The Axe That Roared

Maev Kennedy of The Guardian has a story about an axe that was found in a quarry by John Evans and Joseph Prestwich that has reappeared after 150 years. According to the story:

On 26 May 1859, six months before Charles Darwin shattered the biblical creation story when he finally plucked up the courage to publish his theory of natural selection, the stone hand axe from the bottom of a French quarry was presented to the world at a lecture at the Royal Society in London.

Neither John Evans nor Joseph Prestwich, the businessmen and amateur archaeologist and geologist who found it, nor their distinguished audience, could guess its true age, around 400,000 years. But they did know it came from "a very remote period", when the woolly mammoth and rhinos, whose bones were mixed up in the same layer, roamed the plains of northern France.

There was no way the mammoths and the man-made tool could be fitted into the traditional biblical timescale, calculated by the 17th-century Archbishop Ussher, that God made the world in 4004BC.

The axe then vanished for 150 years, until it was tracked down by another archaeologist and geologist team – Clive Gamble, a professor at Royal Holloway, and Robert Kruszynski of the Natural History Museum – who publish their quest in next month's Antiquity journal.

It is important to note that this was not the first stone tool to come out of the ground and that people were starting to get some odd ideas about just how literal the biblical creation story actually was. The Spy Neandertals had been unearthed in Belgium, in 1828, the Feldhofer cranium in the Neander Valley, in 1856, and other finds had come to light, as well. The axe was special because it showed prehistoric occupation of England, which had spent most of its time under large sheets of ice.

Acts & Fiction

The new ICR Acts & Facts magazine has several interesting columns in. One of them is Galapagos: Showcase for Creation, written by John Morris, the son of the late Henry Morris, head of the ICR. In it, he writes:

The Santa Cruz River was the Beagle's first major stop, and thus Darwin's first chance to apply Lyell's ideas. Dr. Austin discovered Darwin had made numerous errors in Argentina as he attempted to interpret the river valley according to uniformity, and mistook major Ice Age flooding for great ages of minor processes.

Of course, Dr. Morris does not say what these errors were, just that Darwin made them. You have to go to another article, Darwin's First Wrong Turn, by Steven Austin to get that information. In that article, Austin suggests that Darwin misidentified part of a section of the river bank as a basalt flow. Austin states that it cannot be a basalt flow but must, instead, be the remains of a catastrophic flood channel. Austin writes:

Why was Darwin so wrong concerning his interpretation of the river valley? First, he had expectations about what he would see at Camp Darwin before he arrived. His scientific judgment was tainted by preconceptions. Second, Darwin was reading the wrong book before his journey up the Santa Cruz River valley. He had been reading Charles Lyell's book Principles of Geology (1830) during his trans-Atlantic voyage on the Beagle. That book gave him the idea that the biggest boulders were deposited from melting icebergs.

Austin provides no evidence that the deposits were not the remains of a melting glacier. He simply says that there had to have been a colossal flood. Back to Morris. He writes that Darwin observed the finches on the Galapagos Islands and applied natural selection to them. Of this, Morris states:

Evolutionists trumpet the several Galapagos finch "species" as arising by adaptation from one species. Creationists agree, but this did not happen through evolution. Normally the finch types segregate by lifestyle according to their beak shape, but in times of stress they interbreed and combine. No evolution here. The flightless cormorants are recognizably related to other species of cormorant on other continents, but these have lost the use of their wings. Since when is the loss of a useful structure an evolutionary development? The real question is how animals acquire wings in the first place, not how they lose them.

Darwin correctly observed that the finches in different islands looked different and that their beaks were different. In other words, they had adapted to their environments. What is this an example of? Evolution. How did flightless cormorants lose the use of their wings? Evolution, that's how. Descent with modification. This could happen any number of different ways. For example, a small population may have broken off in which a mutation for flightless wings was present. In small populations, this trait would have expressed itself. In the presence of no selection in favor of flight, the trait would eventually permeate the population. The fact that flightless cormorants exist at all means that they can survive just fine without wings that fly. There may have been another reason why they retained the wings but not the ability to fly with them. Wings make great insulators. In the Liaoning fossil beds in China, researchers are discovering flightless dinosaurs that had wings. And that, by the way, is how they acquire wings in the first place. Any time you have descent with modification, you have evolution going on. More fiction from the ICR.

Michael Shermer - Why Darwin Matters

Michael Shermer did a one hour presentation at the University of California at San Diego on why evolution is important. In it, he tackles the nature of science and why ID does not qualify as science. Along the way, he takes pot shots at young earth creationism. His tone is a tad condescending but the talk is informative.



Hat tip to LGF.

The Charles Darwin Bible

Steve Matheson pointed out to me that, for the display rack in which the KJV Bible was jokingly placed (see this post), another resource is much more appropriate. It is the Charles Darwin Bible!



Sold by Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham's organization, the press kit has this to say about it:

Released in response to the secular Year of Darwin (2009), this special publication is designed to help “pull the plug on the rising tide of atheism.” With both the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species book happening in 2009, this is a battleground year for evolution—and Christians need to be ready.

Countless people have been deceived into dismissing God, believing that evolution is a proven scientific fact and that the book of Genesis has been shown to be a fable. Even many churches have neglected the truths of Scripture for the claims of fallible men. This book will give Christians an effective tool to share with evolutionists and atheists in schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and churches—explaining the vital facts about our origins and the truth of our great Creator.

The first paragraph is just cliché. It instantly equates evolutionary theory with atheism—a logical fallacy since one is a metaphysical construct while the other is a scientific theory—and then proceeds to exhort Christians to be ready to combat those evil evolutionists, since this is the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Origin of Species. The second paragraph is no better. It suggests that the book will give "Christians an effective tool to share with evolutionists."

There is simply no reasoning with this group. Every "scientific" article coming out of their web site has factual and logical errors that have been pointed out ad nauseum. No one at AIG listens. I have no doubt that this book will be one factual error after another. As long as AIG can convince people that evolution=atheism, they won't have to address the scientific arguments for evolution. They will also have a ready supply of converts who don't have the science education to know better.

I am more than passingly interested in getting a copy of the book. It is on sale for $2.79 for a limited time and is a pocket-sized resource, which would be nice. But AIG wants $7.31 for shipping! That is the cheapest rate. For comparison, Amazon charges $3.99 to ship it. What is AIG doing with the extra $3.32? Oh well. I Must add it to the list.