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.

Bat-Winged Dinosaurs in the Jurassic

“From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” —Dr. Seuss

A new discovery in China (natch) indicates that, during the Jurassic, there were flying dinosaurs that, effectively, used the same sort of propulsion system used by modern bats.  From Science Magazine:

A number of tiny, bat-winged dinosaurs flew the Jurassic skies, according to the strongest evidence yet for such creatures—a well-preserved fossil of a starling-size fluffball that may have looked a little like a flying squirrel. The find, recovered near a farming village in northeastern China, suggests dinosaurs were experimenting with several methods of flight during this period, but many were an evolutionary dead end.

“This fossil seals the deal—there really were bat-winged dinosaurs,” says Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with the study.

Scientists were already confident that a number of dinosaurs could fly. There are birds, of course, which are technically dinosaurs and appeared during the Jurassic period, at least 150 million years ago. Other dinosaurs sported feathers on their hind- and forelimbs, effectively giving them four birdlike wings.

Evidently, most of these creatures were very small, some the size of a starling.  It seems that the idea of flight was much more common during this period than was originally thought.  Here is an artist's reconstruction.

The more we discover, the stranger it gets.

"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. 
 

More Nonsense From Ken Ham

A new diorama is being created for the Ark Encounter, in Petersburg, Kentucky that is said to depict gladatorial combat between men and dinosaurs.  Raw Story has this:

“Exquisite design by @ArkEncounter artists for new Diorama depicting wicked population in the pre-Flood world to be installed @ArkEncounter,” Ham wrote.

Ham is the director of Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian sect who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that humans, dinosaurs and apparently giants coexisted rather than being separated by millions of years.

“Scientists estimate that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, or a good 64.8 million years before the first homo sapiens, who evolved roughly 200,000 years ago,” said Mazza.

Here is Ham's original twitter post and here is an image of the diorama:

This is the relevant biblical text for this time period:

6 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Even assuming that this passage is to be taken literally (and make no mistake, there is no evidence whatsoever for the world-wide flood that follows later in this book), the passage makes no mention of gladiator-style combat, bread and circuses, or large, prehistoric beasts.  Like so many other things in creationist literature, these are all add-ons to the text.  These were added by Mr. Ham to emphasize the “wickedness” of this generation and the presence of “giants.” 

Ken Ham has a peculiar relationship with dinosaurs, once denying that they were ridden off the ark, only to be confronted with a picture out of a book that he, himself, had written showing just that. 

Dinosaurs are a particular problem for young earth creationism because, if, indeed, they were ridden off the ark, then their almost immediate demise has to be accounted for.  What would have caused them to die off...all of them...at once...without leaving any kind of historical record?  There are no tales of dinosaurs eating people and being hunted to extinction in any literature.  Given that this was only 2400 B.C., wouldn't some of them have survived?  Why aren't they mentioned by either the Chinese or Egyptians, who both had thriving civilizations at this time.  Surely some of the smaller ones would still be walking among us. 

No, in fact, there is not a single dinosaur still living.  We have their descendents, in the form of birds and a wealth of evidence for the transition from the maniraptoran line to modern Aves, but no dinosaurs still exist.   Creationists have yet to satisfactorily address this question. 

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.

It Pains Me To Think...

...how many people there are out there like televangelist Brad Shockley, who displays not just a frightening ignorance of science but the Bible as well.  As David Edwards of Raw Story writes:

On Sunday’s broadcast of Let The Bible Speak, Shockley lamented that the creationist view on dinosaurs was “rarely credited” by the media.

“We often have a difficult time convincing others this is the proper explanation,” Shockley said. “The creationist accepts the teaching of Genesis and teaches that dinosaurs were created on day 5 [and] day 6.”

The pastor noted that humans were also created on day 6 and “shared this world with the dinosaurs” and “all of these events took place approximately 6,000 years ago.”

According to Shockley, schools were using dinosaurs to “indoctrinate” children with lessons about science and evolution.

“Realizing mom and dad couldn’t not defend their religious beliefs, they ignorantly stumble into believing the theories of evolution and abandon their faith,” he insisted. “Evolutionary doctrine on dinosaurs denies the Bible, creation, the existence of God and, by default, ultimately denies Jesus Christ is the son of God and our redeemer.”

At one point he quotes the book of Job's lurid description of behemoth, with passages such as “...a flame goeth out of his mouth...” and suggests that this is a trait that we associate with dinosaurs. No, in fact, we don't associate that with dinosaurs at all. We associate that kind of thing with dragons.He suggests that this is a trait that was lost over time, a convenient excuse for the fact that we have never found any such thing.  He argues that given the amazing things that we find in the animal world today, we should have no trouble believing in dragons.  Really??? 

Nothing short of amazing.  

Velociraptors Had Feathers

Scientific American has a story about a new dinosaur discovery in China which shows, among other things, a feathery dinosaur at 125 million years.  As one of the discoverers puts it:

Zhenyuanlong is covered in feathers. Simple hairy filaments coat much of the body, larger veined feathers stick out from the tail, and big quill-pen-feathers line the arms, layered over each other to form a wing. This is a dinosaur that looks just like a bird. If you could see it alive you would probably make no distinction between it and, say, a turkey or a vulture.

Look at Zhenyuanlong and you see what the real Velociraptor would have been like. Far from being a scaly-skinned reptilian monster, Velociraptor would have been a fluffy, feathered poodle from hell.

Here is a picture of the fossil, accompanying the story.

UPDATE: Dinosaurs Lived With Humans?

I have been reflecting on the blogosphere's reaction to the Google page that results in the search "What happened to the dinosaurs?"  While it is true that the top result is a link to Ken Ham's absurd young earth creationist book by the same title, I wonder if the chief reaction: Have Google change the results page, is the correct one.  Do we really want Google discriminating its results?  That can work both ways and some things we don't want discriminated might be.  I suspect the best thing we can do is place similarly-worded page up that alert readers to the errancy of the result from Answers in Genesis.  To that end, there will be a follow-up post doing exactly that. 

Google: Dinosaurs Lived With Humans?

Google is in hot water for the reliability of its search results this morning.  This story will probably have a very short shelf life.  It turns out that if you ask the question “What happened to the dinosaurs?” the very first result you got was this:

This has sparked an outcry from the science community and several people have posted about it.  Of course, the search results have changed in the intervening time.  Now when you do the search, you get hits from people asking why Google is giving out this kind of information.  This hit the airwaves at least sixteen hours ago and Google has yet to adjust its search results, however.  The top result, after the “in the news” story, is still the one from Ken Ham's organization.  Greg Laden suggests that people tell Google that their results are unreliable by using the "Feedback" button next to Ken Ham's book plug.  I will be curious to see what this looks like a day from now.  He writes:

I’ve never, for one moment, gone along with the idea that Google can pull off a better, more reliable search based on the Google view of what sites are more reliable. My position on this has annoyed many of my colleagues. The promise of the Internet being less bogus and more educational is attractive. But it is a siren call. Regarding this particular issue I’ll claim the role of Galileo until proven otherwise.

Hat tip to Rob Mitchell.

UPDATE: This is lighting up all over the internet. I used the general feedback button to voice my opinion.

I probably should have used better wording but wanted to get it out.  

HuffPo: Creationist Darek Isaacs Calls Dragons Real, Says They Lived In Biblical Times

Sometimes I just want to crawl under the desk and hide.  Welcome to the public face of Christianity: the young earth creationists.  HuffPo is running a story on an interview with Derek Isaacs, listed as a creationist author and filmmaker, in which he argues that dragons lived with humans and are extensively mentioned in the Bible.  Meredith Bennett-Smith writes:

In an interview with Christian talk show Creation Today posted to YouTube on Wednesday, Isaacs says that dragons are real because the Bible says so.

As a so-called Young Earth Creationist, Isaacs is guided by the scientifically discredited belief that the Earth was created by God several thousand years ago. (Scientists believe the Earth came into being about four billion years ago.) In addition, he believes in biblical inerrancy--the belief that the sacred book contains no errors.

"The Bible speaks about dragons,” Isaacs told the show's hosts. "Our authority -- everything we do, we have to measure by the word of God. That is what I believe. So we have to go to the Bible, and the Bible speaks about dragons."

"Scientifically discredited." That is one way of putting it.  Nevermind that there is no archaeological or fossil evidence of "dragons" whatsoever.  Here is the video:



He comments that 2000 years ago, people would have understood the lethality of dragons. Despite never having seen one? Where were they?  If real, honest-to-goodness dragons were actually around, they would have been mentioned in every single book of the bible.

It has been argued by some creationists that dragons were, in fact, dinosaurs.  Some dinosaurs were thirty tons and eighty feet long. Others were fast, killing machines.  If all of the dinosaur remains in the rock record were the result of the flood and represent the carcasses of animals living during bible times, the Holy land would have been overrun with them!

The other problem is that the flood story predates the dragon references in the Old Testament AND the book of Revelation, so there would not have been any dinosaurs running around at this point, anyway.  But there are larger interpretive problems here.

The word "dragon" in Hebrew is Tan-neem, which means large creature.  In many verses in the Old Testament, it clearly means the Nile Crocodile.  For example:

"Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales." (Ezekiel 29:3-4 KJV)

In the New Testament, the word "dragon" refers to Satan:

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." (Revelation 12:7-9 KJV)

 It is pretty clear that this set of verses does not describe a reptile with arms and legs. It describes a monster in theological terms.

This is yet another example of flat-earth Christianity, where there is no interpretation done on the part of the reader. Revelation is only one-way and we are not to question how to read the scriptures.

Consequently, what seems obvious using even a cursory read of the Bible is completely lost on people like this.  Further, it is no surprise from whence this kind of nonsense emanates. 

As Christians, we cannot afford to behave irresponsibly like this.  It is incumbent on all of us to think intelligently about our faith and understand its cultural context and history.  The statements of Derek Isaacs just make Christians look ignorant.

Just When You Thought The Ball State News Would Die Down...

While the ties to Ball State University are, admittedly, somewhat stretched, the media is playing this one up for all it is worth.  Seth Slabaugh writes:

Toy dinosaurs at the juice and coffee table greeted members of Grace Baptist Church during a seminar on a recent Saturday morning.

The reason for the toys?

“Dinosaurs and the Bible” was a key presentation at the creationist event.

Guest lecturer Jay Wile, a nuclear chemist who taught at Ball State University during the 1990s, presented the group evidence of dinosaurs living alongside humans in recent history.

“I am sure you disagree with most of what was in my presentations ... and I have no problem with that,” Wile told The Star Press after his talk. “Disagreement is one of the many things that makes life interesting. I just ask that you treat me fairly in your disagreement.”

So, despite the fact that all of the available evidence puts the dinosaurs and humans at 65 million years apart, and despite the fact that the dinosaur remains that we do have are fossilized and couldn't possibly be six thousand years old, some wall engravings and verses from the Bible that mention "the behemoth" are enough to argue that dinosaurs and humans coexisted?  Really?  They continue:

He next displayed photographs of Native American rock engravings of “incredibly accurate” depictions of dinosaurs at Natural Bridges Monument in Utah and at Havasupai Canyon in Arizona. He also showed photographs of a 13th century Cambodian temple’s rock sculpture of a stegosaurus with plates on its back, as well as two sauropods drawn on the tomb of Richard Bell, a Bishop of Carlisle, who died in 1495.

“No paleontologists were around back then,” Wile said.

True, but the fossilized bones were and, like the remains of Gigantopithecus, would serve to allow the locals to envision what the beast must have looked like. As it turns out, Stegosaurus remains are found mostly in Asia, specifically southern China.  Lo and behold! An alternate explanation that also happens to fit the evidence.  This kind of thing is just depressing to read. 

AIG: Intolerant Atheists Viciously Attack Christian School

In response to the publicity that the fourth grade science test got in Snopes recently, Answers in Genesis posted a rebuttal against "those intolerant atheists."  Ken Ham, himself, writes:

Today, we bring your attention to another attack on Christian education. A Christian K–12 school in South Carolina, with dedicated and highly qualified Christian teachers,1 has come under vicious attack by atheists. Why? Because one of its instructors, a fourth-grade teacher, tested her children about biblical creation, science, and dinosaurs (using AiG resources), and she has become (in)famous on many atheist websites and blogs.

It is not clear to me that she has become infamous on many atheist websites.  Many sites that aired the controversy are not atheist sites.  Like me, they simply cannot believe that this is being taught as science.  Ham is blanketly calling anyone who disagrees with the teaching of this in fourth grade as "atheist."  This is simply name-calling.  For the entire length of the response, however, there is never a question about the quality of the instruction, only the assertion that it is "the atheists" that want to remove the "biblical approach to dinosaurs."  He writes:

For the next two years, our special theme for the Answers in Genesis ministry is “Standing our Ground, Rescuing our Kids” (Galatians 1:4). We, too, have experienced recent increased attacks by atheists, especially whenever they discover we are influencing children with the truth of God’s Word. These anti-God people hate the fact that Christians are teaching children to stand on the authority of the Bible; they want to be the ones teaching children and indoctrinating them into atheism.

For Ken Ham, there is not the slightest possibility that a person can be a Christian and not accept this way of looking at scripture.What happens to these kids when they reach adolescence or adulthood and discover that he is wrong about how the universe is put together?  What then?  Will he feel responsible when they walk away from the faith? 

Urban Legend? Hopefully, But Probably Not.

A friend of mine sent this to me from Snopes.com.  It is, purportedly, a quiz given in a fourth grade science class at a school in South Carolina.
 

 

As Snopes points out:

The title of the quiz is the same as that of a DVD produced by the group Answers in Genesis and hews closely to the material presented therein, including the admonition that "if someone tells you the earth is millions of years old, what should be your reply? Were you there?" and the reference to the Bible as the History Book of the Universe.

Snopes does not come down either way on the authenticity of the quiz, but suggests that the source of the information is credible. They list it as "probably true." I think it probably is also, and is not far from what quite of a few of these private schools likely teach. I have no empirical evidence for that, however. If this is true, once again, this is what will kill the voucher program. All that the opponents of vouchers have to do is point out this kind of use and it is lights out. That is a shame.

News Looking Up For Accurate Science in Homeschooling?

The Atlantic has an excellent article on changes that are happening in the homeschool market that suggest that many homeschoolers are getting disgusted with the bad science.  David Wheeler writes:

For homeschooling parents who want to teach their children that the earth is only a few thousand years old, the theory of evolution is a lie, and dinosaurs coexisted with humans, there is no shortage of materials. Kids can start with the Answers in Genesis curriculum, which features books such as Dinosaurs of Eden, written by Creation Museum founder Ken Ham. As the publisher's description states, "This exciting book for the entire family uses the Bible as a 'time machine' to journey through the events of the past and future."

It's no secret that the majority of homeschooled children in America belong to evangelical Christian families. What's less known is that a growing number of their parents are dismayed by these textbooks.

Take Erinn Cameron Warton, an evangelical Christian who homeschools her children. Warton, a scientist, says she was horrified when she opened a homeschool science textbook and found a picture of Adam and Eve putting a saddle on a dinosaur. "I nearly choked," says the mother of three. "When researching homeschooling curricula, I found that the majority of Christian homeschool textbooks are written from this ridiculous perspective. Once I saw this, I vowed never to use them." Instead, Warton has pulled together a curriculum inspired partly by homeschool pioneer Susan Wise Bauer and partly by the Waldorf holistic educational movement

If you will recall, it was the whole "dinosaur-with-a-saddle" problem that got Ken Ham into hot water, recently.The sad thing is that the biblical stories have been twisted so far out of proportion that they are barely recognizable for what they are and pictures like this, which should strike any student of the Bible as ridiculous, are simply accepted. 

Wheeler writes that many people homeschool not for religious reasons but because they don't like what is being taught in the public schools. That is partly so and partly not. One of the principle reasons that many do not like the public schools is that God has been summarily removed from the picture and it is hard to instill biblical values over the secular ones that the kids are pummeled with every day.

Part of the reason that some of us do not have our kids in public schools is because of the progressive dumbing-down not just of the students but of the administration, as well. Witness the recent problems resulting from lack of rudimentary common sense on the part of teachers and administrators involving children with pastries and toy soldiers. In the first case, the common sense was evident to everyone except the school officials, who suggested counseling for kids (rather than themselves) who were troubled by the incident. Most homeschoolers look on at these stories with a mixture of disbelief, horror and amusement and think, "There but for the grace of God, go we." But for those of us who despair of the lack of critical thinking in the sciences, hope is on the way:

The rising number of homeschool families striving to reconcile belief in God with today's scientific consensus has attracted the attention of at least one publisher -- Christian Schools International in Grand Rapids, Michigan...The CSI science curriculum clearly presents science from a Christian perspective, but does not attempt to discredit the theory of evolution. The content presents God as the author of all of creation, no matter how he did it or when he did it."

This is welcome news for those of us that just watched a child slog through It couldn't Just Happen, which does no better a job than Of Pandas and People in getting the biological and evolutionary sciences right. For both of these books, the emphasis is single-minded: the destruction of evolution. There is no other objective.  If conventional, accurate science is trod upon in the process, so be it.

I don't expect miracles overnight but this is a good first step.  There will be backlash from groups like Answers in Genesis, Abeka and Bob Jones, however.  I just hope that these "underdog" publishers stay true to their mission.  We will all benefit from it. 

Ken Ham Alters His Testimony

It seems that Ken Ham recently had a Google+ Live chat and was asked by a caller about people riding dinosaurs in the Bible.  Here is the exchange:

Q: The last question we have here tonight Ken, they ask: “How did men get the dinosaurs to not buck them off of their saddles when people rode them? Were the dinosaurs more domesticated and well behaved because there wasn’t as much sin back them? I’ve always wondered.”

Ham: (pause) Well, I need to get paid overtime for this question… I seems we’re a bit over our time.

I don’t know where people get the idea that people rode dinosaurs. I mean, there’s no evidence in the Bible that that is so. When Job was looking at Behemoth, the description there… there’s nothing to do with people riding dinosaurs. We don’t know how people interacted with dinosaurs.

As Fatlip over at Leo Weekly amply demonstrates, this is in sharp contrast to what he has previously written. Out of the images that Fatlip provides, this one is the best. It is from Ham's book Dinosaurs of Eden: Tracing the Mystery Through History:

Those are, in fact, Noah's descendents riding dinosaurs.

So, faced with one of the most preposterous of his young earth creation claims, Ken Ham waffles.  It is doubtful that he simply forgot what he wrote, nor is it credible that he didn't see the proofs of the book before it was published and “missed” the pictures of people riding dinosaurs.

It is quite possible that he simply realized how ridiculous it sounded and couldn't bring himself to agree with it. Given his evasive and somewhat-less-than-truthful statements about AiG's involvement in the Ark Encounter, however, I remain skeptical.  

Just as astounding is the question, though.  This just shows up the fact that people who might otherwise be reasonable, believe absolutely fantastic things in the pursuit of this young earth hermeneutic. 

Pat Robertson Goes Rogue

In a response to a question on the 700 Club, Pat Robertson, head of CBN and Regent University in Virginia Beach, caused many jaws to drop when he remarked that the standard young earth creationism model is not all its cracked up to be. Dan Merica of CNN comments:

The statement was in response to a question Robertson fielded Tuesday from a viewer on his Christian Broadcasting Network show "The 700 Club.” In a submitted question, the viewer wrote that one of her biggest fears was that her children and husband would not go to heaven “because they question why the Bible could not explain the existence of dinosaurs.”

“You go back in time, you've got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things, and you've got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas,” Robertson said. “They're out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth, and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don't try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That's not the Bible.”

Before answering the question, Robertson acknowledged the statement was controversial by saying, “I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this.”

“If you fight science, you are going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,” Robertson concluded.

This is, of course, exactly contrary to the teachings of Ken Ham, who argues that it is because we aren't teaching creationism that we are losing our children. Robertson's statement is also a paraphrased restatement of what Kenneth Miller once said: Never bet against science.

Interestingly, while the CNN author attempts to tie in the rest of the article with acceptance of evolution, Robertson doesn't say that. He says that he doesn't accept the recent earth model.

This will make waves in both camps and there will be much hand-wringing among young earth supporters.  Humorously, the The Daily Kos' headline reads: “A Sign of The End Times? Pat Robertson throws the Young Earthers under the bus.”

Whether this counts as a renunciation or simply a public statement of long-held beliefs, I am not sure. That this is big news, however, is unquestionable.

Is Noah's Ark Sinking?

A reader pointed out a story in Leo Weekly about the newest troubles of the Ark-n-Park, the Noah Ark theme park being built (mostly) by Answers in Genesis next to its fabled Creation Museum. Joe Sonka writes:

The first phase of the project will cost $73 million to build, and $6 million has already been spent on land acquisition and design. So far, Answers in Genesis has raised $7.5 million, with private investors pitching in an additional $15.5 million to the LLC, leaving $22 million left to raise before they have enough money to break ground, and $44 million left to complete the project. [Joe] Boone estimates it will take 12-24 months to secure the funding to break ground, then it will take another 24 months to complete construction.

The company will then have to raise $53 million for additional phases of the park throughout next decade.

Such a delay in construction makes the potential for a full $43 million in tax incentives impossible, as the state will only rebate sales taxes for 25 percent of what they’ve spent constructing the project by May 2014. This in turn could hurt private investment for the park, as there is no longer the virtual guarantee of $4 million in rebates every year.

The loss of the tax revenue will be a serious blow to the park construction since it was the center of focus not even a year ago and raised so much controversy. It is an interesting article, with a few hair-raising anecdotes about a visit to the Creation Museum thrown in, just to show how borderline-cult this group is. I truly hope the project hits a dead end but I would bet money that the park will wind up being built. Read the whole thing.

More Feathered Dinosaurs

Science Daily has a story on the discovery of more feathered dinosaurs. From down in the story:

Theropods are bipedal, mostly carnivorous dinosaurs. In recent years, scientists have discovered that many extinct theropods had feathers. But this feathering has only been found in theropods that are classified as coelurosaurs, a diverse group including animals like T. rex and birds. Sciurumimus -- identified as a megalosaur, not a coelurosaur -- is the first exception to this rule. The new species also sits deep within the evolutionary tree of theropods, much more so than coelurosaurs, meaning that the species that stem from Sciurumimus are likely to have similar characteristics.

Once again, we are seeing that, in response to changing climate, some dinosaurs are evolving feathers to keep warm. The writer alludes to this at the end of the quote. It is likely that the ancestors of both branches of theropods will have rudimentary feathers. The coelurosaurs simply took it and ran with it.

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Now playing: Glass Hammer - Farewell to Shadowlands
via FoxyTunes

Ken Ham: Coming to a Billboard Near You!

Apparently, Ken Ham is taking his Creation Museum to Billboards across the Country. According to Dylan Lovan of the AP:

Ham said there are 20 different billboard styles, though some feature other prehistoric animals like mastodons. A billboard near Interstate 64 in Louisville features a flying pterodactyl and says the museum is "101 miles ahead." So far the signs have appeared in 25 states.

The high-tech museum near Cincinnati has animatronic dinosaurs, models and fossils, and teaches that the giant reptiles were created by God in a matter of days along with all other living things a few thousand years ago. Paleontologists say fossil evidence shows dinosaurs were present on the earth tens of millions of years ago, well before humans arrived.

Science educators that have long criticized the museum and said the Creation Museum's campaign is meant to attract young people interested in dinosaurs to a place that delivers a religious message and a version of history that conflicts with scientific findings.

"It's a hook, it's a bait to get people to say, 'Hey let's go to that museum' — and then the other message is brought out," said Steven Newton, a program director at the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif.

The catch is, as you can see from the ads, there is no information so most people think they will be going to a natural history museum, with standard mainstream scientific information about dinosaurs. What you get, instead, is the young-earth creationist message that dinosaurs and humans coexisted on the landscape which, as Barry Lynn points out, is “only true in the Flintstones.”






The advertising will probably work and bring more people in. That is unfortunate.

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Now playing: Genesis - ...In That Quiet Earth (2007 Remaster)
via FoxyTunes

Holy Jurassic Park, Batman!

Wired has a story on “How to hatch a dinosaur” by Thomas Hayden. He writes:

Over the past several decades, paleontologists—including [Jack] Horner—have found ample evidence to prove that modern birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, everything from the way they lay eggs in nests to the details of their bone anatomy. In fact, there are so many similarities that most scientists now agree that birds actually are dinosaurs, most closely related to two-legged meat-eating theropods like Tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptor.
But “closely related” means something different to evolutionary biologists than it does to, say, the people who write incest laws. It’s all relative: Human beings are almost indistinguishable, genetically speaking, from chimpanzees, but at that scale we’re also pretty hard to tell apart from, say, bats.

That's funny. Here's where the Jurassic Park comes in:

These regulatory genes—the master switches of development—contain the recipes for making certain proteins that stick to different stretches of the genome, where they function like brake shoes, controlling at what time during development, and in what part of the body, other genes (for things like growth-factor proteins or actual structural elements) get turned on. The same basic molecular components get deployed to make the six-legged architecture of an insect or fish fins or elephant trunks. Different body shapes aren’t the result of different genes, though genetic makeup certainly plays a role in evolution. They’re the result of different uses of genes during development. So making a chicken egg hatch a baby dinosaur should really just be an issue of erasing what evolution has done to make a chicken. “There are 25 years of developmental biology underlying the work that makes Horner’s thought experiment possible,” says Carroll, now a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Every cell of a turkey carries the blueprints for making a tyrannosaurus, but the way the plans get read changes over time as the species evolves.

That is one of the best definitions of hox genes that I have ever seen. The problem is that you are looking at a developmental level that is very basic.  It will be interesting to see how this is applied in the next few years.