Darwinism: game over
Investigation #32 (The Materialist-Secularist Illusion 3)
Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.—Isaac Newton
I may state that my judgment often fluctuates... In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.—Charles Darwin
AT THE world chess championship’s final press conference in Singapore recently, India’s 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju said upon winning: “Not every chess player gets to experience this moment, and very few get the chance and to be one of them, I’d like to thank God.”[1] This is probably the only time in the 100-year history of the Fide World Championship the winner thanked the Divine for success in a game involving a complexity in moves of pieces around 64 squares on a board, governed by immense mathematical possibilities. There is no telling how a game will ultimately go until pieces on the board are reduced, and probabilities limited. However, a mind is not only behind the creation of the ancient game but in executing moves that lead to success. At the highest levels of chess, random moves do not result in victory. The best players will explain and, indeed the less experienced know, that calculation of moves and being able to adapt to your opponent’s plans, are crucial in leading to wins. In fact, players’ moves even as they play in ‘live’ events are shown (on the screen) in tandem with an evaluation bar indicating the accuracy of moves calculated by advanced computer chess engines. In this 18th world chess championship both players displayed well over 90% accuracy in moves for the most.
(This piece is the third in a series, the second of which is Atonement.)
Indeed, it is this age of computers and sophisticated software that helps put paid on the accuracy and relevance of that quaint account known as the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). But though Darwin was honest enough to know his limitations and that of his theory, his followers have transformed it into a faith they refuse to give up despite its increasingly evident inaccuracy, and falsity. This is because some scientists, and many others, insist on the veracity of their religion—Darwinism—despite Darwin’s non-submission to dogmatism. Much of science today is scientific materialism, a field raised upon the nihilistic foundation of atheism. Not that atheism is a system of belief people are not entitled to, but that scientific materialism is hardly science any longer when it insists on satisfying its atheistic premise at all cost; many aspects of such ‘science’ are unscientific: they cling onto theories that are not supported, and even falsified, by evidence.
Generally, Darwin’s theory of evolution implies the development of a species through small inherited variations; the offspring or individual must be able to reproduce, compete, and survive. This driving force of evolution is blind, pitiless and works on its own—its origin and mechanism a mystery, it just is. Though Darwin does help account for variations in species depending on environment over time, his theory proper on how basic organisms (which somehow happen to exist) evolve slowly over time into the most complex and intelligent forms of life is quite the mystery. And this is taken as dogma while its adherents claim it is not a faith or form of religion. Indeed, because the theory of evolution is losing much credibility today but Darwinists insist on it, they are true believers. Darwinism like atheism is a belief system.
In Darwin’s own words from The Origin of Species (1859):
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
Evolution is either a mindless force or ( in our time) something like a computer programme. If it is a mindless force then we are asked much to believe in it as it is not scientific in any way. But if a type of computer programme then there must be a programmer. We are asked to believe and accept that evolution is a blind mindless mysterious process that just so happens whether we like it or not: thereby apparently reflecting an objective opinion that qualifies as scientific.
Most biologists and anthropologists at German universities embraced Darwinism before the Nazis came to power, but the Nazi regime continued to appoint Darwinists to biology and anthropology professorships. Karl Astel, whom the Nazis appointed professor of human genetics and later promoted to rector (equivalent of president) of the University of Jena, was an avid Darwinist. He was also an SS officer who wanted to turn the University of Jena into a fully Nazified university. In order to accomplish this goal, he received Himmler’s help in recruiting the biologist and SS officer Gerhard Heberer as a professor of human evolution at the University of Jena. Nazis appointed many other Darwinian biologists and anthropologists to professorships, too.—"Was Darwinism Banned from Nazi Germany?”, Richard Weikart.[2]
Unfortunately, Darwin’s idea of ‘natural selection’ was used to mean ‘survival of the fittest’ as popularised by biologist and sociologist Herbert Spencer (see endnote [2]), and did impact certain militant ideologies as shown in the quote above. Geologist and anthropologist Alfred Russel Wallace in a letter to Darwin in 1866 (italics mine):
Now I think this arises almost entirely from your choice of the term ‘Nat[ural] Selection’ & so constantly comparing it in its effects, to Man’s selection, and also to your so frequently personifying Nature as ‘selecting’ as ‘preferring’ as ‘seeking only the good of the species’ &c. &c. To the few, this is as clear as daylight, & beautifully [sic] suggestive, but to many it is evidently a stumbling block. I wish therefore to suggest to you the possibility of entirely avoiding this source of misconception in your great work, (if not now too late) & also in any future editions of the ‘Origin’, and I think it may be done without difficulty & very effectually by adopting Spencer’s term (which he generally uses in preference to Nat. Selection) viz. ‘Survival of the fittest.’
This term is the plain expression of the facts,—Nat. selection is a metaphorical expression of it—and to a certain degree indirect & incorrect, since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select special variations, as exterminate the most unfavourable ones.
Unsurprisingly, in the 1860 edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin did write (italics mine): “It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation…”
Darwin removed the term ‘metaphorically’ in the 1866 edition. Moreover, he did use Spencer's notorious phrase many times in the fifth edition of Origin. He would never have guessed the kind of influence the words ‘survival of the fittest’—a corollary of which is ‘law of the jungle’—would have. In any case, ‘natural selection’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ are not causes of phenomena or underlying forces, they are metaphors for what is observed.
Based on key works by writer, mathematician and thinker David Berlinski, computer scientist and writer David Gelernter, and philosopher of science and writer Stephen Meyer: it is clear that Darwin’s day is over. In Berlinski’s The Deniable Darwin,
The theory of evolution is a materialistic theory. Various deities need not apply. Any form of mind is out. Yet a force is needed, something adequate to the manifest complexity of the biological world, and something that in the largest arena of all might substitute for the acts of design, anticipation, and memory that are obvious features of such day-to-day activities as fashioning a sentence or a sonnet.
Surely, a mind is needed, a consciousness, to guide such a vast process as the development of beings on the planet as similarly needed on a smaller scale: we need a form of intelligence to create and design artworks, form and use language, and give frames of reference to memories. Gelernter in Giving Up Darwin says the advent of microbiology upends much of Darwin as he had no idea of the intricacies of the cell back then. But Neo-Darwinists claim microbiology transforms Darwinism by allowing for random change within cells to bring about evolution; still, can such a simplistic assumption show how basic building blocks of life such as proteins form by sheer chance? Gelernter (italics his):
How to make proteins is our first question. Proteins are chains: linear sequences of atom-groups, each bonded to the next. A protein molecule is based on a chain of amino acids; 150 elements is a ‘modest-sized’ chain; the average is 250. Each link is chosen, ordinarily, from one of 20 amino acids…
Starting with 150 links of gibberish, what are the chances that we can mutate our way to a useful new shape of protein? We can ask basically the same question in a more manageable way: what are the chances that a random 150-link sequence will create such a protein? Nonsense sequences are essentially random. Mutations are random…
The total count of possible 150-link chains, where each link is chosen separately from 20 amino acids, is 20150. In other words, many. 20150 roughly equals 10195, and there are only 1080 atoms in the universe…
Douglas Axe did a series of experiments to estimate how many 150-long chains are capable of stable folds—of reaching the final step in the protein-creation process (the folding) and of holding their shapes long enough to be useful (Axe is a distinguished biologist…). He estimated that, of all 150-link amino acid sequences, 1 in 1074 will be capable of folding into a stable protein. To say that your chances are 1 in 1074 is no different, in practice, from saying that they are zero. It’s not surprising that your chances of hitting a stable protein that performs some useful function, and might therefore play a part in evolution, are even smaller…1 in 1077.
In other words: immense is so big, and tiny is so small, that neo-Darwinian evolution is—so far—a dead loss. Try to mutate your way from 150 links of gibberish to a working, useful protein and you are guaranteed to fail. Try it with ten mutations, a thousand, a million—you fail. The odds bury you. It can’t be done.”[3]
The sheer precision needed to keep basic cellular forms functioning and thriving is astounding; how can a random process of blind chance lead to such formations? Proteins work with many elements in complex combinations such as nucleotides, saccharides, and lipids to create through unimaginable processes an organism; and what about how all this must be harmonised to produce the incalculably remarkable human being? How a person can be formed through a random process is mind-boggling, and where does the mind itself or consciousness come from?
Importantly, it is now clear that the workings of the cell involve precise factory-like operations at a micro level that keep it functioning in the most extraordinary way as much of the outstanding work by Biochemist Michael Behe reveals. As Berlinski says: the cell is an unfathomably complex piece of machinery. This still does not explain where life itself comes from. A sophisticated living organic machine while a stupendous discovery also does not explain existence: why does anything at all exist?
In a wonderful discussion, Berlinski, Gelernter and Meyer raise and clarify many issues showcased in “Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution”. What all this entails, together with the language of the genetic code that informs how beings form and develop, is that information is the basis for the creation of life. The Cambrian explosion resulted in the inexplicable existence at a certain time period of a tremendous number of life forms, i.e., it is an explosion of biological information, something Darwin was not aware of as he was not in an information age. But we are told that from the 1950s and 1960s the big discovery was that the DNA molecule encodes information in a digital or alphabetical or typographical form; it functions like the 0s and 1s in a computer code, it is a language. As Meyer says, it is not chemical properties that give them their function but rather,
…an independent symbol convention which was later explicated in the form of what we call the genetic code so we had a genetic text functioning according to a code…this is a genuine information storage system…
What we know from experience is that information whether we find it in a hieroglyphic inscription or a paragraph in a book or information embedded in a radio signal or in a section of computer code—whenever we find information or we trace it back to its ultimate source we always come to a mind, not a material process…[so] these undirected evolutionary mechanisms that have been proposed as an explanation for the origin of information fail…
[T]he reason the Darwinian mechanism fails [is] because it can’t search the space when it’s so vast, the odds are overwhelmingly against it…we do know from our uniform and repeated experience which is the basis of all scientific reasoning of a source of information, of an origin of a cause for information: that cause is intelligence or mind…
What we’re seeing in life is evidence of the activity of a directing mind in the history of life.
But this is challenged vehemently by establishment science and scientists. As Gelernter states in Giving up Darwin, “They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.” He states when questioned in “Mathematical Challenges” that his colleagues at Yale though friendly with him personally are capable in their academic lives to mutate into aggressive beings:
Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument, as far as they are concerned you take you life in your hands to challenge it intellectually, they will destroy you if you challenge it. Now I haven’t been destroyed…but what I’ve seen in their behaviour intellectually and in colleges across the West is nothing approaching free speech on this topic: it is a bitter rejection, a bitter fundamental angry outraged violent rejection [of what opposes it] which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion. I’ve seen that happen again and again, I’m a Darwinis[t], don’t you say a word against or I don’t want to hear you.
The question is why is this so if Darwinism is indeed science or a scientific theory? Darwinism is part of scientism, and has nothing to do with proper science; it is a system of belief.
I was merely thinking God’s thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are the priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the Glory of God.—The Harmony of the World (1619) by Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). In the work, written entirely in Latin, Kepler discusses harmony and congruence in geometrical forms and physical phenomena.
Meyer is a proponent of Intelligent Design (ID). A good definition of ID:
[A] scientific theory which holds that some features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID theorists argue that intelligent design can be inferred by finding in nature the type of information and complexity which in our experience arises from an intelligent cause.
ID does not posit a Creator but a mind or intelligence behind aspects of the universe. There are those who do not subscribe to the Divine but who do see ID as a plausible explanation of things rather than randomness governing everything. In his recent talk Return of the God Hypothesis in Cambridge, Meyer discusses how Kepler’s words above reflect that the world can be seen as a Book of Nature; this vast Book is there for man to ‘read’ the world and understand aspects of the workings of the universe for it is intelligible to the human mind. As Galileo (1564–1642) says:
Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.
To Galileo and many important scientific minds after him, the language of the universe is indeed best expressed via maths; similarly, there is a genetic and cellular code that help explain the workings of living things. The entire universe is encoded like a vast programme the extent of which is beyond our minds though we have been granted the mental software, consciousness, to grapple with it and understand facets of it.
As Meyer explains, gravity was mysterious to Newton as he thought that there was something immaterial that caused it, a form of ‘constant spirit action’. To him the laws of nature are a mode of Divine action, there are laws of nature because there is a Divine Lawgiver.
But though these bodies may indeed persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first deriv’d the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws…This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being form’d by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One.—General scholium to Newton’s great Principia Mathematica, 1687.[4]
But if scientific materialists who profess the faith of Darwinism betray scientific principles and practice, then what should be said of iconic scientists like Kepler and Newton who believed in Divine order as their foundation for science? But there is a difference between Darwinists and the view of the great scientists upon whose shoulders genuine modern scientists stand: Galileo, Kepler and Newton’s view was that Divine order and legislation of nature could be understood by the human mind; we have the capacity for rational understanding and appreciation of the wonder of the universe as created by the Divine. There are still mysteries (e.g. gravity is still not actually understood though its impact evident) but that does not mean it cannot be understood one day; the intelligibility of much of the universe and living things is meant to encourage constant discovery and learning; we have to put in the effort to gain knowledge and extend it.
The mind is unique, it is such (designed, let us say) that it can comprehend the world. If all was pure randomness how could a mind evolve that could actually understand and give coherence to the world; or to develop understanding and harness knowledge that corresponds to the phenomenal reality before us—and even see beyond that? We are not thrown into confusion and madness but have the capacity for rational thought and behaviour—exactly why we can define irrationality and insanity when it veers away from this datum of stability.
Additionally, we do not stop at failed theories espoused by Darwinism but keep moving on, expand horizons, and marvel at how spirituality and science fit. It is not a matter of faith alone. We have to work to gain insight whether through science or spiritual practice (or both). This is the only way to grasp the works of the Divine and find intellectual, rational wonder as well as spiritual and emotional solace in All That Is. Blind faith does not in itself yield results we desire.
In our time, it is easier to see and accept ID for it reveals the artistry in life and the universe through the knowledge that has been acquired. ID is a stepping stone that enriches, provides depth, and gives a powerful context for scientific endeavour. This is not tantamount to a ‘God of the Gaps’ tactic wherein whatever cannot be explained is regarded as a mystery that can never be solved, or upgraded to an act of God for which no explanation can be given, and must be accepted only on faith. The work of acquiring knowledge and understanding must be done. However, the Divine is a guarantor of our understanding that we are capable of clear, rational modes of thought and analysis; and we should open our minds to the immense possibilities beyond mere materialism. Our information age is crucial in showing how software programmes and computer language provide the next best inference—what in our time helps best explain what we are trying to discover—in understanding the workings of the cell, DNA/RNA, and the functioning of living organisms. In other words, what are the indications that come from what we already understand, or what is analagous to in our era, that helps us infer the cause of phenomena we are trying to find out more about. If we find writing on the walls of a desolate cave, or come across a watch buried deep in the ice of the Antarctic: we can conclude that an intelligence was responsible for the writing or the watch as we know from our experience and knowledge that writing and timekeeping devices are the products of a mind: not blind, random, undirected chance manifesting elements slowly and in gradual increments into words or an intelligible sentence, or a device that tells time.
The frivolity and boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, these are the heralds of approaching change. The gradual crumbling that left unaltered the face of the whole is cut short by a sunburst which, in one flash, illuminates the features of the new world.―Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel
The attempt to stifle ID as revealed and rationalised by order and precision in the motions of celestial bodies, inner workings of organisms (which still do not explain the existence of life itself): is an attempt by the scientific establishment to prevent the move away from scientific materialism to science proper. Serious questioning of this is required for it is scientific materialism, a half-baked attempt at science, that is taught in schools and higher education. Worse, Darwinism is the dogma that is foisted upon generations of unsuspecting students who become adults that in turn think incorrectly that science and spirituality are incompatible: they are not, they complement each other. But this advancement in science through ID will be hindered if we deny the central role of mind in the workings of the cosmos; just as consciousness is central to understanding the workings of the quantum world and the possibilities it opens up. It is imperative to examine why ID continues to be suppressed and attacked constantly by establishment scientists.[5]
ID can be accepted without any problem in science today as it does not compel belief in the Divine but only admittance there is indeed an intelligence to the universe and the workings of life: there are scientists who are comfortable with this. By looking at the language of the universe in terms of mathematics alone recalcitrant belief in Darwinism is unaccountable for the numbers do not add up. With increasing scientific evidence coming in as ID evinces, Darwinism and scientific materialism are in their last throes as acolytes make final moves in a game of denial before the ineluctable verdict against them: checkmate.
Notwithstanding, there is a reason why there are terms such as the Book of Life, the Book of Nature, and belief in the power of words in prayer and affirmations: words have a direct impact on our life in ways we do not fully understand yet. It is no surprise that the genetic code is a language much like that of a computer programme, and that the latter needs a language or code to operate at all. Indeed, we seem to live in a language-based universe. That idea is borne out by those who wish to push boundaries even further; in Hindu scriptures ‘Aum’ is the cosmic or sacred word/sound of creation; the Bible means “The Books” wherein:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.—John 1:1.
Mind is the forerunner of states (good and evil). Mind is chief; mind-made are they.—Dhammapada, The Buddha
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…—Romans 1:20
The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.—The Kybalion, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus
[P.S. Wishing Jonathan and Denise, who just got married, many Blessed and Happy years ahead. And wishing all readers a good Xmas and New Year season.]
Endnotes:
[1] Gukesh, who beat defending champ Ding Liren in a closely fought tournament, is the youngest person to win the world championship. At the prize giving ceremony he reiterated his gratitude to God for his victory whom he said provided him with miraculous guidance in making moves when he was at a lost in difficult moments of the 14 games. Some of the games went on for five to six hours, and seven ended in draws. The moment Gukesh knew he won is dramatic as he made accurate moves that countered Ding’s blunder in an endgame which led to a scenario that would have resulted in a pawn of Gukesh being ‘queened’: this precipitated Ding’s resignation in the final game giving Gukesh the extra point he required for victory. The win was remarkable as Ding had the white pieces in the last round which usually gives the player an advantage: as you start first and have a one move advantage. Thus, Gukesh’s win with black, deploying the adventurous King’s Indian Attack (or reversed Grünfeld), is impressive.
What was unforgettable was the scene when Gukesh, having won, lost the stoicism he maintained throughout the games—as he cried yet rearranged all the pieces on the board back into their starting positions by himself at the end of the game before he stood up while photographers took pictures around him, and officials offered their congratulations.
[2] The full title of Darwin’s key work when published in 1859 was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It is clear that, regrettably, Darwinist ideas impacted Nazi race ideology. But it would be inaccurate to say that Darwin is to blame for this; the Nazi’s would find anything to justify their worldview yet Darwinists today are desperate to deny any linkage between Darwin’s theory and the Nazis. There is evidence, however, that Darwin’s ideas were taught at higher grades in Nazi Germany and that it did have an influence on nefarious elements.
Herbert Spencer first used the expression ‘survival of the fittest’ in the October 1864 instalment of Principles of biology (Spencer 1864–7, 1: 444–5): “This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life’.”
Based on Alfred Wallace’s suggestions to include the infamous phrase, we are told that Darwin did insert Spencer's expression at numerous places in the fifth edition of Origin and in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868). Still, it must be stated that the phrase is also correctly regarded by some as a tautology, as Berlinski points out: saying something survives because it is fit or vice versa does not add to clarity; it only states the obvious.
[3] For the full quote see Giving Up Darwin.
[4] On February 25, 1692/93, in Newton’s (1643-1727) third letter to critic and theologian Richard Bentley, he rejected the possibility of remote action, even though he accepted it earlier in the Principia (1687). Newton wrote:
It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is the reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.
Compare this with Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807):
The significance of the ideal is the substantiality as the identical and concrete essence of nature and of the spirit, a concrete essence which is called God. The proof that this significance is the absolute truth is the mediation by which nature is suspended into the spirit, and the spirit suspends its subjectivity through its activity into the absolute spirit, thereby placing itself as its final ground in such a way that this mediation is in itself just as much the suspension of the mediation, of the antithesis, and knows itself as the absolute first principle.
While not addressing Newton, Hegel’s philosophical dialectic sees spirit as the mediator of nature within the Divine that in turn is part of Absolute Mind (Absolute Spirit, Universal Mind, God, Objective Mind). Yet it is consistent to see Newton’s ‘constant spirit action’ or gravity within a Hegelian framework.
[5] The importance of consciousness to quantum mechanics implies that mind provides a deterministic outcome to possibilities, or helps determine reality:
When physicists perform an experiment on quantum systems (for example, trying to measure the energy levels of an electron in an atom), they're never quite sure what answer they'll get. Instead, the equations of quantum mechanics predict the probabilities of these energy levels. Once scientists actually conduct the experiment, however, they get one of those results, and all of a sudden the universe becomes deterministic again; once scientists know the energy level of the electron, for example, they know exactly what it's going to do, because its ‘wave function’ collapses and the particle chooses a certain energy level…
For instance, in a faraway gas cloud, deep in the vastness of interstellar space, nobody is around; nobody is watching. If, within that gas cloud, two atoms bump into each other, this is a quantum interaction, so the rules of quantum mechanics should apply. But there is no ‘measurement’ and no result—it's just one of trillions of random interactions happening every day, unobserved by humans. And so the rules of quantum mechanics tell us that the interaction remains indeterministic.
But if those same two atoms bump together inside a laboratory, scientists can measure and record what happened. Because a measurement occurred, the same rules of quantum mechanics tell us that the indeterminism flipped to become deterministic—that's what allowed me to write down a concrete result.
[Top picture: “The Tower of Babel”, Pieter Bruegel (1563). According to Biblical tradition, the Babel tower was regarded as an act of blasphemy against God as it represented a pagan deity. It was also symbolic of many languages being generated leading to confusion among peoples.]
© 2024 Sanjay Perera. All rights reserved.
