New Book by Dennis Venema and Scott McKnight: Adam and the Genome

Dennis Venema and Scott McKnight have released a new book called Adam and the Genome.  From the BioLogos blurb:

This week on the blog we’ll have a series of reflections on the book from people across a range of views. Tomorrow will feature Pete Enns of Eastern University (and former BioLogos Senior Fellow);  later in the week we'll hear from Ken Keathley of Southeastern Baptist Seminary and Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute at Cambridge University. We’ve invited Venema and McKnight to respond to these posts on the blog next week. Today I’ll give an overview of the book—hopefully just enough to whet your appetite to get the book and read the whole thing.

The BioLogos statement of beliefs doesn’t mention Adam and Eve (neither do the historic creeds of the church), and different members of our community come to different conclusions on the topic. We think it is important for there to be continued conversations among informed and committed Christians on this and other important issues.

Here is the cover.

Hopefully, there will be a Kindle version soon. I am still wading through John Walton's book on Genesis 1, after having finished David Mongomery's The Rocks Don't Lie and Joel Edmund Anderson's The Heresy of Ham, both of which I highly recommend.

Update on the South Dakota Bill

The Argus Leader is running a story about the South Dakota “Strengths and Weaknesses” bill being bandied about.

Deb Wolf, a high school science instructional coach for the Sioux Falls School District, worries the bill would also undermine school boards' ability to enforce the curriculum they've approved.

"This is horrible, but let's say I believe in eugenics," Wolf said. "(SB 55) says that I couldn't be prohibited, I couldn't be stopped from teaching that as long as I did it in an objective scientific manner, and it doesn't specify what that means."

The bill now moves to the House where, if passed, it will go to the governor's desk for final approval.

Rachelle Smith, who has two children at John Harris Elementary School, was in disbelief that the bill was even under consideration.

Smith worries the bill, if passed, would cause parents to try to avoid certain teachers or request to change classes if a teacher strayed from science curriculum.

She also worries that her second-grade daughter, who loves studying science, won't be learning the subject properly.

The passage of any of these bills would set a terrible precedent. Science is not like any other discipline.  You are not entitled to your own set of facts.  That simply is not how the world works. 

The Hill: New wave of anti-evolution bills hit states

The Hill has a report on new legislation that has evolution, once more, in the crosshairs.  These bills are being floated in South Dakota, Oklahoma and Indiana.  There are subtle differences, however:

The bills represent something of an evolution themselves: They do not specifically mention creationism or intelligent design, two alternatives to evolution theory advanced by religious conservatives. Instead, they allow teachers to address the “strengths and weaknesses” of material being taught to students.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, said the new effort aims to undermine evolution by preventing school districts from blocking teachers who question scientific consensus.

“They’re no longer trying to ban teaching evolution. They’re no longer trying to balance teaching evolution. They’re now trying to belittle evolution,” Branch said.

Proponents of the measures say they do not allow teachers to inject religion into science classes. Model bills make clear that teachers are to question theories in an “objective” measure by focusing on “scientific information.”

This is subterfuge on a grand scale. What theories do you suppose they will question?  Do you think they will question gravitational theory?  What about cell theory? Atomic theory?  Likely, these theories will not be examined for their “scientific information.” All of the focus will be on evolution.  What makes these bills so insidious is that they are very hard to repel:

Science groups worry that the new measures will be more difficult to challenge in court. While earlier attempts have been shot down, the new bills are crafted to withstand facial challenges, Branch said.

“It makes the bills very hard to challenge on the basis that they’re unconstitutional, because they’re not requiring anyone to do anything,” he said.

The bills would also put school boards in the untenable position of being open to lawsuits from teachers, if they try to block the presentation of alternative ideas, and from parents, if they allow those alternative ideas to be presented.

One can only hope that these bills will be killed in committee.

David MacMillan Responds to Todd Wood

David MacMillan, writing at Panda's Thumb, responds to Todd Wood regarding the issue of peer-review of creationist literature.  He writes:

Wood also stated that both the articles I referenced in my original post were, in fact, letters to the editor rather than full refereed journal articles, and thus it isn’t irregular to publish them simultaneously. Here’s where it gets a bit dicey, not because I doubt his explanation, but because ARJ’s editor, Andrew Snelling, apparently made no effort whatsoever to distinguish between letters to the editor and actual articles. That’s a problem.

The whole point of peer review is that it identifies scholarship which has been evaluated by peers. Scientists and researchers learn to trust peer review because they know it has been read and examined with a critical eye, both for careless errors and for systematic errors. Peer review is the dam which holds back the flood of pseudoscientific nonsense (although this doesn’t prevent creationists from trying their damnedest to slip things in). Creationist publications like the Answers Research Journal are creationism’s way of claiming legitimacy.

That’s not to say that individual creationists who submit to publications like ARJ are insincere. Nor are their submissions useless; in many cases, as in the debate over H. naledi, the breadth of discussion illustrates very well the earnest attempt to make their models work. Creationist organizations now make a practice of referring to their “professional, peer-reviewed technical journal(s)” and claiming that “evolutionists are unaware of our scientific literature”. It is because the models do not, in fact, work that we have an opportunity to use their own work against them, highlighting clearly where the different models proposed by different authors are plainly incompatible. Creationists are trying to fit a 4-billion-year-old peg into a 6-thousand-year-old hole, and it shows.

Perhaps the best example of this that I have read in recent memory is the work of Phil Senter, in using flood geologists to invalidate their own models.Young earth creationists want to have their research taken seriously, but since none of their models hold up under scrutiny, and they seem to spend the vast majority of their time trying to poke holes in established science, this has not been forthcoming from the science establishment.  I also question Todd Wood's assertion that scientists are not aware of creationist research.  There are people that do nothing but read what comes out of AiG, CMI and the ICR with an eye for critical science.  Even the work that comes out of the Discovery Institute is put under a microscope.

Snelling should have been absolutely up front about the fact that the responses were letters to the editor.  MacMillan makes the point that the failure to distinguish this smacks of being arbitrary.  More to the point, it allows unvetted opinions and statements to creep in without proper backstopping.  As noted in my previous post, however, my experience is that this has never stopped many young-earth creationists before. 

Stealth Bill in Oklahoma

Another &ldauo;strenghts and weaknesses” bill has been put forth in Oklahoma. NCSE has the story:

Senate Bill 393 (PDF), styled the Oklahoma Science Education Act, is the latest antievolution bill in the Sooner State. SB 393 would, if enacted, in effect encourage science teachers with idiosyncratic opinions to teach anything they pleased — proponents of creationism and climate change denial are the usual intended beneficiaries of such bills — and discourage responsible educational authorities from intervening. No scientific topics are specifically identified as controversial, but the fact that the sole sponsor of SB 393 is Josh Brecheen (R-District 6), who introduced similar legislation that directly targeted evolution in previous legislative sessions, is suggestive.

Why is it suggestive? It is suggestive because every other bill that has dealt with “strengths and weaknesses” has been aimed specifically at evolution.This is a common tactic and one can only hope this one goes down in flames. 

David MacMillan on Homo naledi, Ken Ham and Creationism

Over at Panda's Thumb, David MacMillan has taken to the pen again to examine the world-view of young earth creationism.  He writes:

As I expected at the time, creationists were quick to insist that H. naledi couldn’t possibly be evidence for human evolution. However, though they all predictably agreed that it wasn’t a transitional form, they were completely unable to agree on what it was. Some saw the apparently intentional burial in a cave (which would have required the use of fire for artificial light) as undeniable evidence of humanity, while others pointed to the small cranial size and numerous australopithecine traits as an argument against this. Dr. Joel Duff of Naturalis Historia wrote a series of posts as the various responses emerged, illustrating the utter inability of creationists to reach any sort of resolution.

The controversy gives us outsiders a glimpse into just what makes these groups tick. Creationist organizations are less focused on research and more focused on presenting a veneer of authority, as this earns the greatest amount of loyalty from their followers. So it was important for them to present an authoritative-sounding answer; after all, if there really are no “missing links”, then the true nature of a discovery like H. naledi should be readily apparent. The disagreement in their collective responses, however, only demonstrated what mainstream science already recognized: H. naledi really did have a mixture of modern and plesiomorphic traits.

It is this mix of traits, just like the mix you find in other fossils from all over the range of human history, that demonstrate the nature of evolution and how new traits arise. MacMillan has written, as have I, that as long as the focus is on individuals as representations, and not on the traits, themselves, then the constant flow of evolution will be completely invisible. This is the critical teaching of systematics.You don't follow the individuals.  They might not go anywhere.  You follow the traits.

He then has high praise for Todd Wood, someone who I have admired within the creationist sphere as just about the only person who treats the evidence honestly:

Dr. Todd Wood is one of the few creationists who seems to make a genuine effort to approach evidence logically and honestly. In fact, Wood’s honesty about the positive evidence for evolution is one of the reasons I originally felt like I could be genuine in my own examination of the evidence, which ultimately led to my accepting science. Wood responded to the discovery of H. naledi rather differently than the larger creationist organizations. Rather than immediately claiming to know what the new species really was, he withheld judgment and advocated systematic research.

Wood has tangled not just with AiG, but also with Reasons to Believe, Hugh Ross' OEC organization, about whom he suggests that we cannot trust.  He has done so every time with integrity and honesty.  It is his dogmatic approach to the scriptures that I find troubling, but that is not the subject of this post.  MacMillan details an exchange between Wood and AiG that leaves him, like the rest of us, convinced that AiG is completely lacking in intellectual honesty:

One of AiG’s researchers, writing under the pseudonym of “Jean O’Micks”, initially agreed with Wood’s conclusions that H. naledi had too many human features to be considered an ape, but then reversed his view in a second article to match AiG’s initial claims. In response, Wood submitted an article to the Answers Research Journal pointing out that O’Micks reached this conclusion by excluding inconvenient data.

While I obviously disagree with Wood’s views on origins and the age of the Earth, this paper was nonetheless an excellent example of using sound research principles to identify poor scholarship. What’s most interesting, though, is how AiG responded.

AiG accepted Wood’s submission to ARJ, but only after O’Micks had an opportunity to write a rebuttal. Then, they posted the rebuttal on their website first, ahead of Wood’s article...Now, I only have minimal experience publishing in scientific journals, but this is highly irregular. A reputable journal would either allow a letter to the editor in a later issue, or they would require a rebuttal to be submitted as a full peer-reviewed research project in a later issue. Posting a concurrent rebuttal demonstrates that ARJ’s claims of academic integrity and peer review are pure nonsense.

Todd Wood weighed in on this:

Ouch.  No.  Not even close.  First of all, my response was written as a letter to the editor.  I only provided an abstract after the editor, Andrew Snelling, requested it.  Letters to the editor in journals are frequently published simultaneously with a response, and they often do not undergo the same sort of peer review as a full paper would.  See any letter in Science or Nature for example.  That's exactly what happened here.  These papers were posted simultaneously on December 28 with mine first in the queue.  You can even see this in the journal page numbering: My paper is pp. 369-372 and O'Micks's response is pp. 373-375.  MacMillan is just wrong.

Wood continues, in his defense of creationist journals:

After criticizing O'Micks's response as hasty, error-filled, and special pleading, MacMillan concludes that our exchange shows that all creationist journals "lack any actual rigorous peer-review process." Since MacMillan doesn't seem to have any firsthand experience with creationist peer review, that's a bold claim to make. Frankly, I've had more hassle from some creationist reviewers at JCTS than I've had publishing in some noncreationist journals. Creationist journals aren't all one thing, and they definitely aren't created "as a way to legitimize their claims of scientific and doctrinal authority." That's also nonsense. JCTS was designed for specialty publications in the area of baraminology and related creation biology that would be of little interest to the broader creationist community. In my experience, no one is impressed by my articles on carnivorous plants or bootstrapping in baraminology.

Wood is, perhaps, correct that creationist journals are not all one thing but my experience with many different creationist journals is that they all suffer from the same failing: inability or unwillingness to treat the science with integrity and in an honest fashion.

Having said that, MacMillan seems to have misunderstood what went on and so Wood's correction is duly noted.  Wood writes, in a follow-up post:

I think we all have a higher calling, though.  As a Christian, I definitely have a higher calling.  I have a genuine interest in seeing creationists improve the work that they do and the articles that they write.  That's why I publish the critiques that I do.  I know that I've done a lousy job in the past, and I genuinely want to improve that aspect of my work.  Too often, I've let sarcasm and passion take over, and I've burned (nuked, really) bridges that shouldn't have been.  Shame on me.

So I want to learn from the Panda's Thumb.  I want to ponder my writing a lot more.  I want to think carefully about how I respond as much as I think about what I say.  Tactics matter.  That's the lesson I'm learning here.  It's not enough to be on the right side.

There is certainly a lot of sarcasm and passion to go around. Interestingly, Wood accuses Panda's Thumb of being of singular intent: criticizing creationists. Therefore, he argues, they do not necessarily care if they get some facts wrong. I have never known the writers of Panda's Thumb to knowingly misstate facts. It is likely that some assumptions were made in this exchange that were not entirely correct.  However, I have also known from my own investigations, that there is more than enough of this to go around.

For example, from time to time, AiG has posted articles on human evolution by Elizabeth Mitchell or David Menton. They are routinely awful.  Filled with logical and observational errors, they are deceptive and they drip with sarcasm. This is also true with the ICR's Acts and Facts, an organization that routinely gets basic facts wrong.  Further, sites such as Carl Wieland's Creation Ministries International have articles that are replete with errors. In my experience, these writers have no interest in getting their facts correct.  They, further, often have no interest in understanding the basics of science and routinely misstate fundamental tenets and concepts (see Ken Ham's complete misunderstanding of the importance of historical science here). 

While there is certainly a great deal of animosity and sarcasm coming out of the anti-creationist camp, much of it arises from the issues outlined in the previous paragraph.  Does that excuse the sarcasm and vitriol?  No, it doesn't, but after playing whack-a-mole for awhile, the lack of civility becomes a bit more understandable.  Wood has been almost a single, lone voice in the wilderness and has not been reticent about taking on fellow creationists for their sloppy science.  More of his compatriots need to follow his lead. 

Ken Ham and the Missing Dinosaurs

Ken Ham got into a twitter war with the WaPo, after one of its writers posted an article in which it was written that all of the dinosaurs died out during Noah's flood.  The WaPo has since updated the article to correct the view.  It mostly serves as a vehicle for promoting the film "We Believe in Dinosaurs," which is an examination of creationism in the US.   Here is part of what Vicky Hallett wrote:

[David MacMillan] joined the directors of “We Believe in Dinosaurs” for a recent Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) to explain why some people accept “creation science.”

One key question: Why is it called “science”?

The label is popular with creationists, MacMillan writes, because it allows them “to set themselves up as participants in an equal controversy, as if there are two equal sides to choose from.” To bolster that idea, he adds, “some creationists also try to mimic the appearance of hypotheses, research, and so forth.”

When a child is raised with creationism — as MacMillan was — it’s the default position. If that’s what’s taught in school, the curriculum limits exposure to the mainstream evidence that life on Earth is far older than some Bible-based believers insist it is.

“The whole focus of organized creationism is advancing the idea that all the evidence can be interpreted in a variety of ways and everyone is biased,” MacMillan writes. “Plausible deniability, you know?”

This is not so unlike the Hammish one's insistence that there is no such thing as "historical science" because nobody was there to observe what happened. "Were you there?" is his catchphrase for that.While there is uncertainty in the scientific world, the idea that there are always two ways of interpreting evidence is nonsense.  Often, there is so much evidence supporting one particular interpretation that the alternatives are thrown in the dustbin of history.  Phlogisten, spontaneous generation, inheritance of acquired characteristics are examples of these.

So is creation science.

As Hugh Ross once pointed out (paraphrased), every single young earth creation argument suffers from one or more of three main problems: faulty assumptions, faulty reasoning, and failure to consider alternatives.  For Ken Ham, the earth was created 6ooo years ago.  There can be no alternative to this viewpoint.  All of the evidence has to point in that direction.  (This is where the heresy comes in).

Anyway, Ken Ham responded to the original WaPo article with the following tweets:

Hey @washingtonpost we at @ArkEncounter have NEVER said Dinosaurs were wiped out during Flood-get your facts right 

and 

I challenge @washingtonpost to show ONE instance where @arkencounter supposedly says Dinos died out during Flood! 

None of this, of course, helps Ham.  Now he has to defend the argument that, somehow, in the last four thousand years, dinosaurs disembarked from the ark, mysteriously all of them died out and No Written Records of Their Existence Were Kept.

David MacMillan took to the pages of Panda's Thumb to address young-earth creationism and his role in it. Critical to this account is that he is a former young-earth creationist. He suggests that Ken Ham's response to the WaPo article is not surprising:

Ken Ham gains an advantage by playing the persecuted saint; he has recently even compared his movement to Martin Luther and the Reformation. But more immediately, he takes offense because he has invested so heavily in one specific, defined, detailed narrative, to the point that getting these kinds of explanations “correct” becomes a central religious necessity. To most of us, it might not seem to make much of a difference whether he’s claiming dinosaurs died during the mythical flood or immediately after, but to stridently religious creationists like Ham, the Post article might as well have claimed he believes in the world of Harry Potter.

Most ironic, however, is that the Post article wasn’t nearly so incorrect as Ham insisted. True, the Ark Encounter features numerous caged dinosaur pairs – I’ve seen them in person – but their Flood narrative is invoked to explain why dinosaurs went extinct. In fact, the Flood is their automatic explanation for virtually everything we observe, particularly the mountains of evidence that run contrary to a 6,000-year-old world.

About the focus of young-earth creationism, he has this to say:

Creationists construct a dizzying array of ad hoc explanations for every possible piece of evidence, because at the root, they aren’t actually interested in developing testable models or creating useful theories. What’s important to them is presenting an appearance of the scientific process in order to maintain their authoritative position. That’s why organized creationism has thus far been largely impervious to scientific debunking: it’s not about science, it’s about faith, faith in the rigid system of beliefs they present to their followers.

It is this viewpoint that allows Ken Ham to castigate all other forms of creationism and insinuate that his version of events is the only Christian one. For those interested in how David MacMillan came to part ways with this movement, there is a multi-part post in the Panda's Thumb in which he discusses how the movement works.

Ken Ham's Ark Taken Up To Heaven!

That is one of the stories from the satirical Christian website The Babylon Bee.  From the story:

In what is being called a stunning miracle, apologist Ken Ham’s controversial $100 million replica of Noah’s Ark was reportedly taken into heaven in the sight of attendees just several days into the park’s opening.

Witnesses claim they heard a voice from the heavens booming, “This is my beloved ark, in which I am well pleased,” before a loud rumbling begin to reverberate all around the attraction. Then, onlookers watched in amazement as the clouds parted and the great wooden ship began ascending toward the skies.

Sources state that within several minutes, the ark had disappeared into the clouds, having been taken into the presence of the Almighty.

If only.  That, and other stories at the site had me in tears this evening.  If your Christianity can stand a sense of humor, this is the site for you.  In many ways, it is like the old Wittenberg Door, a satirical newspaper that was popular in the 1980s.  Enjoy. 

David Coppedge, Redux

David Klinghoffer has a post for "Evolution, News and Views" in which he defends David Coppedge, the erstwhile NASA technician who claimed he was fired from his job at JPL because of his intelligent design support. Coppedge has a fifteen-minute video in which he recounts the affair.   In typical hystrionic fashion, Klinghoffer writes:

Of all the cases we've covered here where scientists and others have been persecuted for sharing ideas favorable to intelligent design, what happened to David Coppedge is arguably the most reprehensible. That's partly because Coppedge, working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab as a team lead on the Cassini Mission to Saturn, wasn't a PhD scientist with the space agency. He was a computer administrator, albeit a senior one, and therefore by definition a less powerful, more vulnerable player in the science world.

Klinghoffer either has not read the trial transcripts or chooses not to remember them. Coppedge sued NASA and it came out during the trial that he was a difficult employee who was hard to get along with.  My original post on this trial, and Klinghoffer's reaction to it, is here.  Newsvine wrote, at the time (link no longer works):

At trial, JPL attorney Cameron Fox contended Coppedge was a stubborn and disconnected employee who decided not to heed warnings to get additional training, even when it became clear the Cassini mission would be downsized and computer specialist positions eliminated.

Coppedge often was confrontational and insensitive to customers and colleagues, who had complained about his behavior and his advocacy of intelligent design, Fox said.

I remarked, then, that Klinghoffer was focusing on the wrong aspects of the trial, a situation in which the Cassini project was being downsized and Coppedge was well aware of this at the time.

As in the case of Richard Sternberg, the details are what matter.

Pope Francis: Big Bang and Evolution are True

The Toowoomba Chronicle is reporting a story out of the Vatican that Pope Francis has declared evolution and the big bang to be scientifically accurate and not threats to faith.  Andrew Withnall writes:

THE theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not "a magician with a magic wand", Pope Francis has declared.

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the "pseudo theories" of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator - arguing instead that they "require it".

"When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so," Francis said.

"The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

"Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve."

This follows a pattern in recent years of the Popes accepting evolution that goes all the way back to Pope John XXIII.  I am quite sure that if the Hammish one gets wind of this, he will denounce it, forthwith. 

New Indie Film: We Believe in Dinosaurs

Indiewire has a story about a new film soon to be out that follows the construction of the Ark Encounter from blueprint stage to opening and examines the “unsettling and uniquely American conflict between science and religion.”  From the story:

In recent years, believing has not been enough for creationists. Determined to prove that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate, they have begun building museums based on creation science. Their goal is to debunk evolution and to do that they are starting to think big. A comparison of 34 industrialized countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution.

As creationism moves into the White House, it remains one of the most polarizing forces in the United States. That is why this film is so important right now.

I will be surprised if this comes anywhere near Knoxville but might appear as a Fathom event.

Petition: Mike Pence Should Ban the Teaching of Evolution

Patheos is pointing to a petition that is being circulated to have incoming vice-President Mike Pence make the teaching of evolution illegal.  Here is part of the petition:

We the undersigned note that, when you were a member of the U.S House of Representatives, you spoke out on the subject of science education and for presenting students with all available information. Recently, we have seen the passage of academic freedom bills in Louisiana and Tennessee which have allowed for critical evaluation in the classroom and improved educational standards. However, whilst an important development, they were only enacted owing to the need to protect students from indoctrination. We object to the teaching of the very controversial theory of evolution as part of the K-12 science curriculum which we regard to be unnecessary and unhelpful.

It is obvious to us that Evolutionism-Darwinism is an anti-Christian atheistic dogma masquerading as science. According to renown philosopher of science, Professor Michael Ruse, himself an ardent evolutionist, there is no doubt that the theory of evolution represents a philosophical worldview: “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity.”

Aside from the fact that when examined, it turns out that Dr. Ruse has an extraordinarily peculiar view of Christianity and the relationship between what Jesus taught and what Paul taught, there is no sound basis for the idea that evolution is a religion.  If it were, organizations like BioLogos would not exist.   BioLogos seeks to understand the workings of the natural world within the context of a God-created universe.  Ruse is projecting his atheism onto his understanding of evolution.  Because some evolutionary biologists are not Christians does not make it impossible (or improbable) for a Christian to be one.

Onward.  The writers of the petition use three examples of recent research to attempt to bolster their case.  The first one is The Demise of the Genetic Blueprint.  They write:

Two researchers, Monteiro and Podlaha, admit that,“the genetic origin of new and complex traits is probably still one of the most pertinent and fundamental unanswered questions in evolution today.” Harvard professor, Peter Park, goes even further to proclaim that,“it's become very clear that DNA sequences are just a building block. They don’t explain higher-order complexity.” Obviously, if organisms are more than just the epiphenomena of their genes, then the gene-centric Neo-Darwinian paradigm cannot at all explain the diversity of form and so fails utterly.

The problem with the first quote is that it is used entirely out of context. Here is an un-quoted part of the abstract:

In the last two decades we have learned that novel traits appear to be built using old genes wired in novel ways [5], but it is still a mystery whether these novel traits evolve when genes are rewired de novo, one at a time, into new developmental networks, or whether clusters of pre-wired genes are co-opted into the development of the new trait. The speed of evolution of novel complex traits is likely to depend greatly on which of these two mechanisms underlies their origin. It is important, thus, to understand how novel complex traits evolve.

These writers have, in no way, undermined the theory of evolution, they have simply highlighted some areas in which our understanding of the processes are unclear.  This is classic young-earth creationist quote-mining.  The Nature paper, of which Dr. Park is an author, is highly technical and deals with how genomic sequences are regulated.  It does, in no way, cast a negative light on evolution as a process, however.  Once again, the question is simply by which path do complex traits evolve, whether by means of accumulated change or in larger steps (no I am not invoking Goldschmidt).

Example number one shot down.  The second one is The Demise of Cumulative Selectionism.  The petitioners write:

The core premise of Darwin's theory of evolution is that biological features have been produced by the cumulative selection of innumerable slight successive modifications. But as renown biologist Dr. Michael Denton has noted, the theory of evolution has been in crisis for the past 30 years because of the abject failure to show that there is a functional continuum in biology that allows for a gradual change leading to complex new features. In his view,“Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth.”

Here the authors have reached way into the past to grab a book that was written in 1986—an eternity in scientific terms—as their go-to source. Interestingly Denton updated the book much more recently, and retitled it Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis.  Sy Garte reviewed this book and writes this:

Denton describes his own worldview throughout the book as “structuralism”, which is all about the form that matter (including biological matter) takes. This contrasts with “functionalism” (the basis of Darwinism), which is about how things work, including adaptation. His hero is Richard Owen, a pre-Darwin naturalist who wrote extensively on the concept of natural law as the basis for biological forms. Denton takes the pre-Darwinian 19th-century concept of Types—clades, such as vertebrates and mammals—as his central theme. According to Denton (and Owen), Types are the manifestation of built-in biological laws; and what distinguishes them are structural homologs that cannot be explained by either slow, progressive steps (the gradualism of classical Darwinism) or purely adaptationist natural selection. This philosophical view fits well with the standard anti-evolution paradigm of Intelligent Design.

This approach is almost diametrically opposed to the modern practice of systematics, in which the focus of evolutionary development is on traits, not whole organisms.Using Owen's blueprint, transitional forms are, indeed, rare and macroevolutionary changes cannot be readily explained.  Once the focus is shifted to traits, however, then one can see how certain traits emerge, change and disappear in the fossil record and taxonomic relationships can much more easily be delineated.

With regards to this petition, however, damningly, Denton clearly writes that evolution has happened and that there is universal common ancestry for all life forms.  According to Garte, he mentions Intelligent design exactly once in the book.

Example number two shot down.  On to number three.  This one is the Demise of the Last Universal Common Ancestor:

The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) is the hypothetical organism, that lived 4 billion years ago, for which there is no actual physical evidence of at all. It is only inferred because all life shares essentially the same genetic code. Recent scientific research indicates there is no reason to believe that it ever existed. As Professor Ford Doolittle states, “We do doubt that there ever was a single universal common ancestor.” Indeed, the idea that all living organisms are descended from a single ancestor is as preposterous as the discredited hypothesis that all human languages are descended from a prototypical tongue.

Once again, the writers of the petition have not done even the most rudimentary research into the position of the paper that they quote. Lets look at the abstract of the paper:

If the tree of life (TOL) was the thesis and the web of life (WOL) its antithesis, then we are now in the period of disciplinary synthesis. A more realistic (less idealistic and dogmatic) microbial systematics and evolutionary theory will inevitably emerge. WOL advocates (WOLers) will be unable to claim total victory, however, and TOLers will be tempted to redefine what it was they were defending in order to avoid the appearance of defeat (e.g. Galtier & Daubin 2008). Preferable to this, epistemologically and ontologically, would be the adoption of a pluralist perspective, from which this controversy can be seen as but a stage in the development of a more powerful and general reading of Darwin's theory.

A more powerful and general reading of Darwin's theory. That does not sound like anti-evolutionary writing to me. Doolitle, further, writes: “I will propose a more general and relaxed evolutionary theory and point out why anti-evolutionists should take no comfort from disproof of the TOL hypothesis.”

Example number three shot down.  So what we have here is a petition to have the theory of evolution banned by an organization that uses examples from the literature in which the theory of evolution is universally supported.  This does not sound like a winning strategy to me. The salient feature of all of the quoted articles is that the theory of evolution is remarkably strong, explains a great amount of diversity in past and present life but that it is having growing pains and that new ideas are emerging that need to be examined in light of the traditional evolutionary synthesis.

This petition needs to be pitched into the circular file as yet another example of how  anti-evolutionists cannot even take the time to do basic research into what it is that they wish to ban.  No wonder nobody in the scientific world takes these people seriously.

Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber

Many outlets are reporting the find in Myanmar of perfectly-preserved dinosaur feathers in Amber.  From the Washington Post:

The amber hunters who dug up the segment in Burma (Myanmar) assumed the encased remains were vegetation, making the amber valuable when carved into jewelry. It probably did not occur to them that their discovery could be a dinosaur tail with secrets to tell. But a Chinese paleontologist named Xing Lida, perusing a Burmese amber market in 2015 for objects of scientific interest, recognized the amber’s true value.

“With the new specimen from Myanmar, we finally get that association between identifiable bones and feathers preserved in exquisite detail,” said Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada, a paleontologist and an author of the study, in an email to The Washington Post. Lida, McKellar and their Chinese and Canadian colleagues published an analysis of the tail on Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

How do we know it is from a dinosaur and not a bird?

X-ray images revealed that no ancient bird grew this tail. The tail tip belonged to a two-legged dinosaur called a theropod. “We can tell that this specimen came from a theropod dinosaur because the tail is flexible and the vertebrae articulate with each other, instead of being fused together to form a solid rod — which is a characteristic of modern birds and their closest relatives,” McKellar said. Specifically, the researchers hypothesized the animal was a type of dinosaur called a coelurosaur, and likely a juvenile.

Image Credit: A rendition of the coelurosaur. (Chung-tat Cheung and Yi Liu)

This further cements the link between the late Cretaceous theropods and early birds. More pieces of the puzzle.

More Bad News...

After the death of Keith Emerson in March of this year, Greg Lake, of ELP has died after a long battle with cancer.  NPR has a glowing tribute to the lyricist for both King Crimson and ELP. 

Greg Lake spent much of his musical life as the "L" in ELP. He was the band's singer, played guitar (both acoustic and electric) and bass, and wrote lyrics for the beloved 1970s progressive rock band. He often acted as the quiet, contemplative counterpoint to the thunder of drummer Carl Palmer and keyboardist Keith Emerson.

Most people came to know Greg Lake through ELP's first "hit" song "Lucky Man," with its images of white horses, white lace and feathers, and (somewhere in there) the tale of a king and a man who goes off to war to die for his country. These phantasmagoric songs were a pleasant shift in rock music, from the often literal tales and endless songs of love that streamed across the airwaves. The world of wild song structures Greg Lake and his bandmates pioneered was liberating and literate — and it was his sonorous tones that led the charge.

He had a distinctive and powerful voice and, even though I did not care for his philosophical take on life, often angrily anti-religious, the voice dovetailed with the other two members of the band and he was a consummate bassist. Another prog rocker gone. Rest in Peace.

How Will Climate Change Affect Human Evolution?

Gizmodo asked a number of scholars how they thought AGW will affect human evolution.  Some of the answers were interesting. Biological anthropologist John Hawks wrote:

I’ll be honest — the degree of climate change we are talking about in the next couple of centuries, which is on the order of several degrees Celsius, is by and large going to make the temperate regions of the world more similar in temperature to tropical Africa, where all our ancestors originated. We’re effectively terraforming the world to be more like our origins. The effects on humans are much more social and economic than evolutionary.

To the extent we see evolution, it will be changes in plant and animal species. Some will change the timing of their lives, some will invade new areas where they couldn’t adapt before, and many will become extinct — especially those today locked into small “reserves” that will undergo local climate shifts faster than they can adapt. And of course we will exert our own selection and genetic engineering upon our crops and domesticated animals to suit the changing climate.

Biological anthropologist Chris Stringer wrote:

The pace of change is likely to be too fast and dramatic for us to evolve physically to meet the challenges of a much warmer world. Any changes would have to come from cultural or social accommodation to the new situations – if that proves possible.

I think it is still way to early to tell how the earth will respond to anthropogenic changes in climate. If you will recall, only fifteen years ago, people were talking about global cooling.

...And About Creationism Going Extinct in Texas...

Raw Story has a postmortem on the 2016 presidential election and focuses on Texas races that went very badly for Democrats.  Kaiah Collier writes:

Republicans seeking re-election to the State Board of Education managed to hang onto their seats Tuesday despite speculation that the unpopularity of the candidate headlining the GOP ticket, Donald Trump, may flip certain races. And one newcomer seeking an open seat in a deeply conservative East Texas district easily bested his Democratic rival.

So, what effect will this have on the teaching of evolution?

The GOP’s good showing Tuesday is a win for conservative members of the state board who are mounting a fight to keep creationism in Texas’ science curriculum standards. Determining the big topics teachers must impart on the state’s more than 5 million schoolchildren is one of the board’s biggest duties, along with approving textbooks.

Let the skirmishes begin.

New Study on Homo naledi

Lauren Schroeder and colleagues have published a report on the skull of Homo naledi, in which they address the characteristics and attempt to place them in a taxonomic context, using morphometric analysis.  From the abstract:

Our results indicate that, cranially, H. naledi aligns with members of the genus Homo, with closest affiliations to H. erectus. The mandibular results are less clear; H. naledi closely associates with a number of taxa, including some australopiths. However, results also show that although H. naledi shares similarities with H. erectus, some distances from this taxon – especially small-brained members of this taxon – are extreme. The neighbor joining trees place H. naledi firmly within Homo. The trees based on cranial morphology again indicate a close relationship between H. naledi and H. erectus, whereas the mandibular tree places H. naledi closer to basal Homo, suggesting a deeper antiquity. Altogether, these results emphasize the unique combination of features (H. erectus-like cranium, less derived mandible) defining H. naledi. Our results also highlight the variability within Homo, calling for a greater focus on the cause of this variability, and emphasizing the importance of using the total morphological package for species diagnoses.

Another major finding of the study is that a grouping of H. naledi and specimens of Homo erectus "exceeds, in many instances, what we would expect if this grouping represented a single species."  Recall that we have zero idea how old this find is and, to the extent that this is possible, are trying to place this skull using only taxonomic analysis. Nonetheless, it gives us more information about this stage of hominin evolution and suggests that there was considerable variation of morphs running around during the transition from the australopithecines to early Homo. 

Richard Dawkins Parody

Warning: this one is a bit off-color but quite funny nonetheless.  Recall, in recent years, the low-level animosity that has been leveled at Starbucks for not having a Christmas-themed coffee cup.  Well, some enterprising soul put up a wicked parody of this with Richard Dawkins on the front of a Dunkin' Donuts cup.  I won't reproduce the image here, this being a family site and all, but I will add the description from the original Above Average site (warning: crude description):

When I stopped into Dunkin Donuts yesterday, I was greeted by a terrible surprise when the cashier handed me my hot chocolate in their new holiday cup. There was no Christmas motif, no red and green, and not a seasonal snowflake to be found. It was just the Dunkin Donuts logo and a picture of notorious atheist Richard Dawkins giving me the finger. I asked to speak to the manager immediately.

“This is outrageous!” I yelled at her. “How could you make such a horrible cup?!”

“I don’t know, I don’t make the cup designs,” she replied sheepishly. “They were just trying to be inclusive I guess? I honestly don’t even know who that is.”

Apparently, quite a few people didn't recognize the parody for what it was and Bookface lit up like a Christmas Tree with complaints about Dunkin' Donuts (which they probably didn't appreciate one bit). The parody showed up on Snopes pretty quickly, who had this to say:

This article was just a satirical take on the annual "War on Christmas" controversies that have in recent years included Starbucks' holiday cups, including the 2015 version that did not feature any religious symbols, as well as the coffee chain's November 2016 (non-holiday) green unity cup.

Funny.

What Our Ancestors Ate

NPR has a story on dietary analysis of fossilized hominin teeth called Dental Detectives.  Erin Ross writes:

When scientists want to know what our ancient ancestors ate, they can look at a few things: fossilized animal bones with marks from tools used to butcher and cut them; fossilized poop; and teeth. The first two can tell us a lot, but they're hard to come by in the fossil record. Thankfully, there are a lot of teeth to fill in the gaps.

"They preserve really well," explains Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg, a dental anthropologist at Ohio State University. "It's kind of convenient because teeth hold so much information."

The structure of a tooth and even the amount of enamel, for example, hint at what the teeth are adapted to eat.

Peter Ungar, of the University of Arkansas, adds this:

“If you eat Jell-O almost every day of the year, but sometimes you need to eat rocks ... you want teeth that can eat rocks,” he explains. So, teeth are usually adapted for the toughest component of an animal's diet, not what it eats on a daily basis.

To see what an animal was actually eating, Ungar studies something called dental microwear, the marks left behind by food on teeth. As we chew on say, a celery stick, hard particles — either bits of silica from the plants' cells or sand and grit from the surrounding environment — are dragged across and pressed into our teeth.

Beyond this, though, detailed isotope analysis of teeth has revealed changes in migration and patterns: Ross writes:

Teeth from more recent fossils reveal more because they have more isotopes preserved in them. For example, the nitrogen in the teeth of Neanderthals can reveal whether the protein they ate came from plants or animals. It's one of many reasons researchers think Neanderthals hunted large mammals, though scientists have also found fossilized plants stuck in Neanderthal teeth.

Researchers were even able to use isotopes to find out when one Neanderthal started weaning her baby. As teeth grow, they lay down layers of enamel. And barium, a molecule children get from breast feeding mothers, builds up in baby teeth until the mother stops nursing. By comparing barium in a Neanderthal tooth with levels in donated present day baby teeth, the scientists were able to find out that the Neanderthal baby had been weaned at about seven months.

More pieces to the puzzle. Read the whole thing.

Oh Ye of Great Faith!

Zack Kopplin writes in the Daily Beast that creationism could go extinct in Texas with this election cycle.  Oh Ye of Great Faith!  To wit: 

Teaching creationism in Texas public schools may become illegal next year.

In September, a group of educators chosen by the Texas Education Agency to streamline the state’s science curriculum standards removed portions of four passages that contained creationist language. The new standards must still be approved by the Texas State Board of Education where creationists are fighting to reverse the changes. The board members, unlike the education agency staff, are elected officials. That means the fate of creationism in Texas could be determined on Election Day.

If the decision stands, it would be a major blow to political creationism and the first time in a decade for any state’s creationism policy to be overturned.

Texas has always been a battleground state for evolution, but great strides have been made in recent years, first with the ousting of Don McLeroy, a strident creationist who famously said “I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts.”  McLeroy, if you will recall, was a dentist.  Kopplin is, in my view, being overly optimistic.  They will never go gently into that good night.  They will rage, rage, against the dying of the light (apologies to Dylan Thomas).  He continues:

The final vote on the new standards will take place next spring and control of the 15 member board is narrowly split 6-6 between moderates and religious conservatives, with 3 more Republican board members acting as swing voters. If the vote were held today, it’s probable the new standards would be approved. But after the election, the vote becomes less clear.

Creationism tends to reappear in continuous fashion, because so much of the populace supports it and the legislators (many of whom have sympathies in this direction) fell compelled to support their constituencies. If the standards get voted out this election cycle, they will be back for the next one.