title: Objections to evolution

text: Regardless of acceptance from major religious hierarchies, early religious objections to Darwin's theory continue in use in opposition to evolution. The ideas that species change over time through natural processes and that different species share common ancestors seemed to contradict the Genesis account of Creation. Believers in Biblical infallibility attacked Darwinism as heretical. The natural theology of the early-19th century was typified by William Paley's 1802 version of the watchmaker analogy, an argument from design still deployed by the creationist movement. Natural theology included a range of ideas and arguments from the outset, and when Darwin's theory was published, ideas of theistic evolution were presented in which evolution is accepted as a secondary cause open to scientific investigation, while still holding belief in God as a first cause with a non-specified role in guiding evolution and creating humans. This position has been adopted by denominations of Christianity and Judaism in line with modernist theology which views the Bible and Torah as allegorical, thus removing the conflict between evolution and religion.


title: Objections to evolution

text: However, in the 1920s Christian fundamentalists in the United States developed their literalist arguments against modernist theology into opposition to the teaching of evolution, with fears that Darwinism had led to German militarism and posed a threat to religion and morality. This opposition developed into the creation–evolution controversy, involving Christian literalists in the United States objecting to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Although early objectors dismissed evolution as contradicting their interpretation of the Bible, this argument was legally invalidated when the United States Supreme Court ruled in "Epperson v. Arkansas" in 1968 that forbidding the teaching of evolution on religious grounds violated the Establishment Clause.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Since then creationists have developed more nuanced objections to evolution, alleging variously that it is unscientific, infringes on creationists' religious freedoms, or that the acceptance of evolution is a religious stance. Creationists have appealed to democratic principles of fairness, arguing that evolution is controversial and that science classrooms should therefore "Teach the Controversy". These objections to evolution culminated in the intelligent-design movement in the 1990s and early 2000s that unsuccessfully attempted to present itself as a scientific alternative to evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A major source of confusion and ambiguity in any creation–evolution debate can arise from the definition of "evolution" itself. In the context of biology, evolution is genetic changes in populations of organisms over successive generations. The word also has a number of different meanings in different fields, from evolutionary computation to molecular evolution to sociocultural evolution to stellar and galactic evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: "Evolution" in colloquial contexts can refer to any sort of "progressive" development or gradual improvement, and a process that results in greater quality or complexity. When misapplied to biological evolution this common meaning can lead to frequent misunderstandings. For example, the idea of devolution ("backwards" evolution) is a result of erroneously assuming that evolution is directional or has a specific goal in mind (cf. orthogenesis). In reality, the evolution of a biological organism has no "objective" and is only showing increasing ability of successive generations to survive and reproduce in their environment; and increased suitability is only defined in relation to this environment. Biologists do not regard any one species (such as humans) as more "highly evolved" or "advanced" than another. Certain sources have been criticized for indicating otherwise due to a tendency to evaluate nonhuman organisms according to anthropocentric standards rather than according to more objective ones.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Evolution also does not require that organisms become more complex. Although the biological development of different forms of life shows an apparent trend towards the evolution of biological complexity, there is a question as to whether this appearance of increased complexity is real, or whether it comes from neglecting the fact that the majority of life on Earth has always consisted of prokaryotes. In this view, complexity is not a necessary consequence of evolution, but specific circumstances of evolution on Earth frequently made greater complexity advantageous and thus naturally selected for. Depending on the situation, organisms' complexity can either increase, decrease, or stay the same, and all three of these trends have been observed in studies of evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Creationist sources frequently define evolution according to a colloquial, rather than a scientific, meaning. As a result, many attempts to rebut evolution do not address the findings of evolutionary biology (see straw-man argument). This also means that advocates of creationism and evolutionary biologists often simply speak past each other.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Critics of evolution assert that evolution is "just a theory", which emphasizes that scientific theories are never absolute, or misleadingly presents it as a matter of opinion rather than of fact or evidence. This reflects a difference of the meaning of "theory" in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a "theory" is a conjecture or guess, in science, a theory is an explanation whose predictions have been verified by experiments or other evidence. "Evolutionary theory" refers to an explanation for the diversity of species and their ancestry which has met extremely high standards of scientific evidence. An example of evolution as theory is the modern synthesis of Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian inheritance. As with any scientific theory, the modern synthesis is constantly debated, tested, and refined by scientists, but there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that it remains the only robust model that accounts for the known facts concerning evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Critics also state that evolution is not a fact. In science a fact is a verified empirical observation while in colloquial contexts a fact can simply refer to anything for which there is overwhelming evidence. For example, in common usage theories such as "the Earth revolves around the Sun" and "objects fall due to gravity" may be referred to as "facts", even though they are purely theoretical. From a scientific standpoint, therefore, evolution may be called a "fact" for the same reason that gravity can: under the scientific definition, evolution is an observable process that occurs whenever a population of organisms genetically changes over time. Under the colloquial definition, the theory of evolution can also be called a fact, referring to this theory's well-established nature. Thus, evolution is widely considered both a theory and a fact by scientists.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Similar confusion is involved in objections that evolution is "unproven", since no theory in science is known to be absolutely true, only verified by empirical evidence. This distinction is an important one in philosophy of science, as it relates to the lack of absolute certainty in all empirical claims, not just evolution. Strict proof is possible only in formal sciences such as logic and mathematics, not natural sciences (where terms such as "validated" or "corroborated" are more appropriate). Thus, to say that evolution is not proven is trivially true, but no more an indictment of evolution than calling it a "theory". The confusion arises in that the colloquial meaning of "proof" is simply "compelling evidence", in which case scientists would indeed consider evolution "proven".


title: Objections to evolution

text: An objection is often made in the teaching of evolution that evolution is controversial or contentious. Unlike past creationist arguments which sought to abolish the teaching of evolution altogether, this argument makes the claim that evolution should be presented alongside alternative views since it is controversial, and students should be allowed to evaluate and choose between the options on their own.


title: Objections to evolution

text: This objection forms the basis of the "Teach the Controversy" campaign by the Discovery Institute, a think tank based in Seattle, Washington, to promote the teaching of intelligent design in U.S. public schools. This goal followed the Institute's "wedge strategy", an attempt to gradually undermine evolution and ultimately to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." Several other attempts were made to insert intelligent design or creationism into the U.S. public school curriculum, including the failed Santorum Amendment in 2001.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Scientists and U.S. courts have rejected this objection on the grounds that science is not based on appeals to popularity, but on evidence. The scientific consensus of biologists determines what is considered acceptable science, not popular opinion or fairness, and although evolution is controversial in the public arena, it is entirely uncontroversial among experts in the field.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In response, creationists have disputed the level of scientific support for evolution. The Discovery Institute has gathered over 761 scientists as of August 2008 to sign "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" in order to show that there are a number of scientists who dispute what they refer to as "Darwinian evolution". This statement did not profess outright disbelief in evolution, but expressed skepticism as to the ability of "random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life." Several counter-petitions have been launched in turn, including "A Scientific Support for Darwinism", which gathered over 7,000 signatures in four days, and Project Steve, a tongue-in-cheek petition that has gathered the signatures of 1,393 (as of May 24, 2016) evolution-supporting scientists named "Steve" (or any similar variation thereof—Stephen, Stephanie, Esteban, etc.).


title: Objections to evolution

text: Creationists have argued for over a century that evolution is a "theory in crisis" that will soon be overturned, based on objections that it lacks reliable evidence or violates natural laws. These objections have been rejected by most scientists, as have claims that intelligent design, or any other creationist explanation, meets the basic scientific standards that would be required to make them scientific alternatives to evolution. It is also argued that even if evidence against evolution exists, it is a false dilemma to characterize this as evidence "for" intelligent design.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A similar objection to evolution is that certain scientific authorities—mainly pre-modern ones—have doubted or rejected evolution. Most commonly, it is argued that Darwin "recanted" on his deathbed, a false anecdote originating from Lady Hope's story. These objections are generally rejected as appeals to authority.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A common neo-creationist objection to evolution is that evolution does not adhere to normal scientific standards—that it is not genuinely scientific. It is argued that evolutionary biology does not follow the scientific method and therefore should not be taught in science classes, or at least should be taught alongside other views (i.e., creationism). These objections often deal with:


title: Objections to evolution

text: Creationists commonly argue that "evolution is a religion; it is not a science." The purpose of this criticism is to reframe the debate from one between science (evolution) and religion (creationism) to between two religious beliefs—or even to argue that evolution is religious while intelligent design is not. Those that oppose evolution frequently refer to supporters of evolution as "evolutionists" or "Darwinists".


title: Objections to evolution

text: The arguments for evolution being a religion generally amount to arguments by analogy: it is argued that evolution and religion have one or more things in common, and that therefore evolution is a religion. Examples of claims made in such arguments are statements that evolution is based on faith, and that supporters of evolution dogmatically reject alternative suggestions out-of-hand. These claims have become more popular in recent years as the neo-creationist movement has sought to distance itself from religion, thus giving it more reason to make use of a seemingly anti-religious analogy.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Supporters of evolution have argued in response that no scientist's claims are treated as sacrosanct, as shown by the aspects of Darwin's theory that have been rejected or revised by scientists over the years to form first neo-Darwinism and later the modern evolutionary synthesis. The claim that evolution relies on faith is likewise rejected on the grounds that evolution has strong supporting evidence, and therefore does not require faith.


title: Objections to evolution

text: The argument that evolution is religious has been rejected in general on the grounds that "religion" is not defined by how dogmatic or zealous its adherents are, but by its spiritual or supernatural beliefs. But evolution is neither dogmatic nor based on faith, and they accuse creationists of equivocating between the strict definition of "religion" and its colloquial usage to refer to anything that is enthusiastically or dogmatically engaged in. United States courts have also rejected this objection:


title: Objections to evolution

text: Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause, Epperson v. Arkansas, supra, Willoughby v. Stever, No. 15574-75 (D.D.C. May 18, 1973); aff'd. 504 F.2d 271 (D.C. Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 924 (1975); Wright v. Houston Indep. School Dist., 366 F. Supp. 1208 (S.D. Tex 1978), aff.d. 486 F.2d 137 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. denied 417 U.S. 969 (1974).


title: Objections to evolution

text: A related claim is that evolution is atheistic (see the Atheism section below); creationists sometimes merge the two claims and describe evolution as an "atheistic religion" (cf. humanism). This argument against evolution is also frequently generalized into a criticism of all science; it is argued that "science is an atheistic religion", on the grounds that its methodological naturalism is as unproven, and thus as "faith-based", as the supernatural and theistic beliefs of creationism.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A statement is considered falsifiable if there is an observation or a test that could be made that would demonstrate that the statement is false. Statements that are not falsifiable cannot be examined by scientific investigation since they permit no tests that evaluate their accuracy. Creationists such as Henry M. Morris have claimed that any observation can be fitted into the evolutionary framework, so it is impossible to demonstrate that evolution is wrong and therefore evolution is non-scientific.


title: Objections to evolution

text: J. B. S. Haldane, when asked what hypothetical evidence could disprove evolution, replied "fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era." Numerous other potential ways to falsify evolution have also been proposed. For example, the fact that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than the great apes offered a testable hypothesis involving the fusion or splitting of chromosomes from a common ancestor. The fusion hypothesis was confirmed in 2005 by discovery that human chromosome 2 is homologous with a fusion of two chromosomes that remain separate in other primates. Extra, inactive telomeres and centromeres remain on human chromosome 2 as a result of the fusion. The assertion of common descent could also have been disproven with the invention of DNA sequencing methods. If true, human DNA should be far more similar to chimpanzees and other great apes, than to other mammals. If not, then common descent is falsified. DNA analysis has shown that humans and chimpanzees share a large percentage of their DNA (between 95% to 99.4% depending on the measure). Also, the evolution of chimpanzees and humans from a common ancestor predicts a (geologically) recent common ancestor. Numerous transitional fossils have since been found. Hence, human evolution has passed several falsifiable tests.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Many of Darwin's ideas and assertions of fact have been falsified as evolutionary science has developed, but these amendments and falsifications have uniformly confirmed his central concepts. In contrast, creationist explanations involving the direct intervention of the supernatural in the physical world are not falsifiable, because any result of an experiment or investigation could be the unpredictable action of an omnipotent deity.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In 1976, the philosopher Karl Popper said that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme." He later changed his mind and argued that Darwin's "theory of natural selection is difficult to test" with respect to other areas of science.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In his 1982 book, "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism", philosopher of science Philip Kitcher specifically addresses the "falsifiability" question by taking into account notable philosophical critiques of Popper by Carl Gustav Hempel and Willard Van Orman Quine and provides a definition of theory other than as a set of falsifiable statements. As Kitcher points out, if one took a strictly Popperian view of "theory", observations of Uranus when it was first discovered in 1781 would have "falsified" Isaac Newton's celestial mechanics. Rather, people suggested that another planet influenced Uranus' orbit—and this prediction was indeed eventually confirmed. Kitcher agrees with Popper that "there is surely something right in the idea that a science can succeed only if it can fail." But he insists that we view scientific theories as consisting of an "elaborate collection of statements", some of which are not falsifiable, and others—what he calls "auxiliary hypotheses", which are.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A related claim to the supposed unfalsifiability of evolution is that natural selection is tautological. Specifically, it is often argued that the phrase "survival of the fittest" is a tautology, in that fitness is defined as ability to survive and reproduce. This phrase was first used by Herbert Spencer in 1864 but is rarely used by biologists. Additionally, fitness is more accurately defined as the state of possessing traits that make survival more likely; this definition, unlike simple "survivability", avoids being trivially true.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Similarly, it is argued that evolutionary theory is circular reasoning, in that evidence is interpreted as supporting evolution, but evolution is required to interpret the evidence. An example of this is the claim that geological strata are dated through the fossils they hold, but that fossils are in turn dated by the strata they are in. However, in most cases strata are not dated by their fossils, but by their position relative to other strata and by radiometric dating, and most strata were dated before the theory of evolution was formulated.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Objections to the fact that evolution occurs tend to focus on specific interpretations about the evidence.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A common claim of creationists is that evolution has never been observed. Challenges to such objections often come down to debates over how evolution is defined (see the Defining evolution section above). Under the conventional biological definition of "evolution", it is a simple matter to observe evolution occurring. Evolutionary processes, in the form of populations changing their genetic composition from generation to generation, have been observed in different scientific contexts, including the evolution of fruit flies, mice, and bacteria in the laboratory, and of tilapia in the field. Such studies on experimental evolution, particularly those using microorganisms, are now providing important insights into how evolution occurs, especially in the case of antibiotic resistance.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In response to such examples, creationists say there are two major subdivisions of evolution to be considered, microevolution and macroevolution, and it is questionable if macro-evolution has been physically observed to occur. Most creationist organizations do not dispute the occurrence of short-term, relatively minor evolutionary changes, such as that observed even in dog breeding. Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the traces of macroevolutionary ones.


title: Objections to evolution

text: As biologists define "macroevolution", both microevolution and macroevolution have been observed. Speciations, for example, have been directly observed many times. Additionally, the modern evolutionary synthesis draws no distinction in the processes described by the theory of evolution when considering macroevolution and microevolution as the former is simply at the species level or above and the latter is below the species level. An example of this is ring species.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Additionally, past macroevolution can be inferred from historical traces. Transitional fossils, for example, provide plausible links between several different groups of organisms, such as "Archaeopteryx" linking birds and non-avian dinosaurs, or the "Tiktaalik" linking fish and limbed amphibians. Creationists dispute such examples, from asserting that such fossils are hoaxes or that they belong exclusively to one group or the other, to asserting that there should be far more evidence of obvious transitional species. Darwin himself found the paucity of transitional species to be one of the greatest weaknesses of his theory: Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record. Darwin appealed to the limited collections then available, the extreme lengths of time involved, and different rates of change with some living species differing very little from fossils of the Silurian period. In later editions he added "that the periods during which species have been undergoing modification, though very long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which these same species remained without undergoing any change." The number of clear transitional fossils has increased enormously since Darwin's day, and this problem has been largely resolved with the advent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which predicts a primarily stable fossil record broken up by occasional major speciations.


title: Objections to evolution

text: As more and more compelling direct evidence for inter-species and species-to-species evolution has been gathered, creationists have redefined their understanding of what amounts to "created kinds", and have continued to insist that more dramatic demonstrations of evolution be experimentally produced. One version of this objection is "Were you there?", popularized by young Earth creationist Ken Ham. It argues that because no one except God could directly observe events in the distant past, scientific claims are just speculation or "story-telling". DNA sequences of the genomes of organisms allow an independent test of their predicted relationships, since species which diverged more recently will be more closely related genetically than species which are more distantly related; such phylogenetic trees show a hierarchical organization within the tree of life, as predicted by common descent.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In fields such as astrophysics or meteorology, where direct observation or laboratory experiments are difficult or impossible, the scientific method instead relies on observation and logical inference. In such fields, the test of falsifiability is satisfied when a theory is used to predict the results of new observations. When such observations contradict a theory's predictions, it may be revised or discarded if an alternative better explains the observed facts. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation was replaced by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity when the latter was observed to more precisely predict the orbit of Mercury.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A related objection is that evolution is based on unreliable evidence, claiming that evolution is not even well-evidenced. Typically, this is either based on the argument that evolution's evidence is full of frauds and hoaxes, that current evidence for evolution is likely to be overturned as some past evidence has been, or that certain types of evidence are inconsistent and dubious.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Arguments against evolution's reliability are thus often based on analyzing the history of evolutionary thought or the history of science in general. Creationists point out that in the past, major scientific revolutions have overturned theories that were at the time considered near-certain. They thus claim that current evolutionary theory is likely to undergo such a revolution in the future, on the basis that it is a "theory in crisis" for one reason or another.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Critics of evolution commonly appeal to past scientific hoaxes such as the Piltdown Man forgery. It is argued that because scientists have been mistaken and deceived in the past about evidence for various aspects of evolution, the current evidence for evolution is likely to also be based on fraud and error. Much of the evidence for evolution has been accused of being fraudulent at various times, including "Archaeopteryx", peppered moth melanism, and Darwin's finches; these claims have been subsequently refuted.


title: Objections to evolution

text: It has also been claimed that certain former pieces of evidence for evolution which are now considered out-of-date and erroneous, such as Ernst Haeckel's 19th-century comparative drawings of embryos, used to illustrate his recapitulation theory (""ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny""), were not merely errors but frauds. Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells criticizes biology textbooks by alleging that they continue to reproduce such evidence after it has been debunked. In response, the National Center for Science Education notes that none of the textbooks reviewed by Wells makes the claimed error, as Haeckel's drawings are shown in a historical context with discussion about why they are wrong, and the accurate modern drawings and photos used in the textbooks are misrepresented by Wells.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Creationists claim that evolution relies on certain types of evidence that do not give reliable information about the past. For example, it is argued that radiometric dating technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay rates of certain isotopes generates inconsistent and thus unreliable results. Radiocarbon dating based on the carbon-14 isotope has been particularly criticized. It is argued that radiometric decay relies on a number of unwarranted assumptions such as the principle of uniformitarianism, consistent decay rates, or rocks acting as closed systems. Such arguments have been dismissed by scientists on the grounds that independent methods have confirmed the reliability of radiometric dating as a whole; additionally, different radiometric dating methods and techniques have independently confirmed each other's results.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Another form of this objection is that fossil evidence is not reliable. This is based on a much wider range of claims. These include that there are too many "gaps" in the fossil record, that fossil-dating is circular (see the Unfalsifiability section above), or that certain fossils, such as polystrate fossils, are seemingly "out of place". Examination by geologists have found polystrate fossils to be consistent with "in situ" formation. It is argued that certain features of evolution support creationism's catastrophism (cf. Great Flood), rather than evolution's gradualistic punctuated equilibrium, which some assert is an "ad hoc" theory to explain the fossil gaps.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A common objection to evolution is that it is simply too unlikely for life, in its complexity and apparent "design", to have arisen "by chance". It is argued that the odds of life having arisen without a deliberate intelligence guiding it are so astronomically low that it is unreasonable "not" to infer an intelligent designer from the natural world, and specifically from the diversity of life. A more extreme version of this argument is that evolution cannot create complex structures (see the Creation of complex structures section below). The idea that it is simply too implausible for life to have evolved is often wrongly encapsulated with a quotation that the "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747"—a claim attributed to astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and known as Hoyle's fallacy. Hoyle was a Darwinist, atheist and anti-theist, but advocated the theory of panspermia, in which abiogenesis begins in outer space and primitive life on Earth is held to have arrived via natural dispersion.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Views superficially similar, but unrelated to Hoyle's, are thus invariably justified with arguments from analogy. The basic idea of this argument for a designer is the teleological argument, an argument for the existence of God based on the perceived order or purposefulness of the universe. A common way of using this as an objection to evolution is by appealing to the 18th-century philosopher William Paley's watchmaker analogy, which argues that certain natural phenomena are analogical to a watch (in that they are ordered, or complex, or purposeful), which means that, like a watch, they must have been designed by a "watchmaker"—an intelligent agent. This argument forms the core of intelligent design, a neo-creationist movement seeking to establish certain variants of the design argument as legitimate science, rather than as philosophy or theology, and have them be taught alongside evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Supporters of evolution generally respond by arguing that this objection is simply an argument by lack of imagination, or argument from incredulity: a certain explanation is seen as being counterintuitive, and therefore an alternate, more intuitive explanation is appealed to instead. In actuality, evolution is not based on "chance", but on predictable chemical interactions: natural processes, rather than supernatural beings, are the "designer". Although the process involves some random elements, it is the non-random selection of survival-enhancing genes that drives the evolution of complex and ordered patterns. The fact that the results are ordered and seem "designed" is no more evidence for a supernatural intelligence than the appearance of complex non-living phenomena (e.g. snowflakes). It is also argued that there is insufficient evidence to make statements about the plausibility or implausibility of abiogenesis, that certain structures demonstrate poor design, and that the implausibility of life evolving exactly as it did is no more evidence for an intelligence than the implausibility of a deck of cards being shuffled and dealt in a certain random order.


title: Objections to evolution

text: It has also been noted that arguments against some form of life arising "by chance" are really objections to nontheistic abiogenesis, not to evolution. Indeed, arguments against "evolution" are based on the misconception that abiogenesis is a component of, or necessary precursor to, evolution. Similar objections sometimes conflate the Big Bang with evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Christian apologist and philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who believes evolution must have been guided if it occurred, has formalized and revised the improbability argument as the evolutionary argument against naturalism, which asserts that it is irrational to reject a supernatural, intelligent creator because the apparent probability of certain faculties evolving is so low. Specifically, Plantinga claims that evolution cannot account for the rise of reliable reasoning faculties. Plantinga argues that whereas a God would be expected to create beings with reliable reasoning faculties, evolution would be just as likely to lead to unreliable ones, meaning that if evolution is true, it is irrational to trust whatever reasoning one relies on to conclude that it is true. This novel epistemological argument has been criticized similarly to other probabilistic design arguments. It has also been argued that rationality, if conducive to survival, is more likely to be selected for than irrationality, making the natural development of reliable cognitive faculties more likely than unreliable ones.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A related argument against evolution is that most mutations are harmful. However, the vast majority of mutations are neutral, and the minority of mutations which are beneficial or harmful are often situational; a mutation that is harmful in one environment may be helpful in another.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In addition to complex structures and systems, among the phenomena that critics variously claim evolution cannot explain are consciousness, hominid intelligence, instincts, emotions, metamorphosis, photosynthesis, homosexuality, music, language, religion, morality, and altruism (see altruism in animals). Most of these, such as hominid intelligence, instinct, emotion, photosynthesis, language, and altruism, have been well-explained by evolution, while others remain mysterious, or only have preliminary explanations. No alternative explanation has been able to adequately explain the biological origin of these phenomena either.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Creationists argue against evolution on the grounds that it cannot explain certain non-evolutionary processes, such as abiogenesis, the Big Bang, or the meaning of life. In such instances, "evolution" is being redefined to refer to the entire history of the universe, and it is argued that if one aspect of the universe is seemingly inexplicable, the entire body of scientific theories must be baseless. At this point, objections leave the arena of evolutionary biology and become general scientific or philosophical disputes.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have argued in favor of cosmic ancestry, and against abiogenesis and evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: This class of objections is more radical than the above, claiming that a major aspect of evolution is not merely unscientific or implausible, but rather impossible, because it contradicts some other law of nature or is constrained in such a way that it cannot produce the biological diversity of the world.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Modern evolutionary theory posits that all biological systems must have evolved incrementally, through a combination of natural selection and genetic drift. Both Darwin and his early detractors recognized the potential problems that could arise for his theory of natural selection if the lineage of organs and other biological features could not be accounted for by gradual, step-by-step changes over successive generations; if all the intermediary stages between an initial organ and the organ it will become are not all improvements upon the original, it will be impossible for the later organ to develop by the process of natural selection alone. Complex organs such as the eye had been presented by William Paley as exemplifying the need for design by God, and anticipating early criticisms that the evolution of the eye and other complex organs seemed impossible, Darwin noted that:


title: Objections to evolution

text: [R]eason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Similarly, ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said on the topic of the evolution of the feather in an interview for the television program "The Atheism Tapes":


title: Objections to evolution

text: There's got to be a series of advantages all the way in the feather. If you can't think of one, then that's your problem not natural selection's problem... It's perfectly possible feathers began as fluffy extensions of reptilian scales to act as insulators... The earliest feathers might have been a different approach to hairiness among reptiles keeping warm.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Creationist arguments have been made such as "What use is half an eye?" and "What use is half a wing?". Research has confirmed that the natural evolution of the eye and other intricate organs is entirely feasible. Creationist claims have persisted that such complexity evolving without a designer is inconceivable and this objection to evolution has been refined in recent years as the more sophisticated irreducible complexity argument of the intelligent design movement, formulated by Michael Behe. Biochemist Michael Behe has argued that current evolutionary theory cannot account for certain complex structures, particularly in microbiology. On this basis, Behe argues that such structures were "purposely arranged by an intelligent agent".


title: Objections to evolution

text: Irreducible complexity is the idea that certain biological systems cannot be broken down into their constituent parts and remain functional, and therefore that they could not have evolved naturally from less complex or complete systems. Whereas past arguments of this nature generally relied on macroscopic organs, Behe's primary examples of irreducible complexity have been cellular and biochemical in nature. He has argued that the components of systems such as the blood clotting cascade, the immune system, and the bacterial flagellum are so complex and interdependent that they could not have evolved from simpler systems.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In the years since Behe proposed irreducible complexity, new developments and advances in biology such as an improved understanding of the evolution of flagella, have already undermined these arguments The idea that seemingly irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve has been refuted through evolutionary mechanisms, such as exaptation (the adaptation of organs for entirely new functions) and the use of "scaffolding", which are initially necessary features of a system that later degenerate when they are no longer required. Potential evolutionary pathways have been provided for all of the systems Behe used as examples of irreducible complexity.


title: Objections to evolution

text: The Cambrian explosion was the relatively rapid appearance around of most major animal phyla as demonstrated in the fossil record, and many more phyla now extinct. This was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today, although they did not resemble the species of today.


title: Objections to evolution

text: The basic problem with this is that natural selection calls for the slow accumulation of changes, where a new phylum would take longer than a new class which would take longer than a new order, which would take longer than a new family, which would take longer than a new genus would take longer than emergence of a new species but the apparent occurrence of high-level taxa without precedents is perhaps implying unusual evolutionary mechanisms.


title: Objections to evolution

text: There is general consensus that many factors helped trigger the rise of new phyla, but there is no generally accepted consensus about the combination and the Cambrian explosion continues to be an area of controversy and research over why so rapid, why at the phylum level, why so many phyla then and none since, and even if the apparent fossil record is accurate. Some recent advances suggest that there is no clearly definable "Cambrian Explosion" event in the fossil record, but rather that there was a progression of transitional radiations starting with the Ediacaran period and continuing at a similar rate into the Cambrian.


title: Objections to evolution

text: An example of opinions involving the commonly cited rise in oxygen Great Oxidation Event from biologist PZ Myers summarizes: "What it was was environmental changes, in particular the bioturbation revolution caused by the evolution of worms that released buried nutrients, and the steadily increasing oxygen content of the atmosphere that allowed those nutrients to fuel growth; ecological competition, or a kind of arms race, that gave a distinct selective advantage to novelties that allowed species to occupy new niches; and the evolution of developmental mechanisms that enabled multicellular organisms to generate new morphotypes readily." The increase in molecular oxygen (O) also may have allowed the formation of the protective ozone layer (O) that helps shield Earth from lethal UV radiation from the Sun.


title: Objections to evolution

text: A recent objection of creationists to evolution is that evolutionary mechanisms such as mutation cannot generate new information. Creationists such as William A. Dembski, Werner Gitt, and Lee Spetner have attempted to use information theory to dispute evolution. Dembski has argued that life demonstrates specified complexity, and proposed a law of conservation of information that extremely improbable "complex specified information" could be conveyed by natural means but never originated without an intelligent agent. Gitt asserted that information is an intrinsic characteristic of life and that an analysis demonstrates the mind and will of their Creator.


title: Objections to evolution

text: These claims have been widely rejected by the scientific community, which asserts that new information is regularly generated in evolution whenever a novel mutation or gene duplication arises. Dramatic examples of entirely new and unique traits arising through mutation have been observed in recent years, such as the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria which developed new enzymes to efficiently digest a material that never existed before the modern era. There is no need to account for the creation of information when an organism is considered together with the environment it evolved in. The information in the genome forms a record of how it was possible to survive in a particular environment. The information is gathered from the environment through trial and error, as mutating organisms either reproduce or fail.


title: Objections to evolution

text: The concept of specified complexity is widely regarded as mathematically unsound and has not been the basis for further independent work in information theory, in the theory of complex systems, or in biology.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Another objection is that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. The law states that "the entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium". In other words, an isolated system's entropy (a measure of the dispersal of energy in a physical system so that it is not available to do mechanical work) will tend to increase or stay the same, not decrease. Creationists argue that evolution violates this physical law by requiring an increase in order (i.e., a decrease in entropy).


title: Objections to evolution

text: The claims have been criticized for ignoring that the second law only applies to isolated systems. Organisms are open systems as they constantly exchange energy and matter with their environment: for example animals eat food and excrete waste, and radiate and absorb heat. It is argued that the Sun-Earth-space system does not violate the second law because the enormous increase in entropy due to the Sun and Earth radiating into space dwarfs the local decrease in entropy caused by the existence and evolution of self-organizing life.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Since the second law of thermodynamics has a precise mathematical definition, this argument can be analyzed quantitatively. This was done by physicist Daniel F. Styer, who concluded: "Quantitative estimates of the entropy involved in biological evolution demonstrate that there is no conflict between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics."


title: Objections to evolution

text: In a published letter to the editor of "The Mathematical Intelligencer" titled "How anti-evolutionists abuse mathematics", mathematician Jason Rosenhouse stated:


title: Objections to evolution

text: The fact is that natural forces routinely lead to local decreases in entropy. Water freezes into ice and fertilised eggs turn into babies. Plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen, but [we do] not invoke divine intervention to explain the process ... thermodynamics offers nothing to dampen our confidence in Darwinism.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Other common objections to evolution allege that evolution leads to objectionable results, such as eugenics and Nazi racial theory. It is argued that the teaching of evolution degrades values, undermines morals, and fosters irreligion or atheism. These may be considered appeals to consequences (a form of logical fallacy), as the potential ramifications of belief in evolutionary theory have nothing to do with its truth.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In biological classification humans are animals, a basic point which has been known for more than 2,000 years. Aristotle already described man as a political animal and Porphyry defined man as a rational animal, a definition accepted by the Scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages. The creationist J. Rendle-Short asserted in "Creation" magazine that if people are taught evolution they can be expected to behave like animals: since animals behave in all sorts of different ways, this is meaningless. In evolutionary terms, humans are able to acquire knowledge and change their behaviour to meet social standards, so humans behave in the manner of other humans.


title: Objections to evolution

text: In 1917, Vernon Kellogg published "Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium", which asserted that German intellectuals were totally committed to might-makes-right due to "whole-hearted acceptance of the worst of Neo-Darwinism, the "Allmacht" of natural selection applied rigorously to human life and society and "Kultur"." This strongly influenced the politician William Jennings Bryan, who saw Darwinism as a moral threat to America and campaigned against evolutionary theory; his campaign culminated in the Scopes Trial, which effectively prevented teaching of evolution in most public schools until the 1960s.


title: Objections to evolution

text: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote August 8, 2005, in NPR's "Taking Issue" essay series, that "Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality and a host of other issues are really debates about the origin — and thus the meaning — of human life. ...evolutionary theory stands at the base of moral relativism and the rejection of traditional morality."


title: Objections to evolution

text: Henry M. Morris, engineering professor and founder of the Creation Research Society and the Institute of Creation Research, claims that evolution was part of a pagan religion that emerged after the Tower of Babel, was part of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies, and was responsible for everything from war to pornography to the breakup of the nuclear family. He has also claimed that perceived social ills like crime, teenage pregnancies, homosexuality, abortion, immorality, wars, and genocide are caused by a belief in evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Pastor D. James Kennedy of The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and Coral Ridge Ministries claims that Darwin was responsible for Adolf Hitler's atrocities. In Kennedy's documentary and the accompanying pamphlet with the same title, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy", Kennedy states that "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler." In his efforts to expose the "harmful effects that evolution is still having on our nation, our children, and our world," Kennedy also states that, "We have had 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution, and what has it brought us? Whether Darwin intended it or not, millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed inferior, the devaluing of human life, increasing hopelessness." The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture fellow Richard Weikart has made similar claims, as have other creationists. The claim was central to the documentary film "" (2008) promoting intelligent design creationism. The Anti-Defamation League describes such claims as outrageous misuse of the Holocaust and its imagery, and as trivializing the "...many complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry. Hitler did not need Darwin or evolution to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people, and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness. Moreover, anti-Semitism existed long before Darwin ever wrote a word."


title: Objections to evolution

text: Young Earth creationist Kent Hovind blames communism, socialism, World War I, World War II, racism, the Holocaust, Stalin's war crimes, the Vietnam War, and Pol Pot's Killing Fields on evolution, as well as the increase in crime, unwed mothers, and other social ills. Hovind's son Eric Hovind claims that evolution is responsible for tattoos, body piercing, premarital sex, unwed births, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), divorce, and child abuse.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Such accusations are counterfactual, and there is evidence that the opposite seems to be the case. A study published by the author and illustrator Gregory S. Paul found that religious beliefs, including belief in creationism and disbelief in evolution, are positively correlated with social ills like crime. The Barna Group surveys find that Christians and non-Christians in the U.S. have similar divorce rates, and the highest divorce rates in the U.S. are among Baptists and Pentecostals, both sects which reject evolution and embrace creationism.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Michael Shermer argued in "Scientific American" in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law. He goes on to suggest that evolution gives more support to the notion of an omnipotent creator, rather than a tinkerer with limitations based on a human model, the more common image subscribed to by creationists. Careful analysis of the creationist charges that evolution has led to moral relativism and the Holocaust yields the conclusion that these charges appear to be highly suspect. Such analyses conclude that the origins of the Holocaust are more likely to be found in historical Christian antisemitism than in evolution.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Evolution has been used to justify Social Darwinism, the exploitation of so-called "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races", particularly in the nineteenth century. Typically strong European nations that had successfully expanded their empires could be said to have "survived" in the struggle for dominance. With this attitude, Europeans except for Christian missionaries rarely adopted any customs and languages of local people under their empires. Creationists have frequently maintained that Social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature, since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon is "good" or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Another charge leveled at evolutionary theory by creationists is that belief in evolution is either tantamount to atheism, or conducive to atheism. It is commonly claimed that all proponents of evolutionary theory are "materialistic atheists". On the other hand, Davis A. Young argues that creation science "itself" is harmful to Christianity because its bad science will turn more away than it recruits. Young asks, "Can we seriously expect non-Christians to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it?" However, evolution neither requires nor rules out the existence of a supernatural being. Philosopher Robert T. Pennock makes the comparison that evolution is no more atheistic than plumbing. H. Allen Orr, professor of biology at University of Rochester, notes that:


title: Objections to evolution

text: In addition, a wide range of religions have reconciled a belief in a supernatural being with evolution. Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education found that "of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, 89.6% belong to churches that support evolution education." These churches include the "United Methodist Church, National Baptist Convention USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and others." A poll in 2000 done for People for the American Way found that 70% of the American public felt that evolution was compatible with a belief in God. Only 48% of the people polled could choose the correct definition of evolution from a list, however.


title: Objections to evolution

text: One poll reported in the journal "Nature" showed that among American scientists (across various disciplines), about 40 percent believe in both evolution and an active deity (theistic evolution). This is similar to the results reported for surveys of the general American public. Also, about 40 percent of the scientists polled believe in a God that answers prayers, and believe in immortality. While about 55% of scientists surveyed were atheists, agnostics, or nonreligious theists, atheism is far from universal among scientists who support evolution, or among the general public that supports evolution. Very similar results were reported from a 1997 Gallup Poll of the American public and scientists.


title: Objections to evolution

text: Traditionalists still object to the idea that diversity in life, including human beings, arose through natural processes without a need for supernatural intervention, and they argue against evolution on the basis that it contradicts their literal interpretation of creation myths about separate "created kinds". However, many religions, such as Catholicism which does not endorse nor deny evolution, have allowed Catholics to reconcile their own personal belief with evolution through the idea of theistic evolution.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The Lega Basket Serie A (LBA) is a professional men's club basketball league that has been organised in Italy since 1920. Serie A is organised by Lega Basket, which is regulated by the Italian Basketball Federation (FIP). It is the highest-tier level of the Italian league system. The LBA plays under FIBA rules and currently consists of 16 teams, with the lowest-placed team relegated to the Serie A2 and replaced by the winner of the play-offs of that tier.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: A total of 99 teams have competed in the LBA since its inception. Seventeen teams have been crowned champions, with Olimpia Milano having won the title a record 28 times, and Virtus Bologna 16 times. According to FIBA Europe's and Euroleague Basketball's national league coefficients, the LBA was the historically top ranked national domestic league in Europe, for the period 1958 to 2007. Today, the LBA is considered to be one of the top European national basketball leagues. Its clubs have won the most EuroLeague championships (13), the most FIBA Saporta Cups (15), and the most FIBA Korać Cups (10).


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The first men's basketball championship was held in Italy in 1920, organized by the Royal Italian National Gymnastics Federation and won by S.E.F. Costanza Milano, led by Carlo Andreoli. However, the first championship officially organized by the newly formed Italian Basketball Federation (FIP) was instead disputed in 1922. During the first years, Milan's teams dominated the league: in the initial six seasons, there were five successes for Assi Milano and one for Internazionale Milano. Between 1928 and 1935, Ginnastica Roma and Ginnastica Triestina alternatively won the championship.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: In 1936, the championship was won by Olimpia Milano; the title was the first of 28 championships won by Olimpia over the decades. The team, coached by Giannino Valli, won four consecutive championships, only interrupted by Trieste in 1939–1940 and 1940–1941. In 1941–42 and 1942–43, the title was won by Reyer Venezia, however, the following two seasons were never held, due to the break out of World War II on Italian soil.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: At the end of the war, the league was characterized by the rise of Virtus Bologna, which won four consecutive seasons. Virtus would later become one of the most successful teams in Italy, capable of winning 16 titles through its history. From the 1949–50 season, the domination of Olimpia Milano began. Milan's team was able of winning 14 championships out of the 18 played up to 1966–67. The team, coached by Cesare Rubini, marked an unrepeatable dominance on the Italian league thanks to players like Sandro Gamba, Romeo Romanutti, Enrico Pagani and Bill Bradley. From 1954 to 1956, Virtus won the title again, achieving a so-called back-to-back under the leadership of Vittorio Tracuzzi, while in 1961 and 1964, Pallacanestro Varese was crowned Italian champion.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: After the victory of Pallacanestro Cantù in 1968, Varese opened a new cycle of successes, winning 7 championships in 10 years, between 1968–69 and 1977–78. The team, led by Aldo Ossola, Dino Meneghin, Bob Morse, Manuel Raga and coached by Aza Nikolić, was widely considered one of the best in the history of Italian basketball, capable of winning five European titles during the same period. Olimpia Milano and Cantù respectively won the championship in 1972 and 1975, while Virtus won the title in 1976, coached by Dan Peterson, and achieved a back-to-back in 1978–79 and 1979–80, thanks to Krešimir Ćosić, one of the best centers in Europe, Renato Villalta, Carlo Caglieris and the captain Gianni Bertolotti.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The 1980s and the 1990s are widely considered as the "golden age" of Italian basketball; during these decades, the Italian championship became one of the most competitive in the world, often considered to be the second one after NBA. The 1980s were characterized by a predominance of Olimpia Milano. The so-called "red shoes" were capable of winning five titles between 1981 and 1989, thanks to outstanding players like Mike D'Antoni, Bob McAdoo and Dino Meneghin. Cantù won its third title in 1981, while Virtus Roma won its first and only championship in 1983, under the leadership of the American point guard Larry Wright. In the 1983–84 season, Virtus Bologna won its tenth national title, defeating Olimpia Milano in the finals, while Victoria Libertas Pesaro was crowned Italian champion twice in 1988 and 1990.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The 1990s began with the historic success of Nando Gentile and Vincenzo Esposito's Phonola Caserta; as of today, this title is still the only one won by a team from Southern Italy. While the 1991–92 season was won by Toni Kukoč's Benetton Treviso. However, the 1990s were deeply marked by the dominance of Virtus Bologna: the "Black V" was able of winning four titles from 1992 to 1998, thanks to its Serbian star, Predrag Danilović, but also important players like Antoine Rigaudeau, Alessandro Abbio and Zoran Savić. Treviso won the title again in 1997, while Varese won its tenth national championship in 1999, thanks to young and talented players like Andrea Meneghin and Gianmarco Pozzecco.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The 1999–2000 championship was won by Carlton Myers's Fortitudo Bologna, winning for the first time after three consecutive lost finals between 1995–96 and 1997–98. In the following season, Virtus Bologna of Manu Ginóbili was crowned national champion once again. Moreover, the Black V was able of winning both the Italian Cup and the EuroLeague, achieving a so-called Triple Crown (known in Italy as "Grande Slam"). From 2002 to 2006, the Serie A was marked by a harsh rivalry between Benetton Treviso and Fortitudo Bologna: Treviso won the title in 2002, 2003 and 2006, always defeating Fortitudo in the national finals; Bologna's team won the title in 2005 against Olimpia Milano.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: In 2004, Mens Sana Siena won its first title, but it was only three years later, in 2007, that Siena would begun its dominance over the Italian league. From 2007 to 2013, the Tuscan team was able of winning seven consecutive titles, under the leaderships of Terrell McIntyre, Shaun Stonerook and Romain Sato. However, on 7 October 2016, following an investigation for accounting and fiscal fraud, the Court of the Italian Basketball Federation has revoked the championship titles awarded to Siena for the 2011–12 and 2012–13 seasons, two Italian Cups (2012 and 2013) and the 2013 Supercoppa. Following Siena's relegation, Olimpia Milano, under the new ownership of Giorgio Armani, won the championship again in 2014, 2016 and 2018, while Dinamo Sassari won its first title in 2015, becoming the first team from Sardinia to do so. In 2017 and 2019, Reyer Venezia returned to the top of Italian league after more than seven decades.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The 2019–20 regular season saw a strong prominence of Virtus Bologna, however, the season was cancelled prematurely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and, for the first time since 1945, the Italian league did not assigned the title. In the following season, Miloš Teodosić's Virtus Bologna won its 16th title, defeating 4–0 its historic rival Olimpia Milano in the national finals. It was Virtus's first title after twenty years.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: From 1993 to 2022, the LBA had title sponsorship rights sold to ten companies; UnipolSal was the most recent title sponsor, having sponsored the LBA from 2020 to the present.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: Following the end of the 2015–16 season, LBA has a new sponsor. The Turkish brand Beko left LBA after four years of sponsorship, and all its other basketball team sponshorships in Europe. Beko would focus on their sponsorship of the Spanish football team Barcelona.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: In December 2016, President Egidio Bianchi had communicated to have reached an agreement with PosteMobile to become the title sponsor of the LBA. In July 2019, LBA announced that the agreement with PosteMobile for LBA ended on June 30.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: The competition format follows a double round-robin format. During the course of a season, which lasts from October to May, each club plays each other twice (once at home and once away), for a total of 30 games. Teams rankings at season end is determined by receiving two points for a win and no points for a loss. At season end, the eight top teams play-off, pitting the first place standings team against the 8th place team, and so on.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: There are three playoff rounds. The Quarterfinals are best of five, while the semifinals and finals series are best of seven (in the 2012–13 season, all series were best-of-seven). The winner of the finals round is the champion of the LBA.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: At season's end, the last qualified club of the regular season is relegated to Serie A2 Basket, and replaced by the winner of the playoffs of this league.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: LBA clubs must play in arenas that seat at least 3,500 people. From 2017 to 2018 season, clubs must host their home playoffs matches in arenas that have a seating capacity of at least 5,000 people.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: Each club can choose the 5+5 formula, that consists of five Italian players and five foreign players, and the 3+4+5 formula, with five Italian players, three foreigners from countries outside the E.U. and four foreigners from E.U. countries or "Cotonou Countries".


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: At the end of the season there is a prize of €500,000 for the top three ranked teams, that had chosen the 5+5 formula, considering the playing time of Italian players, and €200,000 for those teams that will obtain the best results with their youth sector.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: In summer 2016, four Italian teams (Reggio Emilia, Trento, Sassari and Cantù) were forced to withdraw from EuroCup because of the FIBA and Euroleague Basketball controversy.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: From 2017 to 2018 season, Italian Basketball Federation would allow LBA clubs to rejoin EuroCup. There will be at least six teams in Europe. One in EuroLeague (Olimpia Milano directly enter the EuroLeague as licensed club), two in EuroCup (but they are negotiating with ECA for a third spot) and three in Basketball Champions League. Lega Basket decided Italian Clubs will be free to choose in which European Cup they want to play, based on final ranking and sports merit.


title: Lega Basket Serie A

text: For the 2017–18, 2018–19 and 2019–20 seasons, domestic TV rights are shared by Rai Sport and Eurosport. The new frame shows Rai airing one game every Sunday on free TV, while Eurosport is the new owner of the pay TV, international and internet rights of the LBA. Eurosport has TV rights also for Supercoppa and Coppa Italia.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: Let the Bad Times Roll is the tenth studio album by American rock band The Offspring, released on April 16, 2021. Produced by Bob Rock, it is the band's first release on Concord Records, and their first studio album in nine years since "Days Go By" (2012), marking the longest gap between two Offspring studio albums. "Let the Bad Times Roll" also marks the band's first album without bassist and co-founding member Greg K., who was fired from The Offspring in 2018 amid business disputes. Even though new bassist Todd Morse had already joined the band and appeared in the video for the album’s title track, bass guitar accompaniment was provided by guitarist and vocalist Dexter Holland. It is the second and last album to feature drummer Pete Parada, who was fired from the band in July 2021 for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID 19.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: The band's tour schedules, lineup changes, legal issues and the search for a new label after their split with Columbia Records, who released the Offspring's previous six albums, contributed to a years-long delay behind "Let the Bad Times Roll". The band started recording new material for the album with Rock as early as the summer of 2013, and after re-recording it at various studios and at various periods between 2013 and 2020, it had been completed by 2020 and was ready for release later that year. However, due to the aforementioned issues, other inner disputes and the COVID-19 pandemic, the album's release was pushed back to 2021.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: Plans for a tenth studio album were first mentioned about six months after the release of "Days Go By" by Offspring guitarist Noodles, who stated that they would "sit down and take a look at a new record" after the completion of the "Days Go By" tour. Noodles had then hoped that the band would enter the studio in 2014 to begin recording their album. Vocalist Dexter Holland stated in a May 2013 interview that he had written a "punk" song about "the government keeping you down."


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: The Offspring entered the studio in August 2013 to begin tracking new material, with producer Bob Rock at the helm. Within the next few years, the album's progress was slowed down by grueling tour schedules and the end of their contract with Columbia Records, the label that the Offspring had been on since 1996. The band released their first song in over two years, "Coming for You", on January 30, 2015; at the time of its release, it was unclear if "Coming for You" would be released as a one-off single or would appear on the band's upcoming tenth studio album, but a tweet from frontman Dexter Holland heavily implied it was in an unfinished state. Noodles had stated, however, that "Coming for You" would appear on the album.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: By September 2015, the Offspring were still in the studio and had finished 2-3 tracks. A month later, Noodles posted a picture of himself, Holland, Parada and Bob Rock in the studio on his Instagram page, which indicated that they were recording their tenth studio album. In a November 2015 interview Noodles said that he hoped the album would be released in 2016. However, in an August 2016 interview with EMP LIVE TV, Noodles said they had five or six songs done and they would release one or two songs soon. In the same interview, Noodles hoped the album would be finished by the end of 2016. In an October 2016 interview with "Alaska Dispatch News", Noodles stated that the band was "planning on getting in the studio soon" to record the album, planned for release in 2017. On January 3, 2017, Noodles posted a picture of the band (except Greg K) in studio on his Twitter page, "Here's a selfless selfie that I just took. Working!", implying that the band had finished or was still recording the album. In a May 2017 interview, Holland stated, "I actually plan to spend a lot more time in the studio. We didn't put it on hold but we've been less active on the recording side for the last few years so I would like to put out another record. The band is number one for me and what I am most passionate about."


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: In an interview during their appearance at Rock in Rio in September 2017, Noodles and Holland talked about the new Offspring album, with the former commenting, "We've got a few songs already done. We wanna do a couple more, and we definitely want to get something out soon. Our fans have waited long enough, I think, so we wanna get something in their hands that they can listen to and hold, and put in their ears." Holland added that the album would "for sure" be released in 2018. In an October 2017 interview, however, Holland said, "I think I want to do like an EP. It's kind of what people are doing these days and it makes for less time in between stuff. It has been five years for us so we have a few songs together and I'm hoping to get something out by early next year." In the same month, bassist Greg K. mentioned a possible 2018 release date for the new Offspring album, and revealed that one of the reasons for the album's slow progress was because they have been working on songs here and there. He also stated that the band was in no hurry to finish the album. In December 2017, Noodles told Front Row Live, "We're working on it. We were in the studio all this week. We finished up for the holidays on Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we're gonna get back in the studio as soon as the new year [rolls around], in January." On February 23, 2018, the band announced via Instagram that they had finished tracking down drums for the album. The Offspring were asked two months later on Twitter if their new album would be released soon, and replied, "We're hoping by summer."


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: On February 23, 2019, Noodles confirmed on his Instagram account that the new Offspring album was finished, writing "The album is done. Working on getting it to the fans now. Stay tuned!" A month later, Dexter Holland confirmed that the album was "98% finished" and mentioned a tentative fall 2019 release. Noodles reiterated that the album was ready for release in 2020 and they were in the process of searching for a new record label to release it. On April 21, 2020 the band released a rock cover of Joe Exotic's country song "Here Kitty Kitty" popularized by the 2020 Netflix documentary "Tiger King". It was recorded while the band was in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a June 2020 interview with Download TV, Holland confirmed that the new album was "basically done" but added that its release was "on hold at the moment" because of the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: On February 8, 2021, Dexter and Noodles posted a video confirming that the album was finished with an official release date and single announcement coming soon.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: On February 23, 2021, the Offspring announced "Let the Bad Times Roll" as the title of their tenth studio album, as well as its artwork, release date and track listing. The album's artwork was designed by Daveed Benito. The album's title track was released as a single on the same day.


title: Let the Bad Times Roll

text: "Let the Bad Times Roll" received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 54 based on 6 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". DIY Magazine gave the album 1 and a half stars, saying "Rarely have Dexter Holland’s lyrics been so cliche, or the band as a whole revert to tropes worn thin before the group dropped their 1994 magnum opus, ‘Smash’. The faux-protest chorus of opener ‘This Is Not Utopia’ dilutes any earnest hostility with its inane repetition of “the roots” as Dexter chants “The roots of America / the roots of hysteria”." "Wall of Sound" scored the album 9/10, stating it was "one of the punk world’s best releases of the year so far." Consequence of Sound stated that "Let the Bad Times Roll offers hints of creative tangents that could revitalize the band next time around – if they’re willing to challenge themselves."


title: Britannia Unchained

text: Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity is a political book written by several British Conservative Party MPs and released on 13 September 2012. Its authors present a treatise, arguing that Britain should adopt a different and radical approach to business and economics or risk "an inevitable slide into mediocrity".


title: Britannia Unchained

text: The book is written by Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss, five Conservative MPs who were elected in May 2010 and belong to the party's Thatcherite-leaning Free Enterprise Group. The text sets out their vision for the United Kingdom's future as a leading player in the global economy, arguing that Britain needs to adopt a far-reaching form of free market economics, with fewer employment laws and suggesting the United Kingdom should learn lessons from the business and economic practices of other countries, including Canada, Australia and the tiger economies of East Asia like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Four of the five co-authors became part of the cabinet of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019, with co-author Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister on 6 September 2022; she appointed Kwarteng as her Chancellor the same day. 38 days into his tenure, Kwarteng was removed from his post following the turbulent market reaction to his mini-budget, while Truss would announce her resignation as Prime Minister less than a week later.


title: Britannia Unchained

text: An article written by four of the authors for the ConservativeHome website and published on the day of the book's publication said: "We are convinced that Britain's best days are not behind us. We cannot afford to listen to the siren voices of the statists who are happy for Britain to become a second rate power in Europe, and a third rate power in the world. Decline is not inevitable".


title: Britannia Unchained

text: The book asserts that the UK has a "bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation". It then says:


title: Britannia Unchained

text: It says the UK should "stop indulging in irrelevant debates about sharing the pie between manufacturing and services, the north and the south, women and men".


title: Britannia Unchained

text: The content suggests that Britain has policy lessons to learn from a number of other countries which it claims are outperforming the United Kingdom and sets out the areas where the United Kingdom needs to rethink its strategy, citing examples of countries which the authors believe have been successful in these areas. On deficit reduction, the example of Canada during the 1990s is given, where overall spending was reduced by 20% between 1992 and 1997. On education, the authors lament the relatively low number of students who study mathematics at A Level which they say is 15%, contrasting it with Japan where 85% study the subject at a similar level. In the realm of business and economics, Israel is cited as an example of a country that supports innovation while the United States is given as an example of a nation that supports risk-taking. The willingness of Britain's employees to work hard is compared to that of workers of other countries, with suggestions that a decreasing number of Britain's workers are contributing towards economic growth through which state spending is enabled to be maintained. It is asserted that this undermines the United Kingdom's competitiveness.


title: Britannia Unchained

text: The book caused controversy in August 2012 after a short quotation appeared in London's "Evening Standard" which accused British workers of laziness and lagging behind their Asian counterparts. The comments were criticised by union leaders, among them the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress Brendan Barber: "The problem with the UK economy is not its workers, but a severe lack of jobs". The Labour Party urged British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron to distance himself from the views and the Shadow Secretary of State for Business Chuka Umunna commented: "First they blame British businesses for their economic failures and now they blame the people who work within them, showing how out of touch the Tory party has become".


title: Britannia Unchained

text: Writing for the "New Statesman", Jonathan Portes criticised the accuracy of the content, saying the book contained "factual errors" and evidence of "slipshod research" by the authors:


title: Britannia Unchained

text: The book received renewed attention under the Johnson government, which had all five co-authors as ministers and three of them occupying two of the Great Offices of State. Several writers argued that the book was indicative of Boris Johnson's objectives for Brexit and wider reforms.


title: Britannia Unchained

text: The book received even greater attention following the appointment of Truss as Prime Minister and Kwarteng as Chancellor and the financial crisis triggered following the Truss government's September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget. Kwarteng was dismissed as Chancellor by Truss on 14 October after only 38 days in the position. Truss resigned as prime minister only a few days later, making her resignation announcement on 20 October; her last day in office was 25 October.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden. It creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water. Zen gardens are commonly found at temples or monasteries. A zen garden is usually relatively small, surrounded by a wall or buildings, and is usually meant to be seen while seated from a single viewpoint outside the garden, such as the porch of the "hojo", the residence of the chief monk of the temple or monastery. Many, with gravel rather than grass, are only stepped into for maintenance. Classical zen gardens were created at temples of Zen Buddhism in Kyoto during the Muromachi period. They were intended to imitate the essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve as an aid for meditation.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Stone gardens existed in Japan at least since the Heian period (794–1185). These early gardens were described in the first manual of Japanese gardens, "Sakuteiki" ("Records of Garden Keeping"), written at the end of the 11th century by Tachibana no Toshitsuna (1028–1094). They adapted the Chinese garden philosophy of the Song dynasty (960–1279), where groups of rocks symbolized Mount Penglai, the legendary mountain-island home of the Eight Immortals in Chinese mythology, known in Japanese as Horai. The "Sakuteiki" described exactly how rocks should be placed. In one passage, he wrote:


title: Japanese dry garden

text: "In a place where there is neither a lake or a stream, one can put in place what is called a "kare-sansui," or dry landscape". This kind of garden featured either rocks placed upright like mountains, or laid out in a miniature landscape of hills and ravines, with few plants. He described several other styles of rock garden, which usually included a stream or pond, including the great river style, the mountain river style, and the marsh style. The ocean style featured rocks that appeared to have been eroded by waves, surrounded by a bank of white sand, like a beach.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: White sand and gravel had long been a feature of Japanese gardens. In the Shinto religion, it was used to symbolize purity, and was used around shrines, temples, and palaces. In zen gardens, it represents water, or, like the white space in Japanese paintings, emptiness and distance. They are places of meditation.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The Muromachi period in Japan, which took place at roughly the same time as the Renaissance in Europe, was characterized by political rivalries which frequently led to wars, but also by an extraordinary flourishing of Japanese culture. It saw the beginning of "Noh" theater, the Japanese tea ceremony, the "shoin" style of Japanese architecture, and the zen garden.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Zen Buddhism was introduced into Japan at the end of the 12th century, and quickly achieved a wide following, particularly among the Samurai class and war lords, who admired its doctrine of self-discipline. The gardens of the early zen temples in Japan resembled Chinese gardens of the time, with lakes and islands. But in Kyoto in the 14th and 15th century, a new kind of garden appeared at the important zen temples. These zen gardens were designed to stimulate meditation. "Nature, if you made it expressive by reducing it to its abstract forms, could transmit the most profound thoughts by its simple presence", Michel Baridon wrote. "The compositions of stone, already common in China, became in Japan, veritable petrified landscapes, which seemed suspended in time, as in certain moments of Noh theater, which dates to the same period."


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The first garden to begin the transition to the new style is considered by many experts to be Saihō-ji, "The Temple of the Perfumes of the West", popularly known as Koke-dera, the Moss Temple, in the western part of Kyoto. The Buddhist monk and zen master Musō Kokushi transformed a Buddhist temple into a zen monastery in 1334, and built the gardens. The lower garden of Saihō-ji is in the traditional Heian period style; a pond with several rock compositions representing islands. The upper garden is a dry rock garden which features three rock "islands". The first, called "Kameshima", the island of the turtle, resembles a turtle swimming in a "lake" of moss. The second, "Zazen-seki", is a flat "meditation rock," which is believed to radiate calm and silence; and the third is the "kare-taki", a dry "waterfall" composed of a stairway of flat granite rocks. The moss which now surrounds the rocks and represents water, was not part of the original garden plan; it grew several centuries later when the garden was left untended, but now is the most famous feature of the garden.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Muso Kokushi built another temple garden at Tenryū-ji, the "Temple of the Celestial Dragon". This garden appears to have been strongly influenced by Chinese landscape painting of the Song dynasty, which feature mountains rising in the mist, and a suggestion of great depth and height. The garden at Tenryū-ji has a real pond with water and a dry waterfall of rocks looking like a Chinese landscape. Saihō-ji and Tenryū-ji show the transition from the Heian style garden toward a more abstract and stylized view of nature.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The gardens of Ginkaku-ji, also known as the Silver Pavilion, are also attributed to Muso Kokushi. This temple garden included a traditional pond garden, but it had a new feature for a Japanese garden; an area of raked white gravel with a perfectly shaped mountain of white gravel, resembling Mount Fuji, in the center. The scene was called "ginshanada", literally "sand of silver and open sea". This garden feature became known as "kogetsudai", or small mountain facing the moon, and similar small Mount Fuji made of sand or earth covered with grass appeared in Japanese gardens for centuries afterwards.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The most famous of all zen gardens in Kyoto is Ryōan-ji, built in the late 15th century where for the first time the zen garden became purely abstract. The garden is a rectangle of 340 square meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones. The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the "hōjō", the residence of the abbot of the monastery.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The garden at Daisen-in (1509–1513) took a more literary approach than Ryōan-ji. There a "river" of white gravel represents a metaphorical journey through life; beginning with a dry waterfall in the mountains, passing through rapids and rocks, and ending in a tranquil sea of white gravel, with two gravel mountains.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The invention of the zen garden was closely connected with developments in Japanese ink landscape paintings. Japanese painters such as Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506) and Soami (died 1525) greatly simplified their views of nature, showing only the most essential aspects of nature, leaving great areas of white around the black and gray drawings. Soami is said to have been personally involved in the design of two of the most famous zen gardens in Kyoto, Ryōan-ji and Daisen-in, though his involvement has never been documented with certainty.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Michel Baridon wrote, "The famous zen gardens of the Muromachi period showed that Japan had carried the art of gardens to the highest degree of intellectual refinement that it was possible to attain."


title: Japanese dry garden

text: During the Edo period, the large promenade garden became the dominant style of Japanese garden, but zen gardens continued to exist at zen temples. A few small new rock gardens were built, usually as part of a garden where a real stream or pond was not practical.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: In 1880, the buildings of Tōfuku-ji temple in Kyoto, one of the oldest temples in the city, were destroyed by a fire. In 1940, the temple commissioned the landscape historian and architect Shigemori Mirei to recreate the gardens. He created four different gardens, one for each face of the main temple building. He made one garden with five artificial hills covered with grass, symbolizing the five great ancient temples of Kyoto; a modern rock garden, with vertical rocks, symbolizing Mount Horai; a large "sea" of white gravel raked in a checkboard pattern; and an intimate garden with swirling sand patterns.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Stone arrangements and other miniature elements are used to represent mountains and natural water elements and scenes, islands, rivers and waterfalls. Stone and shaped shrubs ("karikomi", "hako-zukuri" topiary) are used interchangeably. In most gardens moss is used as a ground cover to create "land" covered by forest.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The selection and placement of rocks is the most important part of making a Japanese rock garden. In the first known manual of Japanese gardening, the "Sakuteiki" ("Records of Garden Making"), is expressed as "setting stones", "ishi wo tateru koto"; literally, the "act of setting stones upright." It laid out very specific rules for choice and the placement of stones, and warned that if the rules were not followed the owner of the garden would suffer misfortune. In Japanese gardening, rocks are classified as either tall vertical, low vertical, arching, reclining, or flat.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: For creating "mountains", usually igneous volcanic rocks, rugged mountain rocks with sharp edges, are used. Smooth, rounded sedimentary rocks are used for the borders of gravel "rivers" or "seashores." In Chinese gardens of the Song dynasty, individual rocks which looked like animals or had other unusual features were often the star attraction of the garden. In Japanese gardens, individual rocks rarely play the starring role; the emphasis is upon the harmony of the composition. For arranging rocks, there are many rules in the "Sakuteiki", for example:


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Make sure that all the stones, right down to the front of the arrangement, are placed with their best sides showing. If a stone has an ugly-looking top you should place it so as to give prominence to its side. Even if this means it has to lean at a considerable angle, no one will notice. There should always be more horizontal than vertical stones. If there are "running away" stones there must be "chasing" stones. If there are "leaning" stones, there must be "supporting" stones.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Rocks are rarely if ever placed in straight lines or in symmetrical patterns. The most common arrangement is one or more groups of three rocks. One common triad arrangement has a tall vertical rock flanked by two smaller rocks, representing Buddha and his two attendants. Other basic combinations are a tall vertical rock with a reclining rock; a short vertical rock and a flat rock; and a triad of a tall vertical rock, a reclining rock and a flat rock. Other important principles are to choose rocks which vary in color, shape and size, to avoid rocks with bright colors which might distract the viewer, and make certain that the grains of rocks run in the same direction.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: At the end of the Edo period, a new principle was invented: the use of "suteishi", "discarded" or "nameless" rocks, placed in seemingly random places to add spontaneity to the garden. Other important principles of rock arrangement include balancing the number of vertical and horizontal rocks.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Gravel is usually used in zen gardens, rather than sand, because it is less disturbed by rain and wind. The act of raking the gravel into a pattern recalling waves or rippling water, known as or , has an aesthetic function. Zen priests practice this raking also to help their concentration. Achieving perfection of lines is not easy. Rakes are according to the patterns of ridges as desired and limited to some of the stone objects situated within the gravel area. Nonetheless, often the patterns are not static. Developing variations in patterns is a creative and inspiring challenge. There are typically four raking patterns, line, wave, scroll, and check.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: The gravel used in Japanese gardens is known as "suna" (sand) despite the individual particles being much bigger than those of what is regarded as normal sand. These vary from 2 mm to up to even 30 to 50 mm in size.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Gardens in Kyoto have historically used "Shirakawa-suna", (白川砂利, "Shirakawa-sand") which is known for its rather muted colour palette. This type of muted black-speckled granite is a mix of three main minerals, white feldspar, grey quartz, and black mica which matches the aesthetic for most zen gardens. Shirakawa-suna also has an eroded texture that alternates between jagged and smooth and is prized for its ability to hold raked grooves, with patterns that last weeks unless weather, animals or humans intervene.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: As of 2018 in Kyoto alone there are 341 areas spread over 166 temples covering a surface area of over 29,000 m which have used "Shirakawa-suna". Gravel is used in the entrance, main garden, and corridor area and takes four forms, spread gravel, gravel terrace, gravel pile, and garden path. Typically in areas covering less than 100 m, the gravel is 20 to 50 mm deep and has a particle size of 9 mm.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: "Shirakawa-suna" was sourced from the upper reaches of the Shirakawa River. However, since the late 1950s the river has been a protected waterway and extraction of gravel from the river has been illegal.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Over time the gravel becomes weather-beaten and becomes finer, forcing gardeners to occasionally replenish it in order for the gravel to retain the patterns made in them.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Since the banning of extraction from the Shirakawa River the gravel used for both maintenance of existing gardens and the creation of new ones is sourced from quarried mountain granite of similar composition that is crushed and sieved. However the process of manufacturing creates rounded particles of the same size, lacking the pattern holding characteristics of true "Shirakawa-suna", which have corners and are not uniform in size. For instance the Portland Japanese Garden experimented with granite chips sourced from Canadian quarries to compensate for the loss of access to Shirakawa-suna.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: In the Japanese rock garden, rocks sometimes symbolize mountains (particularly Horai, the legendary home of the Eight Immortals in Taoist mythology); or they can be boats or a living creature (usually a turtle, or a carp). In a group, they might be a waterfall or a crane in flight.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: In the earliest rock gardens of the Heian period, the rocks in a garden sometimes had a political message. As the Sakutei-ki wrote:


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Sometimes, when mountains are weak, they are without fail destroyed by water. It is, in other words, as if subjects had attacked their emperor. A mountain is weak if it does not have stones for support. An emperor is weak if he does not have counselors. That is why it is said that it is because of stones that a mountain is sure, and thanks to his subjects that an emperor is secure. It is for this reason that, when you construct a landscape, you must at all cost place rocks around the mountain.


title: Japanese dry garden

text: Some classical zen gardens, like Daisen-in, have symbolism that can be easily read; it is a metaphorical journey on the river of life. Others, like Ryōan-ji, resist easy interpretation. Many different theories have been put forward about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream to swimming baby tigers to the peaks of mountains rising above the clouds to theories about secrets of geometry or of the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of "natural" objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation."