Meanwhile, in Mississippi...

A Republican state representative has drafted a bill that will require a disclaimer in the front of all science textbooks in the state. Here it is, passage by passage:

The State Board of Education shall require every textbook that includes the teaching of evolution in its contents to include the following language on the inside front cover of the textbook:

"The word 'theory' has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

There are so many things wrong with this disclaimer, one doesn't know where to start. The word "theory" has only one meaning to any working scientist: a broad statement of relationships describing a particular set of phenomena that are well supported by scientific hypotheses. That's it. When someone like Ronald Reagan says "Well, its only a theory," he really means he doesn't know what a theory is. This is true over and over again in dealings with creationists—they have no idea what the word "theory" means. It sure as Hell doesn't mean "speculative idea or plan."

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution is only controversial to creationists. To 99% of practicing biological scientists, it is established science. Consequently, the statement "some scientists present" is a complete fabrication. Only someone completely ignorant of the biological sciences would write this.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

This is out of the creationists playbook. The Cambrian "explosion" is only an explosion if you think that 50 million years is a rapid period of time. Also, many new groups of animals appeared after this period—dinosaurs, anyone? To creationists, there are no transitional forms because they define transitional form in such a way that none would ever be found.

Study hard and keep an open mind."

As long as you are not thinking about evolution! Hat tip to LGF and Ed Brayton.

Deception, Texas-Style

According to LGF, there have now been attacks on the other areas of the Texas science standards because they deal with the age of the earth and radiometric dating. Steven Schafersman, a professional geochemist and a member of the panel that crafted the Earth and Space Sciences (ESS) standards has written an open letter to the Texas State Board of Education that encapsulates the deceptions on the part of the creationists. It is a bit lengthy but is an eye-opener in terms of how these groups operate. The focus of the paper concerns the efforts of two of the ESS members who circumvented the rest of the ESS standards writers to go directly to the SBOE by sending them a minority report in which they disagreed with the wording of the standards and expressed disappointment that the "strengths and weaknesses" clause had been taken out:

The minority report was sent in secret to the SBOE without the knowledge of the other ESS panel members. Secret minority reports are especially reprehensible, since the scientist panel members, the "majority," did not have a chance to respond to or forestall the minority report by more discussion and possible compromise. Also, minority reports are supposed to be written after all the work of the panel is completed and the two sides are at an impasse, which was not the case here. This minority report was written on November 6, soon after the Oct 30-Nov 1 penultimate meeting of the ESS panel. The last meeting was scheduled for Dec 4-6, so there was plenty of time to deal with issues contained in the minority report and make changes that might be agreeable to all. [Roger] Sigler and [Tom] Henderson sent the minority report was sent [sic] to all the SBOE members--the ultimate decision-makers--without any context or forewarning to their colleagues on the ESS panel. The majority on the ESS panel never had an opportunity to respond to or even read the minority report, and have never had the opportunity to write a rebuttal to the SBOE. For almost two months, the minority report was the only ESS report that the SBOE had--the de facto ESS report--which is extremely destructive and unfortunate.

Henderson and Sigler agreed to withdraw the minority report if their concerns were addressed, and, according to Schafersman, they were. Subsequently, however, a second minority report appeared. According to Schafersman:

Needless to say, this is appalling. They had promised to withdraw the minority report if we carefully addressed their concerns, which we did, and then they broke their word. We did accept some of their suggestions that were not scientifically debilitating, and modified a few sentences that had the effect of making some statements less certain or exact, and all these changes are documented in the comments. We never promised to make all the changes they wanted, and we couldn't have done this, since many of the changes were unscientific and would have had the effect of confusing students rather than educating them about science. The behavior of Sigler and Henderson makes me certain that the purpose of the minority report is what I suspected from the first: a device to sabotage the scientific quality and integrity of the ESS standards by giving some unscrupulous SB members a hook to attack them.

...The worst part of this experience is that Henderson and Sigler duplicitously misled the ESS workgroup's members into believing that their cooperation would remove the minority report. I believe they intended to sabotage our group's efforts from the beginning with a minority report, and never planned to withdraw it after we made the changes in their favor. Also, I don't believe that Sigler and Henderson acted alone, but in my opinion conspired with Terri Leo and David Bradley to create a provocative report that could be used by the two SBOE members to convince the others to vote to censor the ESS standards in favor of removing offending requirements (fossil evolution, ancient age of Earth, origin of life) and inserting other language that would weaken the document (uncertainties with radiometric dating, global warming, and of course "strengths and weaknesses").

As we saw from the Dover School Board trial, it apparently is not above YEC supporters to deceive and lie to get what they want. That is sad.

It Snowed Today...

Knoxville's relationship with snow is fleeting at best, but today, against the forecast of "cloudy," it snowed some two inches.



This town used to do snow quite well. Even as late as the mid-90s, there were some nice snows. Last year was the first one that I can remember in which there was no snow at all. Onward toward the Jurassic!!

Evolution: Multiple Beneficial Mutations in One Generation

The Science Examiner is reporting that out of Texas A&M is coming research indicating that evolution is more dynamic than originally thought:

Working with populations of yeast cells, which were color-coded by fluorescent markers, Katy Kao, assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, and Stanford University colleague Gavin Sherlock were able to evolve the cells while maintaining a visual analysis of the entire process.

Their research, which appears in the December edition of Nature Genetics, shows the evolutionary process to be much more dynamic than initially thought, with multiple beneficial adaptations arising within a population. These adaptations, Kao explained, triggered a competition between these segments, known as “clonal interference.”

Beneficial mutations have always been thought to arise sequentially, with selection acting on each one in turn. Further, it was found that some beneficial mutations do not survive in successive generations. In hindsight, this seems reasonable since in any given generation of an organism, a wide variety of variation is present, each to be acted on independently. It is just neat to see it in action.

Hat tip to LGF.

Texas Redux

On January 2, I posted that the new Texas science standards passed without the "strengths and weaknesses" language that was so desired by some members of school board, including Don McLeroy, the head of the board. I also noted that the board did not have to use the standards but that they were highly recommended. Wellllll...Houston Press Blogs reports that the standards are to be debated:

The SBOE is holding a public hearing January 21 on science standards, and the people at the Discovery Institute, who think Intelligent Design blows away that whole stoopid "evolution" theory, are happy as unevolved clams.

"We're very pleased that in this Darwin bicentennial year Texas has invited scientists on both sides of the evolution debate to testify about the scientific status of Darwin's theory," said Dr. John West, associate director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, in a statement released today.

It is telling that the DI is so out of touch with what evolutionary theory is that they continue to call it "Darwin's theory" as if there have been no advancements since his time. Time to drag in the Dover ruling.

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

Louisiana: A Few More Unanswered Questions

A story on KATC.com reveals a bit more about the angst that the science teachers are feeling about the new Board of Elementary and Secondary Education guidelines in Louisiana regarding "academic freedom":

Before Thursday's vote, Marjorie Esman, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said the guidelines don't include enough detail about the procedure for challenging supplemental materials introduced into science classes.

Esman said questions also remained about whether challenged materials could be used by teachers until the objection was heard by education leaders.

"Nobody under these provisions will know what to do, not the parent, not the teacher, not the school," she said.

State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek said the education department has detailed plans for how to handle objections."We spent a great deal of time with our lawyers," he said.

Pastorek offered the department's lawyers to meet with Esman. He said if she has further problems, she can present those to BESE at a later meeting, and Esman agreed.

Opponents of the law have predicted it likely will result in a lawsuit.

Yup.

More on the Louisiana Ruling

The Times-Picayune has an additional story on the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's decision to strike a passage keeping creationism and ID out of science classrooms. Some found the ruling positive and some didn't:

"The children of Louisiana were well served by this action," said the Rev. Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum and an original advocate of the bill. Mills said the law is not about advancing the Judeo-Christian version of creation but encouraging students and teachers to engage in open discussions.

Louisiana State University biology professor Kevin Carman said that already occurs in science classrooms but is only productive when the methodology sticks to empirical evidence. "I don't believe in evolution," he said, emphasizing the word "believe." "I am convinced by the supporting facts."

The statement by Gene Mills is a smokescreen. He doesn't want students engaged in open discussions, he want evolution out of the classroom. A check of the LFF's web sites reveals papers presenting science from only one perspective. Some are written by members of Answers in Genesis.

Learning from Macaques

New Kerala reports on a study of Japanese Macaques that has yielded insights into human evolution, say researchers from the Primate Research Institute in Tokyo. The story notes:

Primatologists Michael A. Huffman, Charmalie A.D. Nahallage, and Jean-Baptiste Leca from the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto, Japan, assessed social learning exhibited by these macaques during stone-handling, a behavior that has been passed down from elder to younger since it was observed in some of the troops in 1979.

Stone-handling, in this study, included rubbing and clacking stones together, pounding them onto hard surfaces, picking them up, and cuddling, carrying, pushing, rolling and throwing them.

Neat.

Louisiana School Board Rolls Over

A story in the Louisiana Advocate reports that language was stripped from the new state law intended to "promote critical thinking" involving creationism. Stripped was the following paragraph:

Materials that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind shall be prohibited for use in science classes.

Some people were not happy:

Patsy Peebles, of Baton Rouge, a veteran biology teacher, pleaded with the committee to leave in the wording, which was recommended by the state Department of Education.

Peebles was a member of the advisory panel that made policy recommendations earlier.

Peebles said specific bans on creationism and intelligent design materials were needed so that teachers are “very clear on what they can and cannot do.”

But state Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa and sponsor of the bill, said the wording should come out.

Nevers noted the law did not single out creationism or intelligent design and that state regulations should not either.

Nevers has been responsible for several bills promoting creationism or ID. I see lawsuits on the horizon.

Doubting Darwin?

A new book is out called Doubting Darwin? Creationist Designs on Evolution by Sahotra Sarkar. BioOne has a review. The reviewer makes an important point that was often made in the past about the Young Earth Creationists:

The power of the ID creationist arguments is not that they are convincing, coherent, or compelling; it is that they are presented with a veneer of complexity that is taken as a sign of authority—namely, scientific authority. Dismantling these arguments requires a certain level of technical proficiency, but it is not altogether effective. The risk of providing ID creationists with the cover of legitimacy is often greater than any payoff would be in confronting the arguments directly. It is, after all, legitimacy that they are typically after. Politically, it can be more valuable simply to air your ideas in debate without much regard as to how such debates play out. Nonetheless, exposing the absurdity of the seemingly technical ID creationist claims is a vital component in the push back against creationism. For as much as what is at stake concerns a political or ideological debate, it must be underwritten by good science.

This is what is behind the "teach the controversy" movement. If no controversy exists, create one. Overall, a good review with a qualified thumbs-up.

Top 10 Signs of Evolution in Modern Man

The List Universe has a top ten list of evolutionary holdovers in modern humans. These are often vestigial and range anywhere from junk DNA (nonfunctional vitamin C genes)to the appendix and are interesting in that they truly show how cobbled together we really are.

Here is an interesting example:

The plantaris muscle is used by animals in gripping and manipulating objects with their feet - something you see with apes who seem to be able to use their feet as well as their hands. Humans have this muscle as well, but it is now so underdeveloped that it is often taken out by doctors when they need tissue for reconstruction in other parts of the body. The muscle is so unimportant to the human body that 9% of humans are now born without it.

Evolution works with what it has. This has often led those of us that believe in God to wonder why He has such an odd sense of humor.

What Difference Does Evolution Make?

The Times Online has a story by Bryan Appleyard called For God’s sake, have Charles Darwin’s theories made any difference to our lives?
The article highlights the differences between the American and British acceptance of how important the man is. For example:

“Darwinism,” says Dr David Menton of Answers in Genesis, which built the Creation Museum, “is what you have once you have denied the existence of God.”

I would really love for someone to actually define "Darwinism." Anyway, contrast that with this:

In Westminster Abbey, parties of schoolchildren walk over the marble slab on which is inscribed simply, “Charles Robert Darwin. Born 12 February 1809. Died 19 April 1882”. There’s also a black plaque depicting a mightily bearded Darwin in old age.

The focus of the article is how we have failed to wrap our brains around the "descent from a common ancestor" argument. Appleyard goes on:

For John Gray, the philosopher, this all points to a fundamental oddity of the conflicts and anxieties generated by Darwin. He says: “Darwinism appeared in the context of a monotheistic religion that assumed a categorical distinction between humans and other animals. In any religion that didn’t assume that, it wouldn’t have produced these unending conflicts.”

If Darwin had been Japanese, Chinese or Indian, then his primary insight – our deep connection to nature – would have been seen as unremarkable, if not self-evident. But in the Judaeo-Christian or Muslim worlds, in which man is seen as the God-elected pinnacle of creation, it is dynamite. This is why, as Darwin so clearly saw, his idea represents a fundamental moral challenge to our western world-view.

This is a tough one because it brings into sharp relief questions about original sin, historical Adam, existence of the soul and other questions for which no two Christians agree on the answers.

Year of Darwin: A Creation Perspective:Part III

The third article, Do Species Change by Paul Garner, is a puzzler. It begins by contradicting cherished dogma of the ICR that species do not vary outside of their "kinds." He states:

To his credit, Darwin corrected a popular misunderstanding. Species do change. Since Darwin’s day, many observations have confirmed this. In fact, new species have even been shown to arise within a single human lifetime. For example, one study gave evidence that sockeye salmon introduced into Lake Washington, USA, between 1937 and 1945 had split into two reproductively isolated populations (i.e., two separate species) in fewer than 13 generations (a maximum of 56 years).

Okay, when's the other shoe going to drop? Ah, here it comes:

The church’s compromise on Scripture’s authority had dire results. While Darwin was right to argue that species change, he went too far. He should have gone back to Scripture to see what it really said. Instead, he ignored the biblical data and assumed that all creatures descended from a single common ancestor over millions of years.

Although he never comes back to address this point, he does go on to say some pretty negative things about his fellow creationists, concluding:

Modern creationists need to challenge both the unbiblical essentialist ideas that underlie species fixity and the naturalistic ideas that underpin evolution from a common ancestor. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes: yes, species change, but variation has clear limits (see “The Discontinuity of Life,” p. 88). In the twenty-first century, we face the exciting challenge of re-thinking the history of life from a truly biblical perspective.

Not dead sure what means but he has gone further than other creationist has dared to go. For that he should be commended.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Evolve...

WWL-TV has a story detailing the recent activities of the Louisiana state education officials:

A new law that promotes what its backers call "critical thinking" about evolution and other science topics is about to come up for discussion again in Baton Rouge -- this time before state education officials charged with deciding how it should be implemented.

While the law maintains a requirement that public school science teachers use state approved science textbooks, it also allows local teachers and school boards to introduce "supplemental materials" in science classes on topics including evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.

It is clear from instances around the country that supplemental material often means things like Of Pandas and People. On the bright side:

Proposed for discussion at the December meeting were requirements that any information in the supplemental material be "supported by empirical evidence." The proposed language also said religious beliefs "shall not be advanced under the guise of encouraging critical thinking" and that materials "that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind shall be prohibited in science classes."

Predictably, that got this reaction from some quarters:

Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative Christian group that supported the law, said Thursday that he was unhappy with some of the policy language prepared for discussion at a December meeting of the BESE committee. That discussion was postponed until Tuesday.

Mills declined to discuss his specific objections.

"I would just summarize it this way," he said. "I would think that it left religious neutrality and took a tone of religious hostility. Or at least it could be interpreted by some to have done that."

I would interpret it as being science-friendly instead of science-hostile. But that's just me.

Mutation, Natural Selection and Exaptation in Action.

Health officials are concerned that the dominant flu strain cropping up this year seems to be Tamiflu resistant. The story in the Herald Tribune notes:

Last winter, about 11 percent of the throat swabs from patients with the most common type of flu that were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for genetic typing showed a Tamiflu-resistant strain. This season, 99 percent do.

"It's quite shocking," said Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, director of infection control at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "We've never lost an antimicrobial this fast. It blew me away."

The single mutation that creates Tamiflu resistance appears to be spontaneous, and not a reaction to overuse of the drug. It may have occurred in Asia, and it was widespread in Europe last year.

It has undergone selection and will become the dominant strain until we find something to combat it. Now the kicker:

The mutation conferring resistance to Tamiflu, known in the shorthand of genetics as H274Y on the N gene, was actually, he said "just a passenger, totally unrelated to Tamiflu usage, but hitchhiking on another change."

The other mutation, he said, known as A193T on the H gene, made the virus better at infecting people.

This is a classic example of a genetic mutation that codes for a protein that does something else being co-opted by the virus' defense mechanism to ward off Tamiflu. Evolution in action!

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds. Stay Healthy!!

Incredibly Off-Topic: Something New from Todd!!

I have been a Todd Rundgren fan for 35 years and he now has a new album out and an interview on CNN. From the interview:

"The thing that makes it different -- the thing that makes it interesting every once in a while -- is when someone comes along and you think that they're not simply using this as a marketing tool for themselves," he continued. "You see them, and obviously music is the thing that redeems them. ... That to me is what makes music exciting, is when suddenly you see someone and you realize they were meant for music."

And Rundgren? He's still meant for music, too. He's preparing to produce a new New York Dolls album, 36 years after he produced the group's debut. There's also talk he'll perform his 1973 album "A Wizard, A True Star" live. It's a full schedule doing something he loves, even if there's virtually no chance he'll be topping the charts.

I would pay to see that. His new album is called Arena. Time to go to the local "record" store.

Expelled!: The Mask is Off!

The producer of the movie Expelled! now says never meant to make a movie that presented a fair treatment of the case for the academic dismissals of supporters of Intelligent Design but, rather, wanted to get people charged up about the cause. The interview with Walt Ruloff, which appears in the Vancouver Sun reveals this:

In Expelled, Stein, with his trademark monotone, takes on the role of a Michael-Moore-like muckraker bent on exposing the allegedly closed minds of scientists who champion Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The documentary links such scientists to Nazis. The reaction was what one would expect.

"We wanted to generate anger," Ruloff said.

"We always knew we'd get extreme anger on the one side and extreme support on the other. We also think we got extreme interest in the middle."

There is also this:

Its harsh tone mocked and almost demonized opponents, especially the anti-religious scientist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion.

The documentary also interviews several ID proponents who say they lost academic positions because of their views. However, defenders of the scientific community have countered that Expelled's claims of academic persecution are misleading, if not false.

Ruloff says the film is accomplishing its goals, nevertheless. "What we really wanted to do was give scientists more courage. Science is in such lockdown. The only way we can give scientists courage is if we deal with the issue head-on -- in kind of an American style."

So the object of the film was never to present the case that the dismissals were unfair, but rather to "demonize" evolution supporters, to promote ID in the colleges and universities and provoke people to anger. Hardly a scientific endeavor. On par for something connected to the Discovery Institute.

Dr. Dino To Stay in Jail

ReligionNewsBlog has reported that the tax evasion convictions of Kent Hovind and his wife have been upheld:

Kent Hovind, 55, is serving a 10-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Edgefield S.C.

He was found guilty in November 2006 of failing to collect and pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes, obstructing tax laws and structuring transactions to avoid financial reporting laws.

Jo Hovind, 53, was sentenced to one year and a day in prison on 45 counts structuring transactions to avoid financial reporting laws.

Apparently, the future of Dinosaur Adventure Land is still being decided.

Year of Darwin: A Creation Perspective Part II

Roger Sanders also writes the second article on Charles Darwin, Darwin's Personal Struggle with Evil, although a more appropriate title would be "Darwin's personal struggle with Grief."

The article recounts a story known to most who have studied the life of Charles Darwin, the death of his daughter Anne. It is largely surmised (as Sanders does here) that it was this event that led Charles Darwin away from God. Here is what Sanders has to say:

Darwin’s faith was not in Jesus Christ, only in what he could see, touch, and understand. Perhaps more than any other scientist of his time, this hurting father came to understand the evil that really exists in the natural world—“red in tooth and claw” as the poet Lord Tennyson described it. The death of Anne just made the evil touch him personally. As far as we know, it also made him turn away from God once and for all.

This is at variance with other accounts. The Darwin Correspondence Project, for example, has this to say:

Darwin and his family had a lifetime involvement with the Church of England, and various dissenting establishments. In the Darwin and Wedgwood households, formal adherence to the Anglican Church was often combined with Unitarian belief. Unitarianism was a form of Protestant non-conformism that departed from the Anglican Church in its denial of the Trinity and the doctrine of eternal damnation. Unitarian congregations were comparatively small, well-educated, and allowed for a greater variance of belief (and doubt) than many non-conformist denominations.

In a letter to John Fordyce in 1879, Darwin writes:

Dear Sir

It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.— You are right about Kingsley. Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, is another case in point— What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one except myself.— But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. Moreover whether a man deserves to be called a theist depends on the definition of the term: which is much too large a subject for a note. In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.

It seems that he possessed no belief in the salvation of Jesus Christ and drifted further away from the faith the older he got but never rejected God completely. Sanders ends the column thus:

Darwin proposed a new natural law—natural selection—which assumed that death has operated from the beginning. With this naturalistic, impersonal force of natural selection, he found a substitute for the God of the Bible, who is the Creator of all life-forms, the eternal Judge of sin, and the only possible Redeemer of fallen mankind and of our corrupted world.

This assumes that natural selection only came into the world as sin entered the world through
Adam and that Charles Darwin simply named it, an evil that already existed. This is also at variance with what we know from the natural record of the last 650 million years.

The problem of original sin is a vexing one for most Christians, let alone those that adhere to an evolutionary history of the planet. It seems, however, that natural selection, which was surely built into the fabric of the world by God, should not be viewed as evil but rather as a means by which God worked out his plan over the course of time.

Automotive Darwin Awards

I have always had a fondness for the Darwin Awards, the ridiculous means by which people remove themselves from the gene pool. The Truth About Cars has a version of this "contest" involving cars. Witness the following:

The telephone company had been burying lines. To allow traffic to pass, they dug up half the road at a time and put up warning barriers with flashing lights to direct traffic to the safe side. After they laid the cable half way, they’d fill in that side and then do the same on the other side. Pranksters had moved the flashing lights to the good side of the road.

Speeding late at night and way over the legal blood alcohol limit, [two] ranch hands drove straight into the hole and died. Because of the moved lights the Sheriff’s accident analysis turned into a criminal matter. Crime scene analysis of tire tracks and footprints on the dirt road revealed that the pranksters were the ranch hands themselves, on their way to the bar.

Yup. Too stupid to breed.

Kenneth Miller on Smoke and Mirrors and the DI, Part III

Kenneth Miller's last post on the Loom deals with why the Discovery Institute has not let the Dover decision go and moved on. Here is his rationale:

If ID surrogates in Louisiana, Texas, and other states are to argue that evolution is a controversial idea with serious scientific flaws, they’ve got a problem. They know that the parents and educators backing genuine science education for American students will pick up the Dover decision and cite chapter and verse from its ringing indictment of everything that Casey and the Discover Institute stand for. They also know that state legislators and school board members will consider the legal troubles that beset Dover and decide to pass on Discovery’s persistent offers to guide them along the path of undermining evolution. In short, if Kitzmiller v. Dover stands, they’re done for.

Methinks he is premature. These people have resilience, as the "academic freedom" bills have shown. They will continue to argue their case in one venue or another. The rest of the piece is primarily recap but worth a read.

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

Kenneth Miller on Smoke and Mirrors and the DI, Part II

Kenneth Miller's second post on the Loom is a continuation of his first, a take-down of Casey Luskin's arguments of irreducible complexity. In his second post, Luskin argues that just because one cascade is reducible, another may not be—a shaky argument at best. Along the way, he makes the following peculiar argument:

For example, consider again the bicycle. Bicycles have two wheels. Unicycles, having only one wheel, are missing an obvious component found on bicycles. Does this imply that you can remove one wheel from a bicycle and it will still function? Of course not. Try removing a wheel from a bike and you'll quickly see that it requires two wheels to function. The fact that a unicycle lacks certain components of a bicycle does not mean that the bicycle is therefore not irreducibly complex.

A few weeks ago, I saw a person riding a bicycle down the road on the bicycle's back wheel (we used to call it a wheelie) because he thought he could get where he wanted to go faster. It wasn't just an up and then down motion. He rode that way for a sustained period of time. Maybe he wasn't using the bicycle exactly the way it was intended, but it was clearly functional. Exaptation. No matter. Onward.

Luskin tackles the differences between land-dwelling vertebrates and sea-going mammals:

Darwinists like Ken Miller view the dolphin's lack of factor XII as a case of convergent evolution, but we might also see it as evidence of a functional constraint or a case of common design. The fact that jawed fish lack factor XII is not necessarily evidence that their blood-clotting cascade was a "primitive evolutionary precursor" to the land-dwelling vertebrate blood-clotting cascade, but evidence of a functional constraint for water-dwelling vertebrates--a constraint which is confirmed in that dolphins also lack factor XII. This is an interesting issue that will require further research to sort out. In the mean time, any claims that Miller refuted Behe--or even Pandas--appear to be premature.

Miller replies:

Would you like to take a look and place a bet on the results of that “further research,” Casey? As much as I’d like to win a few bucks from my friends at the Discovery Institute, it wouldn’t be sporting, since such research was actually done more than a decade ago [Semba et al, 1998]. Whales possess a Factor XII pseudogene, an inactivated version of the very same gene carried by land-dwelling mammals. That pseudogene is a direct mark of their common ancestry with other mammals, and disproves any suggestion that constraints on cetacean “design” required the absence of Factor XII. Rather, ordinary genetic processes knocked out the gene, and today the pseudogene remains merely as evidence of their evolutionary ancestry.

As Glenn Reynolds would say: "ouch."

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

Kenneth Miller on Smoke and Mirrors and the DI

Kenneth Miller has some guest posts on the Discovery Magazine blog, the Loom. The first is called Smoke and Mirrors, Whales and Lampreys in which he discusses the claim by Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute that Intelligent Design was misrepresented at the trial in Dover, in 2005. The post centers around the claim that Michael Behe's treatment of the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade is different in his book than it is in Of Pandas and People.

Luskin writes:

So according to Miller, the treatment of the blood-clotting cascade in Pandas is "essentially identical" to the treatment of the blood-clotting cascade in Darwin's Black Box.

The problem is that Miller's claim is false. Behe's treatment of the blood-clotting cascade in Darwin's Black Box is much more precise than the treatment in Pandas, and in fact Behe made it very clear that he was limiting his argument for irreducible complexity to a particular segment of the blood-clotting cascade that had been well-studied and was well-understood.

Miller responds:

First, there’s a perfectly good reason why I compared the clotting treatment in Pandas to Darwin’s Black Box (DBB). They are indeed nearly identical, and that’s because Behe himself wrote both of them. Second, Behe actually did state that the entire pathway is irreducibly complex in DBB. Casey might have skipped over those pages, but I didn’t. Third, as a result, the absence of any components of the cascade in any organism is indeed a direct contradiction of Behe’s formulation of ID. And finally, even Luskin’s “irreducible core” has fallen apart as the result of the most recent research findings on the system.

The argument is somewhat lengthy and delves into what Behe meant. Miller is taking Behe's ideas in both sources and castigates Luskin for the very focus behind his complaint:

But there is something very strange, and even distressing, about Luskin’s contention that the obvious failings of the arguments in Pandas are somehow less important than the ones in DBB. Why is it OK to give high school readers an argument about the irreducible complexity of the entire cascade that you know to be false (as Luskin admits), just as long as you modify that argument in another book?

Indeed.

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

Year of Darwin: A Creation Perspective Part I

Answers in Genesis has an end of the year site on the Year of Darwin: A Creation Perspective. They remark that "a deeper look might surprise you." The first dig comes, predictably, in the opening paragraph of the main page:

Throughout 2009 the world will be celebrating Darwin’s birthday (February 12, 1809) and the publication of On the Origin of Species (November 24, 1859). Meanwhile, Bible-believing Christians have had 150 years to reflect on Darwin’s life and work. What have we learned?

In other words, if you accept "Darwinism" you don't believe in the Bible. That's dichotomy for you. The site is largely an ad for their upcoming Answers issue dealing with the man. Nonetheless, there are some articles attached.

On this site, Roger Sanders writes a column called The Pursuit of Darwin on the life of Charles Darwin. The column largely tracks his early life and influences leading up to and including his voyage on the Beagle. In it, he states the following:

In particular, the majority of British clergymen and clerical scientists followed natural theology, a view of God that took root in the late 1600s. In Darwin’s youth, they held that we can discover God and His attributes from human reasoning alone without reference to the Scriptures.

That was never the intention of natural theology, a term made famous by William Paley, the originator of the concept of Intelligent Design. They simply intended to show that God's handiwork could be uncovered in the natural world. Part of the reason this happened is that scientists like William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick and Charles Lyell began to see that the six-day account in the scriptures could not be reconciled with what was being discovered in the geological column. Sanders carefully does not mention this. From the Darwin Correspondence Project:

In comparing the work of Paley, Buckland, and Owen, it becomes clear that natural theology was not a single, unified tradition. There were in fact different, and to some degree competing, versions of natural theology.

Natural theology was also not without its own controversies. These were especially evident in geology. Discoveries of the fossil remains of extinct creatures, together with other evidence of the age of the earth presented in the work of Charles Lyell and others, challenged the literal reading of the creation story in Genesis. One reading of Genesis, for example, assigned each day of creation to a different geological epoch. Creation was viewed by some as a progressive unfolding, rather than as a single event. Further questions were raised about the role of God in relation to the operation of natural forces and laws.

The rest of the column is somewhat predictable, in that Sanders says that when Darwin went aboard the Beagle and began to examine the fossils:

He saw species as the product of change but not change following the global Flood. He saw rock strata as the product of processes but not processes stemming from the biblical catastrophe. He saw diverse kinds of plants and animals but did not recognize the gulf between distinct “kinds” that God had originally created.

He didn't recognize the gulf because no such gulf existed. This had already been established by the naturalists of the day. This is an example of "There have to be created, immutable kinds. Darwin did not recognize them, therefore Darwin was wrong."

To be fair, he does poke holes in a lot of the traditional creationist misconception about Darwin, including the "deathbed recant." That is good. The rest, however, is a treatise on how if you don't accept the six-day model, every conclusion you come to is wrong. There is no hint of the massive problems that the scientists of the day found in adhering to that model.

Michael Dowd: As Good As His Word

A few posts back, I questioned Rev. Michael Dowd's Christology pertaining to his book Thank God For Evolution. I was working off of an interview and had not read the book. Rev. Dowd got rightly upset and said that I should read the book before I formed an opinion. He has been nothing but gracious during our correspondences and, yesterday, as good as his word, I received a gratis copy of the book on my doorstep with a nice note inscribed on the title page. He also kindly threw in some DVDs of his lectures and study guides to boot. I look forward to reading it!

"12 Elegant Examples of Evolution"

Wired Online has a column called "12 Elegant Examples of Evolution" which has lots of neat illustrations and accompanying abstracts or stories. Read the whole thing.

Final Texas Science Standards Draft is a Winner

From the Star-Telegram:

Educators removed the "weaknesses" phrase in their first draft of the science curriculum. After a public hearing that attracted more than 200 speakers, the phrase was back in the second draft, but "weaknesses" was changed to "limitations."

The third and final draft says students should be able to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations. There is also a new requirement that students should be able "to evaluate models according to their limitations in representing biological objects or events," but it would take a mind-boggling leap for anyone to interpret that as applying to evolution, [Dan] Quinn said, particularly when viewed through the plan’s new definition of science.

The only catch is that, despite what the final draft says, the board is not required to use it. On the other hand, given all of the publicity this has raised, if they don't use it, they will have to explain why and that would just raise more questions about their competence. I still think McLeroy ought to be asked to step down since he clearly knows little about science.

Responding to a Comment about Marvin Lubenow's Book

A reader (Dr. T.) states the following in a comment:

I just wanted to leave a comment for visitors to this page. I truly appreciate the intellecual [sic] stimulation given by Lubenow in his book: Bones of Contention (2004, revised version). I truly enjoy the scientific and biochemical knowledge shared. It really does feel like I'm taking a college course! In fact, I am a graduate student studying clinical psychology, but I am first and foremost a Christian (raised a Christian by a grandfather who was a Pastor and mother who was a devout Christian) who fervently seeks well-supported information on creationism, religion and science, and God vs. "Lucy" or "African Eve."

Here is my response:

Dear Dr. T.
Thank you for your comments to this page. I also appreciate that you have read Marvin Lubenow's book Bones of Contention. Sadly, I cannot agree with your assessment of the book. During the course of reading it, I found an extraordinary number of errors that fell into several categories:
* Factual errors
* Logical errors
* Misinterpretations of theory and
* Use of out-of-date information.

For example:

Factual Error:
p. 80—“Simply put, evolutionists don’t know where the Neandertals came from or where they went. Just a few years ago, their beginnings were said to extend back only as far as 200,000 years. Now, thanks to a striking discovery in a cave in Spain (see chapter 20), the Neandertals may go back 800,000 years on the evolutionist time scale. Equally mysterious is their alleged rapid disappearance at about 34, 000.”

The idea that evolutionists don’t know where Neandertals came from is false. We have fossil remains from the sites of Saccopastore, Arago, Steinheim, Swanscombe and Petralona which predate the classic Neandertal remains of Europe and for which it is easy to clearly see incipient Neandertal characteristics and it is reasonably clear that Neandertals came from one of these groups.

The Gran Dolina material (800 kya) does not show Neandertal characteristics. In fact, it is the lack of Neandertal characteristics that have led some researchers to hypothesize that Neandertals were an offshoot. The last Neandertal does not date to 34 kya, but to 27 kya at the site of Zafarraya. Lubenow has his information incorrect.

Logical Errors:
P. 34—“All experiments performed with present-day animals, plants, or biological molecules are equally flawed. They cannot prove or even support the alleged evolutionary processes of the past. The extensive use of present-day experiments to try to demonstrate evolution reveals that evolutionists do not understand the difference between scientific and historical evidence.”

The wrong-headedness of this statement is breathtaking. It completely wipes out the study of geology, palaeontology, astronomy, palaeoclimatology and other legitimate areas of science. It assumes that there is no uniformity to present and past processes. This is EXACTLY how these sciences work. This is a critical logical flaw in Lubenow’s thought processes. Current experiments are the key to the past because by doing current experiments, we can predict what will be found in the past. If we find it, we know we are on the right track.

An example would be a ballistics expert. He fires different kinds of bullets into different types of material to determine ballistic patterns. When a crime scene is examined, if any of these patterns appear, they investigators have a pretty good idea of what gun was used and how. He didn't have to be there to know this.This is how predictive science works. To dismiss this out of hand is ridiculous. It is difficult to believe that someone such as Lubenow has practiced science for as many years as he has and has not figured this out.

Misinterpretation of theory:
p. 215 par. 4—“Evolutionists insist that the evolutionary process is nondirectional. This is because mutations, the raw material of evolutionary change, are random. However, if you look at an evolutionary chart of the history of life, that chart is clearly directional”

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. No practicing evolutionary biologist has ever stated that evolution is non-directional. While mutations are random, selection is not. It is directional, stabilizing or disruptive. That is a fundamental tenet.

Use of out-of-date information:
p. 81—“If Amud I was buried into layer BI, it follows that he cannot be older than layer BI but could be younger. The radiocarbon date for Upper B1 is just 5, 710 ya.”

Lubenow has missed a particularly important citation here. In an article by Rink, et al. in 2001, ESR and TL dating on six animal teeth recovered from the site yield ages of between 53 ± 7 kya for the B1 layer to 70 ± for the B4 layer. This firmly places the Neandertal at Amud in the range of Neandertals in Europe. Lubenow has gone out of his way to use the oldest date for this Neandertal that he can find. A revision means you go out and get the most up-to-date information.

The book is also astounding in its lack of accompanying citations. Numerous passages that attack evolutionary theory or the fossil record contain no citations to back up their claims. Here is an example:

p. 216 par. 2—“I discovered a number of well-documented cases of reversals in the fossil record of insects, worms, ammonites, fishes, mammals and humans. There were cases where organisms had seemingly gone from a specialized to a more generalized condition. Because the paleontological literature is so vast, I suspect that the results of my research were just the tip of the iceberg. I have no doubt that further research would reveal many more well-documented cases of reversals.”

They are so well documented, he doesn’t bother to cite them. Where is this research? I've never seen it. Why is it not cited?

There are many, many, many other examples of these kinds of errors in the book and I do not have the space here to document them all. Hopefully, I can do that later. It was, quite frankly, difficult to get all of the way through it without throwing it down in disgust. Many times I could not tell if he was simply ignorant of the literature and the theory, intentionally selecting out-of-date information to bolster his (nonexistent) case, or being dishonest. I would like to not think the last option but there were many instances, notably in his lack of citations, where it was hard to conclude otherwise.

Sadly, this book is an example of what I have seen in recent creationist literature and it is no wonder that mainstream scientists do not take them seriously.

Just When I had Almost Given Up...

I had a conversation with a friend of mine from church tonight at a New Year's Eve party in which he expressed sympathy for the theistic evolutionary perspective. I honestly thought I was the only one at my church. I just don't talk about it.

Back to Reading...

A friend of mine gave me a copy of Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design by Thomas Woodward, who is a professor of theology, communications and the history of science at Trinity College in Florida. I will let you know.

Top 10 Evolution Articles

New Scientist has another list: the Top 10 Evolution Articles. It is a fun list, with complete articles behind every headline. One of them, Evolution, What Missing Link? is written by Donald Prothero, author of Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters. It boils down some of the more dramatic examples of transitional fossils. Lots of information.

Red-Headed Neandertals

The Telegraph has a story about research into the Neandertal genome that suggest that at least some of them had red hair and even freckles. The article states:

After analysing the fossil bones found in a cave in north-west Spain, the experts concluded they had human blood group "O" and were genetically more likely to be fair skinned, perhaps even with freckles, have red or ginger hair and could talk.

The investigating team from Spain's government scientific institute, CSIC, used the very latest forensic techniques to remove the bones for analysis to prevent them getting contaminated with modern DNA.

Presumably they found FOXP2 (oddly truncated from "Forkhead Box P2"), one of the genes responsible for the capacity for speech. The article doesn't say. So, it looks like the northern European dermotype traits go back a ways.

New Book

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending have a new book out called The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. I don't have enough money for all of these books!!

New Scientist Has an Article on Evolution and Unwisely Tackles Religion

I missed this during the year. New Scientist had an article on the 24 myths and misconceptions regarding evolution. It is separated into "shared misconceptions" and "creationist myths," which is aptly named. Each misconception links to an article on the topic and it is very thorough, with links to other articles included. Unfortunately, there is a subtle anti-religious tone throughout which sometimes manifests itself thusly:

So are religion and evolution incompatible? It depends who's judging. The idea that many religious people find most satisfactory - that a deity intervened in and directed the evolutionary process - cannot be disproved but is not supported by any evidence. The interpretations that are most compatible with what we know - that God did not intervene in evolution after creating the universe, or God is nature - are ones that many believers find unpalatable.

Of course, some biologists such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers are well known for dismissing all theistic religions. However, the question of whether religion and evolution are compatible is not the same as the bigger question of whether any theistic religion is compatible with reason and rationality.

This sounds like it was written by someone who doesn't understand a religious perspective. Whether or not it can be supported depends on what you take as evidence. Are the arguments in Evidence that Demands a Verdict worthy of consideration? I doubt that this author would see them that way. The last statement quoted above is simply gratuitous. I suspect St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis would be able to argue circles around Mr./Dr. La Page on theological issues. We have seen how well Richard Dawkins has fared in this regard.

Take what you need from the evolution sections. The theology, on the other hand is a tad facile.

Pleistocene Park Redux

The idea of resurrecting critters from long ago is picking up interest. A story out of Canwest suggests that genetics has been traveling apace.

Would you pay $100 to see a woolly mammoth munching on grass? How about Neanderthals building a fire, or a sabre-toothed tiger streaking across the prairie? The genetic blueprints for such extinct creatures and humans are emerging from labs around the world. U.S. researchers recently unveiled the mammoth genome and a German team is putting the finishing touches on the genome of our Neanderthal cousins, which is expected early in 2009. Scientists, who once dismissed reviving extinct creatures as little more than science fiction, now find themselves with the tools that might make it possible.

Still not sure it is a good idea. We already have a biome that is optimized for the planet at this time. Other ideas won't work, no matter how much Michael Crichton might have had us believe:

Dinosaurs are too far-gone -- degradation of the DNA over millions of years should keep Tyrannosaurus Rex on the shelf indefinitely. The more recently vanished dodo bird, great auk, and ancient bears, wolves and tigers are possible candidates for revival, as is the Neanderthal, which died out about 30,000 years ago.

May we live in interesting times.

New Studies in Biopoesis

According to a study out of the University of Montreal, the last common ancestor to all life lived around 3.8 billion years ago. The story, in eScience, notes:

The study changes ideas of early life on Earth. "It is generally believed that LUCA was a heat-loving or hyperthermophilic organism. A bit like one of those weird organisms living in the hot vents along the continental ridges deep in the oceans today (above 90 degrees Celsius)," says Nicolas Lartillot, the study's co-author and a bio-informatics professor at the Université de Montréal. "However, our data suggests that LUCA was actually sensitive to warmer temperatures and lived in a climate below 50 degrees."

The early world would have originally contained only organisms with RNA, rather than DNA and that, when DNA evolved, it allowed organisms to move into warmer environments.

Neandertal Discoveries of 2008

Yahoo News has a list of the top Neandertal discoveries of 2008. The story is fairly short but interesting.

Robert Sibley on "Why Faith Matters."

Robert Sibley, writing for the Ottawa Citizen asks "Why Faith Matters." In it, he takes on the new atheism, promulgated by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others. He makes the following observation about the new movement:

By all appearances atheism is deeply embedded in the contemporary mind. Modern philosophy, natural science and psychology are, more often than not, atheistic in outlook. So, too, are many of our social and political institutions. It is a virtual taboo for a Canadian politician to refer to his or her religious faith in public life. The school system teaches students about sex and drugs, but classroom prayers have largely been cancelled.

Mr. Sibley's central tenet, one that I have long thought to be true, is that it is the upbringing of these new atheists rather than their science that has shaped who they currently are. About the new atheism's take on religion, he writes:

It would take an encyclopedia to fully analyze the new atheists' attack on religion. It is perhaps sufficient here to note that while their arguments have proven popular in terms of book sales and media attention, their grasp of theology, philosophy and, in some cases, science has been criticized as superficial.

"The treatment of religion in these tracts consists mostly of breezy overgeneralizations that leave out almost everything that theologians would want to highlight in their own contemporary discussion of God," says John Haught, a professor at Georgetown University. "Rather, the new atheism is so theologically unchallenging. Its engagement with theology lies at about the same level of reflection on faith that one can find in contemporary creationist and fundamentalist literature." In other words, the militant atheists are no better than the religious fundamentalists they attack in terms of theological substance.

Touche. While evolution poses some problems for certain readings of the Bible, it does not for many others. Read the whole thing.

Hope that everybody had a Merry Christmas. I will start up again today or tomorrow. No news so far.

Earliest Tool Use at 2 Mya in South Africa

According to a story in Canada.com researchers out of the University of Toronto, working at the Kuruman Hills in South Africa, have discovered stone tools use in layers dated to around 2 million years ago:

"Geological evidence indicates that these tools were deposited in the cave by human ancestors, not washed into the site from the outside," said a University of Toronto statement on Friday announcing the discovery. "The combination of stone tools indicating the presence of human ancestors, and the dating of the lead levels, to the conclusion that human ancestors were in the cave two million years ago. This is the earliest evidence for intentional cave occupation by human ancestors."

Smarter than we thought.

National Geographic's Top Ten Discoveries of 2008

This is an interesting list, including dinosaurs, sea creatures and modern fauna. The best one is the "Frog from Hell" that I included in a post here.

The Guardian interviews Adnan Oktar

The Monday issue of the Guardian carries an interview by religious correspondent Riazat Butt with Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, who writes under the name Harun Yahya. He is responsible for the Atlas of Creation, Volumes 1-3, a huge effort that was mailed to science teachers the world over last year. Richard Dawkins had this to say about the content of the Atlas of Creation:

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the "breathtaking inanity" of the content . Is it really inanity, or is it just plain laziness — or perhaps cynical awareness of the ignorance and stupidity of the target audience — mostly Muslim creationists. And where does the money come from?

Oktar doesn't say:

Oktar, squeezed into a white trouser suit, declines to reveal how the Atlas industry is funded, nor will he say how much he is paid, or indeed whether he is paid at all. Challenged to explain the apparent contradiction between his beliefs and his plush surroundings, he responds: "I want to resemble Prophet Solomon. Prophet Solomon was like this. He used to be well dressed. He liked being well dressed. His palace was beautiful; there were beautiful people around him. Allah is beautiful. Allah loves those who are beautiful, wants everywhere to be beautiful. Paradise is also beautiful. [The] aim of a Muslim should be beauty."

Surely he knows that at that point in Solomon's life, he was having some issues with his faith:

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech ^[a] the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. 7 On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. (1 Kings 11: 4-8 NIV)

No matter. Onward. The interviewer notes:

What he thinks, unashamedly and unapologetically, is that Darwin was lying and that there has been no evolution. He repeats this point throughout the interview.

"Almost 100 million fossils have been unearthed so far. All of these show that plants, animals, humans and insects have never undergone evolution whatsoever and they were all created in the same way by God. We can see this fact in each fossil we come across. There is no fossil proving the contrary. If they can show one, I will reward them 10 trillion Turkish Lira [£4.4 trillion]."

Around a minute later he adds: "There exists no fossil to prove the Darwinian theory. If they can show a few fossils, I will reward them 10 trillion. But there are almost 100 million fossils proving creation. In Turkey, we have exhibited thousands of them."

Although somewhat guarded in their response to these claims, the writer quickly points out:

How does he reach these conclusions, I wonder, imagining him to have laboratories and researchers at his disposal. Oktar himself, by his own admission, has no scientific experience or background. He is not an academic. He studied interior design.

Interior design? That is as bad as having a degree in hydraulic engineering. On his site, there is a section on Letters of Appreciation written by individuals who have received the book. There are no biologists, palaeontologists or geologists listed, only politicians, cultural ministers and ambassadors. Meet the new face of creationism.

Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones on the MORI Poll

See the post below this for more details.

Both Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones, also writing in The Guardian, weighed in on the MORI poll results today. Jones is professor of genetics and heads the biology department at the University College of London, where Michael Day also works. He writes:

I find this very depressing. Do those teachers believe that they should also teach the possibility that water is H3O, that Bacon wrote Shakespeare and that babies are brought by storks?

The logic is exactly the same: and there is just as little, or as much, scientific controversy about the idea of evolution as there is about those of physics and chemistry.

Dawkins is a tad less charitable:

If 29% of science teachers really think creationism should be taught as a valid alternative to evolution, we have a national disgrace on our hands, calling for urgent remedial action in the education of science teachers. We are failing in our duty to children, if we staff our schools with teachers who are this ignorant – or this stupid.

I agree with Dawkins on very little when it comes to theology, but as far as science goes, he is right this time.

Poll: 29% of Specialist Science Teachers Support Teaching Creationism

Great Googlymoogly! The first couple of paragraphs in the story in the Guardian read:

Almost three out of ten specialist science teachers believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons, according to a national poll of primary and secondary teachers.

The survey also reveals strong support for the views of Michael Reiss, the Royal Society's former director of education. Reiss resigned from that position in September over his views on how to include creationism in science lessons. Some 73% of science specialists endorsed his position that creationism should be "discussed" in science lessons.

However, the finding that a large minority of science teachers advocate the active teaching of creationism will dismay many scientists who believe that supernatural explanations for the origin of life and the universe have no place in science lessons at all. At the height of the row over creationism teaching, two Nobel prize winners and Fellows of the Royal Society – Sir Harry Kroto and Sir Richard Roberts – publicly called for Reiss to be sacked over his views.

Never mind that Reiss was no creationist and wanted to teach it in class so it could be shot down. One wonders what "specialist" science teachers are, since the article does not exactly say. As far as bringing up creationism just so that it can be shot down, the article continues:

The Ipsos/MORI poll also canvassed support for the more hard-line position of only mentioning creationism in the context of dismissing it. It found that 26% of all teachers and 46% of science specialists agree with the views of Prof Chris Higgins, vice-chancellor of the University of Durham, who is quoted as saying "creationism is completely unsupportable as a theory, and the only reason to mention creationism in schools is to enable teachers to demonstrate why the idea is scientific nonsense and has no basis in evidence or rational thought."

Only 46%. that may be misleading, though, because it may be that the other 54% don't want it brought up at all. This is nothing short of astounding and suggests that the problem in England is much worse than here in the United States, where the numbers are much lower. It also suggests that, like here, the teachers are being taught how to teach, rather than what they are teaching. I don't think that is going to change any time soon.

Completely Off-Topic: Continuity Error in Star Trek Trailer

My son Marcus pointed out a continuity error in the new J. J. Abrams Star Trek trailer. The trailer has a young James Tiberius Kirk driving a roadster out in the (presumably) Iowa countryside. He is clearly very skilled at doing so. I showed this trailer to my son, who said "but dad, in [the second season episode] A Piece of the Action, he doesn't know how to drive a car." In fact, it looks as if he has never even seen a car. People don't forget things like that in twenty years.

Creation Moments II

The ICR page has an article written by Brian Thomas, a science writer, on why Neanderthal Men Were Modern Men. It is an object lesson on how to misread the fossil evidence. Here is how it starts:

A set of fossilized human remains has been discovered in Iberia that shows partial Neanderthal characteristics, proving again that Neanderthals interbred with anatomically modern men.¹ This adds to a growing list of evidence, consistent with biblical history, that demonstrates Neanderthal to have been fully human, rather than an evolutionary transition.²

The first cited article is Walker et al. (in press). Here is the conclusion from that article:

The human remains from the Sima de la Palomas in southeastern Iberia therefore document the presence of Neandertals, relatively late in the Middle Paleolithic. They help to substantiate that the Middle Paleolithic of the region was the product of Neandertals, even though diagnostic human remains associated with the very latest phases of this technocomplex in Europe remain elusive. At the same time that the Palomas humans exhibit a suite of derived Neandertal features and archaic Homo configurations long since lost among early modern humans, their morphological variation indicates that they deviate from the expected Neandertal ranges of variation. This pattern may be result of genetic drift in relative isolation, directional change or, perhaps more likely, population contact to the north. (emphasis mine)

The Palomas Neandertal remains do not represent "partial" Neandertal characteristics. They show a Neandertal population with some modern characteristics. Does this mean that they were the same species? Maybe, maybe not. This does not change the fact that they were clearly different from modern humans in appearance. As Dave Frayer has pointed out, even though there are traits present in modern Europeans that are reminiscent of Neandertal traits, there are no modern humans with the full suite of Neandertal characteristics. If you saw a Neandertal on the subway, you would know good and well he wasn't a modern human. They might be Homo sapiens, but they were certainly not modern humans.

Onward.

He also writes:

Anthropologist Marvin L. Lubenow has shown that Neanderthal, other than having a larger cranial capacity, was anatomically the same as Homo erectus.³ Their fossils do not fit into the depiction of a linear evolutionary ape-to-man transition that is iconic today, but were simply comingling variations of humankind. Furthermore, a fossil elbow (KP 271) and the Laetoli footprints of Neanderthal man are indistinguishable from modern man, and both have been dated by evolutionary scientists at 4 million years or older—predating the earliest Neanderthals!⁴ Thus, within the published evolutionary dates, “anatomically modern Homo sapiens, Neandertal, archaic Homo sapiens, and Homo erectus [as well as Lucy-like Australopithecinces] all lived as contemporaries.”³

I have read Lubenow's book. It is not good and that is being charitable. This paragraph suffers from what Hugh Ross characterizes as "failure to consider alternative explanations." To Lubenow, the presence of a fossil elbow with some modern characteristics proves that modern humans and australopithecines coexisted because he chooses to look at the elbow in isolation, instead of with the rest of the fossil assemblage at the site. Here is a list of what was found at that site:

KNM-KP 29281 1, 2 Holotype mandible & L temporal fragment
KNM-KP 29282 — LM1 or M2
KNM-KP 29283 3 Maxilla
KNM-KP 29284 4 RC & RP3 germs
KNM-KP 29285 14, 15 R proximal & distal tibia
KNM-KP 29286 5 Mandible fragments & associated dentition
(RI1, L & RI2-M3)
KNM-KP 29287 6 Mandible with teeth
KNM-KP 30498 7 L & R maxillary fragments & associated dentition
KNM-KP 30500 8 Mandibular fragments & associated dentition
KNM-KP 30502 4 Associated mandibular tooth fragments
KNM-KP 30503 16 Proximal manual phalanx
KNM-KP 30505 4 Partial M germ
KNM-KP 30942 — 5 tooth fragments
KNM-KP 31712 9 Associated juvenile mandibular & dental fragments
KNM-KP 31713 10 R mandible with tooth fragments
KNM-KP 31714 4 Ldm2
KNM-KP 31715 — LM1 or M2 fragment & two other tooth fragments
KNM-KP 31716 — P3 or P4 fragment & C/ fragments
KNM-KP 31717 4 LM3, RM3 & LM2 fragments
KNM-KP 31718 — R Mandibular fragment (M2–3)
KNM-KP 31719 — I1
KNM-KP 31720 — Maxillary M fragment
KNM-KP 31721 — RM2 & M3 partial crowns
KNM-KP 31723 4 RM3
KNM-KP 31724 17 L capitate
KNM-KP 31726 4 RP4
KNM-KP 31727 — RC
KNM-KP 31728 4 LM1
KNM-KP 31729 4 Rdm2
KNM-KP 31730 4 LM2 & RP3
KNM-KP 31732 — Tooth fragments
KNM-KP 34725 11 Associated juvenile dentition and skull fragments
KNM-KP 35838 — LM3
KNM KP 35839 12 Associated LI1, RC & LP3
KNM-KP 35840 — LM3 & maxillary M fragments
KNM-KP 35841 — M crown
KNM-KP 35842 4 R maxillary M
KNM-KP 35844 — M fragment
KNM-KP 35845 — M fragment
KNM-KP 35847 4 LM2
KNM-KP 35850 — Maxillary M fragment
KNM-KP 35851 — LM2 or M3 fragment
KNM-KP 35852 4 LC
KNM-KP 37522 — L mandibular molar
KNM-KP 37523 — M fragment
KNM-KP 37524 — Tooth fragments

Here is the conclusion from that article:

Australopitheus anamensis predates all other taxa that have been assigned to Australopithecus, and in most ways it appears to be more primitive than any other. Although it is readily distinguishable from A. afarensis, this is because A. anamensis is generally more primitive in all except its uniquely large maxillary canine basal tubercles and rounded inferior contour of the external surface of its mandibular symphysis. The possibility that A. anamensis represents an
ancestor of A. afarensis is not precluded by the evidence available to date. (Ward, Leakey and Walker, 2001)

That was their conclusion after looking at all of the data, not just one bone. Why didn't Lubenow look at all of the fossil data before making his conclusion that modern humans lived with australopithecines? I will venture it is because Lubenow has dismissed evolutionary scenarios out of hand. Since he has done so, it is inconceivable to him the fossil remains that the individuals at this site represent mosaic evolution. He must view them independently. Therefore, to him, it looks like there are several different species of hominid present at the site, which validates his premise that evolution is false. The problem is that he can't see the forest for the trees. The data doesn't disprove evolution, it supports it.

This also presents a perfect example of the creationists' catch-22 claim that there are no transitional forms. Taken in total, the material from this site shows, as the conclusion above notes, that this form is intermediate to what came before (perhaps Ardipithecus, perhaps Sahelanthropus, perhaps Orrorin or none of the above), and what came after, A. afarensis. Yet, by claiming that one of the bones represents a modern human, Lubenow has effectively said, "there's no transitional form here, just a collection of different hominids." Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It reminds me of what Frank Sherwin said about Tiktaalik, the intermediate form between the late fish and early tetrapods—that it wasn't an example of a transitional form because it was incomplete. This despite the fact that every part of the fossil that was complete screamed "transitional form!!!"

Conveniently lost in the ICR's interpretation of this material is that these fossils are found in strata that are over three million years old and that there are no Neandertals anywhere at this depth, just as there are no australopithecines in the same strata as Neandertals. What you do find is that just above the strata containing the last australopithecines, you find early archaic Homo. Above strata containing these hominids, you find Homo erectus/ergaster. Above strata containing these hominids you find archaic Homo sapiens, and above them you find modern humans. The important thing to remember, though, is that many of these species overlap and, perhaps, coexist across the landscape. That is how evolution works. Unfortunately, the folks at the ICR will never see that.

Citations:

Walker, M., Gilbert, J., Lopez, M. et al. (in press) Late Neandertals in Southeastern Iberia: Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, Murcia, Spain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. n.p.

Ward, C., Leakey, M., and Walker, A. (2001) Morphology of Australopithecus anamensis
from Kanapoi and Allia Bay, Kenya. Journal of Human Evolution. 41: 255-268.

Marvin Lubenow's Site

Marvin Lubenow, the author of Bones of Contention, a treatise on the human fossil record that will form the basis of my hopefully soon to be written book Bones of our Ancestors, has a section of the Answers in Genesis site that asks that you support the Creation Museum by giving a message and your name and email. This was my message:

I am afraid that I cannot support the creation museum because I firmly believe that it does not teach an intellectually honest account of the creation of the universe. As a Christian and as a scientist, I am troubled that this world view is seen by scientists and lay people alike as the equivalent to that of support for a flat earth. As Davis Young has said, we do harm to the Christian cause by promoting a view of science that is indefensible. Please accept this dissent in the spirit in which it is meant. Yours in Christ, Jim Kidder

I then put down my name and email address. I wonder what sort of response I will get.

Nuts and Bolts Study Group

Here is another blog called the Nuts and Bolts Study Group that deals with the same kind of issues that this one does. I believe they come at things from a pro-ID perspective but I need to read more. The boiler plate is considerably more well-thought out than mine:

Welcome to this forum where you can join our journey through the intersection of faith and science. We want to explore the state of current human knowledge and examine how it impacts traditional theology, and build a framework of belief that maintains intellectual integrity and theological consistency.

There are four contributors, at least one of which has read The Meaning of Creation by Conrad Hyers, a book that EVERY CHRISTIAN should read. Read up.

A Francisco Ayala Plug for Michael Dowd's Book

Michael Dowd, who has been nothing but gracious since I questioned his Christology a few posts back, sent me this little blurb by Francisco Ayala about his book Thank God for Evolution:

"Thank God for Michael Dowd! That was my reaction as I finished reading Thank GOD for EVOLUTION. How wonderful that a Christian pastor takes the time to understand evolution and discovers that evolution and religion need not be in conflict. Rather, much religious inspiration can be drawn from contemplating the immensity of the universe and the magnificent beauty and diversity of the living world. More yet, Michael Dowd is dedicating his life to preaching that the dialogue between evolution and religion can be fulfilling, surely for people of faith, but also for scientists." —FRANCISCO J. AYALA, PROFESSOR OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, AND AUTHOR OF DARWIN'S GIFT TO SCIENCE AND RELIGION

High praise indeed.

Homo floresiensis: More Evidence for Speciation in East Asia

According to a story out of Biology News Net, Kieran McNulty and Karen Baab of SUNY Stony Brook have demystified some of the fog surrounding the "hobbit" species (I hate that term) that was discovered in the Indonesian island of Flores.

Comparing the simulation to the original Flores skull discovered in 2003, McNulty and Baab were able to demonstrate conclusively that the original "hobbit" skull fits the expectations for a small fossil hominin species and not a modern human. Their study was published online this month in the Journal of Human Evolution.

The cranial structure of the fossilized skull, says the study, clearly places it in humanity's genus Homo, even though it would be smaller in both body and brain size than any other member. The results of the study suggest that the theorized "hobbit" species may have undergone a process of size reduction after branching off from Homo erectus (one of modern day humanity's distant ancestors) or even something more primitive.

Here is the conclusion from the Journal of Human Evolution article that is currently in press:

The numerous primitive features of the mandible (Brown, in this issue) and postcranial skeleton (Brown et al., 2004; Morwood et al., 2005; Argue et al., 2006; Larson et al., 2007; Tocheri et al., 2007; Jungers et al., 2008), combined with the shape of the cranium, suggest that the ancestor of H. floresiensis was more primitive than the majority of Asian H. erectus specimens, perhaps resembling the oldest Sangiran dome fossils (Kaifu et al., 2005). Here, the overall shape of the LB1 cranial vault was most similar to the East Turkana hominins and D2280 from Dmanisi (see also Brown et al., 2004; Argue et al., 2006). These results concur with the hypothesis that the Liang Bua fossils may have descended from a hominin population more primitive than Asian H. erectus that underwent a process of size reduction.

Any way you shake it, the evidence is adding up that this does indeed represent a species of hominin/hominid that is separate from what else is going on in Wallacea at this point in time and further supports this "bush" notion of hominid evolution. As modern humans, we have grown accustomed to the idea of being the only species of Homo running around. As far as fauna are concerned, that is the exception to the rule. I think we also cling to this unilineal notion of human evolution in East Asia that is turning out to be unwarranted. There was, evidently, a bit of experimentation going on. What is stunning is the sheer primitiveness of the H. floresiensis fossils.

Citation:

Baab, K and McNulty, K (2009) Size, shape, and assymetry in fossil hominis: The status of the LB1 cranium based on 3D morphometric analyses. Journal of Human Evolution. (in press)

Donald Prothero Reviews A Flock of Dodos

Donald Prothero, the author of the top-flight book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, has written a review of the book A Flock of Dodos by Barrett Brown and John Alston for Skeptic Magazine. This is not the same as Randy Olson's film of the same name. He (and they) are very forthright and caustic in their analysis:

Brown and Alston are frank about their approach from the first chapter, where they warn that they will not only step on toes, but cut them off. “This will not be a polite book. Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who always take advantage of any well-intentioned concession, and the leaders of the so-called “Intelligent Design” movement, as we shall see, are so incredibly dishonest that they could cause a veteran heroin addict to blush — not out of any moral objection on the part of the addict, but rather out of the embarrassment that anyone could be so darned bad at lying. And, as we shall see, the Intelligent Design folks are bad liars indeed”.

They are not the first people to say so. Read the whole thing.