Todd Wood's Take on Danuvius

Todd Wood is always interesting to read, even if I don't share his chronological leanings.  He has thoughts on the new Miocene ape from Bavaria, Danuvius:

Based on the fragmentary remains, we make some really interesting observations about the anatomy of Danuvius. These apes had strongly opposed big toes, which would allow them to effectively grip things with their feet. Their tibiae (shinbones) have the kinds of joints that would allow them to walk upright, and their femora (thighbones) support that conclusion. These apes might have been in some way bipedal. The arm bones they found have traits that are associated with suspensory locomotion, like hanging from tree branches. The body size was fairly small, about the mass of a bonobo.

As I mentioned in my post, I think the evidence for bipedalism is vastly over-stated and, even if it can be shown that this “Extended Limb Clambering” is shared by other fossil ape finds from the region, there is no particular reason to think that these critters were ancestral to later hominins. It is entirely likely that they exhibited a separate adaptation to this particular style of locomotion.  Todd raises some other questions, though, that are not answered in the paper:

So why not address similarities of Danuvius to later fossil hominins? The authors are trying to establish a new means of locomotion that they call Extended Limb Clambering (ELC). So they compare Danuvius to living primates (where the authors know how they get around), and they're interested in comparing it to contemporary Miocene apes of Europe. But they're not all that excited about other comparisons to later fossil forms like Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, or Orrorin. They also don't relate their findings to later fossil apes in Europe like Graecopithecus or the Trachilos tracks, both of which have been linked to hominins or bipedality. Perhaps they don't think those things are worth talking about (maybe because they're skeptical of Graecopithecus like I am), but I guess I just don't agree.

I think that part of the reason that these questions are not raised is because there is so much of a gap between these finds, chronologically and geographically. There is simply with which to relate them. As Todd points out, the hominin status of Graecopithecus is dubious, at best, and, even if the Trachilos tracks are hominin, they are still quite a distance from Bavaria and six million years later in time.

For now, this fossil ape stands on its own.  If we find other evidence of incipient bipedality in other forms in the area and can relate them to later forms, then the picture might change.  For now, though, Danuvius is a very interesting, odd Miocene ape. 

Ted Davis Waxes Theological, Todd Wood Responds

Ted Davis, like the rest of us, is tired of how the origins debate is playing out between mainstream and non-mainstream science.  He has great praise for those that display clear-headed thinking on both sides in the debate such as Michael Ruse and Todd Wood.  He writes:

I also tip my hat to YEC proponents Todd Wood and Paul Nelson. Each was featured in the YEC film, Is Genesis History?, but neither dismisses proponents of EC with the back of his hand. They both have the courage and conviction to seek the truth, even if takes them places where their creationist friends don’t want them to go. For example, on the same day the film was released, Dr. Nelson dissented from how his ideas were presented in the film. Dr. Wood didn’t do that, but he does candidly admit elsewhere that “Evolution is not a theory in crisis,” that “it is not teetering on the verge of collapse,” nor has it “failed as a scientific explanation.” He finds “gobs and gobs” of evidence for evolution,” denies that it is “just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion,” affirms that it “has amazing explanatory power,” and frankly says, “There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.”

I am quite sure that this last quote will haunt Todd Wood to the grave because most evolutionary creationists (including myself) keep it in their back pocket. Wood has taken on some heavy hitters who have misused science and has done so in an honest and thoughtful way and he has truly striven to understand biodiversity as it pertains to his way of thinking. Furthermore, unlike many in the young earth creationist camp, his posts are free of invective and insult.  For these things and others, he should be commended.

Davis continues:

There’s always the danger than one can overplay one’s hand, or forget that those who see things differently are also made in the image of God. Sometimes, one’s opponents in a public disagreement really are mean-spirited, arrogant, or intellectually dishonest, tempting one to respond in kind. In such situations, do your best to take the high road. Stick with the facts, spell out why you hold different opinions, and be fair to ideas defended by others, even when you strongly disagree: no one has a monopoly on truth. Intellectual honesty and humility do not imply cowardice or lack of commitment to the Gospel. 

This is something I am often guilty of. I find it all too easy to take a blowtorch to the writings of Answers in Genesis in a nasty way, typically because I am writing in anger.  This often happens when I discover a post or article in which it is clear that the person writing the article has little knowledge of the subject about which they write and their tone is insulting or condescending.  It is all too easy to open up both barrels. He finishes with an admonition to avoid indoctrination:

Individual Christians have every right to think for themselves, without being browbeaten into submission by fear, accused of holding dangerous views simply for favoring a different interpretation of Genesis, or publicly shamed as intellectual cowards for accepting consensus science.

There is a great danger in taking the attitude that if two people have a disagreement about something, that one of them is not in the spirit. This behavior results in arrogance, haughtiness, broken relationships and lots of finger-pointing. We are all guilty of sin, especially the sin of self-righteousness.

Todd Wood responds by adding another way that he would like to see the debate change: less of “diagnosing the enemy”: 

There's two big problems I see with Diagnosing the Enemy. First of all, it's just a profoundly arrogant thing to do. How can anyone seriously think that reading a Facebook comment or blog article would actually reveal all the intricacies and complexities of human thought? Some days, I can barely put two words together, and you think that's going to actually reveal the inner workings of my mind and years of study and research and prayer and thought?

Also arrogant is the ulterior motive of Diagnosing the Enemy: I have the cure. Because, let's face it, diagnosing a problem isn't really the point, right? The point is: if only my enemy would watch my video or read my book or do what I tell them, then everything would be fine. Because not only can I diagnose your problem by engaging in a superficial reading of superficial comments, I'm the guy who's gonna cure you! When you think about it like that, it's obviously and embarrassingly silly, but it still doesn't stop us from reading certain triggers and sticking people in that pigeonhole.

Which brings me to the second big problem: It's dehumanizing. Instead of complex people with complex thoughts and attitudes and personalities, we reduce our enemies to one simplistic issue. There aren't just ideas out there that float around having battles by themselves. Ideas are held by real people with real personalities, and histories, and values, and fears. And all of that immensely complicated personality gets entangled with the way we think about the world and our faith. When disagreements pop up, though, these people for whom Christ died suddenly become defined by one perceived "defect."

I am of two minds about this response. It is certainly correct that people are complex and that a single blog post or Bookface post does not remotely capture their complexity.  As noted above, it is all too easy to fire off a response to a post that you know has gotten some basic information wrong.

The problem is that when an entire body of work of an organization continually misrepresents science and the authors of that body of work show absolutely no interest in correcting this misinformation, a response is necessary. When an entire body of work is continually scientifically inaccurate, it begins to inform about the people who are producing it.  In short, at least on one level, it makes it possible to “diagnose the enemy.”

 If you read all of the posts on my blog or my writings on BioLogos, you would get a pretty good idea of what I think about science and theology. It might even be possible to “diagnose” me a bit. To be sure, you would not have insight into what I think about abortion, gun control or how good a father I am to my children, but it would be pretty clear that I am a card-carrying evolutionary creationist.

Davis's post is a clarion call for both sides to take the high road.  That is often hard to do when you are being called “evil, stupid evolutionists” and you know that what they have written is just plain false.
Wood remarks that it is disheartening to see BioLogos identified as the “middle ground.” If we are not the middle ground, what are we? We are people who are firmly convinced in the salvation of Jesus Christ and the integrity and primacy of God's word to us.  We are also people who want to understand the universe that God has created, but to do so in an honest, forthright, and scientifically sound way.

Evolutionary creationists are dismissed by atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris for believing in fairy tales and being scientifically compromised by their faith.  This is a false charge.  We operate within the scientific framework with the understanding that everything around us is God's handiwork.  We are dismissed by many young earth creationists as being “compromisers” and not taking the bible seriously.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the things that seems to drive this invective is that atheists are convinced the Bible is false and that we are idiots for believing in it.  Young earth creationists are convinced that their understanding of scripture is absolutely correct, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It is easy enough to understand where the atheists are coming from, since they see nothing beyond the observable universe.   It is the YEC perspective that I find perplexing. It leads to people like Wood, himself, saying about evolutionary creationists that they “ought to know better,” even though, by his own admission, there is a massive amount of evidence for evolution.  Ken Ham takes it a bit further by questioning whether we are, in fact, Christians at all, and that if we pass on the EC perspective to our children, we are endangering their salvation.

Is it possible that Wood and his fellow YEC supporters are correct in their scriptural assessment?  It absolutely is.  Is it possible that we have evolution wrong?  Is it possible that the earth was created six thousand years ago?  Again, it absolutely is.  But the weight of evidence currently doesn't support those positions.  In fact, there is little to no empirical support for them.  Many good, devoted Christians are out there are wrestling with these facts.  To be told that they “ought to know better” than to accept them or that they aren't Christians if they do is insulting.  Further, as noted above, it betrays a troubling aspect of this perspective: the idea that our understanding of scripture is unbiblical. 

Secondary to this is that, in all of the young earth creationist literature that I have read, there is a remarkable lack of self-examination when it comes to scriptural interpretation.  To those who support the young earth model: we might be wrong about our interpretation of scripture, but you might be, also.  For the origins debate to change, there must be an acceptance of this on both sides of the aisle.  Only then will progress be made and name-calling cease.  

Ken Ham Comes to Alberta

Young earth creationism is ubiquitous in home school curricula here in the United States.  Ken Ham is trying to make that the case in Canada, as well.  There has been pushback. Bill Kaufmann of the Calgary Herald writes:

Australian-born Ken Ham, a leading Christian fundamentalist proponent of creationism over evolution, is scheduled as a keynote speaker at the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) convention in Red Deer next April.

Ham spearheaded the building of a Noah’s Ark-centred creationist museum in Kentucky, and the educational books he’s authored includes Dinosaurs of Eden: Did Adam and Eve live with dinosaurs?

“Those who believe that only the uneducated reject evolution perhaps do not realize that evolution, far from fact, does not even qualify as a theory,” states an entry on his Answers in Genesis website.

“Evolution is a belief system about the past.”

It also offers a line of textbooks in areas of biology, geology and “creation apologetics.”

This is total nonsense. I would quote Todd Wood at this point, but he is probably tired of me quoting him. Suffice it to say, evolution is one of the most well-tested theories on the planet.  If you choose not to “believe” it, that is fine but to say that it is not a theory is just ignorant and foolish.  The more Ken Ham writes, the less I think he knows about how science works.   And now the pushback:

But Alberta Liberal Leader David Khan said while home schoolers have every right to invite speakers like Ham, it raises questions about what those children are being taught as science.

“None of that belongs in science curriculum, which should be mandatory for everyone regardless of whether they’re funded by Alberta Education or not,” said Khan.

“Having a bunch of kids lacking in basic science education is a problem for society writ large.”

He questioned whether Education Minister David Eggen is doing enough to ensure real science is being taught outside conventional classrooms.

While the AHEA doesn’t receive provincial funding, they’re expected to teach fact-based science, said Eggen’s spokeswoman Lindsay Harvey.

“All students, no matter what format of education they receive, are expected to learn from the current Alberta curriculum,” said Harvey.

I am generally not in favor of government oversight in home schooling. When that happens, you tend to get an agenda that seems to be tolerant of everything except “conservative” values.  Having said that, I wonder about all of these kids who wind up going to secular universities and having their faith blown apart by grounded, empirical science.  You can't mandate to homeschoolers what they should and should not teach unless you force a specific curriculum on them but stories like this shine a spotlight on home schooling that might be detrimental in the long run.

I wonder if Ken Ham is even aware of the damage that he is causing.  As Joel Edmund Anderson put it in his book The Heresy of Ham:

I believe that the paranoia, divisiveness, and frustration that the young earth creationist movement fosters wherever it goes should serve as an indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is not simply a case of Christians having a difference of opinion on a certain topic.  This is a case of a movement willing to declare war on everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, who does not capitulate to what they have unilaterally declared to be true.

I couldn't agree more.

Book Purchase: Adam's Quest

I hate it when books come out that escape my attention.  Such is the case with a book titled Adam's Quest, by Tim Stafford.  In it, Stafford has interviewed eleven scientists who have struggled with their understanding of how their faith fits in with their pursuit of science.  In a sense, this is like the book Four Views on the Historical Adam, in that it surveys Christians from different perspectives.  He has interviewed young earth creationists, supporters of intelligent design and evolutionary creationists.

As readers of this blog will note, I have been extremely critical of young earth creationists and intelligent design supporters, not so much for their beliefs (which I also find issue with, though) but for their ham-handed and often deceptive way in which they treat the scientific evidence for an ancient earth and evolution.  At least Todd Wood, one of the assembled scientists, has also had issue with this and, from what little I have read of Kurt Wise, he has as well.

Patheos has a short introduction to the book, which focuses on the first group, the young earth creationists, and some of their consternation at the way that science is examined.  There is a passage with a particularly damning quote from Kurt Wise about this:

After that, Wise lost interest in creationist apologetics, especially as he began to realize that many of the creationist evidences from his reading were wrong. “At first I thought it was ignorance.” As he learned more though, he became convinced that the mistakes in creationist literature were willful. … Wise concluded that for many creationists the end justifies the means. For them, “it doesn’t matter if what you say is true. It matters if it brings people to the right conclusion.” (p. 15-16)

This is, perhaps, why I find people like Ken Ham and his organization, Answers in Genesis so contemptible. They pretend to address the scientific concerns in an honest way but misinterpret evidence, arrive at faulty conclusions and smear hard-working scientists as a matter of course.  As i just told my oldest child, I am not going to come right out say they are lying, but it sure looks like it. 

Perhaps one of the scariest parts of the book and one of the principle reasons that I picked it up are in the sample that is available from Amazon, in which the author recounts his upbringing, which is almost word-for-word what I experienced growing up.  He then recounts every Christian parents' nightmare: the falling away from the faith of one of his children, in part because of the strains of learning correct science and being told that he could not be part of his circle of church friends if he continued to accept an old earth. 

Right now my children are in a home school group that is heavily young earth creation-based and I know that several of the parents of their friends would be horrified if they knew that I was an evolutionary creationist.  I simply don't advertise it. One of them thinks of Ken Ham as a hero of the faith.  How would it be of value for me to confront her with the notion that I think he is a charlatan and a heretic? 

As of yet, my oldest child does not seem to be tracking in any scientific direction so I doubt that this will have a huge impact on his life.  The same does not seem to be true with my second child, who is enamored with botany.  She will hit evolutionary biology head-on in college and I will have to prepare her for that and how to hold onto her faith throughout.  That will be, perhaps the greatest challenge that faces me. 

I look forward to reading this book with interest and would encourage downloading the sample.

Slightly Off-Topic: Mike Adams: Inherit the Windfall

Mike Adams has a new column on the continuing travails of Bryan College and its embattled president Stephen Livesay.  Bryan, if you will remember, made the news when twenty percent of its faculty left after being required to sign a statement of faith supporting young earth creationism and a literal Adam and Eve.  More recently, it allied itself with Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, which I am quite sure was, as much as anything, politically motivated.

Now it seems that there have been some financial irregularities to go on top of the religious ones.  Adams writes:

The present crisis dates back to 2009 when one of the founders of the National Association of Christian Athletes (NACA) was accused of sexual molestation. A proposal was made to sell a property owned by NACA, which is known as the Fort Bluff Camp, for an amount of $2.5 million. This would have covered NACA’s debt at the time, which was $900,000. Thus, it would have left them $1.6 million in the black. This is where Bryan College President Stephen Livesay gets involved. This is also where the gross financial misconduct begins.

Livesay managed to defeat the proposal to sell the land with an alternate proposal to get rid of the then-existing 13-member NACA Board. Livesay proposed a new 15-member NACA Board be put in its place. Elevating audacity to a Zen art form, Livesay suggested the following composition for the new NACA Board: Nine new members from the Bryan College Board and six members from the existing NACA Board. Unbelievably, Livesay proposed that he would be the one to choose all 15 members.

It goes downhill from there.According to Adams and other sources with whom I have spoken personally, the board is now little more than a mouthpiece for Livesay.  The last person who would stand up to him resigned from the board last year, as Adams notes.  From other sources, it became known that, as of a few years ago, Stephen Livesay was paying himself over $300k a year as president.  This after telling Todd Wood and the CORE Institute that the college didn't have the funds to continue supporting the institute.  This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.  I hope that Bryan survives.  We were down there for a summer institute last summer with my son, Marcus, and it is a very pretty campus and the people there were very friendly.

Todd Wood on Is Genesis History?

Todd Wood has a post on the reactions to the film Is Genesis History? and he makes some very good points and a couple of lousy ones.  First the good ones.  He writes:

Does the film present a false dichotomy? From the world outside of young age creationism, it definitely does. Lumping all the other positions on creation and evolution into one monumental thing isn't really fair to the vast diversity of opinions out there. That part is quite correct, and if I was an old-earth creationist or theistic evolutionist, I would definitely be bothered by that.

He is absolutely correct about this.  It does bother me that there is a false dichotomy presented here.  I do not for one minute think that the universe and all that is in it was created by blind, godless processes. I have a firm and strong faith in the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ and the creating power of God.   I also do not think that the universe was created six thousand years ago.  There is simply no defensible empirical evidence for that.  Second point:

Unfortunately, the reality is that we all divide people up into "us vs. them." Let's face it, BioLogos would have you divide up the world into BioLogos vs. those who reject all of science. That's not remotely fair. Paul Nelson wants the dividing line to separate those who accept design and those who accept only naturalistic processes. That division would exclude those, like BioLogos, who think the "naturalistic" processes are God's design. RTB's dividing line isn't so easy to summarize but I guess it would cut off Christians who think the world is young on the one hand and those who think evolution is real on the other.

Too much of this does go on, it is true. I don't think that he has completely accurately characterized the position of BioLogos and it is passing peculiar that he doesn't mention ICR or AiG and the fact that they are pretty specific about who is US and who is THEM.  I do know from my own blog posts and writings that I am guilty of this sort of thinking and that there are many different views along the continuum from the straight six-day model to flat-out atheistic naturalism.

Now the lousy ones.  First:

The theological importance of the historical Genesis is a giant theme of young-age creationism, even if you reject the way some creationists present it. In the case of RTB or Intelligent Design, the theme seems to be fighting over things that really matter like evolution, and not fighting over things that don't matter like the age of the universe. If we don't focus our real disagreement on the "most important" issues (like design), then we damage our witness by exaggerating the importance of secondary issues.

Wrong. None of these issues really matter to the faith. You can be a young-earth creationist, an intelligent design supporter or an evolutionary creationist and STILL be a Christian. In the grand scheme of things, evolution doesn't really matter.  Every Christian should believe the following:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the father, by whom all things were made.  Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man.  He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.   He suffered and was buried.  The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.  He ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father.  He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead.  His kingdom shall have no end.  I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, and who spoke by the prophets.  I believe in the holy catholic and apostolic church.  I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.  I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. 

That's it.  If you believe those things, you are in the body of Christ.  Nothing outside of that is fundamental to the faith.  That includes evolution.  Second lousy point:

And finally, to those of you patient people who actually read all of this and are still fuming, "That movie was terrible and misleading, and the greater sin is theirs!" you are part of the problem, my friend. If you play the outrage card (BioLogos), you just add fuel to the fire. The response will be, "BioLogos is the one repeating tired old lies about young-age creationism!" So please think carefully before you email me your outrage, and maybe direct that energy to thinking about ways of moving forward and not just yelling the same things at our deafened ideological "enemies." I'd love to hear new ideas.

This gives cover to those who DO intentionally misuse and misrepresent scientific evidence for their own gains.  One of the things that drives me bat crap crazy is that AiG gets scientific information wrong almost all of the time. If you don't hold those people accountable for their abuses of science, and point out where these people are going off the rails, then they get off scot-free and mislead more people.  Wood himself has castigated other creationists for saying that there is no evidence for evolution when there is, in his words "gobs and gobs of it." 

I may not agree with Todd's interpretation of Genesis, but in his scientific endeavors, he always treats the science with respect.  The same cannot be said for many in the YEC universe. Here's a new idea: how about the folks at ICR and AiG actually treat the science with the respect it deserves.  Science is not the be-all-and-end-all.  It only describes the physical universe, but it does a pretty good job of that and if you are going to reject it, come up with some sound hypotheses that can be tested.

David MacMillan Responds to Todd Wood

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

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

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

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

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

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

David MacMillan on Homo naledi, Ken Ham and Creationism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Todd Wood weighed in on this:

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

Wood continues, in his defense of creationist journals:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Wilsey: Is the Evangelical Right Actually Conservative?

John Wilsey, writing for the Christian Century asks a very important question: Is the Christian Right actually conservative.  The post is mostly an (well-deserved, IMO) indictment of modern evangelical Christianity:

Many on the evangelical right have also jettisoned the intellectual, credal, and liturgical traditions of Christianity. There’s not much new in that. The anti-credal trend goes back to early-19th-century America. But it continues, and this “crisis of authority” has profound ramifications, as Molly Worthen, Thomas Bergler, D. H. Williams, and other scholars have noted.

This is a major problem. If we take Russell Kirk’s emphasis on order in conservatism, then it is difficult to classify rightist evangelicalism as conservative. At the beginning of his Roots of American Order, Kirk defines order as “a systematic and harmonious arrangement” that “signifies the performance of certain duties and the enjoyment of certain rights in a community.” Disorder is “a confused and miserable existence” wherein “the commonwealth cannot endure.” Kirk’s understanding of order as central to conservatism is one rule by which we ought to measure the legitimacy of conservatism in American evangelical Protestantism.

As a result of turning away from objective authority, evangelicals have a sentimentalized religion. Sentimentalism yields a self-referential faith. Kirk calls this “egoism,” which is antithetical to “humility, charity, and community.” Sentimentalism turns inward and rejects the outside world. Self-help and self-defense messages abound, along with constant appeals to stay relevant for the young people. Bergler terms this process “the juvenilization of American Christianity.”

This goes hand in hand with the "Disney-ization of Christianity" and Mark Noll's perspective that the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is that there is no evangelical mind anymore, but that the Church has abrogated its responsibilities in modern society and academia. Todd Wood, the young earth creationist down in Dayton, TN, lamented this a bit back, arguing that the church has set up a parallel culture with all the trappings of secular culture, only recognizable by the fact that its members go to church on Sundays.  Further, he notes that this culture is poorly done, which leads young people to abandon it.

So the modern evangelical movement spends that vast majority of its time focusing on the modern culture wars—homosexuality, gay marriage, pre-marital sex, evolution and other related issues—and in so doing, forgets that it has a rich history of three or four millenia, filled with some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. Consequently, instead of academic centers of Christian thought, we get the Creation Museum and pastors like Brad Shockley.  No wonder people are leaving the church in droves.

Scorecard on What YEC Sites Think of Homo naledi

Naturalis Historia posted a scorecard  on what the various opinions of Homo naledi are depending on which young earth creationist site you visit.  I have read and responded to the AiG post, which was flawed in its approach from the outset (it assumed that all australopithecines were only apes).

Hat Tip to Todd Wood at CORE.

Todd Wood: Intro to Origins

The Core Academy has just finished putting together its Intro to Origins series of classes.  The topics are varied, including a discussion of the current creation/evolution debate, and sections on creationism and theistic evolution.  Each class is $50, and with four kids being home schooled, I just don't have the money for them. 

I have every belief that the science will be treated fairly and respectfully, if from a young-earth perspective.  There is a code on the site that will allow anyone interested to get a 25% discount for a set period of time.  I disagree with Todd on most things regarding the age of the earth and cosmogony but he has never treated the science shabbily. 

Bryan College Officially Supports Young Earth Creation Model

The Chattanooga Times-Free Press is reporting that, following what is considered to be an unhealthy drift toward naturalism, the college administration has revised their faculty pledge statement.  According to the story:

The board of trustees is requiring professors and staff to sign a statement saying that they believe Adam and Eve were created in an instant by God and that humans shared no ancestry with other life forms. If they don’t sign, they fear that jobs could be on the line.

General consensus is that this statement is unnecessary and divisive. Since the ruling, almost 300 students (37% of the total student body) have signed a petition requesting that the requirement be overturned. I suspect that is not likely to happen anytime soon.  This is a matter of faith, not science, and the fact that it further marginalizes Bryan in terms of science education will probably carry no weight.  President Steven Livesay, who formulated the statement was quoted as saying: “Scripture always rises above anything else. Scripture rises above science. ... Science at some point will catch up with the scripture.” What if it doesn't? What if your understanding of scripture and science continue to diverge, as they have for the last two hundred years? What then?

As time goes on, the evidence for the young earth model gets worse, not better. President Livesay, are you so sure that, despite the fact that there is no extrabiblical evidence to support it, your hermeneutic is correct?  Are you willing to injure the reputation of your college and put your faculty on edge for it?

As one of my friends at work (and a graduate of Bryan) put it: “Appalling.”

Update From Todd Wood

Todd Wood is now actively trying to save CORE and, even though he is still in the proposal and fundraising stages, it looks like his efforts may pay off.  He writes:

If you pray to the one true God, please pray for us now that these proposals will be well received and that God will guide us as we make even BIGGER plans for the future. If you don't pray to the one true God, well... keep watching, because I think He's going to do something amazing.

Because of his attention to the data and his honesty and integrity, his presence on the scene can only benefit the entire search for the truth in these issues and I pray that his efforts will succeed.

CORE is Defunct

Todd Wood has been ruminating about this on his blog for some time and now it looks like a reality: financial support for the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College is being withdrawn.  He writes:

On January 11, 2013, I had a meeting with Stephen Livesay, president of Bryan College. He informed me that due to a significant budget shortfall, the college would be discontinuing support for the Center for Origins Research effective June 30. He has offered to continue housing the CORE facilities, but there will no longer be any salary support for CORE faculty or staff. Since we have very little regular donation support, his decision basically means the end of CORE as we know it. You can read the official college statement on this closing at their website

I like reading Todd's work and, even though I have grave philosophical concerns about the fact that he can understand the immensity of the evidence for evolution and yet still reject it based solely on modern creationism theology, he always treats the evidence fairly and honestly. Nick Matzke, writing for Panda's Thumb has this to say about it:

Wood was almost the sole representative of critical thinking in the creationist movement. He also had the virtually unique trait of understanding what modern evolutionary biology actually said before opening his big mouth about it. I can’t think of a time when he quote-mined Gould’s punctuated equilibrium quotes or blamed Darwin for Hitler or used the other careless, bottom-of-the-barrel tactics ubiquitous with creationists of the ID or AIG varieties. And I can think of many times when he called shenanigans on creationists engaging in those sorts of sins.

Indeed, I remember his takedown of Fuz Rana's interpretation of the chimpanzee genome data. One particular quote was memorable:

I would recommend that no one accept any of RTB's arguments without fact-checking their claims first. I do not know whether these problems are due to lazy scholarship, ignorance, intentional deception, or ideological blinders. What I do know is that you cannot trust Reasons to Believe.

For a creationist to say that about an ID organization is quite something.  I hope that Todd continues to write and to post blog entries.  Whatever I think about his theology, he is a joy to read. 

Todd Wood on the Neandertal Interbreeding Question

Todd Wood has weighed in on the Neandertal hybridization results in ArXiv with some of his own thoughts and he raised the spectre of incomplete lineage sorting...something that entirely escaped my thought process when I was waxing about the ArXiv paper yesterday. But as he, himself, points out, there are problems with this explanation. He writes:

Since incomplete lineage sorting is a random process, I would not expect to see any modern human population significantly more similar to Neandertals than any other modern human population. Modern human populations diverged well after the Neandertal divergence, so whatever genes were still very similar to Neandertals should have been evenly divided. Even more interesting is the geography: the ancestors of the modern humans with Neandertal-like genes come from the same geographic region as the Neandertals. If incomplete lineage sorting is to blame for Neandertal-like genes in modern humans, that geographic pattern would just be a weird coincidence. That's not to say that one couldn't make a case for incomplete lineage sorting, but we would need some new evidence to really seal the deal (such as new samples of Eurasians that don't have Neandertal-like genes or Africans that do).

He is right. If modern humans and Neandertals diverged as much as 250 ky BP as many people think, then drift would ensure that the two genomes would be more highly divergent than they appear to be. He is also correct about the geographical coincidence. As I wrote yesterday, the interbreeding conclusion would tend to be supported by the appearance of Neandertal-reminiscent traits in the earliest moderns from the area.

The authors argue that linkage dis-equilibrium, which is when you have allele combinations that are present in two related populations in higher percentages than can be accounted for by chance, supports the recent interbreeding model, a conclusion that Wood agrees with (although how a young-earth creationist can agree with that kind of model, I will never know).

Christianity Today: “A Tale of Two Scientists”

Christianity Today has an article by Tim Stafford on Darrel Falk and Todd Wood. Darrel is the president of BioLogos (Disclosure: I write for BioLogos) and Todd Wood is the biologist at Bryan College in Dayton Tennessee and, as far as I can tell, the only young earth creationist who honestly treats the geological and biological evidence. Of Falk he writes:

He took a postdoctoral fellowship in Southern California. On one memorable day, he was at the beach with his family when he saw a church bus arrive in the parking lot. From the lettering on the side, he could see the bus was from a Nazarene church, the denomination of his boyhood. "This church family, I reasoned, was having a picnic, just like I used to love so much." The sight prompted deep sadness, as he thought of his daughters. They would never go on a church picnic. They would never gain the richest part of his heritage. "I longed to go back, if only for the sake of my daughters. But I could not go back—the chasm that separated us was too great. One of the widest sections of the gulf was my belief in gradual creation."

When I read this, I realized that it resonated with me. I was in church one day and my pastor was giving a sermon on Genesis, in particular the pre-flood world, and it shook me. While I believe in Jesus Christ and the salvation He brings, I realized I didn't believe what my pastor was saying. What he was describing was an outgrowth of a deep, convicted faith that is unencumbered by modern science, or by racking doubts of whether anything in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is true in a literal sense or is it all myth. I can't go back to that faith. I know that it puts me at odds with a great many of my friends but, as Falk alludes to, the gulf is too great. When my friends ask me to explain why I think the evidence for an old earth and evolution is so good, I hesitate. In some ways I don't want them to lose that innocence and yet, in other ways, I am convinced that the young earth hermeneutic is wrong and can be destructive to the faith.

Wood has always struck me as someone who has a very regard for scientific integrity and the ability to correctly analyze scientific research, even if he does not believe their conclusions. In the past, I have been critical of what I perceive to be cognitive dissonance in his approach to his science. That is perhaps, unfair. I think that he truly does believe that there is evidence of change but that this points to something we just haven't fathomed yet.

Having said that, the biological/evolutionary evidence doesn't exist in a vacuum—it rests on the geological and biogeographical evidence of an ancient earth—and he has yet to properly address it and its relationship to biological diversity. As of now, he seems either unwilling to do so or feels it is irrelevant to his research. Given his approach to biological science and his general castigation of the level of research of his fellow young-earth creationists, I would be curious to know what he thinks of this evidence.

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Where is Todd's Letter?

Panda's Thumb noticed something that I also did a few days ago. In this post, I commented on Todd Wood's letter to Governor Bill Haslam but remarked at the time that the link was busted. PT has noticed that there is still no link and suspects foul play. Nick Matzke writes:

Wood’s argument as stated wasn’t all that convincing, really – the law is necessary if your goal is to push creationism in public schools without getting in trouble, for instance. My gut instinct is that what was really going on was that Wood, for a long time one of the only self-critical, independent, and somewhat realistic voices within creationism, just doesn’t think that pushing ID/creationism via government power and the public schools is a good idea. It’s not even good for creationism – pushing your ideas in the public schools before they are accepted in the scientific community will instantly discredit your movement within science; it leads to heated political battles rather than academic discussion; and inevitably it has historically led to expensive and embarrassing court defeats for creationism, and tighter legal restrictions against teaching creationism.

Matzke opines (and I agree in the absence of anything to the contrary) that Wood, who is not your average creationist, got his hand slapped. I certainly hope that this is not the case as his is about the only sane voice (mostly) in the entire world of creationism. If someone has reined him in, that spells trouble.

It feels, in some respects, like the Bruce Waltke fiasco of a few years back where he stated that the Christian community needed to acknowledge the importance of the evolution evidence and was summarily drummed out of his position at Reformed Theological Seminary for saying so.

At Sunday school this weekend, one of the topics that came up was persecution of Christians. Every single person in the room, to a man or woman, stated that they had received more persecution from fellow Christians about their beliefs than by non-believers. How sad is that?

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Todd Wood Thinks SB893 is Superfluous

Todd Wood has written to Governor Haslam, arguing that the passage of SB893 is pointless. The link to the letter appears to be broken on Todd's page, so I quote it in part. He writes:

Because of my religious convictions, I am a committed creationist, but unlike many creationists, I have grown quite weary of the creation-evolution propaganda war. I believe this bill is an ideal example of what's wrong with the creation-evolution war. For example, since the bill clearly states that religious discussions are not protected, it could not be used to permit "some Sunday school teachers to hijack biology class by proxy," as the editorial in the March 21 edition of the Tennesseean suggested. On the other hand, my own reading of the bill indicates that it provides no protection that teachers don't already have. Teachers are already well within their rights to discuss any scientific evidence that pertains to the prescribed curriculum and to encourage critical thinking about it. Many already do.

Interestingly, he hits on a particular problem in his opening statement involving creationism: it doesn't stand on its own merits. It is specifically tied to a “religious commitment.” This is counter to the position by the mainstream organizations such as AiG and the ICR, which have argued for decades that their science is as good as mainstream science and shows that the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago.

I have often wondered if a challenge should be issued: that someone would come forward who is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth and the universe were created in six twenty-four hour days six thousand years ago and that the geological column represents the effects of a world-wide flood but who is either an atheist or a hard-line agnostic. I doubt such a person exists.

The second problem that I have is that I don't think that the law is superfluous. Right now, if someone teaches recent earth creationism in the classroom in public school, they run the risk of being fired, like John Freshwater was. Now that the law has been passed, there is no oversight and such teachers are beyond the veil of accountability. The only way such a person would be stopped is if a lawsuit such as the one at Dover, PA were brought forth. Does the state really want that, with the media circus it would entail? Then it really would be Scopes II.

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Todd Wood on William Jennings Bryan

Todd Wood, who teaches at Bryan College, named for William Jennings Bryan has written a glowing tribute to the late orator. He writes:

As an outspoken critic of evolution (which he called a “guess with nothing in the universe to support it”), the college’s namesake isn’t known for his love of science. In his own day, critics accused Bryan of spreading “appalling obscurantism” and “peculiar imbecilities.” Bryan—and creationists like me—are commonly believed to be antiscience. After all, how could you possibly doubt something so well established as evolution? You might as well believe the earth is flat, or so the common wisdom would have you believe.

But is this really so? Ron Numbers, in his article on the creationists in Science, writes:

Though one could scarcely have guessed it from his public pronouncements, Bryan was far from being a strict creationist. In fact, his personal beliefs regarding evolution diverged considerably from those of his more conservative supporters. Shortly before the trial he had confided to Kelly that he, too, had no objection to “evolution before man but for the fact that a concession as to the truth of evolution up to man furnishes our opponents with an argument which they are quick to use, namely, if evolution accounts for all the species up to man, does it not raise a presumption in behalf of evolution to include man?”

This puts him more in the camp of C.S. Lewis, who was accepting of evolution as a scientific discipline but not of “evolutionism” (what we would refer to as philosophical naturalism). This does not paint a picture of an anti-evolutionist at all but one concerned about the effects of evolution in society.

What is also side-stepped in this article is the fact that Bryan was not a young-earth creationist at all but rather accepted that the earth might be millions of years old. This also puts him at odds with modern creationists and, as Numbers writes, more in tune with other conservative theologians of his time. In writing about William Jennings Bryan's anti-evolutionism, these things should have been addressed.

The Meaning of “Biblical Literalism”

Todd Wood points us to an article by Joshua Moritz on The Search For Adam Revisited: Evolution, Biblical Literalism, and the Question of Human Uniqueness that shows up in the journal Theology and Science. It appears to be open-access and I had no trouble securing a copy. Although the focus is on the idea of how to interpret the creation narratives in a literal, yet textually faithful fashion, Moritz, in quite concise language, points out the glaring origin of modern young-earth creationism and how different it was from the understanding of biblical literalism of the day:

Even more recently, such as at the time of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial (1925), the actual face of biblical literalism was quite different than one might expect—especially if one has in mind young earth creationism with its insistence upon a 10,000 year old recently-created earth and its focus on ‘‘flood geology’’. Around the time of the Scopes trial in the early twentieth century, there is no record of any biblical literalists within normative Christianity who interpreted the Bible as claiming a recent creation in six 24-hour days or that Noah’s flood had anything to do with how one should interpret the record of global stratigraphy. Indeed, literalists at that time saw Noah’s flood as a local phenomenon and ‘‘even the most literalistic Bible believers accepted the antiquity of life on Earth as revealed in the paleontological record.’’ The one exception to this general rule was the Seventh Day Adventists—a sect of Millerites who, after 1844 (and disillusioned by Christ’s failure to return), regrouped under the leadership and supernatural visions of the teenage prophetess Ellen G. White—a charismatic young woman ‘‘whose pronouncements Adventists placed on par with the Bible’’. White and her Seventh Day Adventist followers harbored no doubts about the correct reading of the early chapters of Genesis because in a trancelike vision White was ‘‘carried back to the creation’’ by God himself, ‘‘and was shown that the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in six [24 hour] days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other week.’’ White likewise saw that during Noah’s flood, God created all the various geological layers of sediment and fossils by burying the organic debris and causing ‘‘a powerful wind to pass over the Earth...in some instances carrying away the tops of mountains like mighty avalanches...burying the dead bodies with trees, stones, and earth.’’ Thus, from the divine dreams of Ellen White young earth creationism was born and, ironically, it was conceived in stark opposition to the reigning biblical literalism of the day.

Most young earth creationists that I know are, I believe, unaware of this information. How, or if it would change their Christian walk is unclear. It is instructive to read Ron Numbers' The Creationists to see how dominant the Adventists were in the formation of modern-day young earth creationism.

The article is a good expose on how the scriptures would read if we really did read them literally, which is quite differently than our modern understanding of them is. He reiterates the position that is held by Paul Marston and others, that there is absolutely nothing in the passages that indicates that Adam and Eve are the only people around during the account in Genesis.

Although the paper is largely devoid of scientific observations, he ends by reminding those of us that tend to think too highly of the scientific endeavor that it is not the be all and end all that we think that it is:

While the doctrine of creation demands that Christians take science seriously, a large part of taking science seriously is to understand that science, as such, is not (and never has been) in the business of making unalterable pronouncements about the nature of reality. Because there is so much terrain in both science and theology that remains unexplored we must press onward in faith, sobered by a good dose of epistemic humility, and taking care in the meantime to not greatly exaggerate the reports of Adam’s death.

That said, if all the evidence points in one direction, how long do we ignore it?

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