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2019 Audi A7 Review
Christian Wardlaw, Independent Expert | May 22, 2019
Audi has redesigned half of its sedan and sportback models for 2019, bringing out new versions of the A6, A7, and A8. Topping the lineup in terms of price and prestige, this trio evolves Audi's design language, debuts new technologies, and introduces a standard mild-hybrid drivetrain for improved efficiency.
The 2019 Audi A7 is the sportback, based on the A6 sedan but replacing the trunk with a huge hatch and a giant cargo area. The A7 is sleek and stylish on the outside, upscale and technologically advanced on the inside, a true delight for all of your senses.
For this review, we evaluated a 2019 Audi A7 Prestige equipped with extra-cost paint, Cold Weather package, Individual Contour Seating package, Driver Assistance package, and 20-in. aluminum wheels. The total price came to $85,440, including the $995 destination charge.
2019 Audi A7 Ratings and Reviews
Audi Car and SUV Ratings, Reviews and Awards
2019 Audi Buyer's Guide
What Owners Say
Before we discuss the results of our evaluation of the 2019 Audi A7, it's helpful to understand who buys this midsize premium car and what they like most and least about it.
J.D. Power data shows that 77% of Audi A7 buyers are men, in alignment with the segment average of 78%. The Audi buyers are younger, though, with a median age of 59.5 years (vs. 62). They also enjoy a more robust median annual household income at $325,000 (vs. $212,099).
Most Audi A7 buyers identify themselves as performance buyers (67%), with the second most common psychographic group working utilitarians (22%). At the segment level, the percentages are 53% and 8%, respectively.
In comparison to all midsize premium car buyers, A7 purchasers are less concerned with reliability, quality, maintenance costs, and fuel economy. J.D. Power finds that 86% agree that reliability is a first consideration when choosing a new vehicle (vs. 91%); 92% agree that quality of workmanship is a first consideration (vs. 97%); 70% agree that they avoid vehicles with high maintenance costs (vs. 74%); and 14% agree that fuel economy is a first consideration (vs. 33%).
Furthermore, Audi A7 buyers are not interested in paying extra for safety and environmental features. Just 28% agree that they'll spend more to get a vehicle that is environmentally friendly (vs. 50%), while 86% agree they'll pay extra to get the latest safety features (vs. 90%).
What do Audi A7 buyers value? Style and performance. The data shows that 61% of A7 buyers strongly agree that they like a vehicle that stands out from the crowd (vs. 47%), and 76% strongly agree that they like a vehicle that offers responsive handling and powerful acceleration. After all, just 14% of A7 buyers agree that a vehicle is just a way of getting from place to place (vs. 20%).
Buyers say their favorite things about the A7 are (in descending order) the engine/transmission, exterior styling, seats, driving dynamics, and interior design. Buyers indicate their least favorite things about the A7 are (in descending order) the visibility and safety, storage and space, climate control system, infotainment system, and fuel economy.
What Our Expert Says
In the sections that follow, our expert provides his own assessment of how the 2019 Audi A7 performs in each of the 10 categories that comprise the J.D. Power 2018 U.S. Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study.SM
If you think the new A7 looks like the old A7, you're right. Examine the car closely, though, and you'll spot a wider grille, sharpened edges, and refined proportions. My A7 Prestige looked sensational in Triton Blue paint with optional 20-in. wheels. People seeking a sportier appearance can select the S-line package with 21-in. wheels.
Slip into the A7's cabin and you're immersed in a symphony of sight, sound, and scent. Everything looks and feels rich, the layered dashboard housing high-tech instrumentation and controls. If you know how to use a smartphone, you'll figure out the Multi-Media Interface (MMI) in no time.
My test car had Pearl Beige premium leather, Pearl Beige interior panels, and Pearl Beige carpets and mats. If you live where the weather is frightful instead of delightful, I'd advise against the Pearl Beige flooring in favor of the Granite color that Audi also offers in conjunction with Pearl Beige leather. The Pearl Beige flooring shows every last speck and stain of whatever might be on the bottom of your shoes.
The redesigned A7 seats five people, but remains best for four. And the shorter the folks riding in the back seat are, the happier they're likely to be.
My test car included the Individual Contour Seating package. It adds premium leather for the seats, leather-wrap for various interior surfaces, and special wood trim. But the reason to get it is for the upgraded seats with a wider range of adjustment, ventilation in addition to the standard heating, and a massage system with multiple programs.
Climate Control System
Prestige trim includes a 4-zone automatic climate control system in the A7, ensuring optimum comfort levels for everyone.
Front and rear, the controls are digital, rendered on a touch-screen display with haptic feedback to confirm selections. Up front, the driver can also use natural-language voice controls to adjust cabin temperature.
During an unseasonably cool but sunny week in Southern California, the system had no trouble making my family warmer or cooler as each person desired.
Infotainment System
Audi's new MMI technology looks daunting at first, but is one of the best digital control panels I've used to date. Fast, responsive, and offering a variety of interaction methods, if you're comfortable using a smartphone or tablet computer, you'll quickly acclimate to the dual-screen system.
The lower screen includes climate controls, shortcut buttons, and a handwriting-recognition system that sets new standards for such technology. The upper screen handles the main infotainment menus and vehicle settings.
Using your fingertips, you can swipe, scroll, pinch to zoom, spread to expand, slide to adjust, and push virtual buttons that provide haptic feedback to indicate success. You can also use natural-voice commands to make adjustments, or the controls on the steering wheel. A volume knob resides on the center console.
Audi Virtual Cockpit is a perfect companion for the new MMI. Standard with Premium Plus and Prestige trim, this digital instrumentation panel allows a driver to emphasize traditional gauges or to shrink them in favor of data panels. The navigation system's Google Earth imagery looks especially impressive, yet another example of how the A7 seems like money well spent.
My test car also had the mid-level Bang & Olufsen sound system, and it sounded fantastic. You can spend almost $5,000 on an even better one, but unless you are a true audiophile I don't think that's necessary.
Storage and Space
Storage space in the A7 is pitiful. Cargo space is laudable.
Up front, aside from a set of cupholders and the lower door panel bins, there simply isn't any practical space to store anything. Even the shallow center console tray is useless for anything other than a smartphone sitting in the wireless charger. You can use the large glove box—if you can reach it from the driver's seat.
Owing to its design, the Audi A7 is adept at carrying luggage. Behind the rear seat the car offers 24.7 cu. ft. of cargo space. A 40/20/40 split-folding rear seat adds maximum utility, and while Audi doesn't provide an official volume number with the back seat folded down, it certainly must measure about 50 cu. ft.
Visibility and Safety
Thin windshield pillars and wide side mirrors make it easy to see out of the Audi A7. Driving aids, like the standard parking-assist sensors and available Virtual 360 surround-view camera system, help when maneuvering the A7.
Audi Side Assist is optional with Premium trim and standard on other A7s. It's excellent, with large orange lights on the inner side mirror housing that softly glow when a vehicle is in the A7's blind spot. Signal a lane change and they flash brightly to indicate danger. If you try to change lanes anyway, the steering will resist input to suggest once again that making the move is a bad idea.
What I love about this design is that you can easily see the warnings in your peripheral vision, without looking away from the road. Other car companies take note: this is how blind-spot monitoring is done.
The A7 offers a long list of additional driver-assistance and collision-avoidance technologies. Some are common, like adaptive cruise control with forward-collision warning and automatic emergency braking. Others are unusual, such as Intersection Assist, Turn Assist, and Emergency Assist.
I sampled as many of the A7's advanced driving-assistance systems (ADAS) as I could, in a variety of situations. They're not faultless. On one occasion the car momentarily slammed on its own brakes for no good reason, and on another in stop-and-go traffic it was clear the Traffic Jam Assist wasn't going to bring the car to a stop so I jammed my foot on the brake pedal to keep from embedding expensive Singleframe grille bits into the rear bumper of an old Toyota Corolla.
This represents the best of Audi's ADAS to date. It's going to be a while before self-driving cars are ready to rock.
Engine/Transmission
For the 2019 model year, the standard and only engine for the A7 is a turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 making 335 horsepower between 5,000 rpm and 6,400 rpm, and 369 lb.-ft. of torque between 1,370 rpm and 4,500 rpm. A 7-speed dual-clutch automated manual transmission with Normal and Sport modes delivers the power to a Quattro Ultra all-wheel-drive (AWD) system.
Quattro Ultra is a new version of Audi's AWD technology. It features driveline disconnect, which means the car operates as a front-drive vehicle unless traction or performance requirements dictate the use of the rear wheels. It helps to improve fuel economy, Audi says.
Four Drive Mode Select settings are available to the driver: Comfort, Auto, Dynamic, and Individual. Choose Dynamic and put the transmission in Sport mode and Audi says the A7 will accelerate to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds. That's a believable number.
Driving the A7 in its most aggressive settings also helps to eliminate evident but not irritating drivetrain hesitation. In Comfort or Auto mode, in normal driving situations, the driver can sense a delay as the engine restarts and the dual-clutch transmission engages, sometimes followed by a feeling that is likely the driveshaft reconnecting to send power to the rear wheels.
This slight delay and lack of refinement is the most disappointing aspect of the A7's powertrain.
To improve fuel economy, the Audi A7 is equipped with a 48-volt mild-hybrid system using a 10-Ah lithium-ion battery and a belt alternator starter to help improve fuel economy.
Thanks to this light-electrification system, the A7's engine shuts down earlier as the car approaches a stop, remains off for longer while you're waiting at a traffic light or idling in traffic, and makes it possible for the car to "sail" with the engine off at speeds between 35 and 100 mph, such as when descending a hill.
Collectively, the 48-volt system's reduction of engine load combined with these three traits is supposed to provide 25 mpg in combined driving. My test car returned 19.8 mpg.
Most of the time, I used the Normal transmission mode and Drive Mode Select's Auto setting. However, testing day included heavier traffic than normal. And up in the mountains, well, the A7 was just a blast to drive.
If you plan to exercise an Audi A7 on a regular basis, you might wish to upgrade to the sport suspension or the adaptive damping suspension, the latter of which is paired with 4-wheel steering. The 21-in. wheels that come with the S-line package are also a good idea.
My test car had none of these extras, and exhibited excessive body motions on a writhing, undulating mountain road. Nevertheless, the A7 drove like any good German car does—with unflappable composure.
In Sport and Dynamic modes, the powertrain downright astounds with responsiveness, the Quattro Ultra AWD showing no discernable side effects of its driveline disconnect design. The steering is a little too heavy in these modes, though, so I prefer Sport and Auto.
Regardless of drivetrain settings, the car's brakes are unfazed by hard, repeated use. The upgraded 20-in. wheels wore 255/40 all-season tires, but they proved sticky enough to slice and dice the blacktop ribboned across the Santa Monica Mountains.
In typical driving settings, the A7 is sublime. Prestige trim includes dual-pane acoustic side windows, and with the standard suspension tuning you can tune into the Bang & Olufsen audio system and tune out whatever is happening in the rush-hour traffic around you.
If you're using the adaptive cruise control with Traffic Jam Assist, though, pay attention. It's not infallible.
Final Impressions
Though the Audi A7's new mild-hybrid powertrain didn't deliver the promised efficiency and did deliver some odd sensations when accelerating from a stop, my previous experience with a new A6 suggests that you can easily expect better fuel economy under driving conditions different from those I experienced.
If you don't care one bit about mileage—and J.D. Power data suggests that A7 buyers don't—know that the new A7 is a fast, surefooted, stylish, luxurious, and technologically advanced automobile ready for all seasons and, with its huge hatch and giant trunk, all reasons.
Additional Research
The opinions expressed in this review are the author's own, not J.D. Power's.
No portion of these reviews may be reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed, or used for a derivative work without J.D. Power's written permission. © 2022 J.D. Power
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Google has many special features to help you find exactly what you' re looking for. Clearing them fixes certain problems like loading formatting issues on sites. Phim hoat hinh doremon cho dien thoai.
When you use a browser like Chrome, it saves some information from websites in its cache cookies. Search the world' s information videos , images, including webpages more.


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Tag: spirit of mystery
Cornish lugger Spirit of Mystery for sale on eBay
The Cornish lugger Peter Goss and his crew used to sail to Australia a couple of years back (read this and this), Spirit of Mystery, is up for sale on eBay.
She was built in Millbrook, Cornwall by Chris Rees, and is heavily built in larch on oak, and has an open plan interior.
The owner says she is great fun to sail and can be sailed easily by a crew of two, though he has thended to sail her as standing lug so that no dipping is needed.
Frankly, it's nearly impossible to describe how desirable I find this boat… if only I had the money and time!
Author Gavin AtkinPosted on February 2, 2015 February 2, 2015 Categories Boatbuilders and restorers, Equipment and boats for sale, Sailing boat, Working boatsTags boat for sale, Cornish lugger, ebay, Peter Goss, spirit of mystery2 Comments on Cornish lugger Spirit of Mystery for sale on eBay
Pete Goss's Spirit of Mystery is for sale
Photos by Mark Lloyd
Spirit of Mystery, the 37ft Mounts Bay lugger that sailing racer and adventurer Pete Goss had built to sail to Australia is for sale.
Pete used the boat to recreate the famous voyage of the fishing lugger Mystery, in which a group of seven Cornishmen led by Captain Richard Nicholls sailed to the distant colony to find work and prosperity in 1854/5. They were all related and had shares in the boat, and the legend is that Captain Nicholls agreed to make the voyage after a few drinks…
Back then, the Mystery became the smallest migrant vessel ever to make the journey.
Apart from successfully recreating the Mystery voyage, the Spirit of Mystery has history built into her – Goss sourced a piece of oak from Nelson's Victory to make up the chart table, teak from the Cutty Sark forms part of the saloon table and an original rivet from the SS Great Britain is a cupboard handle.
Built in Cornish oak and larch by Cornish boat builder Chris Rees, Spirit of Mystery has four main berths, a pilot berth, toilet, gas cooker and wood-burning stove, and is a comfortable cruiser. She has also shown she can take some very heavy weather – following a knock-down in the Southern Ocean she rolled back up and carried on sailing.
Goss says he is sad to see her go, but is moving on to a new adventure. 'I always thought that Spirit would be the boat I grew old with when I gave up major adventures – one that Tracey and I would take cruising when we retire.
'But with a new adventure in the pipeline and no time to use her, it is time for her to go to a new home. Hopefully it will be to an owner that loves and cherishes her as I have done and if it is also one that keeps the story alive then so much the better.'
Spirit of Mystery is lying in Plymouth and is for sale for £80,000 (tax paid). There is more information about her at the website www.petegoss.com/mystery.
Author Gavin AtkinPosted on August 22, 2012 August 28, 2012 Categories Boating, boats, ships and the sea, Equipment and boats for sale, Traditional carvel, wooden boat, Working boatsTags Australia, boat for sale, Mounts Bay lugger, Pete Goss, spirit of mystery, voyage CornishmenLeave a comment on Pete Goss's Spirit of Mystery is for sale
Spirit of Mystery crew set sail for Australia – but without their underpants
[ad name="intheboatshed-post"]
The crew of the Mounts Bay lugger Spirit Mystery
wave as they set sail for Australia – presumably
before the underpants crisis hit home
West Country sailor and adventurer Pete Goss and the crew of Spirit of Mystery have begun their epic voyage to Australia via the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Taking advantage of a change in the wind, they slipped lines on Monday evening, waved goodbye to the gathered crowd and set sail after a series of strong westerlies, the wind finally swung around to the north west, giving the little wooden lugger a push on the long journey south and into the Bay of Biscay.
Satellite tracking will allow the rest of us to monitor their progress via Pete's website at http://petegoss.com.
The news today, however, is that their friend and PR guru Stuart Elford has distributed a news release announcing that the sailing heroes left their most of their underpants in a launderette in Newlyn before they commenced their voyage to Australia via Cape Town.
Flying enthusiast Elford had hoped to drop packs of replacement undergarments to the little ship from his private aeroplane, but has apparently been defeated by the strong winds and poor visibility.
'By the time the weather clears they will be out of range of light aircraft from the UK,' he said.
In any case, it's unclear whether it would be right to use modern technology to deliver a large consignment of underpants to the crew. 'The crew of the original Mystery would not have had this sort of support, so perhaps it is fitting that we didn't make the air-drop,' he added.
So there we have it. Captain Goss and fearless crew of commandos are going down under without their underwear. Thank God they're British!
I only hope the Sheilas of Australia will throng the dockside for the Mystery's eventual arrival and show their appreciation by slinging a few pairs of Marks & Spencer's best across to the blushing and only slightly forgetful crew.
Underpants or not and even in poor weather, at this time of year I'm prepared to bet many of intheboatshed.net's UK-based readers will wish they were also sailing south towards the sun. For their sake, I trust this is the worst thing that goes wrong.
I've got a bundle of close-up photos taken when we dropped in at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall to share some time, so look out for that if you're interested in the Spirit of Mystery.
Follow the link for earlier posts on Pete Goss and the Spirit of Mystery.
Spirit of Mystery in less inclement weather – and presumably
better supplied with underwear
Don't miss anything good – Subscribe to Intheboatshed.net
Author Gavin AtkinPosted on October 23, 2008 July 7, 2015 Categories Boating, boats, ships and the seaTags atlantic, Australia, bay of biscay, cornish, launderette, lugger, newlyn, Pete Goss, southern ocean, spirit of mystery, stuart elford, underpantsLeave a comment on Spirit of Mystery crew set sail for Australia – but without their underpants

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Advanced Development Program is looking for world class talent in SYSTEMS INTEGRATION AND TEST ENGINEERING to be a part of a team that will carry on our tradition making history in advanced aircraft development. Candidate will support a team responsible for the integration and test of Mission Systems capabilities and functions in a laboratory, flying test bed, and flight test environment. Utilizing mission systems requirements, the candidate will assist in the development of test requirements and procedures, execute integration and test activities in a lab environment, evaluate mission systems functionality in a flying test bed, and support mission systems flight test evaluation. Candidate must have strong technical background, excellent communication and interpersonal skills, in-depth understanding of military aircraft functionality, and demonstrated integration and test experience with a modern software intensive mission systems architecture.


text:
Q: I have HTTP error 404 when redirecting in my MVC3 app In my application I have a route:
routes.MapRoute(
        name: "ILRoute",
        url: "{*Path}",
        defaults: new { controller = "Page", action = "index", Path = "" });

And in my controller I get the path and find what page was called and return the view that I want with page data.
It works fine when I am running on VS 2010 but when I upload to the server I get the error 404 when calling some pages. For example: I have menu that link attr set to 'channels'. In VS 2010 it works fine and when the menu is clicked the channel page appears but on the server a 404 error appears. I changed the URL in my browser manually to this:

myserverIP/websiteNAme/Home

and in this state when I click on the "channel" menu the page appears! But in the last state the browser says: File or directory not found, browser try to access this URL:

MyServerIP/channel

A: finally i found solution to solve problem
i use "/" and domain name and menu link like this
"/domainName/MenuLink
so when user click on the menu the url going correctly
tnx every body

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: argument passing to echo in PHP here are i am providing some examples of echo
Example 1
echo 'The sum is ', 1 + 2; //works fine

Example 2
$x=true;
echo '$x is undefined value ' , ($x===true) ? 'NO' : 'Yes'; //Works fine

Example 3
function f($arg){
  return $arg;
}

echo 'hello ' , f('buddy'); //Works fine

Example 4 -
echo 'hello ' , if($a) { return "wowo"; } else { return "fine"; }; // generate parse error

Here is the point that all example working fine but example 4 its generating parse error.
my questions is that -
1. language constructs can be used for echo arguments ?
2. If yes language constructs can be used, how can we use language constructs for echo arguments ?
3. Only functions that return strings can be passed to echo arguments ?

A: Yes you can use language constructs to echo arguments or return values.
If else is a conditional statement which can be use to evaluate a value. using this you will be able to break the the logic into several pieces and evaluate the condition. the echo will work separately for an each statement. But if you return a value , it will be returned from function and not from the statement.
EX:
$value = "hello";
if($a) { $value.= "wowo"; } else { $value.= "fine"; }
echo $value;

in the other hand ternary operator is an operator that takes three arguments and performs an operation .


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HomeCurrent IssuesLawsuit Against the Sexualization of Student Athlete
Lawsuit Against the Sexualization of Student Athlete
April 14, 2018 Melissa Rosman Current Issues, News 0
Chrystal Savage, Staff Writer |
Shalom Ifeanyi, former University of Cincinnati volleyball player and student, 19, filed a federal lawsuit on March 20, against head coach, Molly Alvey. Ifeanyi asserts that Alvey had her removed from the team after repeatedly putting down her figure. Alvey cited the "promiscuous" photos the college athlete was uploading to social media, specifically Instagram, claiming that the athlete had no respect for herself, nor would anyone else. Ifeanyi is seeking $75,000 for the racial and sexual discrimination and harassment received while on the team, as well as the violations of due process that took place after a formal complaint was filed to the university.
It should be noted that nine of the 11 remaining players are Caucasian, as well as three-quarters of the coaching staff, and the current administrative director of athletics. While it's not uncommon for a sports team, or any other organization, to have an overwhelming ethnicity and marginalized diversity, the suit states that racial harassment was also endured.
The double standard of flat chested, slimmer, and paler complected girls is staggering. The suit claims that in all photos, Ifeanyi was pictured from the chest up and fully clothed, as to comply with coach requests, made only to single her out from the rest of the team. Meanwhile, girls of the previously detailed characteristics can be seen in images including, but not limited to, two piece swimsuits.
Ifeanyi asserts that the harassment began after she made the team. Prior to her recruitment, Alvey was constantly making an effort to add Ifeanyi to the roster, even convincing her to transfer from Oregon State University. However, after Ifeanyi made the team, Alvey began constantly mandating her freedom to post on her own social media pages. According to Ifeanyi, on various occasions the coach body-shamed her, saying in part, "When the football players see this, what do you think they see? They see your breasts. It's seductive."
Ifeanyi finally challenged the authoritarian abuse, explaining via text, "I feel like I'm being body shamed because I'm not flat chested. I'm not trying to show my boobs coach, I can't make them go away. There's a history of black women because of their bodies being sexualized and that's what appears to be happening to me… I can't help the way I'm built. I am not trying to argue, I just feel like I have to be flat chested or real skinny in order to post."
Seven days later, Ifeanyi was dropped from the team. The Cincinnati coaching staff would likely attempt to defend the cut by illustrating that Ifeanyi was unwilling to comply with authority, and thus, they made the decision to terminate her position. However, if the former UC athlete can prove that discrimination and unequal treatment was a factor, she may have a case to win the Title IX complaint and federal lawsuit against her former coach. If nothing else, media attention alone could serve some justice.
The GSRC Presents: The "B" Word
SUNY Oneonta's "Move Out!" Program


Whilst many celebrate the New Year with champagne and a kiss at midnight, the occasion also causes many to reflect on their life circumstances and imagine where they can make improvements. Casting a New Year's Resolution solidifies this concept for many people and commonly includes; more exercise, more time with family, drinking less, reading more books, earning more money and of course, changing jobs.
Try to identify any employees that may not be 100% happy or committed. Look for warning signs such as waning performance, increased leave time, unusual behaviour or withdrawal from social interaction.
Take steps to speak with those employees before the end of year break. Employees have more time to reflect and consider their situation over the break, so any issues or concerns left unchecked may escalate and fester at this time.
Employers may not be able to fix any of the issues before the holiday break, but it is important that a discussion occurs and employees know you care enough about their issues to consider and address them.
Set the tone for the New Year by providing your employees with some structure and direction. This involves communicating your plans for the coming quarter or 6 month period and what you'd like your team to work towards in that time.
People leave their jobs for a variety of reasons, but we find the most common are stress, dissatisfaction with management and feeling undervalued. These issues should not be ignored and having open conversations with employees before they reach a critical point will help to nurture a culture of loyalty and understanding within your team and minimise unexpected departures.


text:
Devils Prospects
Devils Need to Kick Prospect Tires
By Will Agathis March 12th, 2017
With the end of the season fast approaching and the New Jersey Devils well out of playoff contention, the focus shifts to examining options for the future. There are several players toiling in Albany and junior hockey who are eligible for an extended look. Management should be cognizant of these players when making future roster decisions.
As of March 12, the Devils can make two more call-ups from Albany (emergencies notwithstanding) but can recall as many players as desired from junior hockey. The following three candidates could very well play for John Hynes' team before the close of the 2016-17 season.
John Quenneville
It's curious to see that Quenneville, despite being Albany's most potent point producer in his rookie season in the AHL, has only appeared twice for New Jersey in 2016-17. He did not separate himself from the pack in those two games, going pointless and minus-1, but only was afforded 17 minutes of ice time over that stint.
In Albany, Quenneville has been an electric playmaker, first on the A-Devils in assists and points with 29 and 40 respectively. All of these accolades come in his first season in the AHL. Moreover, he is seventh among AHL rookies in points and the second-youngest player in the top-seven.
A 2014 first-round pick lauded for his versatility, Quenneville is capable of playing both center and wing. His versatility does not compare to his hockey sense on the ice. He's comfortable with the puck and without it and plays a full 200-foot game. As one of the Devils' top future options at center, Quenneville is deserving of another opportunity this season.
The Devils are devoid of scoring and need something to catalyze chance creation. Quenneville is as good a candidate as any to rejuvenate an offense in desperate need of help.
Yohann Auvitu
Auvitu is a familiar face on the list. He played in 23 games – picking up four points – before being sent down to Albany in December. That transaction helped Auvitu gain his confidence, as he said, but did not lead to any more scoring in his most recent two appearances in New Jersey in January. Since then, Auvitu has 10 points and 59 shots in 21 games.
One of Auvitu's strengths is producing scoring chances – he's second among defensemen in Corsi/60. Only Damon Severson creates more shooting opportunities when on the ice. Some of that success may be a result of favorable zone starts, but he has outperformed Karl Stollery and Dalton Prout, who have had similar chances.
The Devils struggle to get offense out of their defenders. Auvitu offers scoring ability and can fire pucks on net at a healthy rate, with 2.2 shots/game. The defensive zone play is Auvitu's great downfall. In his first season of North American hockey, Auvitu has noticeably struggled with the game's defensive side. It will be interesting to see if Auvitu has made strides in that part of his game when he eventually reappears in New Jersey.
Blake Speers
Speers makes for an interesting case. The 2015 third-round pick appeared for the Devils in three games at the onset of the season before being returned to Sault Ste. Marie. If he is on the main roster for seven more games, then the Devils burn the first year of his entry-level contract. Additionally, the team cannot call up Speers until Soo's season is over. The timing of all this may make a Speers appearance in New Jersey unlikely, as the Greyhounds are second in the OHL in points.
While playing for Soo in 2016-17, Speers has scored 30 points in 26 games. Speers puts a considerable amount of power behind his shots and has good hockey sense, which is why his game could translate well to the NHL.
Updates on Devils prospects Michael McLeod, Blake Speers, Nathan Bastian and more https://t.co/7e4aSirBqF
— Chris Ryan (@ChrisRyan_NJ) March 4, 2017
The Devils' depth at right wing includes Kyle Palmieri, Stefan Noesen, Devante Smith-Pelly, and Beau Bennett. Palmieri is on pace for 54 points and remains one of the team's few consistent pieces. Noesen and Bennett have shown flashes of greater talent but are still struggling to separate themselves from a mediocre lineup. Smith-Pelly has not played up to expectations after his impressive scoring run last year (13 points in 18 games). Help is needed at right wing both right now and in the long run, and Speers could be the answer to both concerns.
The Devils are going through their greatest struggles of the 2016-17 season. The offense, especially, is in total disarray. Until management tries out some of its overlooked talent, the team will continue to play a stale, event-free brand of hockey. At the very least, an influx of youth could pull this team out of a long funk.


text:
/* -*- C++ -*- */

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All rights reserved.

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Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
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Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

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contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
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POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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#ifndef _AIG_
#define _AIG_
#include<cstdlib> // for size_t

/** @file AIG.h */

#include "Expr.h"
#include "Model.h"
#include "UniqueIntegralType.h"
#include <unordered_map>
#include <unordered_set>

namespace Opt
{

class AIG;

#ifndef UNIQUE

typedef unsigned long NodeIndex;
typedef unsigned long NodeRef;

#else

typedef UniqueIntegralType<unsigned long, 0> NodeIndex;
typedef UniqueIntegralType<unsigned long, 1> NodeRef;

#endif

typedef std::unordered_map<ID, NodeRef> IDRefMap;
typedef std::unordered_map<NodeRef, ID> RefIDMap;

inline NodeRef invert(NodeRef ref) {
  return (UIGET(ref) ^ 0x1);
}
inline NodeRef refOf(NodeIndex index, bool c) {
  NodeRef ref = UIGET(index) << 0x1;
  return (c ? invert(ref) : ref);
}
inline NodeIndex indexOf(NodeRef ref) {
  return (UIGET(ref) >> 1);
}
inline bool isNot(NodeRef ref) {
  return (UIGET(ref) & 0x1);
}

} // namespace Opt

#include <cassert>
#include <vector>

class AIGAttachment;

namespace Opt
{

class AIG;

class AIGNode {
public:
  AIGNode();
  AIGNode(NodeRef arg0, NodeRef arg1);
  inline bool isVar() const;
  inline NodeRef operator[](size_t child) const;
  inline NodeRef& operator[](size_t child);
private:
  friend class AIG;
  NodeRef args[2];
};

class AIG {
public:
  AIG();
  inline const AIGNode& operator[](NodeIndex index) const;
  inline AIGNode& operator[](NodeIndex index);
  inline const std::vector<AIGNode>& nodes() const;
  inline NodeRef merged(NodeIndex index) const;
  inline size_t depth(NodeIndex index) const;
  inline size_t nFanout(NodeIndex index) const;
  inline size_t size() const;
  void resize(size_t new_size)
  {
    _nodes.resize(new_size);
  }
  void clear();

  NodeIndex addNode();
  NodeIndex addNode(NodeRef arg0, NodeRef arg1);

  void merge(NodeIndex index, NodeRef with, bool updateFanouts = true);
  void resetMerged();

  void update(AIGAttachment * aat);

  unsigned& numInputs() { return _numInputs; }
  const unsigned& numInputs() const { return _numInputs; }
  unsigned& numStateVars() { return _numStateVars; }
  const unsigned& numStateVars() const { return _numStateVars; }

  std::vector<NodeRef>& nextStateFnRefs() { return _nextStateFnRefs; }
  const std::vector<NodeRef>& nextStateFnRefs() const { return _nextStateFnRefs; }
  std::vector<NodeRef>& outputFnRefs() { return _outputFnRefs; }
  const std::vector<NodeRef>& outputFnRefs() const { return _outputFnRefs; }
  //For AIGER 1.9
  std::vector<NodeRef>& badFnRefs() { return _badFnRefs; }
  const std::vector<NodeRef>& badFnRefs() const { return _badFnRefs; }
  std::vector<NodeRef>& constraintFnRefs() { return _constraintFnRefs; }
  const std::vector<NodeRef>& constraintFnRefs() const { return _constraintFnRefs; }
  std::vector<std::vector<NodeRef> >& justiceFnSetRefs() { return _justiceFnSetRefs; }
  const std::vector< std::vector<NodeRef> >& justiceFnSetRefs() const { return _justiceFnSetRefs; }
  std::vector<NodeRef>& fairnessFnRefs() { return _fairnessFnRefs; }
  const std::vector<NodeRef>& fairnessFnRefs() const { return _fairnessFnRefs; }

  std::string dot() const;
  std::string dot(NodeRef ref);
  void print();
private:
  void traverse(NodeRef, AIG &, std::vector<NodeRef> &,
                IDRefMap &, RefIDMap &, IDRefMap &, RefIDMap &);
  void updateFanout(NodeIndex index);

  std::vector<AIGNode> _nodes;
  std::vector<NodeRef> _merged;
  std::vector<size_t> _depth;
  std::vector< std::unordered_set<NodeIndex> > _fanouts;
  std::vector<NodeRef> _nextStateFnRefs;
  std::vector<NodeRef> _outputFnRefs;
  //For AIGER 1.9
  std::vector<NodeRef> _badFnRefs;
  std::vector<NodeRef> _constraintFnRefs;
  std::vector<std::vector<NodeRef> > _justiceFnSetRefs;
  std::vector<NodeRef> _fairnessFnRefs;

  unsigned _numInputs;
  unsigned _numStateVars;
};

} // namespace Opt

#include <limits.h>

namespace Opt
{

bool AIGNode::isVar() const
{
  return (args[0] == ULONG_MAX && args[1] == ULONG_MAX);
}

NodeRef AIGNode::operator[](size_t child) const
{
  return args[child];
}

NodeRef& AIGNode::operator[](size_t child)
{
  return args[child];
}

} // namespace Opt

namespace Opt
{

const std::vector<AIGNode>& AIG::nodes() const
{
  return _nodes;
}

NodeRef AIG::merged(NodeIndex index) const
{
  return _merged[UIGET(index)];
}

const AIGNode& AIG::operator[](NodeIndex index) const
{
  return _nodes[UIGET(index)];
}

AIGNode& AIG::operator[](NodeIndex index)
{
  return _nodes[UIGET(index)];
}

/**
 * Returns the depth of the AIG node with the given index.
 * Depth is defined as the maximum of the depth of the node's fanouts. The
 * depth of variables is by definition zero.
 */
size_t AIG::depth(NodeIndex index) const
{
  return _depth[UIGET(index)];
}

size_t AIG::nFanout(NodeIndex index) const
{
  return _fanouts[UIGET(index)].size();
}

size_t AIG::size() const
{
  return _nodes.size();
}

void printAIG(const AIG& aig);

} // namespace Opt

#endif /* _AIG_ */

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
'My People Fund' surprises residents with $5,000 checks
Sevier County wildfire victims picking up their final distribution from Dolly Parton's My People Fund on Thursday received a very nice surprise: Their checks were for $5,000 instead of the $1,000 they expected.
Author: Michael Crowe
Sevier County residents picking up their final distribution from Dolly Parton's My People Fund on Thursday received surprise checks for $5,000 instead of the $1,000 they expected.
Since December, the fund has given $1,000 checks to people who lost their homes in the November wildfires each month. About 875 families have been receiving assistance from the fund.
The plan was for families to receive $1,000 a month for six months.
The Dollywood Foundation has brought in $4 million to date, more than they expected, so it allowed them to make these final checks larger than planned. Each recipient received a check for $5,000 on Thursday.
For people like Charles and Jenny Forgey, who lost their home in the November wildfires, Thursday was just the latest step on their road to recovery.
"I don't know how to explain it, it's really touched me good. And I appreciate everything they've done for me," Charles said.
Just as valuable to those handing out this help – are reactions like that.
"You really develop relationships with people," Dollywood Foundation President David Dotson said. "You see the same folks, share their stories, know what they've been thru so a bond has certainly been developed."
PREVIOUS: Families grateful for Dolly Parton's My People Fund
MORE: Three months later, My People Fund recipients thankful for help
Parton and the Dollywood Foundation announced the My People Fund just two days after the devastating fires swept through Sevier County. Officials say the fires damaged or destroyed a combined total of 2,545 buildings in Sevier County, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, including businesses, homes and public buildings.
And while this might be the last check, it's not the last step of rebuilding.
Still -- the Forgeys want to thank Dolly.
"I'm here to tell you, that little woman -- if I ever see her, I'll squeeze her," said Jenny Forgey. "That's all there is to it."
On Friday, the Dollywood Foundation will announce their plans for the rest of the money they've raised.


text:
2010-11-30 by Jamie Ashcroft
Prosperity Minerals (LON:PMHL) believes that China's new five year economic plan will lead to expanding domestic demand.
The company has a broad range of assets including an iron ore trading business, real estate development and a number of cement related interests.
It has been sitting on a substantial cash pile since it sold most of its cement business for around US$490 million – the final payment was received in August. Prosperity plans to invest in the Chinese iron ore and property assets to benefit from the countries ever expanding market place.
"The PRC continues to be the world's fastest growing major economy and in its new five year plan 2011-15, there will be a palpable shift of focus from exports to the expansion of domestic demand and the welfare of China's more than 1.3 billion inhabitants," chairman David Wong said.
"We believe this can only be good news for Prosperity's prime businesses."
This afternoon Prosperity released its interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2010. The headline results were enhanced by the massive gains made following the cement divestments.
As a result of the US$489 million disposal the company had a US$237 million gain, which boosted the rest of the figures. The company made a net profit of US$234.5 million, around 10 times more than the comparative period of 2009. Earnings (EBITDA) reached US$237.9 million (H109: US$42.9 million).
"It has been another very busy and profitable six months for the group," Wong added.
"We completed the sale of the majority of cement assets for some US$490 million, including debt, entered into an agreement to buy iron ore from Malaysia and diversified into the real estate sector with purchases in Guangzhou and the establishment of a new joint venture in Changzhou City,
"Similarly, in the second half, we are looking at a number of equally exciting projects in both iron ore and property."
In respect of current trading, Prosperity said that iron ore trading volumes have been recovering from the lower volumes that were shipped in the first half.
Furthermore it expects more iron ore shipments from its partner Grace Wise in the second half.
It is also considering a new property investment in two high-end residential property developments.
The projects are located in Chongqing Direct Municipal City, in south-western China and in Hangzhou City in the Zhejiang Province of eastern China.
"Management remains positive about the medium to long term prospects of the PRC real estate market and believes that the PRC government's measures aimed at cooling speculation will benefit the market over the same period," the company said.
Kryso Resources
Fluormin
Condor Gold


Abstract: Elimination of adrenaline and noradrenaline from blood of adult and old rats was studied within different periods after administration of the catecholamines. Adrenaline was eliminated from blood of rats of both age groups with the similar rate; however, the time of elimination of noradrenaline was distinctly longer in old animals are compared with the adult ones. The alterations observed may be due to the effects of sympathetic system on metabolic process in various tissues in the old age.
Reference: Voronkov G.S., Adrenaline and noradrenaline elimination from the blood of rats of different ages, Voprosy meditsinskoi khimii, 1978, vol: 24(5), 632-636.


text:
What to expect from Trump's State of the Union address
Joel Mathis
Pete Marovich/Getty Images
In other, more normal circumstances, President Trump might be expected to give tonight's State of the Union address as a somewhat humbled man. He was, after all, forced to delay the speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the government shutdown he instigated — and then ended the shutdown when it became apparent he was losing support from Republicans in Congress. The event also comes as newly empowered House Democrats are feeling their oats after reclaiming power in the November midterm elections. By any objective measure, the president is on a losing streak.
But Trump doesn't really do humility, so we're unlikely to see much in the way of conciliatory gestures in tonight's speech. He does, however, disdain the usual political conventions which means things could get a little weird. What is the state of our Union, Mr. President? Here are a few ways Trump might spin it:
The state of the Union is … terrifying. Trumpism has always relied on a fair amount of scaremongering, and tonight's address looks like the last chance to make his case for a wall on the United States' southern border. Both of these factors combined means Trump can be expected, again, to paint a picture of America as a dangerous place, beset by immigrants who murder our citizens, furnish them with life-killing drugs, and engage in human trafficking. Seem extreme? Consider the president's guest list for tonight.
Trump SOTU guests include: family of couple killed by unauthorized immigrant; human trafficking investigator; survivors of Pittsburgh massacre; Alice Johnson; recovering opioid addict; re-hired sawmill employee; child cancer survivor; kid bullied for being named Joshua Trump.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 5, 2019
Trump has long argued that a wall is the only way to prevent these evils. So far, few Americans are buying it. His last grasp at making the sale, then, is to put a human face on his version of the issue.
The state of the Union is … awesome. Despite the aforementioned losing streak, Trump does indeed have good news to share: Job growth in America is strong, and wage growth seems to be bubbling up, too. Still, most Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Nearly as many disapprove of the president's job performance. A growing number of Republicans are ready to see him face primary competition in 2020.
The president hasn't given up on trying to sell a good-news version of his administration, though. He answers questions about racial divisions by pointing to the low unemployment rate among African Americans. He celebrates every time the Dow rises above 25,000. He desperately wants credit.
That means the president is likely to attempt a delicate balancing act in his speech. He wants Americans to believe two things about his administration: America has never been better. And only he can fix it. There's a good chance it will all seem entirely incoherent.
The state of the Union is … boring. Despite the drama, though, there's a real possibility this speech — like so many before it — will quickly fade into oblivion. In the last 40 years or so, there has been precisely one memorable moment at a State of the Union: President Clinton's 1996 declaration that "the era of big government is over." (He was wrong.) The speeches — and the responses — tend to be snoozers, notable only for the occasional gaffes and breaches of decorum. President Trump, so far, has not proven the exception to the rule.
For that reason, the near-cancellation of this year's speech proved surprisingly popular, at least among pundits. It's a political exercise that absorbs a lot of energy every year, but which produces little in the way of actual change or progress.
Whatever ends up in the speech, though, we know one true thing about the state of our Union: It feels fractured. You're not likely to hear that from the president. But it'll be easy to see in the way Pelosi manages her facial expressions as she sits behind Trump, as well as in the way Democrats — and maybe even a Republican or two — sit on their hands during the speech's obvious applause lines.
Such partisanship is always on display at these events, of course, but Trump has built his career on deepening the divides, not bridging them. We can expect more of that from tonight's speech, which gives us our final verdict on the state of the Union: These days, it's kind of a mess.
More Perspectives
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More from Joel Mathis
Mitch McConnell should recuse himself
Of course Warren and Sanders are fighting
The Pentagon is Trump's worst enabler
Mindhunter just got Netflixed
Jeva Lange
Lara Trump is making fun of Joe Biden's stutter
Kathryn Krawczyk


text:
Webmaster	Religion & Spirituality, Science, Unificationism
A Layman's Cosmology: Speculation on Earth's Evolution and the Emergence of Humankind
By Henry Christopher
In "A Layman's Cosmology: Speculation on the Origin of Existence and God," I speculated "It would appear that Existence might be likened to a vast, endless sea of particles and atoms, with the potential, as Aristotle saw it, to be made into an infinite variety of substances. All that was wanting was a being with the mind to create." I noted a Creator with a consciousness to love and bring about harmony in creation — modeled after His/Her own being — emerged from this sea of existence.
This article explores the possibilities of how God worked through the evolution of the earth to prepare for the arrival of humankind.
Scientists tell us the universe is 13.8 billion years old, while the earth is 4.5 billion years old. In our reckoning, that is a long period: plenty of time for the Creator to experiment, test, prepare, and develop step-by-step an ideal physical environment and introduce humankind to that world.
According to geological evidence, earth scientists have divided the history of the planet into major eras, periods and epochs in order to track the evolution of earth's chemical, geological, biological, and climate events. It took four billion years for earth to form out of a volcanic, molten mass, and for life to be introduced.
First, in the Precambrian Era, major developments took place to make the earth capable of supporting life: earth's molten mass had to cool off and form a solid crust; the chemical composition of the atmosphere had to develop, water introduced, and oceans formed. During the first billion years, a magnetic field formed around the earth, which kept the planet's atmosphere from dissipating into the vast solar system. Without our atmosphere, life on earth would not exist, as is the case with the Moon and other planets in our solar system.
The evolution of plants, fish and animals started in the sea, where they remained for at least 600 million years. In the absence of a protective ozone layer, the land was bathed in lethal levels of UV radiation. Once photosynthesis raised atmospheric oxygen levels high enough, the ozone layer formed, making it possible for living things to venture onto the land.
The Paleozoic Era or "Age of Fishes" came next, lasting 325 million years, with the introduction of amphibians and insects.
This was followed by 180 million years of the Mesozoic Era, the "Age of Reptiles." During this era, dinosaurs appeared, as well as small mammals and birds.
After the extinction of the dinosaurs, the last era began 66 million years ago — the Cenozoic Era or "Age of Mammals," where the continents took their present shape and major developments in all areas of plant and animal life took place. Then, 20 million years ago, scientists say the evolution of humans began.
What comes into question is: Did the development of the earth just happen by chance, or was it orchestrated by God? Was our planet His laboratory where He experimented, tested, selected and rejected, over billions of years, all the variables to create a proper environment for humankind? Variables included ideal climate; a variety of geographical conditions and continents; sustainable ecological environments for a multitude of plant, animal, insect, fish, and all other life on earth, and so much more.
Another question would be: Will a proper environment continue to exist that favors human life, or will another multi-million-year ice age come that wipes out most of the human population and its accomplishments and leaves us lost and at the mercy of a cold and hostile world? Can we trust in the Creator to keep us safe and prospering on our planet, or are we at the mercy of cruel and heartless chance?
It could be argued, from the layman's perspective, that the Creator carefully and methodically developed life on earth over the last 4.5 billion years, and most recently, around 30,000-100,000 years ago, to prepare an ideal world for us to live in.
The Five Major "Ice Ages"
An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and alpine glaciers, and polar ice sheets in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. Within each ice age, long-term periods of cold climate are termed "glacials," followed by warm periods called "interglacials." By this definition, we are in an interglacial period — the Holocene — of the present ice age.
The five "ice ages" which scientists have discovered might have been part of the process of the Creator, which was essential to the development of life on earth. In this way, God possibly used ice ages to regulate development by wiping the slate clean after experimenting and testing so that She could start new tests and experiments and eventually place humankind on Her ideal world.
For instance, perhaps She created dinosaurs and other ultra-large birds, insects and sea creatures 250 million years ago for the purpose of testing out on a large scale organs, body functions, adaptability, etc. When She was satisfied, She then used a glacial period to clean up Her work, clean the slate, and prepare to refine those results in new, more elegant, streamlined, and beautiful creatures and plants, which would be a part of Her ideal world.
Either by chance, or perhaps by the methodical work of the Creator, the ice ages played a critical role in forming the geography, climate, and life on earth as it exists today.
For example, scientists say the first major Huronian Ice Age, 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago, was caused by the elimination of atmospheric methane — a greenhouse gas — during the Great Oxygenation Event, also called the Oxygen Crisis. At this time, oxygen levels were dramatically increasing due to the first microbes that began producing oxygen by photosynthesis. This created a new opportunity for biological diversification — but it also threw the chemical balance of the atmosphere dangerously off.
However, through the action of glacial and interglacial periods in this early ice age, the levels of oxygen and CO2 in the atmosphere were regulated so that the animal and plant life we see today could thrive and not be wiped out. Was that just luck or was it by the Creator's design?
The five major ages in the Earth's history are the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, Karoo Ice Age, and current Quaternary Ice Age. Outside these ages, the earth seems to have been ice-free even at the poles.
The first four ice ages occurred from 2.4 billion years ago until around 260 million years ago. Then the earth was relatively warm until just 2.6 million years ago when the fifth ice age began.
It started with large ice sheets in Greenland, the Arctic and Antarctic, and with the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Since then, the world has seen five major glacial and interglacial cycles. The last glacial period started 110,000 years ago and ended around 10,000 years ago.The ice coverage on the earth was not as far reaching as in past ice ages, and the plant and animal life was not completely killed off as in the past, such as when the earth was turned into a "snowball" for around 180 million years in the second major ice age.
What is interesting is that the first four ice ages had alternating cycles of glacial and interglacial periods lasting millions of years. However, in this last ice age, the cycles have been drastically reduced from millions of years to thousands of years, perhaps because the Creator had been at work on the finishing touches of creating and stabilizing the continents, the atmosphere components, fish, and the fauna and flora, with the anticipation of finally bringing humankind on earth.
His last and most important job was to develop an anatomically correct body for humans, in preparation to insert eternal spirits in His children, so that they could fulfill His goal of making humankind His eternal partner and co-creator in both the physical universe and the spiritual world.
With the scientific knowledge and experience the Creator gained from His work with dinosaurs during the Jurassic Period, He was ready to apply that expertise on the more refined and "modern" animals that emerged over the past 60 million years and apply it to the development of prototypes for humans, to prepare a suitable body for the spirits of man and woman. The following chart and timeline of human evolution highlights what we might consider God's preparation to adapt a suitable physical human body to the natural world He had prepared.
The Emergence of Humankind: Children of God
When scientists consider the evolution of man, we often hear how our early ancestors had to battle with and conquer the "hostile" natural world just in order to survive.
Perhaps there is another way of looking at our past evolutionary history. It is possible God was constantly refining the human body of our ancestors of the proto-human type and testing them, to see how they adapted to the natural world, and was making needed adjustments as new and more "modern" humans emerged from Africa and intermingled with earlier hominids. As earlier proto-humans were making critical changes in their biology as they adapted to the environment, God was creating in the latest ancestors that interbred with them, a more sophisticated, beautiful and ideal body.
Neanderthals dwelled in Europe from 230,000 years ago, while homo sapiens arrived around 200,000 years ago, living in tribal communities; mastered tool-making; used fire for cooking and warmth; and began to create a culture that included art, burial rites, and more.
Scientists believe around 150,000 years ago, the earth was coming out of a glacial period into an interglacial period that lasted around 50,000 years, until the temperatures began to decline into a new glacial period. It could have been during this interglacial period, scientists are now saying, that anatomically modern humans — possibly Cro-Magnon — were interbreeding with Neanderthals.
According to a human evolution account, "a sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010 indicated that Neanderthals did indeed interbreed with anatomically modern humans circa 45,000 to 80,000 years ago (at the approximate time that modern humans migrated out from Africa, but before they dispersed into Europe, Asia and elsewhere)." As a result of interbreeding, some scientists think modern humans inherited immunity from certain germs and bacteria from Neanderthals, which ensured their survival on earth.
If God, indeed, had been preparing the earth for billions of years for the emergence of humankind, this might have been an ideal time. It is possible God chose two families within a Cro-Magnon tribe, and when a male and female child were each born, He placed the eternal spirit into the infants, elevating the animal race of homo sapiens to children of God — the biblical Adam and Eve.
The rest is history. However, an irony of earth's and humanity's history may be that the earth was not too hostile and wild an environment for humankind, but humankind, in disobeying God, became too hostile towards not only the earth — which God so lovingly intended to be our Garden of Eden of harmony, peace and beauty — but tragically, too hostile toward one other.
The ultimate question may not be whether the earth will change to be unable to support life. Rather, will humankind find a pathway back to God to embody His/Her love and bring peace on earth or could we become so violent, we end up destroying ourselves and our planet?♦
Henry Christopher (UTS Class of 1980) is Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at UTS. He was a graphic artist at The Washington Times for 20 years.
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21 thoughts on "A Layman's Cosmology: Speculation on Earth's Evolution and the Emergence of Humankind"
James Mathison says:
A lot of work went into your article, Henry, and I appreciate it. I agree with you that the Cro-Magnon race was probably engineered as a final model for the spirit-filled race of Homo Sapiens.
But the general assumption that most Christians make that I have trouble with is that all the work done to bring about "this universe with us in it" was a one-off project by a one-time Creator. How can it be that the majority of us Christians look to the future and see an eternity ahead of us, yet we look to the past and myopically insist that the creation of our universe containing our species of conscious intelligence was a one-off project "at the beginning of time about 13.8 billion years ago"? That's so crazy!
If we think outside the limitations of our own physical universe, and about eternity, the inescapable conclusion is that we are part of "an eternal creation process that had no beginning"! So, instead of trying to come to grips with a "First Cause God," we can start forming a realistic relationship with our "Heavenly Parents" — and with a whole family (sorry, there's no way around it!) of "Heavenly Aunts and Uncles" — whose "divine creatorship" is to be inherited by each blessed couple, if only we do like they and TPs' did and fulfill our original purpose (the Three Blessings).
Would it be acceptable to "revise the Principle" along these lines? I love True Parents, but sometimes I feel like the Lone Ranger when expressing such ideas in a Unificationist forum.
Christopher McKeon says:
Interesting you should say that, James. Perhaps you could send me a note?
Gordon Anderson says:
Thanks, Henry, for describing a big macro viewpoint. This type of knowledge no doubt should have an impact on our theology, including the Divine Principle, as James Mathison suggests. I remember an elder member telling me that when True Father first visited the pyramids of Egypt and learned that humans had been around more than 6,000 years, he was surprised because the Bible he had studied so meticulously had led him to believe the Genesis chronology. However, he simply took this as new information and modified his understanding.
Ruins of ancient cities found under the ocean, and precision carving and moving of huge stones stacked over 12,000 years ago all over the world indicate that other civilizations flourished during the last glacial period that ended about 10,000 years ago. One theory gaining more support is that at the end of that period, as glaciers melted, large lakes of water were formed on top of ice sheets and that when the edge of the ice sheet broke, so much water was released that it raised the level of the oceans possibly 100 feet. That would be enough to bury coastal cities around the world and create a scientific basis for the "flood judgment" stories we have inherited.
None of this scientific knowledge about the past, however, changes our understanding of the fundamental points of the Divine Principle: that everyone seeks happiness, and to achieve it we undergo developmental processes of three stages of growth, and must master the processes for obtaining the three blessings that will enable us to live in peace, prosperity, and happiness. We may eventually gain knowledge of other intelligent beings in the universe, but that would not change how we have to learn and live by social principles the Divine Principle describes, even if written from the worldview of biblical language and knowledge.
Susan Schroeder says:
Gordon, as a former historical geographer and biblical scholar, I found Henry's article concise and informative, along the lines that I myself believe to be true. While your third paragraph is true, the fact that he did not address that does not take away from his research. That was not his intention in the first place. There are others who are researching those issues. We need to look forward to create CIG, but we also need to look to our history to understand ourselves and our universe.
John Sonneborn says:
The review of evolutionary history is very valuable. I must note, however, that the concept of God breathing into a newborn's nostrils would be taken by "modern man" noted in Exposition of the Principle, Part I, Introduction, as a typically mythological explanation of a natural phenomenon. Then, what could be that phenomenon? One possibility is that, with an infant's first breath, he or she for the first time assumes some human form or level of responsibility for activity (which will develop according to principles in the Principle of Creation), implying or defining a spiritual self not found in other species. A Unificationist elder, in a private conversation, suggested that the elements that would become the spiritual self are being assembled as a fetus grows in the womb (this person seemingly implying that they were matching the physical development of the fetus).
I would like to suggest also that the first human ancestors were born as twins, from one set of pre-human parents rather than from two. While boning up on evolutionary theory in order to formulate this comment, I came across the following sentence in Wikipedia: "Some biologists have argued for an extended evolutionary synthesis, which would account for the effects of non-genetic inheritance modes, such as epigenetics, parental effects [my italics], ecological inheritance and cultural inheritance, and evolvability." [Such effects might suggest the children of Blessed couples as representing a further step in evolution or even a new species, in which some of them seem to consider themselves to be.] If the first ancestral pair were not siblings, there would likely have been other humans in existence who, if reproducing, would have begun additional lines which later died out.
I think it is incorrect to view the post-Big Bang universe as a testing ground for God. Once the Big Bang occurred then the emergence of stars and planets and plants and animals was a forgone conclusion that was baked into the design. That a species of animal would be elevated through evolution to full consciousness and awareness of God may have taken some nudging/guidance from 'the other side' but God would have known exactly what was needed and would not need to test just as an architect or engineer knows exactly what should go where to translate their blueprint to substantial reality.
Philosophically speaking, I don't see why a maximally great creator would need to have a variety of species of children. To a parent, children are children and starting with a handful and having them multiply into trillions would fulfil the need and I don't see why that same parent/creator would need to make other universes or spawn other families within the same universe. From a design point of view it would be a redundant use of energy and I suspect that God is exquisitely disciplined and efficient in His use of energy (which I do not believe to be infinite).
Scientifically speaking, the biggest cosmological errors that many academics make are in not understanding that there is no such thing as big or small numbers or long or short periods of time. Those are relative to our own size and experience of time. This error causes a more fundamental mistake derived from a lack of understanding of statistical probability.
Because there is no such thing as large or small numbers or long or short periods in absolute terms, then it is folly to state that 'with such a large number of planets over such a long period of time it is inevitable that they will produce X.
Statistical probability cannot be projected forward from a zero or one point. In other words, it is not possible to project a statistical probability of anything at all when there is only a sample of one. In order to project a statistical probability of something there must be a large past sample from which to extrapolate the future occurrence. If we have a 200 year record of the number of hurricanes in the USA then we can reliably predict the statistical probability of a certain number of hurricanes in the USA next year. But if only one hurricane occurred in all of recorded American meteorological history then there is no basis whatsoever to predict when or even if a hurricane will occur again.
Likewise, we only have a confirmed sample of one when it comes to the emergence of sentient species in the universe or occurrences of a big bang that leads to the existence of a universe. Therefore we have no basis at all with which to predict, let alone insist, that there must be other sentient species in our universe and other universes.
Sometimes the more informed view is to confess to not knowing and having no basis to form an opinion.
Peter, assuming the Big Bang (currently accepted theory) did occur, if we ask ourselves what happened during the infinite amount of time that transpired before the BB, and if we also ask about what we expect will happen during the infinite amount of time after our universe undergoes Entropy Death (currently accepted theory), then we can't help but think outside the box and wonder what else, independently from us, has been and continues to go on in "the cosmos" — that vast and mostly invisible (to us) reality.
Some people avoid these sorts of questions by insisting, "Time itself was created at the time of the Big Bang." But, really, the only way time could not exist is if absolutely nothing ever happened. That's a silly idea! For one thing, it's incompatible with our belief in a Creator who actually planned out the universe before creating it.
Therefore, we're faced with the reality that some things were going on long before our universe came into existence. We already believe that our spirits are eternal and meant to live on forever into the future, and that we'll continue to exist long after our universe blinks out (if it does), so the natural question is, "What's been going on, and what will we do with all the time we'll have on our hands in the future?"
Of course it's absolutely true that our main task now is to take responsibility for what we do know and for what we say we believe in. So some of us feel they have too much on their plate to take time to speculate. I can appreciate that; but it's not for me. I believe it's important to always ask "why", and to avoid dead-ends by always trying to envision the bigger picture.
So? What will we do through eternity? Play harps — not! Our Heavenly Parents created children in their image, and since we are their children, and we are meant to grow up to be like them, we will want to create like they did. That begs the question, "When did this process of creating children who themselves want to become creators begin?" The answer that jumped out at me after a lot of prayerful reflection is: "Since we see no end in sight when looking ahead into the distant future, it hardly makes sense to insist on a beginning when we look back behind us into the distant past."
We owe our existence, as conscious beings capable of true love, to our loving Creator; but although in a sense we represent the finished product of this eternal process, we are by no means either the first nor the final result — it might help to reflect on two rhetorical questions I heard Father Moon (the messiah) ask us: i) "Which aspects of God [our Creator] are we NOT meant to inherit?" ii) "God had a beginning."
If it's true that the Creator of humanity, our Heavenly Parents, had a beginning, then is there a Ha Na Nim (Ultimate Inscrutable One) who always existed and is the First Cause who set everything in motion? Oh, yes, that's true too, according to Father Moon. Oh my! Now I feel like a grasshopper! (But Genesis provides a hint with two separate Creation stories, a generic one and a specific one.)
Rather than playing our harps, we will engage in activities much more important than creating. Bill Gates, in reviewing for the New York Times a book envisioning futures, put the question this way: "…what will happen once people…no longer need to work in order to feed and clothe everyone?" In a letter to the editor (of that section) that was published last month by the Times, I replied, "If one assumes that human beings are fundamentally creative, then we will spend our time creating things of beauty or goodness and sharing them with one another. I prefer to assume that each person has the fundamental irrepressible desire to give love to the greatest effect imagined. People would spend their time helping others, working toward the present or the future of a community or the whole planet." I thereby put into public circulation a fundamental tenet of Unificationism, and also suggested a vision alternative to yours.
John, I don't disagree with you, and I'm certain we will spend our time in SW creating beautiful things for one another. I just think that one of our more beautiful creative projects in SW as blessed couples, assuming we eventually grow capable of it, is that we'll do like our Heavenly Parent(s) did and create a universe or two as a home for children created in our image. And far from being able to rest on our laurels (on the seventh day), we may have to once again hone our parenting skills doing damage control, just like our HP has had to do with us. Even if it's a lot of work, I can't imagine creating anything more magnificent than a self-perpetuating species of true love!
Would you clarify what alternative vision you are suggesting? I don't see that much difference between yours and mine, except perhaps regarding the extent of our creative potential in SW.
Your point is a total non sequitur. Monumental events occurring before, during and after the Big Bang in no way indicate that parallel events are occurring. There is nothing from the former that you can extrapolate the latter. It's essentially stating that if one grand thing occurs then it follows that multiple grand things occur. It's less than a logical fallacy as there is actually no logic at all. It's not thinking outside the box because doing so still implies a relationship to the box in externality.
My point isn't that I'm stating there are no parallel events as I have hypothesised about that myself. My point is that it is wrong to draw a link that says because one occurred then its evidence that another may have occurred. Again, my point is about the incorrect way people (including statisticians) use statistical probability. From a sample of 1, absolutely nothing can be predicted.
I do not believe that time only started to exist after the Big Bang or that God exists outside of time. People often get things upside down or back to front. I have two theories on time. One is that rather than existing outside of time, God exists in a more complex, multi dimensional, full version of time yet simplified time and made it two dimensional and linear for us so we could handle existence without instantly going insane during our formative period.
My other theory is that time does not and has never existed. That time is just a word that we use to describe 'development', just as human beings have many words for things that don't exist but help us conceptualize. For example, there is no such thing as 'up' or 'down'. There is only 'away from' and 'towards'. So I think it possible that what we really refer to when we talk about time or the passage of time is 'development'. People grow, matter decays, etc. When people zip around the universe in a theoretical spaceship then the faster they go/accelerate the slower time passes. But my theory says that in fact this just has an atomic/quantum effect on their bodies and all matter moving with them so that development slows down in a uniform way within their ecosystem. So when they return to earth they find their twin brother is much older than they are and conclude that time has run differently when in fact developmental speed has just been affected differently.
I am prepared to write an essay to answer your question of what we do through eternity but it would be quite controversial.
As for God having a beginning: Then whoever created God or is the ultimate being is who we are actually referring to when we say 'God' and the god you are referring to here is a foreman, an angel. That takes us back to the original question of if the original God had a beginning.
Henry Christopher says:
I don't think God initiated the Big Bang and programmed that everything afterwards would happen automatically, either in the universe or on earth. That's carrying God's supposed efficiency a little too far.
Scientific evidence of the geological and biological history of the earth clearly indicates that things evolved and developed over extraordinarily long time periods.
We can believe God was the heart and intelligence behind that development or say it happened by meer chance.
I can envision God intimately involved in creating physical life on earth over those billions of years, the vision that was in His/Her mind of an ideal world — even enjoying tweaking the DNA of the creatures that were being created, including us — to form what would be most pleasing to Him. Just like an artist that experiments with different styles, pigments and brush strokes, etc., to portray life on canvas until it pleases him or her. This does not at all take away from a sense of God's ability as a creator, but rather shows His/Her great and caring love as our Parent.
Henry,
Who can say just what 'maximally great' means when theologians and philosophers describe God this way?
Ask yourself this: which can win in a computer vs. computer chess game. An Intel 486 processor from 1994 or an Intel Core i9 processor from today? All things being equal, the Core i9 would destroy the 486. However, if you give the 486 an infinite amount of time to calculate each move then the weaker processor can win any game against any processor or AI system anytime. Likewise, God's true thinking and design prowess is not only based on the power of His mind but also on the fact that God has perfect recall (in computer terms that would be an infinite amount of RAM and disk space) and most importantly, God has an infinite amount of time to plan and test and model before executing. So there is no such thing as going too far when it comes to God's efficiency.
Again, there is no such thing as a long or short time. These things are only relative from our point of view to the life span of a human being. Or more specifically, to however much time we personally have lived. A year to a ten-year-old is 10% of their experience of time but a year to me at age 53 is only 1.88% of my experience of time. To God, 14 billion years maybe be an unextraordinary amount of time.
When it comes to what pleases God in terms of creation, ask yourself this question: Why do you eat the food that you eat. People think they eat the food they do because they like it but that is incorrect. The reality is that they like the food because they eat it. What pleases God is that which has integrity of design and conforms to the 'Tree of life' design principle. The Tree of life is not just a historical person or persons. As the DP teaches, it is a being design. But it is actually much more than that. It is an 'entity' design. So an animal from a biological point of view is also a tree of life according to its design. So is every plant and so is a thriving business. A tree of life can be said to be 'any entity that exists in maturity according to its design, can continually maintain its existence by interacting with its environment in a mutually beneficial way and can multiply it's self and also generate enough life energy not only to continue its own existence but also foster the existence of its offspring until the offspring reaches its own point sustainability'.
There are two kinds of trees of life. Temporary and eternal. Any perfect human is two trees of life. Their body is a temporary tree of life and their soul is an eternal tree of life.
So God doesn't have some arbitrary taste in what pleases Him. Something is considered 'good' when it conforms to the Tree of life principle and I strongly believe that when God designed the universe He did not enforce individual designs on any plant or creature or even homo sapiens. There was no need. As long as the entities were trees of life then they would be beautiful to God. Also, I believe God is not omniscient and does not want to be as that would be boring. Being so would rob God of the delight of being surprised sometimes. So God knows an awful lot and can predict an awful lot but especially as we have free will then He does not always know what will happen and in a non-fallen world this would be a delight.
That was quite an depth explanation of how God operates, but I see that you have come around to my point of view somewhat. You say "…God has an infinite amount of time to plan and test and model before executing." So we agree that God does, after all, plan, test and model in creating. But where you say He figures it all out in His head, then lets it all unfold automatically, I on the other hand, think She works it out as things are physically being developed, and makes adjustments along the way that pleases His scientific mind and sense of beauty. More like how we do things. I see God as more human and less as the perfect computer.
This explanation is good because it helps us understand all the steps it took over the last 4.5 billion years for God to bring the world and humans to the Ideal in His mind and heart. Such as dinosaurs and other creatures who have come and gone; the formation of continents; the five ice ages that in some cases virtually wiped out everything on earth; the patient and careful regulating of geology, climate, biology, and myriad other elements of earth science to eventually form the perfect environment for us. If She did all Her planning beforehand, why didn't the earth unfold perfectly from the beginning, rather than going though all the trials and changes in its evolution before humankind could be placed upon the earth?
The idea of God working it all out in His mind and then setting it in motion automatically — and just watching it unfold — seems to me rather inefficient and clumsy when applied to the actual history of the earth for a perfect God.
Henry writes: "When scientists consider the evolution of man, we often hear how our early ancestors had to battle with and conquer the "hostile" natural world just in order to survive." And then, "The rest is history. However, an irony of earth's and humanity's history may be that the earth was not too hostile and wild an environment for humankind, but humankind, in disobeying God, became too hostile towards not only the earth — which God so lovingly intended to be our Garden of Eden of harmony, peace and beauty — but tragically, too hostile toward one another."
These observations beg several questions: Was the entire earth meant to have a temperate climate without "hostile" conditions that would make growing crops or hunting and fishing difficult? Were we supposed to be vegetarians? Was it un-Godly behavior by our ancestors that caused climate extremes?
These questions are not easily answered, IMO. Evolutionary science tells us that people from cold climates have an evolutionary-based, metabolic disposition to store fat with the onset of colder temperatures. Our mind sends a "trigger-warning" to our bodies as summer moves to autumn. (That's why dieting as a New Year's resolution is usually a futile undertaking).
Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Selfish Gene (1976), argues that we are hard-wired (evolutionary speaking) in such a way as to always assure our survival by seeking power and success, thereby insuring survival of our own genes. Dawkins posits that it is our genes, "the lowest level of all," and not our bodies, that "are the fundamental unit of selection…the unit of heredity." Though he's an atheist, he nonetheless views this as being an ineluctable and quasi-altruistic attribute. He also asserts that there exists an innate willingness in humans to sacrifice oneself for the sake of assuring that one's lineage (and genes) will carry on through one's descendants, and that the penchant for sacrifice (from the Latin sacra-ficio; to make holy) is an intrinsic part of human DNA. Interestingly, Dawkins admits that those who possess religious convictions are actually more willing to make sacrifices and concedes that this has been a significant matter in the development of certain cultures in which religious belief was a primary aspect of society.
Has anyone sought counsel on these issues from Jonathan Wells?
Responding to some of David's questions, I am personally satisfied to believe (based on the teachings of Unificationism, especially including True Mother's speech at Madison Square Garden) that all humans share a common ancestral pair who, by the very fact of their survival, would have come into existence in a opportune environment, and who were each endowed with the creation principle to guide them as they learned how to take responsibility. During their immaturity, they made fundamentally wrong ethical choice(s) then relating to one another unsatisfactorily, and that this impaired their ability to reap and use nature's bounty. I like the idea set forth in Genesis 1 that they were vegans, having fallen, according to Unificationism, "below the level" of animals, and that only when Noah's family and their animals had established a secure plantation did their diet expand to include flesh.
David Burton says:
You have done a lot of good research, but the central point of your speculative interpretation is "His last and most important job was to develop an anatomically correct body for humans, in preparation to insert eternal spirits in His children." Everything else is interpreted through this lens. But I would argue that this point is highly problematic. It makes the rest of the speculation moot.
In Divine Principle, spirit is sungsang and sungsang does not exist separately from hyungsang. So if we accept Divine Principle, God could not have "inserted" spirit into an already existing body.
That is an interesting point you bring up. However, without claiming to know exactly how God created, I think my contention that God was behind the evolution of life on earth with the purpose of creating an ideal environment and an ideal body for His children is very plausible.
I agree that all things, as you say, according to the DP have a sungsang and a hyungsang part. Nothing exists with only one or the other. (Even the angels I assume have something representing this dynamic). So plants, trees, rocks, animals, etc., all have this makeup. Certainly, in the evolution of humankind, i.e., homo habilis, homo erectus, neanderthal and homo sapiens all must have had a sungsang and a hyungsang part. However, could they communicate with God, angels and the spiritual world? Did they have a spirit that could live on eternally in the spiritual world? I would maintain that they did not.
I would suggest that God invested in one "Adam" and one "Eve" from some early homo sapien families an eternal spirit that allowed them to be the first humans capable of communicating freely with God and the angels, and transitioning to the spiritual world after they died. The were the first Children of God.
Henry, thanks for replying.
So sungsang and hyungsang both have structure and develop together (and yes, we do need to think more about how angels and the human spirits after death manifest this structure). That is human consciousness itself is emergent and consequently is also tied to evolutionary processes. This for me is the key conceptual change provided by Divine Principle that would underlie any speculation on evolution. We have to consider the development of both sungsang and hyungsang not just hyungsang.
With respect to sungsang, I believe there is a threshold of complexity where not just consciousness, but consciousness of self or self-conscsiousness arises. Passing this threshold is the key. Most animals do no have this, but a few higher ones do. Some chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants, and perhaps birds are self-aware and may well have persistent individual spirits. Neanderthals did have symbolic burials too, so some at least were probably self-aware enough to consider an afterlife and have spiritual selves.
"Adam and Eve" then would be the first to pass this threshold in our species.
Right! Now this is really something to think about: our sungsang or our "internal character." My two articles on a "layman's cosmology" were just leading up to this very point for me. All humankind should have been communicating with God, the angelic kingdom and the spiritual world from our beginning. Presumably our first ancestors could and did, for a while. We join religions because they offer us a pathway to re-connect with God.
A number of years ago, Rev. Moon gave a speech in Korea that I attended. As in many of his speeches, he started off by saying, "and because of the Fall, Adam and Eve, etc., etc." But this time, he said:
"Perfected Adam and Eve would have communicated directly with God using their five spiritual senses, and at the same time, they would have freely worked with the creation using their five physical senses… But, with the fall of the first human ancestors, all humanity descended into a hopeless hell from which they could not escape by their efforts alone. Their five spiritual senses became completely paralyzed. They fell into a state similar to that of a blind man whose eyes only appear to be normal to an observer but do not function at all. Forced to live with just their five physical senses, they became only half human. They could not see God. They could not hear His voice, or feel His touch. So how could they experience His love as their own Parent or understand His suffering heart?"
We lost an essential part of our inner nature. It appears we regressed to a Cro-Magnon state of being. We will never bring peace on earth unless we find out how to regain that lost sungsang element — our five spiritual senses — and become fully human once again.
The Fall narrative kind of sits on top of the evolution narrative. I am not sure quite how they go together, and yes, I agree that the consequences of the Fall had to do with our sungsang. So we tend to misunderstand the directive to unite our mind and body. I don't think we lost any "elements" of sungsang per se but rather inherited what amounts to a software conflict, not a hardware problem, so some functionality was lost. Our spiritual senses are dulled, not missing.
Yes, religions have in the past offered a partial path back to God. However, I believe True Parents have taken us beyond that need; that we are now in a time period never before seen, not even at the time of Adam and Eve. We are past what was lost, so now we need to think of growth "post-Fall" or "post-restoration." I don't think the Fall narrative is helpful right now except for historical purposes. The problem I see for Unificationism now is that we are like the prisoners in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" who don't want to come into the light after their chains are removed.
I didn't come around to your point of view on this. It's been my view all along. It isn't the same as your view.
Any engineer or architect in their matured field reaches the point where everything is mapped out; then a good engineer doesn't need to make adjustment's later on. So when I say testing I mean that God would do thought experiments to see what happens this way or that way then this informs the evolving design. But once He commits with the Big Bang then there are no more adjustments, and after all, the fine tuning would not allow for it. Even the most minor adjustment either way would make life impossible.
I do believe however that God could nudge events at certain points along the way. But that's still different from your view as I believe the nudging was built into the design.
I don't see a species being wiped out by a meteor or ice age as being a dead end. It is all part of the continued development as the creatures that survived then went to eventually produce human beings.
I think God saw to it that the universe was so vast and diverse that it was just highly probable that a planet with life on it that had the right environmental conditions would emerge. Which means there are likely many other planets with life on them and possibly creatures as highly evolved as neanderthals. But going the step further for divine beings might be something that needed a nudge from God.
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