Some Thoughts on American Fundamentalism from Across the Border

There is currently a kerfuffle going on in Canada, regarding the new Alberta Education Minister and his position on biological evolution.  Jen Gerson, of the National Post, writes:

Alberta premier Jim Prentice’s hand-picked education minister Gordon Dirks told forum attendees last weekend that he was an “Old Earth guy” — a reference to a doctrine of Creationism that generally rejects biological evolution.

Mr. Dirks has declined to clarify his views. He’s also declined to comment on whether or not he accepts the scientifically accepted understanding of evolution when asked directly by the Post.

“The Minister isn’t going to comment on his political opponents’ purposely manipulated recollections of private conversations…. He supports the existing curriculum and the government ensures schools follow it,” said Mr. Dirks’ spokesperson, David Heyman, who added that questions about creationism were posed by members of the centre-left Alberta party in a bid to corner and embarrass the minister.

It’s an effective tactic; there has traditionally been no shortage of ridicule for politicians who espouse genuinely held religious beliefs on the subject.

This has been a tactic on the part of the press here as well, and in the last election cycle, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman and several others stumbled out of the starting blocks when they ran up against that issue. Only John Huntsman looked at the issue squarely in the eye and said he accepted biological evolution, but by then, nobody knew who he was.  Contained in the story is this observation, as well:

Irving Hexham, a religion and politics professor at the University of Calgary, said evolution — like abortion — is a divisive issue among evangelical Christians. If politicians from this background come out in favour of the mainstream view of evolution, they risks alienating themselves from their own religious community.

“The whole evolution thing has blown up in North America in a ridiculous way. I don’t think there is any reason why Christians can’t believe in evolution, and throughout the world, a lot of Christians do,” he said.

However, the topic seems to be remain contentious among fundamentalists, and evangelical Christians in particular.

“American fundamentalism took it as a boundary. You’re on one side or another. If you believe in evolution, you can’t be a true Christian and you’re out of the fold. It’s a litmus test.”

While this has been a simmering issue for some time, it has only been within the last three years or so that high-profile Christians, such as Ken Ham has brought it to the forefront and, while he has claimed that his position has never been that one cannot be a Christian and accept evolution, he clearly thinks as much, given posts with such titles as The Danger of BioLogos, and BioLogos Funds Project to Undermine the Authority of the Word.  In fact, a word search for “Biologos” reveals quite a few articles in which Mr. Ham wrings his hands in dismay at theistic evolutionists. It is quite clear he regards us with suspicion and distrust.

Ken Ham is a very powerful force in modern evangelical Christianity and he has many supporters within the evangelical community.  Only prayer will loosen the hold he and others like him have on the home school and larger evangelical communities. 

It has been suggested that the modern Christian landscape is ready for a new denomination: the young earth creationist, since, for many, that viewpoint so dominates their thinking.  I wonder if that might be so. 

Kent Hovind Guilty of Contempt of Court

Peter J. Reilly at Forbes, who has kept up-to-date on the trials and tribulations of Kent Hovind, reports that a jury has found him guilty of contempt of court.  He writes:

I just heard from Jonathan Schwartz of Interlock Media and freelance journalist Ben Sheffler that the jury has reached a verdict.  On the six count indictment, Hovind was found guilty on count three, which only applied to him – violating court orders to not interfere with title to the property. Hansen was found guilty on counts five and six, which only related to him – violating a court order to Creation Science Evangelism to refrain from further filings in relation the property and resisting a grand jury subpoena.  The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the more serious fraud charges against Hovind .  Hansen was found not guilty on one of the fraud charges (count two) with the jury not reaching a verdict on the other fraud charge (Counts 1 and 4).

As I mentioned in the last post, the target might just as easily be Paul Hansen, who was also indicted.  the jury's inability to come to a decision with regard to the fraud charges is big for the two, though, as those were the much more serious charges.  Here is more information.  What does this mean for Hovind? As Reilly notes, Hovind will continue the appeals to have the original charge dismissed.  It will be an uphill battle, though, given this recent instance of what the government surely saw as “meddling.”

Neandertals Hunted Eagles, Wore Talons as Jewelry

Nature News is reporting that a find of bone adornments was unearthed at the Krapina Neandertal site over 100 years ago but not recognized as being Neandertal in manufacture until just recently. According to the story in Nature News:

Neanderthals hunted mammoths, bison and other powerful animals for food — yet their fiercest foes may have been the massive eagles they snared to make jewellery. The talons of white-tailed eagles found at a Neanderthal site in Croatia show cut marks and patterns of wear that suggest the claws were donned as personal ornaments.

“They’re very powerful birds. It takes a certain amount of bravery and foolishness, even, to catch one of these things,” says David Frayer, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, whose team describes the claws in paper published on 12 March in the journal PLoS ONE.¹ With wing spans of around 2 metres, the birds are Europe’s largest aerial predator.

Here is part of the image from the Nature News story, showing one set of ornaments.

This is more evidence of advanced/metaphysical thought on the part of Neandertals (not to mention their hunting abilities) and helps to paint a better picture of a complex society that was emerging in Europe at this time.

New BioLogos Post on LD 350-1

My post on the new fossil find in the Afar Triangle is up over at BioLogos.  This is a very, very important find because it stretches our own line, Homo back some 400 thousand years earlier than previously thought and relegates all but one of the australopithecines to side branches of human history.  All of those theories that Au. sediba, or Au. garhi or Au. africanus or Kenyanthropus might be ancestral to Homo?  Gone.  As Isaac Asimov would say, they are one with the snows of yesteryear.  Comments are welcome there and here.  

BTW, Ken Ham has promised (somewhat ominously) that there will be a response over at Answers in Genesis to the description of the find by the original authors.  I will tackle that when it comes out.

Great Homeschool Convention 2015: Jay Wile

Melanie and two of the kids have gone junketing off to the 2015 version of the Great Homeschool Convention, in Greenville, South Carolina.  The convention has sessions on all kinds of different topics, and a few on science in general and evolution, specifically.  The featured speaker this year in that area is Jay Wile.  Remember, the American homeschooling experience is, almost without exception, firmly in the young earth camp.  This is almost like founder effect, where one small population, in which all people have the allele for x proliferate and soon everybody has it, a la black hair in Japanese, Chinese and Koreans (which I am sure is pleiotropic).

Anyway, you may remember the dust-up a few years back involving Pete Enns and Ken Ham, in which the latter showed how nasty a person he can actually be.  I told Melanie that I would prefer that my children do not attend any of Jay Wile's sessions because I am quite sure that they will get only half-truths and misinformation.  He has a nine-part Youtube series on "Evolution: The Enemy of Truth and Science."  I scanned the series and concluded:

• His knowledge of the fossil record is non-existent
• He relies on out-dated information to bolster his case, such as making the statement that there are no transitional fossils and focusing for long periods of time on digressions like Haeckel's embryos and Piltdown
• He completely misunderstands the cytochrome C argument
• He completely distorts what Charles Walcott found in the Burgess Shale in 1909
• He distorts how long the Cambrian explosion was, but the worst thing is that
• He accuses evolutionary biologists of covering up data and lying.  

I wonder how he would react if someone in the audience stood up and said "Mr. Wile," did you know that young earth creationism is a lie?"  It is distressing to see a Christian address the science in this way and, in this vein, he is no better than Ken Ham, a man for whom I have no respect, whatsoever.  These are arguments that can be put over on an audience that does not have the necessary background to understand their vacuity.  Mainstream science always winds up on the defensive, in these instances. (Note: this paragraph is different from the one that was originally posted, which was considerably more scathing.  I wrote it after watching some of Wile's YouTube videos, and his distortions made me very angry, some of which I have repented of).  Like so many creationists, with the exception of Todd Wood, I cannot tell if he really has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, or is intentionally trying to mislead out of a misguided sense that he has to make sure that his audience doesn't ever accept evolution.  

Wile was the founder and writer of many of the textbooks of the Apologia educational ministries.  I ran into one of those a bit back, which was awful.   He has since left the ministry but is now on the convention circuit.  In 2009, Jerry Coyne received a letter from a distraught parent who's kids had also run afoul of the Apologia series.  It reads, in part:

There is a serious problem in homeschooling right now in that most homeschooling families find themselves using the Apologia series for teaching science because it is so parent friendly. However, this series was written with one purpose in mind and that was to debunk evolution in favor of Intelligent Design. While our family is religious, we are not Creationists and I have serious problems with the Apologia series. I find it dangerous because so many homeschoolers are using it. The author and owner of the company, Jay Wile, is so convincing he is turning many homeschooling families away from the real science of evolutionary biology to the pseudo science of Creationism even if they started out as evolutionists. These parents are turning to Apologia in good faith because there is nothing else out there that is parent friendly. We even used it ourselves at one point, but supplemented it with evolution videos and materials, but I refuse to contribute money to the company. Sadly, I have seen people that I know are intelligent and well educated fall victim to Dr. Wile’s very convincing arguments. I almost did myself, but was saved by more extensive research and my daughter’s level head.

Sadly, most parents will not go to the trouble of doing the extensive research necessary to combat the arguments so they get their heads filled with this nonsense from people like Wile.

The one good thing I can say for him is that, when Ken Ham launched his viscious attack against Pete Enns, Jay Wile stood up for Enns, and was, in turn, attacked by Ham's organization.  This does not exonerate Wile from his distortions and misinformation, however.  I pray that none of my friends go to these sessions.  I don't want to have those conversations with them. 

Ars Technica Pulls The Mask Off the "Teach the Controversy" Bills

I have written this many times in this blog: the “Teach the Controversy” legislation being promoted in different statehouses across the country is really a decidedly concerted effort to keep evolution from being successfully taught. The Discovery Institute has continued to maintain that they have no wish to intrude upon the teaching of evolution in the public schools, but that is only partly true. They are quite interested in making sure that it is not the only view taught.  Some years back, the Discovery Institute started a website, academicfreedompetiton.org that gave an example/model of what an academic freedom bill should look like. It reads in part:

Existing law does not expressly provide a right nor does it expressly protect tenure and employment for a public school teacher or teacher at an institution of higher education for presenting scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution. In addition, students are not expressly provided a right to positions on views regarding biological and chemical evolution.

Here's the catch: there is no “full range of scientific views” about evolution. That is like asking to teach the full range of views about gravity. Evolutionary theory is so robust that there are no competitors. Catastrophism, inheritance of acquired characteristics, blending, all have gone into the dustbin of science.  Evolution has only become a stronger theory over time.  As creationist Todd Wood once wrote:

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

That has not stopped the Discovery Institute. And now Scott Johnson of Ars Technica realizes that. He writes:

If you knew absolutely nothing about the bitter public debates over certain scientific issues in the US, the “teach the controversy” bills that keep surfacing would probably sound reasonable and unremarkable. These state bills, which are mostly identical, encourage science teachers to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories. Duh, right?

But why are these bills mainly focused on protecting said science teachers from being shut down by their superiors? Why would that happen?

To understand, you need to see that this is just the latest in a very long line of attempts to undermine the teaching of certain scientific topics that the legislators don’t like, especially evolution and climate change. The aim of these bills is to provide cover for teachers who want to teach their students that evolution isn’t a scientific fact and that creationism (possibly stealthed within the supposedly non-sectarian label of “intelligent design”) is a viable scientific alternative.

The Discovery Institute, as the source for the modelers of these bills is way out in front of your average state legislator, who probably couldn't spot evolution on a map but is absolutely sure that it is “evil, wicked, mean and nasty.”As long as they have people of good faith who will carry their water, in the name of scientific integrity, then they can sit back and watch.  This strategy has only worked out in some cases.  Most of the bills of this nature get bogged down in committee or voted down.  As he points out, only Tennessee's bill has passed.  I am quite sure another strategy is on the horizon.  There are a number of different paths this can take.  I am also quite sure that the Discovery Institute will continue its subterfuge.  It has a long history of that. 

Hovindicators, Onward March!

Peter Reilly has been having quite a bit of fun following the current travails of Kent Hovind, affectionately known as “Dr. Dino.” Hovind, who ran a young earth creationism organisation in the 1990s and early 2000s, ran afoul of the law in the middle of the aughts and wound up in jail for tax evasion in 2006. He has now served almost a decade of his sentence but now finds himself the recipient of yet another government indictment. I reported on this a bit back.  Now, apparently, the government is developing an interest in Hovind's co-defendent, Paul Hansen.  Reilly writes:

Kent Hovind, proponent of Young Earth Creationism, the notion that there is scientific not just hyper-literal scriptural evidence that humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth contemporaneously, is on trial for fraud and contempt of court. The charges relate to filings on properties that the government seized in connection with his conviction in 2006 on a 58 count indictment which included 45 counts of structuring. Structuring is the systematic withdrawal of amounts somewhat less than $10,000 to avoid currency reporting requirements. In addition to his long prison sentence, which is nearing its end, Hovind forfeited the structured funds.

Since the funds had been spent, property was seized. Paul John Hansen, trustee of Hovind’s ministry and co-defendant in the current trial, filed a lis pendens, warning potential buyers of the hazards of buying property from the federal government that might be subject to litigation.

As earlier, Reilly thinks the government is making a mountain out of a molehill and suggests that the case is really about something else:

Prosecutions for tax related offenses are very rare. Their purpose is to encourage compliance. This had me wondering, along with the Hovindicators – Why Kent Hovind? The initial volleys of the government indicate that their primary target may be Paul John Hansen, for whom defiance of government authority is a vocation. It has been more of a hobby to Kent Hovind, who focuses on winning souls, exposing the lies of evolution and warning about the coming New World Order.

Hovind, once upon a time, if you will recall, issued a challenge to the worldfor scientific evidence of evolution.  Here is the original offer:

I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution.* My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a religious belief.

* NOTE: When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:
1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.
2. Planets and stars formed from space dust.
3. Matter created life by itself.
4. Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.
5. Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

An even casual reading of this “offer” suggests that God is the only one who would be able to provide this kind of evidence, which proceeds a priori from the theological construct that this biological and cosmic evolution took place in the absence of God, a proposition for which there can never be evidence one way or the other (and Hovind knows that). Suffice it to say the $250,000 was never collected.

Megan McArdle Thinks the Question to Scott Walker About Evolution is Misguided

She is right.  To a large extent, what a president thinks or does not think about evolution is largely irrelevant to the daily tasks of running the country.  We found that out with Ronald Reagan. In the current political crisis, involving what Scott Walker did or did not say with regard to evolution,  she writes:

I was at a dinner the other night where the very high percentage of Americans who believe in young-earth creationism was submitted as evidence of the failure of the U.S. school system. I don't think that's right. People forget most of what they learn in school almost as soon as they learn it -- I got an A in sophomore chemistry, and all I can tell you about it now is that it's sometimes measured in "moles" and there's something called a covalent bond that ... well, actually, I forget. And before you start looking all superior, STEM majors, what is the difference between the conditional and the subjunctive, and can you name four causes of the Thirty Years' War without resorting to Google?

Most of the people who "believe" in evolution don't have much more scientific foundation for their beliefs than a young-earth creationist does for theirs. I would be slightly surprised to learn that the reporters asking the questions -- or, for that matter, President Obama -- could deliver more than a few vague sentences about how evolution works, desperately dredged up from the Life Sciences module of their seventh-grade science class.

At the end of the article, she hints at why the question was asked in the first place: Scott Walker is a republican and, therefore, the natural subject of attacks by the press who are trying to trip him up. A starker contrast could not be found than the current issue with Hillary Clinton's private email accounts, about which the mainstream press is asking No Questions Whatsoever. 

They didn't ask Scott Walker a question about evolution because they wanted to know what he thought about it. They asked it because they know good and well that there is an established track record of republicans saying stupid things about science, publicly. That was their real target.

New Jawbone Fills Gaps, Raises Questions

A group working in the Afar Triangle has discovered a mandibular fragment with associated teeth that show strong affinities to early Homo.

The catch is that the provisional date for this specimen is 2.8 million years. Writes Pallab Ghosh for the BBC:

The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into "the most important transitions in human evolution".

"This is the most important transition in human evolution”

Prof Brian Villmoare University of Nevada

Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between an iconic 3.2 million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974, called "Lucy".

Could Lucy's kind - which belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis - have evolved into the very first primitive humans?

"That's what we are arguing," said Prof Villmoare.

This find in the north of the continent strains, almost to the breaking point, the argument that Australopithecus sediba is the best candidate for being ancestral to early Homo. That find came from a cave in South Africa and, up to this point, all of the respective species of Australopithecus have been fairly tightly geographically restricted in their home ranges. The distinct possibility exists that only A. afarensis is ancestral and ALL other australopithecines went extinct, but we will have to wait for considerably more comparative studies on the morphology of the jaw to make any sort of rudimentary arguments along those lines. 

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.