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Viruses Devolve

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The main thesis of Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves, surrounds what Behe calls “poison-pill” mutations, which gives an organism a quick fix, but which can run the risk of being rendered incapable of utilizing future needed adaptations. IOW, breaking and blunting genes to adapt to new environments become changes that get locked in due to NS’ tendency to root out anything but what is the ‘fittest’ in any environment–and this can include even beneficial mutations being rooted out due to beneficial mutations being so rare and showing up way too late to modify the adapted organism.

So, today at Phys.Org there is a PR (press release) about a study involving viruses. It turns out that even at the level of viruses, the First Rule of Adaptative Evolution applies: a broken gene ends up being beneficial to the virus, allowing it to replicate itself when it has been rendered almost unable to do so by the host’s immune system.

From the PR:

But the researchers continued to culture the B1-free strain for multiple generations in the lab, then sequenced its entire genetic code to gauge how it evolved. They found that, over just a few days, the B1-free strain responded by deleting a single base pair – a fundamental component of DNA – while leaving nearly 200,000 others untouched. The seemingly miniscule loss corresponded with a 10-fold increase in the strain’s otherwise stunted replication.

As usual, the experimenters are “surprised”:

“We were expecting that the virus may adapt another gene to compensate,” said Wiebe, associate professor of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences. “What we found instead is that the virus adapted by inactivating another gene. It was as if, upon cutting one wire, the best way to fix the problem was to cut another wire.

Just think, if they had read Behe’s new book, they would not have been surprised at all.

Update:

In his book, Behe uses evidence showing that “devolution” occurs in bacteria and in eukaryotes. Now we can add viruses to the lot. I think this only adds to and strengthens his argument for his First Rule.

Comments
Moreover, it is not as if the carbon dating was ever accepted across the board in the first place. It was one out of place piece of evidence that contradicted many other lines of evidence that argued very strongly for the Shroud's antiquity and authenticity. There have been severe questions about the 'out of place' carbon dating ever since it was first announced:
8 Reasons Why The Shroud Of Turin Might Be The Burial Cloth Of Jesus By Brian Chilton – April 25, 2017 1) The 1988 carbon-dating test was flawed 2) The blood on the Shroud is authentic 3) The image on the Shroud is not a painting 4. The pollen on the Shroud is found exclusively in the Jerusalem area 5. The wounds of the man on the Shroud match the details of Jesus’s crucifixion 6. The points of the face match those of the earliest portraits of Jesus 7. The identical position and type of blood on the face of the Shroud with that of the Sudarium of Oviedo. 8. ,,, high-powered ultraviolet radiation used to make the image on the Shroud. http://reasonsforjesus.com/8-reasons-why-the-shroud-of-turin-might-be-the-burial-cloth-of-jesus/
Thus in conclusion, you may not like the fact that Fanti published in a 'predatory journal', neither do I for that matter, but still, regardless of where the "$100 bill" was found, it still cashes out and refutes the flawed carbon dating of the shroud. If you were truly concerned with scientific evidence, you would accept the overwhelming evidence that the Shroud is authentic. Again, seeing is believing,
Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Hologram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TL4QOCiis Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words “The Lamb” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ
But who am I kidding, you guys can't even accept the fact that God created your very own 'beyond belief' brain ,,,
Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth - November 2010 Excerpt: They found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study: ...One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html
,,, so. if you can't even accept that your very own 'beyond belief' brain was intelligently designed by God, much less will you guys ever be willing to accept the fact that God raised Christ from the dead so as to provide a propitiation for our sins.
Matthew 13:15 For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'
bornagain77
March 22, 2019
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BB, I did not go 'wading through all of the filth to get to it'. I happened across a reference to it while perusing this site:
Scientific Papers and Articles (on the Shroud of Turin) https://www.shroud.com/papers.htm
Moreover, the question is not where the paper was found, or how it was found, but if the paper, like my hypothetical $100 bill, cashes out. And indeed the papers listed by Fanti stand on their own merit. For prime example, the late Raymond Rodgers, the lead chemist for STURP, published his study (cite number 14 in Fanti's paper) in Thermochimica Acta (a well respected journal) in 2004 well before Fanti even published his paper
Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin - Raymond N. Rogers - 2004 Abstract In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich determined the age of a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence. This came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin. The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample. Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow–brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.,,, The fact that vanillin can not be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years. http://www.shroud.it/ROGERS-3.PDF
And to reiterate, Rogers passed away shortly after publishing that paper, but his work overturning the carbon dating of the shroud was ultimately verified by scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Analytical Results On Thread Samples Taken From The Raes Sampling Area (Corner) Of The Shroud Cloth by Robert Villarreal with Barrie Schwortz and M. Sue Benford. The results of the FTIR analysis on all three threads taken from the Raes sampling area (adjacent to the C-14 sampling corner) led to identification of the fibers as cotton and definitely not linen (flax). Note, that all age dating analyses were conducted on samples taken from this same area. Apparently, the age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case. What was true for the part was most certainly not true for the whole. This finding is supported by the spectroscopic data provided in this presentation. http://www.ohioshroudconference.com/a17.htm
Again here are the videos that go through how of all this work overturning the Shroud carbon dating came about,,
Shroud of Turin – Carbon 14 Test Proven False – – Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford – video (with Raymond Rogers, lead chemist from the STURP project) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxDdx6vxthE Shroud Carbon Dating Overturned By Scientific Peer Review – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlFTVv2l0L4
Thus the carbon dating of the Shroud was overturned long before Fanti came along. Fanti basically, using non-destructive techniques for dating the shroud, just narrowed the age for the shroud down much closer to the first century than Rodgers was able to do, via chemistry alone, with his limited sample of a few threads. And again, here is a video of Giulio Fanti describing the specific scientific tests that he used to determine the age of the Shroud. I’ll leave to it the unbiased readers to decide for themselves. Personally, I find his work overturning the carbon dating to be very much above board and reliable.
Giulio Fanti and the Turin Shroud – load bearing test, infared test, Shroud dated to time of Christ – 34:00 minute mark – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4c4812XA9A
And here is an overview of Fanti's tests that narrowed the age of the Shroud down to the first century: (Of note, Giulio Fanti is a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University)
NEW TESTS DATE THE SHROUD New experiments date the Shroud of Turin to the 1st century AD. They comprise three tests; two chemical and one mechanical. The chemical tests were done with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy, examining the relationship between age and a spectral property of ancient flax textiles. The mechanical test measured several micro-mechanical characteristics of flax fibers, such as tensile strength. The results were compared to similar tests on samples of cloth from between 3250 BC and 2000 AD whose dates are accurately known. FTIR identifies chemical bonds in a molecule by producing an infrared absorption spectrum. The spectra produce a profile of the sample, a distinctive molecular fingerprint that can be used to identify its components. Raman Spectroscopy uses the light scattered off of a sample as opposed to the light absorbed by a sample. It is a very sensitive method of identifying specific chemicals. The tests on fibers from the Shroud of Turin produced the following dates: FTIR = 300 BC + 400 years; Raman spectroscopy = 200 BC + 500 years; and multi-parametric mechanical = 400 AD + 400 years. All the dates have a 95% certainty. The average of all three dates is 33 BC + 250 years (the collective uncertainty is less than the individual test uncertainties). The average date is compatible with the historic date of Jesus' death on the cross in 30 AD, and is far older than the medieval dates obtained with the flawed Carbon-14 sample in 1988. The range of uncertainty for each test is high because the number of sample cloths used for comparison was low; 8 for FTIR, 11 for Raman, and 12 for the mechanical test. The scientists note that "future calibrations based on a greater number of samples and coupled with ad hoc cleaning procedures could significantly improve its accuracy, though it is not easy to find ancient samples adequate for the test." They used tiny fibers extracted from the Shroud by micro-analyst Giovanni Riggi di Numana, who gave them to Fanti. Riggi passed away in 2008, but he had been involved in the intensive scientific examination of the Shroud of Turin by the STURP group in 1978, and on April 21, 1988 was the man who cut from the Shroud the thin 7 x 1 cm sliver of linen that was used for carbon dating. These tests were carried out in University of Padua laboratories by professors from various Italian universities, led by Giulio Fanti, Italian professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua's engineering faculty. He co-authored reports of the findings in 1) a paper in the journal Vibrational Spectroscopy, July 2013, "Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy" by Giulio Fanti, Pietro Baraldi, Roberto Basso, and Anna Tinti, Volume 67, pages 61-70; 2) a paper titled "A new cyclic-loads machine for the measurement of micro-mechanical properties of single flax fibers coming from the Turin Shroud" by Giulio Fanti and Pierandrea Malfi for the XXI AIMETA (Italian Association of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics) congress in 2013, and 3) the 2013 book "Il Mistero della Sindone" (The Mystery of the Shroud), written by Giulio Fanti and Saverio Gaeta in Italian. https://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html
And here is Fanti's list of papers again
8. Fanti G, Malfi P (2015) The Shroud of Turin – First century After Christ! Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Singapore, India. 9. Damon PE, Donahue DJ, Gore BH, Hatheway AL, Jull AJT, et al. (1989) Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Nature, 337: 611-615. 10. Baraldi P, Tinti A (2015) Molecular Spectroscopy as an alternative for dating Textiles. MATEC Web of Conferences p. 36. 11. Fanti G, Baraldi P, BassoR, Tinti A (2013) Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy. Vibrational Spectroscopy. 12. Fanti G, Malfi P, Crosilla F (2015) Mechanical and opto-chemical dating of Turin Shroud, MATEC Web of Conferences p. 36. 13. Riani M (2012) Regression analysis with partially labeled regressors: carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Journal of Statistical Computing Stat Comput. 14. Rogers R (2005) Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin. Thermochemical Acta 425: 189-194.
Let's see if they cash out.
Number 8 is a book published by Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. As far as I can tell it looks reputable. Number 9 is the original carbon dating published Nature, no comment needed as to their solid reputation, in spite of their overt atheistic bias Number 10 is published by MATEC Web of Conferences which, as far as I can tell, is reputable Number 11 is published by Vibrational Spectroscopy - Elsevier, again reputable. Number 12 is also published by MATEC Web of Conferences Number 13 is published by the Journal of Statistical Computing, again from what I can tell, is reputable. And Number 14 which I have already mentioned is of course published by Thermochemical Acta, and again from what I can tell, is reputable.
Thus Fanti's paper, much like my hypothetical $100 dollar bill found laying in the trash can, does indeed cash out.bornagain77
March 22, 2019
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MatSpirit:
My best estimate of the odds against anything remotely like the Christian God existing are much larger then anything Dembski ever calculated against the non-intelligent creation of a hundred base-pair length of DNA, so I’m comfortable with my belief that there is no God.
There isn't any calculation against the non-intelligent creation of the solar system, including the earth/ moon system. There isn't any calculation against the non-intelligent creation of life on earth. There aren't any odds for such a thing as neither are even feasible. And it is guaranteed that your alleged "best estimate" is just pulled from your arse. How daft do you have to be to think that minds arose from the mindless via blind, mindless and purposeless processes?ET
March 22, 2019
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BA77
The argument from these atheistic trolls that the evidence in Fanti’s paper does not stand on its own merits just because it was published in a ‘predatory journal’ carries the same weight as someone trying to argue that a $100 bill found in a garbage can has no value since it was found in a trash can.
I don’t look through the trash for the same reason that I don’t look through predatory journals. Both ventures may produce the odd piece that has some value but it generally isn’t worth wading through all of the filth to get to it.Brother Brian
March 22, 2019
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Since none of the atheistic trolls who came to pat MatSpirit on the back for, basically, putting forth an ad hominem attack against Fanti are actually addressing the meat of the issue of carbon dating, just as MatSpirit did not address the meat of the issue of carbon dating, I will take that as concession on all of their parts that they have no real argument against the evidence presented by Fanti overturning the carbon dating of the Shroud. The argument from these atheistic trolls that the evidence in Fanti's paper does not stand on its own merits just because it was published in a 'predatory journal' carries the same weight as someone trying to argue that a $100 bill found in a garbage can has no value since it was found in a trash can. The value of the evidence cited by Fanti stands on its own merits just as the value of a $100 stands on its own merits. Their argument for dismissing Fanti's evidence, before it is even evaluated, is ludicrous.bornagain77
March 22, 2019
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MS@52, Thank you for making me laugh. It was well worth the read. And the bit about predatory journals was spot on.Brother Brian
March 22, 2019
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MS
Bornagain77 is why they invented the scroll wheel. I’ll illustrate why using your quotation from him:
BA77 must have shares in a scroll wheel manufacturer. :)Ed George
March 22, 2019
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Moreover, MatSpirit, in his hast to scroll past my posts, which he apparently finds to be beneath his dignity to even read, also did not address what I consider to be the main evidence establishing the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, i.e. The 'eye-witness' evidence of 'seeing is believing'
Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Hologram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TL4QOCiis Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words “The Lamb” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ
So basically, we have a clothe with a photographic negative image on it that was made well before photographer was even invented. Moreover, the photographic negative image has a 3-Dimensional holographic nature to its image that was somehow encoded within the photographic negative well before holography was even known about. My question to atheists is this, if you truly believe some mad genius forger in the middle ages made this image, then please prey tell why did this mad genius save all his genius for this supposed forgery alone and not for, say, inventing photography itself since he surely would have required mastery of at least the basic principles of photography to pull off the forgery? Not to mention mastery of laser holography? Moreover, why did this hypothetical mad super-genius destroy all of his scientific instruments the he would have had to invent in order to make the image? Leonardo da Vinci would not have been worthy to tie the shoe laces of such a hypothetical genius! Where is the evidence that your unknown super-genius even existed? As the following article states, ” it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html
Also see post 49:
Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loop hole by Zeilinger and company), provides a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the quote unquote ‘Theory of Everything”
(February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673179 Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Of supplemental note:
The Shroud of Turin – Evidence it is authentic Excerpt: In June 2002, the Shroud was sent to a team of experts for restoration. One of them was Swiss textile historian Mechthild Flury-Lemberg. She was surprised to find a peculiar stitching pattern in the seam of one long side of the Shroud, where a three-inch wide strip of the same original fabric was sewn onto a larger segment. The stitching pattern, which she says was the work of a professional, is quite similar to the hem of a cloth found in the tombs of the Jewish fortress of Masada. The Masada cloth dates to between 40 BC and 73 AD. This kind of stitch has never been found in Medieval Europe. http://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html Shroud Of Turin – 2000 Years Old (Matches Masada Cloth) – video (21:20 minute mark) https://youtu.be/cpaZcVagTFk?t=1294 John 20:3-8 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.
Thus in conclusion, clearly MatSpirit has not judged the scientific evidence overturning the carbon dating of the Shroud fairly but has let his a-priori bias towards atheistic materialism severely cloud his judgement in evaluating the evidence that was presented to him. Which is very sad since Christ's victory over death is, without question, the most momentous event for mankind in all of recorded history.
1 Corinthians 15:55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
Since each of us must pass through the threshhold of death into eternity, Christ's victory over death is GREAT NEWS for each of us. Recognizing the significance and importance of the claim to each of us individually, It is beyond me how anyone could be so unfairly biased in his evaluation of the evidence for this claim as MatSpirit has demonstrated himself to be in his evaluation of the evidence.bornagain77
March 22, 2019
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MatSpirit after stating his disdain for me,,,
Bornagain77 is why they invented the scroll wheel.
Goes on to state that Juniper Publishers is on the “List of Predatory Publishers”. And sure enough it is on a list of several hundred "possibly predatory publishers". ,
List of Predatory Publishers This is a list of publishers that may be engaging in predatory practices. https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/
Thus it seems that predatory publishing is indeed a huge problem. But even if Fanti published in a 'predatory journal' that still does not say anything about the integrity of the references that Fanti listed which overturned the carbon dating of the Shroud. And to MatSpirit's credit he does go on to list the references that Fanti cited in the article in the 'possibly predatory publisher',
8. Fanti G, Malfi P (2015) The Shroud of Turin – First century After Christ! Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Singapore, India. 9. Damon PE, Donahue DJ, Gore BH, Hatheway AL, Jull AJT, et al. (1989) Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Nature, 337: 611-615. 10. Baraldi P, Tinti A (2015) Molecular Spectroscopy as an alternative for dating Textiles. MATEC Web of Conferences p. 36. 11. Fanti G, Baraldi P, BassoR, Tinti A (2013) Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy. Vibrational Spectroscopy. 12. Fanti G, Malfi P, Crosilla F (2015) Mechanical and opto-chemical dating of Turin Shroud, MATEC Web of Conferences p. 36. 13. Riani M (2012) Regression analysis with partially labeled regressors: carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Journal of Statistical Computing Stat Comput. 14. Rogers R (2005) Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin. Thermochemical Acta 425: 189-194.
After 'fairly' listing the citations which overturn the carbon dating, MatSpirit goes on to state,
Wait a minute! Three of the seven citations are for G. Fanti, the author of this piece. These are NOT independent! What about citation number 9? The one “Which has been widely criticized.” That’s: 9. Damon PE, Donahue DJ, Gore BH, Hatheway AL, Jull AJT, et al. (1989) Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Nature, 337: 611-615 The carbon dating test that was really really INDEPENDENTLY administered by three of the leading universities in the western world, all of which dated the cloth to 1260–1390 AD, which is the same time that Bishop d’Arcis was writing to Pope Clement VII that the cloth was a forgery and its maker had confessed. Yes, it has been “widely criticized”. From every Shroud crank in Christendom.
Perhaps MatSpirit should not be so quick to scroll past my posts? In post 42 it was shown that, besides the Memorandum of Piere d’Arcis having several holes in it, that we now have fairly extensive and reliable historical evidence that places the origin of the Shroud well before the middle ages of Europe. Then as was mentioned in post 43, the carbon dating was initially overturned by none other than the late Raymond Rodgers himself, who was lead Chemist on STURP, and who can hardly be considered a "Shroud crank in Christendom" since he defended the carbon dating for several decades from the 'lunatic fringe' element.
The carbon dating question has been thoroughly addressed and refuted by Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford in 2000. Their research, with textile experts, showing the carbon testing was done with a piece of the Shroud which was subject to expert medieval reweaving in the 1500’s had much historical, and photographic, evidence behind it. Their historical, and photographic, evidence was then scientifically confirmed by chemical analysis in 2005 by none other than Raymond Rogers, the lead chemist on the STURP team. Thus, the fact that a false age was shown by the 1988 carbon testing has been accepted across the board as far as the scientific evidence itself is concerned.
Shroud of Turin – Carbon 14 Test Proven False – – Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford – video (with Raymond Rogers, lead chemist from the STURP project) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxDdx6vxthE Why The Carbon 14 Samples Are Invalid, Raymond Rogers per: Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425 pages 189-194, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) Excerpt: Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow–brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud. The fact that vanillin can not be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years. http://www.ntskeptics.org/issues/shroud/shroudold.htm
Rogers passed away shortly after publishing that paper, but his work was ultimately verified by scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Carbon Dating Of The Turin Shroud Completely Overturned by Scientific Peer Review Excerpt: Rogers also asked John Brown, a materials forensic expert from Georgia Tech to confirm his finding using different methods. Brown did so. He also concluded that the shroud had been mended with newer material. Since then, a team of nine scientists at Los Alamos has also confirmed Rogers work, also with different methods and procedures. Much of this new information has been recently published in Chemistry Today. http://shroudofturin.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/the-custodians-of-time/
This following is the Los Alamos National Laboratory report which confirms the Rogers’ paper:
“Analytical Results on Thread Samples Taken from the Raes Sampling Area (Corner) of the Shroud Cloth” (Aug 2008) Excerpt: The age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case……. LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. – Robert Villarreal – Los Alamos National Laboratory http://www.ohioshroudconference.com/
Of related note is this video from Robert Villarreal, friend of the late Raymond Rodgers (lead chemist on STURP), overturning the carbon dating. Villarreal is a scientist at the Los Alamos laboratory:
Shroud Carbon Dating Overturned By Scientific Peer Review – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlFTVv2l0L4
Thus, despite MatSpirits' 'promising' start in fairly listing all the citations overturning the carbon dating of the Shroud in the article from the 'predatory journal', it is found that MatSpirit, none-the-less, did not actually judge the citations that he himself listed fairly. Indeed he did not even mention Raymond Rodgers citation at 14 save to hand wave it off along with the rest of the citations from the others that he found unpalatable, (particularly Fanti). He then doubled down on his unshakable faith in citation number 9, the original carbon dating of the shroud which he listed. Needless to say, this is NOT an unbiased reading of the empirical evidence on MatSpirits' part but is, like his scrolling past my posts which he finds extremely unpalatable, evidence that he much too quickly dismisses evidence that, IMHO, unquestionably refutes his position. MatSpirit tried to brush off Fanti's work in particular with, "Three of the seven citations are for G. Fanti, the author of this piece. These are NOT independent!" Yet, regardless of MatSpirits' all too quick knee jerk reaction to dismiss anything that does not agree with his a-priori philosophical bias towards atheistic materialism, Giulio Fanti is a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University, and he is thus more than qualified to conduct experiments on the age of the Shroud using the exact methods that he has used to determine its true age. Here is a video of Giulio Fanti describing the specific scientific tests that he used to determine the age of the Shroud. I'll leave to the unbiased readers to decide for themselves. Personally, I find his work overturning the carbon dating to be very much above board and reliable.
Giulio Fanti and the Turin Shroud – load bearing test, infared test, Shroud dated to time of Christ – 34:00 minute mark – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4c4812XA9A
bornagain77
March 22, 2019
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PaV: As to which Shroud of Turin I want you to focus on, it’s the one clearly laid out by BA77. I’ll quote from him: Bornagain77 is why they invented the scroll wheel. I'll illustrate why using your quotation from him: "Why is the Turin Shroud Authentic? – Giulio Fanti* – November 2018" ... "Six [8, 10-14] out of seven independent dating methods (and [9] has been widely criticized) indicate that this linen Sheet is datable to a period including the first century after Christ." ... https://juniperpublishers.com/gjaa/pdf/GJAA.MS.ID.555707.pdf" What do you get from that address? Why, it's a .pdf file from Juniper Publishers. Gee, I never heard of them. Lets Google Juniper Publishers. Ah, the fourth hit is, "List of Predatory Publishers" And there's Juniper Publishers. This is BA77 territory, all right. But there's no information on them. But the sixth hit is, "Flaky Academic Journals: Juniper Publishers and the Journal of Forensic Science and Criminal Investigations. Different "Journal", but let's see if they say anything about Juniper Publishers. Oh yeah. "Google Maps indicates that the address as of 10/10/16 is an apartment house in Thousand Oaks, California. This is a change from the initial addresses in 2015. Those were a mail forwarding front and an apartment house in Dubai, which led Beall to suspect that "thirty-six science journals are being published by one man out of a flat in Dubai." Yes, this is looking like a BA77 quality citation. Here's more: Juniper says, "Juniper publishers have been established with the aim of spreading quality scientific information to the research community throughout the universe. We ... strive to offer the best in class ... thus matching up with the rapidity of the twenty-first century." And they'll publish all this for only $1049 per research article from a "high income country." Did you see that? They only charge a thousand bucks to publish your article! They go on: "From the guidelines for authors: "Juniper reviewers are requested to provide authentic, positive review comments and critics for the respective manuscript." Also, "One can intimate us your pinion of accepting or declining the invitation. If you are not able to accept the invitation you can suggest any of your colleagues, so that respective editor may invite that person to review and you may not transfer your invitation." So they're looking for really rough and tough reviewers to say, "Yes!" to publishing your very important article for only a thousand dollars and if they feel they can't say, "Yes", can they perhaps suggest someone who will? Well, what of it! Maybe you're a ground breaking investigator, with a thousand bucks in his pocket, whose research is going to overturn the whole field of whatever, but you can't get published because the Darwinist journals are "discriminating" against you, where "discriminating" is defined as "couldn't find a Yes Man" to approve it. Juniper to the rescue! So let's look at the "journal article" that BA77 thinks is so authoritative. It's from, "Global Journal of Archaeology & Anthropology (GJAA)" and the thousand dollar article is, "Why is the Turin Shroud Authentic?" and it's by Giulio Fanti. Sure enough, there's the section you quote: " Six [8, 10-14] out of seven independent dating methods (and [9] has been widely criticized) indicate that this linen Sheet is datable to a period including the first century after Christ." Wow! Six out of seven INDEPENDENT dating methods say it dates to the first century. And the one dating method that doesn't "has been widely criticized". Let's look at those references. 8. Fanti G, Malfi P (2015) The Shroud of Turin – First century After Christ! Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Singapore, India. 10. Baraldi P, Tinti A (2015) Molecular Spectroscopy as an alternative for dating Textiles. MATEC Web of Conferences p. 36. 11. Fanti G, Baraldi P, BassoR, Tinti A (2013) Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy. Vibrational Spectroscopy. 12. Fanti G, Malfi P, Crosilla F (2015) Mechanical and opto-chemical dating of Turin Shroud, MATEC Web of Conferences p. 36. 13. Riani M (2012) Regression analysis with partially labeled regressors: carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Journal of Statistical Computing Stat Comput. 14. Rogers R (2005) Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin. Thermochemical Acta 425: 189-194. Wait a minute! Three of the seven citations are for G. Fanti, the author of this piece. These are NOT independent! What about citation number 9? The one "Which has been widely criticized." That's: 9. Damon PE, Donahue DJ, Gore BH, Hatheway AL, Jull AJT, et al. (1989) Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Nature, 337: 611-615 The carbon dating test that was really really INDEPENDENTLY administered by three of the leading universities in the western world, all of which dated the cloth to 1260–1390 AD, which is the same time that Bishop d’Arcis was writing to Pope Clement VII that the cloth was a forgery and its maker had confessed. Yes, it has been "widely criticized". From every Shroud crank in Christendom. There's more, but I've wasted enough time on this. Your quote is an absolutely typical example of one type of BA77 quote, citing a bunch of quacks and slighting any authorative evidence that disagrees with his beliefs. (i.e. It's "been widely criticized" - by cranks.) The other type of BA77 citation is where he goes hog wild on a crankish interpretation of some actual scientific paper that he misunderstands. Especially anything with the word quantum in it. Also, if you disagree with him in any way, you get a slew of insults and name calling. Lately the messages have tended to come four at a time, too, which puts a lot of stress on the scroll wheel. There's nothing immoral about this, of course. (Except for the threats, insults and name calling.) I've never seen him tell an outright lie, but a man with a mind so ... flexible as his doesn't need to lie. True cranks really believe everything they say. It even used to be fun to read some of his stuff and just marvel at it, but the incessant repetition has taken the fun out of that. He's also gotten increasing arrogant and insulting over the years and lately he's even gotten threatening, inviting people to come down to his basement for a lesson. All in all, that's why the scroll wheel was invented. Luckily, he's your problem. Good luck. Meanwhile, I wasted a couple of hours last night writing this message and more hours tonight writing the last one and let's face it, you're going to shrug it all off. Plus, BA77 is going to go several colors of ape when he reads this and I don't want to melt down that poor scroll wheel, so I'm bringing my part in this conversation to an end. Good luck with BA. It's been interesting talking to you.MatSpirit
March 21, 2019
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Ok, that one made it. Here's a very condensed recap: I don't know why you think I'm afraid to say I was conscious well before two years of age, but I was and so is every normal human. I don't know what happened to you at five, but from your description it sounds like you discovered something like you were a distinct piece of the universe and you could think. Congratulations. I seldom posted here and I though up a new logon and ID every time I got a new computer or my old one crashed. I did get banned once when Barry was carrying on about how things could not be A and ~A and I asked if that also applied to quantum superposition. I think MatSpirit is cute and accurate and the password is easily remembered. St. Januarius and his blood. How COULD it possibly be faked? The "Januarius" article on Wikipedia suggests, "Various suggestions for the content's composition have been advanced, such as a material that is photosensitive, hygroscopic, or has a low melting point. However, these explanations run into technical difficulties, such as the variability of the phenomenon and its lack of correlation to ambient temperature. A recent hypothesis by Garlaschelli & al. is that the vial contains a thixotropic gel. In such a substance viscosity increases if left unstirred and decreases if stirred or moved. Researchers have proposed specifically a suspension of hydrated iron oxide, FeO(OH), which reproduces the color and behavior of the 'blood' in the ampoule. The suspension can be prepared from simple chemicals that would have been easily available locally since antiquity." They go on to say, "[Giuseppe Geraci, a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Naples's Frederick II University], further reproduced the phenomenon with his own blood stored in the same conditions as the Camaldoli relic. He stated that, "There is no univocal scientific fact that explains why these changes take place. It is not enough to attribute to the movement the ability to dissolve the blood, the liquid contained in the Treasure case changes state for reasons still to be identified." He ultimately argued that "there's blood, no miracle". PaV: What is the source of this “reproducibility”? You rely on “reproducibility,” and, yet, by your own reckoning (that is, simple “reproducibility” can overcome any kind of improbability in random fashion) ‘randomness’ cannot account for the beginning’s of this capability. You’ve painted yourself into a logical ‘corner.’ Reproducibility cannot do everything, but it does power evolution. It's the engine that makes more copies of favorable mutations and powers natural selection. What do you mean, randomness cannot account for the first replicator? What was the first replicator? How did it work? Are you like the YECs who demand that it was a fully modern cell? It's much more likely to have been a small molecule, small enough to form by chance. It's hard to say without a sample, but we'll probably grow multiple small examples in a test tube in the next 50 years. Maybe sooner. Of course, I can just imagine the complaints we'll get about that, especially from UD. PaV: "[Sir Fred Hoyle] used the fact that cytochrome c is necessary for cell division in animals (here we go again with your favorite: “reproducibility”) to demonstrate that the odds of a 100 a.a. protein is 22^100 to 1. Those are some odds. Would you like to comment on Hoyle’s methodology?" Yes. Those are the odds of a 100 a.a. protein forming at random in one try. Nobody but YECs and other creationists think cytochrome c formed that way. But they do think that the first living thing was a modern type cell using cytochrome c to copy its DNA. Which the first living thing almost certainly didn't have, anyway. Hoyle was a smart man, but he should have known better. But then, the Universe doesn't appear to be in a steady state, plagues don't seem to really descend on us from outer space and the Natural History Museum in London did not fake its copy of Archeopterix. (Lee Spetner was in on that one, too. Read the Archeopterix article on Wiki.) PaV: And, please, what “odds” can you calculate that God doesn’t exist—or is simply a theological argument given quite often by Darwinists? Hoyle makes sense. His argument is unassailable. Where do your “odds” come from? First, the universe seems to run just fine without God. Isaac Asimov once said that Franklin's invention of the lightning rod was the first win of science over religion. When its usefulness was understood, just about every building in America was soon topped with a lightning rod - except churches, who though they were an affront to God. Soon, churches, with their towering steeples, were just about the only buildings being struck by lightning. After a while the churches quietly started putting up lightning rods. Second, God is represented as all knowing. In particular, he's supposed to be able to carry on a conversation in ancient Hebrew. This requires understanding the meaning of thousands of words. At a very conservative five bits per word and a thousand words, I'll let you calculate the odds. It's 2 ^ 5000. My calculator overloads. I know, the Church Fathers argued that God is totally simple. They were wrong. Third, God is remarkably shy. I believe Donald Trump exists. You'd have real trouble finding evidence that he doesn't. The God who alegedly used to speak from burning bushes or appear as a whirlwind of fire would be fantastic, but you couldn't argue that he didn't exist. God should show himself unambiguously once in a while. Like in the old days. PaV: So now you’re left with impugning the Templeton Prize winner—another Darwinian tactic, which has nothing to do with science, but politics. So you're not going to argue against my charge that he made a weak and misleading statement for the prize?MatSpirit
March 21, 2019
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PaV, I had a long msg written to you when I was suddenly logged out half way through it. The problem may be on my end, since this laptop is rather flaky. I'll save this message and see if it makes it.MatSpirit
March 21, 2019
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Thanks Hazel. I saw that experiment a few weeks ago. It is perfectly consistent with the recent closing of the free will loop-hole. And is yet another falsification of 'realism', i.e. the notion that a material reality exist 'out there' independent of mind and/or Mind with a capital M. Though the experiment is somewhat limited in how it may effect our 'shared experimental results' in the present world, the implications are none-the-less huge. It confirms the Christian Theist's contention that each of us individually directly participates with God, via our free will, in choosing which reality ultimately gets presented to each of us. As Anton Zeilinger succinctly put the situation in the following video, (where he touched upon the Kochen-Speckter Theorem), "what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” – Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:45 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4C5pq7W5yRM?t=461
i.e. The present experiment you referenced Hazel, which verified "Wigner's Friend" thought experiment, solidifies what was already known via the Kochen-Speckter Theorem and/or contextuality, along with what was already known with the recent closing of the free will loop hole in quantum mechanics by Zeilinger and company.. Again the implications for bringing the free will of each individual human into the foundational laws of the universe are huge. First off, as I have mentioned several times before, it undermines the Darwinian worldview from within. As Steven Weinberg, an atheist, puts it in the following article, "In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,,"
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg - 2017 Excerpt: Today there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways.9 ,,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,, http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because "humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level". Yet Hazel, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, and as the present experiment that you yourself referenced further verifies, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. As your referenced article itself stated, "measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement". Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loop hole by Zeilinger and company), provides a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the quote unquote ‘Theory of Everything”
(February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673179 Luke 22:42 "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."
Besides the empirical verification of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there, to put it mildly, is also a fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” as well. Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” – C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
In support of C.S. Lewis’s contention that “Without that self-choice there could be no Hell”, I only have to point to the people who are fanatically ‘pro-choice’ as far as abortion in concerned, demanding the unrestricted right to choose death for their unborn baby no matter what stage of development the baby may be at. Shoot, infanticide itself, unthinkable just a few short years ago, is now being demanded by many on the ‘pro-choice’ side. Moreover, exactly as would be a priorily expected on the Christian view of reality, and via two of our most precisely tested theories in science, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QDy1Soolo
Again, the implications for individual humans, to put it mildly, are fairly drastic,
Bill Wiese (Man Who Went To Hell) – 23 Minutes in Hell (8 Minute Version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqufixPt2w0 "I started to move toward the light. The way I moved, the physics, was completely different than it is here on Earth. It was something I had never felt before and never felt since. It was a whole different sensation of motion. I obviously wasn't walking or skipping or crawling. I was not floating. I was flowing. I was flowing toward the light. I was accelerating and I knew I was accelerating, but then again, I didn't really feel the acceleration. I just knew I was accelerating toward the light. Again, the physics was different - the physics of motion of time, space, travel. It was completely different in that tunnel, than it is here on Earth. I came out into the light and when I came out into the light, I realized that I was in heaven." Barbara Springer - Near Death Experience - The Tunnel - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv2jLeoAcMI
i.e. you are literally choosing between eternal life with God or eternal death separated from God: Verse:
Deuteronomy 30:19-20 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead for atheists to seriously reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of eternal death separated from God.
Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words “The Lamb” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
bornagain77
March 20, 2019
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off-topic, for ba77: https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.htmlhazel
March 20, 2019
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BA77: Thank you for all of the citations and links you've provided. You've assembled quite an arsenal.PaV
March 20, 2019
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of related note is this video from Robert Villarreal, friend of the late Raymond Rodgers (lead chemist on STURP). Villarreal is a scientist at the Los Alamos laboratory:
Shroud Carbon Dating Overturned By Scientific Peer Review - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlFTVv2l0L4
bornagain77
March 20, 2019
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MatSpirit: As to which Shroud of Turin I want you to focus on, it's the one clearly laid out by BA77. I'll quote from him:
Why is the Turin Shroud Authentic? – Giulio Fanti* – November 2018 Conclusion excerpt: If, as discussed above, by authenticity of the Shroud is meant a funerary sheet, of very ancient manufacture, of about 2000 years ago, that wrapped the corpse of a man hard tortured and dead on a cross, all the scientific clues considered seem favorable to this hypothesis. Six [8, 10-14] out of seven independent dating methods (and [9] has been widely criticized) indicate that this linen Sheet is datable to a period including the first century after Christ. The most important Relic of Christianity wrapped a corpse. The blood traces correspond to those of a tortured man. The body image cannot be explained, but the most reliable hypotheses refer to an intense and probably very brief burst of energy. The corpse, endowed with considerable corpse rigidity, remained wrapped in the Shroud for a short period, not exceeding forty hours. All these clues therefore confirm the authenticity of the Shroud [27] https://juniperpublishers.com/gjaa/pdf/GJAA.MS.ID.555707.pdf
In your discussion of consciousness, for the second time, you've omitted any discussion of a two-year-old boy. Why this omission? Is it because it refutes your basic premise and you want to hide from it? Stand up and be a man! As to the liquefaction of St. Januarius' Blood, your irreverence for what is sacred is on display. There are plenty of things out there in the universe that CANNOT be directly tested, but which can be not only observed, but given a reasonable explanation. What reasonable explanation can you give for this liquefaction--which can take place several times a year, even in normally cold months? Are you afraid to be honest with yourself? And when are you going to identify the moniker you used to use here?
I’ll spell my point out: You don’t need to expend any intelligence designing a rabbit reproducer. EVERY living thing comes with one. It’s the most basic thing about being alive. It’s also the engine that runs evolution. It’s how a fortunate mutation increases in numbers.
What is the source of this "reproducibility"? You rely on "reproducibility," and, yet, by your own reckoning (that is, simple "reproducibility" can overcome any kind of improbability in random fashion) 'randomness' cannot account for the beginning's of this capability. You've painted yourself into a logical 'corner.'
You’re conflating simple consciousness with a philosophical realization of your place in the world.
What does this even mean? How can you possibly have a "philosophical realization of your place in the world" if simple consciousness doesn't already exist? Thank you for your tautology--Darwinists are very good at this.
Tiktaalik: I read that article back when Casey still worked at the Discovery Instutute. You say that Evolution is dying when YECism is moribund and the Discovery Institute is laying off its stars.
Apparently reading doesn't help you make headway on these things. My original point stands. Changing the discussion to where YEC now finds itself (I'm Catholic, so, this is of no interest to me) or that, according to you, the Discovery Institute is "laying off its stars" (I'm not sure what this means) is no more than a diversionary tactic.
Templeton Prize winner: “Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against.” A belief is your best estimate of something. My best estimate of the odds against anything remotely like the Christian God existing are much larger then anything Dembski ever calculated against the non-intelligent creation of a hundred base-pair length of DNA, so I’m comfortable with my belief that there is no God.
Not only did Dembski, a 'believer', calculate these odds, so did an 'atheist,' Sir Fred Hoyle. He used the fact that cytochrome c is necessary for cell division in animals (here we go again with your favorite: "reproducibility") to demonstrate that the odds of a 100 a.a. protein is 22^100 to 1. Those are some odds. Would you like to comment on Hoyle's methodology? And, please, what "odds" can you calculate that God doesn't exist---or is simply a theological argument given quite often by Darwinists? Hoyle makes sense. His argument is unassailable. Where do your "odds" come from?
Do you have any idea how much your man got for such a weak and misleading statement? I’ve heard it’s over a million. Sort of makes you sorry for the Templetons. They have money to burn, but they still can’t get any traction.
So now you're left with impugning the Templeton Prize winner---another Darwinian tactic, which has nothing to do with science, but politics.PaV
March 20, 2019
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As the following article states, "Six out of seven independent dating methods,,, indicate that this linen Sheet is datable to a period including the first century after Christ."
Why is the Turin Shroud Authentic? – Giulio Fanti* – November 2018 Conclusion excerpt: If, as discussed above, by authenticity of the Shroud is meant a funerary sheet, of very ancient manufacture, of about 2000 years ago, that wrapped the corpse of a man hard tortured and dead on a cross, all the scientific clues considered seem favorable to this hypothesis. Six [8, 10-14] out of seven independent dating methods (and [9] has been widely criticized) indicate that this linen Sheet is datable to a period including the first century after Christ. The most important Relic of Christianity wrapped a corpse. The blood traces correspond to those of a tortured man. The body image cannot be explained, but the most reliable hypotheses refer to an intense and probably very brief burst of energy. The corpse, endowed with considerable corpse rigidity, remained wrapped in the Shroud for a short period, not exceeding forty hours. All these clues therefore confirm the authenticity of the Shroud [27] https://juniperpublishers.com/gjaa/pdf/GJAA.MS.ID.555707.pdf
Moreover, the repeated ‘voluntary forgetfulness’ of established facts and the repeated ‘distortion of scientific evidence’ by leading critics of the authenticity of the Shroud are gone over in the following paper, and contrary to what the critics would prefer, actually, due to the dishonest and shallow tactics that the critics of the Shroud have had to resort to, actually bolsters the claim that the Shroud is authentic.
Why is the Turin Shroud Not Fake? – Giulio Fanti* – December 04, 2018 Excerpt page 5: a. As reported above, some important arguments in favor of authenticity are forgotten in an apparently voluntary way. For example the scientific fact [6,19,20,25] that the Shroud wrapped the corpse of a severely tortured man, scourged, crowned with thorns and crucified according to Roman techniques is forgotten when a painting technique to explain the body image of the Shroud is supposed. Other recent results are also forgotten, such as the numismatic dating of the Shroud through the Byzantine coins [25], which sees it already in 692 AD, while someone keeps on stating that the Shroud did not exist before 1300 AD. b. The reality of scientific experiments are distorted and the global result is forgotten at the expense of a particular detail useful for the present goal. For example the work [22] detected the presence of pigments of various colors on the Shroud, probably due to the contamination with other paintings, but only the red pigments have been mentioned in a paper [13] to sustain a particular thesis. c. Statements relative to a distorted reality can be found when for example we read that pollen grains detected by a researcher on the Shroud have not been seen afterwards [13]. In fact, the same kind of pollen grains [29] together with other particles coming from powders vacuumed from the Shroud have been recently detected thus confirming more dated results. d. Not correct statements are still frequent like that asserting that the sample of Shroud used in 1988 for radiocarbon dating had been perfectly cleaned or that the pollutant should weigh about 80% of the total weight of the fabric to reach the age in which Jesus Christ lived in Palestine.,,, https://juniperpublishers.com/gjaa/pdf/GJAA.MS.ID.555715.pdf
As well, seeing is believing
Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Hologram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TL4QOCiis Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words “The Lamb” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ
So basically, we have a clothe with a photographic negative image on it that was made well before photographer was even invented. Moreover, the photographic negative image has a 3-Dimensional holographic nature to its image that was somehow encoded within the photographic negative well before holography was even known about. My question to atheists is this, if you truly believe some mad genius forger in the middle ages made this image, then please prey tell why did this mad genius save all his genius for this supposed forgery alone and not for, say, inventing photography itself since he surely would have required mastery of at least the basic principles of photography to pull off the forgery? Not to mention mastery of laser holography? Moreover, why did this hypothetical mad super-genius destroy all of his scientific instruments the he would have had to invent in order to make the image? Leonardo da Vinci would not have been worthy to tie the shoe laces of such a hypothetical genius! Where is the evidence that your unknown super-genius even existed? As the following article states, " it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology."
Astonishing discovery at Christ's tomb supports Turin Shroud - NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. 'However, Enea scientists warn, "it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html
Verse, article and video
John 20:3-8 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. The Shroud of Turin - Evidence it is authentic Excerpt: In June 2002, the Shroud was sent to a team of experts for restoration. One of them was Swiss textile historian Mechthild Flury-Lemberg. She was surprised to find a peculiar stitching pattern in the seam of one long side of the Shroud, where a three-inch wide strip of the same original fabric was sewn onto a larger segment. The stitching pattern, which she says was the work of a professional, is quite similar to the hem of a cloth found in the tombs of the Jewish fortress of Masada. The Masada cloth dates to between 40 BC and 73 AD. This kind of stitch has never been found in Medieval Europe. http://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html Shroud Of Turin - 2000 Years Old (Matches Masada Cloth) – video (21:20 minute mark) https://youtu.be/cpaZcVagTFk?t=1294
bornagain77
March 20, 2019
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As to the Carbon Dating in particular: The carbon dating question has been thoroughly addressed and refuted by Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford in 2000. Their research, with textile experts, showing the carbon testing was done with a piece of the Shroud which was subject to expert medieval reweaving in the 1500’s had much historical, and photographic, evidence behind it. Their historical, and photographic, evidence was then scientifically confirmed by chemical analysis in 2005 by none other than Raymond Rogers, the lead chemist on the STURP team. Thus, the fact that a false age was shown by the 1988 carbon testing has been accepted across the board as far as the scientific evidence itself is concerned.
Shroud of Turin - Carbon 14 Test Proven False – - Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford - video (with Raymond Rogers, lead chemist from the STURP project) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxDdx6vxthE Why The Carbon 14 Samples Are Invalid, Raymond Rogers per: Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425 pages 189-194, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) Excerpt: Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow–brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud. The fact that vanillin can not be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years. http://www.ntskeptics.org/issues/shroud/shroudold.htm
Rogers passed away shortly after publishing that paper, but his work was ultimately verified by scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Carbon Dating Of The Turin Shroud Completely Overturned by Scientific Peer Review Excerpt: Rogers also asked John Brown, a materials forensic expert from Georgia Tech to confirm his finding using different methods. Brown did so. He also concluded that the shroud had been mended with newer material. Since then, a team of nine scientists at Los Alamos has also confirmed Rogers work, also with different methods and procedures. Much of this new information has been recently published in Chemistry Today. http://shroudofturin.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/the-custodians-of-time/
This following is the Los Alamos National Laboratory report which confirms the Rogers' paper:
“Analytical Results on Thread Samples Taken from the Raes Sampling Area (Corner) of the Shroud Cloth” (Aug 2008) Excerpt: The age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case....... LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. - Robert Villarreal - Los Alamos National Laboratory http://www.ohioshroudconference.com/
Further test have also now dated the Shroud within the first century time frame:
Turin Shroud 'is not a medieval forgery' - 28 Mar 2013 Excerpt: Experiments conducted by scientists at the University of Padua in northern Italy have dated the shroud to ancient times, a few centuries before and after the life of Christ.,,, The analysis is published in a new book, "Il Mistero della Sindone" or The Mystery of the Shroud, by Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University,,, Scientists, including Prof Fanti, used infra-red light and spectroscopy – the measurement of radiation intensity through wavelengths – to analyse fibres from the shroud,,, The tests dated the age of the shroud to between 300 BC and 400AD.,,, Scientists have never been able to explain how the image of a man's body, complete with nail wounds to his wrists and feet, pinpricks from thorns around his forehead and a spear wound to his chest, could have formed on the cloth. Mr Fanti said the imprint was caused by a blast of “exceptional radiation”, although he stopped short of describing it as a miracle. He said his tests backed up earlier results which claimed to have found on the shroud traces of dust and pollen which could only have come from the Holy Land.,,, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9958678/Turin-Shroud-is-not-a-medieval-forgery.html Giulio Fanti and the Turin Shroud - load bearing test, infared test, Shroud dated to time of Christ - 34:00 minute mark - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4c4812XA9A
bornagain77
March 20, 2019
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MatSpirit asks:
What Shroud of Turin do you want me to comment on? The one that Bishop Pierre d’Arcis wrote a memorandum to Pope Clement VII about in 1390 reporting that the shroud was a forgery and that the artist had confessed? Or the Shroud of Turin that was submitted for independent carbon dating tests to the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, all of whom concluded with 95% confidence that the shroud material dated to 1260–1390 AD?
Yet the Memorandum of Piere d’Arcis in particular, that atheists often cite as evidence against the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, has several holes in it.
The Shroud of Turin’s Earlier History: Part 4: To Little Lirey The Memorandum of Piere d’Arcis appears to make a strong case against the Shroud’s authenticity and has formed the cornerstone for skeptical historical judgement, especially during the 20th century. However, there are fatal problems with its claims. Some researchers have concluded that Bishop d’Arcis misunderstood the Shroud’s nature and origins and drew erroneous conclusions based on garbled rumors. First, d’Arcis' complaints about the evil intents of Lirey’s deans seem misdirected, as it is clear that the de Charny family, who enjoyed a well deserved good public reputation, was always in charge of and behind the Shroud’s expositions. More importantly, where did the bishop obtain his information about Henri de Poitiers and the painter who supposedly produced the relic? It was not from any known documentation; d’Arcis was a competent lawyer before his clerical appointment and surely would have referenced any files from 30 years earlier (Wilson 2010: 228-29). If Bishop Henri de Poitiers had discovered a fraud and opposed the relic’s showings during the 1350’s, he left no known record for d’Arcis to cite. Instead, after reviewing de Charny’s papers related to the new Lirey church’s activities, Henri’s sole surviving document, dated May 28, 1356, praises de Charny’s devotion adding And ourselves wishing to develop as much as possible a cult of this nature, we praise, ratify, and approve the said letters in all their parts … we give our assent, our authority, and our decision … (Bonnet-Eymard 1991: 18). If anyone at this time was charging fraud, it was unlikely to be in the next year either, as in June of 1357 twelve bishops granted indulgences to pilgrims visiting the church. Pope Clement was confronted with conflicting correspondence from both Geoffrey II and Bishop d’Arcis and finally decided early in the next year on somewhat of a compromise: de Charny could exhibit the Shroud without elaborate ceremonials and declaring it not Christ’s true shroud but “a copy and representation” of it (Geoffrey’s “official” position, anyway), and Bishop d’Arcis could not interfere with those expositions or face excommunication (Fossati 1983: 25). Finally, was there an artist who in the middle 14th century created perhaps the greatest fraud of all time? Three additional lines of inquiry argue against it. Beginning a hundred years after the Shroud’s first appearance in the West many dozens of painted copies were made, most still visible today, but all “look crude and almost ludicrously amateur by comparison to the original” (Wilson and Miller 1986: 13). And where else in late medieval art can this unknown artistic genius’ masterpieces be seen? Second and more decisively, what does modern scientific inquiry say about the Shroud being a painting? In 1978 a team of more than thirty mostly American scientists, the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), spent about 120 hours pulling various technical data from the Shroud and then devoted years to its analyses. In October, 1981 they met the press and announced, with only one dissenting voice, No pigments, paints, dyes or stains [could be found and that both physics and chemistry tests] preclude the possibility of paint being used as a method for creating the image … We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist (Schwortz online at http://www.shroud.com/78conclu.htm). When the numerous unusual, perhaps unique image properties became apparent to participating scientists John Heller and Alan Adler, they identified about ten near insurmountable difficulties an artist would face trying to create the Shroud’s image (Heller 1983: 202-204). STURP published their findings in a variety of professional scientific journals (see Schwortz at http://www.shroud.com/78papers.htm), still available today, which made the Shroud “the most intensely studied artifact in human history” (Heller 1983: back dust cover). Last, if there never were an artist who created the image, researchers have taken another look at the Latin in d’Arcis’ famous Memorandum and made a key observation. The Latin phase so casually translated “it was proved by the artist who had painted it” could also be rendered “the artist who had copied it.” French researcher Brother Hillary de Cremiers recognizes that the Latin depingere (to paint) is ambiguous but that the verbal construction throughout this section of the Memorandum makes the best sense if an artist making a copy gave his opinion that the image was “made by human hand” (de Cremiers 1991: 41-42). This might also help to explain some indications that a hidden shroud, thought by many to be the actual pre-1349 shroud but obviously a painted copy, was supposedly found in Besançon’s St. Stephens about 1377; later it became famous throughout France until it was destroyed during the French Revolution. Could it have been a copy made by Bishop de Poitiers’ confessed artist as a replacement for Jeanne deVergy’s secret transfer of the original to Lirey (Scavone 1993: 213)? http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/09/05/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-4-To-Little-Lirey.aspx#Article
Moreover, we now have fairly extensive and reliable historical evidence that places the origin of the Shroud well before the middle ages of Europe:
The Shroud of Turin's Earlier History: Part One: To Edessa http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/03/14/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-One-To-Edessa.aspx The Shroud of Turin's Earlier History: Part Two: To the Great City http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/03/20/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-Two-To-the-Great-City.aspx The Shroud of Turin's Earlier History: Part Three: The Shroud of Constantinople http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/03/28/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-Three-The-Shroud-of-Constantinople.aspx The Shroud of Turin’s Earlier History: Part 4: To Little Lirey http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/09/05/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-4-To-Little-Lirey.aspx#Article Dr. Schneider Five Part Series - Part 3: History (of the Shroud) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI-0v-p18IA Below is a summary of scientific and historical evidence supporting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin as the ancient burial cloth of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. by J. Michael Fischer, adapted from the original article by John C. Iannone https://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html
bornagain77
March 20, 2019
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PaV, What Shroud of Turin do you want me to comment on?   The one that Bishop Pierre d'Arcis wrote a memorandum to Pope Clement VII about in 1390 reporting that the shroud was a forgery and that the artist had confessed? Or the Shroud of Turin that was submitted for independent carbon dating tests to the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, all of whom concluded with 95% confidence that the shroud material dated to 1260–1390 AD? PaV: What evidence do you have that chimps are conscious? Do you have any? Or are you simply asserting this? Well, let's start with the obvious things.  First, they sleep, at which time everybody agrees they are not conscious, then they wake up and start moving through the trees, eating, watching out for danger and engaging in a ton of social interactions with each other, including, for males, power politics involving complex short term and long term alliances.  If a human did all that, we would call him conscious. They also pass the mirror test where they recognize themselves in a mirror and rub off any paint or other smuges they see on their face.  Male chimps are known to let the troop know where they intend to forage tomorrow (in other words, they plan ahead).  Oh yeah, some people taught sign language to chimps and the chimps liked to talk with each other.  And with humans. Even more interestingly, some of the chimp mothers taught sign language to their offspring, who then carried on conversations, etc.  Read anything by Frans de Waal for much more . Liquefaction of St. Januarius’ Blood:  Lets open that reliquary and sample the brownish-red contents.  Actual direct tests like that did wanders for the Shroud. You're conflating simple consciousness with a philosophical realization of your place in the world. I'll spell my point out:  You don't need to expend any intelligence designing a rabbit reproducer.  EVERY living thing comes with one.  It's the most basic thing about being alive.  It's also the engine that runs evolution.  It's how a fortunate mutation increases in numbers. Tiktaalik:  I read that article back when Casey still worked at the Discovery Instutute.  You say that Evolution is dying when YECism is moribund and the Discovery Institute is laying off its stars. Templeton Prize winner:  “Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against.” A belief is your best estimate of something.  My best estimate of the odds against anything remotely like the Christian God existing are much larger then anything Dembski ever calculated against the non-intelligent creation of a hundred base-pair length of DNA, so I'm comfortable with my belief that there is no God. Do you have any idea how much your man got for such a weak and misleading statement?  I've heard it's over a million.  Sort of makes you sorry for the Templetons.  They have money to burn, but they still can't get any traction.MatSpirit
March 20, 2019
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MatSpirit: Indeed, materialism, a viewpoint that entirely rejects the notion of God's existence, is a 'belief.' The newest Templeton Prize winner had this to say:
The annual Templeton Prize, which recognizes outstanding contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension," was awarded Tuesday to Brazilian Marcelo Gleiser -- a theoretical physicist dedicated to demonstrating science and religion are not enemies. A physics and astronomy professor whose specializations include cosmology, 60-year-old Gleiser was born in Rio de Janeiro, and has been in the United States since 1986. An agnostic, he doesn't believe in God -- but refuses to write off the possibility of God's existence completely. "Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method," Gleiser told AFP Monday from Dartmouth College, the New Hampshire university where he has taught since 1991. "Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against." "I'll keep an open mind because I understand that human knowledge is limited," he added.
PaV
March 19, 2019
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MatSpirit: I don't recognize this moniker. What was your previous moniker if you go that far back?
Does love exist? Of course. Is it material? Yes, it’s caused by the material actions of your material neurons plus a whopping dose of strong drugs. Uppers, mostly. Just watch a couple of young lovers. They can stay up all night spooning. Do you think animals are conscious? What about chimps? Or chimps who use sign language?
Your foolishness is on display. What evidence do you have that chimps are conscious? Do you have any? Or are you simply asserting this? I've had experiences of reality that have had nothing to do with my physical body. Now, should I deny this because your materialist viewpoint denies this? Can you remember going to the market with your mother when you were two years old when she asked you if you wanted an ice cream cone and you told her, "Yes"? Were you conscious then? Would you like to answer the question?
PaV: Why don’t you study documented miracles? MS: Got any? Please, no flying saints. And from the last hundred years, please. Oh, and evidence, not stories written down by true believers.
Please explain the image on the Shroud of Turin. Explain it. Describe how it came into being. Explain the liquefaction of St. Januarius' Blood. The putative explanations given are risible.
PaV: However, building a watch that ‘reproduces’ itself requires more intelligence than simply making a watch that works. So, biological forms bespeak a much greater intelligence behind them than a mere watch would. This is just basic common sense. But evolution only works on organisms that are already reproducing. It’s built in and requires no intelligence to add on. In fact, if a line of organisms STOPS reproducing, that’s it for evolution. The line goes extinct.
You've avoided the point I've made. I don't mention evolution. I make a simple assertion: to make a watch that can reproduce itself takes more intelligence than simply making a watch. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Please don't skirt it as you did the last time. P.S. [Edit] As to Tiktaalik, perhaps you should read this article. You're big on reading, right?PaV
March 18, 2019
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ET: “we do not even know what makes a rabbit a rabbit.” MatSpirit: "Rabbits are made of the same things we are, arranged differently to make a rabbit."
So according to MatSpirit's materialistic "logic", Rabbits and Humans are both just material particles albeit differently arranged material particles. An answer that missed ET fundamental point so drastically would be comical if MatSpirit were not so naively sincere in his belief that the only difference between rabbits and humans is ONLY a difference in arrangement of material particles. If reductive materialism were actually true, the ability to define what a species truly is, i.e. to answer the question of what makes a rabbit truly a rabbit and what makes a human truly a human?" becomes impossible:
Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design by Logan Paul Gage Excerpt: First, the problem of essences. G. K. Chesterton once quipped that “evolution . . . does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man.” It might appear shocking, but in this one remark the ever-perspicacious Chesterton summarized a serious conflict between classical Christian philosophy and Darwinism. In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms. Think about it: How is it that we are able to recognize different organisms as belonging to the same group? The Aristotelian provides a good answer: It is because species really exist—not as an abstraction in the sky, but they exist nonetheless. We recognize the squirrel’s form, which it shares with other members of its species, even though the particular matter of each squirrel differs. So each organism, each unified whole, consists of a material and immaterial part (form).,,, One way to see this form-matter dichotomy is as Aristotle’s solution to the ancient tension between change and permanence debated so vigorously in the pre-Socratic era. Heraclitus argued that reality is change. Everything constantly changes—like fire, which never stays the same from moment to moment. Philosophers like Parmenides (and Zeno of “Zeno’s paradoxes” fame) argued exactly the opposite; there is no change. Despite appearances, reality is permanent. How else could we have knowledge? If reality constantly changes, how can we know it? What is to be known? Aristotle solved this dilemma by postulating that while matter is constantly in flux—even now some somatic cells are leaving my body while others arrive—an organism’s form is stable. It is a fixed reality, and for this reason is a steady object of our knowledge. Organisms have an essence that can be grasped intellectually. Denial of True Species Enter Darwinism. Recall that Darwin sought to explain the origin of “species.” Yet as he pondered his theory, he realized that it destroyed species as a reality altogether. For Darwinism suggests that any matter can potentially morph into any other arrangement of matter without the aid of an organizing principle. He thought cells were like simple blobs of Jell-O, easily re-arrangeable. For Darwin, there is no immaterial, immutable form. In The Origin of Species he writes: “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.” Statements like this should make card-carrying Thomists shudder.,,, The first conflict between Darwinism and Thomism, then, is the denial of true species or essences. For the Thomist, this denial is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge. As philosopher Benjamin Wiker observes in Moral Darwinism, Darwin reduced species to “mere epiphenomena of matter in motion.” What we call a “dog,” in other words, is really just an arbitrary snapshot of the way things look at present. If we take the Darwinian view, Wiker suggests, there is no species “dog” but only a collection of individuals, connected in a long chain of changing shapes, which happen to resemble each other today but will not tomorrow. What About Man? Now we see Chesterton’s point. Man, the universal, does not really exist. According to the late Stanley Jaki, Chesterton detested Darwinism because “it abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.” And if one does not believe in universals, there can be, by extension, no human nature—only a collection of somewhat similar individuals.,,, Implications for Bioethics This is not a mere abstract point. This dilemma is playing itself out in contemporary debates in bioethics. With whom are bioethicists like Leon Kass (neo-Aristotelian and former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics) sparring today if not with thoroughgoing Darwinians like Princeton’s Peter Singer, who denies that humans, qua humans, have intrinsic dignity? Singer even calls those who prefer humans to other animals “speciesist,” which in his warped vocabulary is akin to racism.,,, If one must choose between saving an intelligent, fully developed pig or a Down syndrome baby, Singer thinks we should opt for the pig.,,, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-06-037-f
Immaterial abstract concepts, such as, ‘human nature’, 'rabbit nature', ‘dog nature’, ‘cat nature’, simply cannot be grounded within the Darwinian worldview. Thus humorously, not only have Darwinists never experimentally demonstrated the 'origin of species', Darwinists can't even define what a species truly is in the first place! I would call that a fairly dramatic failing for a theory that purports to be the "be all/end all" scientific explanation for the origin of species. Moreover, as bad as it is for Darwin’s theory to not be able to account for the concept of species, it gets much worse for the Darwinist. Not only does Darwin’s theory fail to account for what a species truly is, the ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution is also found to be grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic “form” and/or shape.
Darwinism vs Biological Form – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
Moreover, the failure of the reductive materialism to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than mutations to DNA itself. In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics – December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, “We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s,” added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. “So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.” http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
Thus, since the reductive materialistic explanations of neo-Darwinism are grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic form, then neo-Darwinian speculations for how one type of organism might transform into another type of organism are based on pure fantasy and have no discernible experimental basis in reality. Shoot, the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinism cannot even provide a coherent foundation for the abstract immaterial concepts of personhood and mathematics:
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? By M. Anthony Mills - April 16, 2018 ,,, As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
Thus, besides Darwinian evolution already being shown to be mathematically impossible (by Sanford, Dembski, Marks, Axe, Behe, Durston etc.. etc..), Darwinian evolution is further falsified by mathematics as being a scientific theory since Darwinism denies the very reality of one the thing it most needs, i.e. mathematics, in order to be considered scientific in the first place.
Darwinian Evolution vs Mathematics – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3gyx70BHvA
Besides the abstract concepts of species, of biological form, of personhood, and of mathematics, there are many other abstract things, (things that everybody, including Darwinists, take for granted as being real), that become illusory and therefore ‘non-real’ within their reductive materialistic Darwinian worldview. As Dr. Egnor states in the following article, “Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts.... We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses.”
The Fundamental Difference Between Humans and Nonhuman Animals – Michael Egnor – November 5, 2015 Excerpt: Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals. Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.,,, ,,, It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2/
Thus, the Darwinian worldview is a severely impoverished and bankrupt worldview that lacks the intellectual funds that are necessary to explain everything that is truly unique and important about human life. Indeed, it denies everything that is immaterial. Immaterial things that give humans the unique attributes and abilities that are associated with being 'made in the image of God'.
2 Corinthians 4:18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
bornagain77
March 18, 2019
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MatSpirit:
Tiktaalik was the first quadruped.
No, it wasn't even a tetrapod. It was still a fish that lived in water. And seeing that you don't have a mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes you definitely cannot account for fish. (endosymbiosis doesn't help)ET
March 18, 2019
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MatSpirit:
Rabbits are made of the same things we are, arranged differently to make a rabbit. New rabbits are assembled by their mothers. If you want to know more about how this works, study embryology. If you’re wondering how rabbits came to be, study paleontology and evolution.
LoL! Evolution can't even produce eukaryotes. And no, we have no idea what makes a rabbit a rabbit beyond that a baby rabbit is born after a successful mating of a male and female conejo.ET
March 18, 2019
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PaV: Where does intelligence come from? What is consciousness–that is, if you’re having a conversation with a two-year-old boy or girl, then are they “conscious” of what is going on? [No, intelligence allows such a conversation, but “consciousness” is layerd upon reason and intelligence. Where does it come from?] What about beauty? What about love? [Does love exist? Are you willing to deny it exists? Well, then is “love” a “material” substance? Where do you stand on all of this?] And is ‘love’ greater, or less than, a coconut, e.g.? It's interesting that only conservative Christians (and I suppose conservative Muslims and other religious conservatives) refuse to admit that the brain produces our minds and other mentality. I suppose it's because you can't take your brain to heaven, so how is your mind going to go? Non-conservatives seem to have no problems here. I suppose they just trust an omniscient and all powerful God to take care of that problem. Frankly, when I see how energetically conservatives hunt down heresy and read of Mother Theresa's crushing doubts (as well as the magnitude of what they have to believe) I often question conservative faith. Does love exist? Of course. Is it material? Yes, it's caused by the material actions of your material neurons plus a whopping dose of strong drugs. Uppers, mostly. Just watch a couple of young lovers. They can stay up all night spooning. Do you think animals are conscious? What about chimps? Or chimps who use sign language? PaV: Why don’t you study documented miracles? Got any? Please, no flying saints. And from the last hundred years, please. Oh, and evidence, not stories written down by true believers. PaV: But the question is not really do you believe in the material world, but whether or not you believe there is no God, because evolutionist’s argument is that the only acceptable hypthesis is that some incarnated intelligence can act—a position that can only be maintained by denying God’s existence. So, if you deny the existence of God, what is your evidence [if we’re going to talk about evidence]? I think you got something wrong. Evolution does not say that only some intelligence can act, it says that no intelligence is needed. I love your demand that I prove the non-existence of God. Do you think you have a similar duty to show the non-existence of Odin or Thor? I think not. If you want me to believe in your god, show me evidence. The burden of proof is always on those claiming the supernatural exists. PaV: I’ve been at this blogsite for over fourteen years. I've been here a long time, too. I remember when Dave from Texas was running the blog and even a time when Dembski himself was still here. He soon got tired of getting clobbered in debate and turned it over to Dave, who was much more adroit with the ban-hammer. Funnier too. PaV: Discussion with most, if not almost all, evolutionary biologists is like trying to get a religious fundamentalist to convert—a big waste of time. Their minds and hearts are closed. Not really, everybody here's just firing blanks. PaV: I’m not going to waste time pointing out errors. If you had any errors to point out, you'd be delighted to. PaV: I’ve tired of all that. Perhaps others are not tired of it. But they know what I’m talking about. That’s sufficient. They share the ID delusion. PaV: However, building a watch that ‘reproduces’ itself requires more intelligence than simply making a watch that works. So, biological forms bespeak a much greater intelligence behind them than a mere watch would. This is just basic common sense. But evolution only works on organisms that are already reproducing. It's built in and requires no intelligence to add on. In fact, if a line of organisms STOPS reproducing, that's it for evolution. The line goes extinct. PaV: My point is exactly the one that Neil Shubin is making: if you have a ‘series,’ then we know which direction ‘evolution’ took; but, without it, it’s still a bit of a guess. Again, how can we rule out the possibility of a reptile returning to the sea as an explanation? This is why it's so hard to argue with a YEC or ID fan. All the knowledge is against their beliefs, so they're very careful not to learn anything that will scupper their beliefs. Question: WERE THERE ANY REPTILES THEN? NO! Tiktaalik was the first quadruped. Remember the fins with bones in them? After quadrupeds, amphibians developed and reptiles developed out of amphibians.MatSpirit
March 17, 2019
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I found Mackay when I was in my teens or early twenties, probably from a reference by Martin Gardner. I see it's available for free now at many places, including https://web.archive.org/web/20040623130633/http://www.litrix.com/madraven/madne001.htm I recommend it to all.MatSpirit
March 17, 2019
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ET: "we do not even know what makes a rabbit a rabbit." Rabbits are made of the same things we are, arranged differently to make a rabbit. New rabbits are assembled by their mothers. If you want to know more about how this works, study embryology. If you're wondering how rabbits came to be, study paleontology and evolution.MatSpirit
March 17, 2019
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Faced with Uncooperative Data, Evolutionary Icthyologists Reverse the Predictions of Common Descent - Casey Luskin - December 30, 2014 Excerpt: Neil Shubin and his team are at it again, suggesting that Tiktaalik was a fish with a "wrist.",,, ,,,it was never established that fish with wrists or fish with digits existed in the first place. In fact, the Science Daily article acknowledges that living fish have no analogues to the bones of tetrapod limbs: "Initial attempts to confirm the link based on shape comparisons of fin and limb bones were unsuccessful.",,, Ironically, the description of bones in living fish is also a very good description of the fin of Tiktaalik. See my post from 2008, "An 'Ulnare' and an 'Intermedium' a Wrist Do Not Make: A Response to Carl Zimmer." Tiktaalik had no wrist, and in fact, there are no known living or fossil fish that have anything like a wrist or digits.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/faced_with_unco092401.html The Evolution of the Darwin Fish - February 17, 2018 - David F. Coppedge Excerpt: Darwinians believe that fish crawled out onto land—their fins becoming pentadactyl limbs—then returned back to the sea multiple times in the form of ichthyosaurs, pinnipeds and whales.,,, After Darwin, various ‘transitional’ fish with bony fins were subsequently proposed and deposed (see sign, above), but Darwinians didn’t become excited until Neil Shubin’s Tiktaalik fossil (6 April 2006), though some disagreed (4 December 2008).,,, Subsequently, though, tetrapod tracks were found a full 10 million Darwin Years earlier (6 January 2010), undermining Shubin’s claim to have found a transitional form. Darwinians are still hunting.,,, https://crev.info/2018/02/evolution-darwin-fish/ Mudskippers. The Strangest Creature ever to Defy Evolution - December 14, 2016 Excerpt: No fossil evidence exists for their putative evolution from some pre-mudskipper organism. Scientists are not even able to satisfactorily classify modern mudskippers into a family, leaving their evolution to pure speculation. They were once included in the Oxudercinae subfamily, within the family Gobiidae (gobies), but recent molecular studies do not support this classification. Darwinists are now stymied about their phylogeny, and can only speculate concerning from what and how they could have evolved. A major problem for evolution is that the first mudskipper in the fossil record is morphologically a modern mudskipper. Long assumed to be a transitional animal between a swimming fish and a tetrapod (four footed) animal, a recent study by Kutschera and Elliott (2013, p. 1) concluded that, although some walking fishes such as mudskippers “shed light on the gradual evolutionary transition of ancient fishes to early tetrapods … they are not the ancestors of tetrapods, because extant organisms cannot be progenitors of other living beings.” As Polgar, et al. note, more study is required to detail the evolution of the mudskipper (2014, p. 179). Many experts have hypothesized that fish fins evolved into terrestrial limbs, a theory that also does not fit the facts (Clack, 2012, p. 136). For example, the earliest tetrapods were not pentadactyl (having five fingers and toes) as are modern tetrapods, and the fossil evidence does not support the fin to limb evolution (Clack, 2012, pp. 136-137). Summary In short, the mudskipper is not a fish that evolved legs or an amphibian that evolved to look like a fish, but a graceful well designed swimmer in water that gets along so well out of water that they spend most of their life on land and thrive in large areas of the world. We have no evidence of fish-fin to tetrapod limb evolution, and the mudskipper does not help to explain the major missing links that can bridge the two structures. Like the duck-billed platypus, the mudskipper contains a unique mosaic of features found on many different animals. And this situation is bad news for evolutionists. http://www.create.ab.ca/mudskippers-the-strangest-creature-ever-to-defy-evolution/ This following article has a excellent summary of the 'less than forthright' manner in which Darwinists handle anyone who dares to tell of falsifications to their imaginary evidence for 'transitional' fossils: Evolutionary Biologists Are Unaware of Their Own Arguments: Reappraising Nature's Prized "Gem," Tiktaalik - Casey Luskin - September 2010 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/09/evolutionary_biologists_are_un038261.html
bornagain77
March 17, 2019
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