Paul Braterman: Why Historical Sciences Are More Useful Than "Rule-Seeking" Sciences

Paul Braterman has a post that comes in response to what can only be called a Usenet forum on young earth creationism.  His post outlines the value of historical sciences.  Ken Ham has been highly critical of historical sciences with his patented “Were you there?” shtick. Braterman counters this nicely.  He writes:

What about reproducibility, prediction-making, and testing against observation, traditional hallmarks of good science?

All we need to be able to reproduce is our observations, not necessarily the event that caused them. We cannot duplicate the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, but we can duplicate the observations from which we infer that it occurred. We cannot duplicate the formation of the Cretaceous limestones of Europe and North America, but we can repeatedly confirm that they contain similar microfossils, showing them to be of the same age. And when we speak of prediction-making in science, we are using the word “prediction” rather loosely, to include relevant information about the past. Thus when William Halley used Newton’s physics to work out the trajectory of the comet that bears his name, he “predicted” that the comet would have appeared previously around 1531 and 1607, in accord with recorded observation.

While some of the examples he gives could be solidified a bit, they are instructive on why historical sciences are very bit as useful and rigorous as observational science.  He also invites comments.

"They Are Digging in the Wrong Place"

Bodie Hodge has a post on the AiG website that is nothing short of astounding.  AiG is, once again, moving the goalposts.  And who is Bodie Hodge?  He is, according to the site: "A speaker, writer, and researcher for Answers in Genesis, Bodie Hodge has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale."  Hodge writes:

Each year there are many headlines, books, technical articles, and videos about another supposed missing link—a supposed link between a land mammal and whale, a dinosaur and bird, an ape and human, and so forth. Usually, these are quite easy to refute by anatomical features.

For example, alleged missing links turn out to be anything but—for example, either ape, human, or a fake (e.g., Piltdown man) or dinosaur, bird, or a fake (e.g., Archaeoraptor).

Nevertheless, these alleged missing links rarely make creationists cringe. I think it frustrates some of the evolutionists because they think they have found some sort of knock-out evidence that they interpret as support for evolution. But creationists rarely bat an eye.

Well, I’m going to let you in on a secret as to why creationists rarely take notice of these alleged missing links. It is because the evolutionists are digging in the wrong place—just like the bad guys in Indiana Jones. When you don’t have the correct information, you can miss the mark significantly.

So evolutionists are just like "the bad guys" in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Did you catch that?  A casual trip through the fossil record indicates that there are, in fact, many, many transitional forms present.  We now have very detailed sequences from Devonian crossopterygians to early tetrapods, from land mammals to whales, from maniraptoran dinosaurs to birds and, of course, from late Miocene/early Pliocene apes to humans.

But this isn't even the central focus of his post. First, he lists the conventional geological stratigraphy.  He bungles this early on.  He writes: "In a general sense, evolutionists look for alleged dinosaur-to-bird missing links in the Cretaceous and Paleocene (bolded)."  Wrong.  The dinosaur-to-bird sequence dates to the late Jurassic.  Furthermore, the presence of feathers on non-avian dinosaurs suggests that feathers evolved even before the late Jurassic.  By the early Cretaceous, birds were numerous.  The transition had long since ended by the Palaeocene.  Had he done any study of the transition from dinosaurs to birds, he would have known this.

He then writes:

But here is the problem. The rock layers from Cambrian to Miocene—at least mapped in the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4)—were from the Flood.2 Miocene and Eocene rock is intricately part of the makeup of the mountains of Ararat, as is Cretaceous and Triassic (many times inverted, lying above the Miocene and Eocene). Since that time, the upper strata are post-Flood strata—such as Ice Age layers and recent volcanic flows. I understand creationists debate about tertiary sediment (Paleocene through Miocene) and encourage you study this further.

He gives absolutely no justification for this viewpoint. No evidence is presented indicating why pre-Pliocene sediments are flood and Pliocene sediments on up are not.  There is no event to mark this transition, no sedimentary layer that is distinctive.

Nothing. He simply says that it is so, therefore it is. It gets worse:

So when evolutionists say they found a transitional form between an ape and a human in Pliocene rock, creationists hardly flinch. Evolutionists are looking at the rock strata and the age of the earth incorrectly because humans were around long before that rock was ever laid down! Furthermore, humans existed when the Cambrian rock was laid down during the Flood. To go one more step, mankind had dominated the earth for over 1,600 years before the Cambrian rock was laid down!

When someone says that they found a transitional form between a dinosaur and a bird in the Paleocene, again, creationists hardly think twice. Both specimens died the same year in the same Flood and are not related. This is why finding feathers in the rock layers “before the dinosaurs” is not a problem for creationists.4 Nor is it a problem when we find theropod dinosaurs (which supposedly evolved into birds in the evolutionary story) that had eaten birds in lower Cretaceous rock.5

Birds were made on Day Five, which is a day before the dinosaurs; land animals, like dinosaurs, were made on Day Six. Having both buried in Flood sediment isn’t a big deal.

So many questions...

• If humans were around before the rocks were laid down, how is it that we find no humans at the base of the geological/flood column?  In fact, why aren't human remains found throughout the column, if they predate the Cambrian?
• How is it that all of the fossil species that are supposed to be in flood deposits are perfectly sorted, even to the point of brachipods being sorted by crinulation number and trilobites being sorted  by number of compound eye segments?  What about the detailed fossil sequences mentioned above? 
• if humans had ship-building capacity during the time of Noah and existed in towns and settlements, why is there no evidence of this at the bottom of the geological column?
• If humans did, in fact, predate the Cambrian, why do we find a detailed, clear sequence from prehuman hominoids through human precursors to archaic and them modern humans beginning in the Pliocene?  
• If the sediments from the Miocene back to the Precambrian reflect flood deposits, why do we find the largest land mammals, dinosaurs three quarters of the way up the column, when they should have sunk to the bottom?  
• If the sediments from the Miocene back to the Precambrian reflect flood deposits, why do we find features throughout the geological record that could only have happened on the surface, such as rain drops, footprints, hatched dinosaur eggs, cave systems, sand dunes, burned forests, swamps, etc. 

So why aren't any of these things problems for the creationists?

Biblical creationists presuppose the Bible’s truth and subsequently the true history of the earth—including Noah’s Flood. Evolutionists have presuppositions too, albeit, false ones, but presuppositions nonetheless. This is why when evolutionists look at Flood rock they unwittingly believe that the rock was actually laid down slowly and gradually over long ages. I suggest they have been indoctrinated to believe such stories as gradual rock accumulation over millions of years which has never been observed or repeated. Thus, the concept of millions of years is not in the realm of science but interpretation.

The reason that "evolutionists" do this is because every bit of the palaeontological and geological evidence points to a long depositional history with evolutionary diversity.  It is not a matter of indoctrination.  It is a matter of going where the evidence leads.  One might reasonably argue that if you put on young earth creationist blinders, you do not see the vast stretches of time and the changes that the earth has gone through in its long history, but, instead, a flat earth. 

It is common to find nonsense on the AiG site, but this rises to a new level of inanity. This post is terribly written, incorrect, pompous and insulting.  The writer provides no evidence for the position he takes, insults the hard work of scientists who have spent decades piecing together the geological and fossil records, and betrays complete ignorance of basic geology and palaentology.  It is hard to be charitable to Mr. Hodge, who plainly knows nothing of which he writes and, as a result, produces pure drivel. 
 

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.

PJ Media Takes on NPR on Science and Completely Misses the Point

Science is not a democratic exercise.  There is either scientific support for a theory or there is not.  If there are competing views about how some kind of observable phenomena should be explained, one of those views is usually shown to be incorrect.  That is how science proceeds.  Consequently, the idea of “teaching the full range of views” on a subject should be viewed with some skepticism. It is certainly valid to do so in an historical context to get a picture of how scientific understanding of a given phenomenon has progressed, but not as far as teaching prevailing scientific understanding of it. Yet, that is exactly what is being suggested by PJ Media writer John Ellis.

Ellis is responding to an NPR post, which is supportive of evolutionary theory, and he is critical of the post writer, Barbara King, for her position that evolutionary theory should be taught uniformly throughout primary and secondary institutions.

First, the NPR post.  King writes:

Watching the NBC Nightly News broadcast on a Friday earlier this month, I gaped as the last segment aired.

Kevin Tibbles was reporting from the site of Kentucky's Ark Encounter, constructed by Christian fundamentalist, young-Earth creationist and Answers in Genesis president Ken Ham. At the time, Ark Encounter was set to open to the public the following week.

Tibbles described Ark Encounter as telling "the Old Testament story of Noah, the animals and, of course, the flood." He interviewed Ham and closed out the 2-minute piece by noting Ham's hope that people will come in droves "to study the story of Noah for generations to come."

Astounded that the Ark Encounter showed humans and dinosaurs coexisting, despite the fact that dinosaurs had been extinct for some 60 million years before our ancestors arrived on the scene, she wondered how to best respond to this misinformation. 

*Speak out and speak up to school boards. Parents can insist that biology teachers in public schools be well-qualified to teach evolution; currently, many are not. In a related vein, check in with the "Take Action" page of the NCSE.

*Let the media know when they do a poor job of covering evolution-related issues or, conversely, a good one. The week after the NBC Nightly News segment, CBS News aired a report from Ark Encounter. Correspondent Mark Strassmann talked to Ham — and to a visitor who confirmed her belief that dinosaurs and people "walked hand-in-hand" a few thousand years ago on Earth. But he went on also to interview Jim Helton from Tri-State Freethinkers and science communicator Bill Nye "The Science Guy" as well, who stood up for evolutionary science.

*Read science- and evolution-based books to, and with, your children. Even young kids may enjoy and learn from age-appropriate writing that gets across concepts of evolution. Last year, I wrote here about Grandmother Fish by Jonathan Tweet and illustrator Karen Lewis. Another example is Evolutionary Tales by Matt Cubberly and illustrator May Villani, a short book that invites children to think about adaptive features of animals like the sugar glider, tarsier and pileated woodpecker.

*Ask evolution-related questions of political candidates and their staff. Science is, of course, a big issue in presidential campaigns. It's clear that the Hillary Clinton campaign accepts anthropogenic climate change as a serious risk to the world that requires science-based policy initiatives, whereas the Donald Trump campaign does not. But on evolution, it's much harder to find evidence of questions asked and answered. (An attempt to reach Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller this week did not produce a reply; even asking evolution-related questions may be valuable, though, because they let staffers know what voters care about.)

It should be pointed out that this column came out before Trump named Mike Pence as his running mate, a man who has not shown support for evolutionary theory in the past.

So....what did John Ellis of PJ Media have to say about Barbara King's suggestions?  Well, one can get a pretty clear idea from the title of the column, which is “NPR Writer Having a Meltdown Because YOUR Children Might Learn About Noah's Ark.”  Actually, King only mentions the Ark Encounter as a lead-in to promote the teaching of evolution.  As noted above, she correctly points out that there are 65 million years in between modern humans and dinosaurs, a geological point firmly established by many lines of evidence.  Beyond that, though, her point, and it is a very good one, is that the general public is woefully uneducated about basic evolutionary theory, a theory that underpins all of modern biology.  That is her target.

Ellis goes on:

Last week, NPR treated us to a condescending and science-worshipping article written by Barbara King, an anthropology professor whose latest book is titled How Animals Grieve. If King had stopped at the usual scientism slurping, that would have been bad enough. King, however, took the extra step and demanded an obeisance from parents and the complete sacrifice of their children to the god of contemporary science.

Taking aim at young earth creationism as manifest by Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, Barbara King scolds reporters who give any positive attention to, in King's words, "anti-science creationist discourse." She goes on to explain how society has failed our children by allowing them to be exposed to anything but evolution. After a series of proposed remedies, King concludes her condescending rant by declaring that, "Our children must be taught about evolutionary science in order to be science-literate."

First off, this column kind of surprised me coming out of PJ Media. This is the kind of thing I would expect to read from the Discovery Institute, the intelligent design think tank out in Washington state.  Who is John Ellis?  If you click on his name, you are greeted with this:

Having spent the majority of his adult life as a theatre artist throughout the Southeast, John now lives in the DC area with his wife and two kids. Besides writing, he works on the staff at his church. Prior to writing for PJ Media, he was a columnist for No Depression and regular contributor to Bearded Gentleman Music.

In other words, he has no scientific training whatsoever.  He is a musician and writer (and not of science).  Here is what he writes next:

Since scientism is a faith-based religion, and a faith-based religion that has the entire trajectory of science history undermining it, scientism's adherents have to forcefully clear the worldview deck in order for their religion to flourish. In the marketplace of ideas, the weaker ideas are going to need some handicapping, so to speak.

The thing is, next to no one is attempting to keep children from learning about evolution. Creationists that have any sway over policy want children to learn options. There is a concerted effort, however, to frame worldview discussions in a manner that eliminates any worldview that doesn't bow down to the current, most-privileged group-think. In other words, Barbara King isn't really concerned that your children be science-literate; she wants to make sure that your children aren't exposed to ideas that threaten her larger worldview. She wants control.

Controlling the education of children is one of the front lines in the battle of worldviews. Barbara King realizes that for her religion of scientism to flourish, children's education has to be devoid of competing ideas.

There are numerous problems with this column. Ellis uses phrases like "the usual scientism slurping" as if such were a common thing in scientific discourse, yet does not define or explain in any satisfactory way what "scientism" is or why Dr. King's writing should be characterized as such.  Further, his use of the phrase "god of contemporary science," suggests that he holds the scientific enterprise in very low regard.  Given his background, one wonders what qualifications he has to write this column and who green lighted it in the first place.

He mentions "taking aim" at young earth creationism.  This is, perhaps, because young earth creationism is an easy target at which to take aim.  There is no defensible science that supports the young earth position.  We have known for almost a hundred years that the earth is not 6,000 years old and the evidence for the young earth position gets weaker every day.  Consequently, defense of young earth creationism, by people like Ken Ham and others, has begun to focus on how acceptance of an old earth and evolution amounts to "compromising the biblical message," that, as Christians, we should know better than to accept evolution, or how evolutionary thought leads to the gross evils of mankind (despite the fact that evil has been around considerably longer than evolutionary theory).  This is a blatant move to appeal to the emotions of supporters and to their religious perspectives.  After all, if the Bible clearly says that the earth was created in six literal days (and that is really big IF), then modern science MUST be wrong.

He speaks derisively of Dr. King's statements that we must teach evolutionary biology to kids to keep them science-literate and that the difference between creationists and evolutionists is that creationists don't worship science.  It is hard to combat an argument like this because it is so lazy.  How do "evolutionists" worship science?  He doesn't say.  Evolutionary biologists don't worship science, they practice it.  He says that the strength of creationists is that they are not "threatened by competing views."

Would he make the same argument that we should teach our kids alchemy, instead of modern chemistry?  What about teaching the various theories of gravitation prior to our modern understanding?  There are, after all, people that still subscribe to those.  What about geocentrism?  How about the Flat Earth Society?

Anyone that tried to seriously teach these would be laughed at, and rightly so.  Why, given that modern young earth creationism has no scientific support, should we treat it differently?  Why, if evolution has more support than most scientific theories, does teaching it constitute sacrificing school kids to "the god of contemporary science?"  If competing views have been shown to be false, why should we teach them?

He writes that scientism (once again, undefined) is faith-based and that it has the entire history of science undermining it, therefore, promoters of scientism need to "handicap" the weaker ideas.  News flash: that is what science does.  It weeds out the weaker ideas.  Back to my initial point: science is not democratic.  Ideas that have no empirical support get put in the dustbin of history.  Science does and must proceed this way or we have no way of understanding the world and universe in which we live.

He writes that no one is trying to keep people from learning evolution.  This simply isn't so.  One of the principle findings of the Dover trial in 2005 is that the defense witnesses lied repeatedly about why they wanted an alternative to evolution taught.  Most of the defense witnesses could not even identify what Intelligent Design was.  When pressed, it became clear that they wanted creationism taught. 

Recent reports from other places in the country indicate that, almost uniformly, attempts to "teach the controversy" or "teach the full range of ideas" are smokescreens for getting young earth creationism (and hence, anti-evolution) into the classroom (For example, see here, here, here, and here).  Most of these bill supporters would like nothing better than to have evolution stripped from the curriculum of public education.  That they have not been very successful so far is not for lack of trying.

This is a very poorly-written article.  While blasting what he calls "scientism," Ellis makes no effort to explain why we should teach creationism in its place.  Further, he makes no effort to explain why the teaching of evolution should not happen, simply that he thinks it consists of a "world view."  If teaching evolutionary theory constitutes teaching a "world view" then guess what?  Most of what we teach as science entails a "world view."

Heliocentrism is a "world view" and we teach that. When Galileo confirmed Copernicus' finding that the earth was not in the center of the universe, it sent shockwaves throughout the church, such that the work of Copernicus was banned. Much like the modern struggle against evolution, it literally changed their "world view" in such a way that they couldn't incorporate it into their understanding of scripture.  Does any educated person today doubt that the earth is not in the center of the universe?   

Gravitational theory changed our understanding of the universe and introduced us to black holes, quantum mechanics and string theory.  Plate tectonic theory changed our understanding of how our earth works, why earthquakes and volcanoes happen where and when they do and why most natural disasters happen.  Science News has a great little article on the Top 10 Revolutionary Scientific Theories, every one of which changed our "world view."  Ellis is just upset because King's world view differs from his.  The catch is that there is empirical support for her world view and there is none for his.  As such, his argument that her promotion of evolutionary theory constitutes "scientism" fails. 

Ken Ham and Asteroids

Leave it to Ken Ham to take a science excursion into the “what if?” and ruin it. The Inquisitr is reporting on Ham's response to a new documentary, made by the Discovery Channel, in which they address the question of what would happen if a bolide were to hit the planet. These events happen regularly (in geologic time, anyway) but most are not of any size to create large-scale problems. The Winslow crater was created around 50k years ago but the last really biggie was the Yucatan bolide that ended the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. Nonetheless, it is incumbent on astrophysicists to do studies about whether or not another one will strike and when.  The significance of this seems to have escaped Ken Ham, who thinks that this kind of search is stuff and nonsense.  He writes:

What you believe about the Earth's past doesn’t just influence how you view it—your belief also determines how you view the future! Because of their beliefs about the past, many evolutionists are concerned that somehow mankind will be catastrophically wiped out and life as we know it will end on Earth. One of the most popular versions of this apocalyptic tale is that a massive asteroid, or several asteroids, will strike Earth and obliterate life. The Discovery Channel even recently made a video simulating what it would look like if a 500-kilometer (310-mile) asteroid smashed into the Pacific Ocean. According to their simulation, such an impact would destroy Earth and vaporize life.

Why is it that evolutionists are so concerned that humanity will someday be catastrophically destroyed? Well, according to man’s ideas about the past, life arose naturalistically and the universe is governed completely by the merciless laws of physics. According to their worldview, evolutionists contend there isn’t anyone upholding or sustaining the universe. We are simply at the mercy of naturalistic processes. Also, according to one evolutionary idea about the supposed dinosaur extinction event, a massive asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. If such an event happened once before, what’s to stop it from happening again and wiping out humanity this time?

This is a bit like the congresswoman from Montana, I think it was, that argued against the need for addressing global warming because the earth had only been around for six thousand years so it was not possible for humans to have affected it that much, anyway.  He continues:

The Bible has already told us how things will end—with judgment from God when Jesus Christ returns to Earth (2 Peter 3:10; Revelation 20:11–15). Those of us who have trusted in Christ as Savior have no fear of this coming judgment because our penalty for sin has already been paid by Jesus. But instead of fearing some hypothetical asteroid apocalypse, those who refuse to acknowledge Christ as Lord should fear this coming judgment, and it should bring them to repent and put their faith in Christ.

Given that he has so badly garbled the beginning of the Bible, I am not entirely convinced he has gotten the end of it right, either. I have done little in the way of study of millenialism, so I won't wade into it here.  Is it true that our ultimate salvation is of paramount importance?  Yes, it is.  Should we have a good personal relationship with Jesus?  Yes we should.

Having said that, Ham is spilling a lot of ink over an exercise in astrophysics to scare people about fire and brimstone.  What a completely humorless response.

I think I might watch the program.

Where Did the Cretaceous Birds Go?

As evidence continues to pile up supporting the theropod dinosaur-to-bird transition, the question has arisen: where did all of the Cretaceous birds that did not give rise to modern birds go?  Science Daily has this report:

Now a team of paleontologists led by Yale researcher Nicholas Longrich has provided clear evidence that many primitive bird species survived right up until the time of the meteorite impact. They identified and dated a large collection of bird fossils representing a range of different species, many of which were alive within 300,000 years of the impact.
"This proves that these species went extinct very abruptly, in terms of geological time scales," said Longrich. The study appears the week of Sept. 19 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Aside: the next time I see a scientist use the word “prove” I am going to strangle them. Scientists don't prove anything. They provide support for a hypothesis or they reject a hypothesis.  Onward.  The common consensus about the dinosaur extinction is that it was, in large part, caused by a huge meteorite that fell to earth toward the end of the Cretaceous in the Yucatan Peninsula.

The crater reflecting this impact is 110 miles across and, while it probably wasn't the entire cause of the dinosaur extinction, it wiped out a good chunk of 'em.The article continues:

Yet modern birds are very different from those that existed during the late Cretaceous, Longrich said. For instance, today's birds have developed a much wider range of specialized features and behaviors, from penguins to hummingbirds to flamingoes, while the primitive birds would have occupied a narrower range of ecological niches. "The basic bird design was in place, but all of the specialized features developed after the mass extinction, when birds sort of re-evolved with all the diversity they display today," Longrich said. "It's similar to what happened with mammals after the age of the dinosaurs."

Another piece of the puzzle!

Fat Birds

It seems that the ancestors of emus and cassowaries became too heavy for flight quite a bit back. Discovery News reports:

The study used molecular dating of the mitochondrial DNA from the moa, which stood 2.5 meters (6.7 feet) tall and weighed up to 250 kilograms (551 pounds), and found its closest relative to be the tinamous -- a flighted bird the size of quail, found in South America.

Previously it was thought ratites all shared a common flightless ancestor about 80 million years ago and their worldwide dispersal occurred before the supercontinent of Gondwanaland broke up.

But Phillips says the problem with this theory was that much of the continental break-up occurred well before the proposed common ancestor.

Their study, which also included DNA sequencing of 22 bird species including flightless and flighted birds, shows ratites became flightless around 65 million years ago, he says.

This coincides with the extinction of dinosaurs in the Cretaceous-Tertiary event.

Most of these had no natural predators or could run faster than the ones they did have until humans came on the scene.

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