World Religion News: Human Evolution Exhibit Censored to Avoid Offending Ultra-Orthodox Jews

It seems that even Judaism has a wing that rejects evolution.  Gee, who knew.  World Religion News has the story:

Authorities of Jerusalem's Natural History Museum frequently covers their human evolution exhibit under a sheet to keep the ultra-Orthodox visitors from being offended . The display title written in Hebrew reads, “The beginning of human evolution and culture.” The exhibit provides in detail the gradual and slow transformation from ape to modern homo sapien. It has a number of skulls, ancient hunting tools, and models along with written explanations. The matter came under scrutiny when a member of the museum staff asked a visitor to leave when she asked the authorities why they censor the display. Chaya David, the visitor in question, said she was shocked and saddened by the incident, terming it not only unwarranted but also not legal.

I sure hope it doesn't read “Homo sapien.” That binomial is never singular. Very early in my graduate career, I put that in a paper and my advisor fried me alive. Beyond that, though, if the story is accurate, why not inform the museum visitor why the display had been covered?  The story also notes:

Ultra-Orthodox Jews do not regard the scientific evolutionary theory as valid. They accept the Biblical version as the valid one. The Bible states humans were created differently from other animals. The traditional reading of the Holy Bible states that the world came into existence 5,778 years back.

Rabbit Hole: One unusual point about this story: 5778 years back puts creation at 3670 B.C. This is some 334 years after the figure that was concocted by Bishop Ussher. It is further important to note that Ussher's date was not the only one around. Everybody from Bede to Newton had their own estimates, all being within about 300 years of each other. Given that they were all working from the same source, what accounts for the discrepancy? Answers in Genesis is happy to provide the answer:

The testimony of so many ancient writers seems to confirm the antiquity (extreme age) of the use of the Julian year—that is, three hundred and sixty-five days with the addition of one extra day every four years. Hence, Ussher had very good reasons for selecting the length of the year that he did. In fact, modern scholarship recognizes this. In 1940 W. G. Waddell translated the works of Manetho, an Egyptian priest of the third century BC, and has the following translation for a portion of the work: “Saites added 12 hours to the month, to make its length 30 days; he added 6 days to the year, which thus comprised of 365 days.”

Only 4.5 billion years off.

Bill Nye Thinks Creationism is "Raising A Generation Of Young People Who Can't Think"

Bill Nye has been interviewed on Newsmax TV, and, in his customary blunt way, argues that:

“Religion is one thing. People get tremendous comfort and community with their religions," Nye said. "But whatever you believe, whatever deity or higher power you might believe in, the Earth is not 6,000 years old.”

Here is the video:

Nye has a very peculiar view of religion. When he is asked why the whole debate is so vexing, he argues that it all boils down to a fear of death and that we just don't want to die. One of the central tenets of Christianity is that, after death, if you accept Jesus as your savior, you go to heaven. When death comes, despite the desire to live life to the fullest and to hang on to life (not inconsistent with Christianity, by the way), we accept it, because we know that heaven awaits.  That is faith.  His response almost comes from a complete ignorance of religious knowledge or history. 

His assessment of how creationists view scripture is largely correct, in that they want to use the Bible as a science textbook.  It is not clear that this debate extends into the realms of physics and chemistry, however.  Otherwise, you would not have so many scientists who have signed the "Dissent from Darwin" petition.  The catch is that, when you get into the realm of the earth sciences, the knowledge gaps become pronounced and arguments that promote the young earth fall short.  That is why there are so few earth scientists that have signed the document.  They make up less than 1% of practicing earth scientists.

The sad thing here is that he is right about the view of scripture that creationists have but does Christianity no favors.  In his view, religious sentiment is okay, as far as it goes.  How many people will he reach that agree with that?  This is one of the reasons that I fear that the leaders of the young earth movement will drive people away from God.  If it is just fairy tales, then why bother?

Bad News in Texas

Apparently, the Truth in Texas Textbooks push has won some major concessions to what kinds of education kids in Texas will get in the coming years.  And it happened in a not-so-above-board way.  Patrick Michels of the Texas Observer has this to report:

When they write the history books about the State Board of Education, last week’s drama over our new social studies textbooks probably won’t go down as a high point.

After punting on a preliminary vote Tuesday, the board approved the textbooks on Friday despite receiving hundreds of pages of revisions at the last minute, which many members hadn’t read. Those revisions came partly in response to 1,500 worried letters from the public that were still arriving just last week. Though the 10-5 vote split on party lines, members agreed that this year’s textbook approvals had been a mess.

But the process was a big win for at least one man, Roy White, and his fellow volunteer textbook watchdogs.

White’s year-old group Truth in Texas Textbooks made an impressive entrance into Texas’ ancient and ongoing fight over what children learn in school, with a recently-released 469-page review of this year’s social studies textbooks.

Unfortunately, the folks who are in charge of either voting up or down on the textbooks did not have the time to examine all of the complaints TTT made because at least the ones involving evolution and the age of the earth were completely bogus.This is not good because, often, where Texas goes, the rest of the nation goes.

An Exercise in Futility and a Real Time Waster OR Why Practicing Scientists Don't Take Young Earth Creationists Seriously

One person wrote a comment on my BioLogos post that went like this:

here is more then 100 evidence that the erath is younger then 4.5 bilion years:

http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth

and about human “evolution” see this great article:

http://creation.com/human-evolution-stories

 I went and looked at the first site.  On it are some 101 so-called "evidences" of a young earth and a global flood.  I decided to tackle it and the further I got in, the madder I got.  Finally, I just gave up because I saw where it was going and because I didn't have time to devote to it.  The first site is put together by Carl Wieland, a medical doctor who quit practicing in 1986 so he could be a full-time young earth creationist.  Going through the list reminded me of why practicing scientists absolutely can't stand dealing with creationists.  Here are the first fourteen.
My responses are indented.

1.     DNA in ‘ancient’ fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years.

a.    Probably modern contamination.  The best we can hope for is one million years for DNA http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2317-row-unravels-over-claim-of-oldest-dna.html#.U7GOwLH1vIg

2.      Lazarus bacteria—bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old. See also Salty saga.

a.    This point is indistinguishable from the first point

3.     The decay in the human genome due to multiple slightly deleterious mutations each generation is consistent with an origin several thousand years ago.

a.    No it is not.  This assumes that everyone inherits all of the mutations and passes them on.  Mutations occur throughout the life of an individual and are not, necessarily passed on during the reproductive years. 

b.    Sanford completely misunderstands or misrepresents Kimura’s results dealing with mutations, completely omitting the conclusions that Kimura reached that build up of deleterious mutations would have no long term effect on a species. http://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/stan-4/

4.     The data for ‘mitochondrial Eve’ are consistent with a common origin of all humans several thousand years ago

a.    Not in any formulation of the out-of-Africa theory are the dates several thousand years ago.  When Cann, Stoneking and Wilson came up with the theory in 1987, they formulated a modern human origin of between 140 and 280 thousand years ago, in Africa.  Subsequent genetic results have not only found that modern humans and Neandertals split around 500 thousand years ago but that there was interbreeding between these two groups, between 30 and 70 thousand years ago.  This point is not only without support as stated, but simply wrong. 

b.    The author quotes Carl Weiland, a young earth creationist--not a geneticist--who writes “But these dates were based upon ‘molecular clock’ assumptions, which were calibrated by evolutionary beliefs about when certain evolutionary events occurred, supposedly millions of years ago.”  The events are independently confirmed by the fossil record and other genetic studies.  So what if it is based on “evolutionary” beliefs?  Those “beliefs” are based on hard, scientific inquiry and constitute over 150 years of research.  Armchair quarterback comments won’t change that.

5.     Very limited variation in the DNA sequence on the human Y-chromosome around the world is consistent with a recent origin of mankind, thousands not millions of years.

a.    From the paper quoted by Dorit et al.: “A coalescent model, with its assumptions of random mating, equilibrium population size, and exponentially distributed bifurcation times, provides an expected date for the last common male ancestor of 270,000 years (with 95% confidence limits of 0 to 800,000 years). Increasing the population size or nonrandom mating would lower this estimate. A lowest limit for the age of the last common ancestor of all Y lineages is derived by assuming the rapid branching and subsequent independence of all Y lineages since the last common male ancestor (known as a "star" phylogeny); such a pattern provides an estimate of 27,000 years, with 95% limits of 0 to 80,000 years. A mixed model, involving local (regional) coalescence, would produce intermediate times (15).” The zero date represents a possible error, not the actual date estimated.  This is misdirection.

6.     Many fossil bones ‘dated’ at many millions of years old are hardly mineralized, if at all. This contradicts the widely believed old age of the earth. See, for example, Dinosaur bones just how old are they really? Tubes of marine worms, ‘dated’ at 550 million years old, that are soft and flexible and apparently composed of the original organic compounds hold the record (original paper).

a.    The Ediacaran fossils are still fossils.  The preservation is remarkable but they are, nonetheless, fossils.  They are encased in Pyrite in an anaerobic setting, aided by bacteria.  From the ORIGINAL PAPER: “They were originally soft and plastic as has been demonstrated by their postmortem ductile deformation and the occasional preservation of twisted tubes without breakage. The tubes were sufficiently robust and thick-walled (Fig. 1.7) to be preserved in such a way and then extracted from the sediment without disintegrating.”  It is the level of preservation that is unusual.  Besides which, even if you could explain these, and some of the fossils that are partially mineralized, what about the countless fossils that do exist that are completely mineralized?  How do you get those to form in a few thousand years? 

7.     Dinosaur blood cells, blood vessels, proteins (hemoglobin, osteocalcin, collagen, histones) and DNA are not consistent with their supposed more than 65-million-year age, but make more sense if the remains are thousands of years old (at most). 

a.    Once again, one example of this in the face of thousands of counterexamples does not a case for a young earth make.  And further, it was “soft tissue,” not dinosaur blood cells. 

b.    Carl Wieland took this and ran with it, getting many things wrong and misinforming his public about the find. 

c.     Wieland said: “The fact that this really is unfossilized soft tissue from a dinosaur is in this instance so obvious to the naked eye that any scepticism directed at the previous discovery is completely 'history'.”  Wrong, wrong and wrong.  It was not unfossilized, it was a quarter of a millimeter in size and only visible through a scanning microscope and the criticisms of his position on dinosaurs was unaffected. 

8.     Lack of 50:50 racemization of amino acids in fossils ‘dated’ at millions of years old, whereas complete racemization would occur in thousands of years. 

a.    He mentions the Green River Formation and the Fig Tree Chert in South Africa.  The Fig Tree chert has been dated by Samarium-Neodymium to around 3.1 billion years old. 

b.    Also, from the ORIGINAL PAPER: “The rate of racemization or epimerization of amino acids under diagenetic conditions proceeds at such a slow rate that equilibrium mixtures of stereoisomers are generated within several tens of millions of years.  Kvenvolden et al (1972) have reported the presence of D-amino acids in Green River Oil Shale of Eocene age which are not equilibrium mixtures of stereoisomers.  They have suggested that either the rates of racemization in oil shale are very slow or that the original amino acids have been partially contaminated by more recent amino acids of the L-configuration.   This latter explanation is supported by the optical configuration of amino acids in hydrolysates of the bound fraction of fossil fish scales and bones were obtained from the Messel Oil Shale of Eocene age (50 x 10⁶ years)”  Wieland conveniently did not mention this.

9.     Living fossils—jellyfish, graptolites, coelacanth, stromatolites, Wollemi pine and hundreds more. That many hundreds of species could remain so unchanged, for even up to billions of years in the case of stromatolites, speaks against the millions and billions of years being real.

a.    So what?   Sharks have remained unchanged for millions of years also.  All that means is that they are remarkably well-adapted to their environment.  Species only change if there is a selective pressure for them to do so.  If there is not, they won’t.  This constitutes no evidence against evolution.

10.  Discontinuous fossil sequences. E.g. Coelacanth, Wollemi pine and various ‘index’ fossils, which are present in supposedly ancient strata, missing in strata representing many millions of years since, but still living today. Such discontinuities speak against the interpretation of the rock formations as vast geological ages—how could Coelacanths have avoided being fossilized for 65 million years, for example? See The ‘Lazarus effect’: rodent ‘resurrection’!

a.    The Coelacanth (Latimeria) is related to the sarcopterygians that lived during the Devonian but is also very different from them, besides which there are other lobe-finned fish around—the Queensland lungfish.  As with the point above, this just means that they survived intact.  We see plenty of evolution of some branches of lobe-finned fish into the early tetrapods.  That doesn’t mean they all did. 

11.  The ages of the world’s oldest living organisms, trees, are consistent with an age of the earth of thousands of years. 

a.    How is this relevant?  Why would we expect anything older than 4,500 years to be still alive?  It has no bearing on the fossils that came before that represent past, extinct life.  My father is 92.  By this logic, that is consistent with the earth being 92 years old. 

b.    Bates uses the tree-ring method to explain that there are no trees that are older than 7500 years.  However, using this method, we can also explain ice cores, which have been excavated from Greenland and the arctic and which provide “rings” of years that stretch back 40 to 50 thousand years.

12.  Scarcity of plant fossils in many formations containing abundant animal / herbivore fossils. E.g., the Morrison Formation (Jurassic) in Montana. See Origins 21(1):51–56, 1994. Also the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon has many track-ways (animals), but is almost devoid of plants. Implication: these rocks are not ecosystems of an ‘era’ buried in situ over eons of time as evolutionists claim. The evidence is more consistent with catastrophic transport then burial during the massive global Flood of Noah’s day. This eliminates supposed evidence for millions of years.

a.    This information is simply wrong.  Examination of the Morrison formation show that the climate was very dry, like a savanna.  What were found were conifers, tree ferns, rushes and the like.  This constitutes no evidence whatsoever against an old earth.  I was not able to run down the reference listed but, based on what I have read so far, I am certain they were misquoted.  Much of the Coconino sandstones were deposited by water.  Of course it was devoid of plants.  They were an ecosystem, just not the ones that Snelling, Austin and Wieland thought they were.  The depositional environment was varied, however.  Some of the deposits are only consistent with being made on dry sand.  There are also fossilized raindrops.  This was not a mass burial of any sort.

13.  Thick, tightly bent strata without sign of melting or fracturing. E.g. the Kaibab upwarp in Grand Canyon indicates rapid folding before the sediments had time to solidify (the sand grains were not elongated under stress as would be expected if the rock had hardened). This wipes out hundreds of millions of years of time and is consistent with extremely rapid formation during the biblical Flood. See Warped earth (written by a geophysicist).

a.    This is a classic example of one, seemingly unexplainable geological formation is extrapolated to cover the entire earth, even though there are no such formations outside of the Grand Canyon.  The young earth explanation completely ignores the fact that rock formations can bend and twist after they have been laid down based on stresses that are placed on them.  Many kinds of rocks are formed this way—they are called metamorphic. 

b.    But even if we had trouble explaining this, and it was evidence for a catastrophic flooding of the area, how can you explain surface features such as:

                                              i.     Rain drops

                                            ii.     Dunes

                                          iii.     Beaches

                                            iv.     Soil

                                              v.     Desiccation cracks

                                            vi.     Footprints

                                          vii.     Coral reefs

c.     There are countless other examples.  Most of those are from Mark Isaac’s Problems with a Global Flood, which airs out most of the evidence. 

14.  Polystrate fossils—tree trunks in coal (Araucaria spp. king billy pines, celery top pines, in southern hemisphere coal). There are also polystrate tree trunks in the Yellowstone fossilized forests and Joggins, Nova Scotia and in many other places. Polystrate fossilized lycopod trunks occur in northern hemisphere coal, again indicating rapid burial / formation of the organic material that became coal.

a.    All that this means is that there are some instances of rapid deposition.  What is not noted about the Joggins formation is that some of the forests show evidence of forest fires.  How would that happen in a global flood?  

Do I need to continue?  Every single “evidence” of a recent creation is wrong, misunderstood or misconstrued.  Wieland selectively quotes from what he wants, leaves out what doesn’t fit his preconceived ideas, and misdirects his readers away from the true points of an article in a way that can only be called dishonest.  

The amazing thing about the voluminous list is that every claim has been refuted in one place or another, some decades ago and yet, the page was updated on May 8 of this year?  Why haven’t the bogus claims been removed?

Once again, this is why practicing scientists despise dealing with creationists.   

UPDATE: I just noticed that the moderator has removed the comment. 
UPDATE 2: now the comment is back but mine is gone.  Weird. 

Pat Robertson Goes Rogue

In a response to a question on the 700 Club, Pat Robertson, head of CBN and Regent University in Virginia Beach, caused many jaws to drop when he remarked that the standard young earth creationism model is not all its cracked up to be. Dan Merica of CNN comments:

The statement was in response to a question Robertson fielded Tuesday from a viewer on his Christian Broadcasting Network show "The 700 Club.” In a submitted question, the viewer wrote that one of her biggest fears was that her children and husband would not go to heaven “because they question why the Bible could not explain the existence of dinosaurs.”

“You go back in time, you've got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things, and you've got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas,” Robertson said. “They're out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth, and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don't try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That's not the Bible.”

Before answering the question, Robertson acknowledged the statement was controversial by saying, “I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this.”

“If you fight science, you are going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,” Robertson concluded.

This is, of course, exactly contrary to the teachings of Ken Ham, who argues that it is because we aren't teaching creationism that we are losing our children. Robertson's statement is also a paraphrased restatement of what Kenneth Miller once said: Never bet against science.

Interestingly, while the CNN author attempts to tie in the rest of the article with acceptance of evolution, Robertson doesn't say that. He says that he doesn't accept the recent earth model.

This will make waves in both camps and there will be much hand-wringing among young earth supporters.  Humorously, the The Daily Kos' headline reads: “A Sign of The End Times? Pat Robertson throws the Young Earthers under the bus.”

Whether this counts as a renunciation or simply a public statement of long-held beliefs, I am not sure. That this is big news, however, is unquestionable.

P.Z. Myers Takes Apart Ken Ham

One of Ken Ham's favorite questions is “Were you there?” and he reserves it for people who argue that the earth is billions of years old or that evolution has occurred. Recently, he received a letter from a nine-year old girl. He writes about it here. She wrote:

I went to a NASA display of a moon rock and a lady said, "This Moon-rock is 3.75 billion years old!" Guess what I asked for the first time ever?

"Um, may I ask a question?"

And she said, "Of course."

I said, in my most polite voice, "Were you there?"

Love, Emma B

Ham's response is priceless. He writes on his blog:

Each time I give examples in my blog posts of children who have been influenced by AiG, the atheists go ballistic on their blogs. They hate to read of instances like this. They want to teach these children there is no God and they are just animals in this hopeless and meaningless struggle of this purposeless existence.

Praise the Lord, Emma has such a strong foundation in God’s Word and won’t fall for the atheist lies in their attempts to shake their fist at their Creator God.

His rejoinder to the obvious answer to the question of “no” is that we weren't but God was and he gave us his word to go by. This response is, at once facile, scripturally ignorant and logically unsound. P.Z. Myers, in a very restrained and civil fashion, takes what Ham says and and runs with it in an unsent letter to Emma B., in which he writes:

One serious problem with the "Were you there?" question is that it is not very sincere. You knew the answer already! You knew that woman had not been to the moon, and you definitely knew that she had not been around to see the rock forming 3.75 billion years ago. You knew the only answer she could give was "no," which is not very informative.

Another problem is that if we can only trust what we have seen with our own two eyes in our short lives, then there's very little we can know at all. You probably know that there are penguins in Antarctica, and that the Civil War was fought in the 1860s, and that there are fish swimming deep in the ocean, and you also believe that Jesus was crucified two thousand years ago, but if I asked you "Were you there?" about each of those facts, you'd also have to answer "no" to each one. Does that mean they are all false? Of course not. You know those things because you have other kinds of evidence.

This strikes at the heart of the idiocy of Ham's answer. The response is facile and logically unsound because the obvious answer is “no” and Ham knows it. The problem is that neither was he. And if we can't rely on historical and prehistoric sources for our knowledge, why is the Bible any different? After all, the reason we have the Bible in the first place is because We weren't there. It is the record of God's interaction with humans through history, written down by many different people in many different literary styles. Without this record, we would have no knowledge of God. The only thing that makes it different from other historical sources is that we believe it to reflect the nature of God and how we should relate to Him. If we weren't there to see the 3.75 million year old rock created, then we weren't around to see the Bible written down either.

It is scripturally unsound because it places an odd dualism between the word of God and the observable universe. As far as Ham is concerned, any evidence that the earth is 4.5 billion years old is a Godless, atheist lie, no matter how convincing. Yet, if God is the creator of the universe, then He is reflected in his creation. And right now, it looks for all the world like his universe is around 13 billion years old. Every line of observable evidence points to this. It also looks for all the world like the life around us (including us) has evolved over for over three billion years. Every line of evidence points to this, as well. If we ignore this evidence, or distort it to fit a preconceived interpretation of the Bible, what does that say about our attitude toward God's creation? Are we not rejecting the evidence that He, Himself has put forth? To accept God's word and reject His creation is theologically unsound at best.

It also places Ham in a position of authority over all of the scientists who have ever lived that have studied the age of the earth and all of the geological, astronomical, palaeontological and radiological factors that go into determining its age and he is in a position of authority over all of the theologians who argue that a literal interpretation of the creation stories is theologically simplistic. In effect, he is not just saying that they are wrong, he is saying that by disagreeing with him, they are not walking with God. Pompous, a bit?

I hope that Emma is found by a Godly teacher who can also inform her that the science surrounding the age of the earth is sound and that most of the people who did the science that revealed this age were devout Christians. Asking “Were you there?” is just ignorant.

Letter to Rand Paul

I just sent this letter to the Rand Paul campaign. Paul, if you will recall, dodged a question on the age of the earth at a home school convention. This evasion provided a good deal of grist for the "GOP as scientifically illiterates" mill. The letter reads:

Dear Dr. Paul,

At a recent home school convention when you were asked how old the earth is, you "passed." As a scientist who is concerned that the GOP is embracing a scientifically bankrupt model of earth and universal origins that proposes that the universe was created six thousand years ago, I would be most grateful if you would clarify your position on this question. If, like me, you share this concern, it would be most welcome for you to come forward as a Republican who accepts a scientifically grounded view of origins and yet who espouses a Christian world view.Such a pronouncement would show the media that there are non-democrats running for public office that have not rejected modern science.Thank you for your time.

Lets see if I get a response.

The Testimony of a Former Young Earth Creationist

Terry Gray points to a post on the ASA site by Dr. Joshua Zorn, a former young earth creationist who went on to get a Ph.D. in physics. It is heartfelt and wrenching because, along with Glenn Morton's account, it reveals the struggles that many who discover that the young earth arguments don't have merit encounter. This post arose out of the discussion of my cross-post over on Steve Martin's blog about how to handle encounters with YEC supporters in a loving way. Joshua writes this:

While it is true that the results of the historical sciences are often tentative because we cannot go back in time to observe directly what happened, many of the results are quite secure and have impacted our lives. Success in locating oil deposits, an understanding of where earthquakes will occur, our understanding of historical passages in the Bible, a deeper understanding of human and animal behavior, and the powerful argument for the existence of a Creator based on the Big Bang (see The Creator and the Cosmos in the bibliography below) all depend on the accuracy of the results of the historical sciences such as historical geology, plate tectonics, paleontology, archaeology, anthropology, history, cosmology, and behavioral ecology.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking the age of the earth is just a matter of "trusting God's Word" versus "trusting science." Christians need to, and every day do, trust both. The common error of rejecting many well-established results of science in favor of a certain biblical interpretation is not a valid Christian position. In the end, the truth will be a harmony which rejects neither the teachings of Scripture nor the well-established results of science. The results of science (properly interpreted) should never challenge the authority of Scripture, but they may cause us to reexamine our interpretation of Scripture. This is what I am pleading with young earthers to do.

Please read this article. It is very appropriate for the struggles that we as evolutionary creationists/theistic evolutionists go through every day. Even if you are not sympathetic to our position, it will help you understand where we are coming from.

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The New Texas Science Standards and What is Wrong With Them

The NCSE has a story about what is wrong with the new science standards crafted by the Texas State Board of Education. It is found in the new issue of Earth Scientist and starts on page 30. The article puts a plain face on some of the things that went under the radar of the mainstream press and others that were reporting on the changes. For example:

The ESS standards include material on the fossil record, and this was a predictable
target for creationist board members. A standard in the original ESS read:

(c)(8)(A) evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness, and
rate of diversity of evolution.

This was amended to:

(c)(8)(A) evaluate a variety of fossil types, proposed transitional fossils, fossil
lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance,
completeness, and rate of diversity of evolution and assess the arguments for
and against universal common descent in light of this fossil evidence.

One pro-science board member attempted to return (c)(8)(A) to its original language, but was voted down; as bad as most of these amendments were, things would have been worse had it not been for the efforts of pro-science board members.The final language adopted by the board removed references to common descent and evolution:

(c)(8)(A) analyze and evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils,
proposed transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness, and alignment with scientific explanations in light of this fossil data.

Other changes were made with regard to the age of the earth:

The age of the universe standard was amended from:

(4)(A) evaluate the evidence concerning the Big Bang model, such as red shift
and cosmic microwave background radiation, and the concept of an expanding universe that originated about 14 billion years ago.

to:

(4)(A) evaluate the evidence concerning the Big Bang model, such as red shift and cosmic microwave background radiation, and the concept of an expanding universe that originated 14 billion years ago, current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe.

Why would the Texas SBOE omit the specific age of the universe? The basis of this removal is not scientific uncertainty; the widely-accepted number of 13.7 billion years is well-established by numerous separate lines of evidence. The phrase “14 billion years” was removed in order to satisfy creationist board members who believe the universe, and the Earth, to be less than 10,000 years old.

Now one begins to understand why Casey Luskin claimed victory for the standards in his blog. These are absurd changes and, as Steve Newton writes, will only serve to confuse students who are trying to understand these already hard concepts.