David MacMillan: Understanding Creationism

Over at Panda's Thumb, David MacMillan is writing a short series on the subject that has baffled people like me for years: why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, do young earth creationists continue to reject evolutionary theory. From Part 1:

We understand the theory of evolution to be a series of conclusions drawn from over a century of research, predictions, and discoveries. This theory allows us to understand the mechanisms in biology and make further predictions about the sort of evidence we will uncover in the future. Its predictive power is vital to success in real-life applications like medicine, genetic engineering, and agriculture.

However, creationists don’t see it the same way. Creationists artificially classify medicine, genetic research, and agriculture as “operational science,” and believe that those disciplines function in a different way than research in evolutionary biology. They understand the theory of evolution, along with mainstream geology and a variety of other disciplines, as a philosophical construct created for the express purpose of explaining life on Earth apart from divine intervention. Thus, they approach the concept of evolution from a defensive position; they believe it represents an attack on all religious faith.

This defensive posture is reflected in nearly all creationist literature, even in the less overt varieties such as intelligent-design creationism. It dictates responses. When creationists see a particular argument or explanation about evolution, their initial reaction is to ask, “How does this attack the truth of God as Creator? What philosophical presuppositions are dictating beliefs here? How can I challenge those underlying assumptions and thus demonstrate the truth?” Recognizing this basis for creationist arguments is a helpful tool for understanding why such otherwise baffling arguments are proposed.

This kind of thought is always on display with Ken Ham, who continually refers to evolution as “their secularist religion” despite literal pleading from scientists who know better. The problem is that Ham is very persuasive and holds vast importance in the evangelical community. It doesn't matter that, as MacMillan notes earlier in his post, there are no young earth creationists that understand evolution even rudimentarily. They simply aren't interested in learning about it.  Why should they? On the other hand, the idea that evolution is presupposed on atheistic terms is ludicrous to your average evolutionary biologist.  Scientific research does not and cannot convey truth. It is just science, no more and no less. As someone recently wrote in the comments on this post:

When I do math and I don’t pray or think about God, it’s not atheistic math, it’s just math. When I drive and am not thinking about God, it’s not secular driving, it’s just driving. And when I go into the lab and I’m thinking about the lab experiment and not theological issues, its not agnostic science, it’s just science. Adding an adjective implies some sort of intentional avoidance of theism or purposeful distance from theism, when the real truth of the matter is that nobody is avoiding anything, they are just focused on their jobs/hobbies/whatever.

Amen. Ham and like-minded creationists are adding an ontological layer onto the practice of evolutionary biology that does not exist.  If you simply study the fossil record and modern genomics, the evidence for evolution is enormous.  Calling it a “secular religion” won’t make that go away.

Science, Faith and Cognitive Dissonance

Josh Rosenau, who used to write a blog called Thoughts from Kansas, has written a very thoughtful post on the world view as it applies to faith in God and the practice of science.  It has been argued by those who view faith dimly that to practice science and believe that God can work in the modern world is to hold two cognitively dissonant views.  If science is to be reliable, the world must be a spiritually closed system—no input from God—or else one can never reliably predict the results of a particular hypothesis without knowing for sure that God did not have a hand in the outcome.

For example, if a hurricane is traveling up the eastern seaboard and the people of the coastal town of West Noiseville pray that the hurricane misses their nice little hamlet, and, lo and behold, it veers off at the last minute, was that, in fact, the handiwork of God or did the naturally-occurring prevailing winds simply act to perform this action?  When testing atmospheric models to see where the hurricane is going to go, scientists do not take into account the prayers of West Noiseville's residents.  They cannot, because those are outside the purview of the scientific method.  Did God answer their prayers?  Science cannot tell us.  The problem, according to some, however, is that by entertaining a world view that even allows the actions of God, we are compromising our scientific endeavors.  We are allowing for untestable hypotheses.  Jerry Coyne, a notable atheist, makes this argument.  Coyne, however, argues that there are perfectly good scientists who believe in God and that this dissonance is almost subconscious.  He writes:

Although I think scientists who are religious are engaged in a form of subconscious cognitive dissonance, I’ve never said that religious belief automatically prevents somebody from doing good science. There were many believers, even in my own field (Ronald Fisher and Theodosius Dobzhansky, to name two) who made immense contributions to evolutionary biology. And although I vehemently object to Francis Collins’s touting scientific evidence for God (i.e., “The Moral Law”), I’ve said repeatedly that Collins was a good scientist and that I had no scientific objections to his heading the National Institutes of Health.

Here is how Rosenau characterizes Coyne’s position:

Coyne takes the philosophical stance that science and religion are, in some sense, intrinsically incompatible, and he believes that a consequence of this incompatibility will be some sort of psychological conflict in the minds of religious scientists.

I happen to think that his philosophy is flawed, simplistic, and ill-argued, but that’s for another day. He’s claiming that the philosophical point makes a prediction about people’s mental processes, which should be testable. Facts are stubborn things, and a good scientist ought to be willing to adjust his philosophy in response to stubborn facts that stand at odds with those predictions.

Rosenau then goes on to give a rousing list of scientists who were devoutly religious who not only performed excellent science but did so, they felt, in the service of their God.

I also think that Coyne is wrong but for a different reason.

How you view science largely depends on whether or not you take the “short” view or the “long” view of creation. For example, there is evidence that some very bad diseases that we as humans suffer from are caused or at least activated by endogenous retroviruses. These include some cancers and MS. The short view argues that the earth was created in the very recent past and that all bad things that occur around us are direct results of a tangible, physical fall from grace by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, subsequent to which the world was irrevocably changed. They are the “decay” of this fall.

But here's the problem. There is also very good genetic evidence that there has been incorporation of parts of some of these retroviruses into systems such as placental development, which means that, from a human survivability perspective, some of this retroviral DNA has resulted in a “good” thing.  Further, it seems clear that these responses have evolved over a considerable period of time.  These findings are clearly incompatible with the short view of creation.  But need these findings lead to philosophical conundrums?

Coyne has no bad things to say about the scientists that he mentioned (Fisher, Dobzhansky) because they performed science with integrity and honesty and yet were men of faith.  These scientists were not just old earth creationists, but, like their modern counterparts Francisco Ayala, Simon Conway-Morris, Dennis Venema and others, they were evolutionary creationists.  To these people, science is our way of understanding God's creation.  In the process of doing so, however, the first casualty is the short view. These folks found, as did 99% of other Christians practicing in the sciences, that, as Pat Robertson put it a few days ago, there just ain't no way the universe was created six thousand years ago.  They further found that, yes, by gum, evolution really does happen. 

Once you open yourself up to those possibilities,  there is no scientific endeavor that will lead you to any kind of psychological conflict because all roads lead to Rome.  If you truly believe that God created the heavens and the earth, then any research will simply be illuminating that.  Does this cause a rethink of the literal nature of certain scriptural passages?  Yup, sure does.  But there have been competing interpretive models of those passages for centuries. 

Coyne is quite correct that cognitive dissonance can occur in some instances.  If you pursue scientific research to its logical ends, and your scriptural hermeneutic is narrow, you will eventually suffer from this dissonance.  This is, in part, fueling some of the problems at Bryan College right now and is causing somewhat of a crisis of faith in evangelical Christianity. 

If, on the other hand, your understanding of scripture looks more like this, then the sky's the limit.  As Conrad Hyers points out:

...the Genesis accounts of creation do not prove to be in conflict with scientific or historical knowledge. This is not because the creation texts can be shown to be in conformity with the latest scientific and historical knowledge, or supported by it, but precisely because they have little to do with it. They belong to radically different types of literature, with equally different types of concerns and goals.

Where does this leave miracles? Dunno. I will tackle that on another day.

Saner Heads Prevail in South Carolina

The Columbian Mammoth is now the official state fossil of South Carolina.  Seanna Adcox has the story:

Olivia, who wants to become an Egyptologist, requested the designation after realizing South Carolina was among just seven states without a state fossil. Her research showed that slaves dug up fossilized mammoth teeth on a South Carolina plantation in 1725. They are thought to be among the first identified vertebrate fossils in North America.

"That just fueled her passion. It was not just about fossils but about her state being recognized," said her mother, Amanda McConnell.

But Olivia's seemingly simple idea, which easily passed the House in February, drew opposition in the Senate.

Senators tacked on language declaring mammoths were among God's sixth-day creation, as written in the book of Genesis. They also attempted to create a symbol moratorium. Both amendments were eventually tossed out by a House-Senate committee that worked out a compromise, which both chambers approved last week.

Not sure exactly how the compromise was structured because the bill's sponsor is a believer in “biblical creation” as well. Apparently, he said it did not make sense to tack the language on to just this bill.

I have seen this phrase “biblical creation” creeping into the literature of the young earth movement and I find it offensive. Those who use it equate it with young earth creationism and the language is stark: those who don't agree with that movement don't believe in the bible because their creation theology is not “biblical.” That is arrogant, myopic, condescending and (I believe) scripturally indefensible.

Congratulations, Olivia.

There is a story in the New York Times by Alan Binder involving the Bryan College controversy, if you are interested.  I so dislike the Times that I will not comment on the story here.

Ark Encounter Begins Construction

Catching up!   I have been snowed under with work and the end of the semester.  In the meantime, several things have happened.  First, it appears that, due to an influx of money, the Ark-n-Park has broken ground.  The Grant County News reports:

In an invitation only “Hammer and Peg” ceremony last week at the Creation Museum in Hebron, representatives from Answers In Genesis said bulldozers will be moving dirt on the 800-acre project off Ky. 36 in Williamstown by the end of the month.
“This is going to change the city of Williamstown,” said Ken Hamm, president, CEO and found of AIG. “By the way, this will change Northern Kentucky. All sorts of things are going to happen because of this.”

Hamm told the near capacity crowd of 900, that a poll by Vanity Fair Magazine and 60 Minutes indicates that 43 percent of the public surveyed would like to have Noah’s Ark discovered.

Wonder why it was invite only? The comment about finding Noah's Ark is a sort of throw-away line since, even if we can take the Genesis story literally, the odds of that are practically nil.

A Chronicle of the Ball State Controversy

Christopher Stephens offers a time-line of all of the happenings at Ball State over the past year involving the controversy with intelligent design. 

Pat Robertson Reiterates His Disdain for Young Earth Creationism

Late last week, Pat Robertson took to the airwaves to, yet again, tell the world what he thinks of young earth creationism.  Here is what he had to say:




He gets very few of the details correct but his general gist is. He seems to be taking the view that Adam is a specially appointed person picked by God to be the first person to walk with God. As Davis Young points out, however, this effectively means that there were quite a few “pre-Adamites” walking around before this with uncertain spiritual identities.  Robertson is a master of understatement when he says that “...we haven't worked all the wrinkles out...”  Interestingly, the article then points this out:

Robertson may have to take this up with his own TV network, which promotes Young Earth Creationist material and publishes articles claiming that opposition to Young Earth Creationism is heretical.

The second article takes the point of view that death could not have occurred before Adam's sin or else Jesus’ atonement would be null and void and that this constitutes a “...direct attack on the foundation and message of the Cross.” There is then a hat tip to AIG and Ken Ham.  Throughout the article, there is absolutely no attempt made to grapple with any of the scientific data.  It is as if it simply is wrong, no matter what it yields.  This is a variant of the “Man's word versus God's word” argument that Ham is so fond of using.

2 Fired Bryan College Professors Sue the College

Last week, the AP reported that two of the professors at Bryan College that have not been retained, Steven DeGeorge and Stephen Barnett, have sued the college for breach of the school charter.  The AP writes:

Science professor Stephen Barnett and education professor Steven DeGeorge say in the lawsuit that college trustees don’t have the authority to make the change because the school’s charter says the statement can’t be altered.

Attorney Rosemarie Hill, who represents the college, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press (http://bit.ly/1jLAoBZ) that leaders at the institution do have the authority to amend the statement.

“You might disagree with it,” she said. “But the college, through its board of trustees, has the right to make the decisions it did.”

Since the school clarified its statement of belief to say that Adam and Eve were historical people who were not created from previously existing life forms, the conflict has escalated with a majority of professors voting “no confidence” in the school’s president, and students and alumni penning petitions in response to the controversy.

Students held a protest day last month prompted by the loss of at least nine of the college’s 44 full-time professors and statements by Bryan College.  President Stephen Livesay, who has downplayed the controversy.

As I said in the last post on this, there is a lot of unwanted attention being paid to the college right now about this and the suit will bring even more to President Livesay and the Board of Trustees. How do you downplay a lawsuit filed by two of your own faculty against policies that a large chunk of the school does not support?

20% of Faculty Leaving Bryan College

The Tennessean is reporting that quite a number of faculty have either left or been dismissed from Bryan College as a direct result of the new statement of faith, promulgated by President Livesay and the board of directors, that the faculty have been required to sign.  They write:

The dispute at Bryan College, named for William Jennings Bryan, began in February when trustees clarified the school's statement of belief to state that Adam and Eve were historical people who were not created from previously existing life forms.

Since then, the conflict has escalated with a majority of professors voting "no confidence" in the school's president, and students and alumni penning petitions in response to the controversy.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press (http://bit.ly/1rPvIwM) reports that in a day of action last week, students wrote notes to the Board of Trustees, signed petitions, wore black armbands and expressed their opinions on social media, among other actions.

The protest was prompted by the loss of at least nine of the college's 44 full-time professors, two of whom were fired after rejecting the college's clarified statement of belief, and statements by Bryan College President Stephen Livesay, who has downplayed the controversy.

How do you downplay the loss of 20% of your faculty? That would be devastating to any institution of higher learning.  Livesay has also said that “the reality is we are solid.” Funny, that is not what quite a few students are saying. From the Times Free Press story:

In the foyer of the small Christian school's administration building on Monday, students wrote notes to departing staffers, whose portraits lined a long table. Recent news stories of the controversy at Bryan hung on a big poster. Comments from Livesay that students are happy and Bryan is "solid" were highlighted.

"Is this your voice?" the poster asked.

More than 170 students initialed a sheet that answered "no." One set of initials sat under the side that said "yes."

Dozens of students tied strips of black fabric to their arms to highlight the sadness on campus.

And at a morning chapel service, the last of the year, students stood up to announce their discontent and that Monday would be a day for students to speak out.

I am not sure how this is going to end up but it does reflect a growing sense that, as a Christian body, we need to grapple with the science coming out of genetics and palaeontology and assess different scriptural models rather than ignore them, which is what the board is doing.

There is a new book out titled Four Views on the Historical Adam (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) which assesses the hermeneutic arguments for whether Adam and Eve really did exist. There is a good reason that there are four views and good reasons that scholars have been wrestling with the relevant biblical texts for centuries.  President Livesay and the board are not only saying that three of the views are wrong, but that they aren't welcome at Bryan.  So much for studied academic discourse and dialogue. 

The Discovery Institute Strikes Again

We don't even have to play “Guess that party!” do we? This time it is Mike Fair, R-Greenville, South Carolina, using the DI template.  The Columbia Post and Courier carries the story:

The S.C. Education Oversight Committee on Monday sent proposed language to the board that would require biology students to construct scientific arguments that seem to support and seem to discredit Darwinism.

The decision comes more than two months after the subject became a divisive issue for many in the Palmetto State and nationally in February, when Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, voiced opposition during the review and approval of a new set of science standards for 2014.

At the time, Fair argued against teaching natural selection as fact, adding there are other theories students deserve to learn. He said the best way for students to learn was for the schools to teach "the controversy." On Monday, he reiterated his stance.

"We must teach the controversy," Fair said. "There's another side. I'm not afraid of the controversy. ... That's the way most of us learn best."

There is no Controversy. The only controversy is one that is manufactured by the Discovery Institute and organizations like it.   Maybe we should start teaching other controversial things.  Controversies exist in science where the data does not clearly point one direction or the other.  It does not exist when the information clearly points one direction.  I would call on rep. Fair to state what, exactly, the controversy is.  My suspicion is that it would be usual canards about transitional fossils and irreducible complexity.  It is one thing to fear a controversy that is real and can shake things up.  It is another to fear one that only exists in the minds of some. 

Evolution Humor

I saw this cartoon on Wonkette and laughed for a good five minutes solid.  Enjoy:

Smithsonian Gets Tyrannosaurus rex, AiG Responds

Last week, the Washington Post reported that the Smithsonian Institution had finally purchased an original Tyrannosaurus rex fossil to replace the replica that has stood in the Dinosaur hall for the last fifteen years.  J. Freedom du Lac reports:

The world’s second-most-visited museum has big plans for the borrowed king carnivore: It will stand as the centerpiece of the new dinosaur hall that’s scheduled to open in 2019, after a five-year, $48 million makeover. The hall — one of the most visited spaces at the Natural History Museum — closes April 28.

“It’s an amazing object,” Johnson said of the T. rex.

The 38-foot-long dinosaur died more than 66 million years ago in a riverbed and was frozen in time — and rock — for ages. It remained unseen and undisturbed from the late Cretaceous Period until around Labor Day in 1988, when rancher Kathy Wankel spotted a small part of an arm bone during a day hike in a wildlife refuge.

The fossil will be in the hall for fifty years because it is owned by the Army Corps of Engineers.  It will inspire students of science for decades to come.  Its purchase by the Smithsonian did not go unnoticed, however.  Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis, had this to say:

From many of the responses I’ve seen to the Creation Museum’s exquisite dinosaur exhibits and sculptures (including life-like animatronic dinosaurs), it would seem that evolutionists think they “own” dinosaurs! They see dinosaurs as synonymous with evolution and millions of years, and evolutionists can become very upset when creationists use dinosaurs. Evolutionists know that kids are fascinated by these creatures, and so they can be used to draw kids in and teach them about evolution.

For example, recently, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (in Washington, DC), acquired a T. rex skeleton, known as “the Nation’s T. Rex.” This T. rex is very complete. The museum director, Kirk Johnson, believes the new dinosaur skeleton will draw many children to the National Museum of Natural History, saying, “Dinosaurs are the gateway drug to science for kids.”

Of course, secularists know that children love dinosaurs, and they use dinosaurs to indoctrinate kids into evolutionary ideas. “The Nation’s T. Rex” will be a centerpiece for the Smithsonian—a museum funded by our tax dollars. In reality, then, the government is imposing the religion of evolution and millions of years on children visiting the Smithsonian, while also claiming a supposed separation of church and state! Our tax dollars are funding the religion of naturalism (atheism) and its evolutionary story to be exhibited in the Smithsonian in the nation’s capital!

As I mentioned in a comment on my last post, this is part and parcel of how Ham works. As he did in the Ham on Nye debate, by dismissing all of the historical sciences as bogus, he can claim that the Smithsonian is practicing religious indoctrination.  Since, in his mind, evolution is only supported by the fossil record, a record of past events, it isn't scientific.  That evolution is supported by modern genetics either completely escapes him or, worse, is something he ignores because he has to.

Bill Nye Says He Underestimated Impact of Debate

Bill Nye now says that he underestimated the impact that his debate with Ken Ham had on the evolution/creationism debate.  As he writes in the Skeptical Inquirer:

I do about a dozen college appearances every year. It’s a privilege that I enjoy immensely. At first, I figured this appearance and this encounter would get about the same amount of notice as a nice college gig. There’d be a buzz on Twitter and Facebook, but the world would go on spinning without much notice on the outside. Not here: the creationists promoted it like crazy, and soon it seemed like everyone I met was talking about it.

I slowly realized that this was a high-pressure situation. Many of you, by that I mean many of my skeptic and humanist colleagues, expressed deep concern and anger that I would be so foolish as to accept a debate with a creationist, as this would promote him and them more than it would promote me and us. As I often say and sincerely believe, “You may be right.” But, I held strongly to the view that it was an opportunity to expose the well-intending Ken Ham and the support he receives from his followers as being bad for Kentucky, bad for science education, bad for the U.S., and thereby bad for humankind—I do not feel I’m exaggerating when I express it this strongly.

In hindsight, it is, perhaps, understandable that he would think this, but Ham is a showman, who plays for high-stakes and, because creationists are normally not given the time of day by your average scientist, this presented a golden opportunity to tear down what he honestly believes is the heart of the philosophical naturalism that is turning people away from God. That Nye is not known for his church-going behavior only added fuel to the fire. It didn't matter how important Nye thought the debate was.

The other concern, voiced going in, was that, while Ken Ham eats, lives and breathes creationism, Nye was not an expert in this field.  He writes:

I am by no means an expert on most of this. Unlike my beloved uncle, I am not a geologist. Unlike my academic colleague and acquaintance Richard Dawkins, I am not an evolutionary biologist. Unlike my old professor Carl Sagan or my fellow Planetary Society Board member and dear friend Neil deGrasse Tyson, I am not an expert on astrophysics. I am, however, a science educator. In this situation, our skeptical arguments are not the stuff of PhDs. It’s elementary science and common sense. That’s what I planned to rely on. That’s what gave me confidence.

What might seem like common sense to him is, by way of every poll I have ever seen, not common sense to a good deal of the population, especially the evangelical Christian subset, the direct taxonomic descendents of the fundamentalists from the 1920s.  This is, for many people, no less than a struggle between good and evil and, as I mentioned a bit back, modern evangelical fundamentalism has gotten to the point where if science is seen to conflict with scripture at all, it is to be regarded with skepticism and suspicion and rejected, if necessary.  Nye should have seen this as an uphill battle going in.

Nye did, however, have charitable things to say about his debate opponent:

I was and am respectful of Ken Ham’s passion. At a cognitive level, he believes what he says. He really means it, when he says that he has “a book” that supersedes everything you and I and his parishioners can observe everywhere in nature around us. I respected that commitment; I used it to drive, what actors call, my “inner monologue.” I did not choose, as I was advised, to attack, attack, attack. My actor’s preparation helped me keep things civil and be respectful of Mr. Ham despite what struck me as his thoughtless point of view. I’m sure it influenced the countless people who’ve written to me and come up to me in public to express their strong and often enthusiastic support. Thank you all.

I am also respectful of Ken Ham's passion but not the results that it produces. I am not respectful of the untruths (here and here) that he and his organization perpetuate in the service of his passion. I am not respectful of his disdain and condescension of mainstream scientists, and I am not respectful of his attacks on other Christians (here and here) who are also trying to find their way in the science/faith maze. Consequently, it is difficult for me to be respectful of Ken Ham as a person, no matter what he believes.

Your Inner Fish Part 2, on PBS Tonight

Don't forget to watch part 2 of Your Inner Fish, on PBS tonight at 10:00.  The first episode was very good and is a great companion to the book.

Poland Welcomes a New Religion...Maybe

In a recent court decision, a Warsaw court overturned a lower court's decision to deny the request by a group of people to petition that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be an accepted religion in the country.  Heather Saul of The Independent reports:

A group of Pastafarians who gathered outside the court shouting "pasta" during the hearing on Tuesday welcomed the ruling.

In January, Pastafarian minister Christopher Schaeffer was sworn into the Pomfret New York Town Council this week with a colander on his head throughout the ceremony to represent his unique religious beliefs.

They now have two more months to gather the necessary documents to prove that their religion should be taken seriously.  What is mentioned briefly in the article is that this movement is a direct response to the Intelligent Design supporters’ statement that, while the original ID movement had strong links to organized Christianity, in fact, the “Intelligent Designer” could be anything or anyone. The response was, then, “If this is so, then we believe that the universe was created by a flying spaghetti monster” and Pastafarianism was born.  As parodies go, it is pretty good and the ID folks only have themselves to blame for this, since they refused to be up-front about something that everybody else on the planet knew: that the “designer” is the God of the Bible. They cannot, of course, do this because if they did, ID as a “legitimate” course of study would be dead in the water as far as the public schools are concerned. They have very nearly given the game away recently by linking ID to “essential Christian doctrines”  in a conference at a Baptist church north of Houston.  In the wake of parodies like the CFSM, it will be interesting to see where the ID movement goes from here.

Teach Both. Let The Kids Decide

Rick Perry once told kids that they teach both evolution and creationism in Texas “…. because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.” Why stop there?

Kate Mulgrew Was Snookered

Io9 is running a story that Kate Mulgrew does not, in fact, believe that the sun orbits the earth and that she was duped into appearing in the film The Principles. From her Facebook page:

“I understand there has been some controversy about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused. Kate Mulgrew”

As I mentioned to a reader, Charleton Heston also regretted doing a “documentary” called The Mysterious Origins of Man, but I cannot find his press statement on it. As Ms. Mulgrew mentioned, Lawrence Krauss was also misrepresented. Here is part of his statement on Slate:

I have no recollection of being interviewed for such a film, and of course had I known of its premise I would have refused. So, either the producers used clips of me that were in the public domain, or they bought them from other production companies that I may have given some rights to distribute my interviews to, or they may have interviewed me under false pretenses, in which case I probably signed some release. I simply don’t know.

Many people have suggested I litigate. But this approach seems to me to be completely wrong because it would elevate the profile of something that shouldn’t even rise to the level of popular discussion. The best thing we can all do when faced by nonsense like that, or equivalent silliness promoted by biblical fundamentalists who claim that science supports a literal interpretation of the Bible, is to ignore it in public forums, and not shine any light on the authors of this trash.

And everyone breathes a sigh of relief.  It is unfortunate/tragic/sad that people like Sungenis have to resort to subterfuge to get people to agree with their crackpot ideas.  We should have known better.

Hat tip to Jason Broyles

More on Vouchers

One of my readers pointed out that, as much as I castigate politicians such as Paul Broun, who has publicly stated that evolutionary and big bang theories are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” they don't get into the offices they hold without the votes of the people.  That someone such as Broun can rise to hold a position on a science and technology committee is truly astounding, in and of itself and points to gaping holes in our selection processes.  But, back to the people.  Politico is the latest outlet to run a story on the controversial voucher programs being run by an increasing number of states.  Stephanie Simon writes:

One set of books popular in Christian schools calls evolution “a wicked and vain philosophy.” Another derides “modern math theorists” who fail to view mathematics as absolute laws ordained by God. The publisher notes that its textbooks shun “modern” breakthroughs — even those, like set theory, developed back in the 19th century. Math teachers often set aside time each week — even in geometry and algebra — to explore numbers in the Bible. Students learn vocabulary with sentences like, “Many scientists today are Creationists.”

I am assuming that the information being disseminated here comes from the Creationist Voucher Database, compiled by Zack Kopplin, which is a great resource.  Tennessee currently does not have a voucher program but it is being promoted in the state house even as we speak.  Ms. Simon remarks that the voucher support program is very well-organized:

They’ve spent heavily to campaign for sympathetic lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans — often targeting primary races to knock out anti-voucher candidates early. They’ve staged rallies packed with cheering families. They’ve funded local advocacy groups such as North Carolina Citizens for Educational Freedom and Hoosiers for Economic Growth. And they’ve worked closely with black ministers to boost demand for vouchers in African-American neighborhoods.

Wanting a better education for your kids is a noble idea, and if you think your kids are getting an education that is not only bad but reflects world views that are distinctly not yours, then you need to act.  There are schools that promote a Christian world view but still teach good science.  There are also curricula that are oriented this way.  But they swim against the tide.

The principle problem is one of the tragic failures of modern evangelical fundamentalism: that modern science can conflict with scripture and that, as a result, it is to be either regarded skeptically or, worse, dismissed altogether.  How did we get here? 

Slightly Off-Topic: Kate Mulgrew To Narrate Geocentrism Movie

The former Kathryn Janeway, of the starship Voyager, Kate Mulgrew (otherwise known as Mrs. Columbo) has gone down the rabbit hole.  She will be narrating a film by Robert Sungenis, titled The Principle.  The Daily Mail reports:

The film, set for release this spring, was partially backed by a well known anti-Semitic and far-right conservative, Robert Sungenis, who runs a blog called 'Galileo Was Wrong.'

Scientists such as Michio Kaku, Lawrence Krauss, and Max Tegmart all appear in the trailer, discussing the Earth's unique characteristics that allow it to sustain life.

Sungenis himself appears in the trailer to offer some of his conspiracy theory.

'You can go on some websites of NASA to see that they've started to take down stuff that might hint to a geocentric universe,' he tells the audience.

I wrote a post on Sungenis a bit back, when the geocentrism issue appeared on the radar and the post generated some chatter.  According to the story in the Daily Mail, Sungenis has also been tied to anti-holocaust rhetoric and they provide a link to this article, which relates this bit of unpleasantness:

Sungenis, who was born into a Catholic family but became a Protestant before returning to the Catholic Church in 1992, was taken seriously in mainstream Catholic circles for many years, even producing two religious series for EWTN, a Catholic television station. That ended in 2002, when Sungenis published a 33,000-word, anti-Semitic attack on a joint statement by the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs that criticized the Catholic Church's history of attempting to convert Jews. The article repeated a series of ancient anti-Semitic canards, relied on anti-Semites like Father Denis Fahey as authorities, and even praised Fahey and Father Charles Coughlin (the viciously anti-Semitic "radio priest" of the 1930s) as "dedicated Catholic priests who lived impeccable lives and defended Holy Mother Church from every sort of Satanic deception." As a result, EWTN pulled Sungenis' TV series and removed all mention of him from its Web site; in a similar way, Envoy magazine also removed Sungenis from its website. Since then, Sungenis has gone even further into anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering, frequently reminding people that the 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia "predicts the anti-Christ will come from Jewry."

As career moves go, this is not a good one for Ms. Mulgrew, who should know better than to get mixed up with these people.


P.S. Ordinarily I would not touch things that come from the Southern Poverty Law Center, since they are rabidly partisan, sensationalistic, and lean far to the left of MSNBC.  Insomuch as I can tell, they have gotten their fact right here but I have not dug deep. 

Kenneth Miller: Darwin, Design, and the Catholic Faith

Kenneth Miller has a lengthy post for Beliefnet on evolution and faith.  There is no date on the page, so I don't know when it came out.  He writes:

Science is, just as John Paul II said, silent on the issue of ultimate purpose, an issue that lies outside the realm of scientific inquiry. This means that biological evolution, correctly understood, does not make the claim of purposelessness. It does not address what Simpson called the "deeper problem," leaving that problem, quite properly, to the realm of faith.

The rest of the argument is, in many ways, a boiled down version of the one he proposed in Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, where he argued that contingency is built into the system. He writes:

The neo-creationists of intelligent design, unlike Popes Benedict and John Paul, argue against evolution on every level, claiming that a "designer" has repeatedly intervened to directly produce the complex forms of living things. This view stands in sharp contradiction to the words of a 2004 International Theological Commission document cited by the Cardinal. In reality, this document carries a ringing endorsement of the "widely accepted scientific account" of life's emergence and evolution, describes the descent of all forms of life from a common ancestor as "virtually certain," and echoes John Paul II's observation of the "mounting support" for evolution from many fields of study.

More important, the same document makes a critical statement on how we should interpret scientific studies of the complexity of life: "whether the available data support inferences of design or chance cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence."

Miller is coming at this from the back side. It is a common misunderstanding that evolution is a random process. This is argued by Cardinal Schönborn (who he quotes in the post as calling evolution an “unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection” ) as well as quite a few Discovery Institute fellows like David Klinghoffer and David Berlinski.  Here is the problem: natural selection is measurable and it is directional.  Therefore, if you want to argue that evolution is an “unguided, unplanned process,” than the forces that act on plants and animals in nature are unplanned and unguided as well. I doubt any Christian wants to go down that road theologically.   This is exactly contrary to what Miller is suggesting.  He argues that the events in nature are not random, as is generally conceived by philosophical naturalism, but are, instead, contingent in ways that we, perhaps, cannot understand.

The point he is making is that the scientific enterprise cannot examine this problem.  It is a theological one, not a scientific one.  It is not just that at a gross level we cannot use science to prove or disprove God's existence, but that even at a subatomic level, there is no certainty.  We act on faith, and, sometimes, that has to be enough.