Okay, So Maybe It is Not Like a Toblerone Bar...

Someone once wrote (can't find the source) that the dimensions of Noah's Ark would render it like a Toblerone Bar.  According to a new Fox News report, it may have actually been round.  From the story:

A recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia -- modern-day Iraq -- reveals striking new details about the roots of the Old Testament tale of Noah. It tells a similar story, complete with detailed instructions for building a giant round vessel known as a coracle -- as well as the key instruction that animals should enter "two by two."

The tablet went on display at the British Museum on Friday, and soon engineers will follow the ancient instructions to see whether the vessel could actually have sailed.

That the story of Noah had antecedents is not new.  It is generally accepted that there are "competing" flood stories in the Near East that have some sort of relationship to each other.  This has fascinated researchers for years and was, recently, the subject of an interesting book by William Ryan and Walter Pittman titled Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History that attempted to locate the source of the stories in the Black Sea. Literalistic Christians are uncomfortable with the idea that the flood story in Genesis is not unique and that Noah and his family may not represent real people or if they do, that the flood was a much more localized event (one of several?).

There are several points of argument against the idea that the flood story represents real events.  The first is that there are so many similarities between the stories, from the promise to flood the world, to the rounding up of the animals, to the flood itself, the releasing of birds and the sacrifice, in which variously The Lord or the gods found the aroma of the sacrifice "pleasing." 

The second primary argument is that, given that the flood is supposed to have occurred around 2348 B.C., there is a remarkable amount of amnesia concerning this event.  Within a scant thousand years, there are thriving civilizations everywhere, and no one has ever heard of Noah or his sons.  Their names do not show up on any stelae or in any stories.  The Chinese don't have any stories that don't involve the flooding of the Yalu River and the Egyptians are busy building the pyramids, which may have started 250 years earlier than the flood date.  For Noah and his sons to have restarted the human race, it is more than a tad peculiar that nobody remembers them. 

Irving Finkel, the man who translated the table, agrees:

"I'm sure the story of the flood and a boat to rescue life is a Babylonian invention," he said.

He believes the tale was likely passed on to the Jews during their exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C. And he doesn't think the tablet provides evidence the ark described in the Bible existed. He said it's more likely that a devastating real flood made its way into folk memory, and has remained there ever since.

"I don't think the ark existed -- but a lot of people do," he said. "It doesn't really matter. The Biblical version is a thing of itself and it has a vitality forever.

This is true and the biblical story, like the Gilgamesh story, speak to the need to turn away from evil, that God punishes, that water is cleansing and that God will not forget or turn away from us forever.

When Acceptance of Evolution is Not Necessarily "Liberal"

Zack Kopplin has written a column for Slate in which he exposes some of the stealth creationism that is going on in some Texas public schools.  Along the way, however, he takes potshots at values that many conservatives, including myself, hold dear and that have no bearing on the creation/evolution debate.  It is a stark reminder that those of us that are conservative-leaning TE/CE are an unusual group.  He spends most of his time targeting a curriculum run by Responsive Ed, based in Lewisville, Texas. 

He writes:

Another Responsive Ed section claims that evolution cannot be tested, something biologists have been doing for decades. It misinforms students by claiming, “How can scientists do experiments on something that takes millions of years to accomplish? It’s impossible.”

The curriculum tells students that a “lack of transitional fossils” is a “problem for evolutionists who hold a view of uninterrupted evolution over long periods of time.”

“The assertion that there are no ‘transitional fossils’ is false,” Miller responded. “We have excellent examples of transitional forms documenting the evolution of amphibians, mammals, and birds, to name some major groups. We also have well-studied transitional forms documenting the evolution of whales, elephants, horses, and humans.”

Responsive Ed is not unique in this and that these organizations, such as Accelerated Christian Education, A Becka, Apologia and others continue to peddle these myths is nothing short of mendacious.  The data is out there and has been out there for decades.  To be shown that something is true and continue to say that is not is a lie.

In other sections, Kopplin addresses incorrect historical ideas that are, unfortunately taught as fact. The idea that "Darwinism" led to the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich has been shown to be false.
 
But Kopplin conflates the scientific issues with social issues viewpoints, some with which he obviously disagrees: He writes:

About LGBTQ rights, Responsive Ed says, “Laws against the homosexual lifestyle had been repealed in many states, but some states continued to ban the behavior.” The homosexual lifestyle?

About President Franklin Roosevelt, it teaches, “The New Deal had not helped the economy. However, it ushered in a new era of dependency on the Federal government.”

and also

On the feminist movement, Founders Classical Academy students are taught that feminism “created an entirely new class of females who lacked male financial support and who had to turn to the state as a surrogate husband.”

How is the notion of LBGTQ rights not an issue of "lifestyle?" That is exactly what is being promoted as normal: a lifestyle. If you want to argue for gay marriage, that is a lifestyle choice. If you want to argue that gays should raise children, that is a lifestyle choice.  Surely we are not reducing the rights of LGBTQ people to the sex act alone.

Did the New Deal policies prolong the depression?  Quite a few economists think so.  For example, James Powell of the Cato Institute argues that it not only did that, but that the policies ushered in vastly expanded government interference in private lives.  Two UCLA economists, Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian, also argued that the policies were harmful.

With regard to the feminist movement, the position Kopplin is railing against is exactly what is being argued by Jessica Gavora, in the Washington Post.  She writes:

Julia is just the latest makeover. She is the Democrats’ answer to Romney’s family Christmas card. A nation of women on their own, after all, doesn’t relate very well to fecund portraits of smiling white moms and dads with kids and golden retrievers underfoot. With her spare, faceless affect, Julia is meant to evoke a more modern, independent sensibility — with the exception of her life of endless government dependency, that is.

Julia is Mary Tyler Moore on the government’s dime. You’re gonna make it after all, Julia! Just remember who’s responsible on Election Day.

The problem is, like so much of our political rhetoric, Julia is not a composite; she’s a myth. Some of the nation’s single moms may be successful Web designers, but many are poor — fully half have incomes of less than $30,000 a year, compared with just 15 percent of married women. It’s not Pell grants and SBA loans these women rely on but Medicaid and food stamps. And it’s not comfortable retirements in community gardens they contemplate but bleak old age.

Whereas government benefits were once the state’s compassionate response to women who had lost their husbands, in Julia’s world they are the unquestionable entitlement of women who never married. The decline of marriage and Democratic political opportunism have combined to transform what used to be a situation to be avoided — single motherhood — into a new and proud American demographic, citizens of Obama’s Hubby State.

Can one fault the curriculum for promoting one particular viewpoint on a set of social issues? Perhaps.   But to dismiss these viewpoints as being invalid or wrong is more a product of a liberal mindset than well-constructed complaint against bad teaching.  He is disdainful of one curriculum's attempt to teach abstinence.  Why is teaching abstinence, in an age of growing teen pregnancy, a bad idea? 

Another issue not addressed is that, when one goes to school, a set of values is being taught—even if it is that you can construct your own values in a vacuum—because it is not possible to teach without doing so. Why conservative values any less important than liberal ones?

Where Kopplin objects to substandard science teaching and incorrect history, he is completely justified in doing so. Where he disagrees with conservative teaching for which there are differing viewpoints, he is considerably less so.   These are not issues of creationism or evolution or even of science in general. 

Ken Ham Waxes on the Cost of Belief in Evolution. Dan Wilkinson of Unfundamentalist Christian Responds

Ken Ham had a personal note on the AiG page about the upcoming debate.  He writes, in part:

Because our ministry theme for 2013 and for 2014 is “Standing Our Ground, Rescuing Our Kids,” our staff thought that a debate on creation vs. evolution with a man who has influenced so many children to believe in evolution would be a good idea. Now, those of you who know me realize that I don’t relish public debates, so please pray for me. But this debate will help highlight the fact that so many young people are dismissing the Bible because of evolution, and even many young people who had grown up in the church decided to leave the church because they saw evolution as showing the Bible could not be trusted. This exodus of young people from the church is documented in my coauthored book Already Gone.

Dan Wilkinson, on his blog Unfundamentalist Christian, responds:

No, Mr. Ham, no one’s leaving the church because evolution shows that “the Bible could not be trusted.”

Mr. Ham, they’re leaving the church because of people like you: people who fervently create walls, erect barriers, establish rigid rules for what one must believe in order to be a Christian. They’re leaving the church because your version of Christianity has nothing whatsoever to do with right practice, and everything to do with “right” belief. They’re leaving the church because by essentially demonizing everyone who doesn’t agree with you, you’ve made believing in Young Earth Creationism* more important than Jesus’ explicit explicit commandment to love God and neighbor.

Ken Ham did not like this much. He responded thus:

Apparently they call this sort of thing 'Progressive Christianity.' I guess that means 'evolving Christianity'--whatever the secular world believes about where they came from, you accept that as infallible and then change their assumed fallible Word of God to fit! So sad. In many ways these sort of people are more dangerous to Christianity than the atheists.

Note--the typical personal attack; no research cited (at least AiG had a professional group--America's Research Group--conduct real research into why kids are leaving the church and published it in the book 'Already Gone'); only one verse of Scripture referred to (Matthew 22); just this person's fallible opinions to justify holding man's word as infallible and God's Word as fallible.

Ham is correct about the lack of research. Wilkinson is working off of anecdotes and conversations. He could quote Glenn Morton, however, who left young earth creationism exactly for the reasons that Wilkinson writes about.  There are others out there, I am sure.  I personally know of one person who walked away from the faith after being home schooled using a young-earth curriculum.  When she got to college, her faith was rocked by the fact that there was quite a bit more evidence for evolution than she had been told.  Ham is also correct that there is invective and ad hominem in the post.  It would have been better if the writer had steered clear of such language. 

On the other hand, Ham, himself, has been guilty of the same kind of behavior, personally attacking Peter Enns to the point where Ham was dis-invited from a home schooling conference for his lack of Christian spirit.  He seems to be unrepentant about this.

Additionally, Ham is guilty of a "one way" approach to the scriptures, in which there is no value placed on either current or past interpretation.  Scripture is revealed directly to us and we do not question what it says or how it says it.  Consequently, passages that have provoked discussion and disagreement in the past are rendered flatly, with no color or depth.   He seems to be unwilling to admit that there may be different interpretations of scripture out there by very thoughtful, honest Christians.  Everyone who thinks differently from him is guilty of believing "progressive Christianity."

Most of the folks at BioLogos and the ASA are charitable to young-earth creationists, even if they don't agree with them.  There is no such reciprocity from Ham.  In describing the EC/TE mindset, he is venomous, calling us "more dangerous to Christianity than the atheists."  More dangerous to Christianity than Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and Sam Harris?  Really?  We seek to follow God, understand His ways and trust in Jesus as our savior, just as Ham does and yet, for him, that counts as nothing.  That is sad. 

New Study: Ardipithecus ramidus Derived In Human Direction

According to Bill Kimbel and colleagues, the skull of Ardipithecus ramidus shows tell-tale signs of being derived in the human direction away from great apes.  From Science Daily:

White's field-research team has been recovering fossil remains of Ardipithecus ramidus in the Middle Awash research area, Ethiopia since the 1990s. The most recent study of the Ardi skull, led by Suwa, was published in Science in 2009, whose work (with the Middle Awash team) first revealed humanlike aspects of its base. Kimbel co-leads the team that recovered the earliest known Australopithecus skulls from the Hadar site, home of the "Lucy" skeleton, in Ethiopia.

"Given the very tiny size of the Ardi skull, the similarity of its cranial base to a human's is astonishing," says Kimbel.

The cranial base is a valuable resource for studying phylogenetic, or natural evolutionary relationships, because its anatomical complexity and association with the brain, posture and chewing system have provided numerous opportunities for adaptive evolution over time. The human cranial base, accordingly, differs profoundly from that of apes and other primates.

In humans, the structures marking the articulation of the spine with the skull are more forwardly located than in apes, where the base is shorter from front to back and the openings on each side for passage of blood vessels and nerves are more widely separated.

Given that the post-cranial remains from Ardipithecus suggest facultative bipedalism, this is not so surprising. If you are going to walk upright at all, you need to be able to see where you are going. This information, in conjunction with the new appraisal of the Orrorin tugenensis remains strongly suggests that, while Orrorin was at or near the junction of the last common ancestor, Ardipithecus, at 1.6 million years later, is quite a bit beyond it. It also reinforces what a terrible model the modern apes are for early human morphology.

More Info on the Ken Ham/Bill Nye Debate

The Columbus Dispatch has a short piece on what to do if you didn't get tickets for the Ken Ham/Bill Nye debate.  The write, in part:

The museum says it’s still possible to watch the debate by reserving a live video stream for $4.99. The stream is free with pre-orders of debate DVDs and/or digital downloads ranging from $12.99 to $24.99.
For information, visit creationmuseum.org.

I will probably watch the stream and get a copy of the debate, as well.

Ken Ham on the Upcoming Debate

Answers in Genesis has written up a pre-debate post on their website.  "Layman" writes:

The agreed-upon topic for the 7 PM debate is “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”
Ken Ham Debates Bill Nye

“A debate with Mr. Nye, nationally known for his children’s TV program and for promoting evolution, will be one of our major events in 2014 to highlight how children and teens are being influenced by evolutionary thinking," declared Ham. “This year, our AiG theme is ‘Standing Our Ground, Rescuing Our Kids.’ Having the opportunity to hold a cordial but spirited debate with such a well-known personality who is admired by so many young people will help bring the creation/evolution issue to the attention of many more people, including youngsters.”

Ham added, “I hope to show Mr. Nye and our debate audience that observational science confirms the scientific accuracy of the Genesis account of origins, not evolution.”

I will be curious to see what "observational" science he brings out. One of the principle problems with the arguments against an old earth is that they cannot be used to show that the earth is six thousand years old. When you read the creationist literature, each of the methods is used only to show that the earth cannot be 4.5 billion years old. There is usually no lower limit mentioned. To my knowledge, there is no observational data that can be used to show that the earth is between six and ten thousand years old or that the earth was under water between 2400 and 2500 B.C.  If Nye takes this attack,  it will not go well for Ham.  

HufPo: What We Learned About Human Origins In 2013 Will Blow Your Mind

The Huffington Post has a story on the advances in human origins for the last year.  In the realm of modern human origins:

Recent analyses of fossil DNA have revealed that modern humans occasionally had sex and produced offspring not only with Neanderthals but also with Denisovans, a relatively newfound lineage whose genetic signature apparently extended from Siberia to the Pacific islands of Oceania.

This year, hints began emerging that another mystery human lineage was part of this genetic mix as well. Now, the first high-quality genome sequence from a Neanderthal has confirmed those suspicions.

These findings come from Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, where the first evidence of Denisovans was discovered in 2008. To learn more about the Denisovans, scientists examined DNA from a toe bone unearthed there in 2010.

The researchers found that the fossil belonged to a Neanderthal woman. Her DNA helped refine the human family tree, as it revealed that about 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of modern people outside Africa is Neanderthal in origin, whereas about 0.2 percent of DNA of mainland Asians and Native Americans is Denisovan in origin. [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]

As Dennis Venema points out, modern humans appear to come from a population of around 150,000, which likely arose in North Africa.  I would still suggest two possibilities that might explain the hybridization.  One, that from around this time to 50 thousand years ago, humans existed as a generally polytypic species and that interbreeding, until the demise of the Neandertals and the Denisovans was, perhaps, widespread.  In the 50 thousand years since then, these genes have stochastically dropped out of the population.

The other possible model that would explain the variation between Neandertals, Denisovans and early moderns might be a syngameon, in which there are three definable species that, at their peripheries, hybridize.  At some point, then, the modern humans simply swamped the other two genomes. This would be the model of modern-day dogs and wolves which can mate but ordinarily do not. 

Another finding?  That early Homo may have been one highly-variable species, rather than a bush of species:

The level of variation seen in Homo fossils is typically used to define separate species. However, analysis of 1.8-million-year-old skulls excavated from the Republic of Georgia revealed the level of variation seen among those skulls was about the same as that seen among ancient African Homo fossils. As such, researchers suggest the earliest Homo fossils may not be multiple human species, but rather variants of a single lineage that emerged from Africa.

This will rattle those that hold to more cladistically-driven models of human origins like Ian Tattersall who supports a model more like the phylogenetic species concept, in which  single trait difference might confer species-level taxonomy.  This takes care of this issue of why there are two very different morphs on the landscape in East Africa at this time, represented by ER 1813 and ER 1470.  The dimorphism is quite large, but, as we discovered, is not beyond what would be expected in any species of large-bodied hominoid but larger than what would be found in any living population of humans in the last several hundred thousand years. 

A good run-down.  Read the whole thing. 

Ark Encounter Sinking, Ham Blames "Spiritual Battle"

As has been reported here and elsewhere, the Ark-n-Park is in danger of not being built because of lack of funding. Recently, The city of Williamstown released some junk bonds to be bought that would provide funding for the amusement park.   Now it seems that the bonds are not selling. Morgan Lee of the Christian Post has an update on the problem:

In a recent fundraising letter, Answers in Genesis (AiG) President Ken Ham claimed that the organization's theme park's current financial woes were "an indication of the immense spiritual battle we are in."

To open the Kentucky attraction, which would include a full-scale, 510-foot-long model of Noah's Ark, AiG must sell $29 million in unrated municipal bonds by Feb. 6 to avoid triggering the redemption of the $26.5 million of bonds that have already been sold.

  As for the reason this might be, Ham suggests it isn't just the money:

Without specifically mentioning any names or reports, Ham also suggested AiG's bond selling process had been sabotaged by atheists and that inaccurate media coverage had in turn led to some of its financial obstacles.

"From atheists attempting to register for the bond offering and disrupting it, to secular bloggers and reporters writing very misleading and inaccurate articles about the bonds, to brokerage firms saying 'yes,' but after reading these incorrect reports saying 'no' in allowing the Ark bonds into their client accounts—the obstacles were numerous and disruptive," wrote Ham. "Frankly, it has been an extremely stressful and frustrating time for all of us."

Ham does not say who these people are.  Nor does he say what the misleading information that is being published is but it is possible he is referring to the Slate article.   The answer may be a bit more mundane than that.  As Mark Chappatta of Bloomberg wrote:

Industrial-development bonds are considered the riskiest municipal debt because they account for the largest proportion of defaults in the $3.7 trillion municipal market. Williamstown issued the bonds without a rating, making the prospect of repayment even less clear.

Mark Stern of Slate elaborates:

As Answers in Genesis readily admits, the bonds “are not expected to have any substantial secondary market” and are “not an obligation of AiG.” Somewhat alarmingly, the bonds are unrated, an indication that they’re extremely risky—and almost impossible to resell. High risk, higher yield: These, in essence, are creationist junk bonds.

Would you buy them? I wouldn't, even if I thought the cause was a worthy one (which I don't).  The funding issues may also be simply be that God is fed up with the Disney-ization of fundamental evangelical Christianity.  Maybe it isn't a war against principalities.  Maybe the park just shouldn't be built.  Maybe God looked at the "Ten Plagues of Egypt Fun Ride" and thought "enough is enough."   Maybe.  

New Proposed Virginia Bill is Redundant

Climate Progress, a branch of Think Progress has a story on a new "strengths and weaknesses" bill that is being proposed for the public school system in Virginia.  Two things are interesting about the story: how the bill actually reads and how Climate Progress thinks it reads.  First, the bill, itself actually does not mention either evolution or climate change anywhere.  Part A reads:

A. The Board and each local school board, division superintendent, and school board employee shall create an environment in public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about scientific controversies in science classes.

That is as close as it gets to actually mentioning the hated sciences. Climate Progress, on the other hand, in its opening paragraph on the bill, writes:

A new bill, up for consideration this year in the Virginia General Assembly, would give Virginia’s public school teachers permission to teach about the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “scientific theories” like evolution and global climate change. The bill is part of a national trend of legislative proposals, led by creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute and climate-change deniers such as the Heartland Institute.

The bill is being promoted by state representative Dickie Bell and a cursory reading of this story would make one think that Bell is going directly after evolution and climate change.  Further, the Climate Progress story goes on:

Bell told the Hampton Roads Daily Press that the bill was intended to protect teachers who might otherwise be disciplined for how they responded to questions from students about topics like evolution. He noted that since the state does not require teaching of alternatives to the theory of evolution, “introducing them into instructional discussion would not seem appropriate.”

If you go to the story in the Daily Press: it reads thus:

One of the handful of former teachers in the General Assembly, Del. Richard "Dickie" Bell, R-Staunton, has been thinking of an awkward spot teachers can find themselves in. Specifically, science teachers when a student asks about alternatives to scientific theories.

For instance, evolution.

Bell says his bill is intended to protect teachers from disciplinary action if people don't like the way they respond to questions about scientific theories.

Did Bell actually say "evolution," or is that the tacit assumption?  His statements about evolution are, in fact, very vague.  It only comes up when he is asked whether or not alternatives to evolution ought to be taught, to which he replies in the negative.  Since the bill, itself, is so scrupulously nondescript in its language,  one cannot help but wonder if he is working off the failed attempts at similar legislation that actually single out the hated sciences.

It seems reasonable to assume that Bell had climate change and, perhaps, evolution in mind when he drafted this legislation.  It is poor legislation and redundant in the sense that what is being proposed should already be a part of the curriculum. Additionally, the "strengths and weaknesses" wording has now become stigmatized as being anti-science in general and specifically anti-evolutionary where its instigation has been attempted.  Whether or not evolution and climate change are mentioned, based on this example of the Climate Progress story, that is clearly what people see.  Fueling this assumption is that, as the Climate Progress story notes, Bell has had the support of Ken Cuccinelli, who has been notable in denying the role of humans in climate change.  Cuccinelli has notably been absent in the evolution debate, however.

Consequently, before we castigate Bell for his anti-evolutionary views, perhaps we ought to make sure that he has them.  He might, but I don't think we can conclusively determine that from this set of stories. 

I have tended to separate the debate on evolution from the debate on climate change because I know a good deal more about the former than the latter and because, rightly or wrongly, I tend to encounter a disturbing number of atmospheric scientists and meteorologists who question the conclusions emanating from the studies being currently conducted and their extrapolations.  I know of no biologists who question evolutionary theory. 

Additionally, evolution, as a scientific discipline, is over 150 years old (older if you count the pre-Darwinian formulations), while climate science is in its infancy.  Therefore, I get uncomfortable when the two are lumped together and argued as a package.

The best thing for this bill is to have it die in committee, like many others of its kind.

Oh Well...

The Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate tickets are already sold out.  How popular is this?  800 tickets sold out in twenty minutes.  According to the site, there are tickets available for a simulcast from the museum. 

Bill Nye to Debate Ken Ham

Bill Nye the Science Guy is slated to debate Ken Ham, head of the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis.  This debate is set to happen at the main hall of the Creation Museum at 7:00 p.m. on February 4.  Tickets are $25 and will be available from Answers in Genesis beginning tomorrow (The event link is at the bottom of the page).  I may try to get up there for this.  On the other hand, I bet the local churches will bus people in by the hundreds just to make sure that Bill Nye is given a hard time so tickets may sell out fast.  Here is the story on ABC News:

The event is likely to attract plenty of attention in scientific and faith circles, as Nye is a high-profile advocate of science education and Ham is a respected leader among Christians who believe the Bible's origin story is a factual account of the Earth's beginnings.

Ham had been hoping to attract the star of TV's "Bill Nye The Science Guy" to the northern Kentucky museum after Nye said in an online video last year that teaching creationism was bad for children. The video was viewed nearly 6 million times on YouTube.

"Having the opportunity to hold a cordial but spirited debate with such a well-known personality who is admired by so many young people will help bring the creation-evolution issue to the attention of many more people, including youngsters," Ham said in a release Thursday.

Ham, it seems, has gotten his wish. The problem is, because of format issues and the fact that the audiences for these debates tend to not be up-to-speed on the science, they rarely go well for your average scientist. Bill Nye is not your average scientist, however and has a folksy, down home way of explaining things.  Hopefully, that spirit will prevail.  Look for Ham to be patronizing and evasive.   Here is the Youtube video that got it started.

The Atlantic Also Wonders Why Support Among Republicans is Dropping

David A. Graham, of The Atlantic, also wonders why support is dropping among Republicans for Evolutionary theory.  He writes:

One possibility is that respondents who identified as Republican and believed in evolution in 2009 are no longer identifying as Republicans. Fewer scientists, for example, are reportedly identifying with the GOP, and the overall trend is for fewer Americans to call themselves Republicans. But both Gallup and separate polling from Pew found approximately the same party ID in 2009 and 2013.

Another is that the rise of "intelligent design" education has helped to swing younger Americans against evolution. Yet the age breakdown remains similar in 2009 and 2013, with respondents ages 18 to 29 most likely to believe in evolution.

What does that leave? Maybe the gap represents an emotional response by Republicans to being out of power. Among others, Chris Mooney has argued that beliefs on politically contentious topics are often more rooted in opposition to perceived attacks than anything else—an instance of "motivated reasoning." Given that Democrats have controlled the White House and Senate since 2009, this could be backlash to the political climate, though it will be hard to tell until Republicans control Washington again.

Given that people do not tend to change their religious perspectives based on who is in office, I do not think this is it, either.  Something is being missed here. I think it is possible that the rise in Republicans who reject evolution is being influenced, at least in part, by the uptick in the number of self-described conservatives being home schooled.  From an Education News story in March:

More than 2 million children around the U.S. are homeschooled, a number that is 75% higher than it was in 1999. And the number is expected not just to grow, but to grow exponentially over the next decade — especially since the advent of free virtual public schools and quality curriculum all around the country.

While the story is quick to point out that the parents of these children are increasingly choosing this route not just because of religious reasons, conservative Christians are still vastly the bulk of those being home schooling.  I have found very few home school curricula that do not exude antipathy toward evolution.  This  has been the case for some time. Arguing against this perspective is the fact that a higher percentage of younger people accept evolution.  However, we don't know about the educational breakdown, apart from "did you graduate from college or not?"  How many of those evangelical protestants that reject evolution were home schooled?  It would be nice to know.  In any event, however, it can only be one factor of many due to the relatively small number of children involved.  The reasons behind the drop in support are likely multifaceted.

BTW: there is one very unusual response collected by the poll that I missed the first time around.  Among self-described mainline protestants that accept evolutionary theory, 36% think that evolution was guided by God and 36% think that God was not involved.  If you are a self-described mainline protestant in the second batch, how does that work exactly?  You believe in God but you don't think He has acted in the evolution of biodiversity on the planet?  What does He do?

Pew Poll: Views on Evolution Driven By Religion More Than Education?

Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes for the Salt Lake Tribune and suggests that, buried in the Pew poll on evolution, religious affiliation is a much greater predictor of evolution acceptance than education.  She writes:

While education matters, the new analysis suggests that religion appears to have more influence than level of education on evolution. The 21-point difference between college graduates and high school graduates who believe in evolution, for example, is less stark than the 49-point difference between mainline Protestants and evangelicals.

Evangelicals are four times as likely to reject human evolution as mainline Protestants, with 64 percent of evangelicals saying that "humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Half of black Protestants say humans have not evolved, compared to 15 percent of white mainline Protestants who share the same opinion.

Those with more years of formal education are more likely than those with less education to say that humans and animals have evolved over time. Seventy-two percent of college graduates say humans have evolved over time, compared with 51 percent of high school graduates who say the same thing.

The problem with this analysis, of course, is that there is no one-to-one correlation. How many of the mainline protestants are college graduates?  How many of the evangelicals?  Unless you can isolate those patterns, you cannot say for sure if this is an accurate analysis. 

Acceptance of Evolution Drops Among Republicans

The Pew Forum has released the results of a new poll that seem to indicate that acceptance of evolution has stayed relatively unchanged in most demographics since 2009.  Among Republicans, however, it has dropped.  They write:

About half of those who express a belief in human evolution take the view that evolution is “due to natural processes such as natural selection” (32% of the American public overall). But many Americans believe that God or a supreme being played a role in the process of evolution. Indeed, roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.”

These beliefs differ strongly by religious group. White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Roughly two-thirds (64%) express this view, as do half of black Protestants (50%). By comparison, only 15% of white mainline Protestants share this opinion.

There also are sizable differences by party affiliation in beliefs about evolution, and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has grown. In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.

Other items of interest revealed in the poll:

• It did not seem to matter whether or not the questions focused on humans or other animals in terms of acceptance of evolution
• men accepted evolution more than women (65% to 55%)
• College graduates had higher rates of acceptance than people with high school education or less (72% to 51%)
• younger respondents had much higher rates of acceptance than retirement age people (68% to 49%)

It is not a surprise that Republicans are moving away from evolution.  The party as a whole has beeen pushing away from that position for years and most of the recent Republican presidential candidates had (usually uninformed) anti-evolutionary position.  Only Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney deviated from this view.  As the public schools continue to degrade and more conservatives tune out public education in favor of home schooling, the acceptance rate will continue to drop and I predict a greater partisan discrepancy three years from now. 

Science Daily: Neanderthal Genome Shows Early Human Interbreeding, Inbreeding

More clarity.  A new study coming out of the University of California at Berzerkeley posits that not only did early modern humans and Neandertals interbreed, but Neandertals inbred, as well.  From the story:

Population geneticist Montgomery Slatkin, graduate student Fernando Racimo and post-doctoral student Flora Jay were part of an international team of anthropologists and geneticists who generated a high-quality sequence of the Neanderthal genome and compared it with the genomes of modern humans and a recently recognized group of early humans called Denisovans.

The comparison shows that Neanderthals and Denisovans are very closely related, and that their common ancestor split off from the ancestors of modern humans about 400,000 years ago. Neanderthals and Denisovans split about 300,000 years ago.

It is not clear to me when you make the species break but for two species to interbreed several hundred thousand years after they split is unusual.  Dogs and wolves, for example, don't have nearly that time depth.  The split must have been a very subtle one, then.  As to how they know that Neandertals interbred without having two related Neandertals on hand, here is the explanation:

In another analysis, Jay discovered that the Neanderthal woman whose toe bone provided the DNA was highly inbred. The woman's genome indicates that she was the daughter of a very closely related mother and father who either were half-siblings who shared the same mother, an uncle and niece or aunt and nephew, a grandparent and grandchild, or double first-cousins (the offspring of two siblings who married siblings).

Depending on how large the population was, this may have been a necessity. it may also be an artifact of sampling. This happens in modern human populations as well but is not common.  As the authors note, there are quite a few unanswered questions.  For example, they really have no idea how much interbreeding between Neandertals, Denisovans and modern humans took place.

Another Conservative Drinks From the Wrong Bottle

Granville Sewell has written a piece for Human Events, titled Intelligent Design Theories Gaining Steam in Scientific Circles.  As nearly as I can tell, he has gotten everything wrong.  Lets start with who Granville Sewell is.  He is a mathematics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and a long-time supporter of intelligent design.

First, the title is indefensible.  Whether or not he, himself, came up with it, there is no evidence whatsoever that intelligent design is gaining ground in scientific circles.  In fact, there is contra-evidence.  There have been no intelligent design-based articles published in any of the mainstream journals and the only journal that is devoted to it, Bio-Complexity, has had one article and two critical reviews published for the entire year of 2013.  The article is co-written by two members of the editorial staff, to boot.

 He writes:

Darwin thought he could explain all of this apparent design through natural selection of random variations. In spite of the fact that there is no direct evidence that natural selection can explain anything other than very minor adaptations, his theory has gained widespread popularity in the scientific world, simply because no one can come up with a more plausible theory to explain evolution, other than intelligent design, which is dismissed by most scientists as “unscientific.”

This is ignorant nonsense with an arrogant tone attached to it.  The theory of evolution has gained widespread popularity because, as a theory, it is incredibly robust, with over 150 years of evidence to back it up, coming from the fields of biology, palaeontology, biogeography, microbiology, molecular biology, geology and others.  Every year, the evidence for evolution continues to pile up as we fill in more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.  Witness recent discoveries that have shown that the first tetrapods evolved in the late Devonian in shallow seas, that feathers evolved and diversified in dinosaurs as a means of insulation before they evolved into a means of flight, or that the femur of Orrorin tugenensis shows transitional characteristics between late Miocene apes and the earliest hominins.  These are not minor adaptations.  They show selection and evolution across taxonomic levels and reflect predictions about what would be found in the fossil record IF evolution were true.

He writes: 

But, in recent years, as scientific research has continually revealed the astonishing dimensions of the complexity of life, especially at the microscopic level, support for Darwin’s implausible theory has continued to weaken, and since the publication in 1996 of Darwin’s Black Box by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, a growing minority of scientists have concluded, with Behe, that there is no possible explanation for the complexity of life other than intelligent design.

Really?

Contrast the publication record of Bio-Complexity with the journal Evolution which, in 2013 alone, published 200 articles. Furthermore, Journal Citation Reports lists 29 journals that have "evolution" in the title. This does not even count those that publish articles on evolution, such as The American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Cell and Systematic Biology to name just a few.

With regard to the "growing minority of scientists,"  if he is referring to the "Dissent From Darwin" list put out by the Discovery Institute, that constitutes no evidence against evolution whatever.  When I analyzed the list a few years back, I found:

13 physicists, 1 plasma physicist, 10 biochemists, 24 chemists, 8 engineers, 7 mathematicians, 2 psychologists, 13 geneticists, and 5 medical doctors.

There are only five geologists on the list, and one lone palaeontologist on it. 

Like most ID writers such as David Berlinski, Cornelius Hunter and David Klinghoffer, he argues that there is dichotomy between accepting evolution and ID:

If you believe that a few fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the basic particles of physics into Apple iPhones, you are probably not an ID proponent, even if you believe in God. But if you believe there must have been more than unintelligent forces at work somewhere, somehow, in the whole process: congratulations, you are one of us after all!

Here is one-dimensional, reductionistic thinking on display. it is either/or. There is no third option, the evolutionary creationist, who argues that the evidence for evolution of life, in all of its 3.5 billion year existence, can be explained as the work of a fantastically inventive and creative God, who took great joy in watching his creation unfold. It is also the thinking of someone who has taken no time to actually learn the basics of evolution and what the evidence is that supports it.  As long as this is the case, we will continue to be subjected to substandard prose such as this offering by Dr. Sewell. 

New Study on Neandertal Burials

Science World Report has a story on a study done by New York University. From the press release:

Neanderthals, forerunners to modern humans, buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France.

Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm that burials took place in western Europe prior to the arrival of modern humans.

“This discovery not only confirms the existence of Neanderthal burials in Western Europe, but also reveals a relatively sophisticated cognitive capacity to produce them,” explains William Rendu, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHUS) in New York City.

The subject of Neandertal burials has been debated for quite some time and there are strong opinions on both sides of the debate. The weight of evidence suggests intentional burial, however. In 1989, Robert Gargett wrote a paper called "Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neandertal Burial," in which he argued that the evidence was lacking. The comments on the article were a sight to behold, some of the most caustic I have ever seen. Dave Frayer wrote, of the remains at La Chapelle aux-Saints:

...we know of no example of a naturally produced rectangular, straight- walled, flat-bottomed pit in the middle of a karstic shelter. That such a natural phenomenon would have occurred and a skeleton would have found its way into it is so unlikely as to make it impossible to consider seriously that the pit sunk into the marl was not the result of deliberate human activity. The manner in which the skeleton lay, on its back, one arm folded and legs flexed, is a strong indication of intentional burial. This seems an unlikely position for accidental death and, in any event, is one that is repeated in numerous other interments¹

This seems to be the recent consensus, as well. The focus of the new research is on the cave floor, of which the authors state that the depression discovered was unnatural and suggests a burial.  The other peculiarity is that the remains were found in such good shape, showing no signs of carnivore activity or environmental degradation.  In fact, of the entire suite of Neandertal remains that we have, the La Chapelle fossils are among most well-preserved.  Filling in the pieces.

¹Gargett, R. (1989) Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neandertal Burial. Current Anthropology 30(2): 157-190
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743544

More on the Texas SBOE Decision to Adopt Scientifically Accurate Textbooks

Church & State has a short piece on the back story behind the adoption of the new scientifically-sound textbooks in Texas.  They write:

In the latest twist of a long-running battle, the Dallas Observer reported in October that the board has narrowed its biology textbook options down to 14 titles – and not one of those choices includes any theories that run counter to evolution.

Unfortunately, no credit is due the board for this development. Many of its members wanted creationism in the books, but textbook publishers refused to put religious concepts into secular science books.

The recent turn of events surprised some observers. Board chair Barbara Cargill is an avid advocate for creationism. In fact, she and her allies invited a few dozen people to review the textbook options this summer, including a handful of known creationists.

Critics believe the review process was stacked to aid creationists. The board has long leaned toward teaching creationism, and this year additional anti-science advocates secured spots on the oversight body.

Textbook writers are highly-tuned to the science they practice and the publishers know that the writers will jump ship rather than have their reputations ruined by putting their names on substandard textbooks. For most of them, money is not the object. It is a labor of love. To have their work watered down is unacceptable.

Judging from the article, some of the board thought that they could get the material changed.  Now that this has not happened, there is no time to go through the selection process again.  What a shame.

This, once again, underscores the need for people on these boards to be scientifically literate.  People that are anti-evolution should have to be able to articulate why, from a scientific perspective, they are that way and defend those answers.  The vast majority won't be able to and it will become clear that they know little of the subject and are basing their decisions on religious perspectives.  I am not sure how, politically, that sort of accountability structure would be set up but these problems will persist until they are.  They just need to be stopped at the door because, as one of my readers once put it, these sorts of viewpoints are religiously-motivated, will tend to persist and their adherents will not budge.   We saw this with Don McLeroy who, in the face of experts in various biological fields, remarked: "I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts." Hard to argue with logic like that.

Creation Museum Not Charging Admission For Children Under 13 in 2014

The AP is reporting that the Creation Museum in Petersburgh, KY, run by Ken Ham, is not going to be charging admission for children the entire 2014 calendar year.  From the story:

The free admission to the Creation Museum is for children 12 and under and lasts the entire year.

In an online posting, museum co-founder Ken Ham says the offer is part of the museum's "Standing Our Ground — Rescuing Our Kids" theme.

Since it opened in 2007, the museum has drawn criticism for exhibits that scientists say contradict evolution science.

Ham says the museum has collected about $225,000 in child ticket admissions in 2013, so the offer "is going to significantly impact our bottom line." But Ham said he is hopeful that private donations would fill the gap.

Children must be accompanied by one paying adult.

The somewhat more jaded among us also note that the museum has had flagging attendance the last few years and that this may be a means of trying to boost that. This sort of thing is a common way to get people in the door—restaurants often have "kids eat free" days—and often will bring up profits and raise visibility despite the loss of revenue from the move.  Revenue for the museum was 5.1 million dollars in 2012, in a year in which they actually took a loss for the first time.  Assuming a status quo in revenue, $225, 000 represents 4.4% of the take, so it is not an insignificant amount.  Private donations have been drying up, which is why the construction of the Ark-n-Park is in jeopardy. The issuance of junk bonds for it and this move for the museum, itself, are risky. 

I would like to ascribe the lofty motives that Mr. Ham to the fee waiver and I hope they are purer than they look on the surface.  On the surface, it looks like they are trying to stop the bleeding. 

Orrorin tugenensis: As Close to the Last Common Ancestor As We Have Gotten?

Based on work by SUNY Stoney Brook, it has been learned that the femur of Orrorin tugenensis, the six-million year-old presumed hominin, also called the "millenium man," has a mix of traits that align it with not just early hominins but late Miocene apes.  Science Daily reports:

According to Dr. Almécija, their study for the first time compared the six-million-year-old Millenium Man femur (called BAR 1002'00) using state-of-the-art morphometric techniques to not only other available hominin fossils but also great apes, hylobatids (ie, gibbons and siamangs), and most importantly to fossil apes that lived in the Miocene. The analysis included more than 400 specimens.

"We discovered that Orrorin's femur is surprisingly 'intermediate' in both age and anatomy between quadrupedal Miocene apes and bipedal early human ancestors," said Dr. Almécija. "Our paper provides quantitative results of the Orrorin femur as a unique mosaic and stresses the need to incorporate fossil apes into future analyses and discussions dealing with the evolution of human bipedalism, an investigation that should stop considering chimpanzees as default living 'starting point' models."

As the authors note, this is not so different from what was concluded about the gait of Ardipithecus ramidus and that the examination of that hominin led to the idea that, perhaps, modern apes are poor models for early hominin morphology and that the modern apes diverged from the last common ancestor (LCA) in entirely different directions. It is exciting to get to a point where there are obviously transitional characters between hominins and non-hominins. 

The other thing that is quite striking is that there is no obvious dividing line between being a quadruped and a biped and that the transition took some time and was gradual.  Don Johanson, in Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, word:

You don’t gradually go from being a quadruped to being a biped. What would the intermediate stage be–a triped? I’ve never seen one of these.

It appears that he may have been wrong, at least about the gradual part.