Catching up again: Clarence Menninga and Apparent Age

I am digging into the past almost twenty years for an article on the creationist doctrine of "apparent age" because it seems that no progress has been made since then. There are still creationists that subscribe to this position.

In 1988 Clarence Menninga (Calvin College, again!) wrote a piece called Creation, Time and "Apparent Age" in which he assesses this viewpoint. He lays it out thusly:

In the face of mounting evidence that the Earth and the universe are billions of years old, some Christians have tried to preserve the traditional notion of a recent creation of the universe by appealing to Scripture, with a highly literalistic understanding of the early chapters of Genesis, and a view of the genealogies found in the Bible as being fairly strictly continuous. Meanwhile, the conclusion that the universe is very old has become more and more firmly established on the basis of consistent and persuasive evidence from the study of our world carried on in several diverse fields of science. In an effort to preserve an interpretation of the Bible as telling us that the universe really is young and still recognize the existence of the scientific evidence of the age of the universe. some Christians have suggested what has become known as the "apparent age" view. That view holds that the universe was created recently with a built-in appearance of age, and so it looks old by whatever means of age measurement we apply to it, but in reality it is young.

Menninga lists several "objections" to the argument of apparent age. Probably the most important one, though, is the loss of confidence in God's covenant with His children. Others have complained that the argument from appearance of age puts God in the position of deceiver, a view i have sympathy with. Hugh Ross, in his book Fingerprint of God, points out that if the universe really is young but looks old, then it raises other problems. If the stars are recently created, the record of the light traveled from them to us is fabricated as well--God didn't just magically make the stars appear, but made it look as though the light took x-light years to reach us. This is deception of the highest order.

Alan Hayward takes a different tack. In Creation and Evolution, he suggests that, if the universe really does present the appearance of age, then what are we to make of all of this "evidence" that the recent earth creationists find? Does this evidence actually reflect places where God forgot to age things? God is then reduced from the omnipotent God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the bumbling, incompetent god of Time Bandits. You can hear Randall saying:

You see, to be quite frank, Kevin, the fabric of the universe is far from perfect. It was a bit of a botched job, you see. We only had seven days to make it.

Sort of takes the air out of things, doesn't it? Read the whole article.

A Voice for Evolution as Science

Once upon a time (1992) the American Scientific Evolution tackled the question of evolution in an official way. Although it doesn't actually say much, they do note:

Science teachers and scientists concerned about the future of science should (a) recognize the limited scope of science and resist exploitation of science by persons with political, philosophical, or religious agendas; and, while celebrating scientific accomplishments, (b) point out unsolved problems and encourage the investigation of such problems.

Good words of wisdom.

Bill Nye, the Science Guy!

Bill! Bill! Bill! Now we will enter our (reverb)Blog of Science! Bill Nye spoke at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas. As Tribune-Herald staff writer Tim Woods notes, apparently during a talk on all kinds of cool topics like Mars exploration, global warming and energy, he also mentioned that God had created two lights, one to rule the day and one to rule the night. He then, correctly, pointed out that the sun was the only actual light. The moon simply reflected the light of the sun. Woods states that, at that point, several of the audience left the room, irked at the notion The Science Guy thought the Bible was not word for word literal. One woman is reported to have said, as she left the room: "We believe in God."

C'MON PEOPLE!!! Is your faith that shallow?? If the moon really is a star like the sun, why is it only half there sometimes?

Slacktivist has a good commentary on the event here. I would also encourage you to read Glenn Morton's Why I Left Recent Earth Creationism. Glenn writes a good deal about this topic. Many of his pieces and other hair-raising stories can be found here.

Hat tip to Jon Reid.

WAY off topic!!

Father Jonathan Morris has written a wonderful piece in Foxnews about the "Gospel of Judas." He uses as his springboard, an execrable article on the subject (which I read) by the Grey Lady, herself. Here is a bit of what he had to say:

For all their purported progressive thinking, one would surmise the 17 centuries separating the Gnostic authors of the “Gospel of Judas” (self-proclaimed “progressives” of their day) and the editors at the Times would produce greater evolution of thought. But the paper’s Friday edition read like the diary of an anti-Christian Gnostic apologist of the late second century AD. For when it comes to Christianity, both are incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction.

As Father Morris notes, the New York Times spin machine was in full swing for the article. Typically, they got few things correct. The Times has been doing a lot of that lately. He also notes:

But on this story about the foundation of Christianity, the paper’s unwillingness to trust eyewitness accounts is baffling. I must say, the silliness of giving the same credibility to the “Gospel of Judas” as to the Christian Gospels is unworthy of the venerable tradition of my morning paper. When I read dumbed-down, ideology-driven articles like this one, the coffee, even good coffee, just doesn’t taste the same.

He has given the paper more credit than they, perhaps, deserve. The Times has become increasingly agenda-oriented and ideologically-driven in recent years.

Eugene Volokh also has some scathing words of wisdom for the media's coverage of the "Gospel of Judas" here.

I have written about Father Morris before. He wrote a nice little article on Intelligent Design in December which I linked on this blog. When I wrote to him, thanking him for it, he responded with the following:

"James,  thanks for the e-mail and for posting the link.  God bless all of your work.
Father Jonathan"

Nifty!!  Thanks again, Father Morris.

"Taking Darwin and Creation Seriously"

Michael Roberts, writing for the American Scientific Affiliation, tackles the seeming contradictions in Genesis and evolutionary theory in the article Taking Darwin and Creation Seriously. As Roberts notes:

The genius of Darwin in "The Origin of Species" (1859) was that he brought together previously unrelated aspects to biology; Variation and selection (leading to Natural Selection), the geological record, Geographical Distribution and the "Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings."

Darwin worked off of the writings of Thomas Malthus, Charles Lyell and all of the naturalists that came before him. Unfortunately, genetics was unknown to Darwin at the time.

Roberts also notes:

To allow evolution by purely "natural" means is often seen to be reductionistic, and often God is brought in to "intervene" at suitable moments, such as the formation of life itself, or the first human. I have much sympathy with a concern over a reductionist outlook on life, which is fairly common today. However to attempt to disprove Darwinism to keep reductionism out is doomed to failure. All science is methodologically reductionist, it has to be.

In some senses, this is a bit like atomic theory and application. One might disapprove of the use of atomic power and protest about it, but that is irrelevant to whether or not atomic power exists. Evolution, even to the level of macroevolution is observable, despite the protestations of some creationists to the contrary. It is amazing the number of people who remark that "evolution is dead" who wouldn't know evolution if it bit them on the backside.

Another point not often remarked upon by Christians is the amazingly ungodly picture that nature presents. As Roberts observes:

The natural world is incredibly wasteful of life; just consider frogspawn. The spawn will produce hundreds of tadpoles, and if TWO survive to become frogs and breed, that is success. Three is a population explosion. The fate of the tadpoles is varied, some, to the horror children, are eaten by other tadpoles. Then, one of my joys in late spring is to hear the Cuckoo calling. The music of the adult is not matched by the morality of its offspring casually heaving out its adopted kin. Life is shot through with suffering and death.

The notion of suffering has always been a thorny one in Christian circles. To the average biologist working in the natural world, it is a good deal worse because they see this seemingly undirected pattern of life and death. To the average biologist, evolution not only is observable, it makes sense. A good article.

More Catching Up

In 2002, William Dembski wrote the book No Free Lunch, which he subtitled Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence. Dembski, as you will recall, is one of the prime movers behind the current incarnation of creationism, ID. Dembski is somewhat less strident in his attacks on evolutionary theory than say, Phillip Johnson or the writers of Of Pandas and People, but he does take whacks at it, nonetheless. If you can wade through it, it is a dense but interesting read.

Howard Van Till, professor emeritus of physics and cosmology at Calvin College (from whence a good deal of right thinking seems to emerge) wrote a somewhat lengthy article reviewing Dembski's work. Entitled E. Coli at the No Free Lunchroom: bacteria flagella and Dembski's case for Intelligent Design, Van Till enjoins us to think critically about how wise it is to employ certain mathematical models as explanatory tools for biology.

According the Van Till, Dembski and others in the movement argue that design ought to be detectable in the known universe. If it is not, then our notions of God's sovereignty and omnipresence are pointless. On thought, this is perhaps a fair criciticm. On second thought, that seems to be the way the world works. It often seems that, to my way of thinking the world behaves with such natural order that there must be an "economy of miracles." Chairs behave like chairs, walls like walls and such. We can build things to work precisely because all of our experiments on the raw materials turn out the same. The forces of physics do not vary from one place to another. Even though the natural "laws" have probabilities associated with them, the probabilites are so high as to be virtually certain.

It is this "economy of miracles" that has led to the various forms of naturalism in science over the last several hundred years. It has also informed our understanding of the past. Uniformitarianism was proposed simply because examination of present processes always yielded understandable causes and few, if any events could be construed as "miraculous." If present actions can be explained, there is no a priori reason past actions cannot be explained the same way. Onward.

Van Till notes, correctly, that not all proponents of ID are "in full agreement" about what evolution entails. Some reject all of it, others just the macroevolutionary elements. Part of this stems from the fact that the creationism umbrella includes two absolutely dichotomous views of reality: one in which the universe was created 20 million years ago and the other in which it was created 6000 years ago. This is analogous to believing that the moon is either made of rock and dust, or swiss cheese.

Van Till hammers at the central problem in ID philosophy: actualization:

But mind-action alone does not produce a working watch. The watch must also be actualized by hand action. As an artisan, the watchmaker must not only conceptualize the configuration of gears and dials that comprise a watch; he must also form the various parts and assemble them into a working mechanism.

And later, with regard to the formation of the bacterial flagellum, itself:

How, for instance, might an unembodied intelligent agent act on a bacterium with no flagellum to actualize a flagellum where none had been before? How does inteliigence (now meaning the action of an unembodied, choice-making agent) accomplish that? Does the unembodied agent somehow force the various atomic and molecular components into their proper configuration? How does a non-physical agent exert physical forces?

Van Till also notes that the imposition of the NFL theorums does not match biological reality--evolution does not proceed in an all-or-nothing fashion. This is a really good article and I have waxed on too long about it. Read the whole thing.

"Arctic fossils mark move to land"

The BBC has an article on some new finds in the Artic that "blurs the distinction between two forms of life - between an animal that lives in water and an animal that lives on land." The finds, of a species called Tiktaalik roseae are found in the Nunavut Territory, in northern Canada. According to the writer:

The creature shares some characteristics with a fish; it has fins with webbing, and scales on its back. But it also has many features in common with land animals. It has a flat crocodile-like head with eyes positioned on top and the beginnings of a neck - something not seen in fish.

Neil Shubin, the principle palaeontologist, is quoted as saying:

"We are capturing a very significant transition at a key moment of time. What is significant about the animal is that it is a fossil that blurs the distinction between two forms of life - between an animal that lives in water and an animal that lives on land."

The article also notes:

Professor Jennifer Clack, from the University of Cambridge, said that the find could prove to be as much of an "evolutionary icon" as Archaeopteryx - an animal believed to mark the transition from reptiles to birds.

This certainly takes the creationists' notion of "Kinds" and kicks it around a bit. Hat tip to R.L. Macklin.

Lubenow again

I have picked up Lubenow again, after a week and a half break. I think my blood pressure had gone back down enough. I have read twenty pages this morning. My blood pressure is going back up.

ID in its infancy?

Dylan Lovan of the AP notes that William Dembski, one of the architects of the current ID initiative states that ID is in its infancy. Nonetheless, he states that in ten years it won't matter because Darwinism will be dead. "I see this all disintegrating very quickly." This is probably news to most biologists. As with the earlier post on the news media, this story is indicative of the perceived level playing field between ID and evolutionary theory. Dembski states that the theory of evolution put forth by Charles Darwin 150 years ago will be "dead." News flash! It died in the 1920s with the birth of the synthetic theory of evolution. Every biologist knows that. It is not immediately clear that ANY proponent of ID does.

More disturbing is this:

According to a 2004 Gallup poll, about 35 percent of Americans believe Darwin's theory is well supported by evidence, another 35 percent said it is not and 29 percent said they didn't know enough about it.

Great! Teaching science by public opinion poll.

Media Coverage of "Intelligent Design"

Jason Rosenhouse and Glenn Branch, writing in the March 2006 issue of BioScience (sorry, once again only accessible by subscription) have noted a striking trend in the way the media cover the ID controversy. It is clear from the article that the authors regard ID as a religious movement, rather than a scientifically-based endeavor. Nonetheless, some of the insights are interesting. They note:

The journalistic need for succinct definitions also distorts the treatment of young-earth creationism and ID. The reporter typically makes a clear distinction between the two, which has the effect of making ID seem like a science-based critique of evolution, not a religion-based attack on it. (p. 248)

This is a common problem with most of the coverage, because the authors of the news pieces only have time to brush the surface of the controversy. They are also keenly aware that their audience will be composed of people who hold to both sides of the issue. Time is also a problem. As they state:

Antievolutionists have a very attractive message to market. They do not tell journalists that they want a certain myopic religious viewpoint presented as legitimate science. Instead, they talk about presenting both sides, being open-minded, opposing censorship, and presenting all the evidence. The only way for the evolutionist to counteract this is to show that creationism's scientific pretensions are nonsense. That is precisely what cannot be done in a brief newspaper article or television appearance. (p. 251)

One-sided language aside, this is an important observation. Often, it simply is not possible to get people up to speed on evolutionary theory. Entire graduate programs are devoted to, and Ph.D.s are granted in evolutionary theory. A half-hour program is simply not sufficient to even scratch the surface. And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Drawing the Line

Benjamin Dowling-Sendor writes for the American School Board Journal on "Drawing the Line Between Science and Religion." I can't link to it because it is behind a vendor subscription but I will provide a few items that did not make their way out of the general Kitzmiller recaps.

Dowling-Sendor reminds us that the wording of the revised disclaimer on the textbooks read

Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is not taught.

The connection that he does not make here, though, is that the "reference book" Of Pandas and People (which I reviewed bit back) goes out of its way to teach origins of life questions. And it does it badly.

Dowling-Sendor also boils down one of the consequences of ID thought that was picked up by Judge Jones:

Second, Jones observed that intelligent design rests on "a false dichotomy, namely that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed."

This is the age-old argument that "creation science" attempted (badly, again) to address in the 1960s: just because your theory is wrong, doesn't make my theory right. What also wasn't widely reported was a much more damning allegation:

He noted, for example, that two board members expressly and repeatedly pushed the other members of the board and school officials to inject creationism into the science curriculum, and that those two board members secretly arranged for the donation of 60 copies of Of Pandas and People to the high school.

Few people like to be snookered, especially by people espousing the value of Christianity. As Dowling-Sendor notes:

In a board election held during the trial, all eight incumbents on the nine-member board who were up for election were defeated.

Update on Lubenow

I am still plowing through Lubenow's Bones of Contention. So far, there are some trends to report. He systematically:

• misinterprets fossils
  
• gets basic scientific concepts wrong
  
• makes inappropriate leaps in logic
  
• makes false analogies
  

It is difficult to know where to begin. As I noted earlier, there is a problem with EVERY page of the book. More later.

The Archbishop of Canterbury weighs in

The Grey Lady puts out a story in which the Archbishop of Canterbury has come down on the opposite side of ID. NYT login may be necessary. The cleric states:

I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said, 'Well, how am I going to explain all this?'

He also noted that opposing creationism in a curriculum is not the same as talking about how creation came about. Good article.

Update: It seems that NYT has since placed this article behind its "Times Select" wall and it is no longer accessible. That is too bad.

Light Posting

Sorry the posting has been light. I have been slammed with getting two anthropology courses finished. I will try to do better.

Dover, the Movie?

This might be a spoof. One would certainly hope so. Someone apparently thinks that the Dover school board ruling would make powerful cinema. Seems they will make a movie about anything these days.

Hat tip to Marilyn Savitt-Kring

Yes, we are still evolving

Nicholas Wade reports in the NYT of research that demonstrates that we are still evolving. This is not really news. We know that tooth size has dropped an average of 11% since the neolithic period. I am curious to know why the authors have singled out only selection for these traits and not drift coupled with selection, since selection will act more quickly on smaller populations where drift has occured and more slowly on larger populations where there is little drift.

Oops!

Sorry, I forgot to link the Kirk Johnson piece on the bill in Utah. Here it is:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/national/28utah.html

An Uphill Battle Indeed

Kirk Johnson of the Grey Lady reports on the failure of an "Origins of Life" bill to be passed in the Republican-controlled Utah House of Representatives. According to Johnson:

The Origins of Life bill, in its initial form, would have required teachers to issue a disclaimer to their students saying that not all scientists agree about evolution and the origin of species. It did not mention any alternative theory to Darwinism, but was viewed by some supporters and opponents as part of the drive to encourage the teaching of intelligent design, which says that life is too complicated to have evolved without an architect.

That the bill did not pass in a state as conservative as Utah was seen by Americans United for Separation of Church and State as a considerable victory. A spokesman for that organization, Joe Conn, was quoted as saying:

"If the creationists can't win in a state as conservative as Utah, they've got an uphill battle."

Hat tip to R.L. Macklin

Evolution on Campus

Nathanael Blake, a columnist on Townhall has written a two-part (so far) column on evolution and evangelicals. Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2. He argues something that I have long thought true--Christians need to make their peace with evolution. Evangelical Christianity made a mistake of incalculable proportions in the 1920s when they chose to reject evolution. This was the time when natural selection was being merged with mathematics, genetics and population biology to form the synthetic theory that we have with us today.

He makes an especially good point that ID exists only to tackle evolution.

Attempts to provide a detailed I.D. position would fracture the coalition into myriad squabbling factions. However, even this tenuous unity is enough to make I.D. into a mighty force in the culture wars. Combating evolution is one of the main goals of the Christian right.

It is almost as if ID proponents simply cannot help themselves. Evolution is too tempting a target. The problem is, as Mr. Blake notes, they don't have the necessary scientific background to tackle it successfully. I am currently on page 90 of Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow and it is horrific.

He also notes:

Interpreting Scripture is difficult and given to some uncertainty. Hence there is a lure to fundamentalism, which eliminates doubt by defaulting to the most literal view possible, regardless of whether the text should be read that way.

While the certainty this confers may be comforting, it makes for sloppy theology and horrible science.

Read both posts. He writes very well.

Sorry

Sorry for the lack of posts. I have been slammed at work and my wife pulled a muscle in her back so i have been looking after the kids at night. Things are better now.