Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling, Creationism and the Challenge of Modern Geology

Recently, a story showed up in the science dailies about evidence supporting rapid canyon formation in Iceland.  First, the story that the BBC ran:

The Jokulsargljufur canyon, 28km long and up to 100m deep, is home to Europe's most powerful waterfall. By analysing the chemistry of rocks in the canyon's walls, the researchers constructed a timeline of how the canyon was shaped over time. Most changes seem to have taken place during three brief but brutal periods. Interestingly, these key flooding events occurred two, five and nine thousand years ago - separated by millennia of relative stability. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the scientists say their findings demonstrate the importance of brief but cataclysmic events in shaping landscapes.

What the story goes on to say is that each brief, but brutal period may have been a matter of days.  This is fascinating but is not unique.  A similar even occurred in eastern Washington State in the late Pleistocene when there were a series of massive floods that carved out huge areas, creating the scablands.  Consequently, while this report is interesting, there is clearly a precedent for rapid movement of sediment by fast-moving water. Another example of this is the Canyon Lake Gorge, in Texas, which was formed in one very large flood, in 2002. 

Fast, torrential floods carving huge canyons quickly out of solid rock. This was too much of an opportunity for Ken Ham to pass up. Very shortly, his post titled Secularists Say Landscapes Can Form in Days came out. (Aside: note the title.  Ham has dispensed with all pretenses of being inclusive, now considering anyone who supports an old earth and the standard geological model a “secularist.”  There can be no room in Bible-believing Christian circles for those not espousing the young earth view.  Organizations like the Association of Christian Geologists are dismissed out of hand.) Ham writes:

Researchers studying Europe’s most powerful waterfall and the canyon containing it reportedly reached the conclusion that they were “created in a matter of days by extreme flooding.” Rather than being the result of slow-and-gradual processes, these researchers believe that a series of extreme floods several thousand years apart formed the waterfall and the canyon catastrophically. They say that these “findings demonstrate the long-term impact that extreme flood events can have on landscapes.”

The leader of the study apparently stated, “We think of natural environments as being formed over thousands of years, but sometimes they are shaped very suddenly. This insight into one of Iceland’s magnificent landscapes helps us better understand these processes, and illustrates their legacy.”

Of course, we have already known that because the Bible tells us that we live on a young Earth. Geological features cannot take millions of years to form slowly and gradually because the planet isn’t that old! When we start with the Bible we know that we live on a young Earth that was radically reshaped by a massive catastrophe, the global Flood. The Flood and its aftermath explain many of the geologic features we see today.

First, it is intellectually dishonest to accept only the sections of someone's argument that you agree with and dispense with the rest.  This is, charitably, cherry-picking the data.  Ham is quite willing to agree that the Jokulsargljufur canyon was formed very quickly, but not that it represents several episodes thousands of years apart.

Ham then calls on Andrew Snelling, the resident geologist, who figured into my last post. In response to the story, Snelling writes:

This is a brief reminder that even uniformitarians are finding that the actual observational data can only explain the formation of landforms such as canyons and massive waterfalls by catastrophic floods, not the present-day slow-and-gradual geologic processes. Of course we disagree on the timescale, but agree this canyon and waterfall in Iceland were carved after the Ice Age, the one short Ice Age that occurred after the Genesis Flood. And rather than floods being thousands of years apart, they would have been only years to decades apart. Of course, this canyon formed in hardened basalt layers in contrast to the soften volcanic ash layers at Mount St. Helens, but it still resulted from catastrophic floods which carved through the solid rock as though it were soft!

Uniformatarians aren't finding anything of the sort. Snelling is clearly putting up a straw man argument by claiming that geologists conclude that canyons can only form rapidly.  There are quite a few canyons around the world that show evidence of having been formed over quite a long period of time and geologists know it. Even the geologically recent Grand Canyon has likely been forming over the last six million years. By the way, for scale purposes, the Jokulsargljufur Canyon is 300 feet deep. the Grand Canyon, which would have to have been formed in the same, rapid fashion, is, from the top of the north rim to the canyon floor, 5500 feet, or over eighteen times as deep as the Jokulsargljufur Canyon.  Its only known water source is the Colorado River. 

But the logical errors continue.  In order for their world-wide flood model to work, flood geologists must use the “part to whole” fallacy.  In other words, what is happening at the Jokulsargljufur canyon would have to be happening all over the world.  Not just canyon formation but all rock formation, everywhere.  While it is quite possible that, in some instances, magmatic rock can form quickly, its formation is very easy to spot because it is very distinctive.  But it is the only kind of rock that can form quickly.  Metamorphic and sedimentary rock, which are also quite distinctive in their appearance, take considerably longer to form.   Further, it is estimated that up to 70% of the planet's stratigraphic rock formations are sedimentary, in origin and these formation leave extensive layering.  These rocks form by means of wind, water action, glacial action and other slow processes.  They do not form quickly.  Metamorphic rock forms even more slowly than sedimentary rock because it can only form under considerable heat and pressure.  In the context of a world-wide flood, how would these rocks, which require heating to between 150° and 200°, have formed in the first place? Ham and Snelling are suggesting, in this model, that the geological column settled, hardened into rock by an as-yet undetermined very rapid heating process, and Then incised the canyon over the still-hardening rock.  They provide no explanation for how this would happen.

It is disappointing to see that, in their zeal to disregard the work of mainstream geologists and brand them all as “secularists,” a term that is surely pejorative in this context, they present arguments that fail to stand up to even rudimentary scrutiny.  This is part and parcel of young earth creationism and this example represents only a microcosm of the insurmountable problems that it faces.  It is almost as if they feel that their devotion to their understanding of scripture should be enough to sway the reader into supporting the young earth model...just don't look too closely. 


  

Andrew Snelling, Geology and Cooking

Sorry, this one rambles a little bit.

Jonathan Baker at Age of Rocks writes an interesting column that is a response to Andrew Snelling's preposterous statement that one can be a successful petroleum geologist and yet be a young earth creationist.  In his column, he likens the different layers of the rock record to the baking of a cake.  After a series of trials in which a cake is cooked for thirty minutes at 150º, then 350º, then 500º, he writes:

In the first trial, it seems, the batter never reached a high enough temperature for these reactions to complete; in the third trial, there were too many! Thus we all know from experience that the results of our cooking depend strongly on the chosen temperature and time. Consider also the various ways to make a roast: we can cook the meat for a short time at high temperature, for a long time at low temperature, or choose some option in between. Why? Because the rate of chemical reactions is temperature dependent, and for every ~10°C increase in temperature, the reaction rate doubles.

Why is this important to understanding the rock record and petroleum geology? He continues:

This flexibility in cooking reflects a basic principle in petroleum geology called the Time-Temperature Index (TTI). The deposition of organic matter in sedimentary layers is much like pouring a raw cake batter into a pan. As those sediments are buried deeper, the temperature naturally increases, due to what’s called the geothermal gradient (heat flows from the Earth’s center to its surface, so temperature increases with depth). Once the temperature becomes high enough, those same chemical reactions that turned our batter into cake can also turn raw organic matter into a suite of energy-rich hydrocarbons (oil and gas). But the actual cooking time depends on the absolute temperature to which those molecules are exposed.

In other words, the Earth’s subsurface works like a giant oven—in fact, this terminology is frequently used by petroleum geologists. As with cooking in our homes, the end result depends on three factors: the original recipe, time, and temperature. When geologists search for oil/gas, they try to constrain those variables as best they can.

The upshot is that, due to the nature of the geothermal gradient, there simply has not been enough time to produce oil if the earth is only six thousand years old. Further, because geologists use this gradient to their advantage in examining the geological column, they have become very good at finding oil.

One of the grand daddies of modern young earth creationism, George McReady Price, received a letter from Harold Clark, another Seventh Day Adventist and fellow creationist, when Clark went out to visit the oil fields in Texas, in 1938. When he got there, Clark received a bit of a shock.  The letter read in part:

"The rocks do lie in a much more definite sequence than we have ever allowed. The statements made in your book, The New Geology, do not harmonize with the conditions in the field. All over the Midwest the rocks lie in great sheets extending over hundreds of miles, in regular order. Thousands of well cores prove this. In East Texas alone are 25,000 deep wells. Probably well over 100,000 wells in the Midwest give data that has been studied and correlated. The science has become a very exact one. Millions of dollars are spent in drilling, with the paleontological findings of the company geologists taken as the basis for the work. The sequence of the microscopic fossils in the strata is remarkably uniform. The same sequence is found in America, Europe, and anywhere that detailed studies have been made. This oil geology has opened up the depths of the earth in a way that we never dreamed of twenty years ago"

Astoundingly, people like Snelling never seemed to learn from the experience that Clark had.  In the last seventy-seven years, oil and gas explorers haven't adopted any form of young earth creationism in their efforts to find oil.  Instead, they have become better at it by using standard, well-understood modern geological methods and an understanding of the geological column that was well-known even in Clark's time.  To debate this on the part of Snelling is willful blindness. 

In some ways, this is analogous to the problem of what you would find in terms of consistency if the geological column were only 4500 years old and really did reflect the remnants of the world-wide flood.  If you could, the experiment might work like this: construct a tank that was a mile high, fill it with about 1000 feet of dirt (remember, the geological column did not exist at all before the flood but they had to be walking around on something), then pour water into the tank, simulating rain for 365 days.  At the end of that period, let the tank drain away (what the flood waters are said to have done).  You know what you will find at the end of that time?  You will find very hard mud at the bottom, medium hard mud in the middle and soupy mud at the top.  What you will not find is sedimentary rock of any kind.  You won't find sandstones, you won't find shales, you won't find chert and you won't find limestone.  Why?  You won't find them because it takes lots and lots of time for these kinds of rocks to form.

Young earth creationist studies of the Grand Canyon are interesting in this regard.  They fail to account for the fact that the walls of the canyon, had they been formed in a year's time, would not have been solid enough to stand up.  Being mostly mud, they would have collapsed, which is what you typically see in large-scale floods.  In fact, you see the relative hardness of rock on display in the canyon walls: the harder rock walls are more vertical, while the softer rock walls are more eroded.  If it were mud, there would be no canyon at all.

That digressed from the original point but these are just more examples of statements that young earth creationists make that are, on the face of it, absurd.  To paraphrase Conrad Hyers: you are asked to believe several impossible things before breakfast. 

Ken Ham Suing State of Kentucky

Ken Ham is suing the state of Kentucky over the revocation of the tax credits for the Ark-n-Park.  Stoyan Zaimov of The Christian Post has this to say:

Answers in Genesis President and CEO Ken Ham revealed that his organization is filing a lawsuit against Kentucky for denying the Ark Encounter theme part participation in the state's tax rebate incentive program. AiG is arguing that the refusal is based on religious discrimination against the creationist group's beliefs.

"Our organization spent many months attempting to reason with state officials so that this lawsuit would not be necessary," Ham said in a statement on Tuesday. "However, the state was so insistent on treating our religious entity as a second-class citizen that we were simply left with no alternative but to proceed to court. This is the latest example of increasing government hostility toward religion in America, and it's certainly among the most blatant."

The state has simply said that it is revoking the credits in light of Ham’s hiring practices, and that support of the tax credits would constitute state-sponsored religion. Ham responded thus:

"The state granted its preliminary approval for the incentive. Only after the atheist groups objected and publicly attacked the state's preliminary approval, did the state renege on its commitment," Ham said in December.

"AiG, as a religious organization, has the legal right to hire people who believe in our Christian faith," he added.

More on the text of the lawsuit can be found at the AiG website, here.  It reads, in part:

The suit specifically alleges that state officials discriminated against AiG and the Ark project “by wrongfully excluding them from participation in the Kentucky Tourism Development Program. Plaintiffs are denied access to this tourism incentive program because of who they are, what they believe, and how they express their beliefs, in flagrant disregard of their constitutional and statutory rights." AiG points out that its lawsuit was filed a few hours after President Barack Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he declared that America must “constantly reaffirm that fundamental freedom: freedom of religion . . . and to do so free of persecution, and fear, and discrimination.” In addition, this afternoon the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit just released an opinion (in Conlon v. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) reaffirming that faith-based groups have an essential constitutional right to make employment decisions consistent with their religious beliefs.

Back when the tax credits were originally revoked, in the middle of December, Dan Arel, over at Patheos, pointed out some inconsistencies in Ham's defense. For one, Ham states that the tax breaks are not money to help finish the project, yet as Arel writes:

But suspiciously Ham then says that park would use this rebate to offset the cost of building. So in reality, since the park is being built in phases, he is asking the state for the money to complete the project. This is exactly why the park is relying on this rebate.

The second point relates to the law about hiring practices. Arel notes that the Ark-n-Park is being set up as a for-profit enterprise. It, therefore, falls under the EEOC laws. Only churches and non-profits organizations can hire anyone they want to. Ham continues to refer to the project as a religious project but, as Arel points out, it has been set up as a business.

Ham has been duplicitous about this project from the start, originally stating that AiG had only a small role in the project (around the 3:25 mark) and that it was clearly a for-profit business venture.  That was hardly believable at the time.   Now, as Ham states, it is AiG that is doing the hiring and and he is crying foul because, as a religious organization, he ought to be able to hire who he wants.  I doubt the suit will end well for AiG and Ark Encounter. 

A Darwin Day Cartoon

Ardziv Simonian,  at Exodus (A travel site), has put together a cartoon in celebration of Darwin Day.  It is a humorous look at the life of Charles Darwin and can be found here.

Time to Play "Name That Party" Again!

A state representative (guess which party!) in Montana has revived a bill to allow the teaching of intelligent design in the classroom.   This is part of the Wedge Strategy as outlined by the Discovery Institute under the heading “Teach Alternative Theories.” As Education Week notes:

Republican [Whoops. Gave it away] Rep. Clayton Fiscus of Billings introduced House Bill 321 in the House Education Committee Friday.

Last session, in 2013, Fiscus introduced a similar bill, which died in the same committee. One proponent spoke on Friday, none spoke in 2013.

Opponents say the bill would allow religion to be taught in Montana public schools.

Depending on how narrowly one takes the Dover ruling, this would probably wither under the first suit filed on behalf of parents.  It just pains me to see another Republican parroting the ID party line when, in all likelihood, he probably couldn't tell you the basics of evolutionary theory if his life depended on it. 

Darwin Day at UT

Darwin Day(s) are occurring at UT this week.  Here is the post from the NCSE:

Dear Knoxville-area friends of NCSE,

I thought that you might like to know about the Darwin Day events
taking place on the campus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

On February 10 at 7:00 p.m., Colin D. Sumrall will be speaking on "On
the Origin of Birds: Did the Age of Dinosaurs Really End?" in the
University Center auditorium.

On February 11 at 11:30 a.m., Joseph Panzik will be speaking on
"Earth, an Evolving Planet" in Dabney 575.

On February 11 at 7:00 p.m., A. C. Sandy Echternacht will be speaking
on "Messing with Mother Nature: Introduced Species" in the University
Center auditorium.

And on February 12 at 7:00 p.m., Alan de Queiroz will be giving the
keynote address, "A World Shaped by Astonishing Events: Darwin,
Creationism, and the Geography of Life" in the University Center
auditorium.

I will at least be able to attend the Sumrall presentation. Not sure about the others. I have to give an exam on the 12th but may postpone it until next week.  The website is here. 

Creationism in the UK: Overstated?

Forbes is running a story that finds the prevalence of young earth creationism is not as great as has been thought.  John Farrell, who right off the bat equates “creationism” with “young earth creationism” writes:

It was thought, based on surveys conducted in 2006, that more citizens of the U.K. were embracing creationism. Indeed, the BBC Horizon program found that 22% of U.K. citizens identified themselves as creationists.

Unsworth, who has a PhD in molecular biology from University College London, was skeptical, and her survey data suggest her skepticism was well founded.

“Many people simply haven’t thought much about evolution,” she said in a press release shortly after reporting her initial results at a Faraday conference in September.

“Survey questions may force them into ticking either a ‘creationist’ or an ‘evolutionist’ box,” she said, “but whether these labels have much real-life significance is pretty questionable.”

I would believe that most people haven't thought about evolution much. I certainly know that the people that I work with at ORNL don't give it much thought. It simply is not germane to their lives. The only reason it is to me is that I pursued evolution as an academic discipline.  I think that even in the Christian community, there is general apathy about it.  The story continues:

After carrying out detailed face-to-face interviews with over a hundred Christians and Muslims, Unsworth designed her own survey. Of 2,116 people in Britain, she found that only 3% reject the idea that plants and animals have evolved from earlier life forms, whilst 6.8% reject the idea that humans have evolved from non-human life forms. Only 4% would qualify as young earth creationists.

Further, she discovered that even amongst regular worshippers–meaning those who attend religious services once a month or more, only 14.3% reject plant and animal evolution, 28.6% reject human evolution and 10.2% think the earth is young.

England and Europe as a whole are, generally, more secular than is the United States and I wonder how different those numbers would be here. The same survey would have to be administered.

There is also truth to the idea that those numbers would be higher here in the south than they likely would be in other areas of the country.  As is the case here, there are bound to be pockets of people who accept creationism without reservation—the home school crowd comes to mind— and support for the Discovery Institute and its mission remains high here in the United States.

She is interviewed as saying that she has higher resolution on the data, with regards to different denominations and religions.  I would be very interested to see what that information shows.

Anatomically Modern Humans in the Levant at 55,000 BP

Nature News (the story appears in other outlets, as well) is reporting a new discovery of an anatomically modern skull cap in Israel, at Manot Cave.  The skull was found on a shelf and the associated deposits have been securely dated by uranium/thorium.  The skull is unquestionably modern, with the characteristic “house” shape. The maximum cranial breadth is high on the parietals and overall shape is rounded, rather than flattened, as in Neandertals.  Further, the rear of the vault is lacking the occipital bun present in Neandertals and the cranium is much shorter, having the length of a modern human.  Further compound the issue is that the Neandertals in the region from the sites of Amud and Kebara are, based on the best estimates, coeval in time with the Manot Cave specimen. 

The Nature story expounds thus:

What happened between 90,000 and 45,000 years ago, a period ten times the length of recorded history? Only the fossils can tell us, and they are few. It seems that the earliest modern humans got to the Levant and no farther. Mount Carmel in Israel hosts caves, such as Qafzeh and Skhul, where H. sapiens remains appear in levels older than those occupied by Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis. The replacement of our own species by Neanderthals seems to be an affront to our prejudices. So how did humans eventually make it to Europe?

The partial H. sapiens skull from Manot Cave goes some way towards providing an answer, as well as hinting at how complicated our early history might have been. It looks much more modern than skulls from Qafzeh and Skhul. It is also much younger, suggesting that the hominin was closer, genetically and evolutionarily, to the earliest known European representatives of our species. This skull, the simple answer would suggest, represents modern humans poised to expand out of Africa and colonize the rest of the world.

Here comes the ‘but’. Our modern genomes contain Neanderthal DNA. At some point, our ancestors bred with Neanderthals before they became extinct. Does the Manot skull represent that moment? We simply do not know. Welcome, Manot skull, to messy reality.

If so, then these human/Neandertal hybrids would have been the group that colonized Europe and that is why we (some of us, anyway) see archaic traits in the earliest modern humans from Europe that date to between 35 and 25 thousand years ago. These traits are present mostly in the shape and contours of the vault in the Mladeč and Předmosti specimens from central Europe.  As these humans spread west, the archaic traits, which may have been under negative selection, diminished. Arguing against this hypothesis is that the Mladeč and Předmosti specimens are more archaic than the Manot Cave fossil.  Alternatively, the Manot Cave individual may represent the modern end of the spectrum of a population that does represent Neandertal/early modern hybridization and that contained a high degree of morphological variability.  Much is unclear.

The authors seem to think that there was not continuous evolution from the Skhul/Qafzeh humans, which date to around 100k BP, to the population represented by the Manot Cave individual and that the Manot Cave 1 specimen represents a later migration of moderns into the area, although this is based largely on the fact that there aren't fossils that span that time period.  The problem with this argument, of course, is that up until this this year, we didn't have the Manot Cave fossil, either.  Perhaps, the more persuasive argument is that the Skhul/Qafzeh fossils are quite a bit more archaic than Manot Cave 1 and are morphologically closer to late archaic Homo sapiens in the shape plot they provide (this mirrors my own research in this area).  On the other hand, a lot can happen in fifty thousand years and the required evolution could certainly have taken place.

That scenario is simplistic, but may explain some things that have confounded palaeoanthropologists for over fifty years.

After reading the paper, however, I am left with one question: What about the Herto cranium? It is a reasonably complete African cranium dating to around 150k that would provide a fantastic comparison and answer even more questions.

Australopithecus africanus Used Power and Precision Grip

Science Daily, as well as some other outlets are reporting new research on evidence that Australopithecus africanus used their hands in the same way that we use ours.  Focusing on the trabecular (spongy) bone patterns found in the metacarpals, they discovered that the wear and deposition patterns supported the hypothesis that they used their hands to perform precision and power "thumb to forefinger" tasks.  This is a huge step in the direction of making stone tools and using the hands for many other daily jobs.  The authors are quick to point out, however:

All early hominin metacarpal specimens generally exhibit high trabecular bone volume fraction like that of Pan and unlike that of the lower trabecular density of recent H. sapiens. However, the distribution of trabecular bone is similar to the distinct patterns of committed tool users and tool makers, H. sapiens and Neandertals.

This is an excellent example of a transitional trait. They began to adapt the power and precision grips while still maintaining arboreal tendencies and retaining some of the skeletal morphology of their ancestors. One more step on the road to humanity.

New Indiana Bill 562

In the Lafayette (or “laughalot” as one of my friends who went to Purdue once called it) Journal and Courier, we learn that state senator Jeff Raatz (political party should be obvious by this point) has crafted an “academic freedom” bill for Indiana public schools.  Dave Bangert writes:

Call it a back-door approach to failed attempts to chip away at state standards on teaching evolution and to bring creationism into the public school classroom, if you want, Raatz said. The bulk of the science world probably will, he figured. He considers it a call to action on critical thinking.

"As long as they do it respectfully," Raatz asked Tuesday, "why should we be afraid of that?"

This week, Raatz and Sen. Dennis Kruse — who has made a cottage industry out of taking swipes at evolution being taught in Indiana classrooms — filed a bill crafted from model legislation built by one of the leading anti-evolution think tanks in the United States.

And, gee, which think tank would that be? This is one of the most insidious campaigns that the Discovery Institute has undertaken.  Clearly aware that it is not legal to teach ID in the classrooms, they have promoted a stealth program to get evolution marginalized as much as possible, leaving ID as the preferred alternative.  Every single one of these bills that comes out has a common stamp on them, coming from the “academic freedom petition” template that originated from the DI. On its face, it seems innocuous enough, but, as Barbara Forrest found out, it is driven by an underlying agenda to rid the classroom of evolution.

PhysOrg: New evidence for anthropic theory that fundamental physics constants underlie life-enabling universe

Wut?

There is an article on the PhysOrg site that seems to be reporting support for the anthropic principle, a critical linchpin of Intelligent Design.  Here is what they say:

German scholar Ulf-G Meißner, chair in theoretical nuclear physics at the Helmholtz Institute, University of Bonn, adds to a series of discoveries that support this Anthropic Principle.

In a new study titled "Anthropic considerations in nuclear physics" and published in the Beijing-based journal Science Bulletin (previously titled Chinese Science Bulletin), Professor Meißner provides an overview of the Anthropic Principle (AP) in astrophysics and particle physics and states: "One can indeed perform physics tests of this rather abstract [AP] statement for specific processes like element generation."

What follows are some fairly standard "tweeking" arguments that have previously been put forth by a number of writers, including Hugh Ross. The article continues:

Professor Meißner states, "the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis sets indeed very tight limits on the variations of the light quark mass."

"Such extreme fine-tuning supports the anthropic view of our Universe," he adds.

"Clearly, one can think of many universes, the multiverse, in which various fundamental parameters take different values leading to environments very different from ours," Professor Meißner states.

Professor Stephen Hawking states that even slight alterations in the life-enabling constants of fundamental physics in this hypothesized multiverse could "give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty."

Professor Meißner agrees: "In that sense," he says, "our Universe has a preferred status, and this is the basis of the so-called Anthropic Principle."

For a major scientific news site such as PhysOrg to give this much space and credence to this argument is astounding. It is still a grand example of argument from personal incredulity, but there certainly is a growing sense that this is one very finely-tuned universe. It almost makes one think about accepting the ID argument. Almost.

Karl Giberson: 2014 Revenge of the Creationists

Karl Giberson has written a post for the Daily Beast called “Revenge of the Creationists,” in which he outlines all of the recent developments in the land of young-earth creationism, although he lumps in climate change as well, a related and often correlative movement.  Aside: I am currently working on a post involving the examination of young earth creationism as a natural theology-based heresy.  Anyway, back to Giberson.  Of course, leading the charge is Ken Ham.  Giberson writes:

America’s leading science denialist is Ken Ham, head of the Answers in Genesis organization that built the infamous $30 million Creation Museum in Kentucky. He also put up a billboard in Times Square to raise funds for an even more ambitious Noah’s Ark Theme Park. Ham’s wacky ideas went primetime in February when he debated Bill Nye. An estimated three million viewers watched Ham claim that the earth is 10,000 years old, the Big Bang never happened, and Darwinian evolution is a hoax. His greatest howler, however—and my top anti-science salvo of 2014—would have to be his wholesale dismissal of the entire scientific enterprise as an atheistic missionary effort: “Science has been hijacked by secularists,” he claimed, who seek to indoctrinate us with “the religion of naturalism.”

It is quite clear from his writings that Ham has absolutely no idea how science actually operates and, as further evidence of his bad judgment in this area, relies on writers who know little to nothing of the areas in which they write.  This creates a two-fer-one bad science punch, giving your average scientist (and even most reasonably educated people) yet another reason to think Christianity is stupid. 

I differ from Giberson in his analysis of his point number four:

Climate change is arguably the most serious form of science denial. Creationism may be wrong, but embracing it won’t wreck the planet.  The last few years have seen many howlers on climate change including Senator Inhofe’s claim that humans cannot possibly influence the climate because “God’s still up there." 

There are plenty of examples of people who have embraced the young earth model who believe that the climate will be just fine because all of the changes recorded in the geological record are only six thousand years old.  The corollary to this is that, because earth is only six thousand years old, God must be returning soon, so why should we care how we treat the environment?  I saw that argument made a few years back (cannot find the post at the moment).  Albert Mohler gets a spot, as well as the Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer, for this skewed analysis of the Cambrian explosion.  The only people missing are Kirk Cameron and Banana Ray Comfort.  Read the whole thing.  His tone is dismissive, but he is largely correct in his assessments.

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

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

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

Here is the video:

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

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

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

You Knew This Was Coming...

Kentucky.com is reporting that Ken Ham and AiG are fighting the Kentucky Tourism Board's decision to rescind the tax credits for the Ark Encounter.  Linda Blackford writes:

On Thursday, Answers in Genesis President Ken Ham accused the government of discriminating against a religious organization after state officials notified Answers in Genesis, the parent organization of the Ark Encounter park, that it could not receive state incentives because its hiring practices would discriminate against non-Christians.

”We have been working on this project with Kentucky for more than two years, so this just-received denial announcement is as disappointing as it is costly for our ministry without the expected rebate," Ham said. "Our construction has already begun at the Williamstown, Ky., site, and it must proceed. We are fully prepared to defend our fundamental rights in court if necessary, as this issue is of huge importance, not only to us, but to every religious organization.”

The legality of the hiring practices has gone around the houses and, after some thought, I think that it does not rest in Ham's favor. Ham fired back:

"The legal question here has already been answered unequivocally by the courts," said Mike Johnson, chief counsel of Freedom Guard. "No state is allowed to treat religious organizations less favorably than other organizations who seek to avail themselves of a facially neutral economic incentive program. Just because some state officials may not agree with the message of a Christian organization does not mean that organization and its members can be censored or treated as second-class citizens."

That is a smokescreen. Ham knows that the whole thing would never have even come up if it hadn't been for someone leaking the hiring practices.That is not the first time that Ham has obscured the real reasons for why some have questioned his actions.  This has the makings of a long drawn-out fight.

Ark Encounter Loses Tax Incentives

Reuters is reporting that the AiG-fronted Ark Encounter project has lost the tax incentives it so desperately wanted for the construction of the life-sized (but not necessarily biblically-based) Noah's Ark.  Steve Bittenbender writes:

Kentucky has pulled potential tax credits for a proposed Noah's Ark-based theme park, telling the developer on Wednesday that the plans had evolved from a tourist attraction into a ministry seeking to advance religion.

State tourism officials had given preliminary approval for tax incentives of potentially more than $18 million over 10 years for the Ark Encounter park slated to open in 2016, but later warned the park's parent company, Answers in Genesis, that it could lose them if it hired only people who believed in the biblical flood.

Nobody has yet been hired but it is pretty clear that the tourism board became uncomfortable when the hiring dust-up occurred and finally just got cold feet. Mike Zovath says that the project will continue but chief counsel Mike Johnson was quoted as saying this “will be a huge financial loss to the organization.” I can only guess that this decision, which the Ark Encounter may fight in court, will have a large effect on the sale of the junk bonds to finance the undertaking. This is a huge win for opponents of the project.

Ironically, this comes on the heels of a huge ad campaign to promote the project, including billboards in Times Square. Here is a YouTube video of the 15-second ad clip: 

Response to The Ignorance of Blind Faith

A.J. Castellitto wrote a piece for the site American Clarion called The Ignorance of Blind Faith, in which he (she?) writes (in the best David Klinghoffer or Cornelius Hunter fashion) the following critique of “evolutionism”:

Ultimately, the overall problem with blind evolution both in process and acceptance is the non-skeptical adherence to a contrived, ideologically-based foundation. Especially since a sinless, godless form of evolution is arguably a building block of communism, apathy and moral decay.

For many, evolution is a cherished and heavily defended concept that resembles religious dogma. The main exception is that most of the radical aspects of evolution proposed by man preclude God. On the contrary, the consideration and inclusion of Intelligent Design theories provide healthy skepticism and rational thought beside the explanatory limits of unguided materialism.

True science should leave no lasting place for unsupported assumptions, unfounded speculations and insurmountable barriers. Not surprisingly, long ago evolution entered the realm of ‘scientism.’ This is why the funding continues to follow the agenda.

Here is how I responded on the site:

The concept of biological evolution is a lot like the concept of atomic energy. When it became possible to use atomic energy to develop nuclear power plants, with their attendant cheap power and radioactive waste, many people decried its use, claiming that it would poison the environment, lead to meltdowns that would jeopardize the health of millions and so on. When it became possible to create the nuclear-based weapons of mass destruction, people decried their existence and use as an existential threat and lobbied to get their use eradicated and to have them destroyed. These were no less than globally moral issues. Underneath it all, uncaring, disinterested, sat the reality of nuclear power. It existed. It was there. It wasn't going to go away.

Evolution is, objectively, one of the most well-documented, supported scientific theories in existence. It just is. I have studied biological evolution for over thirty years. Over 99% of the naturalists out there that actually study the data are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it explains the present and past biodiversity of the planet. You might debate how it is used by those who would perpetrate abuse of their fellow humans. You might debate how it has affected the spiritual walks of the people who encounter it. You might debate how it has affected the globally moral questions we ask. But that won't make biological evolution go away. As humans, we need to ask how to answer those questions in light of evolution. Does it change them? If so, how?

An open question.

Bad News in Texas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possible Mollusk Etching by Homo erectus

Science Magazine (and quite a few other outlets) is running a story involving the discovery of a 500, 000 year-old mollusk that shows some rudimentary carving.  Michael Balter writes:

In 2007, Stephen Munro got the shock of his life. The archaeology graduate student was studying mollusk shells gathered more than 100 years ago on the Indonesian island of Java, where an early human ancestor, Homo erectus, had roamed at least 1 million years ago. As he studied photographs of the shells, Munro spotted one apparently engraved with a pattern of zigzag lines. “I almost fell off my chair,” he says. That’s because the oldest known engravings date back 100,000 years and were made by modern humans—the only species thought to be capable of making abstract designs.

If this has been accurately interpreted, this suggests that Homo erectus was capable of considerably more cognition than is generally ascribed to this form. While there is evidence that Homo erectus controlled fire and, perhaps, had hafted tools, there has been, as of this point, no evidence of symbolic thought.

Some are not convinced:

Yet even if ancient humans engraved the shell, says Russell Ciochon, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, the team has not shown that H. erectus did it. Ciochon, who has spent many years working at sites in Java, agrees with criticisms that the shells have been taken out of context, because Trinil was not an occupation site where early humans actually lived. Rather, Ciochon argues, the human fossils found there (which include a skullcap widely agreed to be H. erectus and a thigh bone that could belong to either H. erectus or H. sapiens, a matter of sharp debate) were washed into the site by a powerful flood, and nothing found with them—including the shells—can be assumed to have been associated with them originally.

Here is the shell.

Another Professor in Hot Water Over Evolution

Inside Higher Ed is posting a story about a professor at Georgia Southern University, a state school in Statesboro, Georgia.  Quoth Colleen Flaherty:

Lecturing for a week about how “evolution could not have happened.” Offering extra credit for students to watch the film “God’s Not Dead.” Showing religious bias in exam questions. Student reviews saying he’ll try to “convert you.”

Those charges, among others, make up a complaint filed recently by two First Amendment watchdog groups against T. Emerson McMullen, an associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University. The institution says it’s now investigating the professor for allegedly using his classroom at the public university to promote his anti-evolution Christian beliefs.

Apparently the Freedom From Religion Foundation and The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science have become involved in this and have pushed for an investigation into the charges.  It strikes me that if he is a science professor, these are serious charges.  If, on the other hand, he is a history professor, then it is incumbent on him to get the history correct.  If he does that, then the sole focus should be on whether or not he is using his classroom as a pulpit.  Despite his insistence otherwise, enough of the student comments indicate that, at least to some degree, he is. 

When I teach Anthropology 110: Human Origins, I am open to speaking with students about the apparent conflicts between evolution and Christianity, but I do not openly discuss them in class or promote EC.  I also use established science.  To do otherwise, I believe, would hurt the cause of Christianity.  Wisely, the Discovery Institute has left this one alone. 

One of my Readers Pointed Out...

That my dad was quite an accomplished scholar who lived a long and varied life.  It is difficult to overstate the importance he played in my life and how much fun it was to be his son.  He taught me many things and, later in life, especially after I had kids of my own, his advice was golden and his friendship was a great joy.  I will comment more on his passing and his role in my life when there is some distance and I can do it and still see the keyboard at the same time.  In the meantime, here is an obituary of him.