More on the story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Florida has new evolution standards for the classroom, according to a story in the Bradenton Herald. This is the paragraph of the story that will raise the most stink:

Proposed standards for seventh-graders, for example, would require that students should be able to "recognize and describe that fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species."

Most creationists can handle little bits of evolution here and there, but there will be howling about this one.

A local push for hominid status for Orrorin tugenensis as well as a run-down on its discovery.

Happy Birthday to Us!

Today the world turns 6 011 years old, according to the Ussher/Lightfoot chronology. Sing happy birthday at least once today.

Vitter yanks the money.

There is now a concerted effort to ask that the funding for the Louisiana Family Forum be yanked. It is quite possible that had the Forum not make its viewpoint on evolution public, this would have gone unnoticed.

Neandertal speech makes a comeback!

Oldest footprints in Europe restored:

Archaeologists have restored and opened to the public, footprints made between 325,000 and 385,000 years ago on the slopes of an extinct volcano near Roccamonfina, north of Naples.

Neat.

Creationism in Canadian churches. The Toronto Star interviews traveling creationist Tas Walker as he makes his way across Canada with the following message:

When Tas Walker hits the stage, he focuses on the geological evidence that supposedly supports creationist belief that the Earth was created on Sunday Oct. 23, 4004 BC, and that this event was soon followed by a global flood that only Noah's family survived in the Ark.

Walker, himself, is quoted as saying:

"Creationists accept the same science that evolutionists do," he says. "Creationists and evolutionists have the same set of facts. The difference is all about the starting assumptions and the interpretation of those facts."

This is nothing short of ignorant. It is the same nonsense peddled by Ken Ham, who is also famous for asking the question "Were you there?" No, Ken and neither were you. If 9 999 people come to the same conclusion about some phenomenon, the one person who doesn't is likely wrong, not just coming to "a different interpretation" of the facts.

While no one was looking, Answers in Genesis erected signs telling people how to get to the new creationism museum in Petersburg. According to the story in the Cincinnati Post:

Answers in Genesis simply took advantage of a benefit available to any other major Kentucky tourist attraction. If you want signs for your attraction, you have to persuade a state committee of transportation and commerce cabinet officials. You must have some kind of cultural, historical, recreational, agricultural, educational or entertainment center.

This, apparently, AIG did, paying 5 000 dollars for each sign. Barry Lynn is not happy.

So, it is the lack of sex that causes speciation. Who knew?

The National Council for Social Studies has released a position statement on the teaching of Intelligent Design in the classroom. They state:

Although the National Council for the Social Studies believes in the open and thoughtful discussion of ideas, public school classrooms are not the place for the teaching of religious beliefs. Social studies is the forum for open analysis and discussion of historical, social, economic, geographic, political and global issues. Thus our recommendations seek to include the study of intelligent design within that framework.

Within this framework, they give some very good advice on how ID could be taught. Interestingly, no attempt is made to distinguish between ID and recent earth creationism. This gives the impression of equivalence between them. ID is no science, YEC is bad science.

Nova will air a special called “Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” on November 13, 2007. Here is the link.

Eugene Volokh discusses a poll about college professors and their philosophical affiliations. The money quote:

According to the survey of academics' ideology linked in my previous post, "creationist identity was also low, but with less identifiable shift by age group (the range was 3.9 to 4.7 percent) and with the strongest disciplinary support in the social sciences (17.6 percent) and humanities (5.0 percent), with negligible support elsewhere.

I am not surprised.

The oldest footprints in Europe.

Italian scientists have dated the marks, which appear to include hand prints, at more than 350,000 years ago, making them part of the genus Homo.

Footsteps of pre-human hominids have been found in Africa, dating back millions of years, but the Italian ones are the oldest traces of human steps - the most exciting discovery in years.

It doesn't mean they belonged to Homo sapiens, modern man, but probably European Homo erectus (also called Homo heidelbergensis), who was around well before the Neanderthals.

Whereas twenty years ago there was scant evidence for Homo erectus in Europe, now it is popping up all over the place.

"Militant Atheists are Wrong." So says LA Times columnist Lee Siegel. Although I could quibble with some of his points, this paragraph seems particularly on-target:

Voltaire and his colleagues attacked the dominant values of their day, at great risk to themselves. By almost comical contrast, the new anti-religionists are safely needling the dominant liberal culture's favorite bete noire. They are publishing their books in an atmosphere of complacency and self-congratulation; they preach to the secular converted, who are buying the books in droves. I'm not a particularly religious person. These arguments don't offend me or my beliefs. But they make me concerned nevertheless, because I think they strike a blow against something more important (at least to me) than belief in God. In their contempt for any belief that cannot be scientifically or empirically proved, the anti-God books are attacking our inborn capacity to create value and meaning for ourselves.

Read the whole thing.

The Daily Mail gets into it.

Europeans can't seem to get worked up about radical Islam, but they sure can get their bowels in an uproar about creationism.

Josh Rosenau is having more fun with the Discovery Institute.

Professor Michael Reiss of London University's Institute for Education thinks that creationism should be taught in public schools. He takes a unique approach:

In a book published yesterday which collates the views of various academics about the controversy, he argues: "I am not convinced that something being 'non-scientific' is sufficient to disqualify it from being considered in a science lesson."

I have long thought that if YECs really thought long and hard about it, having their ideas about the creation of the earth and Noah's flood would be the last thing they would want taught in public schools in science class. It would open them up to rigorous evaluation, which would expose them for the pseudoscience that they are. Given that the public schools are already hostile to Christian teaching (of any kind, it seems), this would have a disastrous effect.

The makers of Expelled fight back.

"I've never seen a bigger bunch of hypocrites in my life," said [Mark] Mathis, who set up the interviews for EXPELLED. "I went over all of the questions with these folks before the interviews and I e-mailed the questions to many of them days in advance. The lady (and gentleman) doth protest too much, methinks."

I will be curious to see it.

Winning over the masses, one scientist at a time, Hillary Clinton backs the teaching of evolution in schools in an NYT article somewhere on their site. Too bad the rest of her is so scary.

European parliamentarians demonstrating that, while they might know creationism when they see it, have no idea what "human rights" are.

Troy Patterson over at Slate is even less kind toward the show:

Our cavemen are diligent upper-middle-class consumers. Note the mentions of cognac and panini presses and caramel biscotti, and check out the scene on the squash court, and then wonder what is up at ABC. One suspects that Cavemen will be gone from the schedule soon enough, but how long will the network's zany experiments in packaging yuppie-male anxiety grind on?

The show does seem to be in keeping with Hollywood's generally jaded view of men.

A bad review for ABC's Caveman, even if you don't buy the racial complaints.

The October issue of First Things has an article called "God and Evolution" by Avery Cardinal Dulles, in which he addresses the different theoretical constructs commonly known as atheistic naturalism, theistic evolution and Intelligent Design. Although he is somewhat sympathetic to the notions of I D supporter Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity," he notes the same thing that Kenneth Miller notes:

As a matter of policy, it is imprudent to build one’s case for faith on what science has not yet explained, because tomorrow it may be able to explain what it cannot explain today. History teaches us that the “God of the gaps” often proves to be an illusion.

He also has a wonder rejoinder for people like Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, who think that religious belief is a human construct that has "evolved" over time:

Some evolutionists contend that morality and religion arise, evolve, and persist according to Darwinian principles. Religion, they say, has survival value for individuals and communities. But this alleged survival value, even if it be real, tells us nothing about the truth or falsity of any moral or religious system. Since questions of this higher order cannot be answered by science, philosophy and theology still have an essential role to play.

It is a good article.

Josh Rosenau asks "Is it a lie if you ought to know better, but don't?"

Eric Cline of the Boston Globe states that Biblical archaeology is too important to leave to the "enthusiast" crowd. His is a pretty good run-down of recent "discoveries" that turn out to be nothing of the sort. I don't remember who said it but one of my favorite quotes is "there is enough wood from the original cross of Jesus lying around to build an ark." Cline notes:

Biblical archaeologists are suddenly finding themselves in a position similar to the evolutionary biologists fighting intelligent design - an entire parallel version of their field is being driven by religious belief, not research principles. The biologists' situation makes the risk clear - they did not deign to mount a public refutation of the "science" of intelligent design for years, until it was almost too late, and thus anti-evolutionary science began making its way into the public schools.

The problem seems to be lack of engagement:

When most archaeologists and biblical scholars hear that someone has (yet again) discovered Noah's Ark, they roll their eyes and get on with their business. This can leave the impression that the report might be true.

The problem is, as John Derbeyshire noted in reference to evolution, debating these "reports" is like playing whack-a-mole. Read the whole thing.

Reason Online takes aim at Ben Stein for the recent ID film dust-up. While it appears that Ben Stein has bought into the nonsense that evolutionary theory leads to racism, violence and the possibility of the Cubs winning the World Series, Ron Bailey's argument is largely unpersuasive.

Neandertals as far east as China? That is what a new study is suggesting. eNews reports :

Geneticist Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from bones found from two sites -- one in Teshik Tash, Uzbekistan and the other from the Altai Mountains in Siberia -- with those of specimens from different European sites.

Scientists looking at the morphology of the remains from the central Asian sites have long disagreed as to whether they came from Neanderthals or Homo sapiens sapiens, the species name for modern man. Paabo's results settle the debate. The study, published in the British journal Nature, confirms that the adult fossils -- about 40,000 years old -- from Okladnikov Cave in Siberia genetically match the European Neanderthal.

The thought then, is that if they got to Siberia, they most likely got further south, into China.

Richard Dawkins has apparently gotten snookered into appearing in a pro-ID film. The film, fronted by Ben Stein, actor (Bueller, Bueller...) and game show host (Win Ben Stein's Money), is called Expelled, and chronicles the academic mistreatment of professors who side with ID. Dawkins and others claim that they were only told that the film would be about the the confluence of science and religion. The film was originally to be called Crossroads. According to the article:

Stein denied in the New York Times that he had misled anyone. "I don't remember a single person asking me what the movie was about," he said. The film company said the movie's title was changed on the advice of marketing experts.

There is also a New York Times article on the controversy. You can go there to find it if you really want to.

Republican candidate for governor in the state of Louisiana Bobby Jindal, who many conservatives have pinned their hopes on in the region, has put his apples in the ID cart. No way to know how this will play out.

Mysterious hominids in southwest Florida. At least David Shealy thinks so.

Mark Graham, of Grove College in Pennsylvania says that there was another side of Charles Darwin:

More than a century after his death, people are still trying to understand Charles Darwin. And a new report says those who label him anti-religion are wrong. The 19th Century English biologist famous for his theory of evolution supported Christian missionary work his entire adult life, reports a cultural historian.

The USAToday article is not particularly long but interesting.

Off Topic

The family and I just got back from vacation to Virginia Beach and Washington D.C. where the kids whethered the heat and the walking around the mall quite well. I also got a chance to see these guys, perhaps one last time. A fantastic concert--Genesis played for two and half hours straight without an intermission. I hope I do that well at age 55.

Senator David Vitter (R) of Louisiana has earmarked 100 thousand dollars for a group called the Louisiana Family Forum that is working to remove evolution from the classroom. What is probably sad about this is that the LFF is likely doing other very good things. This stigma will hang around their collective necks like an anchor. I wouldn't look for Vitter to get reelected, either.

Not sure if this is really news since we pretty much already knew this: "Human Ancestors More Primitive than Once Thought." The article focuses on the Dmanisi remains dated to 1.8 million years ago that appear to be transitional between Homo habilis and Homo erectus/rudolfensis.

The British government has issued guidelines to teachers about how to teach evolution and deal with creationism. Apparently, it was in response to a push by local creationists to channel elementary education:

The Teachernet press release and a corresponding document entitled "Guidance on the place of creationism and intelligent design in science lessons" (dated 18 September 2007) came about after a propaganda exercise in late 2006 on the part of a newly formed creationist organization calling itself Truth in Science.

Packets of creationist-backed teaching materials were sent to the science heads of every secondary school in the United Kingdom. Following complaints, the government issued a series of statements and disclaimers, including a 21 June 2007 statement affirming that creationism (including "intelligent design") "should not be taught as science" and promising guidance for schools "in due course."

Hat tip to the ASA.

The Council of Europe has backed the teaching of evolution in European schools. Here is the resolution, phrased in typically EU, secular fashion. Here is the paragraph regarding the Catholic Church:

76. In the tradition of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI now welcomes the role of the sciences in the evolution of humanity: Science has opened up large dimensions of reason that have been closed up to now and thus brought us new insights. In early September 2006, he brought together a group of former students and colleagues at Castel Gandolfo for a seminar on the evolutionism versus creationism debate. He published the conclusions of this seminar in mid-April 2007 in German under the title “Schöpfung und Evolution” (Creation and Evolution). He does not support the ideas of creationism: the creationist position is based on an interpretation of the Bible that the Catholic Church does not share. The Pope rejects both a creationism that categorically excludes science and the theory of evolution, which hides its own weaknesses and does not want to see the questions that arise beyond the methodological capacities of science. The theory of evolution is considered too pervasive by the Catholic Church, which seems above all to be worried about the influence of “social Darwinism” and the evolutionist theories concerning economic matters and medical ethics.

The draft is quite long and an interesting read. Pastafarianism is even mentioned. Paragraph 87, however, is the one that cuts to the heart of why evolutionary theory ought to be considered on its own merits:

87. Some creationist fundamentalists attack “Darwinism” and materialism by accusing them of being the “real ideological source of terrorism”. “Darwinism is the basis of several violent ideologies that brought disaster to the human race in the 20th century”. Is it necessary to point out that human beings did not await the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s work The Origin of Species to indulge in a large number of massacres? How many people have died in the name of religious wars? The use of religion, like the reference to “social Darwinism” by some dictatorial regimes, is insufficient and cannot in any way call into question the theory of evolution or religion. Social Darwinism is an ideology that claims to have been inspired by Darwin but it has nothing to do with the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Correctly stated.

More information about Homo floresiensis. This is a press release from the Smithsonian (by way of Physorg). Here is the kicker paragraph:

The team turned its research focus to the most complete of the 12 skeletons discovered and specifically toward three little bones from the hobbit's left wrist. The research asserts that modern humans and our closest fossil relatives, the Neandertals, have a very differently shaped wrist in comparison to living great apes, older fossil hominins like Australopithecus (e.g., "Lucy") and even the earliest members of the genus Homo (e.g., Homo habilis, the "handy-man"). But the hobbit's wrist is basically indistinguishable from an African ape or early hominin-like wrist—nothing at all like that seen in modern humans and Neandertals.

This is an HTML link to the Science article, which is, apparently, free to all. I wonder what John Hawks will say--he has always regarded the specimens as pathological.

According to a hand-wrist expert, Homo floresiensis is a bonafide species. States Foxnews:

In the new work, [Matthew] Tocheri and his colleagues analyzed three wrist bones from the hobbit skeleton, technically called Liang Bua 1 or LB1.

The shape and orientation of the bones matched those of non-human apes and were very different from the wrist bones of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and modern humans.

For example, the human trapezoid is boot-shaped, while the same wrist bone in LB1 is wedge-shaped.

"Are they a distinct species or are they pathological modern humans?" asks study leader Tocheri. "I think it's pretty clear that this is a smoking gun, that they are not pathological modern humans. Modern human wrists, normal or abnormal, don't look like an otherwise normal chimpanzee wrist."

I am pretty sure this is not the end of it.

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Now playing: Peter Gabriel - Of These, Hope
via FoxyTunes

The Kansas evolution debate as chronicled by Jeff Tamblyn.

Although the religious side was in full force during the hearings, the Kansas Citizens for Science decided to stage a boycott. Their reasoning was that science is not something that can be determined in the courtroom.

"The average viewer may see the movie as filled with heroes and villains. But my viewpoint is it's filled with human beings," says Tamblyn, a 27-year veteran of corporate film and video production.

Here's an interesting tidbit:

He says, "There are 10 major characters in the film, and they've all been invited to the screening. So far none of the people on the creationist side are coming."

Wonder why?

"Fantastic World"

Lew Moores writes in the Cincinnati City Beat:

The Museum is dedicated to the belief that the Earth is but 6,000 years old, that a science that suggests life on this planet is millions of years old is wrong, that the first man looked like a hippie, the first woman looked like Grace Slick.

Now that's funny.

This is cool. Reptile tracks that are 290 million years old. It will necessitate a rewrite:

"We know from the trackways that these animals had their feet planted almost under their body," Berman said, "whereas in textbooks, they give them a sprawling gait as if the limbs are extended out from the body considerably. This just isn't true. You look at the trackway and you see that the footprints are very close to the midline of the body."

Science in action.

Sort of related but not really. I am not sure what is more amazing: the lawsuit or that people elected this man. Interesting: Foxnews wasted no time in calling to attention the fact that the congressman is a democrat. Usually you have to read three stories on a particular event to figure that out.

It seems the Discovery Institute has a new book out called Explore Evolution. Here is the link for it. The publisher is Hill House. There seems to be a reluctance to say who the authors are. The flyer simply states:

Co-authored by two state university biology professors, two philosophers of science, and a science curriculum writer, Explore Evolution was peer-reviewed by biology faculty at both state and private universities, teachers with experience in both AP and pre-AP life science courses, and doctoral scientists working for industry and government. The textbook has been pilot-tested in classes at both the secondary school and college levels.

Where has it been pilot-tested? Not in any school district around here. Here is the book website.

Going to be on vacation for the next week in Virginia Beach so blogging will be light to non-existent. I will pick it up again on the 25th.

Off-topic day

I just finished reading one of those "disnified" books of Winnie-the-Pooh. I was immediately struck by how vastly inferior it is to the original stories and how dumbed-down it is. All of the personality traits of the original characters are gone. That seems to characterize all of the Disney Winnie-the-Pooh books. How sad.

This seems more a legal question than a science question.

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District that was filed by a Granite Bay man unhappy with how evolution was being taught in his children's school.

Apparently, the man had met with school board officials several times and, when he did not get the answer that he wanted, sued them. The judge saw through the smokescreen and dismissed the suit. Said school board member Jan Pinney:

"He had more time before the board than anybody has ever had in my 12 years on the board."

New research suggests that early hominids did not have a fully developed achilles tendon and, therefore, couldn't run fast.

Anthropology.net isn't convinced.

It seems that climate change is not to blame for the disappearance of the Neandertals.

In a paper dating back a few days, John Derbyshire remarks on Tom Bethell's paper about the AEI conference on Darwinism. Derbyshire recalls the exchange as follows:

If a graduate student came to you and said: 'You know, I've got this great idea for a possible evolutionary pathway for the bacterial flagellum. I think I could figure it out and I've got an idea for some experiments that would test this. Would you recommend me to go along with that?' And Michael said no. Which left me stunned. This is obscurantist.

Bethell responded thusly:

I sent Behe an e-mail. Could he verify this account? No, he could not. "John Derbyshire is imagining things," he wrote back. "I would never have said such a thing. I welcome experiments into evolutionary pathways. It has been my experience that the more we know, and the more experimental work is done, the less and less plausible Darwinian mechanisms become."

Chapman, also present, recalls no such exchange with Behe.

Derbyshire then responded:

So far as my exchange with Michael Behe is concerned, I reported it as I recall it. I distinctly recall his answering "No" to my question, as the answer startled me. I had not expected him to be so blunt. It is possible, I suppose, that he mis-apprehended my question -- there was some crosstalk going on at the time. I know what I asked, though, and I know what he answered. If anything got lost there, I don't feel at fault, though I should be sorry to think that anyone -- even a creationist -- believed himself traduced by something I said in good faith. I should be especially sorry in the case of Professor Behe, who strikes me as the least shifty of a very shifty bunch. At least he had the guts to show up and give evidence at Kitzmiller.

Mr. Bethell responds (in the same article):

Mr. Derbyshire's bitter hostility to intelligent design is so great that he is unable to think straight on the subject. Now he tells us that Michael Behe may have "misapprehended" his question. It is certain that he did, for no intelligent-design theorist is opposed to any scientific research. That research is all tending to support, not weaken the claims of intelligent design. It is convenient for JD to think otherwise, for he is determined to represent intelligent design as another name for "creationism." He has fixed that idea firmly in his head, because he believes that it is the best way to discredit intelligent design.

Here's the problem: where is the research? One paper doesn't do it. I have the paper. Time to see what it says.

Hmm. Yahoo already took down the article about Baylor professor Robert Marks and his struggle against academic suppression. Maybe that is the time length for Yahoo articles, but it seems awfully short.

My oldest daughter and I have been battling walking pneumonia, so the posts have been light. Sorry. On the other hand, this is what I saw from my back yard a few mornings ago.

I just love digital SLRs. That was handheld at 1/80 of a second.

Okay, so its only partly relevant, but still funny.

The National Post of Canada thinks the criticism of John Tory is unfair and misleading. They note:

But there should be nothing controversial about the Conservative leader's position -- especially given that Mr. Tory says his comment referred only to religious studies, not science class. Indeed, creationist material is already included in the religious studies courses taught at publicly funded Catholic schools across Ontario. Any number of creation stories also are taught at the province's various independent Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and (insert your favourite faith here) religious schools. When it suits them, our political and media elites laud these schools and their curricula as hallmarks of our multicultural society. (The same goes for aboriginal creation myths, which many Canadian students learn about in their history courses.) Has political correctness advanced to the point whereby every story of creation is politically acceptable except the one that happens to originate with the country's Christian majority?

This tracks with what David Warren wrote in his caustic review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion about the opponents of Christianity stepping up their rhetoric.

A new book is out by Donald Prothero entitled Evolution: What the Fossil Record Says and Why it Matters. It is an effort to answer the criticisms that the fossil record is spotty and does not support evolution. I think I will order mine today.

"Baylor University Denies Research Scientists' Academic Freedom." This is, sadly, a problem that occurs routinely in academic circles, especially where faculty and administration lean left, which is just about everywhere.

Another not-so-positive review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The author, David Warren, does note something somewhat chilling, though:

In my recent musings on Darwinism, I have been perhaps a bit coy about why I have been raising it at all. This is because it is "in the air," thanks partly to books by Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others. But those books are themselves symptomatic of the intellectual moment in the West, when opponents of Christianity are moving beyond smug disapproval toward active persecution.

No one in the media quite seems to see that.

Lucy is getting people talking in Houston. According to the Houston Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg:

The first public crowds to observe Lucy's 3.2 million-year-old bones on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science responded with a wide range of human emotion: eye-rolling doubts, probing questions, witty jokes, tears of awe, and deep, philosophical dialogue weighing the spiritual, the scientific and what it means to be human.

For some, the lightbulb comes on, if dimly.

Still, [a visitor] said it was important to her to see the exhibit and expose her son to the idea of evolution for the first time: "All kids should know the evolution side and the religious side, because there's something to it or we wouldn't be finding millions and millions of years-old stuff."

Yes, there is something to it.

John Tory has since clarified that teaching creationism would only happen in religion class. TheStar notes:

The clarification from the party office stated that the "Ontario curriculum does not allow for creationism (or any other religious theory) to be taught in science classes in Ontario's public schools," and that Tory "clearly stated that any school to be included in the proposal (for funding) must teach the Ontario curriculum."

Interesting politics north of the border.

John Tory, running for election in Canada, has proposed teaching creationism in faith-based schools and using public funds to support such schools.

Sorry about the light posting. Teaching four classes, working full time and having a child with incipient walking pneumonia have taken their toll.

Update on the Orangutan story. The story notes that it is the research of Erica Cartmill, not Matt Cartmill. My bad.

Whenever I find people tempted to believe that the fossil record was created by the worldwide flood in Noah's time, I always point them here, Mark Isaak's TalkOrigins page, on what would be involved. It tends to be a jolt of reality. The site also posts rebuttals from creationists and commentaries on the rebuttals. That is more than you would get from ICR.

Playing charades with orangutans. A Foxnews story relates the research of Matt Cartmill on primate communications. The story notes:

"The orangutans made a clear distinction between total misunderstanding, when they tended to give up on the signals they'd used already and use new, but equivalent, ones to get the idea across, and partial misunderstanding, when they tended to repeat the signals that had already partially worked, keeping at it with vigor," Cartmill said. "The response showed that the orangutan had intended a particular result, anticipated getting it and kept trying until it got the result."

[Richard]Byrne noted that "looking at the tapes of the animal's responses, you can easily work out whether the orangutan thinks it has been fully, partially or not understood."

I guess we all need to communicate.

Apparently the Geico ads aren't so far off. "Study: Men With 'Cavemen' Faces Most Attractive to Women." Take that, you metrosexuals!!

I am not a fan of recent earth creationism, but if this story is true, this kind of silencing is worse. It seems as though there is a fine line being drawn in predominantly Islamic countries between Islamic-based creationism and Christian-based creationism. I wonder if Charles Johnson knows about this.

Bigger and better chronometric dating methods on the horizon. Hat tip to the ASA.

The area of the brain responsible for "free won't" has been found. Hat tip to the ASA.

The American Scientific Affiliation has a science blog here.

The Texas Board of Education is leaning away from ID. Among the surprising statements:

Creationism and intelligent design don't belong in our science classes," said Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, who described himself as a creationist. "Anything taught in science has to have consensus in the science community – and intelligent design does not."

ID must be falling on hard times if self-described creationists are rejecting the teaching of it at the public school level.

Another paper about the teeth of Chororapithecus with a bit more detail. My friend Art Durband at Texas Tech says "it must be nice when you can get a Nature paper out of a few teeth." Yes, indeed.

More hominid remains have been found that seem to push the ape-human split back even further. As Yohannes Haile-Selassie says:

The most startling implication of the find, the scientists agree, is that our human progenitors diverged from today's great apes -- including gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees -- several million years earlier than widely accepted research based on molecular genetics had previously asserted.

Another interesting point the article notes:

"We know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes," the authors of the paper noted.

But the new fossils, dubbed Chororapithecus abyssinicus by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleoanthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that.

That's one of the things I love about this field. Nothing is ever set in stone.

A friend of mine here at the lab handed me an old opinion piece by William Provine in the September 8, 1985 issue of The Scientist, called "Scientists, Face it! Science and Religion are Incompatible." Amongst other things, he says:

Humans and other animals make choices frequently, but these are determined by the interaction of heredity and environment and are not the result of free will. No inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life.

Aside from the adherence to E.O. Wilson's sociobiology, this seems sad. It is also dogmatic. Atheists seem to get very agitated when they are described as having great faith in their position.

I saw Provine speak at the University of Tennessee some years back, along with Eugenie Scott of the NCSE. She is a self-described agnostic who is sympathetic to the religious position and he was absolutely derisive of her position. His was a Richard Dawkins-style atheism: very arrogant and borderline venomous. He had a brain tumor at the time and seemed to think that he did not have much time left. That was at least ten years ago and he is still kicking.

The Independent reports on the success of the new Creation museum in Kentucky. Amid the derision, there are some interesting bits:

But wait at least one second before dismissing Ham as a crackpot. For starters, his is about the slickest museum you are ever likely to visit. It has an interactive cinema that tells the creation story according to Genesis, with wind gusts in the auditorium, vibrating seats and squirts of water, as well as a state-of-the-art planetarium. Its animatronics are worthy of a world-class theme park. In fact, the principle designer also helped build exhibits for Universal Studios in Florida.

Something else impressive: the construction of the museum was funded entirely by private donations; it doesn’t carry one dollar of debt.

Impressive, indeed. There is also an interesting mini biography of Ham.

Only in today's charged climate would this actually make news: "Ohio School to Mark Darwin's Birth, Work."

David Flanigan tackles the notion of evolution in Blog.Critic and largely gets the concept of "theory" wrong. He states:

According to the late Stephen Jay Gould — Harvard professor and leading spokesperson for evolutionary theory right up until the time of his death in 2002 — Evolution, while still a theory, is also a fact. Is it me, or is this approach faintly reminiscent of former President Clinton parsing the meaning of the word "is" in front of a grand jury?

Its nothing of the sort. A theory takes a large number of known facts that are related and tries to explain the relationship between them using scientific mechanisms. Gravitational theory does this, as does evolutionary theory.

He gets other things wrong as well. He states:

Supporters of evolution would argue that we have indeed observed this phenomenon, but there's a bit of bait-and-switch going on here. We can see micro-evolution in action, also known as "adaptation," but macro-evolution, the shifting of one species to a new and entirely different species has never been observed.

This isn't true. There have been numerous examples of observed macroevolution. Here is a good piece from Talkorigins that examines exactly that area.

He makes the statement "Has anyone ever observed the transition of any species into an entirely different and distinct one? The answer to this is a resounding "no."" This is facile, like Ken Ham's "were you there?" question. Has anyone ever watched the continental plates move? Of course not. But we know that they do.

Biological processes take time, just like any other natural processes. In the process of tackling the science of evolution, Mr. Flanigan makes it sound as if he does not understand the science involved.

Eugene Volokh muses about Taner Edis, Islamic science and a response by Ace of Spades.

An editorial in the Boston Globe by Sally Lehrman addresses why understanding the theory of evolution is so important to those following the issue. One of the critical problems in the education field is the lack of knowledge:

As one of their complaints, intelligent design proponents claim that schools should do a better job of explaining evolution. They may very well be right. While people who believe in the scientific method do not accept the antievolution lobby's claim of "irreducible complexity," are they prepared with a coherent response? They might say "survival of the fittest" with conviction but only have a hazy recollection of terms like "descent with modification," "natural selection," and even "mutation."

This problem is a microcosm of the problems of American education in general. Hat tip again to NCSE.

Jesse Smith of The Smart Set visits the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Light on evaluation of the science at the museum but a fascinating read about the political and social aspects of the debate. Hat tip to NCSE.

More commentary on the Homo habilis finds that have rattled the cages of more than a few palaeoanthropologists.

Tim Weaver and Chris Stringer claim that the Neandertal physiognomy owed less to evolutionary adaptations than to chance. Hmmm. Not sure I agree but I will have to read the article first.

Steve Paulson of Salon interviews Taner Edis on why Islamic science is so far behind western science. An interesting bit of similarity:

Q: Is there outright hostility to science in Muslim countries?

A: Not at all. In fact, you'll typically find that, at least superficially, they are very positive about science. Even many devout Muslim apologists say Islam is supposed to be a scientific religion -- a religion that supports science down to the last detail. But this notion of a science-positive Islam is often combined with ignorance about the details of science and an openness to some deeply pseudoscientific ideas.

It is a good interview.

Richard Leakey condemns the Lucy tour.

An online interview with Fred Spoor about the new finds at Koobi Fora. Here is a quote concerning how important the discoveries are:

If fact, Homo habilis and Homo erectus both come in at about the same time, in bout 1.9 million. And at about 1.4, Homo habilis disappears, Homo erectus continues then. But it means that they lived side-by-side for about, almost, half a million years and that must surely mean that they really had separate ecological niches to survive in this way for such long time. And then you can ask the question, is it likely that one was actually the ancestor of the other, because classically, Homo habilis has been portrayed as the ancestor of Homo erectus who either gradually or through a rapid speciation gave rise to erectus.

Time to rewrite that section of the class.

A nice PR piece in the Miami Herald for the work that continues to go on at Olduvai Gorge.

VisionTV, Canada's self-described "multi-faith, multicultural broadcaster" is in hot water for airing a program called Dil Dil Pakistan by a Muslim fundamentalist who is reported to have said that Israel was using the holocaust for ""legitimizing" crimes against humanity." Among the other transgressions:

Dil Dil Pakistan faced further controversy this week for showing a documentary on Muslim creationism credited to Haruan Yahya, the pen name of Turkish author Adnan Oktar.

It seems that we are seeing the rise of the Muslim creationist movement.

A somewhat more sensationalist story from the Times Online.

Well, this will rattle a bunch of cages. According to the story, Homo habilis and Homo erectus may have overlapped by a significant period in time.

"Their co-existence makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis," said co-author Professor Meave Leakey, palaeontologist and co-director of the Koobi Fora Research Project.

Read the whole thing.

Here is the CNN transcript of the Situation Room interview with Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. It is a short part of the program as a whole, so I am reproducing it in full.

CARROLL (voice over): "One Million B.C.," a popular sci-fi fantasy movie of the late 1960s where humans battled dinosaurs on prehistoric Earth. A new museum doesn't believe that story is fiction or fantasy, but a biblical fact, now on display at the newly opened Creation Museum.

KEN HAM, FOUNDER, THE CREATION MUSEUM: We believe that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, and that's what the bible would teach, because all land animals were made on the same day as Adam and Eve were made.

CARROLL: The religious controversy getting traction at a recent Republican debate where three presidential candidates took a stand against evolution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm curious, is there anybody on the stage who does not agree -- believe in evolution?

CARROLL: Surely, any number of scientists would debate the theory behind these exhibits, which show dinosaurs living side by side with humans. Here the bible's account is taken word for word, that Earth and all its inhabitants were created in six days. A much different account of what you will hear at a natural history museum.

MIKE NOVACEK, PROVOST, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: There's absolutely no scientific evidence aligned with the notion that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

CARROLL: But Creation Museum director Ken Ham says if Christians don't take the bible literally, they undermine its message. So he's confronting the theory of evolution head on.

HAM: The purpose of the museum is really to give people information that's currently being censored from the public schools, from the secular universities, information they don't hear about that actually shows that evolution is not fact.

CARROLL: Demonstrators who disagree with the museum's message protested outside the opening today.

HAM: They do not want children even hearing the possibility that evolution has problems or that it could be wrong. They Don't even want them to hear that. They don't want them to hear the other side.

CARROLL: And if that means believing there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, then so be it.

I have long believed that if the recent earth creation message REALLY got into the public schools and universities, it would be the worst backfire in history because it would expose the YEC arguments to scrutiny on a level that it does not currently get by academia. It would be shown for the sham science that it is. There at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, only one side of the story is being told, and anyone with even a cursory background in science can spot the holes in the arguments. Is this what Ken Ham really wants?

Apparently, there is big money to be made in creationism.

Don't like your modern diet? Check out what people of the palaeolithic ate (or at least what some people think they ate).

Well, this certainly throws a monkey wrench into the Replacement model of modern human origins:

An international team of researchers reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that Asians appear to have played a larger part in the settlement of Europe than Africans did.

The team, led by Maria Martinon-Torres of the National Center for the Investigation of Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, reached that conclusion after analyzing more than 5,000 fossil teeth from early hominins, an early form of human predecessors.

After studying ancient teeth from Africa, Asia and Europe, the researchers reported that early European populations had more Asian features than African ones.

If this bears up, it lends support to the idea that the wave of Homo erectus/rudofensis that moved out of Africa contributed more to the modern gene pool than replacement supporters suggest.

In advance of the Nova special on the Dover School Board case of ID, you could read this.

Off-topic but really cool! Apollo is making the moon landing films available for free online.

More on the PBS Nova film on the Dover trial, and the guy behind it.

Set your VCRs/TiVos. NOVA is going to air a program on the Dover trial on November 13. Although PBS tilts to the left, NOVA normally shoots pretty straight.

Is the multiregional evolution model of modern humans sunk? Roger Highfield doesn't think so.

In case you want a creationism encyclopedia from a Christian perspective, here is Vance Ferrell's 700 page tome. Just a quick glance found him putting forth the "shrinking sun" argument that was demolished over twenty years ago. WHACK!!