A single-couple human origin is possible

Justin Taylor interviews Ann Gauger and Ola Hössjermon their new research paper:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/new-scientific-study-showing-come-original-adam-eve-interview-authors/

Coming home to Mother Church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgBS8ioM_Q

Falling bodies

This is a quick afterthought to my Ehrman/Williams debate review:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/ehrman-v-williams-rematch.html

1. A few more reflections on the death of Judas. I'll edit this into my original post. 

The description of events in biblical narration is generally quite sketchy, so there are many variations on how to visualize the an event happened. 

i) Suppose you have a corpse that falls from a hilltop. The slope of a hill means that it's narrower on top but spreads out further down. Depending on the slope, a body could tumble down a hill. It's in one position when it begins the descent, but rolls over and over, picking up speed on the way down. It's in a different position when it reaches bottom.

ii) Or a corpse might begin the descent feetfirst in freefall for several yards, then strike the side of the hill one or more times. Bouncing off the hillside repositions the body. 

There's nothing ingenious about these explanations. They're realistic, commonplace scenarios. 

That moment when you realize, in midflight, that you boarded the wrong plane

For the first time since my conversion to the Catholic faith I don’t think if I was an Anglican now I would have bothered converting. Don’t get me wrong I’d never go back to Anglicanism.. but I don’t think that if I was an Anglican now I’d see the point of being a Catholic. 1/2

— Fr David Palmer (@FrDavidPalmer) October 26, 2019

Wolves, werewolves, and demons

To my knowledge, there's a very short list of superior werewolf movies, and even those aren't truly great movies. Mind you, there may be additional examples I'm not aware of.

Unless I've overlooked something, directors have failed to develop the dramatic potential of the werewolf character. It alternates between mundane human and savage instinctive animal. 

The problem is a failure to creatively explore and exploit lupine intelligence. To take a comparison, cats are interesting to watch in motion. How they move. Feline reflexes and feline stalking patterns. But in my observation, there just isn't a whole lot going on behind the eyes. 

By contrast, wolves strike me as being far smarter than cats. I don't just mean domestic cats but lions, leopards, and tigers. Wolves remind me of psychopaths. Amoral, pitiless malevolence. Of course, wolves lack the higher intelligence to be evil. But there's a certain analogy.

By the same token, wolves project a kind of inhuman diabolical cunning. Again, that's just an analogy. 

There's just something about lupine intelligence that seems to operate on a higher wavelength. When we look into the eyes of a wolf, it connects with the human viewer–almost like it understands us.  Something we recognize in ourselves, but chilling. Like looking in a mirror, where what you see looking back at you is both familiar and alien.  More akin to human intelligence than, yet inhumane in way similar to a psychopath: he has a human IQ but lacks natural empathy for fellow humans. Something is fatally missing. It's not surprising that heathen Indians felt a particular affinity for wolves. 

If directors, especially Christian directors, had greater imagination, the werewolf would be a good way to model demonic psychology. Or even the fall of angels, like the shift from werewolves in their human state to their lupine state–which parallels the change that fallen angels underwent. They remain angelic, but twisted. 

The Incarnation and the image of God

There's a lazy theological cliché that the imago Dei is what makes man unique. What sets us apart from the rest of creation. 

There's a grain of truth to that, or maybe more than a grain. In the creation account, man is said to be made in God's image–in contrast to all the other creatures (although angels don't figure in the creation account). 

Still, there's the risk of putting to much theological weight on that category. There's no exposition of the concept in Scripture. And in popular discourse, it's a catchall for whatever people like to think makes man distinctive. 

But that's just a segue to my primary point. The overemphasis on the imago Dei, which often functions as a theological shortcut, leads to the neglect of another distinctive. Of all the creatures in this world, including angels (who are our only rivals in the pecking order), God only became Incarnate as a human being. So the Incarnation is a singular tribute to human dignity. That's something else that sets us apart. God came down to our level, yet God had to make us at a certain level for that to be fitting. We had to be high enough in the hierarchy of creation for an Incarnation to suitable, to be the midpoint between the Creator and the creation. That's nothing to brag about. It's by virtue of how we were made, at or near the apex of creation, that the Incarnation lies at the median between the transcendent Deity and the immanent world. 

Ponder what it means that we have the capacity to relate to God at all. In that regard, compare animals to children. Animal intelligence ranges along a continuum. Many lower animals seem to be nothing more than machines with programming (very impressive all the same). Some insects have mysteriously complex behavior given the hardware. Same with bacteria. 

But even the smartest animals appear to have one-dimensional intelligence. By contrast, consider the budding intelligence of a child. Watch how their intelligence flowers at an early age. Even at that tender age, kids have three-dimensional intelligence, and it only deepens with maturation. 

By the same token, creatures must be at a certain threshold for an Incarnation to align. For that to operate in both directions. God relates to humans on our plane while we are able to relate to God, in our finite way. 

Inerrancy for me but not for thee

Many Christian conservatives profess to defend the inerrancy of Scripture when, in fact, they are defending the inerrancy of their interpretation of Scripture.

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) October 26, 2019

"Progressive Christians," apostates, and atheists profess to attack the inerrancy of Scripture when, in fact, they are attacking their interpretation of Scripture, which they treat as inerrant. 

Ehrman v. Williams rematch

I watched a recent debate between Bart Ehrman and Peter Williams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZPPGvF_2I

1. I think Williams did very well. I agree with everything he said. 

There are always missed opportunities in debates like this, in part because the topics keep shifting so that it's impossible to develop a line of thought. Hence, the debater has to make snap judgments about what to discuss. Many worthwhile lines of thought are left out because there's only so much he can discuss within the time constraints. 

In addition, debaters play to their areas of strength, so there will be neglected lines of thought since that isn't their forte. Which is why the Christian side needs to be represented by debaters with a variety of skill sets. 

Although I watched the whole debate from start to finish, I'm going to focus on Ehrman's presentation. 

2. Modern readers below a certain age have grown up with televised news coverage. That puts the viewer in a position analogous to an eyewitness. 

i) When you watch a televised recording of an event, you are not only seeing what happened–you are seeing how it happened. You're like a firsthand observer at the scene. And, of course, the proliferation of cellphone cameras has made that experience even more ubiquitous. 

As such, saturation exposure to televised news coverage may condition or bias the modern reader when he studies biblical narratives. That's an artificial frame of reference to assess written accounts. Historical narratives, whether biblical or extrabiblical, tell you what happened rather than showing you how it happened. 

ii) Apropos (i), this means that when attempting tovisualize a historical account, the reader must mentally fill in the background details. All he's got is a verbal description. Compared to a televised recording, biblical accounts are very spare. 

3. Apropos (2), this means that when it comes to historical reconstruction, a reader must use his own imagination to fill out the picture. Of necessity, he is mentally adding details not contained in the account. That's hardly unique to Scripture. That holds true for historical writing generally.

To an unbeliever, Gospel harmonization smacks of special pleading. But the Gospel harmonist isn't doing anything unusual. He isn't switching from one mode of reading the text to another. When he endeavors to harmonize apparent discrepancies, he's using the same approach he uses when reading accounts with no apparent discrepancies. 

To a cynical unbeliever, this may appear ad hoc, but when we read historical narratives, and when we attempt to go from what happened to how it happened, every reader must postulate additional details not contained in the text. So there's nothing essentially sneaky or strained about what Christian readers are doing. That's a perfectly normal and necessary way to process historical narratives, whether or not they exhibit apparent (or real) discrepancies. Ehrman is very naive in that regard (among others). 

4. Ehrman cites the death of Judas as a showcase example. There are striking differences in how Matthew and Acts report this event. But even in that respect, it's equally striking that both accounts say the death of Judas occurred at the same place (the "Field of Blood"). If, however, these are independent legends, then how do you explain that parallel? It only makes sense if both accounts have a common source in a common event. Judas did indeed die at that location. 

5. Ehrman makes a big deal about Judas falling "headlong" (in Acts). I think the point Ehrman is driving at is that, from Ehrman's perspective, if Judas hanged himself, his feet would point to the ground, so that if for some reason he fell, he'd maintain the same position on the way down. If he fell feetfirst, the body would land feetfirst rather than headfirst. 

But if that's what Ehrman has in mind, notice that both sides are attempting to visualize the logistics of the two accounts. Ehrman, no less than Williams, is postulating conjectural background details to create a mental picture of what the description implies or rules out. 

6. Suppose Judas hanged himself on the branch of a tree on the ridge of a hill. There's nothing unrealistic about that scenario. 

Suppose, in addition, Judas didn't simply fall from the tree. Suppose the rope didn't break from the weight. Rather, what if the body was pulled down. 

By what, you ask? What about scavenger dogs? It's not unrealistic to posit scavenger dogs. We know they exist. Packs of dogs on the prowl for carrion. That happens. 

If the dogs got on their hind legs, perhaps supported by the tree trunk or the corpse, grabbed the corpse by the armpit, and kept tugging, and if that dislodged the corpse, the corpse wouldn't just fall down but fall over. It wouldn't fall feetfirst but headfirst. For the very act of pulling it down would reposition the corpse. 

(Incidentally, I once saw a nature show in which photographers hung meat from a branch to photograph the reaction of lions. The lions were very persistent in attempting to pull the meat down.) 

The only remaining question is if it falls headfirst, does it land headfirst? I'm no expert, but when we watch swimmers highdive (10 meters), they dive headfirst and land headfirst. Their body doesn't change position in mid-fall. 

From what I can tell, there's nothing unrealistic about my harmonization. These are things that naturally happen.

Sure, my reconstruction is speculative, but that's true for historical reconstructions in general. Ehrman's objection requires conjectural details to fill in the mental picture. To have a complete mental image of what the description implies or rules out, the reader must do that. And that's germane to so many of Ehrman's list of "contradictions. 

7. Some other scenarios:

i) Suppose you have a corpse that falls from a hilltop. The slope of a hill means that it's narrower on top but spreads out further down. Depending on the slope, a body could tumble down a hill. It's in one position when it begins the descent, but rolls over and over, picking up speed on the way down. It's in a different position when it reaches bottom.

ii) Or a corpse might begin the descent feetfirst in freefall for several yards, then strike the side of the hill one or more times. Bouncing off the hillside repositions the body. 

There's nothing ingenious about these explanations. They're realistic, commonplace scenarios. 

8. One problem with how he dismisses corroborative evidence Williams marshals for the historical accuracy of the Gospels is that Ehrman has backed himself into a position that he can't credit the historicity of the Gospels even if they are historically accurate. As Williams pointed out:

In order get the story wrong you'd have to have a different mechanism of information–so it's like they've gone to the effort of doing research to get all the context right and then you're going to say they were casual about the stories; and for that you need to have some sort of system of selective corruption of information that corrupts the most important stuff and leaves all the trivial stuff in place. 

9. Ehrman rattles off names like Milman Parry and Albert Lord to demonstrate that oral tradition undergoes creative change. 

i) But a problem with his comparison is that scholars like Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and John Miles Foley were examining the role of creative change in epic poetry. Yet the fact that epic poetry may undergo significant change in the process of transmission from one bard to another is not directly comparable to historical narratives. He's drawing fallacious extrapolations from one genre to a very different kind of genre. 

ii) In addition, it's demonstrably false that oral tradition can't preserve factual information intact:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-longevity-of-oral-history.html

10. Ehrman posits that the sources for the Gospels passed by word-of-mouth through many links before the authors wrote down the latest oral traditions. But there's no presumption that that's the case.

If, however, traditional authorship is correct–and Williams provides some direct evidence as well as alluding to other evidence–then Matthew and John were eyewitnesses. For that matter, Mark was probably an eyewitness. He's a younger contemporary of Jesus living in Jerusalem at the time of Christ's public ministry.  

Moreover, there's no presumption that Luke's sources involve a chain of transmission. He could easily interview eyewitnesses to the life of Christ. Many were still alive at the time he conducted his investigations. So there's no justification to stipulate a series of intervening links. The same holds true if Matthew, Mark, or John supplement their firsthand observation with testimony from other informants. The same holds true even if Matthew, Mark, and John weren't eyewitnesses. 

11. Evidence for harmonization. That's not an evidentiary question but a logical question. It doesn't require any evidence to demonstrate how two accounts are possibly consistent. 

12. Ehrman said:

What would it take, if you're already committed to the idea that there can't be any mistakes, then how would you be open to the idea that there might be a mistake. It's doing theology, it's not doing history. History isn't done by coming at it with a theological presupposition about what had to happen. You look at the evidence. You don't approach it by saying this has to be right. If you're going to do proper history you can't allow your presuppositions about God to affect the outcome. You're saying Christian history isn't the same as history. If you go to a history department there are criteria. 

i) One problem is Ehrman's fallacious argument from authority. But that's just an observation about the sociology of history departments as secular universities. 

ii) We all evaluate historical claims based on our plausibility structures. We come to historical claims with views about what we think the world is like. What's possible or impossible, realistic or unrealistic. What's antecedently probable or improbable. 

Ironically, that's exactly what Ehrman is doing with his methodological atheism. He isn't confining himself to the raw evidence. To the contrary, he takes a position, in advance of the fact, that any divine explanation must be disallowed. He takes that position before he sees the evidence. So even if divine agency is a direct factor in some outcomes, Ehrman is always committed to a naturalist explanation regardless of whether that's the right explanation. He's saying the only proper historical explanations must be naturalistic explanations–even if that explanation is wrong. 

iii) There's an interplay between evidence and plausibility structures. Up to a point, your plausibility structure ought to be revisable in light of evidence. Keep in mind, though, that there's an asymmetrical relationship between naturalism and supernaturalism in that respect. If your naturalistic plausibility structure is based on lack of perceived evidence for God, providence, or miracles, then it only take some positive evidence to the contrary to falsify your plausibility structure.  

It's much harder to come up with what would even count as conclusive evidence for God's nonexistence. Even if (ex hypothesi) God is generally inevident, it only takes a few good examples to disprove a universal negative. 

Demons are real and Jesus saves

The joy of solving Rubik's cubes

Some loosely and tenuously connected musings, nothing more:

1. Let's divide scientific investigation into two categories: the experimental sciences and the historical sciences.

   Generally speaking:

   The experimental sciences involve experiments which can be setup under predetermined conditions and repeated. This in turn can be done by teams of different scientists at different places and different times. The cumulative repetition, if the experiment is successful in proving a hypothesis or theory, fosters greater confidence in its accuracy.

   By contrast, the historical sciences involve a singularity. A one-time event which cannot be repeated. Consider the big bang in cosmology or the origin of life and evolution in the biological sciences. We can't playback the big bang or how life originated and evolved. Closer to home, I have in mind historical and archeological research, SETI, and forensic medicine.

   This doesn't necessarily mean one can't be as confident in theories investigating singular historical events as one can be in theories based on experiments. For example, inference to the best explanation arguments can be quite reasonable.

2. Atheists often demand evidence for God in answered prayers and miracles. They want God to demonstrate to them that he exists.

   Perhaps some atheists would be willing to see some "extraordinary" miracle like God writing something like "the Bible is true" with the stars. Although I recall a prominent atheist (it might've been Peter Atkins) who said that even if God performed an extraordinary miracle, he would chalk it up to a neurological dysfunction and disbelieve what he saw.

   In my experience, though, most atheists demand repeat experiments to test whether an answered prayer or a miracle is truly from God.

   However, why should prayers or miracles be subject to repeat experiments? We'd be treating God like a mechanical miracle dispenser. That's not how personal agents work. If I want to test someone and see if they will give me something, I don't ask them to sit in a controled environment, under the watchful eye of people hired to record his every action, and repeat my question to him over and over again to see if there'll be a different result.

   Instead, I think prayers or miracles might be better investigated using the tools of investigation in the historical sciences rather than the experimental sciences. Such as inference to the best explanation. Consider the people, circumstances, related events, etc., in and around a purported answered prayer or miracle, on a case by case basis, rule out other possibilities, and so on.

3. On a completely different note:

   Most people enjoy reading, listening to, and/or watching stories.

   At the same time, we enjoy re-reading a good story or re-watching a good movie, even though we know the entire story including ending. We love to re-experience our favorite stories over and over again. For example, many people love to re-watch their favorite movies or television episodes.

   However, this isn't true for every story. There are some good stories which we wouldn't want to re-read or re-watch even if we could. Perhaps the stories are good but they're too personally difficult or even traumatic to read or watch again.

   Also, there are often stories which we find delightful that we couldn't watch again. Take murder mystery or detective stories. We might enjoy Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, but once the case has been solved, we're not all that interested in going through it again.

   I presume that's at least partly because it wasn't so much the story itself that was captivating but finding out what the ending was. Discovering whodunnit. The joy was primarily in untangling the thorny knot of the mystery.

   Similar things could be said for other things besides literature. Take the sciences or math. Some scientific or mathematical problems are fun to do on one's own even though everyone knows the answer or how they'll turn out. Other scientific or mathematical problems are more like solving a Rubik's cube or finishing a crossword puzzle.

   Just as there different types of scientific investigations, such as investigations focused on repeating and reproducing the same experiment as well as investigations focused on solving a mystery or a puzzle, it's interesting there are stories we enjoy re-experiencing time and time again as well as stories we enjoy but could only read or watch once.

Spontaneous creation

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design)

Several problems:

1. How do scientific laws "create" material objects? Such as subatomic and atomic particles. Not to mention spacetime itself. These are what the universe consists of, after all.

   I can see how scientific laws describe and explain patterns in nature. I can see how scientific laws make accurate predictions about the course of certain natural phenomena. But how do scientific laws have the ability or power to create or cause material objects to come into existence? How does a scientific law like "F=ma" have the ability to make a car materialize out of thin air? How does the law of gravity have the ability to make the universe come into existence? To kick off the big bang?

2. Minimally laws describe natural phenomena. As such, what is the law of gravity without the existence of gravity? If the law of gravity exists, then presumably gravity exists too. If gravity exists, then it seems Hawking is arguing gravity is what's created the universe. If so, that would still leave unexplained what created gravity. As well as how gravity could exist before the universe exists.
3. However, if it's possible for the law of gravity to exist without the existence of gravity, then where does the law of gravity exist if the universe doesn't exist? Is the law of gravity a free-floating Platonic ideal? Would the law of gravity need to inhere in some mind?
4. What does Hawking mean by "nothing"? Does he mean what most people mean when they say "nothing" (a)? Or does he mean what physicists like Lawrence Krauss mean when they say "nothing", i.e., some primordial soup consisting of quantum fluctuations (b)?

   a. If the former, then Hawking would be arguing something (the universe) came from literal nothing. How can something come from literally nothing on Hawking's beliefs? (Despite the fact that the law of gravity isn't "nothing". Rather it's "something".)

   b. If the latter, then quantum fluctuations are clearly not "nothing" in the normal sense of "nothing". Rather quantum fluctuations are "something". If something (quantum fluctuations) created something else (the universe), then that only pushes the question back a step: where do these quantum fluctuations come from?

5. Hawking notes the universe created itself. Spontaneous creation. That's illogical. A flat-out self-contradiction. If something doesn't exist yet, then how can it create itself?

   Suppose I have a dog. A friend asks where I got my dog. I reply, my dog created itself, before it ever existed. It just popped itself into existence! How so? By its own sheer willpower? Even though the dog didn't exist to have a will in the first place. All this makes no sense.

   This is true for any created object. Such as the universe which Hawking admits is a created object. Otherwise Hawking might have followed early 20th century physicists who argue the universe is eternal. It has always existed. It simply is.

6. If the universe "spontaneously" created itself from the law of gravity, then doesn't that suggest the law of gravity isn't so much a "law" as it is something less than a law? I mean, wouldn't that be like saying 1 + 1 = 2, but sometimes spontaneous things happen, and 1 + 1 = 3.14 or 6.022 x 10²³?

   How would Hawking square this "spontaneous creation" (which suggests chance or randomness) with his uniformitarianism regarding scientific laws as well as the fact that he believes the universe is a closed system?

   Keep in mind Hawking subscribes to M-theory rather than (say) quantum gravity.

7. Hawking notes it's "not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going". However why assume God is in conflict with a scientific law like gravity?

   Suppose a scientific law did have creative powers - or at least have causal powers. Suppose the same scientific law caused the universe to exist. Suppose God exists too. As such, God could have used the scientific law to cause or create the universe. God and a scientific law with causal or creative powers aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

   Indeed, if God exists, the God of the Bible, then God would been the one in whom the laws of nature originate in the first place.

The species problem

THE THREE SPECIES PROBLEMS

The species problem is actually a number of problems that biologists have dealt with since the term was first applied to biological organisms by Aristotle. I call the three main problems the grouping problem, the ranking problem, and the commensurability problem. It will benefit us to clearly distinguish these at the beginning of our discussion and to bear them in mind as we consider the philosophy of species.

What is a species?

From Appendix B in Species: A History of the Idea (2nd ed.) by John Wilkins:

"In Christ"

1. "In Christ" is a Pauline catchphrase, but what does it mean? Commentators aren't very helpful. They say things like it means "in union" with Christ, but that just substitutes one spacial metaphor for another. Or they say it means "in the sphere" of Christ," which again, substitutes one spacial metaphor for another. They are paraphrasing the catchphrase rather than defining it.

2. Just considered as a spatial metaphor, the metaphor implies a point of contrast between inside and outside. These are mutually definable. What it means to be inside depends in part on what it means to be outside. Let's consider some generic associations for people in the ancient world:

i) It was dangerous to be outside at night. You could get hopelessly lost. You could be attacked by nocturnal predators (e.g. the Asiatic lion). They can see you but you can't see them. You could step on a venomous snake. Crime was higher at night (that's still the case). 

ii) You didn't want to get caught in a storm (e.g. Ecclesiastes 13). You seek shelter. 

iii) If an army invaded, you needed to take refuge inside a fortified city. You didn't want to be left outside the defensive walls. 

3. Let's consider biblical connotations of the inside/outside dichotomy:

i) Inside the garden of Eden, with the river, fruit trees, tame animals, and tree of life. Expulsion from Eden: an inhospitable wilderness. Thirst, mortality, vulnerability. 

ii) Safe inside Noah's ark, doomed to die in the flood if stranded outside the ark.

iii) Hell as outer darkness

iv) The new Jerusalem. The damned are barred from entering (Rev 21:27). 

ii) The parable of the wise and foolish virgins. The foolish virgins are shut out. Find themselves on the wrong side of the door. 

ii) The plagues of Egypt: 

• The plague of hail. Better dive for cover lest you be struck dead by hailstones. 

• Plague of darkness. Sunlight in Goshen, pitch black outside Goshen. 

• Plague of the firstborn. Israelites inside their huts, with blood on the door jam, are safe from the angel of death. Outside the angel of death strikes the firstborn Egyptians.

4. However, the point of contrast isn't merely negative, where to be inside simply shields you from what lies outside. What lies inside can be good. A home that contain food and drink, a bed, a fireplace, and companionship. 

Take Paul's adoptive metaphor (e.g. Eph 1:5). Consider an orphan who's adopted. Who suddenly has all the benefits of an "instant" family by virtue of his adoption. His condition instantly changes for the better by virtue of his relationship to his adoptive father (in the ancient world) or adoptive mother and father. 

Consider if the most popular student in school befriends a loner. He befriends a low-status student whom other students have shunned. He brings the classmate into his social circle. That instantly elevates the standing of the loner.  The friendship brings perks. He now has access to the same things. So long as he is with his popular benefactor, he can do the same things.The benefactor shares his good fortune with the unfortunate classmate. 

By the same token, to be "in Christ" is to enjoy all the blessings that flow from the atonement. Because the atonement is vicarious, the benefits are made available to the redeemed by means of their relationship with the Redeemer. 

Microevolution and macroevolution

What's the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution?

Traditionally the distinction is supposed to be at the species level. Micrevolution involves evolutionary changes within a species, while macroevolution involves evolutionary changes beyond a species. Such as when one species becomes another species. Or one species becomes two species (speciation).

1. Yet, today, many scientists disagree with how to define a species. What, precisely, makes a species a species?

2. Also, why is the focal point of macroevolution at the species level? Why is species where we draw the line between microevolution and macroevolution? After all, isn't evolution supposed to be akin to climbing Mt. Improbable? If so, then evolution is simply a gradual but continuous series of changes in one direction (give or take). Hence, why couldn't the line be drawn elsewhere?

3. In fact, is it even a line so much as an outline or sketch? A fuzzy boundary?

4. Moreover, aren't there multiple blurred lines?

5. As such, the traditional demarcations between microevolution and macroevolution seem to overemphasize the significance and roles of species and speciation.

6. Yet, if the borders are hazy enough between microevolution and macroevolution, then that could potentially affect the theory of evolution as a whole. After all, of what use are concepts like microevolution and macroevolution if the borders are so hazy? We might as well simply call microevolution "small change" and macroevolution "big change" for all the explanatory power these terms have.

7. Macroevolution is supposed to be reducible to microevolution. Macroevolution is supposed to be the accumulation of small genetic changes over time (microevolution). Macroevolution is a continuous spectrum of microevolutionary changes.

   All this requires genetic changes. How do genetic changes occur? There are several ways, but the primary driver of these small genetic changes is supposed to be random mutations. In addition, these genetic changes can't be deleterious mutations, or even neutral mutations, but they must be beneficial mutations, in order to drive phenomena like speciation. However, the vast majority of mutations are not beneficial mutations. And according to mathematicians, the problem isn't solved even if given hundreds of millions of years to work with.

Biological information

In this post I'm going to talk about biological information, which in turn is relevant in debates over evolution.

However this post is just an introduction. As such I'm going to simplify a lot of things. I realize I'm sacrificing technical accuracy but I'm doing so in order to get some main ideas across for those who might have zero background in all this but who wish to be able to make a foray into the debate over evolution.

Without further ado:

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, not a 'spark of life'. It is information, words, instructions. If you want a metaphor, don't think of fires and sparks and breath. Think, instead, of a billion discrete digital characters carved in tablets of crystal. If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.

(Richard Dawkins, "The power and the archives", The Blind Watchmaker)

1. Let's start with a book, computer code, and DNA:

   A book contains pages and text, but the pages are just paper and the text is just ink. Rather it's the words that convey the story. Not the words as text, but the words as information.

   A computer program contains code, but code is fundamentally just a pattern of binary digits: 0s and 1s. Rather it's code as a set of instructions for a computer to execute that makes a program functional. Hence code isn't merely bits but code is information.

   The DNA molecule contains four bases (adenine, cytosine, thymine, guanine), but these bases are ultimately atoms (e.g. carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen), and atoms are just physical particles. Rather DNA (as genes) is biological information which can be transcribed and translated to build an organism.

2. These aren't mere arguments from analogy (pace Dawkins). I'm not saying text is like code which is like DNA. Rather this is a comparison of information. I'm suggesting the common denominator in all three is information.

3. Yet information is invisible. We can't sense it, not directly, but it exists. How does that work on atheism/naturalism and evolution/neo-Darwinism?

4. An atheist like Dawkins might argue information emerges from physical properties. Such as in the arrangement of words, code, or DNA.

   However, even if so, what would cause the information to be arranged in a particular manner? How does inert matter arrange itself? What causes the letters of the English alphabet to form words if left on their own? What causes DNA to arrange itself in a particular genetic sequence if it is merely a non-living molecule? Let alone a molecule which self-organizes and self-perpetuates.

5. Is it natural selection? Since when did natural selection act at the atomic level? How does natural selection act on subatomic particles?

6. Moreover, even if a few letters could, somehow, by chance, arrange themselves into words, and words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, and chapters into a book, each subsequent step would seem to prove increasingly challenging. It's the old question of how long it takes for a monkey to type out the works of Shakespeare.

7. There may need to be new information at each subsequent step. A phrase like "In the beginning" may have arranged itself randomly, not to mention somehow well enough to convey meaning, but the sentence "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" contains more information. Namely "God created the heavens and the earth".

   Likewise it's one thing to have a single gene, but it's a lot more to have an entire genome. Let alone an entire organism.

   Hence a question which needs to be addressed is from where does this extra information come? Who or what is adding extra words or sentences or paragraphs into our book? Who or what is injecting additional information into each subsequent step?

   Otherwise is the information self-generated somehow, like an artificially intelligent computer writing new code for itself? How so? That seems highly implausible in the earliest lifeforms which surely would have not been anything like an A.I. computer.

8. Any time information is generated, there needs to be some way to check it for errors. Quality assurance. Yet could one physical entity (an error checking mechanism) have (more or less) co-evolved with another physical entity (e.g. a molecule like RNA or DNA)? How could a complex error-check have evolved roughly simultaneously with a presumably simple molecule in the origin of life?

Luke, the beloved physician

Luke introduces himself as well as the apostle Paul. A quibble is the post might give the impression that the Christian should court suffering.

Is climate change an existential threat?

Save unborn eagles

Knocking In The Enfield Case

Paranormal cases often involve knocking of some sort. But it's unusual to have as much evidence for the paranormality of the knocking as we do with Enfield.

Since the layout of the Hodgsons' house is significant in some of the contexts I'll be addressing below, click here to see a floor plan. I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes a lot in the discussion that follows. I'll use "MG" to designate a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to designate one from Playfair's, so that MG2B refers to tape 2B in Grosse's collection, GP60A refers to 60A in Playfair's, and so on.

If you click here, you can listen to some of the knocking and watch a few witnesses discussing its characteristics. However, the large majority of the knocking on the tapes doesn't sound as unusual as what's played in the clip I just linked, and the knocking didn't always move around the way Grosse describes. It did sometimes have those characteristics, though, as well as other traits I'll be discussing below. I suspect the qualities of the knocking varied for reasons similar to why an individual's speech patterns, diet, dress, and other characteristics vary in everyday life. The poltergeist could have behaved differently on different occasions depending on how much energy it had at the time, its mood, what it was trying to accomplish, and so forth.