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Universal Negatives and Random Mutations

"There is [still no] proof that all mutations are random."

Right in a sense, if only because no one can prove a universal negative.

However we do have proof:

1) That mutations take place and alter the genome, especially in non-essential and unused portions of the genome that do not code for proteins. Mutations collect in those areas of the genome very readily, which is the majority of the genome. In fact, less than five percent of the entire human genome codes for proteins, and that's close to the same percentage of the genome that consists of endogenous retroviral DNA (which is foreign DNA from viruses that has implanted itself, hidden and insinuated itself into our human DNA over the eons). Mutations can also be observed directly every so often right after meiotic divisions of the sex cells. So, mutations are known to occur on a regular basis, and at the FREQUENCY that evolution requires in order to turn, say, a common ancestor of chimps and humans into both chimps and humans. In fact, the known calculated frequency of mutations in the human genome is more than what is required if evolution via mutations over time were true.

2) There is proof that man and chimp are nearer each other genetically than either of them are to the other apes. Indeed, "new genetic evidence that lineages of chimps (currently Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens) diverged so recently that chimps should be reclassed as Homo troglodytes. The move would make chimps full members of our genus Homo, along with Neandertals, and all other human-like fossil species. "We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes," says the study...Within important sequence stretches of these functionally significant genes, humans and chimps share 99.4 percent identity. (Some previous DNA work remains controversial. It concentrated on genetic sequences that are not parts of genes and are less functionally important, said Goodman.)..." [from "Chimps Belong on Human Branch of Family Tree, Study Says" John Pickrell in England for National Geographic News May 20, 2003]

One early estimate of the genetic distance between man and chimp was done in the 1970's using the technique of pairing up the two halves of DNA strings from different species to see what percentage of the DNA stands would join together and what percentage did not. Humans and chimps were found to be no more dissimilar than sibling species of nearly identical fruit flies. Not much genetic distance there.

And it logically follows that if you were to compare the genetic distance not between man and chimp, but between man and the COMMON ANCESTOR of man and chimp, the genetic distance is EVEN LESS. I am guessing, but Denton may be raising that point in his new book, THE TREE OF LIFE, that he is currently writing.


4) There is also proof of upright apes and early pre-hominids, hominids, and eventually the genus homo.

The questions these four points of fact raise in my own mind are many. Perhaps's ignore such questions, I can't speak for them, but here are the questions for me:

1) Mutations happen regularly and at a rate that is not incompatible with the modern scientific theory of evolution. And also, there are unused portions of the genome, huge portions in fact, collecting mutations. In fact enough endogenous retroviruses have crept into the human genome over the millennia to rival the amount of functional protein-coding DNA that is used to construct a human being. Furthermore there are even remnants of the old centromeres in our human Chromosome #2, remnants of when that chromosome was once two separate chromosomes, each with their own centromere, as it is today in all the great ape species. Comparison of the Human and Great Ape Chromosomes as Evidence for Common Ancestry (I have additional info on this if you need it).

QUESTION: It would seem that a designer could have designed a lot cleaner genome, or at least taken some of the old viral DNA out of our genome when adding the occiasional new mutation. He could have removed some of the remants of the extra centromere found in human chromosome #2.

In other words, there could be more signs of design instead of just accumulation of unused portions, instead of evidence of a sloppy fusion of two chromosones into one.

2) The genetic distance between chimp and human is quite small, even smaller between chimp/human, and their common ancestor. It's a genetic distance comparable to sibling species of fruit flies.

QUESTION: Does it really require a miracle to explain how such a distance might be bridged?

3 & 4) There were pre-monkeys before there were monkey, and there were many species of monkey before the first primitve apes showed up, and many species of primitive apes before the first hominids showed up, and different species of homo, before homo sapiens showed up.

QUESTION: There were ages upon ages of monkeys and then ages upon ages of apes. Were any of them required before arriving at hominids, and finally of those hominids, one branch of them arriving at man? It may be "design" of a sort overall, but it does not appear very "direct" to create so many bushes upon bushes of creatures and then only have a few ultimately survive on the ends of each bush.


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Irreducible match of orchid and moth?


From a book by Darwin on orchids I had heard contained a passage about a prediction Darwin had made based on the length of the "nectary" of a species of orchid in Madagascar that was ten to eleven inches long. Quite a long "nectary," which raised the question, what species could reach that far inside the orchid to enjoy its nectar and pass along the orchid's pollen to the next orchid? Darwin reasoned that "in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches!" No such moth species was known at the time, and they were only discovered years after Darwin's death. The length of the nectary appears to have evolved along with the length of the tongue of a particular moth species (perhaps other moth species were also evolving longer tongues at first, but only this species was able to keep up with the lenghening of the orchid?).

Was a designer playing games in designing this oddly irreducible match between this species of orchid and this species of long-tongued moth? Or did this irreducible match come about by virtue of the moths with the longest tongues surviving to continually lick up a source of nectar available only to them? Any strong opinions either way?
Best, Ed

The writings of Charles Darwin on the web
by John van Wyhe Ph.D.

Darwin, On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised. London, John Murray, 1862.



[page] 198


[. . .]


[page] 202


[page] 203


I am familiar with this puzzling case. But, try to write out a specific detailed Neo-Darwinian genetic sequence for it.

Me? I can't even write out a genetic sequence to make Cambell's soup. Darwin knew there were moths with longer tongues than most other species of orchid pollinators [like butterflies and bees and flies] and those moth species pollinated orchids with longer nectaries than most. Darwin assumed in this extraordinary case it was a moth with a tongue ten to eleven inches long getting to the nectar. He was right.

Do I know why the orchid's nectary evolved to such a length, or why the moth's tongue continued evolving to such a length to reach the base of the nectary? Perhaps because as the nectary grew longer the nectar became the sole property of whomever's tongue could reach it, and thus a nitch for food opened up that no other creatures could reach, ensuring that whomever reached that niche could have all the spoils to themselves, a rich prize. And only those whose tongues could reach it, continued to reach it. While the shorter tongued cousins of the long-tongued moths settled for more hotly contested shorter nectaries, or grew extinct.

Philosophe, If you are out of your depth, perhaps you will accept my suggestion that no one can describe the genetic sequence, which at best would only be a series of guesses.

What is a philosophe? Someone from Voltaire's day? And what did it used to mean to call someone "Ms. Philosophe?" (Is Ms. an abbreviation of "Monsieur?")

I agree with you that I am out of my depth. Who isn't "out of their depth" at this point and with our limited knowledge? I bet that moth and its near cousins in Madagascar are no where near having their genomes elucidated and compared and evolutionists are no where near understanding how everything functions and changes in such species.

For the rest, you seem to be describing a directed evolutionary theory, not evolution with chance alteration of the genome, a path I am confident you do not want to follow. It did not require much ingenuity to propose that such a flower would require an insect with a long tongue, or one small enough to make the trek by foot.

I thought about the question the same way, and thought why not a really small insect like a teeny beetle creeping down that ten to eleven inch long nectary for the nectar? Maybe because a single moth with a long tongue made more sense based on the cousin species of moths that already pollinate cousin species of that species of orchid in Madegascar, and Darwin assumed that evolution works with what's already there?

Perhaps you might like to try your hand at writing some scenarios for the separate development of the human sex organs. You might even make the explanation amusing, perhaps leading to a Hollywood contract.

Wow, what a challenge! And a Hollywood contract to boot! But didn't Woody Allen already do the movie version of EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK? Seriously, Lynn Marguilis has written on the evolution of sex, though I don't know if she's talked much about the evolution of human sex organs. From what little I know it does appear that in the womb early on we are all "female" moreso than "male," relatively speaking. The gonads remain relatively in place for females while the male of the species has his gonads descend via two openings in the lower abdomen, and the tubules that lead from his gonads to his urethra have to grow longer since they are stretched up and around the tubules leading from his kidneys to his bladder (do I have that right?). The male prostate is another confusing matter, and doesn't appear to function very well where it is, causing difficulties with urination, especially as we age. (Speaking of difficulties as we age, what's with "wisdom teeth" anyway?) As you can see I'm out of my depth in this matter as well. But are I.D.ers more in their depth concerning such subjects?

Daring scientists to explain one thing and then another thing, first the moth and orchid, then the evolution of sexual organs, including all the environmental/sexual/embryonic selective pressures and the kind and order of genomic mutations that occured over periods of thousands to millions of years, seems quite a task to demand of anyone.

Knowing that such matters have not been explained,'s jump in and explain it their way, by saying "it was a Designer!" I.D. class in college is going to be relatively short if most explanations come down to "That's just the Designer doing his thing, don't ask him how! That would be like trying to peek in God's closet and there's no point to that, since we already KNOW it's I.D." (Less Christian instructors will add that the Designer might also be aliens or time travellers.)

It does not appear to me that the I.D. explanation will take science any where, though it will doubtlessly absorb the minds of children with unquestioning reverence of some sort, toward either God, aliens or time travellers.

Still, I must add that there are also DARWINIAN Christian evolutionists who have reverence for God. Today's prime example might be biologist Kenneth Miller who continues to debate with I.D.ers head to head.
Another such Christian appears to be Howard Van Till ( who refuses to align himself with the I.D. movement. Around the turn of the century there were others. See DARWIN'S FORGOTTEN DEFENDERS: THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT by David N. Livingstone. They appear to agree that perhaps a creation that required constant miraculous adjustments over zillions of years wasn't such a great reflection on the creator after all. But if creatures evolved naturally and death and change were part of natural processes, as natural as new stars being formed and new elements being formed from simpler elements inside stars, then the Creator was all the more impressive in having been able to set such things up right from the beginning. I mean, it's one thing to have to keep pulling rabbits out your hat every day or century or year, but to make human beings out of seventeen-billion-year-old hydrogen, well, that's even more impressive than making a human being out of a single cell in nine months. It's quite a trick, makes the constant dipping into the magic hat look repetitive, tiresome. And then to also produce creatures curious enough to study and rediscover the whole natural process and follow the clues backward, why that's quite an inspiration to enhance curiosity. Can I.D. truly compare with that?



So what if Darwinism gives atheists solace. Are the atheists to be denied solace? Is God, the true God and creator, really as insecure as creationists assert, and always going around blaming people for if they don't believe in him and praise him for everything? Maybe he's not particularly proud of everything he sometimes gets praise for? Like miraculous football passes, or finding one's eyeglasses? Maybe he leaves a lot up to us, and likewise up to nature, because letting things do their own thing is cooler than being a micro-manager? Maybe that's God's lesson to us. And likewise, maybe he doesn't take credit when things go wrong either, like extinctions or volcanoes. A cosmos that runs itself and evolves itself is gonna have things that run into one another, jury-rigging is expected. Maybe this is not the best of all possible worlds, just the best of all possible SELF-EVOLVING worlds? Anyway, that's my three hundred dollars and TWO CENTS on those matters.

I originally brought up the "irreducible long-tongued moth and long-nectary orchid" because it seemed pretty straightforward: Lengthening nectary, lengthening tongue over time. Seems like it could happen, knowing other moths with longish tongues and orchids with longish nectaries. Though a designer might just as well have left both the length of the tongue and the length of the orchid's nectary of average size. (There's only a single known species of bedbug that stab-rapes other males of the same species so as to inject them with his sperm that then finds its way through the stabbed male's organ into the female he has stabraped. Other species of bedbug only stab-rape the female in the abdomen and the males do not stabrape each other. Likewise though the Bombadier beetle has a moving squirt appendage which can direct its heated chemicals. Other cousin species don't have the moving appendage, and they spray the chemicals outward and also on themselves. And beetles of that type already produce the hydroquinones that are used in other capacities in beetles and already have anatomical divisions that could be used as the two chambers to store those chemicals. And there's only one bird species than can fly backwards. And there's only one species of orchid and moth with such very long tongues and nectaries. So for every marvelously specialized species there appear to be lots of less highly specialized cousins sharing similar anatomies and physiologies.)

Was the lengthening of the orchid and the lengthening of the moth's tongue directed? Who knows? The antlers on the heads of Irish elk apparently grew to increasing lengths over time, and then no more Irish elk, they became extinct. (Because of the increasing size and length of their enormous antlers? I don't know. No one knows. But the antlers of the Irish elk do appear to be of an awkward length -- jutting out so far to each side -- that I imagine just swinging it's head quickly from one to side to the other might create enough momentum to strain it's neck -- not a genuine hypothesis, just a joke based on the momentum of twisting and twirling objects, not to mention how such antlers could make it difficult to maneuver and double park in a forest full of trees). Perhaps that orchid with its long nectary might become extinct one day, having specialized itself into extinction, and if that moth is only especially attracted to that orchid's nectar it too could become extinct. There are tapir-like species in the fossil record that show up again later in time with increasingly elongated noses and a pair of elongated teeth until species with longer noses and longer front teeth appear and finally the first elephants with trunks and tusks appear. All that's left today are the modern day tapir and the modern day elephant with those other species between them having gone extinct. If I.D. is life-giving and every one of its irreducible specializations demonstrates the farsighted perfection of an intelligent Designer, then why all the extinctions? Why are the earliest birds more like ancient reptiles than modern day birds? I mean if we found a hummingbird (the only one that can fly backwards) among the earliest birds, I'd be surprised, but we don't. We find birds with reptilian shaped triangular skulls with the same shaped individual skull bones as reptiles, and other features that label them as "birds in progress." (How competant a Designer are we talking about?) And then once the progress has been achieved every early birds is wiped out. In this case the early bird did not catch the worm, it caught the grave. And this happens time and again. Mammal-like reptiles. Wiped out. All those mesyonchids with those weird shaped ear bones that resembled early whale's ears, wiped out, not good enough I guess. (How competant a Designer are we talking about?) All those early Eocene whales, Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus, Basilosaurus, wiped out. Leaving only the species we see today, which still pop out embryonic hind legs in the womb where they are reabsorbed -- or in some cases are not completely reabsorbed and we find a grown whale with bumps on its hind regions that contain (when x-rayed) a small femur, tibia, fibula and phalanges. (How competant a Designer are we talking about?)

Those are questions that I think are as valid as any others.


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Review of The Science of God


In reference to: Testimony of Former Young Earth Creationist

That is a long and thoughtful intellectual trip, more effort expended than I had anticipated when Ed introduced himself to the group. On that occasion I sent to him (direct) a short note, but to date I have had no response.

Ed: "To date" (from the posting of my "intellectual journey" to your reply above) is less than 27 hours. Time must rush by at a furious pace for you. I can imagine you standing on your porch waiting for a reply the day after you mailed someone a letter (in ye old snail-mail days). Well, I'm here now, and you may ask me anything either in this forum or at my home or work email. My work email is ed.babinski@ and I may be contacted there 9:30AM-6:00PM M-F, but again, with work, there are no promises how soon I can reply.

I duplicate it for CED(below) and trust that he has completed all the research necessary for a reply.

Ed: You "trust" that I have "completed all the research necessary for a reply." Not very trustful it would seem. That's understandable. I hope that you have read as widely as I have, and examined each question in as many ways and from as many angles as I have, though I lack absolute "trust" that that is so. It's not really a matter of trust at this early point of discussion, but of the trickiness inherent in all communication about complex, wide ranging, deeply believed, controversial subjects. On the topics of biological origins and the Bible much has been written, and I doubt both of us have read exactly the same articles, books. So, right from the start our ideas about certain subjects are not going to coincide. Perhaps agreement about many of those subjects will prove impossible without a fairly large number of books, articles, sources of information, that we both hold in common. Even so. . .the chorus goes, what "ELSE" have you read about this, that, and the other? (In the end, life is short and so is time for study. And for those two reasons I cannot imagine a "God" who condemns people to hell after they have been blown to and fro in this world for a mere couple of decades in a raging sea of ideas and emotions.)

I also think knowing more about you might aid future communications. (Your e-name isn't a cover for "Phil" Johnson is it?). What has your "intellectual journey" been like? I find most people's stories interesting, having read many testimonies of people who have entered and/or exited various religions/philosophies.

Dear Ed, Welcome.

Ed: Thanks! Happy to be here...Happy to be anywhere in fact.

You seem to have developed a strong preference for a position.

Ed: I have a strong preference for asking questions (and researching questions. My research projects led to a job at a university library - - no I am not a full librarian). I have found various attempts at "concordance" questionable. I found the Bible's creation story(s) questionable. And I've found I.D. hypotheses also questionable. At the moment my question for I.D.ers is simply this, "If there is a Designer, what can we learn about their level of say, competency, by examining various aspects of nature and nature's history? A Divine Tinkerer perhaps?" Personally, I am open to theism, even a personal God, personal beings of light, etc. But I do not have any proof, mainly anecdotes, like NDEs. And the Bible no longer constitutes proof of anything to me concerning its cosmology and cosmogony. The way I presently see things, it is relatively easy to explain the origins of ancient Hebrew creation stories and motifs, while an explanation for how things evolved is more difficult.

So, let me start with two questions. 1) What do you think is important about Darwinism,

Ed: I don't think in those terms. I have explained my position in my "intellectual journey" and above.

and 2) what type of evidence do you consider most important in validating Darwin's theory?

Ed: I have no sacredly held theories of my own, neither Darwinism nor I.D. I have questions. I have read atheists/naturalists and what they have said about nature. I have read I.D. hypotheses and critiques of those hypotheses. I have read young-earth creationism and critques of young-earth creaitonism. I have read old-earth creationists and theistic evolutionists. I have read concordist and non-concordist arguments. I have studied and compared ancient near eastern cosmologies and cosmogonies, and also read attempts to make Genesis (chapters 1 -3) appear to be the first and last word on origins.

For concordance of Bible and Science I suggest books by scientist Gerald L. Schroeder(our library has three).

Ed: I find Schroeder's "concordances" more of a demonstration of Schroeder's agility of mind than "proof" of the truth of the Bible. In fact, Schroeder's central concordance, that both the Bible and modern science agree there was a "beginning," ignores the fact that other creation stories agree there was a "beginning" and also agree with Genesis concerning many "less than scientific" matters that Schroeder ignores or attempts to interpret away.

Schroeder's claim about how much genetic change it would take to create human beings is wrong. According to the latest data, "The difference between human and chimp genomes is only about 1.23%, rather than 1.4% as originally thought."
Even more importantly, modern day chimps and man diverged so the differences that accumulated in each of their TWO genomes over time is greater than the differences between either ONE of them and their common ancestor, which would be less than 1.4% In fact even the present day differences between human and chimp genomes are less than that between the genomes of near identical sibling species of fruit flies. And there is even evidence INSIDE human chromosome #2 that points to it being the result of the fusion of two chromosomes that very closely resemble those found in the chimp which line up band for band to those in man's chromosome #2.

Here are some reviews of Schroeder's books I found on the web that reflect my own questions. I sorted the reviews so they would begin with simpler criticisms and build to more elaborate ones by professors of zoology and physics. It is apparent that Schroeder's "Kabbalistic" concordance hypothesis pleases neither young nor old-earth creationists and their readings of Genesis:

A young-earth creationist AMAZON reviewer of THE SCIENCE OF GOD:

"I find many of his interpretations manipulated to his own cause, e.g. Gen. 1:12 which he interprets: "and the earth brought forth life." A more reliable interpretation of the text renders: "and the earth(or land) brought forth vegetation." Further, he cites no credible Hebrew scholar who agrees with his interpretation of day for order and night for chaos. He relies much more for his case on the mystical kabbalah, especially Nahmanides, which can only be explained at best as "opinion." This leaves him in positions which do not square with all of inspired Scripture. . .For the exact opposite view of Schroeder's key thesis: clocks ticking faster at the center and slow at the edge of the cosmos--- see young-earth creationist, D. Russell Humphreys's book "Starlight and Time."

Old earth creationist Hugh Ross reviews Schroeder's GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG:

"One problem with his view is that it clashes with the scientific data on the timing of Earth's origin. Since the earth already exists on the first creation day of Genesis 1, Schroeder's model would say that Earth began at least 12 billion years ago. Scientific measurements, however, show that it is only 4.6 billion years old.
Our view is that Genesis 1:2 establishes the frame of reference for the creation events: "The Spirit of God was brooding (or hovering) over the surface of the waters." In other words, God's time and space frame in describing creation is the earth's surface, a frame in common with all readers of the account. The text gives no hint of Schroeder's relativistically time-extended creation days. If one seeks Jewish support for a day-age interpretation of Genesis 1, Nathan Aviezer, another Jewish physicist, offers it in a book entitled In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1990). Aviezer acknowledges that the six creation days of Genesis 1 must refer to long time periods."

Amazon Reviewer of THE SCIENCE OF GOD: seapapa from Los Angeles

"Schroeder's thesis is that the author of Genesis is describing a 15 billion year history of the universe and life, even though that was never his understanding or his intention. The true meaning Genesis 1 went undetected until it was discovered by the cabalist author Nahmanides in the 11th Century AD. It was lost again until Schroeder rediscovered it.

"Even accepting the dubious proposition that people can write things that actually mean the exact opposite of what they intend, the match between the Genesis timeline and the scientifically proposed history of the universe makes an ill fit. Schroeder tries to reconcile the two by focusing minutely on certain words in Genesis that could be interepreted to allow for longer time periods, while totally ignoring the text read in its entirety. For example, day three of creation supposedly lasts 1.6-3.6 billion years ago. Genesis said "let the land produce vegetation". Success, proclaims Schroder, that matches the plant life on the planet, which is found only in the... water! He conveniently ignores the rest of the verse which calls for fruit-bearing trees and seed-bearing plants. There was nothing but protozoa and plankton back then. This is typical of the book.

"The most absurd argument is that, if properly interpreted, the 6 creation days correspond to 6 actual 24 hour days on earth AND 15 billion cosmic years. How so? Einstein's relativity of time! Schroeder makes such an effort to preserve the 6 days of creation and the order of creation.

"This book is ultimately a polemic. Although brilliant and articulate, one gets the feeling that Schroeder cannot bear to have Genesis undermined. That compromizes his scientific judgement."

A Reviewer of THE SCIENCE OF GOD (at

"contains a few good passages, but also some egregious errors, which are puzzling when made by a PhD in Physics. For example, G. Schroeder completely misinterprets the experiments with particles moving through openings, invents some odd concept of heat diluting in enlarged volumes, misrepresents the story of photoelectric effect, etc. One striking feature of this book is that Schroeder suggests in it the chronological data , which completely contradict his own data on the same subject, given in his first book, without a word of explanation why he changed those data. A useless book."

A Reviewer of THE SCIENCE OF GOD (at wrote:

"His time dilation calculations are totally at fault. The factor of one million million he uses is totally arbitery (nothing really special happened at z=1 million million). His redshift/blueshift calculations are also wrong: The background temperature (and the redshift) changed by less than 10% in the last billion years. Nowhere near the rate needed to slow down from a 500 million year per day (Day 5, according to Schreoder) to 24 hours per day.

"Another serious mistake appears in his coverage of evolution: He says the the evolution from chimpanzees to humans requires a million point mutations because the difference in the active DNA between human and chimps is 1,000,000 bases.

"This is simply false. Schroeder himself says that the number of changes needed is no more than 70,000. In most cases a single point mutation is enough to complete a change.

"It would have been better if Schreoder, as a nuclear physicist, asked an expert biologist before writing his chapters about evolution..."

Frank Sonleitner,Department of Zoology, University of Oklahoma, Norman OK 73019 reviews Schroeder's THE SCIENCE OF GOD:








Victor J. Stenger, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii and the author of Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe (Prometheus Books, 1988), Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (Prometheus Books, 1990), The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Prometheus Books, 1995) and Timeless Reality : Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes (Prometheus Books, 2000), Review of Schroeder's THE SCIENCE OF GOD.

"How can both the Bible and science be right? Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder says he can show us how. Let's start with cosmology. The Bible says God created the universe in six days and indicates the passage of only about 6,000 years since then. Science currently estimates the visible universe to be about 13 billion years old, give or take a few billion. Schroeder reconciles the two, explaining that the six days of the Bible refer to a different measure of time. He explains: "there is no possible way for those first six days to have an Earth-based perspective simply because for the first two of those six days there was no Earth" (51).

"Instead, time during this six day period was measured on a cosmic clock. And what else could be used for that clock but the vibrations of light (electromagnetic waves)? Today the light from creation appears as the cosmic microwave background. This is now redshifted by a factor of a trillion (1012) from the period of "quark confinement" when matter as we know it first began to form. Thus the cosmic clock at that epoch ran off a trillion days for each of our modern days.
The six cosmic days of creation thus took about 15 billion years earth time, give or take a few billion. So, according to the author, Genesis is not only consistent with cosmology, it gives the correct age of the universe!


"Cosmic day one starts 15.75 billion earth years ago and covers the creation of the universe, the "breaking free" of light as electrons bind to atomic nuclei, and the beginning of galaxy formation. This is described in Gen. 1:1-5 as the creation followed by light separating from the darkness.

"Cosmic day two starts 7.75 billion earth years ago and lasts four billion earth years. During this period the stars and galaxies are born. This corresponds to Gen. 1:6-8, the formation of the heavenly firmament.

"Cosmic day three starts 3.75 billion earth years ago. During two billion earth years, the earth cools, water appears, and the first life forms appear. In Gen. 1:9-13, vegetation first appears during the third day.

"Cosmic day four starts 1.75 billion earth years ago and lasts a billion earth years. The earth's atmosphere becomes transparent and photosynthesis produces an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Schroeder says that this corresponds to Gen. 1:14-19 when "the Sun, Moon, and stars become visible in the heavens" (67).

"Cosmic day five starts 750 million earth years ago and lasts 500 million earth years. During this period, the first multicellular animals appear and the oceans swarm with life. Gen. 1:20-23 says the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and "birds fly above the earth" (94).

"Cosmic day six starts 250 million years ago and ends at the time of Adam. During this period we have a massive extinction in which 90 percent of life is destroyed and then repopulated with humanoids and humans. This, Schroeder says, corresponds to what is described in Gen. 1:24-31.

"Technically, Schroeder's formula gives the present as the end of the sixth day. However, it could just as well have ended a few thousand years ago and not affect the rest of the calculation where things are rounded off at hundreds of millions of years. Schroeder argues that after the six cosmic days of creation, Genesis switches its focus over to humanity and starts measuring time in human terms. The rest of the Bible concerns itself with the 6,000 earth years since Adam and Eve, estimated from the Bible in Bishop Ussher fashion.

"Schroeder does not deny the existence of hominid creatures before Adam. He talks about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, and accepts that they had developed tools, pottery, and many human-like qualities. In Lev. 11:33 the Bible talks about pottery. But, Schroeder argues that since it never mentions the invention of pottery, that event must have pre-dated Adam (130).

"According to the author, the Bible has no interest in these pre-Adam hominids because they were not yet fully human and had no souls. Thus they are never mentioned. Adam represents the quantitative change to a large brain, but more important, the qualitative change that makes us different from all other forms of life: "our soul of human spirituality" (133). God breathed this into Adam, the first real human, 6,000 years ago.

"Schroeder's attempt to connect 31 lines of Genesis to big-bang cosmology and earth paleontology makes entertaining reading, but will convince no one who is not already convinced or totally lacking of critical facilities.

"Let us return to the beginning. Schroeder's use of quark confinement as the defining moment for his cosmic time scale is completely arbitrary. He seems to have chosen it for no better reason than it gives the answer he wants. The redshift from quark confinement to the present is of the order of 1012. Multiplying this by six days gives 15 billion years, which is consistent with our current estimate for the age of the universe.

"Alternatively, Schroeder might have chosen the moment in the early universe called "decoupling," which represents the point where radiation separates from matter. Indeed, he relates this event to the separation of the "light from the darkness" described in Genesis day one. But the redshift from decoupling to the present is only of the order of 1,000, which would give an earth time interval of only fifteen years for the six cosmic days of creation. If he had chosen some other moment, he would have obtained yet a different time scale.

"Furthermore, by Schroeder's own formula the universe creation corresponds to the time of quark confinement. Blueshifting back from that point rather than redshifting ahead, the events prior to quark confinement would recede infinitely into the past, in earth time, and we would have no creation at all.

"Schroeder's use of an exponential function to give different earth periods for each cosmic day is not justified by his argument that earth time is simply redshifted cosmic time. While an exponential relationship would apply for the inflationary epoch in the early universe, that has ended by the time of quark confinement. Afterwards we have the almost linear Hubble expansion in which the redshift varies as a power law with time, not exponentially. By having each cosmic day half as long as the preceding one in earth years, again a completely arbitrary, unjustified procedure, Schroeder is able to vaguely relate events known from cosmology to those described in Genesis.

"In cosmic day two the "firmament" is created. Note that Schroeder excludes from the "firmament" all galaxies more than 7.75 billion light years away, of which there are many. Furthermore, he sees no problem with calling the expanding universe a "firmament." Like all apologists, he selects his data carefully, accepting only those which agree with his hypotheses and discarding those which do not.

"Primitive life first appears in cosmic day three. Here again it takes some mighty stretching to associate what is described in the Bible for the third day, including fruit trees, with the primitive life described by paleontology for that epoch.

"Schroeder has the sun, moon, and stars becoming visible in cosmic day four. In fact, Genesis seems to say the that sun, moon, and stars are created at that time - well after the earth was created.

"Cosmic day five has the waters teeming with life. But the biblical verses imply birds as well. Schroeder says that "birds" is a mistranslation and that the Bible here is referring to water insects instead. Translation is so easy when you know what you want a passage to say.

"Cosmic day six contains the mass extinctions of life that occurred 65 million years ago. The biblical verses referenced make no mention of mass extinction. The Biblical Flood occurs well after Adam, but Schroeder needs to end the six days of creation with Adam for other purposes. This is one event he simply cannot make fit, although he is not honest enough to say so and leaves the impression that everything is consistent.

"At times you get the impression that this book is a parody, with quite a few good chuckles when read in that context. However, the sections on evolution soon convince you that no parody is intended. They are just too unfunny, too dull. Schroeder trots out all the old, tiresome arguments about why "life could not have stared by chance" and how the simplest forms, even viruses, are "far too complex to have originated without there being an inherent chemical property of molecular self-organization and/or reaction enhancing catalysts at every step of their development" (85). He applies the usual creationist deception of calculating chance probabilities as if chance is the only operative mechanism, and then saying this "proves" that God intervenes along the way when they come out very low. And, of course, the "staccato aspect of the fossil record" refutes classical evolution. "These rapid changes cannot be explained by purely random mutations at the molecular-genetic level" (87).

"Notice how often theists tell us that something cannot be explained except by God? They never seem to learn from history."

Revised Title: The Delusions of Gerald Schroeder, December 5, 1997
Reviewer: from St. Louis, Missouri
I was intrigued by the title, but agitated by the contents. The entire book is filled with completely preposterous assumptions and conclusions. After reading such a book, I begin to question why someone, such as Gerald Schroeder, view themselves as scientists.

For an improved perspective on the contributions from Paleontology I repeat what I sent recently to DM: Henry Gee, Editor of Nature, in his "Deep Time", recognizes all Paleo is 'scenario elaboration' synthesized from fragments and the proponent's worldview, beyond the reach of experimentation, not encumbered by the testable predictions on which science depends. Phil(a scientist)

Ed: What LEVEL of "elaboration" was the editor of Nature speaking about?


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Intelligent Design: God in the Classroom


AS MANY OF YOU are no doubt aware, there has been an effort of late here in Ohio to shoehorn a bogus "science" known as "Intelligent Design" into science classes in our public schools. Proponents of "Intelligent Design" (henceforth referred to as "ID-iots") claim that life is too complex to have arisen by natural means, therefore the only "logical" explanation is that it must have been purposefully designed. ID-iots claim that life as it exists today is fundamentally different from hypothetical forms that would or could have evolved naturally without intelligent intervention. They cite this "fact" as proof of their assertions, yet they can't, or won't, say exactly how intelligently designed life differs from nondesigned life. They merely assert that it is different, which begs an obvious question that, if ID-iots possessed even a shred of intellectual honesty, should cause them no end of embarrassment. Simply put, how can they even know this let alone hope to prove it, since according to their own beliefs, they have no examples of nondesigned life to serve as a control to test their hypothesis? How can you prove that A is different from B when, according to your belief system, B doesn't exist? Little wonder then that ID proponents can offer no real evidence to back up their claims. They simply state that ID must be true for this and that reason and expect the rest of us to take their word for it.

Rather than providing evidential support for their own claims, they try to make their case by attacking the opposition, apparently believing that if they can somehow disprove evolution, ID wins by default. That's a sure sign that they have no valid arguments of their own to present, and it's not how science works. Science, real science, bases its conclusions on careful, painstakingly detailed observation and analysis of empirical evidence, not on unfounded assertions based on religious dogma and/or wishful thinking. ID, on the other hand, bases its case largely on the fallacy of "Irreducible Complexity", that is certain features, the eye being one of their favorites, cannot have evolved naturally because any transitional "incomplete" versions would not have been functional. Half an eye, they claim, confers no evolutionary advantage upon the possessor. Thus, by ID-iot reasoning, the eye must have been intelligently designed. Never mind that we can today observe firsthand nearly every proposed stage in the evolution of the eye in modern, living organisms. Never mind that experimental data show that even a primitive "half an eye" can sense light, shadow and motion, and never mind that in a primitive world where most of the competition is still blind, this would have conferred an enormous survival advantage. ID-iots won't be swayed by these facts. By and large, they aren't the type of folks to let the truth get in the way of their version of it. In actual fact, the eye isn't terribly difficult to explain in naturalistic terms. ID's objections are groundless. The rotating locomotor flagellum found in some microorganisms, which ID-iots also love to cite, is much more difficult to explain naturalistically than the eye. However, it has been explained, and quite thoroughly at that. Each proposed step in the development of this unique structure has been more than adequately accounted for. By and large, the idea of "Irreducible Complexity" depends on some pretty subjective interpretations, and the entire foundation crumbles when examined with a critical eye. IC is an idea based on personal conviction, not on fact, and is in no way scientific.

So there you have it. Unfounded assertions based on personal conviction and faulty reasoning, wrapped up in a pretty package of technical-sounding terms. That's "Intelligent Design" in a nutshell. It really doesn't matter what "mysteries" ID does claim to explain. It's the points it avoids addressing that doom ID as science and expose it for what it really is. In an attempt to make their arguments seem less religious and more "scientific", most ID-iots carefully avoid any discussion regarding the identity or nature of this "designer" they postulate, but you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the "science" of "Intelligent Design" isn't science at all. It's the same old creationist nonsense that fundamentalist Christians have been trying to force into our public schools for years. They've simply watered down or discarded some of creationism's more outrageous claims and given it a new pseudo-scientific spin in the hope that it won't be recognized for what it is. Despite vociferous denials by its more prominent supporters, "Intelligent Design" is religion, plain and simple, and has no place in science classrooms.



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Mark Twain Questions the Intelligent Design (I.D.) Hypothesis


Not many people know that Mark Twain wrote an article in 1903 that questioned the "I.D."-like hypothesis of Alfred Russell Wallace, who appears to have argued for an early version of the "anthropic principle." Twain's depiction of evolution below, with the evolution of life taking place in a mere "hundred million years" and with both men and birds evolving from the Pterodactyl, is intentionally farcical. Twain deliberately wants to appear bumpkinish in his ideas of evolution (and in the silly names he invents for species) to make the essays final "I Dunno" all the more poignant.

Following Twain's essay is another titled, "Little Bessie" from an uncompleted work, The Myth of Providence, that fits in with the theme in the essay below.

I do NOT present these essays as the last word in the I.D. / Darwinism debate, though I do think that whomever reads them may gain a firmer grasp of the fact that the present dispute is not likely to be "settled" any time soon. (My own middle of the road "Divine Tinkerer" hypothesis does not appeal to many though I find it hopeful without being unrealistic.)

Best, Edward T. Babinski















'E isn't one O'the reg'lar Line,
nor 'e isn't one of the crew,
soldier an' sailor too!




Also by Mark Twain, "Little Bessie," The Myth of Providence


"Did He give Billy Norris the typhus, mamma?"


"What for?"

"Why, to discipline him and make him good."









"What for?"





(Wearily) "Oh, I suppose so."









Dear mama, have you fainted?"


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Question for I.D.ers (Intelligent Design) concerning the "waste" and "junk" in nature


Question for I.D.ers (in several parts):

How much "waste" and "junk" is there in nature?

1) Do you accept that "pseudogenes" exist inside all animal genomes? What proportion of the human and/or chimp genome contains them? What is the proportion of pseudogenes to functional genes?

2) Do you accept that "endogenous retroviral DNA" exists inside all animal genomes? What proportion of the human and/or chimp genome contains "endogenous retroviral DNA?" What is the proportion of the genomes that codes for endogenous retroviral DNA, compared with the proportion of the genome that codes for functional genes?

3) Do you accept that remnants of misplaced "telomeric chromosomal regions" and remnants of misplaced "centromeric regions" exist inside the human chromosome number two? If you agree both things exist inside the human chromosome number 2, do you think they constitute evidence of a possible "sloppy" fusion of chromosomes in our past ancestors? (Note: When the human chromosome number 2 and the chimpanzee chromosomes 2 and 3 are compared, their overall lengths and the individual bands of human chromosome number 2, and chimpanzee 3 and 4, line up with one another. And, there are remnants inside the longer human chromosome number 2 of "teleomeric regions" and "centromeric chromosomal material," found in the wrong places inside the chromosome number 2, "as if" the human chromosome number two were formed by the "sloppy" fusion of two separate chromosomes.)

4) On rare occaisions a whale is born with (atavistic) hind limbs. Would you consider those to be a "waste" or "junk?" (Or do you deny with AIG [Answers in Genesis] that such atavistic hind limbs exist on modern day whales?)

5) A single bacterial cell that divides every twenty minutes, will multiply to a mass four thousand times greater than the earth's in just two days. That doesn't happen, because of the inconceivably huge death rate of bacteria. If all the eggs from one mother housefly lived, she would produce more than five trillion offspring in just one season. A single oyster, left to its own devices, produces more than one-hundred-twenty-five million eggs in a season. A female sea turtle lays a hundred or more eggs, but after they hatch [and not all do] in a nest buried beneath the sand on the beach, only a handful of baby sea turtles make it to the safety of the ocean. About one hundred million sperm cells are found in each cubic centimeter of human ejaculate. Yet only one sperm lives to fertilize the female's egg. The rest die. And many fertilized eggs never reach maturity. There are equally bountiful numbers from the world of seed-bearing plants. Among the young of both plants and animals, a large percentage of them are taken by disease and or infected by parasites. In fact, two hundred and fifty years ago one-half of all children born died before reaching the age of seven. Similar figures, or worse, are true of many other animal and plant species as well. Could any of this massive fecundity and death of most of the young of animals and plants be indicative of "waste?"

6) When astroids have struck the earth throughout geologic time and killed billions of creaures and caused mass extinctions of species, could that be indicative of "wastefulness" of any kind?


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Human Value According to the Cosmos and also According to the Bible?


How intrinsically "valuable" are human beings according to the cosmos and also according to the Bible? In the cosmos all living things die, including human beings, and even some of the tiniest forms of life live by sucking the life out of the ones with the largest brains and/or the biggest hearts. As for the Bible's view of humanity's intrinsic "value," even more questions arise, a wide variety in fact.

FIRST, let's review the most direct and common recognitions of humanity's place in the cosmos:


Every living thing in the cosmos dies. There is plenty of evidence that our home planet, the earth, has been struck by large objects from space. Visible fiery meteors continue to enter the earth's atmosphere from time to time some even videotaped, and some larger objects from space have passed so close to the earth in the past few decades that their pathways were within the distance from the earth to the moon's orbit. Also, a little behind the arm of the Milky Way in which our solar system lies, there are stars being drawn into our galaxy from a nearby smaller galaxy, and so over a million stars are entering our galaxy and their gravity is interacting with stars found in our galaxy which can cause grave problems for any planets on those stars as they pass nearby each other. Lucky for us the arm of the galaxy where our solar system lies has just recently (in galactic time) already passed through that danger zone where the stars keep entering our galaxy. Also note that a solar flare from our own sun came so near the earth in the 1990s that it disabled satellite and cell phone communication. The earth's magnetic field is also diminishing (viz., the earth's poles shift in polarity and power over time, and a "few generations from now" our planet will soon be in a down phase, lacking a magnetic shield, and no one knows for sure how that might effect life on earth, or affect how electronic-based technology--computers and telecommunications function). I also read that dangerous gamma radiation was detected striking the earth in bursts coming from the vicinity of a "magnestar" that blew up in our general part of the galaxy. That could be quite dangerous if the star were just a bit nearer. Others have supposed that radiation from a star going nova in our vicinity might have instigated some extinctions in the past. Though if any star went nova near the earth that might be it for all life on earth. So this cosmos provides uncertainties galore concerning the continuance of life. Even stars and galaxies in our cosmos have finite lifetimes (though the question of what sort of infinite matrix all cosmoses might lie within, or how that matrix generates new cosmoses, remains an open one in physics and philosophy).

Astronomers have evidence of rings of matter and even planets surrounding distant stars, so there might be planets in the cosmos other than earth on which sentient beings live (found in the "galactic habitable zone" of our galaxy or of distant galaxies, since there's over a hundred billion other galaxies out there, each of them containing a billion or so stars). It is not inconceivable that such beings should they exist, live on planets like ours in which every living thing dies. One is therefore left with far more questions than answers concerning cosmic "value."


Assuming God exists, how do we know for sure that God "values" human beings or to what degree He does? I've already reviewed questions regarding the nature of such "value" based on the cosmic situation in which God has placed humanity, and also based on the fact that neither nature nor God provide every embryo a whole and healthy start in life, but instead the opposite is true, since disabilities, nutritional deficiencies, and childhood illnesses, including deaths during birth and deaths during infancy and early childhood are very common among all species, including human beings.

The Bible says and/or implies that God finds human beings "valuable," even created in God's own "image," however human beings wrote those books, and any sentient being would probably find it difficult to imagine a deity not created in THEIR own image.

However, being "created in God's image" does not even mean that hunanity was so valuable as to be granted the equally god-like gift of immortality. Instead, early authors of some books in the Bible also expressed in numerous places that everyone went to the same place after they died, Sheol, the grave, the land of shades. Such authors of early books of the Bible taught that only God was immortal, while human beings were created from dust and to dust would return. I'm not saying the Bible teaches a uniform view of the afterlife, but simply noting that there are different ideas in the Bible of the afterlife. One was that humanity was animated dust and was not immortal like God. Such a view was common in the ancient world. Among the Greeks for instance, they viewed humanity as mortal , but a select few "heros" could be taken up to be with the gods and live forever like Hercules (the early Hebrews likewise pictured only a few like Enoch and Elijah being taken up, but in other places the Bible emphasized humanity's mortality and a place known as Sheol where all ended up). So some strands of the Bible picture humanity as being "valued" while they lived and breathed, but after death they were "valued" no more than say, "dust" or mere "shadows."

Speaking of the Bible, the same people who wrote some of the earliest books in the Bible also assumed the cosmos was created in six evenings and mornings as measured by evenings and mornings on what we today know to be but one planet, earth. This does not impress humans living today who have learned that all planets have their own days and nights, evenings and mornings, rather than the earth's evenings and morning being central. Was the very first light created "in the beginning" for the sake of instituting our planet's earth days and nights, evenings and mornings? And all the rest of the cosmos was likewise created "based on earth's days and nights," six of them, whether in metaphor or fact? But if that is what "revealed" books of the Bible teach, then how can we be sure of other matters in such books, including statements that God "values" humanity?

Even the pains and pleasures that people and nations experienced were interpreted by the Bible's authors as being signs of "God's" pleasure and displeasure, or signs of God's "punishments" or "blessings." While today people question such easy black or white supernatural interpretations of disasters and boons, of good times and bad times. It would appear that it is indeed the writers of the Bible who are interpreting what happened to them and their nation in terms of "God," just as they interpreted the earth's status in cosmic creation myths, with light created for the earth's evenings and mornings, and the earth created even BEFORE the sun, moon and stars were "made and set... above the earth... to light it, and for signs and seasons" on earth, merely one planet out of the entire cosmos?

The ancient Greeks likewise viewed their nation as lying at the "center of the earth" with their oracle of Delphi lying at the earth's navel, and the earth itself being the foundation of creation with a dome above it where the sun, moon and stars lay. The ancient Greeks also thought they "knew" why good and bad things happened during the Trojan war to certain warriors and nations. They "knew" it was due to the pleasure or displeaure of their "gods" and the exertion of their supernatural powers to decide battles or bless the land (read Homer).


Only in the New Testament are human beings portrayed as having such "value" that God would put Himself through suffering, death, and hell, including God "becoming sin"--becoming something that God cannot stand--hence God punishing God, in order to spare humanity from "hell." That is quite a claim concerning humanity's "value" but note the lateness of such a claim even in the "revealed religion" of the Bible.

Also, think about the self-centeredness of such a portrayal of humanity. Humanity's self-centeredness began with claiming it was created in God's image, then in the intertestamental period believing it would live eternally, and now in the N.T., humanity claiming its own "sins" or failures are why God had to put God through pain, death and hell, with God Himself becoming sin, and shunning and punishing Himself, thus creating a rift, albeit temporary, in God. Quite a jump from humanity being simply mortal dust that returns to dust and winds up in Sheol, the land of shades. For now the human writers of the N.T. have even divinized humanity's faults, imagining God had to take humanity's faults so seriously as to tear God Himself into pieces in a manner of speaking, God punishing God (or to use a metaphor from nature and animals) God smeared Himself with our poo and hated Himself, dissassociating God from God, creating a rift in the Godhead all because of US. Thus humanity's ego and hubris appears to have grown over time and throughout "revealled revelations" in the Bible, such that even our poo is made to eventually smell good or come out good, regardless of the consequences to "God."


Even one human group's self-centered dislike of other nations or other human beings differing from them, has sought justification in the "Divine," namely "Divine condemnations." Such hubris not only gave birth to the interpretation that when other nations suffered they were being "punished by God," but also applied later in the sense of eternal punishment (book of Daniel) other intertestamental works, and of course the N.T.

In intertestamental works the idea of "evil" demons and Satan ruling this world, their power over this world, and fears thereof, all grew immensely, leading to elevated suspicions and hatreds projected onto "outsiders." In the N.T. the projection of such fears was also projected onto believers who loved the same holy books, and who were labeled, "heretics." Thus Christians began persecuting fellow believers as soon as the first Christian emperor gained the throne of Rome, and Christians proceeded to kill more Christians in a few years during the Arian-Athanasian controversy than were killed during the previous three hundred years under non-Christian Roman emperorsl; even killing each other over matters such as whether or not a bishop had ever denied his faith under duress during the earlier days of persecution or remained "pure" (the Donatist controversy). Today Christians continue to debunk each other's practices and beliefs far moreso than non-believers have ever done.

The notion of hell raises the question of the "value" of humanity in other ways as well. Though some Christians declare that hell is God's "great compliment" to human beings, that simply begs the question of what God would do to someone He wished to "insult" rather than "compliment." Furthermore, if God already sees the past and future, then God would know in eternity that there was no "choice" for some souls but hell. What "value" does such a view place on human life?

Hellish conundrums continue when one considers the view that Adam's sin (as Augustine taught) automatically damned all humanity, and it was up to God to grant the gift of saving grace to whomever He would, but he only grants it to some, and denies it to the rest, which means God "values" only some, and damns the rest. Jonathan Edwards put it in Augustinian terms and added darker metaphors, teaching that we all deserve the utmost punishment, because God's disgust toward all of Adam's children since the fall is similar to the disgust we feel when we see a horrid insect or worm. Doesn't sound like everyone is extremely "valuable" in God's eyes.


“They [the Anabaptists] are not only blasphemous, but highly seditious, urge the use of the sword against them... We may not, therefore, mete out better treatment to these men than God Himself and all the saints.”



How "valued" is humanity in the "primeval history" stories in Genesis in which God "repents" of having made man, and floods the earth, drowning nearly every breathing thing on it? How about in Exodus where God tells Moses He would like to let all the Israelites in the desert die and raise up a people from Moses alone? (Even if the story is interpreted as being a ruse on God's part or a temptation or testing of Moses by God, anyone reading it cannot help to also see in it a certain callousness toward human life by God. Note that it states elsewhere in the Bible that God does not "tempt" people so why would he "tempt" Moses with an offer to let the Israelites die and set Moses up as a new Abraham giving birth to a new people? Admittedly, theologians finely divide, some say "gerrymander," the words "tempt" and "test" in this case). And one could also ask what "value" God places on human life when He commands Joshua to slaughter every breathing thing inside certain cities, including babes and pregnant women? Makes life seem relatively "cheap" in God's eyes.

Revealed biblical religion even states that God "sends lying spirits" into prophets, and God "hardens" people's hearts in order that they might be destroyed utterly as in the book of Joshua ("The Lord hardened their hearts to meet Israel in battle in order that He might destroy them utterly, that they might receive no mercy"). Or, God sends plagues and famines, or God says He will put people in the situation where they will be forced to eat their own children just to survive. Or in the N.T. God "sends them great delusion" that they might not turn and be saved. Sounds like a cavalier way to treat human life.


From Origin's day to ours Christian theologians have continued to debate just how much of Jesus's apocalyptic speech about "hell" needs to be taken literally. Some say such speech is an accommodation to the ideas of Jesus's day concerning ideas of heaven and hell already in circulation since the inter-testamental period; and thus we don't even know for sure just how much of what Jesus spoke about hell was an accommodation to ideas and concepts his audience already took for granted.






Neander says that Gregory of Nyssa taught that all punishments are means of purification, ordained by divine love to purge rational beings from moral evil, and to restore them back to that communion with that they may attain the same blessed fellowship with God Himself.




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