to grapple with and to learn from .
Any hypothesis worth proposing is also a hypothesis worth defending , personally , as probably the case , at least until shown otherwise .
Thus , my conscience is untroubled by my less-than-passionate interest in the many artful maneuvers , scientific and theological , of the GAE scenario .
Swamidass has found a way to have Adam and Eve , albeit without having them , so to speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ existed , but not in any historical form that would have been recognizable to a pre-Darwinian , or ( more to the point ) that would disquiet an evolutionary biologist today .
Adam and Eve certainly were not the first humans .
The species Homo sapiens came to be via an evolutionary process , sharing common ancestry with other primates .
Adam and Eve , if they existed , were very late arrivals , dropped de novo ( maybe ) into the ongoing evolutionary narrative .
Their offspring immediately interbred with the vastly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , unrelated to A & E. But nothing biological , no evidence , points to A & E. The ordinary methods of science can say nothing about them , one way or another .
That ’ s a feature of the GAE hypothesis , not a bug .
If you want to know more , read GAE .
I simply don ’ t care , because I ’ m not going to take the GAE hypothesis more seriously than Swamidass himself does .
For him , GAE represents a menu for other people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dialogue with the perplexed , because he is weary of Christians resisting the obvious truth of common ancestry .
If you , the reader , want for whatever reason to believe that Adam and Eve existed , then the GAE menu has entrée options A , B , or C , consistent with “ mainstream science , ” with a range of theological à la carte items at the bottom of the page .
For his part , however , Swamidass writes ( p. 8 ) , “ In this book , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ focusing instead on explaining how science interacts with the questions put forward by others.
” The reader will not learn what Swamidass personally thinks is true about Adam and Eve .
Look again at the GAE menu , please , and make your selection .
That ’ s okay .
It ’ s his book .
As a reviewer , however , what I do want to know — what I do care about — is how Swamidass ended up where he did , in writing GAE , and what he takes to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Why did he start where he did ?
It ’ s not true that Swamidass does not “ press [ his ] personal beliefs ” on his readers .
He does , although he would not call the following propositions beliefs : For Swamidass , the common ancestry of humans and other primates is not a belief .
It is scientific knowledge .
As such , common ancestry represents “ the starting point ” of GAE .
Here Is Our Endorsement I speculate that many atheist or agnostic readers of GAE will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and lightly skim the rest of the book .
Did humans evolve like all other species on Earth ?
Yes ?
And Adam and Eve , if they existed , are in principle undetectable by science ?
Also yes ?
Wonderful : we ’ ll endorse the book .
Just tell us where to send our blurbs .
Nihil obstat , as far as standard evolutionary theory is concerned .
Swamidass has said that science operates by consensus .
As I stated in my Sapientia review , I favor Venn diagrams for depicting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ publicly admissible opinion .
Swamidass , as he has long stated , is committed to evolution and common ancestry ( see Figure 1 ) as the established scientific consensus .
Thus , common ancestry is his starting point for thinking about Adam and Eve .
From there , he reaches out to Christians who currently stand outside that circle , and believe in the traditional conception of Adam and Eve .
GAE offers a sort-of-facsimile version of A & E , he argues , within the logical circle of evolution by common ancestry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Step over here , he invites them , to see if you can live theologically with the consequences .
I will be watching to see who takes the GAE offer .
For me , scientific consensus is not a path to truth ( would I be an ID troublemaker if I believed that ?
really , now ) but represents an inescapable paradox , as simultaneously a strength and weakness of the all-too-human enterprise of science .
In our private correspondence , over several years , I have explained to Swamidass my scientific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ape genomic patterns — his main evidential basis for accepting common ancestry — are far too equivocal a signal to carry the weight he places on them .
We disagree , and there our personal debate still stands .
Hence , I see no good grounds for starting the Adam and Eve conversation where Swamidass wants to begin it , with common ancestry as received knowledge .
Nonetheless , as a fellow Christian , I wish him well in his project .
I ’ ll find it a lot more significant if , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenario as true .
A menu item ?
Not interested .

Image: The Temptation of Adam by Jacopo, by Jacopo Tintoretto / Public domain
Joshua Swamidass wonders why I reviewed The Genealogical Adam and Eve (GAE) unfavorably. Other ID advocates, he notes, such as Sean McDowell or Walter Bradley, liked the book. And scientists not explicitly affiliated with ID, such as the UK botanist and geneticist Richard Buggs, or Rice University synthetic chemist James Tour, also liked it.
Indeed, they did. Buggs said that Swamidass might be nominated for a Templeton Prize. Tour put him on the list for a Nobel Peace Prize. With respect to GAE’s main thesis, however, these reviewers were diplomatically neutral or politely non-committal. Read their comments, at the links above, and you’ll see what I mean. What they did not do — what no one, to my knowledge, has done yet — is agree that the GAE scenario is true, in the everyday scientific usage of the best supported hypothesis among the candidates, consistent with all the evidence. Not even Swamidass himself, the author of the GAE hypothesis, will say that.
So we have a lonely hypothesis standing by itself in the center of the room, which no one, including its author, will own as true (meaning, as noted above, will put forward as the best established in the array of possible hypotheses for human origins). The cheese — the GAE hypothesis — stands alone.
Something Puzzling
The question is why. When an author says, in effect, “Here is a hypothesis about the origin of Homo sapiens which needs your serious attention, but I, who came up with the idea, am not going to tell you what I think is actually the case,” something puzzling is afoot. Darwin wasn’t so cagey. Nor are Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne. Nor is Michael Behe, or Stephen Meyer. I agree with the latter two about the empirical detectability of design, and disagree with the former three about common descent and natural selection, but I greatly respect all five for following the counsel of Matthew 5:37. “Let your Yes be Yes and your No, No.” Evolutionary or ID theorists who defend their positions as the best available, i.e, as “true,” in the everyday sense sketched above, give one something to grapple with and to learn from. Any hypothesis worth proposing is also a hypothesis worth defending, personally, as probably the case, at least until shown otherwise.
Thus, my conscience is untroubled by my less-than-passionate interest in the many artful maneuvers, scientific and theological, of the GAE scenario. Swamidass has found a way to have Adam and Eve, albeit without having them, so to speak — that is, they might have existed, but not in any historical form that would have been recognizable to a pre-Darwinian, or (more to the point) that would disquiet an evolutionary biologist today. Adam and Eve certainly were not the first humans. The species Homo sapiens came to be via an evolutionary process, sharing common ancestry with other primates. Adam and Eve, if they existed, were very late arrivals, dropped de novo (maybe) into the ongoing evolutionary narrative. Their offspring immediately interbred with the vastly greater number of pre-existing, evolved humans, unrelated to A & E.
But nothing biological, no evidence, points to A & E. The ordinary methods of science can say nothing about them, one way or another. That’s a feature of the GAE hypothesis, not a bug.
A Menu for Other People
If you want to know more, read GAE. I simply don’t care, because I’m not going to take the GAE hypothesis more seriously than Swamidass himself does. For him, GAE represents a menu for other people to consider, a locus for therapeutic dialogue with the perplexed, because he is weary of Christians resisting the obvious truth of common ancestry. If you, the reader, want for whatever reason to believe that Adam and Eve existed, then the GAE menu has entrée options A, B, or C, consistent with “mainstream science,” with a range of theological à la carte items at the bottom of the page. For his part, however, Swamidass writes (p. 8), “In this book, I do not press my personal beliefs, focusing instead on explaining how science interacts with the questions put forward by others.” The reader will not learn what Swamidass personally thinks is true about Adam and Eve. Look again at the GAE menu, please, and make your selection.
That’s okay. It’s his book. As a reviewer, however, what I do want to know — what I do care about — is how Swamidass ended up where he did, in writing GAE, and what he takes to be the non-negotiable items on the menu. Why did he start where he did? It’s not true that Swamidass does not “press [his] personal beliefs” on his readers. He does, although he would not call the following propositions beliefs:
We genetically arise as a population, not a single couple; we also share ancestors in common with the great apes. This is the story our genomes appear to tell, and it is the starting point of this conversation. (p. 12)
For Swamidass, the common ancestry of humans and other primates is not a belief. It is scientific knowledge. As such, common ancestry represents “the starting point” of GAE.
Here Is Our Endorsement
I speculate that many atheist or agnostic readers of GAE will stop here, at page 12, and lightly skim the rest of the book. Did humans evolve like all other species on Earth? Yes? And Adam and Eve, if they existed, are in principle undetectable by science? Also yes? Wonderful: we’ll endorse the book. Just tell us where to send our blurbs. Nihil obstat, as far as standard evolutionary theory is concerned.
Figure 1.
Swamidass has said that science operates by consensus. As I stated in my Sapientia review, I favor Venn diagrams for depicting consensus relations, which are expressions of publicly admissible opinion. Swamidass, as he has long stated, is committed to evolution and common ancestry (see Figure 1) as the established scientific consensus. Thus, common ancestry is his starting point for thinking about Adam and Eve. From there, he reaches out to Christians who currently stand outside that circle, and believe in the traditional conception of Adam and Eve. GAE offers a sort-of-facsimile version of A & E, he argues, within the logical circle of evolution by common ancestry, which you may find acceptable. Step over here, he invites them, to see if you can live theologically with the consequences.
A Path to Truth?
I will be watching to see who takes the GAE offer. For me, scientific consensus is not a path to truth (would I be an ID troublemaker if I believed that? really, now) but represents an inescapable paradox, as simultaneously a strength and weakness of the all-too-human enterprise of science. In our private correspondence, over several years, I have explained to Swamidass my scientific reasons for thinking that human and great ape genomic patterns — his main evidential basis for accepting common ancestry — are far too equivocal a signal to carry the weight he places on them. We disagree, and there our personal debate still stands.
Hence, I see no good grounds for starting the Adam and Eve conversation where Swamidass wants to begin it, with common ancestry as received knowledge. Nonetheless, as a fellow Christian, I wish him well in his project. I’ll find it a lot more significant if, or when, Swamidass defends the GAE scenario as true. A menu item? Not interested.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-02--Dembski: “Recent Studies Have Vindicated Wallace” Over Darwin

The newly released Intelligent Evolution : How Alfred Russel Wallace ’ s World of Life Challenged Darwinism offers a direct encounter with the thought of A. R. Wallace , who co-discovered the theory of evolution by natural selection only to adopt a proto-intelligent design view .
Over this , he subsequently broke with Darwin .
The book is edited by science historian Michael Flannery and it includes a rich selection of accompanying background material .
William Dembski writes in his preface to Intelligent Evolution that “ Flannery advances three powerful claims ” : 1 .
Darwin developed his theory of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testing hypotheses against the evidence and following it dutifully wherever it led , as he and his supporters to this day so insistently claim ; rather , he came to the field already armed and equipped with a materialistic worldview that served both as the lens through which he made his observations of the natural world and then as the framework into which he made them fit .
2 .
Although Wallace always claimed to follow Darwin , in fact he increasingly distanced himself from the anti-teleology so prevalent in Darwin ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he developed a comprehensive teleological counter-theory to Darwinian natural selection that may appropriately be called intelligent evolution .
3 .
Recent studies have vindicated Wallace in three key areas : 1 ) his emphasis upon human exceptionalism , as witnessed in the remarkable property of language and speech eloquently presented by the superb literary stylist , Tom Wolfe ; 2 ) his intelligent evolution , as confirmed in the research of physician/geneticist Michael Denton and biochemist Michael J. Behe ; and 3 ) the counterfactual exercise — suggested by noted Darwin defender , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — of erasing Darwin from the scene and calculating the hypothetical results .
In the first two cases , all evidence points to the enduring accuracy of Wallace ’ s prescient conclusions regarding the unique attributes of human beings and the necessity of an information-filled , Mind-like teleological biosphere .
In the last , a world without Darwin would still have been far from perfect ( many ills have nothing to do with him or his theory ) , but would we have had to suffer from the delusions of scientism , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social applications ?
University of Pennsylvania historian of science and social anthropology , Henrika Kuklick , has stated unequivocally , “ scholars have wasted their time trying to exonerate Darwin of responsibility for Social Darwinism , for he was a Social Darwinist.
” To discover the metaphysic that preceded Darwin ’ s science , Wallace ’ s counter in a new guided and goal-oriented evolution , and the present-day science that confirms ideas about human exceptionalism , unblinded evolution , and the real consequences of a Darwin “ deleted , ” get your @ @ @ @ @ @

Photo: Wallace's notebooks, at the Linnean Society, London, by John Cummings / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0).
The newly released Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russel Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism offers a direct encounter with the thought of A. R. Wallace, who co-discovered the theory of evolution by natural selection only to adopt a proto-intelligent design view. Over this, he subsequently broke with Darwin. The book is edited by science historian Michael Flannery and it includes a rich selection of accompanying background material.
“Three Powerful Claims”
William Dembski writes in his preface to Intelligent Evolution that “Flannery advances three powerful claims”:
1. Darwin developed his theory of evolution not from painstaking field analysis by testing hypotheses against the evidence and following it dutifully wherever it led, as he and his supporters to this day so insistently claim; rather, he came to the field already armed and equipped with a materialistic worldview that served both as the lens through which he made his observations of the natural world and then as the framework into which he made them fit. 2. Although Wallace always claimed to follow Darwin, in fact he increasingly distanced himself from the anti-teleology so prevalent in Darwin’s approach to evolution; in contrast, he developed a comprehensive teleological counter-theory to Darwinian natural selection that may appropriately be called intelligent evolution. 3. Recent studies have vindicated Wallace in three key areas: 1) his emphasis upon human exceptionalism, as witnessed in the remarkable property of language and speech eloquently presented by the superb literary stylist, Tom Wolfe; 2) his intelligent evolution, as confirmed in the research of physician/geneticist Michael Denton and biochemist Michael J. Behe; and 3) the counterfactual exercise — suggested by noted Darwin defender, historian Peter Bowler, no less! — of erasing Darwin from the scene and calculating the hypothetical results. In the first two cases, all evidence points to the enduring accuracy of Wallace’s prescient conclusions regarding the unique attributes of human beings and the necessity of an information-filled, Mind-like teleological biosphere. In the last, a world without Darwin would still have been far from perfect (many ills have nothing to do with him or his theory), but would we have had to suffer from the delusions of scientism, and worse, the horrific effects of its social applications? University of Pennsylvania historian of science and social anthropology, Henrika Kuklick, has stated unequivocally, “scholars have wasted their time trying to exonerate Darwin of responsibility for Social Darwinism, for he was a Social Darwinist.”
Wallace’s Counter to Darwin
To discover the metaphysic that preceded Darwin’s science, Wallace’s counter in a new guided and goal-oriented evolution, and the present-day science that confirms ideas about human exceptionalism, unblinded evolution, and the real consequences of a Darwin “deleted,” get your copy of Intelligent Evolution now.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-03--“Radical New Theory” on the Origin of Life?

A headline in New Scientist announces , “ A radical new theory rewrites the story of how life on Earth began.
” But if the riddle of life ’ s origin was already near solved , why was there a need for a “ radical new theory ” ?
As Günter Bechly has pointed out numerous times , evolutionary ideas about human origins are also constantly being “ rewritten.
” It ’ s not a good look for supposedly solid science .
On a new episode of ID the Future , host Eric Anderson talks with scientist and fellow engineer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and how the authors paint themselves into a corner .
Download the podcast or listen to it here .
The context for the paper is this : Decades of research have undermined the three great hopes for a purely naturalistic origin of life — scenarios starting with some sort of metabolism , scenarios starting with some kind of membrane , and scenarios starting with RNA .
All three are necessary for cellular life ; none seems able to have come ahead of the others .
So now some recent work suggests it all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ chemical big bang.
” It ’ s the return of an old idea long ago dismissed as too improbable .
Is this “ hopeful monster ” plausible after all ?
As Anderson and Stadler show , there are numerous hidden assumptions and imaginary entities lurking in the proposal , which when surfaced , call its soundness into question .

A headline in New Scientist announces, “A radical new theory rewrites the story of how life on Earth began.” But if the riddle of life’s origin was already near solved, why was there a need for a “radical new theory”? As Günter Bechly has pointed out numerous times, evolutionary ideas about human origins are also constantly being “rewritten.” It’s not a good look for supposedly solid science. On a new episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson talks with scientist and fellow engineer Rob Stadler about the New Scientist paper and how the authors paint themselves into a corner. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
The context for the paper is this: Decades of research have undermined the three great hopes for a purely naturalistic origin of life — scenarios starting with some sort of metabolism, scenarios starting with some kind of membrane, and scenarios starting with RNA. All three are necessary for cellular life; none seems able to have come ahead of the others. So now some recent work suggests it all happened at once in a sort of “chemical big bang.”
It’s the return of an old idea long ago dismissed as too improbable. Is this “hopeful monster” plausible after all? As Anderson and Stadler show, there are numerous hidden assumptions and imaginary entities lurking in the proposal, which when surfaced, call its soundness into question.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-03--Alfred Russel Wallace: Shedding Light on Darwin’s Shadow

Co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection , Alfred Russel Wallace broke with Charles Darwin over scientific questions that today point scientists to intelligent design .
He arguments are more pertinent now than ever .
From “ Shedding Light on Darwin ’ s Shadow , ” the introduction to the newly released Intelligent Evolution : How Alfred Russel Wallace ’ s World of Life Challenged Darwinism , edited by science historian Michael Flannery : Darwinian theists , in fact , share a peculiarly inflated view of nature with many atheists .
Noted atheist Daniel Dennett , for example @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ wonderful wedding of chance and necessity ” that leaves him in awe of its “ sacred ” magnificence .
Similarly , Richard Dawkins talks of “ the power [ of the Darwinian worldview ] to dissolve astronomical improbabilities and explain prodigies of apparent miracle.
” Darwinian theist Karl Giberson exclaims , “ Nature is grand on so many levels .
Does this grandeur have something to do with the fact that it was created by God ?
” Giberson thinks so , but offers little in the way of evidence for that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feelings .
Fellow-traveler Ken Miller is just as transported by it all as he waxes eloquent about “ chance and wonder ” and how “ we should take genuine delight in knowing that we are the products of the natural world , ” a world the specifics of which “ could have turned out quite differently.
” [ Deborah ] Haarsma [ president of the Darwinian theist think tank BioLogos ] , on the other hand , is more “ passionate about seeing God ’ s hand at work in natural processes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laws are a testimony to God ’ s faithful providential care as he upholds the existence of all matter and mechanisms moment by moment , ” but the underlying mechanisms where she sees the hand of God are .
.
.
largely blind .
A providential hand can not at the same time be a blind one .
C. S. Lewis once quipped , “ Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
” No amount of numinous language can alter historian/philosopher Arthur Koestler ’ s observation [ in The Sleep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rise of philosophical reductionism of the kind ushered in by the Darwinian paradigm .
“ The space-spirit hierarchy was replaced by the space-time continuum ” as an intelligent spiritual world gave way to a blind law-based nature : As a result , man ’ s destiny was no longer determined from “ above ” by a super-human wisdom and will , but from “ below ” by the subhuman agencies of glands , genes , atoms , or waves of probability .
This shift of the locus of destiny was decisive .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ level of hierarchy higher than man ’ s own , it had not only shaped his fate , but also guided his conscience and imbued the world with meaning and value .
The new masters of destiny were placed lower in the scale than the being they controlled ; they could determine his fate , but could provide him with no moral guidance , no values and meaning .
A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure , but a puppet suspended on chromosomes is merely grotesque .
Wallace — nature ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long before Koestler .
His World of Life offers an alternative .
His was an effort to restore nature to the “ space-spirit hierarchy ” it once knew .

Co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace broke with Charles Darwin over scientific questions that today point scientists to intelligent design. He arguments are more pertinent now than ever.
From “Shedding Light on Darwin’s Shadow,” the introduction to the newly released Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russel Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism, edited by science historian Michael Flannery:
Darwinian theists, in fact, share a peculiarly inflated view of nature with many atheists. Noted atheist Daniel Dennett, for example, praises “Nature” as a “wonderful wedding of chance and necessity” that leaves him in awe of its “sacred” magnificence. Similarly, Richard Dawkins talks of “the power [of the Darwinian worldview] to dissolve astronomical improbabilities and explain prodigies of apparent miracle.” Darwinian theist Karl Giberson exclaims, “Nature is grand on so many levels. Does this grandeur have something to do with the fact that it was created by God?” Giberson thinks so, but offers little in the way of evidence for that “something” other than his own feelings. Fellow-traveler Ken Miller is just as transported by it all as he waxes eloquent about “chance and wonder” and how “we should take genuine delight in knowing that we are the products of the natural world,” a world the specifics of which “could have turned out quite differently.” [Deborah] Haarsma [president of the Darwinian theist think tank BioLogos], on the other hand, is more “passionate about seeing God’s hand at work in natural processes,” and explicitly argues that “Natural laws are a testimony to God’s faithful providential care as he upholds the existence of all matter and mechanisms moment by moment,” but the underlying mechanisms where she sees the hand of God are . . . largely blind. A providential hand cannot at the same time be a blind one. C. S. Lewis once quipped, “Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
No amount of numinous language can alter historian/philosopher Arthur Koestler’s observation [in The Sleep Walkers (1959)] concerning the rise of philosophical reductionism of the kind ushered in by the Darwinian paradigm. “The space-spirit hierarchy was replaced by the space-time continuum” as an intelligent spiritual world gave way to a blind law-based nature:
As a result, man’s destiny was no longer determined from “above” by a super-human wisdom and will, but from “below” by the subhuman agencies of glands, genes, atoms, or waves of probability. This shift of the locus of destiny was decisive. So long as destiny had operated from a level of hierarchy higher than man’s own, it had not only shaped his fate, but also guided his conscience and imbued the world with meaning and value. The new masters of destiny were placed lower in the scale than the being they controlled; they could determine his fate, but could provide him with no moral guidance, no values and meaning. A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure, but a puppet suspended on chromosomes is merely grotesque.
Wallace — nature’s prophet — saw this dire assessment long before Koestler. His World of Life offers an alternative. His was an effort to restore nature to the “space-spirit hierarchy” it once knew.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-09-03--Was Kimberella a Precambrian Mollusk?

Was Kimberella a Precambrian Mollusk?

Editor ’ s note : We are delighted to present a new series of posts by paleontologist Günter Bechly on the Ediacaran organism Kimberella .
If identified as an animal , it would “ predate the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian animal phyla as a kind of ‘ advance guard.
’ ” The question is of interest for debates about evolution and arguments about intelligent design raised by Stephen Meyer , among others .
Today , Dr. Bechly introduces his subject .
In past articles for Evolution News , I have critically considered a number of alleged Ediacaran animals .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the famous fossil organism Kimberella , which is a typical member of the Ediacara-type biota ( Muscente et al .
2019 ) , especially from the White Sea assemblage ( Gehling & Droser 2013 , Droser et al .
2017 ) .
It provides the widest range of morphological detail for any Precambrian organism .
Even though it was initially described as a jellyfish , it was later identified , by Fedonkin & Waggoner ( 1997 ) , as a mollusk-like bilaterian animal .
This reinterpretation has been widely adopted and is found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ represents the strongest case for a bilaterian animal from the Ediacaran era .
This is important because it would not only provide a minimum age for the earliest origin of Bilateria but would also predate the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian animal phyla as a kind of “ advance guard ” ( Fedonkin & Waggoner 1997 , Fedonkin et al .
2007b , Stearley 2013 ) .
Some scientists even considered the identification of Kimberella as a mollusk-like bilaterian animal sufficiently secure to use it as a calibration point for the minimum age of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Bilateria / Nephrozoa , Protostomia , and Lophotrochozoa in molecular clock analyses ( Fedonkin et al .
2007b , Benton et al .
2015 ) .
Based on the work of Benton the influential Palaeontologia Electronica ’ s Fossil Calibration Database even has Kimberella as calibration point in the mollusk clade .
Because of the enormous importance of this crucial taxon for evolutionary biology , I reviewed for this article series every single paper that was ever published on it or even only discussed it , so that this synopsis and bibliography @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experts , as nothing comparably comprehensive and up to date exists anywhere else .
The hypothesis of a molluscan affinity of Kimberella is still prevailing in the technical and popular literature on Ediacaran biota ( e.g.
, Bottjer 2002 , Fedonkin 2003 , Fedonkin et al .
2007b , Seilacher 2007 , Trusler et al .
2007 , Stöger et al .
2013 , Schrödl & Stöger 2014 , Vinther 2015 ) .
Peter Godfrey-Smith ( 2016 ) , who wrote about Kimberella as the possible earliest mollusk in his bestselling book Other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the Deep Origins of Consciousness , is quoted by McMenamin ( 2018 ) with the following remarkable statement : “ One of my correspondents expressed concern that I was perpetuating a dubious interpretation of Kimberella as a mollusk ; for another , Kimberella-as-mollusk is crucial to the interpretation of early bilaterian evolution.
” In addition , eminent intelligent design theorist Stephen C. Meyer has acknowledged in his seminal book Darwin ’ s Doubt ( Meyer 2013 ) that Kimberella could be an Ediacaran bilaterian animal and maybe even a mollusk .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as maybe too generous ( Evolution News 2016 ) .
Let ’ s see what the published evidence says and follow the evidence wherever it leads .

Photo: Dorsal mold of Kimberella quadrata from the Ediacaran of Russia, showing the cuticular dorsal shield with tubercular nodes and the tapered oral end; by Aleksey Nagovitsyn: Wikimedia, GNU FDL).
Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a new series of posts by paleontologist Günter Bechly on the Ediacaran organism Kimberella. If identified as an animal, it would “predate the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian animal phyla as a kind of ‘advance guard.’” The question is of interest for debates about evolution and arguments about intelligent design raised by Stephen Meyer, among others. Today, Dr. Bechly introduces his subject.
In past articles for Evolution News, I have critically considered a number of alleged Ediacaran animals. We will now take a closer look at the famous fossil organism Kimberella, which is a typical member of the Ediacara-type biota (Muscente et al. 2019), especially from the White Sea assemblage (Gehling & Droser 2013, Droser et al. 2017). It provides the widest range of morphological detail for any Precambrian organism. Even though it was initially described as a jellyfish, it was later identified, by Fedonkin & Waggoner (1997), as a mollusk-like bilaterian animal. This reinterpretation has been widely adopted and is found in most subsequent publications.
Kimberella indeed represents the strongest case for a bilaterian animal from the Ediacaran era. This is important because it would not only provide a minimum age for the earliest origin of Bilateria but would also predate the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian animal phyla as a kind of “advance guard” (Fedonkin & Waggoner 1997, Fedonkin et al. 2007b, Stearley 2013).
A Calibration Point
Some scientists even considered the identification of Kimberella as a mollusk-like bilaterian animal sufficiently secure to use it as a calibration point for the minimum age of the crown groups of Metazoa, Eumetazoa, Bilateria / Nephrozoa, Protostomia, and Lophotrochozoa in molecular clock analyses (Fedonkin et al. 2007b, Benton et al. 2015). Based on the work of Benton the influential Palaeontologia Electronica’s Fossil Calibration Database even has Kimberella as calibration point in the mollusk clade.
Because of the enormous importance of this crucial taxon for evolutionary biology, I reviewed for this article series every single paper that was ever published on it or even only discussed it, so that this synopsis and bibliography should even prove to be useful for experts, as nothing comparably comprehensive and up to date exists anywhere else.
The Prevailing Hypothesis
The hypothesis of a molluscan affinity of Kimberella is still prevailing in the technical and popular literature on Ediacaran biota (e.g., Bottjer 2002, Fedonkin 2003, Fedonkin et al. 2007b, Seilacher 2007, Trusler et al. 2007, Stöger et al. 2013, Schrödl & Stöger 2014, Vinther 2015).
Peter Godfrey-Smith (2016), who wrote about Kimberella as the possible earliest mollusk in his bestselling book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, is quoted by McMenamin (2018) with the following remarkable statement: “One of my correspondents expressed concern that I was perpetuating a dubious interpretation of Kimberella as a mollusk; for another, Kimberella-as-mollusk is crucial to the interpretation of early bilaterian evolution.”
In addition, eminent intelligent design theorist Stephen C. Meyer has acknowledged in his seminal book Darwin’s Doubt (Meyer 2013) that Kimberella could be an Ediacaran bilaterian animal and maybe even a mollusk. This was considered by other ID proponents as maybe too generous (Evolution News 2016). Let’s see what the published evidence says and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Next, “Kimberella — A Checkered History.”