Naturalistic Intelligent Design

PREPARATORY SOUNDS IN ENGLISH: Initial Set-Up Sounds That Make English Consonants Seem More Natural

2017-02-24T05:52:00.004-08:00

In my ESL teaching experience, I have found that certain sounds tend to prefix or precede English words' initial consonant production in some cases. In addition, they appear to be innate to stressed consonant sound formation and production. Breathing and unintended vocalization (movement of the vocal chords during speech or singing) can produce these subconsciously produced lead-ins and make their barely audible sounds audible. I have also found out that English learners deliberately making these inadvertant sounds in a deliberate manner and over-emphasizing them with gusts or gaffes before their words can help sound production. While getting set up and ready to produce the initial sound of a word beginning in a consonant, using this subconscious routine deliberately can make foreign students' sound production seem even more native-like and help their learning experience. Take the initial "r," "f/fl/fr/ph," "v," and "w/wh", for example. If ESL/EFL learners will setup in the “ooh” position before producing words starting with these consonant sounds, using it for guiding the intial-word position, they can produce a legitimate, native-like consonant-heralding sound. These initial sounds don't seem to be mentioned in any functionally linguistic role in the ESL literature. The one I am talking about particularly for introductory purposes here is perhaps the most obvious one to English speakers: It is the "u" or the long "ooh" sound. It is typically made while closing down the lips naturally while leaving a pencil-thin hole in the very center of the lips. It is done by pursing the lips (closing and slightly rolling them open a bit only at their center – their tip). This leaves an opening about the size of a standard No. 2/HB wooden pencil. That’s 1.5 cm tall. When a non-native English speaker closes his lips and says "ooh" a few milliseconds before saying "right," "fine," "vine," or "white" (and they do sometimes), the lips are set automatically in the ideal position to start the stressed or emphasized consonant sound. The sound-production rule remembered by the student is ideal for instantaneous memory and quick reference/correction: It is a sound rather than a visualized image of mouth anatomy to use. It is less mental a construct and more reflexive in character. In my experience, using such word setup sounds results in more natural, native-sounding consonant production. The heard or audio result is "ooh-right," "ooh-fine," "ooh-vine," and "ooh-white." Of course, the “ooh”is produced quietly and during a very short interval of time to appear more native. But the practice in ESL sets up initial consonants extremely well and soon becomes habitual for the ELL (English Language Learner). Visual images don’t offer this facility or utility. Finally in the science of linguistics there is hope. I am amazed at how well this almost doctored, artificially-imposed sound-preset in ESL alters Eastern European sound production, making it more native-like and satisfying for learners of language groups traditionally not used to achieving such satisfying results. It is very hard to change some language groups' pronunciation practices into native-like-sounding words. Take the Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian linguistic group, for example. Their initial-word position “w/wh” and “r” sound has regularly been reported to be very hard to correct in a habitual and classroom practice. There are several reasons for this, but dealing with the causes independently does not seem to help. However, when these students think about producing a word-preceding, setup sound, and habitually add it methodically to their repertoire of initial consonant sounds, their habitual language production really improves. And it is easily and instantly correctable - if that is a word... After overemphasis in preliminary practice, the actual production can be lowered in amplitude and length to make it manageable. Remember - we are training learners' listening and perceptual capacities along with sound production. This type of sound production also gives language learners hope and confidence. Their outer facial reflexes change into more recognizable and teacher-manageable English patterns naturally and not artificially. This is another way of thinking about and going about sound production; not the mere translation of sounds and words, but a much more conscious, natural, realistic sound-making process. There are other initial consonants that can produced in this way: Other initial, setup sound preceding words like "h” and "l" could use "ah." This is because the consonant needs to be pronounced initially with lips stretched wide. "Ah-see," "ah-zoo" and ah-tea" will do this, too. Even more natural is just taking in a loud breath with the lips in the position to make the “ah” preset/sound appear immediately before producing the word. The student doesn't actually have to vocalize the lead-in sound before the consonant/word, though word stress will often do this intuitively in the native. "Ee-yikes" is a commonly known, familiar example. Thus these preset sounds really do occur - at least in stressed native speech. In addition, the nasal-to-rear throat conducted vocalization (throat growl) of "ng" added to the beginning of the initial "c/k," "g," and "j" sound production helps natives at times. Related to this ng sing-song sound is “mm” sound made in the throat and carried into the jaw. It does often precede natives’ production of the "b," "d," "l," "m," and "n" sounds, I have found. Like in all of these word-preceding, initial-position consonant sounds, the activity seems to help speakers get set up or ready for the startup of their consonant production and think in clearer terms for the target language. By contrast, explosive consonants like "h," "p," "t," and "d" need no such leading/preceding sound in either native production or their L2 (second language)-corresponding setup in order to the sounds more natural or like native English. Perhaps this is because they have no lip or jaw involvement at least in an intermediary sounding modulation role. "P" just uses the lips as a gate or pressure-release valve. I hope these notes will help language study and students - especially certain linguistic groups - by offering some practical insights to teachers trying to improve English students’sound production. May it assist language-teaching pedagogy. And may we all “ng-go native”in our English sound production!

THE POTENTIAL OF NATURALISTIC INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN SCIENCE

2016-09-04T05:37:00.003-07:00

Darwinists ignore other scientific fields’ definitions of intelligence in attributions of cause for any real-world action or event. Their genetic particle and cloud of nature attribution is an abstraction and construct while denying their assumption of the object of Nature writ large is a construct, too. Their criticisms against intelligent design and creation appear to be no different, viewing them as equivalent from one standard red herring view of all arguments made against any agent of cause or designer. Creationism and ID are loosely linked historically; perhaps that is why. However, pat arguments seem a bit simpleminded, childishly basic, and tantamount to lazy superficiality - putting history above any of the actual theoretical facts. DARWINISM CAN'T SEE OR EXPLAIN COMPLEXITY AND ITS INCREASE. In fact, I believe they are predicated on rubber-stamped arguments attacking all outside-the scope/realm-of-natural, material antecedents (anything appealing to super-normal cause looks the same to an evolutionist – as only religion). They're definitely never looking at intelligence as a cause in anything. However, naturalistic design is not so idealistically constrained. It is not limited to changes from designers alone or even primarily, in fact. The cause (which they cannot abstract enough to see) could simply be intelligent mechanisms in the environment or natural influences analogous to brains or neurons there (Lloyd Humprey's computational model of intelligence could be used here), goal-directed sensory-feedback loops and processes in the environment (Sternberg & Salter's goal-directed adaptive behavior intelligence model would suffice), or adaptive plant behavior (Howard Gardner's problem-solving definition of intelligence could model ID). Evolutionist don't have enough knowledge of AI or computational science to even begin to conceptualize and operationalize variables and constructs for detecting and measuring intelligence, much less attributing increasing complexity to it. It seems to me a statistical skew-based model of evolution (admittedly reductive and particle-based) is not even at the single-neuron level in evolution thinking. Evolution as Darwinists see it is lower at least in terms of intelligence concepts than that of an adding machine or abacus (or even stack of Legos). Still Lloyd Humprey's runaway model of computational intelligence could be used to describe or even encompass it, if evolutionists were FREE FROM FEAR AND BIGOTRY to do it. THEY AREN'T! Neither does naturalistic intelligence have to be limited to mere anthropomorphic models (that evolutionists employ for simile and metaphor in terminology and only at the turn-of-phrase level), traditional models or even precedents found in historical teleology or among any of the current ID views. Naturalistic ID or intelligent explanation of directed drift can be stated and independent of all teleological and historical precedents. It is a new enough notion that it is left to the future discretion of any developers and how they may choose to define its terms. And it is need PRECISELY SINCE EVOLUTIONISTS IGNORE INTELLIGENCE AT ALL LEVELS BENEATH SOCIO-CULTURAL EXPLANATIONS. For instance, the development of intelligence models elsewhere (in the non-evolution-related sciences) have not been so narrowly limited or severely curtailed as evolution proponents frequently state the case to be with ID/creationism. And any naturalistic intelligent design theory would most likely allow for more than the simple appeal to an intelligent organism. ID explanations have already been elaborated beyond the notions of a designer and creators, though not any creationist models in my observations. They must think there is never a need for an appeal to the design/intelligence model in science; that would ignore most of social science. Instead, they appeal to inanimate, incremental particles and force-conceptions (machine-oriented, systemic-functional models) that general materialistic causes will suffice in. I say evolution explanations are at times woefully unempirical (non-predictive and esoteric) and in some cases completely incomplete and inadequate functional mechanizations (as discussed below regarding the trends in increased biological complexity and intelligence as shown developed and elaborated on by the fossil record). You use intelligence AS NO APPEAL. DARWINISTS DON'T ATTRIBUTE CAUSE TO ANYTHING BUT FORCE AND PARTICLE EXPLANATIONS. In certain cases, two levels of explanations could both be right. Intelligence was behind a change, though, it can only be seen empirically in its effects. But it is around observable in constructs. You say this of nature as if it were an object and not abstraction. In fact, your belief and consummate appeal to naturalism as a panacea obviates any chance at making an appeal to idealism with a stated admission of your use of abstraction (such as nature and intelligence are as explanatory constructs). In some cases, we could even both be right; such is the case with behavioristic and phenomenological interpretations of behavior in psychology. It is both intelligence-guided and physical in representation. And naturalistic intelligence design/influence is exclusively natural-materialistic. You won't even hear of it!!! Your field ignores intelligent effect as an explanation; it is highly reductive of phenomena; at times exclusively particlistic. However, the real point I think they are missing in this relationship is that animate causes are materialistic natural causes, too. And the real materialistic choice at the organism's level I think is between random, environmentally-adaptive nudges/remnant-skewed statistical influences and directionally correlated, coordinated forces (more sensory-based and exploitive ones, thus animate). Neither explanation violates science's natural-materialistic paradigm. Thus I think the old ID "goddidit" arguments don't apply to naturalistic design; certainly not in the same way as they do to the Discovery Institute's form of nonmaterialistic ID. Both biological systems and organic functions can be viewed at purely inanimate, atomistic, self-integrating levels or at animate, more functional-systemic ones. And any adaptive or augmenting sensory feedback system or process in or around an organism or even in the environment would count as such (goal-directed, adaptive intelligence, as defined by Sternberg and Salter). And biological succession of forms over time has included trends toward greater integration and complexity, and increased intelligence in forms. One-celled organisms have purportedly led directly to the much the more complex and goal-directed organisms of today. THIS IS BUILT INTO THE NATURE OF ORGANISMS IN NATURALISTIC INTELLIGENT DESIGN as it happens consistently and by necessity. Increased complexity I see as a general intelligence pattern; even a theme. In time, hope or faith in survival could be the watershed - the actual driving and directing cause. And I think natural selection combined with mutations is a far too limited, general, seasonally based, and vague as a paired-mechanism; it is too limited a steering notion to explain such a very large directional weight in the fossil record pattern/skew alone. MultI-universe or so-called multiverse theory would explain such direction-accumulating aggregate patterns better if we have to dispense with observed, measurable causes and rely on statistical models alone (as we do with evolution explanations). Saying that greater complexity and intelligence are more adaptive simply begs the question I think. Historically speaking, such has simply been assumed on the basis of the argument of necessity and not actually demonstrated with evidence. Do bacteria get smarter or more goal-directed over time? Where's the evidence for any step up in their functional complexity? Some critics say ID gives a supernatural designer a blank check. I see atomistic and inanimate explanations of natural-materialistic cause giving natural selection a blank check. Neither can be empirically demonstrated currently to be a universal cause, especially for the increasing overall patterns of diversity and greater systemic integration in biological life. Yet natural selection is treated as the motley, universal cause of biology. You also said early on that a designer "could have done anything whatever -- leaving no means of distinguishing what it allegedly did from anything that might have happened but for which it was not responsible." It appears to me that abiogenesis has no trace evidence either, or any hope for finding such. It has a similar empirical-accountability deficiency. Some things in either theory (the theory of evolution or naturalistic ID as presented here) as a result probably have to be assumed rather than get left alone or ignored.. The rampant feature of rather bare, superficial and subjective criticisms in the creation vs. evolution debate in and of itself makes neither theory less or more scientific. Instead, it reduces considerations here to conceptions rather subjective, guttural and purely emotional. IN OTHER WORDS, DARWINISM DOES NOT HAVE THE CONCEPTUAL, EPISTEMOLOGICAL OR METHODOLOGICAL EXPERTISE IN ITS SPITEFUL BIGOTRY TO ENGAGE IN EXPERT DISCUSSIONS WITH METHODOLOGISTS IN THESE MATTERS. Darwinists typically as a consequence choose rather to cower apart and independent from any discussion of such matters. They as a group feign, deign, categorically ignore, evade critiques, and hide their lack of causal relationships and variable operation rather than to enter into active, pointed methodological discussions of the needs of hypothesis-based science in natural selection. They have no cause on multiple fronts. THEY ARE LOST IN DENIAL, STANDARDS FEINT AND TOPICAL EVASION, AND INTELLIGENCE-BASED ATTRIBUTIONS IN COMPLEX PHENOMENA ARE COMPLETELY LOST THEM.

SCIENTIFIC TRACE EVIDENCE FOR MAN BEING A DOMESTICATED SPECIES FROM A GARDEN OR YARD IN THE NEAR EAST 083016

2016-08-30T00:12:00.003-07:00

It is staggering to me how many findings in paleontology, genetics, and anthropology have turned up over the past twenty supporting in-species, short-term biological change. This is not evolution in spite of what generalists say. To them, all history and change are labelled in the common vernacular evolution by default. The secular and academic worlds worship naturalistic change only, and they reduce everything to particles and waves to barely (ridiculously sometimes) explain it. Can you imaging reducing love and intelligence to atomic theory or the periodic table of elements (to chemistry alone). Maybe a study of pheromones could hold up under such an analysis. But functionalism in systems: No! Oversimplification is what you have to do in order to circumvent the mind, insight, perception, ideas, intelligence and consciousness in all explanations, and ill-summarized phenomena is what you get out. Of course, the tutelage of God is left out of this even though there is ample physical evidence on Earth to demonstrate a higher being or power physically present and influencing matters here at times. Miracles (written up in the AMA Journal of the American Medical Association and the sky-descending White Hand of God visitations witnessed in vehicular rescues) are numerous and logically sufficient evidence to scientifically support by implication the existence of God or some similar higher power. I will show you how the pieces about man fit together best to currently support the whole book of Genesis. Why wouldn't an inquisitive, knowing person want help with that prospect? You probably won't understand all that I give you now. Don't worry; I am just getting started in deciding how to present all of this. But how about at least learning for the next thirty minutes from someone who took four years full time to study man's origins at the doctoral level and then thirty years to sort through the research findings in order to help settle the matter? Well, Prof. Kurt Wise of Truett McConnell University, the only Young Earth Creationist Baptist university in the U.S., should be the best to do that. He is the most respected creationist in America. Deservingly so. Even the top evolution proponent in the world, Dr. Richard Dawkins, speaks highly of his ability and integrity. Dr. Wise received a Ph.D from Harvard in geology (with a specialty in paleontology) studying under eminent paleontologist and vehement anti-creationist Stephen Gould. All the while, he took classes as a self-admitted Young Earther Creationist student. But like many creationists, he doesn't settle the matter by developing a scientific theory of creation. Wise simply admits when hard pressed that he resolutely ignores some scientific traditions (egs., dating methods; the fossil tree of common descent) in order to believe what the Bible says. This admission is what Dr. Dawkins likes most about him. It confirms Dawkins suspicions about creationists. I don't want to comprehensively overlook any particular group of research findings, because many of our kids can't, and they tend to be quite trusting. They view truth as something more basic and intrinsic to integrity than Biblical correctness. Many of them believe evolutionists cannot all be liars. And that is a fair appraisal to make of evolutionists. You can't be so callous about evolutionary proponents and terse with handling the findings if you want to attend college with an open, honest mind. Many evolutionists are frank in private with colleagues, but follow a rigid, official party line - which is very choreographed and even stereotyped in debate. They simply and critically ignore contrary evidence in public to do so, too. Picking up on this practice is crucial to outcomes in actual debates with them. And I speak from experience; I have written over a million words online in debate with them. I know the difference between supposed evolution, or change in species, and epigenetics, breed changes within one species. You should know about it, too. It is now blatantly obvious from the studies of epigenetics AND Genesis that we sprung from one breed into many races. And not from many species, but from one species. Racial changes are much more rapid and empirically validated than purported, highly rationalized common descent of all species from a one-cell organism (evolution) because you don't want to believe in a god/creator. "However, it is also apparent that morphological and physiological changes can occur in captivity ... Skeletons are also viewed as rigid, genetically defined entities; whereas in reality, they are entirely plastic, responding significantly to behavioral and environmental stimuli." (in Mammalian Review, 2005, Vol. 35, No. 3&4, pp. 215-216) Domestication takes concerted effort and a focus to work its marvelous transformations; nature is seasonal and has no such determination. That's why it doesn't turn up/appear as a cause or empirical independent variable in real-world observations. Vocational entities act in that way - more out of concerted effort than their intelligence per se. Genesis shows such a deliberate family-shaping and molding theme! A multigenerational theme could do it! Whole genes, or linear slices of DNA, rapidly turn on in captivity, but they don't tend to turn off in feral, or returning-to-the-wild species. Many domestication scientists publicly fear zoo animals cannot return to the wild after 200 years of inbreeding. This means, I believe, that genetic drift in the wild is not due to DNA mutations, but likely gene switching. Artificial selection forces are also keen, potent, quickly responsive, physically observable in phenotypic all manifestation (and were in Genesis when the occurred), most potent in captivity. On the other hand, purported natural selection forces (evolution's so-called evolutionary "mechanisms") are almost if not completely non-existent as empirical representations in the wild as observables. Darwinists have to rationalize them to imagine them at work and at play. Also, the latter are incapable of being empirically detected, measured, or even actually seen in action, i.e., while in process. This should not be (in science). It is methodologically due to the absence of any causal features. Artificial or domestication pressures have no such hidden data. Natural selection's mere systemic-functional ties or system lies resulting in great or severe observational handicaps/empirical liabilities can only be suggested expost facto to observation in evolutionists' conclusions and evaluations. Changes are fast in captivity; not the unbelievable creeping-crawling, supposedly environmentally selected mutations that evolution rationalizes after the fact as occuring. Domestication process are different. They are about a plastic species changing DUE TO management in captivity. We represent the pinnacle of biological creatures on this planet, yet we bear all of the anatomical trademarks of pets that came from some household. Now, I know that was more than a mouthful to swallow, but I had to get it out in the open ... Some of these fundamental or basic features coming from individuals and turning into large family/community traits are actually referred to in Genesis, including great differences in body size variation being found in a particular breed (giants vs. dwarfs), body hair differences (hairy Esau vs. virtually hairless Jacob), racial markings and color diversity, along with vocational specialization in very large communities. Those features are now being found and studied in modern man as coming to only one species. That fact should supply much encouragement to the creationist origins position. It should also yield biological insights into the actual processes involved in man as a single species that split into numerous races. His racial features are most likely breed features that have developed like those of human pets, but only to a lesser degree with fewer domestication traces in livestock. Man's recent breed characteristics most closely reflects those of pets, not livestock, tame scavengers, or wild species. Genesis traces are written in our bones and races! Still, building a creationist theory closest to the Genesis story can take nearly lifetime of experience, a lot of professional findings cut and paste, and a very difficult time pondering what arguments to actually apply. Herein lies the value in my approach. I have access to those documents and a piqued interest to check them out. I have been looking. Perhaps many creationists just give up and revert to the Bible-only view of life. In the search for scientific creationist arguments, a lot could fall to time and chance: I was an anthropology doctoral student; whereas Wise was a biologist and geologist. Weaving origins findings together into a theory is difficult, however, until you've by chance hit upon a significant body of anthropological and biological findings that fit together In a cluster so astonishing and ideal so as to exhibit a close match with the Genesis account. It took an anthropologist writing a domestication view of man from New Zealand (the late Peter Wilson in The Domestication of the Human Species) to call my attention to the domestication literature and the scientific fact that it applies to man. He saw the pet and livestock parallel represented in man's bone morphology and racial heritage first; long before I did. I just add a slightly different twist or attribution of cause, more traits to form a super-domestication pet complex (vs. mere breeding/lifestock domestication trait list), and its amazing religious parallels (the details mentioned about the first men found in the Book of Genesis). Genesis, by the way, is a family heritage book more than a human family origins book. It is an introduction history to the races of man, as well. And that is how it so closely matches the fossil record as to be astonishing! The domestication view of man being biologically most like pets and not like livestock in the fossil and other anatomical trace evidence is astonishingly good. My interpretation of its cause is precedent-based, and more so than Wilson's view. My racial origins theory talked about here is predicated on the majority view domestication argument in science, i.e., seeing an intelligent entity at the center of the cause. There is important evidence and precedence here for concluding that. My view is a logical increment away from the traditional application of already-established scientific findings drawn out to a logical conclusion that man's process of domestication was the same as was later used with other domesticated species. In general terms, it says that an entity-domesticator's trade expertise or handiwork was the cause. Now that's as much based on scientific and causal precedence in domestication studies as you can get. Notwithstanding, no academician or scientist at the Ph.D level wants to go so far as to say an entity domesticated man; of course. That would be as much as admitting outright that there is physical evidence for God. But that is precisely the conclusion that animal husbandry and breeds' developments draws us out to. It stands one step away. Domestication implies that artificial selection or a designer's hand is a process continually set in motion us, too, i.e., scientifically speaking, that it leads to different breeds in pets and man. This is not natural selection. There is no detectable or observable natural selection as independent variable or cause coming from the environment; no logical cause; only after-the-fact speculation. Natural selection theory is not predictive. At most, what evolutionists see might be called genetic drift. There is no empirically observable antecedant for it. But random drift is best described by epigenetics, the study of genes that are already present turning on and off; not created by mutated DNA. Epigenetics as such has profound implications for creationism. I think the field is as rich a reservoir of findings as the systemic-functional evidence for designer necessity in cells and organs, i.e., the mainly Baptist-Methodist intelligent design (ID) view couched as a predictive blueprint of life that's implicit in the very structure of DNA and cell formation. ID is also a pretty good, functional view supporting the argument for a Creator. The professional reluctance in academia to admit a biological designer being implicit and precedented in physical, scientific interpretations of life is based on political, career-professional, and job-protection considerations based on an only materialistic view of the world. That didn't work with communism. But academicians still get ostracized by a highly visible, vocal, political, naturalist lobby. An idealist or pure theorist just can have no role to play in science these days unless it is an argument politically in vogue (or he is in cosmology or particle physics - scientific disciplines that are highly theoretical). My view here of there being ample biological trace evidence directly reflecting God's handiwork demonstrates numerous scientific features that closely mirror what is portrayed in the Genesis about early humans and their racial developments. It is more of an argument than a full-blown theory. Yet there is sufficient genetic and anatomical evidence. Giants are explained by breeds (races), as are dwarfs, and the Pigmies of Africa; Cain's Mark is near the top of the list, too; and especially notable is the import and consequences that Cain read into his physically obvious mark. Perhaps it was like former USSR Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's skin mark or Michael Jackson's pigmentation anomaly. If not, it was actually breed difference. The bone and biological distinctiveness of modern man also follows the Genesis storyline and matches its template: settlement and subsistence (work;industry;produce) practices do, for instance, occur only in modern man. Agriculture and pastoralism are limited to modern man also, and developed almost instantaneously in the Genesis account; taxonomic and analytic mental skills, too; cities, nations, industry, and social hierarchies and vocations all resulted and explained by it to a more limited degree. Yet these only appear in modern man in both Genesis and prehistorical evidence. And by now they can all be predicated on fossil (or mineral deposition preserving bone features) evidence found in genes switching on or off! Epigenetics may turn into a great watershed for creationists. Our time as creationists for obtaining government and scientific legitimacy has come, I believe! In addition, Darwin proponents (evolutionists who promote Darwin's natural selection and purely naturalistic common descent model over an intelligent design target, religious model, or even feedback-guided naturalistic one) get frantically enraged upon learning of it. This taught me a lesson. What agitates them most apparently scares them, though they cannot believe that psychological perspective of their reaction could be correct. How so? I think they are so used to hearing Bible verses quoted back to them that they don't know how to react to a new interpretation of their own findings handed them logically on a silvered-findings platter. I've suffered through numerous soul-wrenching personal struggles and flurries of reactionary verbal abuse from evolutionists as they gradually become aware that a creationist is reinterpreting rock solid and crystal-clear (in science) domestication-of-modern-man findings. It's a view in anthropology that was originally presented by the late New Zealand Anthropology Professor Peter Wilson. My addition is extending cause to its most scientifically logical outgrowth and most rational conclusion; I apply evolutionists' most frequent historical precedent and general cause to it. That precedent is that traditional pet and livestock interpretations in domestication focus on an entity (man) as cause. They often become emotionally unhindged while hearing it unravelled in findings-support fashion before them. Their consequent irrational and abrupt shift into a simple and scientifically empty derogation of my own application/position is a blatant tip-off that this explanation of well-documented scientific facts must have struck a nerve somewhere. I think it is an upset in their science, and religious antipathy. But I am only attributing cause just like what they do with other creatures domestication findings. Notwithstanding, I am methodologically well-trained enough in science and statistics to recognize when I'm being dealt a highly emotional snow-blower job, an intellectual rip off, or a cheap academic chop shop when polemically looking right at them. Just hearing for the first time the domestication theory of man by Peter Wilson exploited to its most scientific consistent conclusion of there being a an entity-domesticator for humans, too, as well as for pets and livestock makes most Darwin believers fly into a frantic rage of talking to themselves. They typically become first silent, then ingenuous, and then harshly sarcastic, and after that spiteful - in that precise order. It's like going through shock for them. And that's on one of their good days. This highly animate emotional response sequence is the most telling feature for revealing their switch into a defensive posture and ingenuous intellectual mode. Seeing that irrational process over and over again is another reason why I am presenting this argument publicly. Even if I am wrong and find insufficient support to cite later for some of these details, the thesis and trait package seen in general terms remains valid. It's main thrust is secure, already being supported (though that will now go into hiding, based on evolutional traditional political policy) by many evolutionist. Its just the source and explanation of this trait complex in man as well as pets that will come under fire! They cannot question its parallels in Genesis: giants, races, regional migrations, global impact, cities, armies (huge social organizations), institutions of society, metallurgy, industries/trades and magnificent linguistic and writting recording capacity. These are not found in so-called proto-men. However, after finding this scientifically hidden, theoretical prospect of the reinterpretation of a group of their findings, one still has to contend with Joseph's brothers. You have other creationists' defense responses to fend off or deal with. Most notably, you have to face the cautious constraints that try to keep evangelicals believing ONLY in pat, traditional views as stated in the form of traditional platitudes and people believing only in Bible-derived truth. These people do not believe in science unless it supports what they intuitively believe. The literally interpreted Bible is not the only formidable challenge you have to confront; narrow-mindedness, too. I am a literal Bible believer myself. That is why I am providing this new interpretation from science. But not every tradition-based, literal interpretation is apt or correct, just as not every scientific one is either. Men are men - and I one. What is most important in this area of contention is this, I think: The information I want to present here gets the closest yet I think scientifically to the Genesis account that origins studies and science in academia will logically and methodologically allow currently. And it is VERY close. But not in the way you might think. It has to accept epigenetics (genes switching on and off) and breed/races changing. This is evidenced in Genesis! I think literal-Bible believing people will have no problem accepting the concept of pet breeds and man's races being from the same process. But epigentics put it in the place of DNA mutation changes/evolution may present a problem. I just want to say that it works well in that use. Why? It accurately describes in a scientific manner what must of happened with man in Genesis without using evolution (natural selection, gene flow, mutation, genetic drift, etc., at all). Doing that was the underlying, fundamental research finding and theoretical premise in my search for a scientific Genesis theory here. We have races (righteous "seed," a strange breed, Cain's mark, etc.) mentioning in Genesis, with size-variety exploding into giants as one result, subsistence differences, and interbreeding causing a new human variety (a noble race of giants). We also have very large societies, social stratification, trades, professions, metallurgy, prisons, international travel, well digging, architecture, mathematics, schools, storage facilities, preservation techniques, grainaries, warehouses, cities, armies, nation states, civilization, slavery, and mass warfare. I believe in a worldwide flood around 4,000 years ago. Kurt Wise has the massive and extensive volcanic eruption evidence to support the view of global, mile-high tsumanis then and justify a good explanation for the milder, more spotty pattern of eruptions of volcanoes worldwide since then. And our own Dr. Arlo Moehlenpah of Stockton, CA has presented recent living tree-ring records that go back only that far. That's great scientific evidence for a global flood - in both cases! It makes Darwinists irrate, too. The real emotional challenge is getting them to rationally deal with any findings contrary to their fundamental paradigms of gradualism and naturalism. My domestication of man explanation here is another thorn in the flesh for them. My view as herein described shows that a plethora of scientific, anatomical finds does show what Genesis says. But it only works scientifically because man has the same distinct domestication trace group of features as animals he has affected, i.e., an extensive line or complex of features that trace the development of the domesticated dog, cat, horses, sheep, and pigs. They did not evolve, but developed breedal characteristics as shown in epigenetics instead. Such variety was already built into their species' genes that were turned on or off. However, domesticated species including man have exhibited a great tendency to display varying anatomical features and differentiate significantly within a broad range of the concept/notion of "kinds." Kurt Wise has spent a lifetime looking for research findings that support the traditional 6 twenty-four hour days Young Earth Creation view. I agree with him that man is only 6,000 years old since the geneologies of Adam to Christ leave little room for doubt. YEC people such as Wise believe it could range up to 10,000 years. I don't care about dating; only the processes used to get man to where he is now and where the Bible said he went concern me. Perhaps I am as admittedly blind as Wise, but only when it comes to dating methods of strata and fossils in them. Or maybe I just don't think that's where Genesis' thrust is at all. It's all about origins and the nature of man to me; not choosing between millions or thousands of years. The Bible says "day," not years. That's why I am of the Old Earth Creationist school of belief. I believe man is young (even all evolutionists including the Darwinists admit that - relative to other species); the Earth is old. Wise and Frank Marsh developed the "baramin" or kinds view in the 1990s. That is the creationist taxonomy system I hold to. A baramin is the "kind" of Genesis ranging from a species collectively to a genus. For example, to a YEC and Wise, the lion and tiger are of one feline baramin. Not to me. The horse, donkey, and zebra comprise another. I agree with them on that. Species within the same baramin can all interbreed and produce at least infertile offspring. But somewhere in-between what we know as species and the larger genera lies a vague and almost imperceptible dividing line. It separates species in the past and those of the present that could by interbreeding still produce virile offspring (the traditional, passe' definition of same species). Breeds (races), not species, are what is important to me; they tell us much about Genesis. But classification of kinds (baramins) is still mostly a hypothetical paper exercise currently - even for the best geneticists, evolutionists, and creationists. You can't interbreed genomes on paper or in a computer simulation program (yet). Somewhere in the baramin or Biblical "kinds" lies the answer, however. So Wise and Marsh are onto something and solving problems with their taxonomy. I think I have found the key to where the Genesis cause of the origin of man is: Domesticated trace evidence. Domestication trace evidence is a very distinctive biological pattern that is only present in a particular group of creatures with a very typical experience. It is not present other animals. It is a very rare biological marker in animals, numerically speaking: a complex of features in bone structure and other anatomical features that reflect experience and the processes they developed from - both in their lifetimes and forming multi-generationally into races/breeds. Man did the same. Forensics (the study of deceased bodies) and fossil studies shed scientific light on the Genesis account by focusing on such life-experience and breed-developing traits. How does this relate to man? This is a group of skeletal traits and racial development pattern that shows than man was in a garden or like place - a palace's arborem, zoo, stockade, corral, yard, oasis, farm, or terrarium. It also shows that he lived a captured, restricted, highly controlled existence with a caretaker of comparative superior intelligence and stature, and in a long-lasting relationship. That is because it can very convincing be argued before high schoolers that humans are MOST LIKE dogs, cats, sheep, and pigs in their most recently acquired breedal traits. I have the trait list to support it and back up that as the best view!! The following goal was stated in the Genesis account: God gave man a purpose to take "dominion." He was told that he would rule over the rest of creation (which was lowered in its scope or extent in the curse after his fall). The domesticated trait package he has is formidable and enlightening in this sense. It means he was shaped in the image God had in his mind. This trait complex in domesticated animals and is a big deal - of great scientific import and Biblical significance to the origin of man! Also shedding light on man's origins - the earliest fossils of modern man are found in the Israel; almost double the age of the earliest ones found in Ethiopia. These factors collectively place his origins in what the Book of Genesis calls a garden of sorts in the Near East Crescent. The science of domestication studies now backs the Biblical view up, though no one yet has written about it as God-controlled. The anti-religious scientists I have dealt with arbitrarily substitute culture for this grand knight in only the case of modern man to avoid discussions about God doing the domestication in His image (design intent, plan, or imagination). Yet man is put at center of the focus in all other full domestication scientific cases, and not his culture. The quirkish, experimental preferences of a series of caretaker individuals are the cause, in fact! Of all things! How scientifically unprecedented and small-minded/bigoted to make an ennobled savage exception of man in stark contrast to all other fully domesticated creatures able to live in a domestic, social setting! We are almost godlike if not just God-appointed (all-pervading and all-encompassing our environs) in our dominion over this Earth, yet no domesticated breed has ever made itself before man or without man. Why should man's own origin be viewed as a scientific anomaly? Isn't science supposed to be consistent in its explanations? The answer of why a domesticator is not included in the origins of modern man is anti-religious bias. Worship of man in the form of humanism or as the noble savage is why. But such an idealistic and romanticized view of man's role to exalt/lift up himself in the past as epitomized best in Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind is scientifically passe'! Most evolutionists say culture or living in large groups did it. I don't. I think the biology as outlined in the Book of Genesis did!! HOW UNBELIEVABLY IRONIC THAT NEW GENESIS-TRACE CREATIONISM IS BASED ON DIRECT BIOLOGICAL-TRACE EVIDENCE AND MODERN-MAN EVOLUTION IS FOUNDED PRIMARILY ON ABSTRACTIONS ABOUT CULTURE. This distinct package of garden-variety or derived/raised/grown bone and racially diverse biological traits can best be described as a designer's palette of personal selection opportunites. Species rate notoriously as mailable/flexible breed selection options and opportunities in captivity (but not in the wild), though also quite prototypical (general-type fixed or core-centered) in terms of what produces virile young. Domestication changes happen much, much faster than purported evolution of species. Domestication traces in man as well as pets and livestock taken as an interlocking complex show a potent process of intensive, intelligent selection at work: resulting in trace evidence features not found biologically in the wild. In man's case, it is not even in preceding modern-man-like forms such as Cro-Magnon man, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo habilis, or Homo erectus! This could be the creationist's answer to evolution in general! This I think is a revolutionary and phenomenal scientific discovery. It resets the scientific clock back to the Biblical view in Genesis on the subject of man's origins! Darwinian natural selection was not and is not at work in the creation of modern man! This is what the biological domestication evidence on man's origins as initially and too succinctly portrayed by Prof. Peter Wilson shows. He attributed the trait complex in man to sedentary or only domicile living. That is making an exception in domestication studies of man; not working from a logical, historical extension of cause as an entity as universally attributed in other domestication studies, but from outside the discipline, i.e., an anti-religious, naturalistic tradition-only based view of man. Anthropologists must always professionally place culture in the role/place of God lording over matters. So man led at least a corralled, protected existence by a benefactor of regal standing controlling his life at first. That's what the biological and genetic trace evidence of modern man shows. In these last days, God's presence has returned in the form of influence has returned of Christ and His Spirit to complete this highly selective, artificially (mentally orchestrated), kingly process of perfecting man. The listed species three paragraphs above are fossils of real animals that our children as students have to bicker over with evolutionists as being pre-human/proto-human. Certain facts from domestication studies could help us understand the scientific origins of man and the Bible a little better. For instance, modern man is the only Homo or man-like animal/form to have spread globally, reflecting considerably superior intelligence, technology, and social complexity compared to any creatures coming before him and/or looking like him. This is remarkable. No other single species has such global distribution and artificially induced biological variability - able to fill nearly any environmental niche and intellectually and technologically adapt to any condition / even the barreness outer space. I just saw another Japanese astronaut take off this morning for the International Space Station! How appropriate: from the most domesticated race of man, biologically speaking! Man's expansive distributional march across the globe was unstoppable given his physical and intellectual trait package. And the evidence show it was selected by a Domesticator. Also, modern man has agriculture (started with Cain in the Bible) and animal husbandry/pastoralism (with Able in Genesis). It precipitated Cain’s jealousy and assault. There is no need to question this. Homo species before man did not and could not achieve agriculture. They didn't have the technology, social complexity, or linguistic sophistication for it. In addition, we also have much more gracile/soft contour bone features (most typically reflected in the smooth bone transitions at the edges, currently in their most pronounced form in Asians – Asians are the most domesticated having little body hair, smooth bone edges, reduced size and skull features). We are also multi-breeds/races (smoothed bone-feature contours, diverse hair and skin colors not found in the wild or in hunting/gathering man-like species at all before Adam). This feature comes in domestication from God or man shaping forms either consciously or unconsciously in his own image (preplanning; imagination), not from society or cultural mores. Individuals did this including aesthetics and desired fumctions as goals. Racial features are not found in wild/undomesticated creatures, i.e., creatures not raised in captivity or similar circumstances. A sampling of one or two domesticated features are found in tame, human-tolerant scavenging species. Dog, cat, sheep, and pig breeds have this intense, many-featured domestication complex. They were raised under intensely controlled conditions of captivity and manipulation. Modern man evidently, scientifically-speaking according to trace features, was, too. He has many biological traits or features/traces showing he was raised the same or a very similar (not noticeably different scientifically) manner. Asians have lost most body hair just like domesticated pigs and some breeds of dogs have. It is unlikely that culture caused this in man because caretaker preferences for the most part caused it in domesticated animals, not enculturation, socialization, or social mores. They were more personal knowledge and preferences with some selective purpose or end goal in mind. So with man. Let's look at some more super-domestication trait features not found in the wild species (and best typified by man, dog, cats, sheep, and pigs). These very domesticated species display less sexual dimorphism (the feature of marked physical differences between the genders - esp. shown by the absence of heavy skeletal edges and bony protuberances) and reduced head/cranium size compared to any foregoing, wild, similar-resembling species. It’s like they’ve all been skeletally remolded from the wild into a softer, smaller, more variable, graceful form. After this, pigmy and giant breeds appear. The same was true in man. The former is in Homo florensis. The latter are in Genesis, Joshua, Genesis, and other historical accounts. The skull and brain are smaller in modern man than any preceding, similar forms, but like Einsteinwas, the latter are more intelligent and socially-technically superior. (In man, this is especially the case when comparing to the directly preceding Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man.) Their social abilities, group size, hunting patterns and toolkits were inferior! This shows there was no direct common descent coming from the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man to modern man. Instead, it took a Domesticator to get involved, just as it did with other intensely domesticated animals. A domesticator is caretaker-captor, a manager and shaper of lives and generations who is in close and intense control. They much more intelligent so as to be protective of them from wild conditions and selective in their breeding partners. There is strong indications in Genesis that the first families of modern humans were managed in this way. Such captivity and micro-management is why these animals are called domesticated species. Man was raised (micro-managed) in a similar way to dogs, cats, pigs, and sheep. His biological traits reveal this. I believe the trace evidence show it was an intelligence directly at work, our Creator, our own intelligent Domesticator – just as there has always been in the development of other domesticated species. Man should be no exception. It is simply on the basis of an adore of nature and worship of godless naturalism that a super intelligence as in the case of dogs and cats, etc., is not considered .He is the first cause in everything. Here is the central scientific truth of the man-origins matter: Man was in God’s image, made under similar biological conditions that can be traced in modern dogs, sheep, and cats. Many of their refined physical traits do not resemble the crude, non-distinctive features borne by any wild species. We still bear the complex of traits that is the domestication footprint – God's handiwork stamp or fingerprint. Then, after being shaped in God's image, we proceeded in similar manner to create our own breeds from the models of wild species in our own, not God's image. The process/trace package is there to prove it! Man was raised under controlled conditions to fit some superio's authoritarian goal and own imaginative purpose, artificial and unnatural a mental notion! Natural selection was not involved or even on the mix. Superior, aesthetic, controlling images are! The bible inasmuch as says this in Genesis, too. Modern man also show a broad range in overall body size and height much larger than in the wild varying from dwarf and pygmy size (Homo foresiensis) to giants with six fingers and toes (as no other creature other than a domesticated animals has). This great size variation is due to domestication/animal husbandry and is best known to the public as occurring in the form of large and very small dog breeds. Only modern men had and have cities, too (as was mentioned throughout Genesis). City origins as well as human origins are found in the Near East. This is significant. Only modern man had the intelligence to develop highly complex and extensive social orders and the extensive agriculture, sanitation, and irrigation needed to support the development of cities with populations numbering over 20,000 people. Paleontologists, biologists, geneticists, and anthropologists considered all the above domestication traits to be racial or breed differences 30 years ago in one much larger and longer-lasting Homo species before, but now are starting to conclude the distinctive package is in a much smaller group, only in modern man, with a much shorter history. They go so far now as to say that modern man is a linguistically separate (Chomsky, Bickerman, and Phil Lieberman at Wash. U.), physically distinct, revolutionary new species, but they won’t admit that a domesticator Was at work – since it reveals a God in existence and involved. But with all other domesticated species, a Godlike species in control was the case in their development, and it is shown in their bone structure traces. Why would man be treated differently as to the first cause of his biological domestication process? Ans., Only anti-religious bigotry. Creationists now have the biological trace evidence and are consistent in their handling of explanations of it consistent with other heavily domesticated species (vs. wild species traits and distributions). . I think discovering and reporting these facts about man’s Domesticator-derived origins, i.e., shaped by the hand of God, is on par with the Star of David/Bethlehem planet-alignment reinterpretation of 40 years ago for Christianity. Similarly, it is also based on new scientific discoveries applied to and paired up with an incident or incidents in the Bible narrative or storyline. I think man growing up in the yard of a palace, dwelling, or similar (the worldwide typical niche for domesticated dogs and cats) best explains modern man's existence - at least in terms of his very distinctive structural form including bone modeling/morphology. Domestication (captivity) and forensic (grave/cemetery tissue and bone markers) actually trace such situations and environments as reflected in the bones of breeds (races) – even typical events in the life of one individual – accumulated in just in one generation. If they are a farmer or husbandman/shepherd, it is revealed in their bones through observation after death and even in fossilization. In the near future, we may find that pelvis bones and upper leg joints (in the groin/loin region) reflect in lifestyle-bone forensics that hunter/gathers sat squat with the ground as Asians tend to do to this day, and that western modern men sat on seats and stools (with the implication being covered dwellings). That would be the next place to look for these markers in bone in relation to man's origin, I think. The point of this is that science does back up the Genesis story of man’s creation and family progress. He is different and superior in many respects to any creature God put on this Earth - in both records. Science is only recently coming around to that view. (Science is slow; domestication is not - relatively speaking.) We can even tell much about current people’s lives and daily habits by just looking at their bones using a Ct scan - just as much as we can the first anatomically modern humans uncovered in the Near East. We can trace events in Genesis; the record/story/trace is also written in their bones! Genesis teaches us that a captivating God watches over and improves a family, their lives, their fortunes, their values, and their bodies! A family directed and at times controlled by God is one major theme of Genesis. Genesis is the Book about God's household; God's family - foremost. Our ministers and children need to understand what discoveries scientists are holding back/hiding from us (but appearing in their professional journals) due to the discoveries’ similarity with the Bible and traditional Christian beliefs. This withholding is most likely being unconsciously done due to a shared prejudice/group standard among the evolutionists in America. I have debated them to the tune of a million words. The spite creationists receive from them is most likely due to their competition with and hatred of religion in general. Ministers and children alike need to know why men ought to be convinced with certainty nowadays in the accuracy of the message of Genesis and the Bible in general as Christians are presenting them. That is why I have attempted to make clear in scientific terms a clarification of some of Genesis features and human family origins in this position paper. If we are to characterize Adam's instantaneously created features as they were intended to be revealed in his bones and later racial developments in Genesis, this is how it looks and worked during the time of Genesis. This is perhaps a novel Biblical interpretation of the theme of races. But races are the same as breeds, and that is an old biological story shown more or less in many domesticated creatures. Or, this could be only a restatement of someone's old family position. In Genesis, this thesis maintains that some entity (which we'll call God for now) controlled marriages, family interbreeding, subsistence, locations, migrations, and resource access. It's about as good a thesis as saying man, domiciles, or material culture caused them by blindsiding selection. There are also the convincing signs/markers for all of this. Man was a pet. All markers of artificial selection, management, and control are there. So it doesn't really matter what we characterize it generally as at this level; for what shows most is the historical and physical trace evidence of selective actions done aforetimes. It is reflected in BOTH the Genesis narrative and the biological traces. At minimum,it is indeed a modern biological fact. The physical or idealistic import of intelligence shown in selection is the only real remaining mystery. WAS IT CAUSED BY AN ENTITY OR NOT? All other artificial selection is! It is also a multidisciplinary description of the trace evidence as it relates to the science, story, and process of racial beginnings that is shown here. It that can be found in evidence abundantly in Genesis narrative form; in bones sufficiently; not just a thematic form in the Book of Genesis. Genesis is a story of racial developments. It is also a story that is shown in our formative biology. And that is a central point for Christianity. It certainly shows us a wonderful religious AND scientific lesson: You really can't get away from the family influence, connections, and ultimate control of God. Breed diversity is what we began with and have always had since we came in contact with a higher entity or power, needed for protection to cause racial diversity. God's provision and direction are in his life-management change. Let's wax poetic here if not simply a bit religious as cosmology and astrophysics does: In it and through it we were born, reared and bred. That is the premier message of Genesis. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being..." (Acts 17: 28). Our racial developments are not completely over yet, so to speak. We as a people are intended for more. The rest of the Bible and some of science teach us that. That God will make a new breed out of mankind again is foretold and well-precedented, too. And in eternal life, we can all be included in the bodily change. He beckons to us to transform us yet again: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2 God is at the center of all of His family's changes. He is the God of all races and breeds; of all of life and times. We are on the journey of a lifetime. He is our Father and our intended destination. Genesis teaches us this lesson more than once, and it is written very well. It is written in His Word as well as inscribed on our hearts. It is even written within the message of our skin and bones.

A Naturalistic Intelligent Design Morning Thought

2016-08-22T17:19:00.003-07:00

The Earth itself is intelligent, righting our wrongs... This, too, is both a Biblical view and view of Biblical proportions. And what Mother Earth cannot do, faith, hope, and love can do in balancing and optomizing matter(s into...

ADMIXTURE THEORY OF NATURALISTIC INTELLIGENCE

2016-08-16T19:38:00.003-07:00

The basic unit of intelligence is a pair. That means the fundamental element of intelligence is a spinning bipolar mass attracting mass and energy and some form of secondary weaker linear force interfering with it over time through attraction/expulsion in a non-arbitrary, beneficial manner, or essentially the accumulated summed over the means squared beneficial affects of any such primary and secondary force pair. Example: waves or momentum through space being offset by gravity distortion/waves. Benefits: bent light and an orbit. Second/interfering/basic intelligence forces which serve to repell/deter weakly: light, momentum, magnetism, electricity, reactions, thought... These dual-interacting forces lend direction, or intelligence to mass and space. Everything simple and complex above the quantum level is built on and made more complex by that essentially dialectic principle of momentum being offset by a bias/offset(viz., elemental intelligence): atoms, star systems, systemics, function, health/sickness, repair/breakdown, the tree of life, ideas, institutions, the senses, marriage/divorce. At quantum levels, we only have particle energy and probabilities. A GRADUAL BIAS TOWARDS INTEGRATION IS BUILT INTO EVERYTHING IN NATURE WITH CONTRAVENING DISINTEGRATIONS BEING THE RARE EXCEPTIONS DOWN TO THE ATOMIC LEVEL AS A RESULT - AND THUS INTELLIGENCE, or interference with momentum - makes things more more or less complex - not accidents!!! This is one of the fundamental positions of naturalistic intelligent design - not godless - but naturally assistive to the point of being God-like. SOMETHING SUBTLE, THOUGH DESIGN-ORIENTED ON EARTH WAS AND IS!!

SCIENTIFIC TRACE EVIDENCE FOR MAN BEING A DOMESTICATED SPECIES FROM A GARDEN OR YARD IN THE NEAR EAST

2016-08-01T22:38:00.003-07:00

SCIENTIFIC TRACE EVIDENCE FOR MAN BEING A DOMESTICATED SPECIES FROM A GARDEN OR YARD IN THE NEAR EAST

2016-08-01T22:38:00.002-07:00

It is staggering to me how many findings in paleontology, genetics, and anthropology have turned up over the past twenty supporting in-species, short-term biological change. This is not evolution in spite of what generalists say. To them, all history and change are labelled in the common vernacular evolution by default. The secular and academic worlds worship naturalistic change only, and they reduce everything to particles and waves to barely (ridiculously sometimes) explain it. Can you imaging reducing love and intelligence to atomic theory or the periodic table of elements (to chemistry alone). Maybe a study of pheromones could hold up under such an analysis. But functionalism in systems: No! Oversimplification is what you have to do in order to circumvent the mind, insight, perception, ideas, intelligence and consciousness in all explanations, and ill-summarized phenomena is what you get out. Of course, the tutelage of God is left out of this even though there is ample physical evidence on Earth to demonstrate a higher being or power physically present and influencing matters here at times. Miracles (written up in the AMA Journal of the American Medical Association and the sky-descending White Hand of God visitations witnessed in vehicular rescues) are numerous and logically sufficient evidence to scientifically support by implication the existence of God or some similar higher power. I will show you how the pieces about man fit together best to currently support the whole book of Genesis. Why wouldn't an inquisitive, knowing person want help with that prospect? You probably won't understand all that I give you now. Don't worry; I am just getting started in deciding how to present all of this. But how about at least learning for the next thirty minutes from someone who took four years full time to study man's origins at the doctoral level and then thirty years to sort through the research findings in order to help settle the matter? Well, Prof. Kurt Wise of Truett McConnell University, the only Young Earth Creationist Baptist university in the U.S., should be the best to do that. He is the most respected creationist in America. Deservingly so. Even the top evolution proponent in the world, Dr. Richard Dawkins, speaks highly of his ability and integrity. Dr. Wise received a Ph.D from Harvard in geology (with a specialty in paleontology) studying under eminent paleontologist and vehement anti-creationist Stephen Gould. All the while, he took classes as a self-admitted Young Earther Creationist student. But like many creationists, he doesn't settle the matter by developing a scientific theory of creation. Wise simply admits when hard pressed that he resolutely ignores some scientific traditions (egs., dating methods; the fossil tree of common descent) in order to believe what the Bible says. This admission is what Dr. Dawkins likes most about him. It confirms Dawkins suspicions about creationists. I don't want to comprehensively overlook any particular group of research findings, because many of our kids can't, and they tend to be quite trusting. They view truth as something more basic and intrinsic to integrity than Biblical correctness. Many of them believe evolutionists cannot all be liars. And that is a fair appraisal to make of evolutionists. You can't be so callous about evolutionary proponents and terse with handling the findings if you want to attend college with an open, honest mind. Many evolutionists are frank in private with colleagues, but follow a rigid, official party line - which is very choreographed and even stereotyped in debate. They simply and critically ignore contrary evidence in public to do so, too. Picking up on this practice is crucial to outcomes in actual debates with them. And I speak from experience; I have written over a million words online in debate with them. I know the difference between supposed evolution, or change in species, and epigenetics, breed changes within one species. You should know about it, too. It is now blatantly obvious from the studies of epigenetics AND Genesis that we sprung from one breed into many races. And not from many species, but from one species. Racial changes are much more rapid and empirically validated than purported, highly rationalized common descent of all species from a one-cell organism (evolution) because you don't want to believe in a god/creator. "However, it is also apparent that morphological and physiological changes can occur in captivity ... Skeletons are also viewed as rigid, genetically defined entities; whereas in reality, they are entirely plastic, responding significantly to behavioral and environmental stimuli." (in Mammalian Review, 2005, Vol. 35, No. 3&4, pp. 215-216) Domestication takes concerted effort and a focus to work its marvelous transformations; nature is seasonal and has no such determination. That's why it doesn't turn up/appear as a cause or empirical independent variable in real-world observations. Vocational entities act in that way - more out of concerted effort than their intelligence per se. Genesis shows such a deliberate family-shaping and molding theme! A multigenerational theme could do it! Whole genes, or linear slices of DNA, rapidly turn on in captivity, but they don't tend to turn off in feral, or returning-to-the-wild species. Many domestication scientists publicly fear zoo animals cannot return to the wild after 200 years of inbreeding. This means, I believe, that genetic drift in the wild is not due to DNA mutations, but likely gene switching. Artificial selection forces are also keen, potent, quickly responsive, physically observable in phenotypic all manifestation (and were in Genesis when the occurred), most potent in captivity. On the other hand, purported natural selection forces (evolution's so-called evolutionary "mechanisms") are almost if not completely non-existent as empirical representations in the wild as observables. Darwinists have to rationalize them to imagine them at work and at play. Also, the latter are incapable of being empirically detected, measured, or even actually seen in action, i.e., while in process. This should not be (in science). It is methodologically due to the absence of any causal features. Artificial or domestication pressures have no such hidden data. Natural selection's mere systemic-functional ties or system lies resulting in great or severe observational handicaps/empirical liabilities can only be suggested expost facto to observation in evolutionists' conclusions and evaluations. Changes are fast in captivity; not the unbelievable creeping-crawling, supposedly environmentally selected mutations that evolution rationalizes after the fact as occuring. Domestication process are different. They are about a plastic species changing DUE TO management in captivity. We represent the pinnacle of biological creatures on this planet, yet we bear all of the anatomical trademarks of pets that came from some household. Now, I know that was more than a mouthful to swallow, but I had to get it out in the open ... Some of these fundamental or basic features coming from individuals and turning into large family/community traits are actually referred to in Genesis, including great differences in body size variation being found in a particular breed (giants vs. dwarfs), body hair differences (hairy Esau vs. virtually hairless Jacob), racial markings and color diversity, along with vocational specialization in very large communities. Those features are now being found and studied in modern man as coming to only one species. That fact should supply much encouragement to the creationist origins position. It should also yield biological insights into the actual processes involved in man as a single species that split into numerous races. His racial features are most likely breed features that have developed like those of human pets, but only to a lesser degree with fewer domestication traces in livestock. Man's recent breed characteristics most closely reflects those of pets, not livestock, tame scavengers, or wild species. Genesis traces are written in our bones and races! Still, building a creationist theory closest to the Genesis story can take nearly lifetime of experience, a lot of professional findings cut and paste, and a very difficult time pondering what arguments to actually apply. Herein lies the value in my approach. I have access to those documents and a piqued interest to check them out. I have been looking. Perhaps many creationists just give up and revert to the Bible-only view of life. In the search for scientific creationist arguments, a lot could fall to time and chance: I was an anthropology doctoral student; whereas Wise was a biologist and geologist. Weaving origins findings together into a theory is difficult, however, until you've by chance hit upon a significant body of anthropological and biological findings that fit together In a cluster so astonishing and ideal so as to exhibit a close match with the Genesis account. It took an anthropologist writing a domestication view of man from New Zealand (the late Peter Wilson in The Domestication of the Human Species) to call my attention to the domestication literature and the scientific fact that it applies to man. He saw the pet and livestock parallel represented in man's bone morphology and racial heritage first; long before I did. I just add a slightly different twist or attribution of cause, more traits to form a super-domestication pet complex (vs. mere breeding/lifestock domestication trait list), and its amazing religious parallels (the details mentioned about the first men found in the Book of Genesis). Genesis, by the way, is a family heritage book more than a human family origins book. It is an introduction history to the races of man, as well. And that is how it so closely matches the fossil record as to be astonishing! The domestication view of man being biologically most like pets and not like livestock in the fossil and other anatomical trace evidence is astonishingly good. My interpretation of its cause is precedent-based, and more so than Wilson's view. My racial origins theory talked about here is predicated on the majority view domestication argument in science, i.e., seeing an intelligent entity at the center of the cause. There is important evidence and precedence here for concluding that. My view is a logical increment away from the traditional application of already-established scientific findings drawn out to a logical conclusion that man's process of domestication was the same as was later used with other domesticated species. In general terms, it says that an entity-domesticator's trade expertise or handiwork was the cause. Now that's as much based on scientific and causal precedence in domestication studies as you can get. Notwithstanding, no academician or scientist at the Ph.D level wants to go so far as to say an entity domesticated man; of course. That would be as much as admitting outright that there is physical evidence for God. But that is precisely the conclusion that animal husbandry and breeds' developments draws us out to. It stands one step away. Domestication implies that artificial selection or a designer's hand is a process continually set in motion us, too, i.e., scientifically speaking, that it leads to different breeds in pets and man. This is not natural selection. There is no detectable or observable natural selection as independent variable or cause coming from the environment; no logical cause; only after-the-fact speculation. Natural selection theory is not predictive. At most, what evolutionists see might be called genetic drift. There is no empirically observable antecedant for it. But random drift is best described by epigenetics, the study of genes that are already present turning on and off; not created by mutated DNA. Epigenetics as such has profound implications for creationism. I think the field is as rich a reservoir of findings as the systemic-functional evidence for designer necessity in cells and organs, i.e., the mainly Baptist-Methodist intelligent design (ID) view couched as a predictive blueprint of life that's implicit in the very structure of DNA and cell formation. ID is also a pretty good, functional view supporting the argument for a Creator. The professional reluctance in academia to admit a biological designer being implicit and precedented in physical, scientific interpretations of life is based on political, career-professional, and job-protection considerations based on an only materialistic view of the world. That didn't work with communism. But academicians still get ostracized by a highly visible, vocal, political, naturalist lobby. An idealist or pure theorist just can have no role to play in science these days unless it is an argument politically in vogue (or he is in cosmology or particle physics - scientific disciplines that are highly theoretical). My view here of there being ample biological trace evidence directly reflecting God's handiwork demonstrates numerous scientific features that closely mirror what is portrayed in the Genesis about early humans and their racial developments. It is more of an argument than a full-blown theory. Yet there is sufficient genetic and anatomical evidence. Giants are explained by breeds (races), as are dwarfs, and the Pigmies of Africa; Cain's Mark is near the top of the list, too; and especially notable is the import and consequences that Cain read into his physically obvious mark. Perhaps it was like former USSR Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's skin mark or Michael Jackson's pigmentation anomaly. If not, it was actually breed difference. The bone and biological distinctiveness of modern man also follows the Genesis storyline and matches its template: settlement and subsistence (work;industry;produce) practices do, for instance, occur only in modern man. Agriculture and pastoralism are limited to modern man also, and developed almost instantaneously in the Genesis account; taxonomic and analytic mental skills, too; cities, nations, industry, and social hierarchies and vocations all resulted and explained by it to a more limited degree. Yet these only appear in modern man in both Genesis and prehistorical evidence. And by now they can all be predicated on fossil (or mineral deposition preserving bone features) evidence found in genes switching on or off! Epigenetics may turn into a great watershed for creationists. Our time as creationists for obtaining government and scientific legitimacy has come, I believe! In addition, Darwin proponents (evolutionists who promote Darwin's natural selection and purely naturalistic common descent model over an intelligent design target, religious model, or even feedback-guided naturalistic one) get frantically enraged upon learning of it. This taught me a lesson. What agitates them most apparently scares them, though they cannot believe that psychological perspective of their reaction could be correct. How so? I think they are so used to hearing Bible verses quoted back to them that they don't know how to react to a new interpretation of their own findings handed them logically on a silvered-findings platter. I've suffered through numerous soul-wrenching personal struggles and flurries of reactionary verbal abuse from evolutionists as they gradually become aware that a creationist is reinterpreting rock solid and crystal-clear (in science) domestication-of-modern-man findings. It's a view in anthropology that was originally presented by the late New Zealand Anthropology Professor Peter Wilson. My addition is extending cause to its most scientifically logical outgrowth and most rational conclusion; I apply evolutionists' most frequent historical precedent and general cause to it. That precedent is that traditional pet and livestock interpretations in domestication focus on an entity (man) as cause. They often become emotionally unhindged while hearing it unravelled in findings-support fashion before them. Their consequent irrational and abrupt shift into a simple and scientifically empty derogation of my own application/position is a blatant tip-off that this explanation of well-documented scientific facts must have struck a nerve somewhere. I think it is an upset in their science, and religious antipathy. But I am only attributing cause just like what they do with other creatures domestication findings. Notwithstanding, I am methodologically well-trained enough in science and statistics to recognize when I'm being dealt a highly emotional snow-blower job, an intellectual rip off, or a cheap academic chop shop when polemically looking right at them. Just hearing for the first time the domestication theory of man by Peter Wilson exploited to its most scientific consistent conclusion of there being a an entity-domesticator for humans, too, as well as for pets and livestock makes most Darwin believers fly into a frantic rage of talking to themselves. They typically become first silent, then ingenuous, and then harshly sarcastic, and after that spiteful - in that precise order. It's like going through shock for them. And that's on one of their good days. This highly animate emotional response sequence is the most telling feature for revealing their switch into a defensive posture and ingenuous intellectual mode. Seeing that irrational process over and over again is another reason why I am presenting this argument publicly. Even if I am wrong and find insufficient support to cite later for some of these details, the thesis and trait package seen in general terms remains valid. It's main thrust is secure, already being supported (though that will now go into hiding, based on evolutional traditional political policy) by many evolutionist. Its just the source and explanation of this trait complex in man as well as pets that will come under fire! They cannot question its parallels in Genesis: giants, races, regional migrations, global impact, cities, armies (huge social organizations), institutions of society, metallurgy, industries/trades and magnificent linguistic and writting recording capacity. These are not found in so-called proto-men. However, after finding this scientifically hidden, theoretical prospect of the reinterpretation of a group of their findings, one still has to contend with Joseph's brothers. You have other creationists' defense responses to fend off or deal with. Most notably, you have to face the cautious constraints that try to keep evangelicals believing ONLY in pat, traditional views as stated in the form of traditional platitudes and people believing only in Bible-derived truth. These people do not believe in science unless it supports what they intuitively believe. The literally interpreted Bible is not the only formidable challenge you have to confront; narrow-mindedness, too. I am a literal Bible believer myself. That is why I am providing this new interpretation from science. But not every tradition-based, literal interpretation is apt or correct, just as not every scientific one is either. Men are men - and I one. What is most important in this area of contention is this, I think: The information I want to present here gets the closest yet I think scientifically to the Genesis account that origins studies and science in academia will logically and methodologically allow currently. And it is VERY close. But not in the way you might think. It has to accept epigenetics (genes switching on and off) and breed/races changing. This is evidenced in Genesis! I think literal-Bible believing people will have no problem accepting the concept of pet breeds and man's races being from the same process. But epigentics put it in the place of DNA mutation changes/evolution may present a problem. I just want to say that it works well in that use. Why? It accurately describes in a scientific manner what must of happened with man in Genesis without using evolution (natural selection, gene flow, mutation, genetic drift, etc., at all). Doing that was the underlying, fundamental research finding and theoretical premise in my search for a scientific Genesis theory here. We have races (righteous "seed," a strange breed, Cain's mark, etc.) mentioning in Genesis, with size-variety exploding into giants as one result, subsistence differences, and interbreeding causing a new human variety (a noble race of giants). We also have very large societies, social stratification, trades, professions, metallurgy, prisons, international travel, well digging, architecture, mathematics, schools, storage facilities, preservation techniques, grainaries, warehouses, cities, armies, nation states, civilization, slavery, and mass warfare. I believe in a worldwide flood around 4,000 years ago. Kurt Wise has the massive and extensive volcanic eruption evidence to support the view of global, mile-high tsumanis then and justify a good explanation for the milder, more spotty pattern of eruptions of volcanoes worldwide since then. And our own Dr. Arlo Moehlenpah of Stockton, CA has presented recent living tree-ring records that go back only that far. That's great scientific evidence for a global flood - in both cases! It makes Darwinists irrate, too. The real emotional challenge is getting them to rationally deal with any findings contrary to their fundamental paradigms of gradualism and naturalism. My domestication of man explanation here is another thorn in the flesh for them. My view as herein described shows that a plethora of scientific, anatomical finds does show what Genesis says. But it only works scientifically because man has the same distinct domestication trace group of features as animals he has affected, i.e., an extensive line or complex of features that trace the development of the domesticated dog, cat, horses, sheep, and pigs. They did not evolve, but developed breedal characteristics as shown in epigenetics instead. Such variety was already built into their species' genes that were turned on or off. However, domesticated species including man have exhibited a great tendency to display varying anatomical features and differentiate significantly within a broad range of the concept/notion of "kinds." Kurt Wise has spent a lifetime looking for research findings that support the traditional 6 twenty-four hour days Young Earth Creation view. I agree with him that man is only 6,000 years old since the geneologies of Adam to Christ leave little room for doubt. YEC people such as Wise believe it could range up to 10,000 years. I don't care about dating; only the processes used to get man to where he is now and where the Bible said he went concern me. Perhaps I am as admittedly blind as Wise, but only when it comes to dating methods of strata and fossils in them. Or maybe I just don't think that's where Genesis' thrust is at all. It's all about origins and the nature of man to me; not choosing between millions or thousands of years. The Bible says "day," not years. That's why I am of the Old Earth Creationist school of belief. I believe man is young (even all evolutionists including the Darwinists admit that - relative to other species); the Earth is old. Wise and Frank Marsh developed the "baramin" or kinds view in the 1990s. That is the creationist taxonomy system I hold to. A baramin is the "kind" of Genesis ranging from a species collectively to a genus. For example, to a YEC and Wise, the lion and tiger are of one feline baramin. Not to me. The horse, donkey, and zebra comprise another. I agree with them on that. Species within the same baramin can all interbreed and produce at least infertile offspring. But somewhere in-between what we know as species and the larger genera lies a vague and almost imperceptible dividing line. It separates species in the past and those of the present that could by interbreeding still produce virile offspring (the traditional, passe' definition of same species). Breeds (races), not species, are what is important to me; they tell us much about Genesis. But classification of kinds (baramins) is still mostly a hypothetical paper exercise currently - even for the best geneticists, evolutionists, and creationists. You can't interbreed genomes on paper or in a computer simulation program (yet). Somewhere in the baramin or Biblical "kinds" lies the answer, however. So Wise and Marsh are onto something and solving problems with their taxonomy. I think I have found the key to where the Genesis cause of the origin of man is: Domesticated trace evidence. Domestication trace evidence is a very distinctive biological pattern that is only present in a particular group of creatures with a very typical experience. It is not present other animals. It is a very rare biological marker in animals, numerically speaking: a complex of features in bone structure and other anatomical features that reflect experience and the processes they developed from - both in their lifetimes and forming multi-generationally into races/breeds. Man did the same. Forensics (the study of deceased bodies) and fossil studies shed scientific light on the Genesis account by focusing on such life-experience and breed-developing traits. How does this relate to man? This is a group of skeletal traits and racial development pattern that shows than man was in a garden or like place - a palace's arborem, zoo, stockade, corral, yard, oasis, farm, or terrarium. It also shows that he lived a captured, restricted, highly controlled existence with a caretaker of comparative superior intelligence and stature, and in a long-lasting relationship. That is because it can very convincing be argued before high schoolers that humans are MOST LIKE dogs, cats, sheep, and pigs in their most recently acquired breedal traits. I have the trait list to support it and back up that as the best view!! The following goal was stated in the Genesis account: God gave man a purpose to take "dominion." He was told that he would rule over the rest of creation (which was lowered in its scope or extent in the curse after his fall). The domesticated trait package he has is formidable and enlightening in this sense. It means he was shaped in the image God had in his mind. This trait complex in domesticated animals and is a big deal - of great scientific import and Biblical significance to the origin of man! Also shedding light on man's origins - the earliest fossils of modern man are found in the Israel; almost double the age of the earliest ones found in Ethiopia. These factors collectively place his origins in what the Book of Genesis calls a garden of sorts in the Near East Crescent. The science of domestication studies now backs the Biblical view up, though no one yet has written about it as God-controlled. The anti-religious scientists I have dealt with arbitrarily substitute culture for this grand knight in only the case of modern man to avoid discussions about God doing the domestication in His image (design intent, plan, or imagination). Yet man is put at center of the focus in all other full domestication scientific cases, and not his culture. The quirkish, experimental preferences of a series of caretaker individuals are the cause, in fact! Of all things! How scientifically unprecedented and small-minded/bigoted to make an ennobled savage exception of man in stark contrast to all other fully domesticated creatures able to live in a domestic, social setting! We are almost godlike if not just God-appointed (all-pervading and all-encompassing our environs) in our dominion over this Earth, yet no domesticated breed has ever made itself before man or without man. Why should man's own origin be viewed as a scientific anomaly? Isn't science supposed to be consistent in its explanations? The answer of why a domesticator is not included in the origins of modern man is anti-religious bias. Worship of man in the form of humanism or as the noble savage is why. But such an idealistic and romanticized view of man's role to exalt/lift up himself in the past as epitomized best in Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind is scientifically passe'! Most evolutionists say culture or living in large groups did it. I don't. I think the biology as outlined in the Book of Genesis did!! This distinct package of garden-variety or derived/raised/grown bone and racially diverse biological traits can best be described as a designer's palette of personal selection opportunites. Species rate notoriously as mailable/flexible breed selection options and opportunities in captivity (but not in the wild), though also quite prototypical (general-type fixed or core-centered) in terms of what produces virile young. Domestication changes happen much, much faster than purported evolution of species. Domestication traces in man as well as pets and livestock taken as an interlocking complex show a potent process of intensive, intelligent selection at work: resulting in trace evidence features not found biologically in the wild. In man's case, it is not even in preceding modern-man-like forms such as Cro-Magnon man, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo habilis, or Homo erectus! This could be the creationist's answer to evolution in general! This I think is a revolutionary and phenomenal scientific discovery. It resets the scientific clock back to the Biblical view in Genesis on the subject of man's origins! Darwinian natural selection was not and is not at work in the creation of modern man! This is what the biological domestication evidence on man's origins as initially and too succinctly portrayed by Prof. Peter Wilson shows. He attributed the trait complex in man to sedentary or only domicile living. That is making an exception in domestication studies of man; not working from a logical, historical extension of cause as an entity as universally attributed in other domestication studies, but from outside the discipline, i.e., an anti-religious, naturalistic tradition-only based view of man. Anthropologists must always professionally place culture in the role/place of God lording over matters. So man led at least a corralled, protected existence by a benefactor of regal standing controlling his life at first. In these last days, God's presence has returned in the form of influence has returned of Christ and His Spirit to complete this highly selective, artificially (mentally orchestrated), kingly process of perfecting man. The listed species above are fossils of real animals that our children as students have to bicker over with evolutionists as being pre-human/proto-human. Certain facts from domestication studies could help us understand the scientific origins of man and the Bible a little better. For instance, modern man is the only Homo or man-like animal/form to have spread globally, reflecting considerably superior intelligence, technology, and social complexity compared to any creatures coming before him and/or looking like him. This is remarkable. No other single species has such global distribution and artificially induced biological variability - able to fill nearly any environmental niche and intellectually and technologically adapt to any condition / even the barreness outer space. I just saw another Japanese astronaut take off this morning for the International Space Station! How appropriate: from the most domesticated race of man, biologically speaking! Man's expansive distributional march across the globe was unstoppable given his physical and intellectual trait package. And the evidence show it was selected by a Domesticator. Also, modern man has agriculture (started with Cain in the Bible) and animal husbandry/pastoralism (with Able in Genesis). It precipitated Cain’s jealousy and assault. There is no need to question this. Homo species before man did not and could not achieve agriculture. They didn't have the technology, social complexity, or linguistic sophistication for it. In addition, we also have much more gracile/soft contour bone features (most typically reflected in the smooth bone transitions at the edges, currently in their most pronounced form in Asians – Asians are the most domesticated having little body hair, smooth bone edges, reduced size and skull features). We are also multi-breeds/races (smoothed bone-feature contours, diverse hair and skin colors not found in the wild or in hunting/gathering man-like species at all before Adam). This feature comes in domestication from God or man shaping forms either consciously or unconsciously in his own image (preplanning; imagination), not from society or cultural mores. Individuals did this including aesthetics and desired fumctions as goals. Racial features are not found in wild/undomesticated creatures, i.e., creatures not raised in captivity or similar circumstances. A sampling of one or two domesticated features are found in tame, human-tolerant scavenging species. Dog, cat, sheep, and pig breeds have this intense, many-featured domestication complex. They were raised under intensely controlled conditions of captivity and manipulation. Modern man evidently, scientifically-speaking according to trace features, was, too. He has many biological traits or features/traces showing he was raised the same or a very similar (not noticeably different scientifically) manner. Asians have lost most body hair just like domesticated pigs and some breeds of dogs have. It is unlikely that culture caused this in man because caretaker preferences for the most part caused it in domesticated animals, not enculturation, socialization, or social mores. They were more personal knowledge and preferences with some selective purpose or end goal in mind. So with man. Let's look at some more super-domestication trait features not found in the wild species (and best typified by man, dog, cats, sheep, and pigs). These very domesticated species display less sexual dimorphism (the feature of marked physical differences between the genders - esp. shown by the absence of heavy skeletal edges and bony protuberances) and reduced head/cranium size compared to any foregoing, wild, similar-resembling species. It’s like they’ve all been skeletally remolded from the wild into a softer, smaller, more variable, graceful form. After this, pigmy and giant breeds appear. The same was true in man. The former is in Homo florensis. The latter are in Genesis, Joshua, Genesis, and other historical accounts. The skull and brain are smaller in modern man than any preceding, similar forms, but like Einsteinwas, the latter are more intelligent and socially-technically superior. (In man, this is especially the case when comparing to the directly preceding Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man.) Their social abilities, group size, hunting patterns and toolkits were inferior! This shows there was no direct common descent coming from the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man to modern man. Instead, it took a Domesticator to get involved, just as it did with other intensely domesticated animals. A domesticator is caretaker-captor, a manager and shaper of lives and generations who is in close and intense control. They much more intelligent so as to be protective of them from wild conditions and selective in their breeding partners. There is strong indications in Genesis that the first families of modern humans were managed in this way. Such captivity and micro-management is why these animals are called domesticated species. Man was raised (micro-managed) in a similar way to dogs, cats, pigs, and sheep. His biological traits reveal this. I believe the trace evidence show it was an intelligence directly at work, our Creator, our own intelligent Domesticator – just as there has always been in the development of other domesticated species. Man should be no exception. It is simply on the basis of an adore of nature and worship of godless naturalism that a super intelligence as in the case of dogs and cats, etc., is not considered .He is the first cause in everything. Here is the central scientific truth of the man-origins matter: Man was in God’s image, made under similar biological conditions that can be traced in modern dogs, sheep, and cats. Many of their refined physical traits do not resemble the crude, non-distinctive features borne by any wild species. We still bear the complex of traits that is the domestication footprint – God's handiwork stamp or fingerprint. Then, after being shaped in God's image, we proceeded in similar manner to create our own breeds from the models of wild species in our own, not God's image. The process/trace package is there to prove it! Man was raised under controlled conditions to fit some superio's authoritarian goal and own imaginative purpose, artificial and unnatural a mental notion! Natural selection was not involved or even on the mix. Superior, aesthetic, controlling images are! The bible inasmuch as says this in Genesis, too. Modern man also show a broad range in overall body size and height much larger than in the wild varying from dwarf and pygmy size (Homo foresiensis) to giants with six fingers and toes (as no other creature other than a domesticated animals has). This great size variation is due to domestication/animal husbandry and is best known to the public as occurring in the form of large and very small dog breeds. Only modern men had and have cities, too (as was mentioned throughout Genesis). City origins as well as human origins are found in the Near East. This is significant. Only modern man had the intelligence to develop highly complex and extensive social orders and the extensive agriculture, sanitation, and irrigation needed to support the development of cities with populations numbering over 20,000 people. Paleontologists, biologists, geneticists, and anthropologists considered all the above domestication traits to be racial or breed differences 30 years ago in one much larger and longer-lasting Homo species before, but now are starting to conclude the distinctive package is in a much smaller group, only in modern man, with a much shorter history. They go so far now as to say that modern man is a linguistically separate (Chomsky, Bickerman, and Phil Lieberman at Wash. U.), physically distinct, revolutionary new species, but they won’t admit that a domesticator Was at work – since it reveals a God in existence and involved. But with all other domesticated species, a Godlike species in control was the case in their development, and it is shown in their bone structure traces. Why would man be treated differently as to the first cause of his biological domestication process? Ans., Only anti-religious bigotry. Creationists now have the biological trace evidence and are consistent in their handling of explanations of it consistent with other heavily domesticated species (vs. wild species traits and distributions). . I think discovering and reporting these facts about man’s Domesticator-derived origins, i.e., shaped by the hand of God, is on par with the Star of David/Bethlehem planet-alignment reinterpretation of 40 years ago for Christianity. Similarly, it is also based on new scientific discoveries applied to and paired up with an incident or incidents in the Bible narrative or storyline. I think man growing up in the yard of a palace, dwelling, or similar (the worldwide typical niche for domesticated dogs and cats) best explains modern man's existence - at least in terms of his very distinctive structural form including bone modeling/morphology. Domestication (captivity) and forensic (grave/cemetery tissue and bone markers) actually trace such situations and environments as reflected in the bones of breeds (races) – even typical events in the life of one individual – accumulated in just in one generation. If they are a farmer or husbandman/shepherd, it is revealed in their bones through observation after death and even in fossilization. In the near future, we may find that pelvis bones and upper leg joints (in the groin/loin region) reflect in lifestyle-bone forensics that hunter/gathers sat squat with the ground as Asians tend to do to this day, and that western modern men sat on seats and stools (with the implication being covered dwellings). That would be the next place to look for these markers in bone in relation to man's origin, I think. The point of this is that science does back up the Genesis story of man’s creation and family progress. He is different and superior in many respects to any creature God put on this Earth - in both records. Science is only recently coming around to that view. (Science is slow; domestication is not - relatively speaking.) We can even tell much about current people’s lives and daily habits by just looking at their bones using a Ct scan - just as much as we can the first anatomically modern humans uncovered in the Near East. We can trace events in Genesis; the record/story/trace is also written in their bones! Genesis teaches us that a captivating God watches over and improves a family, their lives, their fortunes, their values, and their bodies! A family directed and at times controlled by God is one major theme of Genesis. Genesis is the Book about God's household; God's family - foremost. Our ministers and children need to understand what discoveries scientists are holding back/hiding from us (but appearing in their professional journals) due to the discoveries’ similarity with the Bible and traditional Christian beliefs. This withholding is most likely being unconsciously done due to a shared prejudice/group standard among the evolutionists in America. I have debated them to the tune of a million words. The spite creationists receive from them is most likely due to their competition with and hatred of religion in general. Ministers and children alike need to know why men ought to be convinced with certainty nowadays in the accuracy of the message of Genesis and the Bible in general as Christians are presenting them. That is why I have attempted to make clear in scientific terms a clarification of some of Genesis features and human family origins in this position paper. If we are to characterize Adam's instantaneously created features as they were intended to be revealed in his bones and later racial developments in Genesis, this is how it looks and worked during the time of Genesis. This is perhaps a novel Biblical interpretation of the theme of races. But races are the same as breeds, and that is an old biological story shown more or less in many domesticated creatures. Or, this could be only a restatement of someone's old family position. In Genesis, this thesis maintains that some entity (which we'll call God for now) controlled marriages, family interbreeding, subsistence, locations, migrations, and resource access. It's about as good a thesis as saying man, domiciles, or material culture caused them by blindsiding selection. There are also the convincing signs/markers for all of this. Man was a pet. All markers of artificial selection, management, and control are there. So it doesn't really matter what we characterize it generally as at this level; for what shows most is the historical and physical trace evidence of selective actions done aforetimes. It is reflected in BOTH the Genesis narrative and the biological traces. At minimum,it is indeed a modern biological fact. The physical or idealistic import of intelligence shown in selection is the only real remaining mystery. WAS IT CAUSED BY AN ENTITY OR NOT? All other artificial selection is! It is also a multidisciplinary description of the trace evidence as it relates to the science, story, and process of racial beginnings that is shown here. It that can be found in evidence abundantly in Genesis narrative form; in bones sufficiently; not just a thematic form in the Book of Genesis. Genesis is a story of racial developments. It is also a story that is shown in our formative biology. And that is a central point for Christianity. It certainly shows us a wonderful religious AND scientific lesson: You really can't get away from the family influence, connections, and ultimate control of God. Breed diversity is what we began with and have always had since we came in contact with a higher entity or power, needed for protection to cause racial diversity. God's provision and direction are in his life-management change. Let's wax poetic here if not simply a bit religious as cosmology and astrophysics does: In it and through it we were born, reared and bred. That is the premier message of Genesis. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being..." (Acts 17: 28). Our racial developments are not completely over yet, so to speak. We as a people are intended for more. The rest of the Bible and some of science teach us that. That God will make a new breed out of mankind again is foretold and well-precedented, too. And in eternal life, we can all be included in the bodily change. He beckons to us to transform us yet again: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2 God is at the center of all of His family's changes. He is the God of all races and breeds; of all of life and times. We are on the journey of a lifetime. He is our Father and our intended destination. Genesis teaches us this lesson more than once, and it is written very well. It is written in His Word as well as inscribed on our hearts. It is even written within the message of our skin and bones.

A FALSIFIABLE, TESTABLE CREATION/ID THEORY THAT ANTHROPOLOGISTS CAN TEST

2011-11-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

This theory is based on the Genesis chapter 3 creation story, but not chapter 1.

Basis in principle/rule: Most myths are based on some real-world identifiable element/kernel of truth.

Creation Myth Basis: Garden of Eden/Adam and Eve- Perhaps it was something more a environmentally controlled dome or an open corral. Maybe Eve wasn't LUCY, but Adam WAS Tarzan.

Falsifiable Hypothesis: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and maybe the later Australopithecines were in a partially zoo-llke, or some other semi-controlled environmental setting. Traits were selected for there through intelligent intervention. This and not culture resulted in the development of multiple subspecies and even species changes that included readily identifiable domestication traits such as increases in gracile features in morphology.

Predicted Evidence Pro.: H. s.n. -> H.s.s. subspecies changes are domestication traits. They are the result of domestication. So might also many A.r. -> A. a. changes be. Homo sapiens sapiens have numerous traits in evidence that can best be attributed to the effects of domestication. They resulted from artificial selection and not natural selection.

Projected Evidence Con: Homo s. s. has no domestication traits, but natural selection-only affected traits. Any morphological features that look like ones they might be attributable to effects of artificial selection can be better attributed to effects of culture and the development of large groups instead.

Nonhominid primate control group: baboons or rhesus monkeys.

How Would You Like to Test REAL-WORLD ID HYPOTHESES Using a Publicly Accessible Database?

2011-10-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

The following ID hypotheses were originally produced to supply candidates for a testable ID hypothesis consideration on AmazonBooks.com at a time when the possibility of writing such hypothesis was a matter of heated contention. Even a rudimentary, provisional ID hypothesis test if empirical would allow scientists to at least look more closely at the potential theoretical import of ID arguments, for eg., the possibility of drawing explanatory inferences from real-world data. Anybody want to do so? As I am a proponent of ID trained in scientific methodology and am convinced that such is possible, I sought out such hypothesis for doing simple tests like those done in SETI. I can tell you how to do this.

The database providing usable evidence for testing these ID hypotheses is readily available to the public. It can be found on the internet. Check for it at NASA. The data come in the form of a chart posted as some initial results of the Kepler telescope team's exoplanet survey. They cover only the first six months of the survey and so come from a few years back, but they still provide extensive data suitable for analysis and useful in this connection. Now wouldn't that make a nice science fair project?

Where do you go to look for the pertinent data? Check out planetary descriptions of planets in habitable zones around nearby stars. There are over 50 of them listed in the original Kepler telescope survey! Yes, potential life-producing planets have been found around nearby stars. I will give the links to some sources soon, but the database I am talking about here can be easily found simply by doing a Google search on the Kepler exoplanet survey.

Looking closely at the differences between planets located inside and outside liquid water-temperature habitable zones of stars and to popularize such a comparison as a viable ID research project is the matter of concern for me here at this time. The concept reminds me of SETI. SETI used statistical inference to examine radio signals coming primarily from outside our solar system. The goal was to detect anything that might reflect a pattern of intelligent repetition or modulation in radio signals coming from beyond our solar system. A very sensitive and highly directional antenna was used for this purpose.

SETI was never considered a religious or supernatural activity. (Times have changed. The same mathematical and statistical indicators used in SETI when applied to ID detection get held in contempt by some scientists, due to their belief that the examination gets 'contaminated' outright by religious interests.) The processes of forming and parking life-bearing planets are indeed worthy questions for scientific exploration. Examining the location and makeup of planets existing in and out of habitable zones are surely as important a scientific concern as listening to the radio for signs of intelligent activity. Would you rather be all eyes or all ears as a scientist, if given the choice? Which would be better for doing a scientific exploration for the existence of aliens (or none)- removing scientific blindness or deafness- or wrestling with religious bigotry in academia?

I believe there are many other testable ID hypotheses that are possible, though most evolutionists I have spoken with state unequivocally and categorically that there can be none. That's rather closed-minded, I think. Only one is needed to show otherwise, and that was originally my whole point. Provisional case exemplification and assertion-nullification were my primary goals for bringing the matter up at the time (when I first mentioned it); not to publish a paper about it or to demonstrate that I am a cosmologist. I most certainly am not the latter.

The simplest hypothesis here would be a check on the percentage of exoplanets in habitable zones versus adjacent to them. The next would add size/weight(gravity) of the planet concerned, i.e., midrange, Earth/Mars-like versus moon/Mercury-like or Jupiter-like. An associated consideration was a prediction that high-gravity (large planets in general) and other planets holding environments hostile to the development and differentiation of life AS WE KNOW IT (gas giants and planetoids being only two examples of this) might typically fall outside the habitable zone, and ID explanations for this. However, the evolutionists on Amazon.books I discussed this matter with appear to believe that life can exist on most planets and moons in our solar system (and believe this based on negligible scientific data taken from very hostile environments on Earth). However, they have no real scientific evidence of life living beyond Earth or Mars, i.e., on very small or large planets, or beyond our sun's own habitable zone. What has already been documented as life existing on a celestial body must be the basis for actual scientific comparison in this hypothesis test, not scientific conjecture.

A lot of observations and math that relate to such an investigation have already been performed for you by NASA personnel. They must get cited and be thanked for this. However, an investigator does not have to empirically define or measure habitable zone around any star, only critically ponder and correctly interpret what it means with reference to this projected study. Indeed, this determination has already has been made for us: The habitable zone is typically defined for every applicable star once a planet is discovered; sometimes, it appears, before such discoveries are made.

I am of the opinion that something less than a god or gods is/was involved in doing design. Perhaps a whole pantheon of participants operated in more or less chorus fashion advancing a somewhat inscrutable purpose(s). I think a lot of naturalistic processes were involved, too. To me, these factors would explain the waste and mistakes in evidence among the results of design.

I also don't hold or seek to pursue any 'unitary' view on life that might lend cohesion to such disparate views (and to multiple levels). That is undoubtedly one source of the ambiguity in some of what I write. And I don't care much about remaining consistent from a philosophical or personal point of view; basically only from a scientific and paradigm perspective.

I've been pouring over habitable zone hypotheses in the back of my head like wire puzzles. I thus have a third habitable planet hypothesis. It is the most complete one yet encompassing my thoughts about star system design, however:

ID HYPOTHESIS: Size and mass of planets orbiting stars possessing a habitable zone are correlated with distance from the star in ways that maximize the potential for the proliferation of life as we know and observe it, but are not so correlated in stars lacking habitable zones and stars possessing no planets in their habitable zones.

Now this one directly addresses the need of discriminating design, purpose, and guidance as distinct from the typical patterns seen in natural processes, i.e., the hardest issue/catch to make- in my opinion. Hopefully it will take a step in the right direction by adding a control (group) for ID vs. natural processes, i.e., a comparison to stars lacking habitable zones and stars completely lacking planets in their habitable zones. That's about it...

Why not just count planets in and out of the habitable zone for comparison to be simple? Or how about something more like the quasi-anthropocentric "Stars with habitable zones (will) have more planets close to them- improving the chances for a proliferation of life in the universe" then? (re: planet distribution)

Or, even the more direct, though simple and innocuous "Stars with habitable zones (will) have more planets- providing more opportunities for life to develop in the universe"? (re: planet frequency/incidence)

Indeed, in my second habitable zone hypothesis just mentioned above, I have been essentially assuming (if looked at overall, using simple terms) that the designer(s) like planets and prefer multi-planet star systems.

I say 'essentially,' because that varies from my own concept of a designer slightly. It seems somewhat limited in scope and a little anthropocentric. That is to say, isn't it a psychological reference/emotive appeal to the feature of motive only? Then are we to assume then that designer(s) cannot be robot-like/emotionally detached or even slow moving/amoeba-like in operation? I have no qualms about using the term of 'preference' in all references to this area, though I admit this selection may be partisan and somewhat arbitrary; I see rational drive in self-aware creatures more in terms of a goal or purpose, i.e., in keeping with classical teleology.

Then again, why quibble over terms with evolutionists here? Drawing fine distinctions at this point in an investigation is likely to wind up an exercise in futility/trivia. In some versions of the hypothesis I mentioned, the outgrowth of making assumptions about designer(s)' preferences/ purpose is more particular and complex. These versions predict (more) specialized patterns of planetary location/distribution/or size in stars that have habitable zones in contrast to a random or naturally predictible distribution of the same features around stars having none, I think without resort to natural selection. They are intended to reflect that designer(s) preferred certain locations, sizes, and/or kinds of planets, and not merely more planets.

Could it be that the designer(s) simply prefer more planets, thus putting more of them in habitable zones, or even more of them in any location around stars that have habitable zones? That seems like the most basic place to start. However, can natural forces indeed not do such things? Indeed, the fact that such has even been done has not yet been determined. These questions must first be addressed. Yet, can we know these matters with sufficient degree of logical and inductive certainty at this time? I think these are intriguing questions. Since they are at basic levels of the inquiry, they would be good places to start.

I haven't yet considered size of the habitable zone as a variable. Size and spectral output of the stars might also interact with the above projected relationship(s). What about possible outliers such as very large (eg., white giant) and very weak (eg., red dwarf) stars? Could the habitable zone (or its size) serve as a control for the effects of star size and radiation characteristics, or should the latter factors be instead considered as additional independent variables? I haven't even considered what would constitute realiable types of stars in terms of radiation characteristics for the purposes of generating life and sustaining biological progression on a planet.

I think the general null is reflected at least to some degree in the following considerations: Could life-promoting confluences of habitable zones and propitious planetary number/distribution/size be only random occurrences, or patterns resulting from the operation of natural phenomena alone? Assuming only natural factors, could the same, possibly a third natural phenomena such as the particular type of star (or its size, development, history, etc.) provide star systems with both habitable zones and quantitatively more planets (or, alternatively, qualitatively more potential life-producing planets)? That is, could the latter two dependent phenomena be caused by an as-yet unidentified third naturally occurring factor? Then again, what would the discovery of purely random or star-type-only correlated planetary distributions suggest about ID theory in this area?

As you can see, I am still talking about several alternative variables as options for this study. For instance, I am assuming that more planets in the habitable zone would reflect design only if we could rule out appropriate naturally influencing factors, or alternatively, that a complex, life-propitious pattern of size or distribution of planets around candidate\habitable zone stars could logically be only due to design. More likely, the results will provide uncorrelated findings, the failure to reach levels of statistical significance, or provide only hints about possible real causes.

I believe a good first step would be to focus and refine the hypothesis to be investigated. That is what I have been exploring here for the most part. In the more complex versions of the proposed hypothesis, if I am not able to describe all potential causal factors well (in your analogy perhaps: the features of the lake, island proximity, local and surrounding geology,and area features), i.e., whatever conditions that give rise to habitable zones (star type, distance from star, emitted spectrum, etc.) and affect planet number/distribution/or size, I'm going to need a lot of descriptive data on planets lying outside of habitable zones or around stars having no habitable zones. If that is so, then at this time, at the start, with little descriptive data to go on and only a basic understanding to build on, wouldn't a simpler form of the hypothesis would be better?

In all of this, we should not lose track of the overall goal of trying to discover whether there more independently generated life-favoring factors present in habitable zones than in regions outside of them, and then, discovering whether such should be explained by something other than natural forces alone, i.e., not dependent on fluctuations in natural phenomena or the operation of random factors.

To that more basic and general end, wouldn't simpler forms of the hypothesis be preferable now? Here is yet another example of such: Stars with habitable zones will have a larger number of planets and their orbits will be closer together in habitable zones than adjacent to such zones. However, wouldn't even this version be a little too complex at present to count as a good starting point for launching such an investigation?

Want to help test a real-world ID hypothesis using public domain astronomical data? Get in contact with me and let's discuss the possibilities.

What Biological, Functional Realities Support ID Theory?

2010-09-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

Stephen Meyer's book "Signature in the Cell" lucidly covers several of these. Here I will provide several overall conclusions of my own on the subject:

We cannot perceive function without at least rudimentary intelligence. Is that a more basic activity than enacting or adapting a function? Probably so. Detection and identification are likely a magnitude of order simpler than systems creation and startup. Thus more complex systemic activities like sensory feedback, information application/enhancement, and enlisting/prescribing of functions are likely prerequisites for evolution to occur.

I differ some with Stephen Meyer some: Memory, i.e., backpropagated feedback or recursive import/impetus from other events, could supply directional bias though admittedly not the original information framework needed for upwardly complex as opposed to cycling biological progress. Without it, new information arrives in a meaningless manner as countless windfalls from 'nowhere'. We also see the routine arrival of statistically improbable fortuitous twists thru repeated functional confluences in the fossil record- in the form of elaborately enhanced, intricately applied new information. Is upward impetus or a dreamy-eyed catalyst at work?

On the other hand, multiple outcomes and survivor bias chained together with every conceivable possibility played out through innumerable, branching realities would create multiple and some very special universes. We have no framework for tracing all finite possibilities yet, so theory involving such multiverses remains more metaphysical than ID and evolution. In a strictly sequential cause-effect universe, you can only get ever increasing complex functions by the interaction of useful developments or experience in some form of information feedback loop, not through accumulative incremental change alone, since functions are network-constrained, systemic solutions.

One profound ID finding: 3.5 billion years isn't enough biological time; it's either ID, or evolution in the multi-universe sense. So, does the mind envisaged in ID evoke a sense of timelessness, or does evolution have a mind of its own?

Has Science Been Sheltering Evolutionary Theory?

2010-09-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

Proper tact should come as second nature to any avid hypothesis tester. For one, I wouldn't mix in astringent discounters in debate with surface commentary. For eg., I often read evolutionists writing, "There are no ID hypotheses." Also, statements such as "There is no ID theory, period" litter anti-ID comments. What amounts to the drumhead approach is simply bombastic, overbearing, and uni-disciplinary. It could even be shooting one's ability to extrapolate discussions in the foot. This is because uses of the term theory are varied in science, applied to even propositional explanations and low-level modeling. This is seen to all but undergraduates. Narrowly circumscribing theory for intelligent design is uncalled for. I see it as some what (sic)- basically a smear issued out of creationist spite!

Evolutionists are being so parochial without being religious! They are getting blind-sided, shooting their own intellectual scientific efforts in the foot. Theory and hypothesis testing should be what science is about, not the worship and exploitation of naturalism!

Now let's get down to business: ID is teleology, not theology. Someone can't spell. It is no more theology than evolution is metaphysics; yet, ID is less esoteric. It firmly clings to technical distinctions drawn into its argument; formal definitions are an integral part of its logic and organization. Most ID critics on A. Books avoid such vigorous incisiveness. In the strictest sense, historically speaking, macroevolution explanations typically use analogy for logical support, since assertions often go untested, at least in terms of the foundational scientific exercise of hypothesis testing.

My claim here is not that evolution lacks evidence. Relatively small changes have been observed, but that's like constructing a web by pl(a)ying with LEGOs. Nothing comparable to the level of the fossil record's tree and branches results; just a crude outline. It's my blue Jeans (depressed single mothers, deploring missing 'Gene') hypothesis. It's also the paleontologist's view versus the geneticist's.

Shall we be so cheeky as to equivocate purpose with motive to speak of lies? "No evidence!" and "No theory!" then are among the evolutionist's best: weak arguments prompted by blissful ignorance, willful blindness, and myopic impudence. More professional and honest would be any tempered extreme, for eg., "There's always evidence, just not good evidence."

Evolution shows evidence of being old and crusty as a theoretical construct. It is broad and general enough to warrant ever more diverse elaborations and extensions. Even lay persons toy with it, manipulating it in linguistic use as a concept, analogy, and rubric. And its scientific feature set has been significantly altered over the years. The last point is actually voicing alarm, not criticism; the next point is a criticism, however: Evolution is often used exclusively as a thesis (as it is used in history) in technical and scientific writing, and in this manner it has seen much more application than as a theoretical tutor or judge for hypothesis testing. I am talking about the social sciences; here it is being used as a thesis for packaging research, not as a theory guiding it. It has waxed into a more generalized concept referring to broadly construed developmental changes of any type and nearly waned into household cliche', losing some logical distinctiveness and linguistic usefulness along the way. Hasn't history demonstrated a less grand unified theory would be more scientific-better for hypothesis testing? Like esoteric Marxist theory, has it no operationalized models or theorems to test?

I classify evolution as a pattern theory based on the way it receives anecdotal inclusion in scientific research reports. With metaphors and analogues arrived at for illustrative purposes after the data has been gathered, it is often used to paint findings, not guide them in an exercise of what to look for and how to interpret it-used in tandem. Causal-oriented models demonstrate a more continuous reference to theory at least in my experience. The notion of cause itself is a more direct premise, constituting a flow line demonstrated throughout the conduct of research and shown in the activity of report writing!

I think ideological and conceptual developments made to the theory of evolution subsequent to Darwin carried us askance from causal inference instead of towards it embracingly in the social sciences. What of the physical sciences?

Evolutionary theory has been subjected to remarkable sequential revisions. And these changes include rather drastic alterations and additions made to the internal mechanisms of the theory. Every 30 years or so, evolution gets a make-over of dramatic revisions to correct what I maintain are long-forestalled corrections to its categorically denied flaws. Changing it's name would allay a host of problems. Evolution's updates are to the point now that the theory does not appear or function as evolution in the classical Darwinian sense any more, except to its single-minded idealistic luminaries: neonates, loyalists, and antiquaries.

No wonder ID proponents and others have taken issue with certain aspects of the original theory as well as these subsequent updates! Using typical evolutionists' after-the-fact logic, ID gets blamed for its inadequacies in 'blame the critic for all the town's ills' fashion and gets farmed out as religion. It's happening protect established positions and leaders or to maintain the initial placard of bigotry set out typically by wider society against newcomers and outsiders in America.

Discount ID's criticisms of evolution out of hand in a libelous manner? It's a far more useful position in terms of discussing socio-cultural issues to take the tact that there is no genuine macro-evolutionary theory and see what happens- simply poke around like many a diagnostician! Evolution in an applied societal sense frequently appears religious. At times, it even looks like simple ideology wrapped in worship- considered above reproach, held untouchable and unassailable like an icon, sacred relic or time-worn liturgical utensil. At minimum, the theory carries a traditionally assigned, compelling scientific status. This is in spite of its showing some evidence of erosion. In addition, it is nonempirical in several areas, routinely passing through theoretical muster while using untested and in some cases untestable propositions (at least, in terms of hypothesis testing). Here still, I am essentially connecting the dots in what I consider to be areas I am most knowledgable in, evolution in the social sciences. This includes anthropology, my specialty.

Is ID not theory? The term "theory" is applied to scientific models that generate hypotheses that CAN be tested, not to models that hold a track record of having been tested and yielding supportative, valuable findings. If theories' underlying hypotheses first have to be comprehensively tested before they could have the designation as theory assigned them, then they would be mere social devices, not the inductive and predictive technical guides they really are. They would also constitute fly-paper for hypotheses more than the catapults for ideas they really are!

Here's the real reason ID is assaulted: It competes with Evolution, a theory being 'shorn up'. Over time, evolution has evolved from the cause-effect model Darwin proposed it to be to a pattern-elaboration one it is used nowadays in actual practice. This is actually understandable, for evolution has had to be used in this way due to its sweeping scope, particle reductionism, and intractible hypothesis testing status. It has exhibited a strong incapacity for hypothesis testing to be accomplished with it. Maybe testing lengthy multivariate events on such a grand, sequential time scale is a futile exercise. Popper had a fit once over the atypicality of this theory.

Evolutionists at times present a decidedly overfocused view of theory, implying a capital 'T' as in Grand Theory when discussing ID. It's narrowly applied, thus contrived, overspecified definition. Maybe it's the act of using a reserved, populist view for the political purpose of enacting an invective against ID. Dumping diatribe on my bandwagon once more, some highly specialized, ad hoc, contrived definitions are being used to weigh ID in the prejudiced accounts. Yes indeed, I hold this social viewpoint very religiously! So slip me over into the religious book section p(r)etty please!

If only related groupings of successfully tested hypotheses are allowed to constitute legitimate scientific theory, then certain mechanisms and various aspects of evolutionary theory make it fail the same test, at least as Smokey has defined it here. I think it is an overly elaborate definition of theory he has suggested here.

Theory as a general construct for scientific methodology and testing is a far cry from the particularized coverage given here by Smokey. Still, we cannot explain such complex matters to grade school children, so such highly resolved views can have some social merit: This one appears an awe-inspiring embellishment of a vital scientific concept made of simple scientific jargon, apparently to instill admiration for science in grade schoolers.

Is this the kind of scientific coverage that gets used against ID by proponents of evolution? Yes, I think so. Is it also being done for purposes of curriculum control in our elementary schools? Are grade school teachers the ones in control, making ID a special case? I hope not. Then it would basically constitute a process of mixing innocent overspecifications in with a few lazy inaccuracies to fill the educational goals of some interest group. I think other similarly defined terms are being used to heap insincere and inequitable social ridicule and defamation on ID.

Once again, I have frequently stated that evolution's more arrogant proponents are consistently imprecise in their handling of definitions and inaccurate in terms of their language. They tend to be spiteful. I attribute the spiteful tendency to schools of thought attempting to maintain traditional distinctions and a sense of intellectual confidence, spilling over into pomposity and overconfidence. Thus the status quo can be disadvantaged. Evolution's foundational rhetoric often incorporates a single-minded, confidence-assertive approach based on a group of highly repetitious, traditions/platitudes for purposes of self-assurance and even self-aggrandizement in its neonates. This is the historical process of responsible scientific professions working at their optimal best.

Is a successful track record of predictions needed in order to qualify as a theory? Maybe famous and traditional ones. Is that what evolutionists' mean by theory? No test of successful or superior adaptation to a particular niche has been established longitudinally in evolution. And without IDing superior adaptations, there's no tracking progress upward. Without operational (measurable) definitions of them taken from past experience, we simply have no benchmark except superficial complexity for future tracking of meaningful biological progress on any scales that would allow humans to directly observe it. Is evolution a sheltered theory?

FATHER TREE ABOUT ORIGINS

2010-05-26T06:45:00.000-07:00

It was a strange scene. Seven little trees were moving up a clearing toward some large trees at the top of a hill. The tree at the very top was the tallest and biggest. Its limbs were nearly completely covered beneath a huge canopy of leaves. The leaves were held out by limbs that looked very much like strong arms. Its branches reached far out from its trunk to the sides and rear, except at one point. There was a little spot devoid of branches and leaves directly in front of the huge tree. At that point, something stood out that looked like a face.

The old tree looked like a ridiculously top-heavy parasol. Apparently, only its huge tail kept the old tree standing upright.

His name was Father Tree. The little ones had obviously come up to see him. When they got close, they stopped and bowed their little green heads to him. As they did, you could hear the canopy of leaves rustle. Father Tree turned around slowly towards them. He returned their gesture with a jerk of his head.

"Good morning, Father Tree," they said.

"Good morning, little ones," he replied. "What brings you up here to the top of the hill this early in the morning?"

"Father Tree, please help us. We want to hear more about the olden days. We disagree about what we heard."

"Oh, the olden days, hmmm? ... How far back do you want to go?" answered the old tree politely.

"As far as you can!" said one tree in the group.

"Ah, well, I can only tell you what I know. I remember when I was a young tree. An old tree talked about things in the olden days -- in the time before we had brains, eyes, mouths, teeth, feet, and a tail."

"What ... no tail? How did we get our tail then?" barked one bright, little tree.

"Nobody can agree on that, child. I guess, no one really knows for sure. But, it appears that either something very powerful or someone who we don't see around today changed us and made us like we are today," answered the old one.

"Why are we here?" asked one little perceptive tree.

"Well, we only know what other trees have been able to discover by digging in the ground. We have feet to run with and hands to hold things with now. At sometime in the distant past, though, we were at the total mercy of the elements. We had no feet to move us or tail to balance with. That's why now when there is a flood or fire, you must move fast and escape from them!"

"But, Father Tree, how can you? You're so slow," barbed the bright little one again.

"That's true, so that must be why I have all you of young ones around me staying close by. You come, visit, keep an eye on me, okay? And you come help me move down the hill when things get bad.

There was another little tree who had remained silent the whole time up until now. She was shifting nervously side to side. She was obviously aggravated at something. She finally blurted out, "And what about bugs? I want to hear about the bugs!" The other young trees quickly moved in towards her. They began saying, "Shhh," "Sssshuttup," and "We're not supposed to ask about that!" She only glared back at them in silence. But she was not figgiting anymore.

Father Tree was scarred with several missing patches of leaves mixed in with a lot of oddly shaped, discolored ones. There were also a few places where his branches would not grow correctly anymore. That's why the little trees weren't supposed to ask him about the bugs.

"Oh, someone's asking about the bugs again. Well ...(sigh)... When an army of insects comes around, we all do our best to get away from them. But bugs can move very fast. You see, we still do not have the means to move away fast enough and outrun all of them."

The little trees gathered in a huddle. Then they whispered to the sage their one last question. "Why not, Father Tree?"

He had hoped that their inquiry wouldn't proceed this far. He sighed. "Ahhh, children. This gets very personal." He continued, "When some you were very young, the bugs came. I took you up in my arms and placed you deep inside my leaves. I hid you there close to my heart. And while I held you safe there, I could not get away from the bugs. I held you there until the terror passed. You see, I could survive their ravages, but as mere babes, you could not."

"You couldn't get away from the bugs because of us!" replied the littlest of all.

"That's true," said the aged tree, "You see, there is an important lesson about life that you need to learn. Young and old must always stick together and help each other out- especially during the bad times. This is a lesson about a purpose for life and death. Neither generation can survive apart or by itself. Each of us at different times needs the encouragement and assistance of the other. Perhaps that could tell us something about our real origin. Something very elegant made things in this way. And that's the best explanation I have to give you for the way we are now."

The Absurdity of Expecting the Mainstream Press to Publish ID Books

2010-04-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

I guess we should sample the title pages of the anti-slavery books from the 19th century and women's suffrage books from the early 20th, and then analyze the list of publishers that printed them. Then we could decide for ourselves which positions were right. It's a good argument for people who characteristically find relief and acquiesce in the simple view of things. However, it is comparable to the act of judging the quality of a cake from the visual appearance of its icing, or the quality of a store by its window-dressing.

Most strategies used by the status quo to deny legitimacy and prevent institutional access to individuals holding radically new views constitute such examples of shallow-minded thinking, evidently at the point they perceive they are loosing too many constituents. That is the same point in time you see a large number of derisive statements cropping up. Ostensibly, it is for the purpose of reigning in the faithful by employing very simple thus easily politicized sketches outlining a group's essential, though self-admittedly cryptic, positions and dogma. It's by-product is discrimination legally speaking, the unfair treatment of individuals or groups based on race, religion, gender, age, or intellectual position.

What should we make of this current state of affairs? I suggest the following approach: ID, take heart and bide your time! The current evolutionist strategy is dangerously short-sighted. As long as this kind of treatment is levied against you in the form of tangible economic effect and levelled against you in public instances of harangue that bring very evident professional anguish, then historically speaking- you cannot lose! Persecution and defamation historically have never succeeded, at least in the long run. What you should really fear is winning under the wrong circumstances, or perhaps 'winning' at all.

If evolutionists actually wanted to kill your position and do so effectively, they would gobble it up. That is, they would insincerely welcome it for a time. Once in real control, sitting back in their chairs in academic departments, they would quietly sidetrack its arguments, water down its import, and defuse all its insights about evolution. That would leave them in control and you demoralized- in a quandry! You actually should rejoice that your intellectuals and scientists are still powerfully in control of the development of your arguments and viewpoint, and not converted evolutionists such as I.

I have a M.A. in Anthropology from a large midwestern US university and wrote my thesis on the sexual evolution of primates (basically supporting macroevolution). Now I take the naturalistic ID position. But I think some creationists should maintain a base of control of ID, not because they are unjustly accused of being in collusion with ID and of already doing being in control, but from the high risks that academic compromise could bring to ID's goals. Academic acceptance of the ID position is ID's greatest risk due to the fact that ID scientists appear to long excessively for such acceptance. Professionally speaking, that is advantageous, but politically speaking, it is very unwise. I think you should be happy that you are being very obviously being treated rudely and unreasonably. You should even seek out public opportunities for such treatment. Think about THAT whenever you suffer ridicule. We should not be seeking personal comfort in the middle of a fight! And God help us intellectually, figuratively speaking, if the fight is ever over!

Remember, the American people are watching. Rely on the kind of people you know them to be. Subconsciously, evolutionists are deeply troubled at this, that is, by most Americans, their beliefs, curiousity, political nature, and love for the media. This cauldron is all working in the background against evolution and greatly to some evolutionists' chagrin. Some naively express strong sentiments about it in the columns posted here on Amazon Books. It is also an indication of what likely is really happening. The American people are most likely turning en mass against evolution.

Right now, anti-ID arguments look like fruit baskets to those helping shore up traditional evolution. But all the while, intellectually speaking, they are loud-ticking time bombs set out on a very public stage. And... haven't our parents and the American dream practically raised us to prefer the underdog?

Riddle: With the English Language Changing So Quick, Does It Really Matter Whether the Selection is an Adjective or Adverb?

2010-04-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

You've just been given a riddle, and in it, you've been given an example. Enough information is supplied even in the title to decide the matter.

While reading the title of this blog entry, you either winced or you didn't. Those who winced could be called prescriptivists, the authority-minded lot, and those who didn't wince, descriptivists, a democratic and user-friendly group.

The goal of the riddle is this: Find which group is analogous to the evolutionists and which one is analogous to intelligent design.

The Big Bang. An Origins Story.

2010-04-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

Once the universe was a romance. Attraction and Repulsion ruled the roost and Indifference and Excitement were their little kids. Attraction tried to make something of itself, and Repulsion tore it down. Indifference sought patience, the pattern that time brought. Excitement did its own thing, ignoring all sorts of problems.

Then something slammed into this family. It did so with a bang. No one really knows what it was. We never really know in a divorce, do we? Whatever it was, it caused the Big Bang. Attraction gave up and Repulsion got so angry, it blew everything away! Away from what? Well, away from what ever type of romance they had.

What a mess! Things stayed on the edge of nothingness for a while. Then one day a stranger came by. That stranger decided to make a difference. The mess was cleaned up so that the alienation and divorce of principles might never occur again. That stranger was intelligence.

It all has happened before. And it will happen again. It may happen innumerable times- at least until someone gets some real brains and changes the rules of the game in the physical universe.

All Intelligent Design or Evolution Need Prove

2010-04-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

Intelligent Design need not toy with the idea that there is a God, or even explicitly allow for its possibility. There are many types of causal agents that could be influencing direction-limiting biological progress, some natural and others beyond our current levels of functional, systems understanding. Attributing the development of life to a cause or group of causes beats propitious additive random design (evolution) hands down. Take the miracle of the DNA code and its replication, for example. What human alive today could have thought that one up on his own? Originally, it was an incredibly difficult concept to even model. It would have been impossible to have humanly designed it, and it still is. Also consider the self-healing, automatic mending nature of the body which can even by-pass incidentally obstructed blood vessels and restore blood flow. These processes surpass the capabilities of current medicine. We cannot even pair up strands of RNA.

Functioning systems call for causes. The only natural, physical analogies that run counter to the principle of a precipitous cause have a very short lifespan by comparison and are functionally many levels lower on the scale of complexity than functioning, self-repairing tissues and organs. Four of only a handful of possible choices are wave action, typhoons, tornadoes and snowflakes. Humans are basically left to mimick, imitate, or copy observed natural functions. They are not like mere weather or climatological patterns, but more like feedback-driven biological machines beyond human capability to replicate. We are generally neither creative nor insightful enough to originate our own biological systems solutions. What could not be manufactured by man cannot have evolved out of choice accidents and the environmental variation that has been available on Earth.

Intelligent agency, like the evolutionary paradigm, must be viewed through the looking glass it produces and has produced. Basically, its processes are shown in its biological products. But products alone tell us little about the methods used in their manufacture unless some sort of manufacturing code lies beneath the surface. We are limited organisms ourselves, with mediocre sensory organs comparatively speaking and specialized intellectual capacities, thus are restricted by our constitution just as other organisms are. Who certified us capable of discovering our own origins? For one, we can only perceive our world in limited ways and forms. We can only sense certain things, too. Other concepts and phenomena are only noticed by first attributing cause and meaning to them, i.e., to their instances, events and objects. Technology has only added to these abilities incrementally. It has not yet enhanced them on an exponential scale. We are children of a 21st century intellect, its shared records, and its store of devices. We are rarely able to work our way out of this conundrum and see beyond it. When the subject and details of what happened in milleniums past comes up, we are often reminded that our families cannot often agree on what was wrong with last night's supper or conversation. We can offer no guarantee that the experts are right in their interpretation of history. We should even be less reliable when it comes to the matter of pre-history. Why do we give evolutionists a free hand and blank check in the public schools? If one scientist speaks up against it, he or she should be mentioned! I have a masters degree in anthropology and am not permitted to present my view in a U.S. public school science classroom! Current-day court rulings are not merely recapitulating the U.S. court rulings that supported and encouraged monopolies to have an economic heyday in the U.S during the 19th century. They are legally preserving the same type of absurd travesty occuring in American educational institutions!

One consequence of this is shown in the forms our data take. Evolution is just as restricted in its data pool as ID is. Creationists use religious texts for sources of data, primarily. ID broke off of it to base its views on the scientific method and then found its theory severely restrictive, too. Now it jumps into theory and philosophy, as it jumps backs to data and research. Like historical science, evolution and ID are relegated to the position of searching for processes in the archives of past data (fossils and fissures), or else be limited to present physical microprocesses (in genetics and biological cells). Most of our interpretations are circumscribed by the absence of real, direct, ever-present, ideal forms of data. We cannot conduct experiments on macroevolution, for example, but we can sure act like we understand it very well. Both evolution and ID then project views from the position of weakness (and in some cases ignorance), the absence of direct observation of physical data, as a result. Little empirical research is even attempted on the processes of biological progress; instead, much is assumed theoretically. Very little of it gets tested. The main way to prove this fact is by citing the general lack of hypothesis testing found traditionally occuring or going on currently in origins science.

With evolution and ID sitting on their laurels and neither doing much more than complacently trusting theories, unable to physically test their key principles, and waiting for supportative evidence to pile up in the form of subtle, indirect accumulation of implications and a subjectively interpreted preponderance of findings, the following state of affairs exists: All ID needs to demonstrate is that nature is smarter than man. If it proves this case within the present sparse intellectual climate, it has ipso facto proved its main thrust. And this point shouldn't be all that hard to prove, since (as Peter Marshall had said) the DNA code created us and not vice versa! That thrust is that features of directed intelligence in all likelihood produced biological progress- that intelligence in nature is much more likely the cause of biological progress than chaos theory's explanation. All evolution need do is prove that man is the pinnacle of natural, physical development and there is no need to grow beyond his design or look beyond it for anything better. Hopefully, both premises won't be demonstrated to have merit at the same time, but this is exactly what I expect to see happen in the present highly charged political climate of the origins debate.

Randomness is impotent as a directional force. And indeed, I did not say important. Even an appropriately demonstrated process of evolutionary progress needs a demonstratable rationale for directional change and increased complexity as shown in the fossil record. With hominids, it has been culture. With nonhominids, it should be other derivatives of intelligence.

The despised injection of brain matter that would constitute adding insights from artificial intelligence and ID into evolutionary theory in order to give it a needed shot is categorically rejected without due consideration. Any directivity sufficient to provide strong (as opposed to weak) causes of increased biological complexity is currently rejected out-of-hand by evolutionists. They won't countenance causal discussions or observable physical causes because of their blindly hypocritical, unnaturalistic committment to time as cause. No criticisms or adjustments to evolutionary theory supported by nonloyalists are allowed because of wildly charged emotionalism. The merits of AI and ID's arguments cannot not even discussed in an adultlike, rational manner. An atmosphere of dogmatism and a climate of professional fear that it built clouds all discussion. It has beseiged evolutionary science for decades. Partisanism and dogma are the root causes behind it.

Evolutionists' main weakness in this area is their blind parochialism: many are not interdisciplinary. Furthermore, such close-minded proponents are adamant and childishly proud of the fact. Dogma and ideological purity can reign in interest-group politics, and it does so precisely in the case of evolution's out-of-hand, categorical rejection of AI and ID due ostensibly to their hatred of the alleged association of ID proponents with creationists. Stated as at the heart of the argument is a fear of the pollution of science by religion and religious texts, though the same scientists do not try to rein in religious influences that might influence cosmology. Neither are they concerned over the heavy influence that other philosophical positions already have on science, such as humanism, materialism, or atheism. Thus their rejection of ID is most likely historically based and not rooted in any theoretical or methodological- indeed any substantive concerns.

Intelligence and Music Virtually Ignored as Natural Forces

2010-03-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

Intelligence and music are features of nature, prominent in numerous species, yet distinctly separate in their appearance and development from human progress itself. They are greatly reflected in human progress, and perhaps, perfected to a high degree in it. However, biology and physics have virtually ignored intelligence and music as forces of nature.

They get shunned as independent variables and treated as mere consequences and dependent variables. Why is this so? I think it's simply out of the lame excuse that theists project intelligence and creativity as significant causes in origins. Perhaps scientists should steer clear of the use of drinking vessels, too, due to the fact that chalices are still used in churches. That's not to mention other customs that originated in churches, such as the wearing of formal clothing, consulting of reference works, attending institutions of higher learning, etc.

Fearing pollution or other types of influence from the etymological derivation of words is a ridiculous notion, just as expanding the concept of the separation of church and state as a guide to regulate choices of topics in science classrooms is. At work here is the same two-centuries-old Luddite principle at work, surreptitiously designed by a group of people to resist technological change, but actually motivated by the desire to economically regulate the workplace. Many evolutionists in principle fear their craft being influenced in the least bit by anything ever called religious. However, they have not quite thought the notion through yet in my estimation. Some things cannot be avoided in life. We can bury our heads in the sand, but this will not make physical forces or the history of ideas go away.

Some Naturalistic Intelligent Design Hypotheses and Definitions

2010-03-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Intelligence = Selective Reactions to Stimuli (Not Necessarily Conditioned or Consistent Responses)

Naturalistic Intelligent Design Support = Evidence of Intelligence Appearing Coincidentally with Progress (Circumstantial Evidence is Considered Compelling and Supportative, though Not Conclusive.)

Progress = Increased Relative Complexity or Numerical Ascendancy

Complexity = Degree of Functions and Interrelations in an Object

Sensors = Chemical Processes that Create Reactions in Adjacent or Connected Physiological Areas or Pathways
(Also, Mechanical Processes that Create Responses in Adjacent Mechanical Parts or their Connections)

Physiological Synergic Response Is a Superior Independent Variable to Natural Selection!

2010-03-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

ABSTRACT: Who are we to assume that all things continue as they were if left alone? Who made us the power brokers to assign 'continuity and constants' to nature, making them rulers of the universe? Obviously, things have not quite turned out that way. Change and progress are as much the rule in the real world as the exception, and this is especially true of organisms as they are studied in the field biology, medicine and anthropology.

We only need to look at the processes of growth and aging to see that organisms never really stay the same. Throughout the life cycle, organisms undergo a constant flow of cycles and patterned change. Some of it is progressive; most is cyclical. Many changes are facilitative, but others are debilitative, especially those in later life. A truly remarkable fact is that the same is true of nature in general. Even microorganisms mature, grow old, produce new life, and die. Every living creature does, even the thousands-of-years-old redwood trees in California. Progressively increased longevity has not been a general feature of evolution, though increased complexity and intelligence have been. Species develop and die off, too. Where did the life processions we know as maturing and aging come from if organisms are meant to continue the same as they were in the past? Obviously, things do not continue the same always, or else nature would have incorporated a different processual pattern into life.

There is a methodical, constant pressure for progress upward in complexity in the physical world. Individual life cycles ultimately digress and face an end, and not just in the biological world. Stars and planets do so, too. They form, they grow old, crumple and die. Why is this so? Could it be that they have a similar range of timed change, maturing and aging-essentially a life cycle, also? Either such is the case, or something similar is happening. The same could be happening with species, and this is the view that NID supports.

The causes of biological progression could be as simple as music tempting the ears, or beauty entering the mind's eye, creating a synergy in the physical world! The tapestry we call nature could actually be the result of a preoccupation of the real world with a plodding sort of progression, or innate efficiency, pattern elaboration, greater complexity, perfecting intelligence, or even perhaps varying aesthetics put in at the gate- that is, sensations and sensors evidently placed in it! For sure, that's a big if, but it is essentially what information moving around inside an organism would look like if sensory feedback and response are occurring.

It seems to me that this is all NID need show empirically in order to reach legitimacy as as a scientific explanation: It needs to demonstrate that sensing activity and information (stimulus/response) flow is occurring at the cellular or molecular level in organisms. Then cells and molecules will be shown to possess rudimentary intelligence! And this is not that hard a task, since 'mindless' plants have already been shown to possess a high degree of circumstance-adaptive capability. Naturalistic intelligent design does not require a brain. It simply needs to demonstrate a pattern of directed response, problem-solving ability in the physiology of organisms.

Even sexual and artificial selection may be using sensors and triggers! That is the first place to look for what I will call reactive selection here. Sexual and artificial selection (for eg., sexual dimorphism and domestication) show signs of being readily identifiable real world processes and effects. Their track records are more empirical than environmental effects have proven to be. They also entail clearly identifiable referents and antecedants functioning inside organisms. They are thus easier to identify and observe than environmental processes and effects.

Identifiable causes inherent to organisms that could lead to continual progress of upward biological complexity quite likely exist inside organisms. There are a great many interrelated functions; some of them should have synergic tendencies. That is, some of them should push out of their immediate surroundings or jump level, combining actions into consequences that exceed the sum of their individual contributions, and even lead to new and novel actions.

In the lifeless natural environment, synergy can not be seen acting at rudimentary levels. Ever since Charles Darwin provided his environmental mechanism for facilitating the advancement of species in The Origin of Species, natural selection has not amounted to a process showing physical causes. It has instead essentially remained an effect for measurement purposes, a natural consequence only, although it does also get used as the high level generic term for the whole process. I am saying that natural selection has only shown up as a dependent variable in the empirical studies, and not as a real world independent referent. Of course, I am assuming that there is a continuous observable process or repetitious natural cause (a pattern found common to most casual analogies) leading up to most physical results that can be identified through empirical research. Yet natural selection does not manifest an empirical parameter to identify. Even the concept of fitness is an abstract and highly subjective one.

All natural selection is helpful for is telling us that speciation occurs in the environment. It is no more developed a term and useful for identifying causes in the environment than it was one hundred years ago. That's why other scientific concepts are far more useful as selectors. The whole basis in use of natural selection is on identifying superior survival ability after the fact, after differential performance has been demonstrated. This alone shows natural selection is not predictive as a variable. Natural selection's derivative, fitness, is a situationally dependent concept. It is a relative term, useful for comparisons purposes only, and not very useful for actual measurements in species or organisms.

Conventional evolutionary wisdom acknowledges that the biological progress of species, including their moving up the evidentiary ladder of complexity and intelligence, could be rooted either in directed natural causes or in overall, advantageous accidental outcomes. If the latter proposition is the case, progress is an innumerable compounded series of undirected fortuitous accidents (a noncausal description common to chaos and random-number theory), making natural selection an ineffectual mechanism in terms of identifying direct causes (independent variables, for instance). It could be at the most a contributory influence in this role, theoretically speaking. (What is really needed is a more unifying influence; more about this feature of synergy later.) If the former proposition is the case, some form of natural guidance system becomes necessary for there to be any general theoretical understanding of it, and a dream team or design algorithm advancing the assembly line of regulatory genes up to higher levels of complexity becomes necessary, also. This is what intelligent design has proposed. But the latter proposal would require the identification of a nonenviromental stimulus-response mechanism or something like it that is capable of propelling biological structures upward in terms of their real world levels of complexity. And it would require improved empirical definitions of the terms complexity and intelligence, what NID proposes to do.

Is such a natural control device out of reach at present? No, it is not. The problem is that there are several potential causes that can be identified or theorized for tests at present. First, we must assume a one-way step ladder exists in terms of nature's pattern of progressive complexity. Natural selection essential theorizes something so broad as to not be differential in tests, assuming there were any. It also could just as well be seen in localized geographical terms as a multi-directional, cyclical chain of effect, but it gets applied regionally in unidirectional step-ladder mode for long-term explanations primarily. This is because it has been inappropriately applied to the task of explaining upward biological progression, I believe. Again, theoretically, natural selection can only explain the matters of climatological adaptations and terrain adjustment. Also, there just aren't that many variations on themes applicable to natural selection, i.e., distinctive types of environments, even if a species has a wide geographical range.

Have you heard of harmonies, resonances, echoes, reverberations, synergies, etc. appearing as repetitive complexities in nature? These are oft-times novel, sometimes surreal combinations found in the physical world. They endure as patterns that can be rated as either pleasing, progressive, complex, or methodical to the senses. One principle involved in their creation is that forces tend to repeat and reinforce each other when placed within a context of constraint, and this can produce a signusoidal pattern in them. Another principle involved is that mutually reinforcing functional relationships occur naturally. These tend to produce harmonies and synergies in nature.

Even natural selection cannot escape the need to provide explanations of coincidences beyond the theorized chance benefit of chaos. An effect-unifying feature of any benefit-based mechanism is needed for higher functional complexity to be reached. The simplest way would be to identify a sensory mechanism in the environment. Feedback would then need to be demonstrated. Currently, such features are only hypothesized about the environment on a purely theoretical basis. But that is the challenge natural selection must meet in order to be taken seriously as a reliable upward thrusting force of nature. With current definitions of natural selection, finding such features is unlikely, mainly since the environment as a concept exists only at a high level of abstraction and as an essentially theoretical construct. Natural selection proponents need to start demonstrating correlations between environmental features/forces and genomes, thereby demonstrating the context of unidirectional synergy, too, instead of simply assuming propitious cause in a nondescript environment.

Cause is usually not that hard to find in nature. Take the very common example of music. Music is often found to be the product of asserted variations on a theme or an enduring complex pattern of sound. Music exhibits harmonies and synergy. It is sound bouncing around in a variety of directions within measured constraints. There are repeating sounds and variations on themes. Usually, music flows to a climax, whereupon a new cycle begins.

Now why can't biological progression be strongly effected by such harmonies, recombinations and synergy? Of course, there is always a chance to make counter arguments or the polar-extreme argument. In this case it might be that music is the mere interpolation of noisy coincidences as interpolated by a mind. Of course, the human mind can often form some pattern out of continuous random noise if it seeks direction and listens long enough to it. Expectations may even modulate it. In fact, this process is built into the human mind's perceptual tasks, especially the processes of sound and sight filtering. Natural selection appears to assume and utilize such a viewpoint, i.e., a nonrandom selection, asensory point of view. It attributes the complex, genome uplifting consequences of what I will call noise here (mutation and genetic recombinations) to a consistent environment- but who is to say the environment isn't much more chaotic than the gene and chromosome replication process itself? Furthermore, climate is by definition cyclical, not linear, and evolution is linear!

Fortuitous circumstance must be demonstrated in science, not simply assumed. Then our certitude can stand on data, not assumptions and value judgments. Research should both build and test theory, not be shaped and congealed into cases that appear to confirm it. Identifying cases in the real world as instances confirming certain propositions and then explaining the data presented by such cases as illustrative of those same propositions is illegitimate. It is research that is biased backwards. Yet case studies, and natural selection studies in particular, employ this logic frequency in research designs.

This is a point rarely addressed in evolutionary study and research: genetic 'noise' is merely imagined to be something less than data containing meaning. Chaotic effects get added up into benefitial patterns, getting turned into causes as a result, only because of the presumption of unidentified fortitous environmental forces, and the need of a mind to understand propitious circumstance. The problem with natural selection is that the environment isn't the likeliest force driving selection! Mechanisms internal to organisms such as control genes and physiological regulatory functions are more likely to be the cause! They certainly are more observable and measurable.

I once worked as a electronics technician in a college biology lab. Circulatory research was being conducted on rabbits by veterinarians at that site. They discovered that blood vessels automatically reroute themselves around blockages if given the time and opportunity, i.e., they create a spray of newly formed blood vessels jumping/shunting around any blockage of a blood vessel that has been temporary and repeatedly shut off. This assumed that such blockages were not so serious or comprehensive as to actually kill the organism. They surgically implanted a valve in a major blood vessel and shut it on and off with a timer while measuring the blood flow using ultrasonic blood flow meters. Later, they anesthesized the animal, and cut it open. They typically found a spray of by-passes created automatically around the valve by the circulatory system itself that would counter the effects of the incidental obstructions. The blood flow records charted the pattern of the ad hoc vessels' growth and development.

This is what I mean by physiologically regulated functions. Bodies have sensory and cure-making mechanisms for all sorts of continguency (read here 'adaptational') purposes. And they comprise remarkably intelligent adaptational mechanisms inside the organism, not outside in the environment!

Physiologically speaking, the rabbit circulatory system may be a smarter surgeon than the best human mind, smallest hand, and keenest eye! We are talking about an intelligence exceeding human intelligence demonstrated here in the physiological response of an organism!

Coarse external impetus views of biological progression such as natural selection wall us in. They turn on meaning of life and even turn the purpose of an organism's survival into a vacuous mirage, a mental construct- instead of a real world parameter to measure and refine! They also assign stand-alone real world causes an awkward, sideline role in the process. Wouldn't boxed-in harmonies, synergies, and resonances be better candidates as causes of directed, progressive biological change than incremental environmental contraindications at work!

What is behind the presence of nonrandom patterns and complex systems in nature? They are sometimes more complicated than the ability of any human mind to fathom them- far more than short-lived storms. This is just one incredible feature of nature. It is not an easy thing to explain. Nor is it an easy thing to explain away by a simple application of a mathematically descriptive or summative point of view. Physical world analogies and science teach us that highly improbable events are most likely caused by something physical, not supernatural or immaterial! A pattern merely appearing due to some highly unlikely, compounded chain of random, basic events is a description, not a cause (unless the whole universe has higher constructs and functions that in themselves possess empty meaning). Of course, one can interpret any pattern either of these two ways (and perhaps others). It's just that science's goal is to make sense of patterns, not relegate evidence to the stall that provides no explanation but a statistic trace of it. Understanding and explaining cause in the real world is an essential purpose of science. When its goals are sidestepped in academia, the action is regretful. Biological progress is much more than a rationalization about obscure, subtle features of the environment leaving behind a connected series of propitious, accidental effects that have been retained due to their projected real world, differential benefits to a species' survival potential.

Whatever the particular features of fitness are in particular organisms, their definitions are typically performed in a case-sensitive, subjective manner. The conceptual equivalent of backwards (after research) definition is used in identication of natural selection cases. However, any reframing of definitions after cases of fitness have been identified would invalidate the use of them as data points or cases because it creates adjusted data in the favored direction of the researcher's expectations. Particular case studies cannot not be used both for illustration purposes and for data purposes at the same time. Invalid data can too easily be generated in this process, and smudged data is the result. The core problem here is that insights gained from the identification of cases of natural selection are not seen as crucial opportunities for the scientific testing of any alternative hypotheses, or even for testing of the null hypothesis. They are merely seen as proof of concept examples. Research goes no deeper than that, because concept definitions are not being kept separate from data points. Research validation does not proceed past the point of proof of concept. As a result, the natural selection case-study research typically remains at the armchair speculative level, being performed ex post facto, after the discovery of any relevant empirical facts are discovered. And conceptualization to demonstrate fitness appears to be generated on a purely ad hoc basis.

Sexual selection and artificial selection easily show signs of having antecedants and referents, being clearly caused in the natural environment, but natural selection apparently rarely if ever leaves the same mark on its actions. Natural selection and fitness are results, not causes. Nature reflects cause and effect, and science developed in response to curiousity and need to understand the connection between real world cause and effect, not just to admire its effects.

So what is the cause of natural selection? As a mechanism and process, it has escaped close scrutiny. As a cause, however, it cannot escape it.

Cyclical repetition and intricate pattern are nearly as pervasive in our universe as continuity is. They are the basis of sexual selection, not natural selection. In addition, repetition and pattern are the staples of science, and not merely features of nature. They should not be taken lightly or treated with disdain and handled superficiality. Worse yet would be to totally ignore them due to the drone of a single, low-level pattern in the background of nature, statistical accretion. Natural selection may be evolution's abacus- a flat stone crowning the capital of its main column, but it is only the beads-on-wires counting frame of genetics. The column-carry 'keep' function of the mathematical abacus (not the architectural abacus above) can only be performed in a systems model based on sensory input/output using at least a well-timed, triggered mechanical response, or at most, a keen, attentive mind with good hand-eye coordination. That is, progressive complexity needs not only selection and retention mechanisms, but a unification as well. None of these have shown up empirically in the environment except as effects. Accidental coincidence of recurring, combinatory, interfunctional effects with sensory feedback is absurd as a causal explanation in any single organism as well as any one universe. We are not taking about storms or chemistry sets here, but living, thriving organisms.

The selective process of natural selection is, mathematically speaking an explanation of all biological features including the elegant, informed, and intricate which is based primarily on a reductionist explanation. It is much like a number incrementing machine or abacus accumulating profit. I happen to think that a slide rule or calculator would be a better analogy for symbolizing biological progress, not chemical, but the application of natural selection to such problems turns highly simplistic at times. An abacus is highly routine in its operation- just like the fuction of addition. An abascus is a hardwired adding device and natural selection gets explained in purely additive terms quite often. It is a synopsis of billions of particular otherwise inexplicable world events; that's why I call natural selection a mere add-and-carry machine. It is applying the principle of incrementing the mean to the problem of explaining the biological progression of forms and functions. But it says absolutely nothing about why we consistently obtain outrageously tasty fruits and profit from the tree of life!

Still, natural selection is one application of the brilliant principle of parsimony to naturalism! This can be satisfying indeed, even to the point of experiencing an epiphany, but is the catharsis enough? Is coming to a personal conviction a sufficient basis scientifically speaking? If so, science could be running the risk of turning nature into mere cyclical noise and destroying the progressing patterns that comprise the mosaic of its beauty and rhythm, and further empirical understanding. A more detailed view of biological progress is needed, not more rationalizations of the processual description type from a mere rubric such as natural selection. Now which is really behind nature's progression upward in the professional's view? Which is the real process at work? Is it synergic selection for improved complexity, rhythm and dance, or an environmental tax amounting to a purposeless, passive farce?

I still have quite a distance to go to fully explicate this line of inquiry. Sorry that I couldn't accomplish more in this considerable amount of space. I will endeavor to further elaborate the main points of this discussion in future blog entries. All I have attempted to do here is provide an introduction to the basic needs and issues involved. Why do so? It is one of the fundamental topics that concern naturalistic intelligent design (NID), and one that this blog is written for: to introduce naturalistic I.D. to the scientific community in a preliminary way.

Evolution May Be Scientific, but Natural Selection Clearly Isn't!

2010-02-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

ABSTRACT: Evolution should not be castigated in whole or as a term, if for no other reason than the fact it now means a great many different things in the English language. However, criticizing it in part is another story. Natural selection gets criticized, even among evolutionists themselves.

Privately among evolutionists, natural selection is sometimes treated with disdain, although the core idea of the evolution of species is not questioned. It is only the matter of how species evolved that gets criticized in this connection. I have personally heard natural selection lambasted repeatedly by a notable evolutionist talking with groups of his peers. I attributed it to his discontent with Darwinism, but not with the more modern syntheses of evolution.

When I was a doctoral student in anthropology, one young and famous assistant professor in my department repeatedly spoke openly against natural selection. It was obvious that he had made the critique his pet pieve. He made a point of challenging each graduate student he screened in committee meetings to somehow justify natural selection's limitations and define genetic drift correctly. Then he would use their responses to his pointed questions as a basis to reiterate his view that almost no one in anthropology could correctly define genetic drift. He implied that there was an overreliance on natural selection in explanation and not on other features of evolution. Personally, he attributed nearly all evolutionary progress to gene flow as opposed to natural selection. He saw changes in the genetic material of species as caused by the limited diversity resulting from the gene pool sampling error occurring in small, isolated populations that live primarily in secluded mountain ranges.

His actions could be interpreted as a difference in interest or the promotion of a new view. Indeed, it was some of both. But the emotional impetus obviously poured forth out of some other motive. I attributed it to his discontent with natural selection, and I am sure I was not alone in this view. How much a professional can criticize natural selection nowadays depends on several factors. One is what type of academic department you find yourself in or alongside. Are you in biology, genetics, or is it a department of paleontology/anthropology? Different professionals and departments view the adequacy of natural selection variously as they have varied degrees of daily necessity and prior committment invested in the concept. Anthropology I found to be more open to criticism of the concept; genetics seemed almost closed to any criticism of it. Other factors are important to consider before offering a critique, too: Is there a famous, tenured professor in your department who is vocal about natural selection and tolerates no dissent in the discussion? No one in the department will criticize the term then, at least if he or she desires to obtain and maintain tenure. Is your chosen department known for defending traditional Darwinism? You should find out. If not, you could be free to openly suggest additional and alternative forms of selection in explanations.

The answers to these questions will determine how much you are allowed to criticize natural selection openly before your friends and peers in the university. I found out the hard way. I did not criticize biological evolution per se, but the inelegant, stepwise mimic of it, cultural evolution. It is a stage/levels-based, structuralistic copy of biological evolution using integrated levels of cultural development to describe cultural process. Like most social evolution models, it is a crudely stated derivative taken from an overgeneralized view of what Darwinian evolution is all about. The structuralists (British and U. of Chicago school of social anthropologists) support the use of a cultural evolution model strongly while the cultural diffusionists (U. of CA.-Berkeley cultural anthropologists, followers of Franz Boas, the originator of American anthropology) take issue with it. If you are a natural selection critic seeking to enter any such department, you should first find out how much you will be allowed to question particular features of evolution of interest to you-such as natural selection. However, you will not be able to find any openess for questioning the subject of evolution itself in departments encompassing origin studies. Once more, be careful: evolutionists might at a later date mark criticism of natural selection as a social indicator to categorically identify and discriminate against ID proponents. And in origin studies, categorically often means dogmatically when dealing with people and viewpoints.

Challenging natural selection at the conceptual level is a professionally acceptable act, though this is not true in the view of all evolutionists. There are some obvious problems commonly known and discussed about the relevance and usefulness of natural selection as a term, but most evolutionists do not admit this fact publicly. They are reluctant to imply any question that sort exists in evolution studies because of the harshness of evolution's critics. Any such admissions of doubt provide critics with fuel for stoaking fires of protest against evolution, which are often based on grounds that are religious in nature and not scientific. Admitting a fault would be a sign of poor judgment like an admission of fault at the scene of a traffic accident. It would also reflect poor public relations management for evolution in the public sphere. Indeed, any evolutionist I have met is capable of turning quickly and vehemently against methodological considerations when a criticism or doubt is brought against the evolution model in general, i.e., whenever someone appears to put down evolution as a whole. Such criticism sounds hollow to them-like bigotry and religious zealotry. Cross-institutional arguments are then brought into play. The critic also gets turned into an outsider. For many evolutionists, the discussion turns into a class conflict at that point. Professional politics takes over control in the verbal exchange. This is one reason why there is so much 'heat' generated in the debate. The terse process of spiteful labelling often takes place at the outset of discussions, due partly to a quick rejection of opponents' legitimacy, and gets followed up with a turn to uncomplicated terms used in simple-minded fashion. The only good response I have found to this is to establish one's legitimacy first; only then can one critique freely.

Notwithstanding, at the same time evolutionists themselves may be questioning the validity of natural selection in particular cases and consoling each other during their show of solidarity. It is not considered in evolutionary circles to be a show of hypocrisy, but rather a matter of good impressions management and saving face. Like the structuralists say, the public sphere is a stage that all players come to perform on. Things would be simpler if people weren't so human and groups of people were nobler as a rule. Alas, it seems that day-to-day practical, institutional concerns take precedence in matters before the public eye even at the highest levels of evolutionary science nowadays. Good science can quickly turn very political in character.

Let's take a look at natural selection as cause, process, and result. Darwin saw it as the premier mechanism in nature to guide variation to greater survivability. He would never have published The Origin of Species without hypothesizing something like it. As a vital component, he presented it as a real world process affecting population survivability where relative advantageous outcomes, but no particular causes, matter. I have seen the term handled with considerable methodological imprecision in most evolution discussions. Most evolutionists do not differentiate in its use between cause, mechanism, or result. It is often hard to know which one they are referring to when they mention natural selection. Some think that when talking about a process, it does not matter.

Natural selection does not appear to be predictive of cause. It also fails to pass the null hypothesis test: Individuals predicted to comprise the fittest individuals in a population do not survive longer or produce more offspring than average, more typical, individuals. The dead die as phenotype-indiscriminate martyrs. Death before procreative age is indiscriminant-much more accidental and random than that of some vague or indeterminate cause from the environment acting on individual differences. The fittest only appear to survive and produce more offspring than more typical individuals when the research enterprise subjects itself to the ad hoc effects of interpretational tautology. This is defined as research through the use of historical hindsight, observing and labelling prodigious individuals as fittest after the fact by first determining at some point in time those who are the most productive individuals, labelling them as the fittest, and then checking in on any prospective causes in retrospect. Natural selection is not predictive of traits that are reproductively advantageous.

New causes of survivability have not been predictable for the concept of natural selection. Causes identified with the benefit of hindsight typically get applied as an anecdote and done in superficial fashion. Take for instance the notion of adaptation. It gets mentioned in a particular case every time, yet it does not get explained in measurable form as a process. Is this the practice of letting concern over naturalistic cause slide by and go unnoticed for the sake of preserving speculation as theory? Should natural selection always include untested, armchair conjecture as a vital link in its chain of explanations? Would this make natural selection an exercise in empirical science or philosophy? Is it a real world understanding at all or just an exercise in theoretical rubric? This is the big question, and one not easy to answer for evolutionists. It is a very good question to ask, however.

I suppose that one reason why discussions of the term of natural selection get encumbered is that natural selection is usually talked about as a cause or independent variable for purposes of the evolutionary discussion, but seems only ascertainable or empirically detectable in the real world once it becomes an effect or result. But this makes natural selection abdicate any scientific right to supply legitimate explanations of how or why change took place. Most of the findings about natural selection appear in the form of examples or anecdotes about nature, cited after-the-fact in forms resembling rationalizations about the results. They are not hypothesized as causes beforehand to be updated through further testing or refinement. As a result of this lack of recursiveness and feedback for the model, explanations of necessity make use of anecdotes and reflection. This is not good methodologically speaking. It can muddle the meaning of terms, floating them in what I call some theoretically stagnant waters where only data mining/fishing for findings can occur. Natural selection fails the methodological test as a reliable, empirically defined independent variable of anything effecting change in the physical world. It doesn't provide any terms measurable for identifying particular real world processes at work. This is because reproductive advantage and survival fitness appear as unrigorous terms. I will offer support of these points later, but for consistency of argument let me follow this line of thought for awhile. Natural selection is used out of necessity: It supplies an intriguing naturalistic argument at a high level of explanatory abstraction that must somehow be true if speciation naturally occurred. But justifying the use of the term based on rational necessity means it is the 'how' that typically gets rationalized, i.e., the process retains a degree of imprecision. The details get imagined away, rather than discovered by empirically operationalizing them and checking them out.

Natural selection also fails the methodological validity test as a group of physical parameters or even a set of standard factors or variables that might be found manifesting itself physically around and in the natural environment. For instance, no derivative or logically associated variables tend even to get named except for survival, survivability and fitness. Can you find any other ones? Please try! Why might this lack be the case? Survival and fittness, like natural selection, are esoteric and heterogenous concepts. It appears they are unable to show researchers what to look for beforehand (in the research design-before data collection takes place). Such after-the-fact applications of terms do not help make arguments more precise and refined. They justify whatever results one does happen to find, freed from the null hypothesis, a research standard and necessary safeguard. Such practices also obfuscate terms and desensitizes researchers to the highly pragmatized practice of accepting crude methodologies and lowered standards for evidence. When considering natural selection as term and argument, Darwin did not have the benefit of the fields of study of heredity or statistics.

Of course, in the ideal world of science, natural selection or its derivative should be getting treated as an operationalized variable or variable set if it is worthy of being tested empirically. But this is not the purpose of tests in evolutionary science. That is, establishing the validity of natural selection as a parameter is not a concern in data collection for evolutionists. To many of them, there is no other explanatory recourse other than the grand construct of natural selection to influence the selection of benefitial genetic traits.

That's one reason why there is no need to test the validity of evolution in the evolutionist's estimate of the matter. Apparently, it has already been tested for all time in the academic marketplace, and the matter is sufficiently resolved (albeit in incomplete form, empirically speaking). This is because evolution was being severely attacked from outside the purview of the university at the time, and strong positions had to be taken in response. Loyalty and legal issues historically settled the matter in a climate of sensationalism. In less volatile times in science, theoretical decisions have been traditionally resolved by the familiar theory-data-test interactivity feature in science. Indeed, in the view of the universities of the time, there was sufficient data to rule on the matter: natural selection was a valid explanation in their view. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the matter was settled a little too abruptly. Nowadays it is obvious that the jewel of naturalism got set out to pasture out due to the extenuating circumstances of the time, especially the criticism of the universities by the churches and religious people of that era.

This is historically why natural selection fails to get conceived of in particular or measurable terms. It is because such is seen as unneeded. Instead, the mechanism is now used as an abstraction and an explanatory construct. You may ask: For the purposes of theory testing, is that legitimate? Again, there is no need for the practice of testing evolutionary theory in evolutionary science. Explain that state of affairs adequately and you will solve the enigma of several other high level issues found lingering around evolutionary discussions.

Instead of treating natural selection as a measurable, testable feature, it is conceived of more as a general principle of nature. Why is it not operationally clarified or measured? It is not operationally defined because it is too abstract a concept and has no distinctive physical parameters (causes or forces rooted in a law/principle of nature) that it can be associated with. Only reproductive survability comes to mind, which is seen more as an end result than a means of effect. For one, natural selection is too high up the scale of abstraction and generalization in the explanatory scheme of things to be identified as a specific cause or cluster of causes. Still, if Popper was right, natural selection should generate testable, subsidiary forces of cause and powerful ones at that-if it is to be useful to any tests of a theory! In my estimate, it can only be used to identify exceedingly weak causes-if any! Evolutionists will sometimes so much as admit such a weakness when they echo the following sentiments: evolution is an eons long, drawn-out, gradualistic, agonizingly slow process.

Its level of abstraction is one thing that makes natural selection too hard to measurably define. But that makes it only useful as an explanatory (rhetorical) device, not a theoretical (scientific)one. Trying to instantialize a brute force of nature in the form of natural selection would be like attempting to circumscribe and measure the intensity of a storm or explain measures for high-end socio-psychological constructs like anomie or social stability. Instead of being instantiated or operationalized, natural selection usually gets treated much like a virtual or theoretical reality, and is visualized as a literal composite stew of intertwined, cascading environmental factors, none of which get operationalized. It is more like a general principle and philosophical construct than it is a set of definable parameters.

I have not read of any cluster of integrated features or related factors in the environment that can be used to characterize natural selection empirically. It seems it must be assumed axiomatically-taken as a circumscribing or integrating factor in explanations-for it most often appears as a black box in evolution publications! That's why I call it a proxy for empirical testing.

The real question to resolve is whether the composite construct of natural selection can suggest any derivative real world variables that can be measured realiably enough to lend any real empirical support to the theory of evolution at all. The most telling insight I can offer in this connection is that it appears to me that no such hypothesis spinoffs of natural selection are currently being designed or used in evolutionary methodology. Even the most famous, the sickle-cell anemia trait protecting some Africans against malaria, has no real parameter that can assigned to it as cause-other than perhaps the concept of increased local-area survivability. It adds nothing to the issue of increased complexity over time in evolution. In the sickle-cell anemia case it would appear that natural selection is merely a localized statistical bias, not a group of natural factors or forces at work.

The track record for natural selection in this theoretical-empirical test connection thus is not a good one. It is at least a crude concept. It certainly deserves no flattery or blind faith in the evolutionary connection.

Once again, natural selection has become a proxy for a missing operationally defined variable set in theoretical science and public explanations. Natural selection as a composite concept (treated as a general environmental principle shown through a complex of factors) is so vaguely construed as to be completely unobservable and immeasurable in the real world, much like race, democracy, and IQ apparently are. This state of affairs may even be intentional (at least subconsciously) in that it maintains natural selection's legitimacy. That is, it keeps the concept of natural selection protected in an untested/unverified state as a filler, a miscellaneous appeal, or rationalization used for bridging arguments in evolutionary explanations. It operates very well as this regard, too, although it remains a very weak link in the empirical world where there are often physical forces and complex, interacting factors at work. Regretfully, as Popper intimated, this may lower the status of evolution to the category of a thesis rather than provide building blocks for it and refinement as theory.

In the end, testing hypotheses about natural selection chiefly appear in the form of sizing up the credentials and value of the journal a publication propositions about it are found in. In other words, it is not really used in research designs that include recognized and respected research methodology such as sampling methods and tests of the null hypothesis. It is more a background rationale to describe the general trends of evolution. It is also used more as a general tendency in nature, serving to orient and outline the broader aspects of and higher-level integrations found in the evolutionary model.

This is a very regretful state of affairs in evolutionary studies. It is probably one reason why evolutionists and their lobbying bodies fight so hard to discredit and silence the critics of evolution. The real problem lies not in those critics who are professional in their conduct, but with a model that is hiding or denying a pitfall: the fact that at least one of their mechanisms as has been defined and promoted is a philosophical and theoretical term, and not anywhere near becoming an empirical, scientific one. And this same methodological state of affairs has existed for a long time. Evolutionists don't seem able to realize or to face up to questions of reasonable doubt generated from the American public about this observation. The lack of methodological rigor may be making evolutionary science an exception, a science of a different sort, similar to what the social sciences and history are. They are known as the soft sciences, not the hard sciences. And, for some even highly educated people in America, basing our origins on abstract and poorly defined terms is a pill too big and bitter to swallow.

Three Ostriches Debating Origins

2010-02-18T04:54:00.000-08:00

Three ostriches stood side by side outdoors behind a huge table. They were waiting to start a debate on origins. A placard had been placed in front of each of them on the table in order to identify the viewpoints they supported. The sign in front of the ostrich on the right had “evolution” printed on it, the middle one's said “intelligent design", and the one on the left was marked with the word “creation”.

The ostrich behind the evolution sign had its head buried in Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species. The ostrich labeled creation had its head in the Holy Bible. The head of the ostrich in the middle, however, was looking at no book. It was looking up. It was glancing upwards at the sky.

Overhead, there was something saucer-shaped moving at high altitude. Having noticed it, the intelligent design ostrich excitedly beat its wings and started running around in circles. He was trying to get the attention of the other two ostriches.

Hey guys, Hey guys!" he said, "I really think you should take a look at this. It could mean something.”

The other two ostriches, however, could not turn away from their books and take a look. They were too worried about giving only authoritative views in the debate. They did not look up until it was too late. By then the object had passed completely out of their field of view.

Intricately Operating, Self-Replicating Systems Merit Designation as Intelligent Products, and Not Just as Machines

2010-01-27T00:43:00.000-08:00

ABSTRACT: Acutely interactive with the environment, with numerous types and innumerable lines of development found rampant throughout it, the preponderance of life on this planet begs one very important question: Are new forms of life still being developed on Earth? The answer merits direct observation before explanation, and a new perspective in terms of the source/origins of life, i.e., one that posits production as origin. Direct observation is a matter of great importance in this area, and a scientific issue that won't go away easily, whatever the scholarly pale or excuse.

Self-replicating systems using input-output control for environmental interaction merit a classification not only as life, but as intelligent products, too. At least, taken from a systems perspective, they deserve more than consideration as machines or even intelligent machines. Given the magnificent fact that they replicate themselves in assembly-line fashion from same-kind objects/elements, a feat that only computer viruses can mimic in terms of human actions, they are a supreme novelty and perhaps, the very pinnacle expression of nature. They surpass the capabilities of human product conception and design. Say again? Organisms developed simply through the process of long-term environmental accretion?

The environmental situation at the time of origin of life on Earth is generally believed to have been dramatically different than it is now--almost conveniently so. If scientists are no longer able to directly observe the process of life being generated on this planet directly due to the fact that it no longer appears in the field, then it is this absence of recurring new life that becomes most conspicuous. It turns the discussion into a tattle-tail critique on what could be a hypocritical grasp at straws for answers in science. If not such a scientific excuse over the absence of data, it might instead be an actual sign of data: a radical change in what then would become Mother Earth's maturing unilinear processes governing the progression and development of planetary life. Either explanation would constitute a noteworthy point, a historical landmark along the sign trail of origins studies.

There are some pitfalls that come with trying to answer these questions, however. One is that it might expose some shoddy science. Origins scientists are typically defensive from being cornered by religious people, historically conditioned into a posture in public of not countenancing doubt that evolutionary theory might be wrong, underdeveloped or inadequate. However, there are still some legitimate concerns, and these are based on the real world, not any religious text. Assuming that the environment has changed from an original life-initiating state without in-depth data being supplied in support could ostensibly conceal an absence of observational data which never existed. It would also then appear to be part of a rather over-zealous public-relations approach generally employed to obscure the absence of observational data for drawing valid scientific conclusions. Taken as the latter, it would constitute a propagandist ploy used in evolutionary circles to obfuscate the general need for confirmational observations, for example, replacing data with mere public-relations driven spectacles such as convincing petri dish lab exercises made in conjunction with armchair-driven news releases. The latter is the same basic grandstanding approach allegedly used by the Discovery Institute, one that enrages evolutionists, eliciting unmistakable consternation and chronic lament in them.

Discovering ultimate origins or first cause may an unreasonable goal for all but the most doctrinaire and fanatic of scientists. It is much like the attempt to peer at God--a feat well beyond our technological reach (sic). It is in some ways like the our pursuit of conditions before the Big Bang: unattainable to all soul searchers other than the mathematician and cosmologist. That is to say, true origin circumstances may be out of the reach of science without employing the tools that can be used to replace direct observation (for instance, a huge telescope conveniently positioned in space to look back in time). I believe that explanations of the origin of organisms deserve more attention and rigor than the use of anecdotal explanations taken from myth, armchair considerations, vaguely reported survival considerations, or extrapolation taken from organ and structural artifacts alone. What we cannot scientifically observe, we can only theoretically hypothesize. Nothing can justify an argument taken from the point of view of ignorance, or its corollary, the inability to observe pertinent data. Thus conclusive answers are not to be found primarily at the prehistoric extremities of science, where there is by necessity a lowered standard for direct observation and evidence, due to the erosion of data currently inaccessible to instrumental science. Our current unwillingness to peer at the possible origins of new life nowadays is no excuse to project theory into the past as fact in areas where there is an acute lack of willingness to obtain data on what obviously was (and must still be) a replete, recurring natural phenomena, the continued genesis of life on Earth.

I believe this regretful state of ignorance can be resolved by real world data and observation. If the concept of species is taken to be analogous to product/produced lines and not just morphological and its particulate sources, our perspective on origins could change to a more current and functionally based one. Reverse-engineering functional analyses of present-day changes in DNA and genes would then serve as the front-line tier for explanation for organisms' past origins! In fact, species' functions and operations and their development then would be tantamount to an understanding of origins, not a mere sequential outline of the appearance of structures in the fossil record. Indeed, taking a functional view of features means that production is in fact origin, and traces of functions become an operational record of a species's actual history. This would effectively become its track record, the developmental history of a species. Unless we can find the actual production lines and fixtures that constitute the building-blocks to create new life, organs, and functions, all which should be occurring still nowadays (If not, why not?), we cannot understand life's origins in this more systems-oriented, wholistic sense. Understanding how labels are stuck on to animals' skins on the outside (classification by morphology) and visualizing the lumbering amoeba of evolution (genetic variation coupled with natural selection) on a chart are not enough.

In a nutshell, it may well all boil down to this: evolution reduces down to the gene pool of numbers; and NID--to testable ideals, but ideals nonetheless.

The Evolution versus Naturalistic Intelligent Design Question in a Nutshell

2010-01-06T20:08:00.000-08:00

ABSTRACT: With the current climate of the evolution versus intelligent design debate approaching levels of an irreconcilable impasse, what could help resolve some issues in the debate? One feature especially sets natural intelligent design (NID) apart from traditional intelligent design. NID by definition permits nothing but natural causes and explanations in its models. If supernatural intelligence were involved, NID would not see it. However, the opposite is true in terms of nonneural intelligence, such as that found in plants, and in conditional looping, such as found in computer-control systems. It is suggested here that while scientists are engaged in ruling out supernatural intelligence in explanating origins, they not lose sight of the possibility that other forms of intelligence like pure natural intelligence might still be involved.

If an evolution/NID debate at the molecular, genetic and cellular levels could condensed down to one essential consideration, I think it would be this: Are DNA replication and cell division based on any of the following mechanisms--input/output data, selective timing, switches, guided object positioning/juxtaposition, feedback, procedure looping, and the processing of inputs? These would be all natural, thus prone to err. If such is the case, then some aspect of non-conscious control processing (AI-like intelligence) would be involved. Intelligence would be involved in the nonneural sense suggested by Glenn Shrom (See Response Number 15 in "19 Responses to Origins of Intelligent Design"). Or is this all due to iterative timing instead, that is, looping, nonbranching, blind sequential (thus nonintelligent) replication sequences that are also prone to error? In a simple analogy, is there any steering wheel for reacting to an organism's condition or environmental circumstance, meaning an organism's state or situation? The choice in logical and AI terms thus is between that of input-output processing or strict hard-wired sequencing. These are questions whose answers are vital to assigning causal explanations to the processes involved.

Even if evolution is even an inadvertant consequence of the process of DNA and gene replication, there still can be no denying that intelligence is at work if some control processing is involved. Low intelligence, mistakes, and stupidity must still count as controlled natural processing in such a case, and thus must be counted as intelligence in the AI sense. Consider the fact that humans cannot be considered to be nonintelligent objects (creatures lacking all intelligence) simply due to the general stupidity they show as a species in matters of environmental management and ecology. It takes rudimentary intelligence to be stupid; it only takes none to be ignorant. The real question thus is whether natural input/output context processing (eg. relative to environmental circumstance or maturity) is involved in the reproduction of organisms and replication of their parts. It is a crucial consideraton in the evolution/NID puzzle whenever it is viewed at the microscopic level.

The problem with many evolutionists considering the intelligence or nonintelligence origins issue is not that they aren't up to speed; they can frame things in these terms, using AI terminology. They just as of yet choose not to. Neither are they ignorant of AI definitions of intelligence. They just don't adapt and apply the rubric of control processing for this area. Why not use it at these levels of explanation? In effect, they don't see the need. They close their eyes in all innocence to the consideration of rudimentary intelligence in gene and chromosone replication, confident that nonrecursive (linear) processes, statistical gene probabilities, and rates of mutations are sufficient for particle-based explanations, and that such explanations coupled with an environment posited in non-descript form are in turn adequate for explaining the whole matter of the biological progression upward of forms. One problem with this position is that it is only a description of general processes, an investigation of the basic 'hows.' None of it attempts to determine the reasons behind things functioning and adapting intricately, the 'whys.' It may well be that the type of explanations evolutionists tend to avoid, viz., detailed descriptions, naturalistic intelligent design can readily supply in the form of testable real world hypotheses.

Is Evolution in the Social Sciences a Theory or Thesis?

2009-12-26T14:49:00.000-08:00

ABSTRACT: Generally speaking, the data of the social sciences is less quantifiable than that found in the physical sciences. Evolutionary studies in the social sciences are based on qualitative methods for the most part. The interpretation of their findings thus resemble the theses of historical research more than they do the quantifiable theories of the physical sciences.

Evolutionary theory in the social sciences is largely qualitative. It is methodologically based on theses more than it is on scientific theories. Theses are not theories. Let me explain this in a preliminary way. For one, evolution is weak on cause. Most of its process statements are not empirically testable. Also, referring to methodology, evolutionary theory traces prehistorical events using inferences based largely on fossil finds. This is in much the same way that historians write history based on inferences taken from archived data. The only interaction with the data here is mental. Theory and hypothesis do not tug on each other in tandem; they do not feedback on one another except, of course, in writing. Theses come out of the writing exercise; theories pour out of and on empirical research. Theses are tacked on to the end of a research report as its inspiration, justification and light background. Theories are mentioned throughout a research reports, serving as its rationale, organizational framework, and ultimate objective. Evolution in the social sciences handles theory, methodologically speaking, the way theses are developed and supported in history.

Sccial science studies of evolution do not test hypotheses in the physical science sense. They do not incorporate the use the practice of drawing up theory-derived hypotheses and running them through empirical tests, with the exception of some archeology and anthropological linguistics studies. Instead, studies tend to use the same kind of data processing and style of support as found in the studies of history. The subfields of archeology and anthropological linguistics I found to be more quantitative. But physical and cultural anthropology were not. They are largely qualitative in terms of the research enterprise. Many people believe evolutionary studies to be based on hypothesis testing. This is for the most part not true in the social sciences. Research about evolution in social science is run on a different basis than many people believe.

My bachelor's degree was a double major in education and the social sciences. Later, I was a graduate student and teaching assistant in history for a semester at a state university in the Midwest U.S. I did not flunk out; I got straight As in history. I changed my graduate study to the social sciences in the following semester. My masters degree was in anthropology. I studied as a doctoral student and worked as teaching assistant in anthropology for several years more. So I the had opportunity to see both disciplines in action, and write graduate papers for both departments.

Studying history taught me how history is written. Of course, there is some variety. But there are also general practices as well. So any conclusions we could draw are based on generalities, generalities that could be quantified and studied, as well. Historians essentially write theses about the written past and support them with arguments. These are used to build a thesis. Support is found for the thesis, and both are then checked by a professor or committee (one type of peer review). They are carefully scrutinized, but not by using the rigorous method of hypothesis generation and testing. Theses are not theories in the sense that they are not subject to any kind of rigorous quantitative tests, quantitative methods, or strict checklists. They also go through periods of change called revision rather like theories do, but thesis revision is more like a change of a point of view than of a world view. Theories do change. They undergo the much slower and more profound changes called paradigm shifts, at least as compared to the way change occurs in the physical sciences. Scientific theories use a more rigorous, deductive process of syphoning off hypotheses as derivations of a theory, rigorously designing them with committee oversight, conducting actual tests according to a methodology distinctive to a particular discipline, and then subjecting the results to evalutation in the form of peer review. Publication may or may not ensue based on additional factors. Ramifications to the theory are then pondered as a reflective, mental exercise essentially only after testing by peer review.

History uses a very different process of pondering a thesis throughout its generation and writing. There is no rigorous testing performed at any time; it is qualitative, too, meaning it generally contains no numerical data or statistical testing. Rationale, style, logic, and new supplementary information are the guides in thesis writing, by one individual. Peer review comes afterwards, not throughout the research.

Evolutionary theory in biology and genetics may be more rigorous than in the social sciences. I certainly hope so. These sciences are much more quantitative in their methodologies. But at least in the social sciences, evolution is a written using a style of argument and logical presentation of support in the form of anecdotal evidence for the most part. Some quanitative evidence is sometimes added in. It is included as a supplement when such exists, but it is extremely limited in terms of its use and ramifications for evaluation. In essence, the main argument ushers forth from the mind and views of a writer and his or her ability to persuade, not from a rigorous evaluation of research targets met or not met and any relevant data obtained.

If what I am saying here is correct, then the study of evolution is social studies, not social science. I apply this only to the soft (as contrasted to the hard) sciences. In these disciplines, it is most like historical studies in terms of its methodology and writing approach.

Evolutionists Often Lambast Intelligent Design; Should ID Lash Back?

2009-12-23T18:54:00.000-08:00

ABSTRACT: Evolutionists and their critics are engaged in battle. It is a war of words. There are hawks, dogmatists and extremists in both camps. How strongly and in what manner should intelligent design proponents react to the criticisms of evolutionists? That's the subject of this blog entry. It recommends taking a courteous and respectful approach while remaining extremely honest and forthright in discussions.

Evolution is seen by proponents as a slow accumulation, mindless, goal-less, half-blind, round-about-way of changing the genetic makeup of species. I see its labelling of clear-cut empirical causes in the environment as not its strong suite, though its insights about the statistical probabilities of fortuitous genetic alterations is. Neither can evolution legitimately be criticized as a pointless, directionless, or unproductive process, as some critics believe. The theory of evolution models a chain of fortuitous, reinforcing, unplanned events that link up and cross paths with natural laws. Its result is modeled as the mindless accumulation of benefitial genetic traits, though in an agonizingly slow manner. The accumulative effects, however, are nothing short of astounding.

Evolution has generators (of genetic variation), but it lacks explicit processing forces (selective causes). That is to say it has no easily identified processors in nature. The theory envisions genetic errors in resulting from the process of organism replication as seeding change (providing the raw material in the form of genetic replication changes, viz., 'errors'), and survival loadings/effects in the environment selectively weeding out (selecting) the final results. But hypotheses generated by the theory are in most cases rather broad, nondescript models. Proponents are often not very certain in just how all this works; certainly not enough for empirically testing hypotheses against competing, alternative explanations. The basic mindset that typically comes out is unilateral--that there are no competing views. Even the null hypothesis is considered inconceivable at times as a possiblity. General causes are asserted as explanations, but are for the most part never empirically checked out. Descriptive statistics and probabilities are the field's mainstay, but not the use of statistics that would bear out matters of cause, such as multivariate statistics or regression.

It can also legitimately be said that the theory is quite defensive, esoteric, conjectural, and nonempirical when it comes to any criticism about the scientific need of checking empirically for factors of cause/influence. This is tantamount to check for actual causes or influences in the organism's environment. Its proponents are thus simple in their approach and uncritical in action when dealing with opposition to their views, essentially resorting to name calling, not to mention the practice of showing absolute closed-mindedness about competitive views. It is as if they are at war with all criticism. Lashing back is immediate and across the board, and especially heaped on views that even remotely identify with religion.

Non-evolutionists are split as a result over the matter of how much criticism to level against evolution. It has been my experience that individuals who entertain a solely text-based faith (a completely Bible-based view) such as traditional creationists tend to actively entertain the idea that believing in macroevolution is a stupid idea. But at least some scientists believing in teleology think not. They understand that macroevolutionists essentially approach the data from a different theoretical perspective. Some evolutionists are even not aware of this essential difference, however. They are not dumb, stupid, crazy, or ignorant, however. They are just not very self-aware about their value judgments or world view.

It has been my experience that only evolutionists who consistently write badly and argue illogically on weekdays can be justifiably thought of as dumb. Actually, it is a bad approach. For that matter, any consistently poor writer and debater could be considered to be doing the same. Nevertheless, unless such behavior is a consistent, a pattern woven like a thread in an individual's multiple arguments, he or she could be just having a bad hair day or be languishing in a stupor. So it's always best to hold in reserve the meanest of criticisms until one has watched and assessed a writer over an extended period of time. In a nutshell, I recommend critics not try to jump to the practice of using harsh terms without first establishing a good reason. Even then, the decent, careful and respectful use of labels with people and opinions is always appreciated.

These suggestions are biased by my own personal experiences: I wrote my masters thesis in anthropology at a major midwestern U.S. university in explicit support of the macroevolution of primates, the evolution of sexual behavior in primates to be exact. That wasn't being unintelligent at the time. I just held a different theoretical explanation for the same findings as I do now (actually fewer at that earlier date). It has been my long-term belief that this is the most basic difference between the origin camps in America, all insults and purgative labels aside. ID scientists (but not many creationists in my experience) appear to realize this fact. Unfounded criticism is one of the first things typically heaped on evolution by creationists meeting an ID proponent for the first time, but not by ID proponents. That is the fair-play reason why ID's different historical roots and ideological distinctiveness deserve to be more widely recognized. But there is little fair play or attentiveness to the issue of truth shown in debates of origins these days. It has the flavor of a battle waged between political interest groups.

A resolution of the hostilities should come down to a matter of preparing good historical accounts versus promoting the self interest of one's profession. It is a quick and easy fix to post creed-based reactions in a bombastic manner. Similarly, one can get an emotional lift from contributing a one-sided salvo into the perceived climate of a war of propaganda. However, some ID scientists are former evolutionists. As a result, harsh views against evolutionists typically will be hard to come by from them. On the other hand, whenever a position or point is counterproductive to the evolutionists' cause nowadays, some of the latter group won't readily or easily admit that it is a valid fact even when it has become a matter of simple historical record. Just like failing to admit Stephen Gould's remark about the lack of transitional fossils being the biggest kept secret in evolutionist circles or Karl Popper's quickly retracted remark that the theory of evolution was among the most unsatisfying of all scientific explanation, it's as much like pulling teeth to get evolutionists to admit these facts as it is to get a Bible-based believer to admit that microevolution is a scientifically proven fact. It may even someday reduce down to different definitions of what various groups consider evolution to be, although this could also turn out to be a gross oversimplification of the facts. Still, creationists and evolutionists' stubborn and blind dismissal out-of-hand of any position-damaging evidence and the direct consequences of such an approach to evidence seem to be the most profound and poignant feature in the whole debate. It is blind, but not dumb faith at work, I suggest. It derives not from any real lack of intelligence, but from insular adamant support on both sides from some interest groups, a very harsh political agenda within others, and a dogmatic way of perceiving things in a few very vocal proponents.

There are thus extremists and shallow-minded thinkers on both sides. Writing from the standpoint of feeling aggrieved is part of being human. I wouldn't call any of it dumb, however. It is just not a characteristic feature of being a generally tolerant, highly reflective professional who is willing to look at the assumptions underlying his or her positions and admit the magnitude and direction of their effects. Instead, many proponents slide across the surface of established rules, detesting caveats and immediately rejecting all thinking to the contrary, even though Darwin's own writings reflect a deliberation in thought and care in reasoning carried to the extreme. Then again, I too have been caught on the Internet with my pants down on that hopefully infrequent, irreverently bad day.