Mutation produces a new enzymatic function - evolution of new traits

Some people claim that mutations can only cause the loss of function, not the addition of new functions. However, in an exceptionally well-designed experiment, using thousands of generations of Escherichia coli bacteria, Lenski and co-workers have been able to observe a new function appear, by which E. coli can use citrate as an energy source (which normal E. coli cannot do). See here for more on this experiment and the results.

This is not a new result, but it seemed wise to point toward it again in this blog. Thank you for reading!

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 128

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here.  His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

He who would pray must work. It is for power to work that prayer has such great promises: it is in working that the power for the effectual prayer of faith will be gained. In these parting words of our blessed Lord we find that He no less than six times (John xiv. 13, 14, xv. 7, 16, xvi. 23, 24) repeats those unlimited prayer-promises which have so often awakened our anxious questionings as to their real meaning: ‘whatsoever,’ ‘anything,’ ‘what ye will,’ ‘ask and ye shall receive.’ How many a believer has read these over with joy and hope, and in deep earnestness of soul has sought to plead them for his own need. And he has come out disappointed. The simple reason was this: he had rent away the promise from its surrounding. The Lord gave the wonderful promise of the free use of His Name with the Father in connection with the doing of His works. It is the disciple who gives himself wholly to live for Jesus’ work and kingdom, for His will and honour, to whom the power will come to appropriate the promise. He that would fain grasp the promise when he wants something very special for himself, will be disappointed, because he would make Jesus the servant of his own comfort. But to him who seeks to pray the effectual prayer of faith, because he needs it for the work of the Master, to him it will be given to learn it; because he has made himself the servant of his Lord’s interests. Prayer not only teaches and strengthens to work: work teaches and strengthens to pray.

BioLogos: New genetic information added

One of the arguments against evolution by natural selection is that information can only come from an intelligent agent. This article, in BioLogos, by Dennis Venema, refutes that assertion.

This article is not new, but it is important, and, after recently re-reading it, I wanted to call attention to it. It doesn't rule out divine activity, and, at the least, shows us, indirectly, that the God-produced systems of cellular biology are wonderfully complex, and have the power to bring about novel structures and molecules.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 885

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

Christianity: Relevant has an article that discusses the harmful effects of watching pornography -- it leads to a decline in desire for sex with real people. The article mentions the effects on Christian young people.

Computing: Gizmodo tells us that Chicago (and other) police, with help from the FBI, are using fake social media accounts to trap criminals (or innocent people).

Environment: Gizmodo reports that legislators in Utah are considering piping ocean water into the Great Salt Lake, which is at record low levels, with no natural fix in sight.

Health: (and politics) NPR reports that the death rate from COVID has been significantly higher in counties that voted for Trump.

Politics: NPR reports that American right-wingers are praising the autocratic leader of Hungary.

Science: The Scientist reports that significant malaria transmission occurs, due to daytime mosquito bites.

Gizmodo reports that dolphins in the Red Sea apparently rub their bodies, or parts thereof, on corals, for medicinal reasons.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

More on animal variety after the Flood

In a previous post, "Young-earth creationism and the kinds of animals," I examined claims of Answers in Genesis (AiG) the most important young-earth creationist organization at this time. Among their claims is a proposal that, upon leaving the Ark, each individual (or each pair, or each group of seven) animals produced many kinds of offspring -- new species -- apparently almost as soon as the Ark landed. As far as I know, there is no credible scientific evidence for this theory. AiG is claiming that there was rapid evolution (although they seldom use that word) at this time, but that evolutionary processes were not responsible for the development of the species that went into the Ark. So evolution is both responsible, and not responsible, for speciation.

This sort of hyperevolution is a new belief among AiG leaders. It would have been seriously doubted and denied by young-earth creationists a few decades ago.

Does AiG still believe in hyper-evolution? Yes. I was doing an internet search on the question of whether the mustard seed is really the smallest seed. (Mark 4:31) I found this in an AiG publication:

"Evolutionists are assuming that the seed sizes we observe in the present were the same in the past. It is quite possible that some or all of the plants with smaller seeds had yet to differentiate into the species we observe today. The jewel orchids, for example, might not have branched from the originally created orchid kind at the point Jesus made his statement."

Note that the quote includes the idea of plants becoming new species, presumably at some time after the Flood. "Yet to differentiate into the species"

Jewel orchids have smaller seeds than mustard.

I was glancing at a list of recent AiG publications, and found this, by Ken Ham, head of AiG: "We also know that God created a great variety of genetic information into each kind so that they could adapt to their environment and branch out into different species."

No doubt, many other AiG publications and other communications put forward the idea that, upon leaving the Ark, organisms reproduced an amazing variety of species, using some sort of God-created hyperevolutionary mechanism, with built-in directions for diversifying -- not merely natural natural selection, because there hasn't been enough time since the Flood.

Thanks for reading!

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 127

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here.  His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer and the Trinity. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

But there is one condition: ‘He that believeth on me, he shall do greater works, because I go to the Father; and whatsover ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’ His going to the Father would give Him a new power to hear prayer. For the doing of the greater works, two things were needed: His going to the Father to receive all power, our prayer in His Name to receive all power from Him again. As He asks the Father, He receives and bestows on us the power of the new dispensation for the greater works; as we believe, and ask in His Name, the power comes and takes possession of us to do the greater works.

Alas! how much working there is in the work of God, in which there is little or nothing to be seen of the power to do anything like Christ’s works, not to speak of greater works. There can be but one reason: the believing on Him, the believing prayer in His Name, this is so much wanting. O that every labourer and leader in church, or school, in the work of home philanthropy or foreign missions might learn the lesson: Prayer in the Name of Jesus is the way to share in the mighty power which Jesus has received of the Father for His people, and it is in this power alone that he that believeth can do the greater works. To every complaint as to weakness or unfitness, as to difficulties or want of success, Jesus gives this one answer: ‘He that believeth on me shall do greater works, because I go to the Father, and whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’ We must understand that the first and chief thing for everyone who would do the work of Jesus, is to believe, and so to get linked to Him, the Almighty One, and then to pray the prayer of faith in His Name. Without this our work is but human and carnal; it may have some use in restraining sin, or preparing the way for blessing, but the real power is wanting. Effectual working needs first effectual prayer.

Sunspots 884

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

Computing: Gizmodo reports on how often our presence is registered by someone we didn't ask to do this, on-line. (For example, how Google gets information on you, and shows you ads, when you do a search.) Normal internet users leak such information into the hundreds of times a day.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that major oil companies are selling off some of their structure to smaller companies, which are unregulated, and increase emitting greenhouse gases.

Politics: Relevant reports that Americans are a lot more interested in the Depp-Heard trial than in Roe vs. Wade.

Science: Gizmodo reports that NASA has detected a magnitude 5 earthquake on Mars.

A writer in The Scientist discusses sex, and argues that sex differences are much less binary than some would have us believe.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 126

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here.  His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer and the Trinity. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

He who would work must pray: it is in prayer that the power for work is obtained. He that in faith would do the works that Jesus did, must pray in His Name. As long as Jesus was here on earth, He Himself did the greatest works: devils the disciples could not cast out, fled at His word. When He went to the Father, He was no longer here in the body to work directly. The disciples were now His body: all His work from the throne in heaven here on earth must and could be done through them. One might have thought that now He was leaving the scene Himself, and could only work through commissioners, the works might be fewer and weaker. He assures us of the contrary: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and he shall do greater works.’ His approaching death was to be such a real breaking down and making an end of the power of sin; with the resurrection the powers of the Eternal Life were so truly to take possession of the human body and to obtain supremacy over human life; with His ascension He was to receive the power to communicate the Holy Spirit so fully to His own; the union, the oneness between Himself on the throne and them on earth, was to be so intensely and divinely perfect, that He meant it as the literal truth: ‘Greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father.’ And the issue proved how true it was. While Jesus, during three years of personal labour on earth, gathered little more than five hundred disciples, and the most of them so feeble that they were but little credit to His cause, it was given to men like Peter and Paul manifestly to do greater things than He had done. From the throne He could do through them what He Himself in His humiliation could not yet do.

 

Sunspots 883

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

The Arts: Christianity Today reports that the lead that holds stained glass pieces together, in decorative windows, from the late 1800s, is in danger of no longer being able to do so, because of slow oxidation.

Christianity: NPR reports that Orthodox churches, some of which are backing Putin, in the US are attracting far-right people.

Education: (sort of) FiveThirtyEight on laws to prevent teaching about racism.

Environment: A small dolphin, living in the Gulf of California, has a population of about 10 animals, according to Gizmodo.

Gizmodo reports that recycling doesn't really work.

Gizmodo reports that Emperor penguins are in serious danger of extinction, caused by global climate change.

Health: The Scientist reports that taking oral antibiotics may have profound effects on the microbes that normally live in the gut.

Politics: FiveThirtyEight shows us the results of some recent polls on abortion.

Science: The Scientist reports that sunscreen can damage coral reefs.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading. 

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 125

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here.  His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer and the Trinity. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

‘I go unto the Father!’
Or, Power for Praying and Working.
‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’—John xiv. 12, 13.
As the Saviour opened His public ministry with His disciples by the Sermon on the Mount, so He closes it by the Parting Address preserved to us by John. In both He speaks more than once of prayer. But with a difference. In the Sermon on the Mount it is as to disciples who have only just entered His school, who scarcely know that God is their Father, and whose prayer chiefly has reference to their personal needs. In His closing address He speaks to disciples whose training time is now come to an end, and who are ready as His messengers to take His place and His work. In the former the chief lesson is: Be childlike, pray believingly, and trust the Father that He will give you all good gifts. Here He points to something higher: They are now His friends to whom He has made known all that He has heard of the Father; His messengers, who have entered into His plans, and into whose hands the care of His work and kingdom on earth is to be entrusted. They are now to go out and do His works, and in the power of His approaching exaltation, even greater works: prayer is now to be the channel through which that power is to be received for their work. With Christ’s ascension to the Father a new epoch commences for their working and praying  both.
See how clearly this connection comes out in our text. As His body here on earth, as those who are one with Him in heaven, they are now to do greater works than He had done; their success and their victories are to be greater than His. He mentions two reasons for this. The one, because He was to go to the Father, to receive all power; the other, because they might now ask and expect all in His Name. ‘Because I go to the Father, and—notice this and—and, whatsoever ye shall ask, I will do.’ His going to the Father would thus bring the double blessing: they would ask and receive all in His Name, and as a consequence, would do the greater works. This first mention of prayer in our Saviour’s parting words thus teaches us two most important lessons. He that would do the works of Jesus must pray in His Name. He that would pray in His Name must work in His Name.

Sunspots 882

 Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

The Arts: NPR has posted an essay that considers the question of whether there's too much TV -- it's impossible to watch it all.

Christianity: Relevant argues that boycotts by Christians don't really do any good.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that incandescent light bulbs are now supposed to be phased out.

NPR discusses the idea of removing Carbon Dioxide from the air to fight global climate change. There are downsides to this.

NPR tells us that California condors are increasing in number and range.

Health: Gizmodo reports that a bacterium can trigger the release of snot (mucus) which serves as a food source for the bacterium.

Politics: Relevant quotes US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said that churches that are trying to help refugees are "controlled by Satan." Really?

Science: (and Christianity) Christianity Today tells us what black holes tell us about God.

The Scientist reports that lots of kinds of fish can make sounds, and that making sound seems to be important.

Sports: (and health) NPR reports on how Muslims adjust to fasting during Ramadan.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 124

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here.  His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are normally in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer and the Trinity. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

Lord! what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him? for Thou has made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the work of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things under his feet. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!
Lord God! how low has sin made man to sink. And how terribly has it darkened his mind, that he does not even know his Divine destiny, to be Thy servant and representative. Alas! that even Thy people, when their eyes are opened, are so little ready to accept their  calling and to seek to have power with God, that they may have power with men too to bless them.
Lord Jesus! it is in Thee the Father hath again crowned man with glory and honour, and opened the way for us to be what He would have us. O Lord, have mercy on Thy people, and visit Thine heritage! Work mightily in Thy Church, and teach Thy believing disciples to go forth in their royal priesthood, and in the power of prayer, to which Thou hast given such wonderful promises, to serve Thy kingdom, to have rule over the nations, and make the name of God glorious in the earth. Amen.