text:
Their news release concluded:
These findings thus offer an explanation for the coupling of cell differentiation and morphogenesis (acquisition by the embryo of its shape), so that a well-formed animal containing territories with different and physically separated functions, emerges "naturally". Understanding this process fills a conceptual gap between a shapeless mass of cells and an "animal archetype", and sheds new light on how vertebrates have emerged during evolution.
One of the scientists involved with the study complained to us about our analysis. As readers will confirm, we aim to please. After a review of the paper, published in European Physical Journal E, we can report that our original coverage was entirely correct.
In their paper, the authors spent the bulk of their time discussing legitimate scientific observations about chick embryos, using the chicken as a model vertebrate. They show how the cells migrate into positions that create stretching forces that aid in the placement of developing organs. Their experiments with rubber sheets and with actual chick embryo tissues do bear some relationship, in terms of the physical forces at work and how buckling occurs.
They recognize that much more than buckling is involved in morphogenesis of the final product:
Whenever the surface buckles, it does so along the pattern of rings (possibly deformed by advection). That fixes a few general primitive lines in the animal body, segregating the corresponding territories. These general lines correspond to the overall body plan. Of course, many other biological features will contribute to the exact final form of the animal (we think especially of cell migration which is not considered here). [Emphasis added.]
Furthermore, they recognize the need for coded genetic instructions for these physical forces:
A natural question is how genetic transcription correlates with the cell domains. Inspection of general databases shows readily that many genetic markers have domains of expressions sharply correlated to the cell domains evidenced here.
In conclusion, we have shown the existence of annular domains of different cell sizes, with cell size increasing step-wise radially. These boundaries form a 2D template for the animal, whose instruction or "coding" is the contrast of stiffness between rings. Since the 2D body plan locks the fold furrows, the animal pattern is robust against minor spatial or temporal fluctuations in the magnitude of the traction force, as typically may occur during embryogenesis.
It's good to see, also, their epistemic modesty about how much their experiments reveal, and their recognition that further research will be required to form conclusions:
We leave for further studies several important other phenomena observed in the course of this work: tensions exerted by the folds, feedback of the folding process onto the boundaries of the cellular domains, possible interdigitation of the domains correlating with brain segmentation. A major issue to be solved in the near future is whether the correlation between cell domains, buckling pattern, and cadherin expressions is causal, and if so in what direction.
Nevertheless, there are indications in the paper suggesting that their motivation is to shed light on the origin of animal body plans in general, in terms of simple mechanical forces (which we concluded is Lamarckian and oversimplified).
We stated earlier:
If the paper merely describes the observable, measurable forces that cells in a chicken embryo produce as they differentiate under genetic control, there would be no problem. But if they think this explains the origin of new body plans in the Cambrian explosion (as the news release seems to imply), that's another matter.
We welcome any opportunity the authors may find to explain in detail why (1) how these changes in body plans could become encoded in the DNA, (2) why their theory is not Lamarckian.
Image: © mindgamesru_ / Dollar Photo Club.
]]>In brief -- at stake in the question of biological and cosmic origins is, finally, the question of the human self-image. Our colleague the historian Richard Weikart (California State University, Stanislaus) comments in an op-ed for the Merced Sun-Star.
Is this the wave of the future? Or is it a descent into barbarism that undermines the value of human life?
Debate over assisted suicide inflames passions because it strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human. Are we morally significant beings with intrinsic value?
Do we believe that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?
Or, are we simply the chance combination of chemicals thrown together over eons in an impersonal universe? Are we nothing but animals whose love and morality are products of random evolutionary processes -- and thus have no objective reality?
Legalizing assisted suicide is essentially treating people either like animals or, worse, like things.
Peter Singer, a leading bioethicist supporting euthanasia, professes that humans are not special, but are just another animal. Nobel Prize-winning biologist Francis Crick has said, "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." No wonder Crick thought infanticide was acceptable.
As a historian who has written about the history of euthanasia, I have noticed that this kind of disdain for the sanctity of human life has led down some rather dark paths. By the early 20th century, many scientists and physicians in the U.S. and elsewhere were labeling people with disabilities as "inferior," "useless," "burdens," "unfit" and even "persons of negative value." The Nazi regime dubbed them "life unworthy of life," "useless eaters" and "subhumans." Then, in less than six years, they murdered over 200,000 disabled people among the 7 million they annihilated.
My point is not that assisted suicide in Washington or Oregon is the same as Nazi euthanasia. However, it seems to be based on some of the same attitudes -- specifically, the notion that some people's lives are not worth living and they are a burden both to themselves and to others. Instead of encouraging them to live, assisted suicide proponents suggest we should treat them like animals and put them out of their misery.
Put them out of our misery, too, Wesley would add.
As another Discovery Institute colleague, political scientist John West, reminds us, there is no "firewall" between science and culture. That observation defines the mission of the Center for Science & Culture, which is aptly named. Read the rest of Dr. Weikart's comments here.
Image: California State Capitol, © Steven Pavlov / lovingwa.blogspot.com, via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>Some people believe that life came into being by chance and the laws of nature alone. Darwin was an excellent observer of nature but he had no idea how life actually works at the cellular or molecular levels.
Dean observes:
He also writes:Yep, that's pretty much it. Many of today's Darwinists have little or no idea how a software-intensive integrated system works at the component and sub-component level either.
That may be why scientists are much more prone than engineers to posit a chance origin for a complex system. The most likely reason for this disparity is that the overwhelming majority of scientists have never had to conceive, specify, design, test, field and maintain such a system themselves. In the real world of complex digital and analog systems, one wrong bit, in one message, in one interface, in one component of the system may bring the whole thing to a screeching (or smoking) halt.Design for robustness and fault tolerance hopefully minimizes the probability of this, but that is, of course, design. There are infinitely more ways to get it wrong than to get it right.
Yep, it could not be said more cogently, or more briefly. And ditto for physicians who, in contrast with evolutionary biologists, may not design but do specialize in maintaining such systems. Another good reason why invocations of "science" in the evolution debate -- "Science says!" -- should be greeted with the question, "Oh, what branch of science?"
Image: © olly / Dollar Photo Club.
]]>I pointed out that this is because evolutionary inferences are of no significant help to medical research. Inference to evolution is a narrative gloss on the real science in medicine. It is a point that I, along with others, have been making for years. Myers unintentionally provides striking confirmation that doctors and medical researchers don't refer to evolution because it's irrelevant to their science.
Now Myers writes a follow-up post in which he insists that evolution is relevant to medicine, despite the virtual absence of evolutionary reasoning expressed in the medical literature. Specifically, he insists that bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an example of evolution -- a common claim -- and he scolds doctors and medical scientists for not explicitly saying so in their research.
You hear this all the time in the media. Writing in The New Yorker last week, for example, Adam Gopnik scolded evolution doubters:
Evolutionary science is not abstract -- evaluating reports of a "superbug" in Los Angeles, wrought immune by natural selection to antibiotics, means applying Darwinian principles as they go about their often scary work.
This notion, however, is mistaken. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution, in the Darwinian sense of undirected (unintelligent) process of random heritable variation and natural selection, is the process by which populations of living things change over time without intelligent agency causing or guiding the process. When the process of change in populations is guided by intelligence, it is called artificial selection -- breeding.
Of course I'm not the first to point this out. Charles Darwin, in the Origin of Species, made exactly the same argument. In his first chapter, he discussed artificial selection -- animal husbandry and breeding of plants. In subsequent chapters he developed an argument that in nature, changes in population are accomplished by natural selection, without intelligent agency. Darwin distinguished artificial selection from natural selection -- he distinguished breeding from evolution, and of course his theory of evolution is a theory of natural selection, not a theory of animal husbandry or plant breeding, which had been practiced for thousands of years and to which Darwin contributed nothing.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is artificial selection. Antibiotics are intelligently designed by medical researchers, deliberately administered to patients by doctors, who understand that there are some bacteria that are not sensitive to the antibiotic and that have the potential to proliferate. Actually, the administration of antibiotics that kill some but not all of the bacteria in the patient is quite deliberate, because there are huge populations of beneficial bacteria (e.g. in the gut) that should not be killed since they are necessary for health.
Antibiotic research and treatment is a carefully planned intelligently designed process of breeding the human microbiome (the aggregate of bacteria that live in a human being). The purpose of breeding the microbiome is to eliminate the bacteria causing the disease but to preserve the beneficial bacteria (and to preserve the patient). Of necessity some of the bacteria must survive the treatment -- the trick is to kill the pathological bacteria and leave only the beneficial bacteria alive. This cannot always be accomplished, and when it is not accomplished -- that is, when some of the bacteria left alive are pathological and not beneficial -- this is the development of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance in pathological bacteria is the undesirable consequence of the treatment of bacterial infections. It is not natural selection.
There are many strategies in place to minimize bacterial resistance to antibiotics, all of which are breeding the human microbiome -- the process of treating a patient who has a bacterial infection. Antibiotic treatment of infections -- both the desirable and undesirable consequences of the planned therapy -- is the application of intelligent design principles to medical research and treatment.
Antibiotic treatment and the development of antibiotic resistance are artificial selection. Antibiotic treatment is not evolution, which is the consequence of unintelligent undirected unplanned natural selection. Evolution, understood in the Darwinian sense that Myers and other Darwinists intend, is precisely what antibiotic treatment is not.
What's remarkable here is that Myers and others like him don't even understand what evolution is. They deny that intelligent design is evolution, yet they cite an obvious example of intelligent design (antibiotic treatment) as an example of evolution par excellence.
The treatment of infectious diseases with antibiotics is a superb example of intelligent design principles applied to medical research and human biology. Darwinian principles of evolution are not invoked by medical researchers because Darwinian principles contribute nothing to medical research, and medical researchers are relatively insulated from the career-threatening ideological pressure that permeates evolutionary biology.
Medical researchers are free to just do the science. The magnificent advances in medical care in modern times attest to the success of the application of design principles, not Darwinian fairy tales, to medical science.
Image: "Antibiotic resistance tests," by Dr Graham Beards (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>Mr. Gopnik wrote the other day to endorse the idea of subjecting national office-seekers to an evolutionary catechism. He finds it telling that some leading Republicans have declined to say whether they believe in Darwinian theory. Gopnik regards answering such a question as a test of character:
Do you have the courage to embrace an inarguable and obvious truth when it might cost you something to do so? A politician who fails this test is not high-minded or neutral; he or she is just craven, and shouldn't be trusted with power.
While this is stated in extreme terms, and while the premise is false -- that evolution is "an inarguable and obvious truth" -- I'm sympathetic to the basic point that someone who wants to be President of the United States shouldn't be congratulated for "punting" on evolution. Biological origins is an ultimate question demanding consideration, a serious weighing of the evidence, from any thoughtful person.
That said, Gopnik shouldn't be allowed to get away with chastising anyone on the basis of his own -- that is, Adam Gopnik's -- ignorance.
He writes:
All the available evidence collected within the past hundred and fifty years is strongly in [Darwinism's] favor, and no evidence argues that it is in any significant way false.
While there is no debate about Darwinian theory, there are endless debates within Darwinian theory. The controversies are loud and real: Are the mutations offered up to selection always truly random, or could they be in some ways pre-winnowed? How gradual does "gradual" have to be? Is everything we find in an animal an adaptation, or does simple genetic drift and accident account for some part of biological change? There is always a controversy, in that sense, because science is an organized controversy, a self-correcting debate.
Opposition to evolutionary biology is overwhelmingly tied to an investment in some kind of defiantly anti-rational ideology: in our time, to fundamentalist Christian reaction; in dark days past in the Soviet Union, to the Lysenkoist belief in culture-made traits. To oppose Darwinian biology is not to announce yourself neutral or disinterested or even uninterested. It is to announce yourself against the discoveries of science, or so frightened of those who are that you can be swayed from answering honestly.
Oh please. Casey Luskin's Top 10 list is important because no one who reads it and is honest with himself could come away thinking the "debate" over Darwinian evolution is limited to fine-tuning at the margins of the theory, or that the controversy is limited to "creationists" who in Adam Gopnik's telling are running scared from science.
These things go to the core:
Check out Luskin's voluminous footnotes, too, which direct the reader not to creationist literature but overwhelmingly to peer-reviewed science. "All the available evidence" supports orthodox Darwinism? "No evidence" goes against it "in any significant way"? I'm sorry, these are statements that can be defended only through a willful turning away from what the evidence really does say.
What is the nature of the "debate" around Darwinism? Is it nit-pitting or fine-tuning, or simply made up, as Gopnik prefers? Or does it cut to the heart of the theory? That is a question worth talking about. I would love to hear Adam Gopnik's informed response.
Casey's essay, also previously published in the book More than Myth, is not at all the final word on this question. It's simply our most current statement of some important themes. We document the non-trivial problems with Darwinism every day here at ENV.
However for a start, an easy introduction, our Top 10 as articulated by Casey Luskin can't be beat. Let Mr. Gopnik read it and tell us his thoughts.
Image: © Krasimira Nevenova / Dollar Photo Club.
]]>Answer yes to that question and it is the end of racism, sexism, "ableism," and the insidious and subversive meme that some humans are "non-persons" because such invidious ways of thinking flow naturally from measuring human value subjectively.
Or to turn it around, universal human rights and equality depend on the objective judging of human life.
I was thinking about this as I read a book excerpt at Real Clear Science discussing whether we are a single species -- or whether back in pre-history, Homo sapiens mated with other Homo species, since extinct, such as Neanderthals.
Under human exceptionalism, who cares? A human, is a human, is a human. But for those who want to compare and measure humans, it could unleash destructive forces, as historian Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, describes. From "What if Other Human Species Had Survived?":
A lot hinges on this debate. From an evolutionary perspective, 70,000 years is a relatively short interval. If the Replacement Theory is correct, all living humans have roughly the same genetic baggage, and racial distinctions among them are negligible.
But if the Interbreeding Theory is right, there might well be genetic differences between Africans, Europeans, and Asians that go back hundreds of thousands of years. This is political dynamite, which could provide material for explosive racial theories.
Nothing should hinge on the debate. And it wouldn't if we embraced human exceptionalism's moral understanding that a human is a human is a human. It's not hard: We are all equal. Vive la différence!
But rather than making that important point, Harari gives the back of his hand to human exceptionalism:
Homo sapiens has grown so accustomed to being the only human species that it's hard for us to conceive of any other possibility. Our lack of brothers and sisters makes it easier to imagine that we are the epitome of creation, and that a chasm separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Unfortunately, that is typical of how many of today's most noted public intellectuals miss the forest for the trees.
Image: Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>Consider that each mitochondrion (and there are many in most eukaryotic cells) has dozens of those spinning motors called ATP synthase in their membranes. Several other complex machines lead up to ATP production. These machines run constantly. When it's time to divide, all the parts of a working mitochondrion have to be duplicated on cue, at the right time, in the right sequence, with quality control -- otherwise serious diseases can result.
Additional insight into mitochondrion duplication comes in a review article in Current Biology by three microbiologists from Monash University in Australia. They obviously can't describe everything that goes on, because it is far too complicated. It's also poorly understood. Instead, they focus on the membrane transporters whimsically known as TIM and TOM: transporter inner membrane and transporter outer membrane. TIM and TOM are actually large families of proteins that form complexes. Their job is to control what goes in and out of the organelle's two-fold membranes.
Mitochondria cannot be made de novo, so pre-existing mitochondria must be inherited at each cell division. A new study demonstrates cell-cycle-dependent regulation of the activity of the TOM translocase complex to induce mitochondrial biogenesis during the M phase of the cell cycle.
In all eukaryotes, pre-existing mitochondria are used as templates to build more mitochondrial mass, ahead of cell division or in response to increased metabolic demand. Mitochondrial biogenesis requires the import of up to 1,000 different proteins into the organelle, and all proteins imported across the outer mitochondrial membrane enter through a protein translocase called the TOM complex. This complex is a remarkable nanomachine composed of a core formed by the β-barrel channel Tom40 and additional subunits, each of which has a single α-helical transmembrane segment. [Emphasis added.]
Most of the proteins have to be translated from genes in the nucleus. Only about 13 proteins the organelle needs are coded in mitochondrial DNA. The majority of those thousand proteins, therefore, are going to have to work with TIM and TOM on their way in. Wikipedia describes the process:
The vast majority of proteins destined for the mitochondria are encoded in the nucleus and synthesized in the cytoplasm. These are tagged by an N-terminal signal sequence. Following transport through the cytosol from the nucleus, the signal sequence is recognized by a receptor protein in the transporter outer membrane (TOM) complex. The signal sequence and adjacent portions of the polypeptide chain are inserted in the TOM complex, then begin interaction with a transporter inner membrane (TIM) complex, which are hypothesized to be transiently linked at sites of close contact between the two membranes. The signal sequence is then translocated into the matrix in a process that requires an electrochemical hydrogen ion gradient across the inner membrane. Mitochondrial Hsp70 binds to regions of the polypeptide chain and maintains it in an unfolded state as it moves into the matrix.
The proteins are not folded until they get inside the new mitochondrion. Then, other complex processes assemble them into the machines that will begin operation when duplication is complete.
One of those machines, a proton pump named Mitochondrial Complex 1, was recently described by Science Magazine as "among the largest and most complicated membrane protein complexes." It has to be built correctly, because "Its malfunctions are implicated in many hereditary and degenerative disorders." All this construction must take place before cell division can complete.
What the microbiologists from Monash found, working with yeast cells, was that there's a checkpoint mechanism that "turns on" the TOM gates at a certain phase of the cell cycle. It also revs up translation of mitochondrial genes in the nucleus. The master regulator of mitosis, an enzyme known as CDK1, puts a phosphate tag on Tom6, one of the TOM proteins. Here's a taste of the interactions involved among the players:
Harbauer et al. developed biochemical assays to directly demonstrate that the phosphorylation of Tom6 is mediated by CDK1, and that phosphorylated Tom6 is assembled into the mitochondrial outer membrane with increased efficiency (Figure 1). What's more, the increased levels of Tom6 serve to promote an increased assembly of Tom40 into the outer membrane: in this regard, the steady-state level of Tom6 serves as a rheostat to 'dial-up' or 'dial-down' the amount of TOM complex carried by mitochondria. This rheostat is in turn under the control of the cyclin Clb3, which is the specific trigger to activate CDK1 to phosphorylate Ser16 of Tom6. Clb3 expression is tightly controlled to be active only in M phase.
You get the picture. A checkpoint in the cell cycle turns on this protein, which controls that protein, which controls another protein. A series of switches control the timing and activity of duplication of this complex organelle. These switches are sensitive to feedback to ensure everything happens on time, in the right order.
The authors are in awe of how efficient this is. It wouldn't make sense for the protein machines to go to so much work to build another power plant for no good reason.
Now, the stage is set to approach a detailed, systems-level understanding of 'why' and 'how' mitochondrial biogenesis is kicked into top gear. This matters in cell biology. The primary function of mitochondria in most organisms is to maximize the returns in energy currency from investments made in securing carbon from the environment. Via the action of mitochondria, carbon derived from sugars and fats can be used to produce a maximal amount of ATP, but, at a systems level, there is a great paradox in the use of this organelle. To translate the thousand or so proteins needed to build mitochondrial mass and to transport, fold and assemble these proteins into a mitochondrion costs an enormous amount of ATP. It is also costly, in term of ATP consumption, to replace the electron-transport complexes burnt out by oxidative damage in the course of ATP production, and to replicate the mitochondrial DNA and transcribe the mitochondrial RNAs that encode several of the electron-transport proteins. It is little wonder then that the amount of mitochondrial mass accumulated in each round of the cell cycle would be judiciously controlled so as to be just sufficient to ensure maximum dividends to the cell's energy investments.
So how did this all evolve? They don't say. Their only mention of evolution is this one passing reference, offered without evidence or proof:
Four of the subunits surrounding the Tom40 β-barrel -- Tom5, Tom6, Tom7 and Tom22 -- are tail-anchored proteins. For Tom7 and Tom22 it is certain that they were present in the ancestral TOM complex, early in the evolution of mitochondria.
Why that is so certain, again, they don't say. Perhaps without that pair of subunits, the complex wouldn't work, and eukaryotic life would never have gotten started. (It should be noted that prokaryotes, though they lack mitochondria, use the same machinery for ATP production.) Since failure of these machines causes serious disease, we can safely infer that the transporter mechanisms, along with their signals and links to the cell cycle, are irreducibly complex.
Illustrators and reporters often portray these systems in oversimplified ways, as if they somehow "pop" into existence by evolution. This brief look into the window of a real mitochondrion helps you appreciate the sophistication of intelligent design in even a tiny yeast cell.
Image: Athlone Power Station, Cape Town, South Africa, by Simisa (Own work Simisa (talk · contribs)) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>So familiar and potent has this "God of the Gaps" (GOTG) objection become that it causes a well-known phobia among many theists who work in the sciences. Fearful of committing a GOTG blunder, these scientists and philosophers simply avoid saying anything that may implicate a designer in the physical history of the universe. A designer who does nothing detectable, of course, is not a designer who could possibly lose his job. Thus protected, however, the designer becomes superfluous in another way. He makes no discernable difference in the affairs of the universe. The GOTG phobia thus strips theism of any content.
Discovery Institute fellow Paul Nelson will analyze and respond to the GOTG critique in a lecture this Friday evening, February 27, at Biola University (Bardwell 112, 7 pm).
The talk is open to the public, but seating is limited.
Closely related to the GOTG objection is the claim that physicalism turns out to be inevitably superior to designed-based reasoning in the sciences. On this view -- call it the inherent superiority of physicalism -- intelligent design can only be a placeholder for a physical causal account, from which all agent causation has been eliminated. Agents disappear and the fundamental particles take over.
But is this true? In his second talk, on Saturday, February 28 (Bardwell 112, 10 am), Dr. Nelson will disentangle the various philosophical threads that make up the superiority-of-physicalism claim. In fact, design offers the better toolkit for explanation.
This talk is also open to the public, but again, seating is limited. We'll hope to see you there.
]]>First, on March 5 from 4:30-6:00 pm in Seattle, we'll launch the book formally at the offices of Discovery Institute. The event is free but be sure to register beforehand since our space is limited. More information is here.
On March 20-21, in Bryn Mawr, PA, just outside Philadelphia, join John West, John Lennox, Michael Denton, Casey Luskin, and other outstanding speakers for the Westminster Conference on Science and Faith, with its theme this year, "Cosmos and Creator." Again, don't forget to register. More information is here.
On March 23, West travels to Washington to speak at the Heritage Foundation. More information is here.
This is provocative, important, timely material, needless to say. We'll hope to see you at one or more of these events, where you'll have to your opportunity to ask Dr. West in person about the totalitarian temptation in the Age of Obama.
Image credit: U.S. Air Force File Photo. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>Stonestreet highlights the new expanded edition of John West's book, Darwin Day in America, which tells the story of how we got here, culminating in an all new chapter, "Scientism in the Age of Obama -- and Beyond."
In his outstanding book, "Darwin Day in America," which has recently been updated and re-released, John West of Discovery Institute chronicles "how our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science."
West writes that our understanding of science is "so totalistic in its outlook that its defenders claim the right to remake every sphere of human life from public policy and education to ethics and religion."
Of course, this isn't new. In the decades following the publication of "On the Origin of Species," people like William Graham Sumner and Ernst Haeckel took that logic and applied it to economics through the so-called "struggle between the races."
And of course eugenics, the horrible brainchild of Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, would have been literally unimaginable without Darwinism.
Today, scarcely a month goes by without some aspect of human life being explained in Darwinian terms. One book, entitled "The Murderer Next Door," explains -- you guessed it -- the human, especially male, propensity to commit murder as Richards Dawkins' "selfish gene" at work.
On a much more whimsical note, men's domination in Scrabble championships has also been explained in Darwinian terms.
At best, the dominance of Darwinism and scientism does an injustice to what it means to be human. At worst, as in the case of eugenics, it causes suffering on a massive scale.
If the science of Darwinian evolution were truly unassailable, that would be bad enough. Much of this might then have to be accepted with a sigh of resignation. The fact that the science itself is deeply flawed, as professionals in the field themselves increasingly admit in their technical literature, makes it all the more outrageous.
Listen to John Stonestreet here. Amazon is currently sold out of Darwin's Doubt, but you can get your copy directly from the publisher at a fine discount, or of course, alternatively, from Barnes & Noble.
]]>A simple physical mechanism that can be assimilated to folding, or buckling, means that an unformed mass of cells can change in a single step into an embryo organized as a typical vertebrate. This is the main conclusion of work by a team involving physicists from the Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes (CNRS/Université Paris Diderot) and a biologist from the Laboratoire de Biologie du Développement (CNRS/UPMC). Thanks to microscopic observations and micromechanical experiments, the scientists have discovered that the pattern that guides this folding is present from the early stages of development. The folds that will give a final shape to the animal form along the boundaries between cell territories with different properties. This work has shed light on the mechanism for the formation of vertebrates and thus how they appeared during evolution. [Emphasis added.]
It's hard to believe that any biologist can say this. For one thing, it's Lamarckian; nowhere would this "single step" of folding in an "unformed mass of cells" be preserved in the offspring without the information getting coded in the genes. For another, a vertebrate is so much more than a buckle in a sheet of cells! You might as well explain the Cambrian animals by reference to a circus clown blowing up balloons and twisting them into amusing shapes.
To see that they're serious, one only has to look at their one and only illustration. It shows a sheet of rubber being stretched by some kind of clasp at one side. Here's the caption:
Modeling of the fold formation mechanism. A sheet of rubber on which a (stiffer) paper label is stuck buckles along the boundary between the stiff zone and the soft zone when it is stretched. This reproduces the formation of folds along the boundaries between cellular domains.
Let's check to be sure we're not dreaming. What is the question they are trying to address?
How has evolution produced a structure as complicated as a vertebrate, organized along an anteriorposterior axis, marked dorsally by the nervous system and ventrally by the digestive tract, and displaying almost perfect left-right symmetry? And how, during embryonic development, does this develop from a mass of round cells into an organized embryo? By working on chicken embryos, a team involving physicists and a biologist has managed to explain this transition by means of a relatively simple physical mechanism.
If you've seen the Illustra film Flight: The Genius of Birds you will remember the sequence from egg to chick in 21 days, when the cluster of cells took on its bilateral shape. "What's right? What's left? What's front versus back?" Paul Nelson narrates. "Already these cells are committing themselves, in many cases irreversibly, into the roles they will take on in the adult." It's a marvelous pictorial display, illustrating the "elaborate dance with thousands of cast members," as Ann Gauger described it.
It seems these French evolutionists want to reduce this process to, "Hey, pull on that ball of cells till it buckles and all the rest will follow." Let's give them a chance to explain it in their own words:
The scientists worked on chicken embryos because at this development stage, they constitute the model that is closest to human embryos. Furthermore, its flat, disk-shaped structure facilitates the observation and modeling of cell movements. A chicken embryo is made up of four concentric rings. Under the microscope, each ring looks like a series of cells of homogenous size; their size increases from the center towards the peripheral rings, with a "stepped" change from one ring to another. Not only will these cellular domains form different tissues (nervous, muscle, digestive, etc.) but, as discovered by the scientists when filming development of the embryo, it always folds at the boundary between two neighboring rings, as from the second day of its development. These folds will result in a three-dimensional shape, typical of vertebrates.
By measuring the stiffness of the tissues, the scientists were then able to confirm that these boundaries between cell domains display an elastic contrast. The stiffness becomes increasingly marked when the cells are smaller, towards the center of the embryo. Thus as soon as adequate force is applied, the softer, peripheral regions (flanks) "naturally" wrap themselves around the central, stiffer region (the future central nervous system). The force in question is generated by the migration of certain cells, which stretches the embryo lengthwise.
Do they not understand that these forces are pre-programmed in DNA?
Let's be sure they actually think they are explaining the emergence of a new body plan by a physical stretching of a mass of cells. The ending paragraph says:
These findings thus offer an explanation for the coupling of cell differentiation and morphogenesis (acquisition by the embryo of its shape), so that a well-formed animal containing territories with different and physically separated functions, emerges "naturally". Understanding this process fills a conceptual gap between a shapeless mass of cells and an "animal archetype", and sheds new light on how vertebrates have emerged during evolution.
The scientific paper is behind a paywall, but the Abstract should give the salient points. The title is, "Buckling along boundaries of elastic contrast as a mechanism for early vertebrate morphogenesis."
We have investigated the mechanism of formation of the body of a typical vertebrate, the chicken. We find that the body forms initially by folding at boundaries of stiffness contrast. These boundaries are dynamic lines, separating domains of different cell sizes, that are advected in a deterministic thin-film visco-elastic flow. While initially roughly circular, the lines of elastic contrast form large "peanut" shapes evoking a slender figure-8 at the moment of formation of the animal body, due to deformation and flow in a quadrupolar stretch caused by mesoderm migration. Folding of these "peanut" or "figure-8" motives along the lines of stiffness contrast creates the global pattern of the animal, and segregates several important territories. The main result is that the pattern of cell texture in the embryo serves simultaneously two seemingly different purposes: it regionalizes territories that will differentiate to different cell types and it also locks the folds that physically segregate these territories. This explains how the different cellular types segregate in physically separated domains.
Not much there about "how vertebrates have emerged during evolution." If the paper merely describes the observable, measurable forces that cells in a chicken embryo produce as they differentiate under genetic control, there would be no problem. But if they think this explains the origin of new body plans in the Cambrian explosion (as the news release seems to imply), that's another matter.
Here's a more informative experiment they could try. Stretch a spherical multicellular colony like Volvox and see if (1) it remains stretched in a bilaterial shape, (2) the stretching force gets transmitted to the DNA for the next generation, (3) the buckles in the stretch develop into digestive tracts, nervous systems, and circulatory systems, and (4) a vertebrate swims away.
Image: © DC Studio / Dollar Photo Club.
]]>Michael Shermer's column in Reason will serve as an illustration. He notes that IQ scores have been rising and correlates this with a higher morality, presuming that one leads necessarily to the other.
Shermer categorizes human thinking as either "concrete," which he sees as regressive and the cause of brutality, or "abstract," which he claims to be "scientific" and supposedly is more progressive. From "Are We Becoming Morally Smarter?":
"What do dogs and rabbits have in common?" If you answer, "Both are mammals," says [social scientist James] Flynn, you are thinking like a scientist in classifying organisms by type -- an abstraction. If you said, "You use dogs to hunt rabbits," you are thinking concretely, imagining a tangible use for a dog.
Wait: Science isn't only about learning truths about the natural world (abstract). It's also about applying what we learn for the good of humankind (concrete). But I digress.
Shermer credits our contemporary, purportedly improved morality to general increases in "abstract reasoning," among which he includes that great scientific equation, the "Golden Rule":
Abstract reasoning and scientific thinking are the crucial cognitive skills at the foundation of all morality. Consider the mental rotation required to implement the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
This requires you to change positions -- to become the other person -- and then to extrapolate what action X would feel like as the receiver instead of the doer (or as the victim instead of the perpetrator).
Please. The Golden Rule began as an explicitly Jewish religious formulation, based on what God, who loves humankind, was believed to want of us. Or, does Shermer see belief in God as "scientific"?
Ditto St. Paul's teaching that all, man and woman, Greek and Jew, master and slave, are all one and equal in Christ Jesus.
Talk about a radical idea! These and other Judeo-Christian religious concepts shattered cruel moral templates that existed at the time, setting us (the West) walking (too slowly) down the road that led to today's notions of universal human equality, human rights -- and embracing human exceptionalism, the key to achieving those ends.
Not only that, but the early Christians practiced what they preached, e.g., caring for the destitute and rescuing babies exposed on hills. These distinctly religious thinkers opposed the barbaric practice of infanticide -- which many contemporary scientific thinkers have brought back into fashion by claiming that babies are not "persons" because they lack certain cognitive abilities.
Compare that with the "scientific" ideology of eugenics -- abstractly conceived from Darwinist principles and the monk Mendel's gene experiments -- that advocates culling the human herd, separating the so-called "fit" from "unfit."
Social Darwinism, that cruel and odious idea, was similarly conceived as a great moral advance based on scientific premises that the weak among us were dangerous weights pulling the rest of society under the waves, and worse, that the answer to their misery was to let -- or make -- them die.
Political progressives and materialist "free thinkers," who have always claimed they represent the scientific worldview, overwhelmingly supported these two forms of authoritarianism.
Shermer describes what he thinks makes our age morally superior:
Since the Enlightenment, humans have demonstrated dramatic moral progress. Almost everyone in the Western world today enjoys rights to life, liberty, property, marriage, reproduction, voting, speech, worship, assembly, protest, autonomy, and the pursuit of happiness.
Liberal democracies are now the dominant form of governance, systematically replacing the autocracies and theocracies of centuries past. Slavery and torture are outlawed everywhere in the world (even if occasionally still practiced).
The death penalty is on death row and will likely go extinct sometime in the 2020s. Violence and crime are at historic lows, and we have expanded the moral sphere to include more people as members of the human community deserving of rights and respect.
Even some animals are now being considered as sentient beings worthy of moral consideration.
Animals have always been seen as deserving of some moral consideration, all the way back to Genesis. Moreover, the ancient faith Jainism accords moral equality to humans, animals, insects, and grass. I am sorry, but it is really "abstract" to think of grass and people as having equal ultimate value.
Yet Shermer gives all the credit for moral advances to scientific thinking!
Thinking like a scientist means employing all our faculties to overcome our emotional, subjective, and instinctual brains to better understand the true nature of not only the physical and biological worlds, but the social world (politics and economics) and the moral world (abstracting how other people should be treated) as well.
No, empathy isn't rational, it is emotional. Viewing all humans as morally equal certainly isn't a scientific premise. It can't be proved objectively by measuring capacities, abilities, strength, and the like -- too often done in scientific circles.
Science is a powerful and empirical method of learning. It can only tell us what is -- and fashion hypotheses about what may be. It can't tell us what is morally better or worse, right or wrong, enlightened or regressive. That is the subjective job of religion, philosophy, and morality.
Besides, tens of millions of unborn babies have been aborted in this supposedly superior moral age -- which the Shermers of the world must think of as a great moral advance despite the unquestionable biological humanity of abortion's victims.
Yes, science tells us that embryos and fetuses are human beings. But it can't tell us whether abortion is morally correct. Ditto euthanasia.
Do you also notice how Shermer identifies whatever he believes with what is morally superior? We all do that. But morally "smarter" due to abstract and scientific human thinking?
That's part of it, to be sure. But the reality is that what we in the West generally see as great moral advancements were brought about by dynamic human processes -- objective and subjective, religious and secular, scientific and philosophical -- working together to form Western civilization.
Materialists like Shermer are determined to give science false credit for moral progress, even as they exclude other distinctly human disciplines and look down their noses at thinking that they dismiss as "unscientific." That is unadulterated scientism. It's also morally myopic.
Image: "Paul Writing His Epistles," painting attributed to Valentin de Boulogne [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>Cell Replication as System Engineering
The job of an efficiency expert is to find better ways to get more things done in less time at less cost. From "Taylorism" in the early 20th century, through "Operations Research" in the days of World War II, to "systems engineering" today, efficiency expertise has grown into an essential discipline for manufacturing and project scheduling. Recently, Rami Pugatch, a systems biologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, looked at the humble lab bacterium E. coli with the eyes of an efficiency expert. PhysOrg explains how he approached "cellular replication as a systems engineering problem" --
The paper describes the problem of task scheduling in cellular replication processes and ultimately produces a mathematical distribution that characterizes an optimal replication strategy for E. coli cells. The scope of Pugatch's work encompasses individual cellular processes, algorithmic descriptions of optimized replication, systems engineering concepts, and even the history of the concept of the self-replicating factory. [Emphasis added.]
The history referred to is John von Neumann's 1948 theoretical work on how to build a self-replicating factory. Pugatch finds that a replicating bacterium meets those requirements: it keeps all ingredients in well-stocked reservoirs for each task, it schedules them optimally, and duplicates the instructions as part of the job. The bacterium even succeeds when resources are scarce, a "hard-to-solve scheduling problem" according to the paper published in PNAS.
Bacterial self-replication is a complex process composed of many de novo synthesis steps catalyzed by a myriad of molecular processing units, e.g., the transcription -- translation machinery, metabolic enzymes, and the replisome. Successful completion of all production tasks requires a schedule -- a temporal assignment of each of the production tasks to its respective processing units that respects ordering and resource constraints. Most intracellular growth processes are well characterized. However, the manner in which they are coordinated under the control of a scheduling policy is not well understood. When fast replication is favored, a schedule that minimizes the completion time is desirable. However, if resources are scarce, it is typically computationally hard to find such a schedule, in the worst case. Here, we show that optimal scheduling naturally emerges in cellular self-replication. Optimal doubling time is obtained by maintaining a sufficiently large inventory of intermediate metabolites and processing units required for self-replication and additionally requiring that these processing units be "greedy," i.e., not idle if they can perform a production task. We calculate the distribution of doubling times of such optimally scheduled self-replicating factories, and find it has a universal form -- log-Frechet, not sensitive to many microscopic details. Analyzing two recent datasets of Escherichia coli growing in a stationary medium, we find excellent agreement between the observed doubling-time distribution and the predicted universal distribution, suggesting E. coli is optimally scheduling its replication.
The paper makes no mention of evolution or natural selection; neither does the PhysOrg summary. Instead, one finds the language of "PERT" (project evaluation and review technique), "critical path," and other terms familiar to system engineers.
When von Neumann proposed the self-replicating factory, it was a futuristic idea that science fiction writers latched onto, envisioning space-traveling robots that could replicate themselves with resources found on planets they landed on as they spread throughout the galaxy. But right here on earth, we have a perfect example in one of the smallest, "simplest" living organisms.
Surprisingly, our analysis of recently measured datasets of E. coli exponentially growing in a stationary medium reveals that the measured distribution of doubling times fits well to the predicted distribution of doubling times of an optimally scheduled self-replicating factory. [PNAS]
Such a [von Neumann] factory is called "non-trivial" if it includes a universal constructor as a component. The duplicative process is not considered to be complete until a copy of the instructions is provided. Instead of directing their own replication, the instructions are instead duplicated from a template by a separate dedicated machine that is not triggered until the completion of the factory replication phase. This is closely analogous to actual cellular processes. [PhysOrg]
It took an engineer's eye to see this connection. Now, our understanding of bacterial replication is enriched accordingly, with no reference to natural selection. In fact, this revelation of the process creates new problems for neo-Darwinism: how could a self-replicating von Neumann machine emerge in piecemeal fashion, without all the parts, instructions, and "universal constructor" already present?
Materials Science
Meanwhile, the strongest biological substance known has come to light. This material can withstand 5 gigapascals of tension, equivalent to a string the width of spaghetti holding 3,000 half-kilogram bags of sugar, according to the BBC News. What is it? It's the radula, or tooth, of the humble limpet, a snail-like aquatic animal with a spiral shell. And who found it? An engineer. The University of Portsmouth explains:
Professor Asa Barber from the University's School of Engineering led the study. He said: "Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration for structures that have excellent mechanical properties. All the things we observe around us, such as trees, the shells of sea creatures and the limpet teeth studied in this work, have evolved to be effective at what they do.
"Until now we thought that spider silk was the strongest biological material because of its super-strength and potential applications in everything from bullet-proof vests to computer electronics but now we have discovered that limpet teeth exhibit a strength that is potentially higher."
Aha! the Darwinist says. See? Barber said they "have evolved to be effective at what they do." Upon reading the material, though, evolutionary theory had nothing to do with the findings. It was little more than a throwaway line that the professor uttered probably out of habit. He's an engineer, after all, who knows good design when he sees it:
"This discovery means that the fibrous structures found in limpet teeth could be mimicked and used in high-performance engineering applications such as Formula 1 racing cars, the hulls of boats and aircraft structures.
"Engineers are always interested in making these structures stronger to improve their performance or lighter so they use less material."
Barber's work involved testing the tensile strength of the limpet teeth with specially designed instruments. It was difficult work. The teeth are only a millimeter long, and very thin. The limpet uses its radula to scrape algae from the rocks on which it feeds. Barber's team found that, because the way the teeth are constructed with a mineral called goethite, its properties would scale: i.e., the same principles would work on larger sizes, since the strength of the material is not dependent on the size.
Finding out about effective designs in nature and then making structures based on these designs is known as 'bioinspiration'.
Professor Barber said: "Biology is a great source of inspiration when designing new structures but with so many biological structures to consider, it can take time to discover which may be useful."
"Bioinspiration" -- there's a neologism that's a keeper. Think of the prospects for finding more designs out there! As the BBC News article says, "We should be thinking about making our own structures following the same design principles." Good idea. Design is an inspiration to explore, discover, understand, then imitate.
Image: Patella vulgata, by Tango22 (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
]]>Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas is popularly known for his "Five Ways" of demonstrating God's existence. (See, for example, Michael Egnor's recent article here, "Lawrence Krauss, Eric Metaxas, and Aquinas' Fifth Way.") But Aquinas in many of his writings also provides a detailed philosophical account of God's created order and man's ability to know it. In doing so, Aquinas offers insights in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and epistemology that bear on how one might give a philosophical justification for the conclusions arrived at scientifically by ID theorists.
Given Aquinas' obvious theistic position and his classical empiricism it likely seems strange to many people when they hear some contemporary Thomists critiquing intelligent design on various grounds. As someone who sees a deep coherence between Aquinas and the modern design movement, I think these criticisms are misguided (part of my doctoral dissertation shows how ID and Thomism are compatible). I also think that such claims of incompatibility are unfortunate because they miss the ways in which Thomistic philosophy and ID science can be mutually informative.
Here I'd like to focus on one of those ways -- how Thomistic hylomorphism can provide a philosophical foundation for the insights of modern design theorists. Further, once one sees the nature of hylomorphism, it provides another sound critique of the design theorists' arch nemesis, philosophical naturalism.
As Intelligent Design (ID) science has matured over the past several decades, it has gone through several phases of growing pains both as a scientific paradigm and as an idea in the culture. One facet of this growth that interests me as a philosopher is the recent discussion over ID and the metaphysics of information prompted by William Dembski's Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. Among other things, metaphysics is concerned with giving a philosophical account of how things exist the way they do. For example, the scientist may be concerned with why A causes B, but the metaphysician is concerned with the nature of causality per se. What follows is a brief and simple presentation of a hylomorphic account of ID science.
First things first: What is hylomorphism? From two Greek words "hyle" meaning "matter" and "morphe" meaning "form," hylomorphism is a view of natural objects as being a unified composite of form and matter. Thomist Edward Feser notes, "So, form and matter considered by themselves are, in general anyway, mere abstractions; they exist in the mind, but not in reality."1 Every horse, oak tree, dog, and human being is composed of these principles. Form and matter considered on their own are merely concepts in the mind; in things they are two distinct principles that make the one unified individual thing. The substantial form makes a thing what it is and the accidental forms (e.g. quantity and quality) modify it to have the types of quantity and qualities it has. So a substantial form makes a cat a cat, but an accidental form makes it a "black cat."
Besides the form of a thing, there is its underlying matter. Matter plays two important roles in hylomorphism. First, matter is a principle of change. Why? Because it is the matter that makes sense of the thing's ability to receive one form (e.g. having black hair) and then another (having white hair), while remaining the same thing. James Madden says succinctly, "The point then is that there is something present in the object that provides the potential to be in indefinitely many different ways, and we call this matter."2 Second, matter is a principle of individuation. John Wippel writes:
[Matter] is a real intrinsic principle which must be present in every corporeal being both to account for the fact that such a being is capable of undergoing substantial change and to allow for the possibility that a given kind of being can be multiplied in numerically distinct individuals which belong to the same species.3
What differentiates Seabiscuit from Secretariat is not horse-ness, since they are both horses; matter makes Seabiscuit this particular horse and Secretariat that particular horse.
Given these metaphysical categories, what would a hylomorphic view of ID science be? The first thing to note is that it is best to think of ID science in terms of quantification. For example, Dembski and Wells write:
Unlike irreducible complexity, which is a qualitative notion, specified complexity can be quantified and falls within the mathematical theory of probability and information.... [And specified complexity can be] formulated as a statistical criterion for identifying the effects of intelligence...4
So for influential ID proponents like Dembski and Wells, what makes ID a properly defined and scientific analytic tool for design detection is its essentially mathematical character.
Following Dembski and Wells in their view of ID, we now have to find the role of quantity in hylomorphism. Joseph Owens tells us that a thing's corporeity (the fact that it is a physical body) is intimately bound up by its having dimension or dimensive quantity.5 The details need not detain us; the important point is that we have a bridge between ID mathematics and the quantity that follows directly on a thing's corporeal nature. The hylomorphic philosophical analysis of physical realities shows that there is a purely intelligible aspect to any physical reality (its substantial and accidental forms). This aspect is in no way reducible to its purely material component (contra philosophical naturalists), and it is the intelligible quantitative aspect that allows for the empirical detection of design (a la Dembski and Wells).
It is possible, then, to understand ID science through the lens of Thomistic hylomorphic metaphysics.6 When ID makes informational claims about a thing, it requires a metaphysic to account for what makes its mathematical analysis ultimately real. One way of doing that is to say that the quantitative dimensions of a thing are themselves formal in nature and are therefore susceptible to formal (e.g. mathematical) analysis, but that these forms are in matter in such a way that it makes them empirically detectable and therefore objects of science.
There may be other metaphysical systems within which ID science could find its home. The above is an account of how Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism is one of those systems.
(1) Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2008), 58.
(2) James D. Madden, Mind, Matter & Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 235.
(3) John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 317.
(4) William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems (Dallas, TX: Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 2008), 165 & 168.
(5) Joseph Owens, "Thomas Aquinas: Dimensive Quantity as Individuating Principle," Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988), 279-310.
(6) Though some Thomists, e.g. Edward Feser, deny that ID and Thomism are compatible, I defend this compatibility in my dissertation, "An Analysis of the neo-Darwinism/Intelligent Design Debate based on an Eclectic Philosophy of Science Grounded in Thomistic Realism," (Charlotte, NC: Southern Evangelical Seminary, 2012).
Image: © laufer / Dollar Photo Club.
]]>It's not just creationists!
It's also MDs who avoid the "E" word. A survey of the literature found an interesting shift in usage:
The results of our survey showed a huge disparity in word use between the evolutionary biology and biomedical research literature. In research reports in journals with primarily evolutionary or genetic content, the word "evolution" was used 65.8% of the time to describe evolutionary processes (range 10%-94%, mode 50%-60%, from a total of 632 phrases referring to evolution). However, in research reports in the biomedical literature, the word "evolution" was used only 2.7% of the time (range 0%-75%, mode 0%-10%, from a total of 292 phrases referring to evolution), a highly significant difference (chi-square, p < 0.001). Indeed, whereas all the articles in the evolutionary genetics journals used the word "evolution," ten out of 15 of the articles in the biomedical literature failed to do so completely. Instead, 60.0% of the time antimicrobial resistance was described as "emerging," "spreading," or "increasing" (range 0%-86%, mode 30%-40%); in contrast, these words were used only 7.5% of the time in the evolutionary literature (range 0%-25%, mode 0%-10%). Other nontechnical words describing the evolutionary process included "develop," "acquire," "appear," "trend," "become common," "improve," and "arise." Inclusion of technical words relating to evolution (e.g., "selection," "differential fitness," "genetic change," or "adaptation") did not substantially alter the picture: in evolutionary journals, evolution-related words were used 79.1% of the time that there was an opportunity to use them (range 26%-98%, mode 50%-60%), whereas in biomedical journals they were used only 17.8% of the time (range 0%-92%, mode 0%-10%).
... So we have evolutionary biologists who are unafraid to use the word "evolution" properly; medical biologists who know what it is but avoid using the word; creationists who see it happening but don't understand it and despise the word...
Darwinists use "evolution" because it's their creation myth and because its regular invocation is required by their thought police. Doctors and medical researchers don't use "evolution" because it's irrelevant to medical research. Fairy tales about survival of survivors contribute nothing to medical research, or to any other research.
The extraordinary success of medical research is glaring confirmation of antibiotic pioneer Philip Skell's observation that reference to evolution in biology is just a "narrative gloss" on the real science. Just-so stories contribute nothing to biology. Medical research is wildly successful, without any significant reference to evolution.
My first post at ENV was about the irrelevance of evolution to medical research and practice. It's nice to see that PZ Myers finally agrees.
Image: © Vasiliy Koval / Dollar Photo Club.


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Taranaki Tegel workers have secured a 7.25 per cent pay rise over 2 years after a week of tense negotiations and two days of industrial action.
Approximately 230 Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing union members had been engaged in the action since last Wednesday in a bid to get pay parity with their Christchurch and Auckland counterparts. Negotiations appeared to reach a stalemate on Friday when workers rejected Tegel's offer and Tegel refused to meet again to discuss another one.
The industrial action never reached the level of a full-blown strike.
EPMU lead organiser Wayne Ruscoe said members yesterday accepted a 7.25 per cent pay rise spread over the next two and a half years.
Tegel said the thee-year deal involves annual increases of 2.5, 2.0 and 2.75 per cent.
"A majority of that will be paid by June and backdated for six months so that will be a nice Christmas bonus for our members. We are rapt with it. It's been hard yakka," Mr Ruscoe said.
With close to half of Taranaki Tegel workers understood to be union members, any strike action would have immediately affected production.
It is believed the action came six months after the collective agreement had expired and union members rejected the company's new offer last Wednesday.
Mr Ruscoe said Tegel's New Plymouth workforce were previously paid up to 10 per cent less than workers at other plants doing the same work. Some were on as little as $14 an hour.
"There's still a way to go before we win full pay equity but this deal closes the gap significantly and our members can be proud of what they've achieved together.
"We are also pleased the company has accepted the pay equity issue is real, and we hope to continue to work with management to close the gap entirely," Mr Ruscoe said.
A spokesman for Tegel said they were pleased an agreement had been reached that treated staff equally.
- Taranaki Daily News
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Most popular dog breeds in America
These guys are happy because their little brains literally can't grasp the concept of global warming.
Topics: Religion Dispatches, The Bible, Religion, Christianity, GOP, the poor, Tennessee, Social News, Life News, Politics News
Tennessee Republican Rep. Stephen Fincher provides an excellent case study on why context should never be disregarded when quoting from the Bible.
In recent moves by Congress to slash $4.1 billion or more from food stamps (otherwise known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) over the next 10 years, Fincher quoted from 2 Thessalonians 3:10:
For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.
Fincher used this line to prove his point that lazy poor people shouldn't be depending on the government to feed them. Of course, Fincher and his fellows are worried because SNAP rolls have swelled by 70% since the financial collapse back in 2008, causing the government to spend $80 billion* to feed poor people. But instead of curbing the bankers' economy-destroying ways or ending their corporate welfare, they seek to take it out of the stomachs of poor people.
And he abuses the Bible to make his point.
This is why context matters and no one, not even lawmakers who claim to be good Christians, should ever use the Bible as a weapon—especially against poor people.
2 Thessalonians was arguably written by the Apostle Paul. Some dispute his authorship, but the main point here is that the letter was written to the people of Thessalonica at a time when an enthusiastic apocalyptic sect had grown up around the early Christian community there.
Because many of the members of this sect believed that Jesus' return was imminent, they stopped working. They figured why work when Jesus would be back at any moment to sweep us all into heaven?
This work stoppage by otherwise contributing members of their society was causing great hardship among those who were still working, and not surprisingly, they resented their layabout comrades.
So, the author of this letter laws down the law: If you're not going to work, you're not going to eat.
Context matters. Fincher is using a verse written for a specific time, a specific place, and specific situation in Thessalonica thousands of years ago to deprive poor families of food today. This is Bible abuse at its worst.
Today's poor people are not sitting around anticipating the second coming of Jesus to occur at anytime now. Instead, they've waited for the government to grow the backbone that is required to get the bankers' hands out of the people's treasury and restore jobs and fair wages to America.
To deny them food because of the government's actions and inactions that helped to put them there in the first place is outrageous—and to use the Bible to justify the theft is beyond the pale.
It's actually bankers and politicians who are more dependent on government welfare than ever before, like Rep. Fincher whose family has relied on farm subsidies to amass their wealth.
Or perhaps Fincher does knows his Bible… only he's trying to tell poor people that it will take Jesus' second coming for them to get any help out of this government.
*Originally read "million" — RD regrets the error.
Labrador Retriever
These guys are happy because their little brains literally can't grasp the concept of global warming.
German Shepherd
This momma is happy to bring her little guy into the world, because she doesn't know that one day they'll both be dead.
Golden Retriever
I bet these guys wouldn't be having so much fun if they knew the sun was going to explode one day.
This dude thinks he's tough, but only because nobody ever told him about ISIS.
This little lady is dreaming about her next meal-- not Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Yorkshire Terrier
This trusting yorkie has never even heard the name "Bernie Madoff."
She is smiling so widely because she is too stupid to understand what the Holocaust was.
Sure, frolic now, man. One day you're going to be euthanized and so is everyone you love.
French Bulldog
He's on a casual afternoon stroll because he is unfamiliar with the concept of eternity.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all be this care-free? But we can't because we are basically all indirectly responsible for slavery.
Salon is proud to feature content from Religion Dispatches, a daily online magazine that publishes a mix of expert opinion, in-depth reporting, and provocative updates from the intersection of religion, politics and culture.
If we treated any other professionals the way we do teachers, they'd riot in the streets.
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text:
Event Companies Jobs in London
Related Jobs: Fashion Event Companies London, Sports Events London, Events Assistant London, Events Internship London, Fashion Events London
Operations Manager - publishing and Events Company
Elizabeth Arnold Associates Ltd - London
* International Conference and Exhibition organisation and delivery - including managing speakers, AV production, print, venue, security, catering, hostesses, staffing plans, running events onsite. including overseeing large builds, floor plan management... Event Companies Work careers London... Contract... £33000 - £37000/annum
from: jobsite.co.uk (+2 sources) - Yesterday
Just Chefs - Central London / West End, London, South East
Eligibility: In line with the requirements of the Asylum & Immigration Act 1996, all applicants must either be eligible to live and work in the UK or must obtain permits to work in the UK prior to application. Documented evidence of eligibility will be... Event Companies careers London... Up to £45,000 per annum
from: caterer.com - 3 days ago
Senior Sous Chef Events Company, London £35,000-£40,000
Hamilton Mayday - London, South East England
This is a fabulous opportunity for a chef who is on the up of their career and is looking to progress and develop further. Working days are 5/7 days with usually 2 evenings per week. To be considered as an applicant, please send all relevant CVs immediately... 35000.00
from: reed.co.uk (+2 sources) - 4 days ago
Account Manager - Major Financial Benchmarking / Events Company
Parkwell Management Consultants - London, South East England
They are currently looking for an account manager with a strong background in financial services to develop business with existing client accounts within the wealth management Industry. If you are looking to take your financial services account management... 40000.00
from: reed.co.uk - 4 days ago
Delegate Sales Executive - International Events Company
Upgrade Recruitment - South West London, London, South East
The company have been successfully established for over 50 years and there is fantastic growth into conference producing and program manager roles • Keeping abreast of market developments & identifying new growth areas • Weekly reporting on sales figures... Permanent... From £10 to £11.50 per hour
from: totaljobs.com - 2 days ago
Sous and Development Chef - Leading Events Company - 40-42k OTE
COREcruitment International - London, South East
A great basic salary is offered for the Sous and development chef £35,000 standard plus paid overtime when required and company bonus so OTE £40-42,000 Our client is firmly established as one of London's leading Events Company that cater for some of the... £35k - 42k per year + Benefits
from: caterer.com - 5 days ago
Portuguese Advertising Sales Executive - Global Events Company
A2Z Recruitment Solutions Ltd - London, South East England
The Advertising Media sales role will involve selling advertising sales space to conference and event companies and blu chip organisations wishing to advertise with the magazine publications online and offline. across Europe and Brazil. Do you have B2B... 20000.00
from: reed.co.uk (+2 sources) - 5 days ago
Advertising Sales Executive - Global Events Company
A2Z Recruitment Solutions Ltd - London, South East England
The Advertising Media sales role will involve selling advertising sales space to conference and event companies and blu chip organisations wishing to advertise with the magazine publications online and offline. Do you have B2B Sales experience within... 22000.00
from: reed.co.uk (+1 source) - More than 30 days ago
Events Manager - Large Financial Services Company
Henry Nicholas Associates - London, South East
In return you will be working for a major financial services company with excellent prospects. This is a company that likes to nurture its talent. If you are passionate about events, this could be the role for you. To apply for the Event Manager role... Permanent... £25000 - £32000 per annum
from: totaljobs.com (+2 sources) - 3 days ago
Sales Director for prestigious catering and events company
Oxygen Human Resources Ltd - London, South East England
You will lead and develop their enthusiastic sales team as well as have a strategy to grown and develop the business. 50000.00
from: reed.co.uk - 18 days ago


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Nodes on Ropes: A Comprehensive Data and Control Flow for Steering Ensemble Simulations
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IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
By Jürgen Waser,Hrvoje Ribičić,Raphael Fuchs,Christian Hirsch,Benjamin Schindler,Günther Blöschl,Eduard Gröller
Issue Date:December 2011
pp. 1872-1881
Flood disasters are the most common natural risk and tremendous efforts are spent to improve their simulation and management. However, simulation-based investigation of actions that can be taken in case of flood emergencies is rarely done. This is in part ...
World Lines
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IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
By Jürgen Waser, Raphael Fuchs, Hrvoje Ribicic, Benjamin Schindler, Günther Blöschl, Eduard Gröller
Issue Date:November 2010
pp. 1458-1467
In this paper we present World Lines as a novel interactive visualization that provides complete control over multiple heterogeneous simulation runs. In many application areas, decisions can only be made by exploring alternative scenarios. The goal of the ...
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Let U.S. war resister stay in Canada
For the last few years, I have followed our government's response to the issue of American war resisters in Canada, so I was not surprised but was still so deeply saddened to learn that Kimberley Rivera, the first female U.S. war resister to seek refuge in Canada, has been ordered to leave our country by Sept. 20. Ironically, that's the day before International Peace Day.
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For the last few years, I have followed our government's response to the issue of American war resisters in Canada, so I was not surprised but was still so deeply saddened to learn that Kimberley Rivera, the first female U.S. war resister to seek refuge in Canada, has been ordered to leave our country by Sept. 20. Ironically, that's the day before International Peace Day.
This order goes against the clearly expressed wishes of many of our elected parliamentarians who have argued that U.S. war resisters should be allowed to stay in our country. This order also goes against a fundamental Canadian belief that we have an obligation and a responsibility to protect all who face unjust punishment or persecution if returned to their own country of origin because of their actions or their beliefs. This order also, quite simply, goes against what is right and moral and just.
There are those, including our own Prime Minister and members of his government, who argue that Kimberley voluntarily joined the U.S. army and, so, should not be sheltered in Canada because she chose to walk away from a voluntary commitment. My understanding, however, is that Kimberley went to Iraq intending to fulfil the responsibilities she accepted, but then realized she couldn't do so in good conscience because she saw that so many young families, like her own, were suffering and dying because of an invasion she no longer believed to be just.
Kimberley had the courage the stand up for what was right, to stand up against an unjust war and to bring her young family to Canada where they have done everything possible to be responsible and productive.
What has become painfully clear in the last few years, is that wars are fought, most often, because of greed and a desire for power, and that it is corporations and governments that profit from conflict. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have perished in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere while executives and governments in privileged countries like our own have profited.
And many, many soldiers from Canada and elsewhere have paid the "ultimate price" — benefiting the privileged and then trying, and often failing, to deal with the emotional pain of having done so.
There is a reason why there are now more young American and Canadian soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have taken their own lives than there are soldiers who have died in combat. There is a reason why our dear family friend — 23 years old — returned from service in Afghanistan, a fractured and struggling young soul. There is an age old question "What if they gave a war and nobody went?"
What Kimberley Rivera and others like her are courageously saying is that when young soldiers go into combat and look long and hard at those they are fighting against, they often recognize the inherent humanity of their "enemies," understand that they too have children and elderly parents and pets who love and depend on them, and recognize that destroying this other soldier's or civilian's life and soul would also destroy their own.
Kimberley Rivera took that long hard look. And she made a very courageous choice. Please contact Stephen Harper and tell her that we want Kimberley and her family to stay in Canada.
Charlotte Sheasby-Coleman, Etobicoke
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Populated Place in Tulare County, California, USA.
Latitude: 36.29778 : Longitude: -119.20583 : Elevation: 360 ft
Blogs and Websites Near Farmersville, California - GeoURL
Farmersville Map - Multimap
Farmersville Street Map and Satellite Photo - Google Maps
Farmersville Aerial Photo and Topo Map - Terraserver
Farmersville Map - MSN
Environmental Hazards, Flood Area Maps, Boundaries - EPA
Farmersville Area Map - MapQuest
Farmersville CA Weather Forecast - National Weather Service
Weather Forecast near Farmersville - Multimap
The weather forecast links don't work for all places yet.
Some random places: Laup?hoehoe Ecumenical Catholic Church Nedmire Draw BC Number 2 Mine Elora


text:
TD-Complete Submission
What to expect when you're expecting (an acceptance letter)
4.15 / 5.00 3,934 Views[4/25/09] - No way!! Front Page!?! I'm still in shock! Thank you so much!
The sequel is out! Watch it here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/533001
Man am I LAZY! It's been almost a year since I submitted anything! Well, here it is!
This movie is done in a similar style to my first video: "Crossing the Pit". This time, the guy tries to break into a bank.
NOTE! DO NOT CLICK THE DISGUISE until the end. It leads to the credits.
If you leave a review, please also tell me which part was your favorite--I always like to know. Additionally, if you have any suggestions on improvement, those would also be appreciated.
EDIT: Daily 5th! My first award! Awesome!
haha, all the series went very succesful and funny. Hey, Puffballs, make a new episode of series where Henry takes a vacation and decides to travel around the world, when on his every part of journey he is taking part in a crime! Part 1-Paris-stealing Mona Lisa from Museum
Part 2-Tokyo-stealing original pokemon cartridge
Part 3... well it can have as many parts as you decide :)
no matter how short it is excellent're the best a question henry stickman 2015 will hopefully if good luck friend
fuicking nail it i going to jill so i can break out and git rich by sealing a jew and then heilcorperand kick some ass!! /if herry sick man knows what his doing/ lol.
WAIT why is there a trane under the bankXD
It's a subway :D
I remember playing this ever since I was 9 I think, and i remember playing the hell out of this and escaping the prison. But this game deserves the max 5 stars (or 10 stars if voting out of 10 stars) because of its hilarious fails, although its only 6 choices and no way of actually winning in the game.
Yeah, it is a bit dated at this point.


text:
recipe reviews for:
"This one-pot supper sports big flavors. Sauteed ground beef is stirred into shell pasta with a cheesy sauce and Pace® Chunky Salsa. Garnish with chopped cilantro, if desired."
My Profile | Cooks I Like Reviews | Photos | Recipes | Menus | Blog
Cooking Level: Expert
Cooking Level: Intermediate
Cooking Level: Beginning
Muffins are great for breakfast, with coffee, or just as a snack on the go.
Soup is what the doctor ordered to cure those winter blahs.
Delicious recipes, party ideas, and cooking tips! Get a year of Allrecipes magazine for $7.99!
Burgers never need to be basic again! Try this great recipe with dipping sauce.
Update the classic holiday dish with bacon, red peppers, or almonds.
This dish is delicious, and so easy with Campbell's® Cream of Mushroom Soup.


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Holdays.net Home
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4 Vintage 1960s Libbey Glass Tumblers Andrew Jackson, Perry's Flagship
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Dog's are super smart so the next logical step is to train them to help us with yard work. This German Shepherd mows the lawn and looks good doing it. We like the side glance to the camera then it's back to work.
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Timothy Dahl
Founder/EIC at Charles & Hudson
Timothy's background includes stints at This Old House, ELLE DECOR, Metropolitan Home and Woman's Day. His work has been published on Wired Design, Bob Vila, DIY Network, The Family Handyman and Popular Mechanics and he has been featured on the Martha Stewart radio show and as a speaker at the ALT Design Summit, K/BIS and the National Hardware Show.
Latest posts by Timothy Dahl (see all)
- The Bosch Modern Kitchen - March 2, 2015
- Best Kitchens Featured in Dwell - February 23, 2015
- How to Cope with a Small Kitchen - February 23, 2015


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Missouri Valley Conference awards ballots are due in a couple of days, at the conclusion of the regular season. Each MVC city has four votes — the head coach, sports information director, radio play-by-play announcer and newspaper beat writer.While I'm still deciding on some of my selections, my mind is made up on the top spots.
PEORIA -- After a very, very slow start to the joint Mixed Couples Tournament at Landmark Lanes last weekend, it's safe to say that the Peoria Women's Bowling Association is hoping for a few more entries in...
PEORIA -- The Peoria Rivermen held the line on their roster as the SPHL trade deadline arrived on Monday.Now they'll try to hang on to the high ground in the league race with 11 games left.Peoria...
With the Braves column
This month is the frenzy. Next month is the madness.We'll close the regular weekly boys basketball notes with numbers.
PEORIA — How long has it been since Bradley last won the Missouri Valley Conference?MmmBop.
PEORIA -- After the averages and entries were checked and double checked, there were a few changes in the final standings of the 92nd annual Brothers Tournament, which wrapped up a few weeks ago at Landmark Lanes.
Just sports, we say. What's the big deal? It's just sports.Three images of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City remain sharp in my mind today:
PEORIA -- You win games with guys like Peoria Rivermen goaltender Kyle Rank or centers Garrett Vermeersch and Alex Hudson and wingers like Steve Morra or Jake Trask.But teams win championships with players...
NORMAL -- The beauty of the Wichita State Shockers is in the eyes of the beholder.
Canton led all the way in a 56-52 victory at Monmouth-Roseville on Saturday night. The Little Giants (2-16) ended a 15-game losing streak and won for the first time since beating Vandalia at the Canton Thanksgiving Tournament.
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