1. Dawkins claims in public, ignoring his OWN writings, that “little junk DNA” is just what Darwin’s followers would have expected.
2. Christian Darwinists, including Francis Collins, misrepresent C.S. Lewis. Never really supported Darwin.
3. Claim in Nature: Human moral compasses are easily confused. Study really shows that most people don’t read carefully if they don’t care much
4. TED talks creator Wurman says they’ve lost their jazz. Now plans new type of event most of us can’t afford.
5. Oldest galaxy ever detected?
6. Wikipedia in (inevitable) corruption scandal
========================
1. Dawkins claims, in defiance of evidence from his OWN writings, that “not much junk DNA” is just what Darwin’s followers would have expected
In “In Debate, Britain’s Chief Rabbi Tweaks Richard Dawkins with the Myth of ‘Junk DNA’”
(Evolution News & Views September 20, 2012), David Klinghoffer reports,
On the junk DNA point, though, Dawkins manages to squirm out and seems to turn it to his own advantage (at about 13:00). In his telling now, the discovery that junk DNA is not junk at all isn’t a blow to Darwinist predictions but — yes, you guessed right — exactly what a Darwinist would expect.
I have noticed that there are some creationists who are jumping on [the ENCODE results] because they think that’s awkward for Darwinism. Quite the contrary it’s exactly what a Darwinist would hope for, to find usefulness in the living world….
But, as Klinghoffer notes,
If I had been whispering at Rabbi Sacks’s elbow, I would have suggested he point out that Dawkins has changed his tune. Back in 2009, in The Greatest Show on Earth (pp. 332-333), he was presenting the supposed junkiness of the vast majority of the genome as an assured scientific reality and one that is, in the specific case of “pseudogenes,” “useful for. . . embarrassing creationists.”
A reader writes to explain why Darwinists always have an answer even when a specific claim (“junk DNA proves Darwin was right”) is confuted, as it was by the ENCODE project. Riffing off a film, maybe Full Metal Jacket, he quotes:
“How do you know if they’re Viet Cong?”
“They run when they see the chopper.”
“Those guys were standing still.”
“They’re highly disciplined Viet Cong.”*
Make no mistake: people do this sort of thing when they have the cultural power to get away with it and destroy those who call them to account. That’s it; not logic, reason, evidence, facts or history.
Another reader writes,
Perhaps the funniest moment was watching Dawkin’s face when the Rabbi said, “There are Jewish atheists and there are Christian atheists. You, Richard,
are a Christian atheist.”
* We’ve heard it as “”If they run, they’re Viet Cong. If they don’t run, they’re highly disciplined Viet Cong.”—Full Metal Jacket.” Same basic idea. Top people cannot be wrong.
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==================================
2. Christian Darwinists, including Francis Collins, misrepresent C.S. Lewis
In “Up From Evolution” (American Spectator, 9.21.12), Tom Bethell reviews The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society (Discovery Institute Press, 2012), a collection of essays edited by John West:
In the past, some evolutionists claimed Lewis as an ally. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, a Christian who admired Lewis and was influenced by him, believed that Lewis accepted that “Christians should accept the animal ancestry of humans.” But he neglected to study Lewis’s published comments. Others have openly misrepresented what he believed on the subject.
Lewis was “a thoroughgoing skeptic of the creative power of unguided natural selection,” John West points out, and as the years passed he became increasingly critical.
[ … ]
Of particular interest are Lewis’s comments in his posthumously published book, The Discarded Image. He notes the shift in recent centuries “from a devolutionary to an evolutionary scheme”; from a cosmology in which it was once considered axiomatic that “all perfect things precede all imperfect things.” That is a quotation from the sixth century philosopher Boethius, who wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, a work widely read in the Middle Ages. Today, in biology at least, “the starting point is always lower than what is developed,” Lewis commented.
The modern intelligent design movement has raised a related question:
More.
See also newly discovered notes shed light on Lewis’s doubts.
================================
3. Claim in Nature: Human moral compasses are easily confused
In “How to confuse a moral compass: Survey ‘magic trick’ causes attitude reversal”
(Nature, 19 September 2012), Zoë Corbyn reports on a survey that is supposed to be about how people’s moral compass can just change but is actually about how many people, in this case Swedes, do not read or think carefully:
Two statements in every hidden set had been reworded to mean the opposite of the original statements. For example, if the top statement read, “Large-scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime and terrorism,” the word ‘forbidden’ was replaced with ‘permitted’ in the hidden statement.
Sure enough, 53% of the 160 volunteers started arguing for the opposite position from what they hold.
While the study quite properly raises an issue about the value of unsupported self-reports, it probably isn’t valid about topics people know and care about:
Tania Lombrozo, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the experiment is “creative and careful”, but adds that it would be good to see the findings replicated with a more diverse group of participants and a broader range of claims, including those more likely to play a role in people’s everyday judgement and behaviour. “For example, would people fail to notice a change in their judgement concerning the ethics of meat consumption and subsequently provide a justification for a view that isn’t their own?” she asks.
One might add, hot button issues like capital punishment, abortion, gun control, or “My job going overseas.”
The study is just another push poll for “People don’t really know what they think” (and therefore their moral and intellectual superiors should tell them). The trick here is to choose an issue where respondents don’t know enough about the issues to have an opinion from personal knowledge and experience.
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4. TED talks creator Wurman says they’ve lost their jazz
Now plans new type of event most of us can’t afford.
In “Life after TED” (Financial Times September 29, 2012), April Dembosky
Ideas conferences have lost their spontaneity, says Richard Saul Wurman. His solution? A $16,000-a-ticket event featuring David Blaine [pianist], Herbie Hancock [stuntman] and 72 hours of ‘intellectual jazz’
TED talks here.
For Wurman every detail is an important part of the experience he is trying to create: a series of conversations, threaded together by themes and meals and musical breaks that, taken together as a whole, feels like a piece of theatre.
It is something he feels he achieved for several years with TED, which he first hosted in 1984 in Monterey, California. The event grew and grew, and since Wurman sold it in 2001 for $14m, has developed cult status, attracting thousands of followers jockeying for its $7,500 entry tickets for four days filled with highly produced 18-minute “talks of a lifetime”. TED Talks, a series of lecture videos posted online, have received more than 800m views to date. University professors assign them as required course material. Some airlines, such as Delta, even have a TED channel on their in-flight entertainment systems.
But, in Wurman’s opinion, TED today has become over-orchestrated, too “slick”. He intends WWW to be the opposite, to be an exercise in improvisation through conversation or, as the conference tagline runs, “intellectual jazz”. The event’s title, WWW, does not have a single meaning, says Wurman, suggesting instead a long list of words beginning with “w”, including “wanderlust”, “warming” and “wizardry”.
More. Was the current chattering class scene bound to come to this?
The 20 most-watched TED talks tell us something. If one of the talks featured an ID proponent explaining what is wrong with Darwinism, it most likely could not be broadcast, due to riling Darwin’s trolls. Which tells us of another part of the problem.
All TED talks here.
==============================
5. Oldest galaxy ever detected?
From “Ultra-Distant Galaxy Discovered Amidst Cosmic ‘Dark Ages’: May Be Oldest Galaxy Ever” (Science Daily, September 19, 2012), we learn of the galaxy, found viagraviational lensing, that dates from 500 million years after the 13.7 mya Big Bang,
Based on the Spitzer and Hubble observations, astronomers think the distant galaxy was spied at a time when it was less than 200 million years old. It also is small and compact, containing only about 1 percent of the Milky Way’s mass. According to leading cosmological theories, the first galaxies should indeed have started out tiny. They then progressively merged, eventually accumulating into the sizable galaxies of the more modern universe.
“This galaxy is the most distant object we have ever observed with high confidence,” – astronomer Wei Zheng of The Johns Hopkins University
These first galaxies likely played the dominant role in the epoch of reionization, the event that signaled the demise of the universe’s Dark Ages. About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, neutral hydrogen gas formed from cooling particles. The first luminous stars and their host galaxies, however, did not emerge until a few hundred million years later. The energy released by these earliest galaxies is thought to have caused the neutral hydrogen strewn throughout the universe to ionize, or lose an electron, the state in which the gas has remained since that time.
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6. Wikipedia in (inevitable) corruption scandal
Recently, some commenters were squawking about jabs we and others have taken at Wikipedia, world sinkhole of flattened opinion, and the worst way to find out anything about the ID controversy. Well, now this, and who is surprised? In “Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Wikipedia” (C/Net, September 18, 2012), Violet Blue reports,
A Wikipedia trustee and a Wikipedian In Residence have been editing the online encyclopedia on behalf of PR clients. Add the discovery of an SEO business run on the side, and this tempest is out of its teapot.
Both Klein and Bamkin are “Wikipedians In Residence,” a role held by Wikipedia editors in high esteem who liaison with galleries, libraries, archives and museums to facilitate information between the organizations and Wikipedia community editors.
Defenders will rush to assert, of course, that these are isolated instances. How do they know? Who knows how many of the trolls, crackpots, and bigots who camp at Wikipedia and erase fact-based edits are in fact paid by someone, if not Wikipedia, to do just that?
Of course not all Wikipedia sites are troll holes, but when some you know about are, you should take Bertrand Russell’s approach to finding rotten apples in a barrel: Assume they are all rotten and move on.
The teapot is smashed, actually, but it would be contrary to the spirit of flattened knowledge to notice that.
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OT (or plus 1 equals 7):
I don’t want to sound like an apocalyptic alarmist but what came to my mind after reading BA77 link is the “mark of the beast” in Revelation. Could we be using our own DNA to store information about our lives which can then be scanned through a chip in our forehead or hand?
Either the book of Revelation is a false prophecy, or the events it describes transpired almost 2000 years ago.
I don’t think you need to worry.
Nice to have you back.
Mung @3:
Or, a third logical possibility, you don’t understand Revelation . . .
Couldn’t resist mate! 🙂
——-
Couple of more serious thoughts on the news items:
#6
I think Wikipedia is supremely useful as a starting point for things that are non-controversial. Want to know Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, how Red Square got its name, which movies your favorite actor has recently appeared in, etc.? Pretty decent overall.
Want to know about controversial stuff? Evolution, ID, global warming, etc.? No way you are going to get unbiased objective information from Wikipedia.
—
#7 (ba77)
I think one of the biggest challenges with biological computation will be maintaining the stability of the system (and the information encoded therein). Probably even a bigger challenge than the technological/cost problem of having readers/writers readily available.
—
Finally, News, thanks for posting these as a single post, rather than 6 different posts.
WHY I AM NOT A PRETERIST
http://www.angelfire.com/nt/th.....erist.html
Luke 21:24
They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
The Miracle of the Restoration of the Nation of Israel – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwxy9yqhzM
The Precise Restoration Of Israel and Jerusalem In Prophecy (Doing The Math) – Chuck Missler – video
http://www.metacafe.com/w/8598581
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Excerpt “In late years several cuneiform tablets have been discovered pertaining to the fall of Babylon which peg both Biblical and secular historic dates. The one tablet known as the “Nabunaid Chronicle” gives the date for the fall of Babylon which specialists have ascertained as being October 12-13, 539 B.C., Julian Calendar, or October 6-7, 539 B.C., according to our present Gregorian Calendar. This tablet also says that Cyrus made his triumphant entry into Babylon 16 days after its fall to his army. Thus his accession year commenced in October, 539 B.C. However, in another cuneiform tablet called “Strassmaier, Cyrus No. 11″ Cyrus’ first regnal year is mentioned and was determined to have begun March 17-18, 538 B.C., and to have concluded March 4-5, 537 B.C. It was in this first regnal year of Cyrus that he issued his decree to permit the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. (Ezra 1:1) The decree may have been made in late 538 B.C. or before March 4-5, 537 B.C.
In either case this would have given sufficient time for the large party of 49,897 Jews to organize their expedition and to make their long four-month journey from Babylon to Jerusalem to get there by September 29-30, 537 B.C., the first of the seventh Jewish month, to build their altar to Jehovah as recorded at Ezra 3:1-3. Inasmuch as September 29-30, 537 B.C., officially ends the seventy years of desolation as recorded at 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21, so the beginning of the desolation of the land must have officially begun to be counted after September 21-22, 607 B.C., the first of the seventh Jewish month in 607 B.C., which is the beginning point for the counting of the 2,520 years.”
http://onlytruegod.org/jwstrs/537vs539.htm
Eric #5:
It is also a good starting point for things that are controversial.
What’s important, is to remember that it is only a starting point. It is not the final word.
Eric:
Could be, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is what did it mean to those to whom it was written.
Does anyone really understand it?
🙂
Jerusalem was surrounded, they fell by the sword, they went into captivity, just like Jesus said. If you believe that is past, then you are at least somewhat of a preterist 🙂
Luke 21:27
There is no reason to believe, from the context, that he is talking about any other time than when they would fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations.
And there’s no reason to think, from the context, that the “they” in verse 27 refers to a different “they” than the ones he is referring to in verse 24.
Luke 21:28
When what things begin to take place?
“I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene until all these things have taken place.”
– Jesus
@Eric Anderson:
How does anyone know what’s controversial? For the past 15 years I’ve been living in Germany. There’s no controversy here about evolution or global warming. Evolution is true, global warming happens and JW is a crazy cult.
“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised.”
The Whore of Babylon cannot be beaten by mere Christians.
Tobi
News:
Welcome back.
The news roundup format is good — why not call it something like that, a daily news roundup feature?
Breaking developments of course would be separate.
KF
The Signs of Israel’s Rebirth: Lesson 1: The Parable of the Fig Tree
Excerpt: Jesus saved His fullest discussion of things to come until shortly before He died. This discussion, known as the Olivet Discourse, took place on the Tuesday evening between Palm Sunday and the day of the Crucifixion.
Concluding Statement: Now it should also be perfectly clear what the parable of the fig tree in the Olivet Discourse means (Matt 24:32-34). As the disciples were walking into the city on Tuesday morning after Palm Sunday, they noticed that the tree which Jesus had cursed the day before had withered and dried up. Later, on Tuesday evening, when the memory of the withered fig tree was still fresh in their minds, Jesus spoke the parable in question. He said that when the church sees the fig tree leafing out again, it will know that “it is . . . at the doors.” The Greek for “it is” can also be translated “he is.” In prophecy, “door” is often a symbol for the passageway between heaven and earth (Rev. 4:1). What the parable means, therefore, is that when the nation of Israel revives after its coming disintegration and death in A.D. 70, the return of Christ will be imminent.
http://www.themoorings.org/pro.....rael1.html
Of serendipitous note, this video was just loaded:
Fall Feasts and the Budding of the Fig Tree with Doug Hamp – video
https://vimeo.com/50687234
I always thought Ignite was the natural successor to TED. Although, as Ignite is currently organized, it is probably too cumbersome. I think it would be fun for a restaurant to have a standing open mic night where anyone can submit a presentation a week before and come discuss what is on their mind. I think if they did this, and then held TED *less* often, it would make more of a groundswell of interest, and make the main event more interesting.
OT: Ultrasound Technology Advanced by Dolphins and Bats – November 2011
Advances in ultrasound technology is being inspired by a new Israeli research project that studies dolphins, bats and mole rats.
Excerpt: Bisonar – the way animals interpret returning signals – involves superior, real-time data processing, according to Intrator, whose research was reported in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Bisonar animals send ultrasonic sounds called “pings” into the environment. The shape of the returning signals, or echos, determines how these animals “see” their surroundings, helping them navigate or hunt for prey. Humans, however, cannot produce such an accurate picture, Intrator noted.
“Animal ‘echolocations’ are done in fractions of milliseconds, at a resolution so high that a dolphin can see a tennis ball from approximately 260 feet away,” the scientist explained, adding that animals are able to process several pieces of information simultaneously.
With echolocation, a bat can tell the difference between a fly in motion or at rest, or determine which of two fruits is heavier by observing their movements in the wind, Intrator said.
,,, the research could lead to cutting-edge navigation systems and more accurate medical imaging.
http://www.israelnationalnews......GzChFEsE30
That’s an awful lot of falsehood packed into such a short statement.
1. Jesus was speaking directly to to his disciple, which should be obvious just from reading the text. He did not say “when the church sees,” what he said ws “when you see (speaking to the disciples).”
It takes a real twisting of a plain and unambiguous statement to make it say something else.
2. And he did not say “when you see the fig tree leafing out again.” That’s just yet more scripture twisting designed to support a false doctrine.
The fig tree was a parable. He said (paraphrasing), just like you know summer is near when you see the fig trees begin to put forth leaves, so also:
It is the disciples who would see all those things. And it was all these things they would see, not some fig tree putting forth leaves and not the creation of a state named Israel (“Israel” in name only) in the middle east some 2000 years later.
I don’t mind you posting commentary on Scripture, but if you’re going to do so please post things that are not so obviously false.
Luke 21:20
Jerusalem was surrounded and destroyed in AD 70.
The “you” to whom Jesus was speaking was the disciples, not some people who wouldn’t even be around for another 2000 years.
Luke 21:28
How do you propose to demonstrate that Jesus is here referring to some other audience who would see “these things” begin to take place?
What are the “these things” he is referring to in v.28?
v. 29
Still speaking to them. You want us to believe he was speaking to them but meant the message for some people some 2000 years into the future. They would not be the ones to see the signs.
Luke 21:31
Same you. They would be the ones to see all these things taking place.
How do you propose to convince us that “all these things” they would see taking place did not include the surrounding of Jerusalem as stated in v. 20?
Preterism is easy to accept when you stop twisting Scripture to fit some false doctrine.
And it provides a simple and effective response to the “Jesus lied” accusations. He did not lie, He returned when He said He would.
Jesus used the words “you” and “your.”
The referent seems to be his disciples.
So when he (Jesus) says “they,” who is he referring to?
At what time? When Jerusalem was destroyed. That’s the context. No reason to think the they in v.27 is referring to some other “they” than the ones in the previous verses.
All these things happened, as and when He said. Including the coming of the Son of Man
The modern state of Israel has nothing to do with any fulfillment of prophecy.
Revelation 1:1 – 1:3 [Amplified Bible]
Even Sir Isaac Newton, who is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, scientist who has ever lived, was a avid student of Bible prophecy:
Perhaps you should study Newton to find out what Newton says.
Newton accepted the early date for the book of Revelation and asserted that other New Testament books were written after it and make reference to it.
He also explicitly writes, “There is already so much of that prophecy fulfilled, that as many as will take pains in this study, may see sufficient instances of God’s providence … we must content ourselves with interpreting what hath already been fulfilled.”
Are you now trying to deny that Newton predicted the return of Israel before the second return of Christ? Oh well, I can see this is going no where so I will respond no more!
Sort of difficult to argue with what the man himself wrote, eh?
Mung, this is definitely my last response to you on the subject but since you insist and against my better judgement that you will not be fair:
Newton’s calculation to 2060 is corrected here to 2013 to reflect the different start time that is now known to greater detail:
Of note to the start date of ‘spiritual Rome’
Thus adjusting 2013 + 2 = 2015,,,, but myself, I find the reasoning around the whole issue of Newton’s calculation a bit hard to follow, and thus, I much prefer the more straightforward counting of days from the retaking of Jerusalem by the Hebrews in 1967 which is also found in Newton’s theological work on prophecy.
further note:
This following videos give ‘astronomical’ weight to the preceding prediction by Sir Isaac Newton of how the ‘days of Daniel’ are to be counted and is indeed very sobering:
Many times people will object to trying read the signs of the times by saying;
Yet, little do the people making the objection know that the specific verse ‘No one knows about that day or hour’ itself gives a solid clue as to the timing of Christ’s return. The following video deals with ‘no man knows the day or the hour’ objection starting at the 8:33 minute mark in the interview:
and to remind you once again, since you seem to have very selective blinders on, of the precise mathematical fulfillment of the restoration of Israel and Jerusalem in prophecy:
Mark Biltz also has a excellent video series on the prophetic Jewish Feast Days:
Though many may say ‘oh things have been as they have always been’ and try to downplay it as you are Mung (isn’t there a scripture on that somewhere?), myself I find the evidence that we are living in the end times compelling, and even though some may disagreeing with details of the timing I laid out, Jesus himself said:
verse and music:
Mung, this is definitely my last response to you on the subject but since you insist and against my better judgement that you will not be fair:
Newton’s calculation to 2060 is corrected here to 2013 to reflect the different start time that is now known to greater detail:
Of note to the start date of ‘spiritual Rome’
Thus adjusting 2013 + 2 = 2015,,,, but myself, I find the reasoning around the whole issue of Newton’s calculation a bit hard to follow, and thus, I much prefer the more straightforward counting of days from the retaking of Jerusalem by the Hebrews in 1967 which is also found in Newton’s theological work on prophecy.
further note:
This following videos give ‘astronomical’ weight to the preceding prediction by Sir Isaac Newton of how the ‘days of Daniel’ are to be counted and is indeed very sobering:
Many times people will object to trying read the signs of the times by saying;
Yet, little do the people making the objection know that the specific verse ‘No one knows about that day or hour’ itself gives a solid clue as to the timing of Christ’s return. The following video deals with ‘no man knows the day or the hour’ objection starting at the 8:33 minute mark in the interview:
and to remind you once again, since you seem to have very selective blinders on, of the precise mathematical fulfillment of the restoration of Israel and Jerusalem in prophecy:
Mark Biltz also has a excellent video series on the prophetic Jewish Feast Days:
Though many may say ‘oh things have been as they have always been’ and try to downplay it as you are Mung (isn’t there a scripture on that somewhere?), myself I find the evidence that we are living in the end times compelling, and even though some may disagreeing with details of the timing I laid out, Jesus himself said:
verse and music:
I’d like to add this to BA77 Notes; http://www.khouse.org/6640/BP007/
2013? REALLY? Want to place a wager?
Spiritual ROME? lol. That is where scripture-twisting false doctrine takes you.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0914675095
Isaac Newton:
At least he admits he’s just making stuff up.