Mount Carmel Caves Nominated to Join World Heritage List

Four caves that have extensive evidence of human Palaeolithic occupation have been placed on the World Heritage List. They are Tabun, Jamal, El-Wad and Skhul. Tabun and Skhul are near and dear to the heart of every palaeoanthropologist as being the site of the early modern and Neandertal remains described in The Stone Age of Mount Carmel, by McCown and Keith, which was published in 1937. The story, from the Jerusalem Post, notes:

The sites are “located in one of the best preserved fossilized reefs of the Mediterranean region” and contain cultural deposits filled with 500,000 years of human evolution, from the Lower Paleolithic era to the present day, said a summary document that the World Heritage Committee printed in May.

The Nahal Me’arot caves provide “a definitive chronological framework at a key period of human development,” according to the summary document. Archeological evidence found in the region indicates the appearance of modern humans who conducted deliberate burials and who were exploring early stone architecture, as well as transitioning from hunting and gathering to agricultural processes.

This is long overdue. The Mount Carmel area is also traditionally where Elijah struck down the prophets of Baal.

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More Feathered Dinosaurs

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

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

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

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The Diet of Australopithecus sediba

There is some suspicion that Australopithecus sediba, discovered by Lee Berger (or, rather, his son) may be on the line that eventually leads to Homo. This is not clear but right now, it is as good as any model we have. We now know a bit more about what Au. sediba ate. According to Science Daily:

Australopithecus sediba, believed to be an early relative of modern-day humans, enjoyed a diet of leaves, fruits, nuts, and bark, which meant they probably lived in a more wooded environment than is generally thought, a surprising find published in the current issue of Nature magazine by an international team of researchers that includes a Texas A&M University anthropologist.¹

The goofy thing is that these hominins (or at least the ones we have) ate much more of these kinds of items than any other hominin we have discovered. In fact, their diet is much more like that of a chimpanzee than a hominin. This probably means nothing more than that is what they had access to but it does mean they were having a diet different from the robusts. Au. sediba’s teeth are gracile, in comparison to those of the robusts or earlier australopiths. It was definitely a forested environment.

¹Amanda G. Henry, Peter S. Ungar, Benjamin H. Passey, Matt Sponheimer, Lloyd Rossouw, Marion Bamford, Paul Sandberg, Darryl J. de Ruiter, Lee Berger. The diet of Australopithecus sediba. Nature, 2012;
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11185

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Earliest Evidence of Animal Life

Science Daily is reporting on evidence for animal life around 585 million years ago, the first concrete evidence of such. They write:

The discovery was made by U of A geologists Ernesto Pecoits and Natalie Aubet in Uruguay. They found fossilized tracks a centimeter-long, slug-like animal left behind 585 million years ago in silty, shallow-water sediment.

A team of U of A researchers determined that the tracks were made by a primitive animal called a bilaterian, which is distinguished from other non-animal, simple life forms by its symmetry -- its top side is distinguishable from its bottom side -- and a unique set of "footprints."

This is during the Ediacaran Period, which ran from 635 million to around 540 million years ago, part of the Neoproterozoic era. More pieces of the puzzle. Yay!

Kansas Just Got Stranger

Jack Wu is running for a seat on the Kansas State Board of Education. Why is this news? Because, while he is not exactly a member, he regularly shows up for services at the Westboro Baptist Church, in Topeka. If you are not familiar with these fine folks, you should be. Lets see what they, themselves say:

“Thank God for Tsunami. Thank God for 3,000 dead Americans! Yes! Thank God for Sept. 11 and 3,000 dead sodomite Americans in 2001. God sent the Muslim planes to destroy fag New York's twin towers and hurl 3,000 vile Americans into Hell. Even so, God sent Tsunami last week to execute vengeance upon another 3,000, carcasses swallowed up in Asian jungles, and concerning each of whom it shall be said: ‘He shall be buried with the burial of an ass.’ Jer. 22:19” -- WBC flier, January 1, 2005

It is difficult to find a more vile organization than this one. Most of its vitriol is reserved for homosexuality but that is not the focus of Jack Wu. No, his website is very clear:

Let's be specific. Evolution should never be taught in public schools as science. Evolution is false science! God made the heaven and the earth and created humans from the dust of the earth! The very bad teachers that teach that men descended from apes via evolution need to have their teaching licenses revoked. Yes, students should be taught that God created everything.

School administrators are always complaining about budget problems and lack of funding for this or that. Haha, that's funny. I have a really simple solution to solve that problem: Eliminate funding for evolution textbooks and pseudo-education. We'll save a ton of money! Tell those evolution textbook publishers to recycle their waste of paper, and tell those evolution teachers to teach truths instead of lies.

Ironically, this position is not that different, if at all, from that of Don McLeroy, who probably wouldn't be caught dead in a WBC service. Further, I am not sure that even groups like AiG and the ICR would want to be associated with this guy.

I don't give the guy two cents for his candidacy but if someone like McLeroy can become the head of the school board then Jack Wu could, conceivably, win a seat. If he does, it will say some very bad things about the state of Kansas politics. It is a given that nobody in higher education will take the school board seriously at that point.

First the Loch Ness Monster, now Westboro Baptist Church...not a good week for the foes of evolution.

“Many miles away Something crawls to the surface Of a dark Scottish loch” -Sting

This is almost painful to read. The Scotland Herald has a story on the arrival of school children from the great state of Louisiana who are being taught that the actual existence of the Loch Ness Monster is proof that evolution has never happened. Rachel Loxton reports:

Thousands of children in the southern state will receive publicly-funded vouchers for the next school year to attend private schools where Scotland's most famous mythological beast will be taught as a real living creature.

These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.

and a bit later:

One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: "Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

The bit about the private schools getting vouchers is true. That is here. Salon.com did a piece on the ACE textbooks. They fill in the remainder of the above quote:

“Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

I have written on the apologia textbooks before but these books seem to be every bit as bad. It is nothing short of astounding that the authors of the ACE textbooks, in their zeal to disprove evolution, have settled upon an animal for which No Credible Evidence Exists. It is not just bad science, it is cryptozoology of the worst sort. What is next? Evolution can't be true because of if it were, how would it produce the regular octopus and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus? Humans could not have evolved from lower ape forms because Bigfoot still roams the earth?

The second quote is just standard young earth creationist nonsense, continually perpetrated by Answers in Genesis and the like and has been rebutted so many times that the arguments can now reasonably be classified as lies.

Karl Giberson once said:

“Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY are becoming less relevant, as they speak for - and to - an increasingly smaller band of hyper-conservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are what (we've been warned about): a cult, with their own separate science.”

I have resisted calling young earth creationism a cult. Stories like this one make it increasingly difficult to do so.

I Goofed.

In the previous post, I misread my source and thought that PCA Creation Study Report I posted was the 2012 report. It was pointed out to me that it was not, it was the 2000 report. Sorry about that. The 2012 PCA convention is going on right now. One thing my source pointed out was that, during the 2012 sessions, a talk was being given by Dr. Gregg Davidson, Professor of Geology at the University of Mississipi titled “The PCA Creation Study Committee a Dozen Years Later: What Does Science Say Now?” The accompanying abstract in the program was:

"The Creation Study Committee reported their results in 2000 without establishing a firm position on the age of the earth. The report encouraged the PCA to consider what additional scientific understanding might develop in the future to assist in answering the question of age. This seminar will provide an update on the scientific evidence for an ancient earth using examples non-scientists can easily apprehend. Pastors and theologians are generally familiar with the biblical arguments surrounding questions of the age of the earth, but few have access to scientific data they can understand. Most rely on information from young earth organizations that do not adequately or accurately reflect conventional scientific understanding. When information from these sources is passed on to students and congregations, Christ, as the author of truth, is poorly represented. More importantly, our members are inadequately prepared to wrestle with challenges to their faith when encountering the actual scientific evidence even if convinced it is wrong. The seminar will explicitly acknowledge the authority and preeminence of scripture over natural evidence, while also recognizing that God's natural creation can sometimes aid in choosing between plausible biblical interpretations.

This sounds promising and I certainly hope that the committee will give it serious thought. What this does not address, however, is biological evolution, which, as I mentioned in the last post, was very badly garbled. It is true that there is a somewhat steep learning curve when it comes to this stuff but if you want to be honest with your flock, you need to at least get the basics.

Thanks for the correction.

The PCA and Earth History: Litle Progress

A reader sent in the most recent PCA Historical Center Creation Study, a part of the 2012 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. The link to the complete study is here. It begins with a historical account of how the Genesis days were treated. In this account, evolution is featured prominently. Sadly, their exposition of it is predictably garbled. They define “naturalistic evolution” as:

“The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments” (National Association of Biology Teachers). This rules out any supernatural activity of God in the origin and development of life and of humans, and hence makes a naturalistic metaphysic the basis of science.

It does nothing of the sort. It simply states that there are knowable, observable processes that produce evolutionary effects in organisms. It says absolutely nothing about supernatural activity because evolutionary theory does not deal in origins of life. It deals in the modification of life after it appeared. Science is metaphysically neutral. One can make unwarranted extrapolations based on one's preconceived understanding of how nature works, but the results of science simply are. The scientific testing and engineering involved in airplane design is metaphysically neutral, as is the appearance of two species of salamander in the Great Basin where there was once one. Their definition of science is equally garbled.

A large chunk of the document deals with interpretations of the first six days of Genesis. This is equally problematic. When it gets to the objections to the “calendar day” model, the writers make some extraordinarily wrong and biased assumptions and conclusions. They write:

Some have asserted that this view “seems not to take science seriously and impugns the veracity of God because, on the one hand, it dismisses central conclusions of the current scientific consensus on cosmogony and, on the other hand, it supposedly requires one to view the general-revelation evidence as to the age of the earth as misleading.” This criticism is based on the assumption that man is able to interpret general revelation correctly without the light of special revelation. That assumption reverses the proper principle of Biblical interpretation, which is, that special revelation must govern our understanding of general revelation. Those of us who hold the Calendar-Day view make no apology for arriving, after careful consideration of the facts, at conclusions that differ from this so-called consensus. It is not the veracity of God which is impugned but the evolutionary presuppositions of the majority (not consensus) of the scientific community whose assumptions are regularly passed off as facts. Furthermore, it seems disingenuous to fault the Calendar-Day view for differing with current scientific dogma when creationists of all stripes claim to reject the most dominant aspect of that dogma, namely, evolutionary origins of the species. One unique strength of the Calendar-Day view is that it leaves no room to accommodate any version of evolutionism, Theistic or otherwise, while some other theories seem bent on finding some common ground with it.

First, the criticism is not based on the idea that man is able to correctly interpret the data without special revelation. The criticism is based on the fact that God has revealed to us the inner workings of His creation and they do not accord with a strict literal (and theologically debatable) interpretation of the scriptures. It does not reverse the proper interpretation of biblical interpretation, it assumes that the works of God are to be believed just as the word of God is to be believed. How is it that people that writes these things never once reexamine their own biblical interpretations in the light of the data? That never fails to astound me.

The writers then make an unwarranted assumption that “creationists of all stripes” reject evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory has absolutely nothing to do with arguments about the age of the universe. It is the inferred age of the universe that allowed for the formulation of evolutionary theory. This is the oldest creationist argument in the book and the fact that the writers are unaware that it was disproven over forty years ago is disturbing. It makes one think that they have read only Henry Morris in formulating their opinions. They then argue that it is a strength of the Calendar day argument that it rejects evolution. They can reject evolution if they wish, but they do not speak for me or anyone else that accepts evolutionary creationism.

Much more could be written that I do not have time to write. Read the whole document to see where the PCA is going with regard to this issue. It seems to me that they are adopting a flat reading of the scriptures and, despite giving lip service to the historical debates, regard those debates as unimportant to the current discussion. The document is heavily influenced by young earth creationism and, as such, is myopic and narrow in its interpretations and understanding of science.

25th Anniversary of Edwards Vs. Aguillard June 19

June 19 (yesterday) marked the 25th anniversary of the overturning of the “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act” in Louisiana by the Supreme Court. The act required that if evolution was taught, then young earth creationism had to be taught as well.

The court ruled that, since it involved the public school system of Louisiana, the act violated the establishment clause. As several people have noted, it was this particular court case that gave rise to “cdesign proponentsists,” the transitional form between “creationists” and “design proponents” that appeared in the drafts of the appalling book Of Pandas and People and led to the modern-day “intelligent design” movement.

Ken Willard Continues To Kick Up Dust

The AP has news that Ken Willard, currently a member of the Kansas State Board of Education but running for the state legislature, is attempting to raise awareness that the state science guidelines do not include the “evidence against evolution.” John Hanna writes:

Some board members expressed surprise that the early work on guidelines would receive much public notice, especially with it being months before the board is likely to consider adopting the standards. But from 1999 to 2007, the state had five sets of science standarhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifds as conservative Republicans gained and lost board majorities, bringing Kansas international attention and some ridicule. Kansas' current standards, adopted five years ago, are evolution-friendly.

Willard, a Hutchinson Republican, distributed a nine-page letter criticizing the draft multistate standards from the group Citizens for Objective Public Education Inc., which lists officers in Florida and Kansas. The letter suggested that the draft standards ignore evidence against evolution, don't respect religious diversity and promote secular humanism, which precludes God or another supreme being in considering how the universe works.

"I hope that it will be taken seriously and not as just information from a bunch of crackpots," Willard said. "Anybody who deigns to take a questioning position regarding anything to do with evolution is pretty well named to be a crackpot or a kook of some sort."

I went looking for the Citizens for Objective Public Education, Inc. and couldn't find them. Florida Citizens for Science couldn't find them either. They do not seem to have a web presence at all. In this day and age, I find that very odd. NCSE went digging and discovered that the organization is a scant three months old and that the president of the organization is a young-earth creationist. Why do I not find this surprising.

I have written Ken Willard asking for a copy of the letter. We will see if he responds.

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The Hand of a Neandertal?

TG Daily is reporting on a story that the hand prints in the famous cave of El Castillo have been redated and are over 40 thousand years old. If this is the case, it likely predates the arrival of the early moderns into the area and may be
Neandertal in origin. Emma Woolacott writes:

Such paintings can't be dated using standard radiocarbon dating, as they contain no organic pigment. But an international team used a new method to examine 50 paintings in 11 caves in Northern Spain, including the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo.

They dated the formation of tiny stalactites on top of the paintings using the radioactive decay of uranium, giving a minimum age for the pictures.

It would be really neat if they were hand prints of Neandertals and would give us another window into their thought processes, which seem more like ours every day.

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Bonobo DNA Sequenced

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on a story from Nature in which the complete genome sequence of the Bonobo or Pygmy Chimpanzee, has been sequenced. Eryn Brown writes:

“There's a common ancestor that we and these apes were derived from. We want to know what that ancestor looked like,” said Wes Warren, a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the research. “By adding the bonobo to the mix, we have a better idea.”

Now, with all the great ape sequences complete, scientists can better use genetics to help determine whether a particular trait cropped up for the first time in humans, said Kay Pruefer, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany.

Bonobos and Chimpanzees separated around 1 million years ago and are now very different behaviorally.

As an aside, much whooping and howling occurred when this story first appeared this morning. The headline now reads “Scientists map genome of the bonobo, a key human relative.” When it first came out, it read “Scientists map genome of the bonobo, a key human ancestor.” The comments were swift and brutal. Many accused the writer, Eryn Brown, of not knowing anything about science. What most don't realize is that the article is often written without the headline, which is then put in by an editor. In this case, it is likely the editor who didn't know, not the author.

It was also a tad heart-warming to see so many of the readers actually knew the correct relationship between humans and bonobos.

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Phillip Tobias Has Died

Phillip Tobias, a preeminent anthropologist who worked tirelessly to raise the standard for palaeoanthropology in South Africa, has died. From the Scotsman:

But for Tobias’ endeavours, the honours would probably have gone to East Africa, the territory of the more famous Leakey team, Louis and Mary. The Leakeys were great self-publicists and they made sure that East African discoveries – especially those they made in the Olduvai Gorge in Kenya’s Rift Valley – featured prominently in international media at a time when South Africa was mostly renowned for its apartheid policies.

However, Tobias, who was an anti-apartheid activist as well as a distinguished scientist, lived long enough to see the tide turn and South Africa take centre stage in the great debate on humanity’s origins. The huge shift in perceptions was largely Tobias’ doing. It was no mean feat to keep the torch alight for evolutionary studies in a land governed by white right-wing Christian fundamentalists who passionately dismissed the idea of evolution.

Tobias was partly responsible for the changes in attitudes in South Africa that led to the downfall of apartheid and, along with many biological anthropologists of the time, championed the idea that race, as a biological concept, is meaningless. He will be missed.

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Ken Ham: Coming to a Billboard Near You!

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

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

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

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

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

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






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

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More Trouble in Kansas

“Whooooo could imagine that they would freak-out somewhere in Kansas.”
—Frank Zappa

Well, it seems that the Kansas evolution debate is kicking up again. Courtesy of the AP:

Kansas is now among 26 states helping to draft new science standards alongside the National Research Council, with the goal of creating standard, nationwide guidelines. A first draft became public last month, and the Kansas board is scheduled to hear an update on Tuesday.

Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker said a final draft could be ready by the end of the year, and the board would then decide whether to make those standards the state's standards.

But the decision may not be made until after the November election — in which five of the 10 board seats will be on the ballot.

Board member Ken Willard, a Hutchinson Republican, said he's troubled by the first draft of the proposed standards. In the past, Willard has supported standards for Kansas with material that questions evolution; guidelines that he and other conservatives approved in 2005 were supplanted by the current ones.

Willard said the draft embraces naturalism and secular humanism, which precludes God or another supreme being in considering how the universe works. He said he intends to raise the issue Tuesday.

"That's going to be very problematic," Willard told The Associated Press in an interview. "They are preferring one religious position over another."

The current standards are here. In no instance are “biological evolution” and “random” even in the same paragraph. In fact, the standards go out of their way to avoid the trap that the NABT fell into a decade or so back when they referred to evolution as “undirected.” Therefore, the statement that Willard makes charging that one religious position is being chosen over another, is without merit.

But you knew that already.

The fact that Willard objects to evolution being listed as a “well-established, core scientific concept” indicates that, like God-only-knows how many other Republican politicians, he hasn't got a clue how much evidence there is supporting it, or, likely, even what it is. He has just been listening to all of the wrong people. Maybe that is his fault and maybe it isn't but it doesn't help matters.

Look for this to heat up.

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Middle Pleistocene Hominin Height

Science Daily has a story on work being done with the material from the Sima de los Huesos cave at Atapuerca. 27 complete long bones have been discovered there and from these, it has been possible to estimate the height of Homo heidelbergensis. Science Daily writes:

The results suggest that both men and women in the Sima de los Huesos population were on average slightly higher than Neanderthal men and women. "Neither can be described as being short and both are placed in the medium and above-medium height categories. But, both species featured tall individuals," assured the experts.

The height of these two species is similar to that of modern day population of mid-latitudes, like in the case of Central Europe and the Mediterranean.

The humans who arrived in Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic era, Cro-Magnons or anatomically modern humans, replaced the Neanderthal populations. They were significantly taller than other human species and their average height for both sexes was higher, falling in the very tall individual category.

Height remained the same for some 2 million years.

We know from the remains at Turkana that, at least for some individuals, height close to that of modern humans had been achieved by 1.3 million years ago.This probably reflects (amongst other things) a massive increase in protein in the diet, which would come about by increased hunting, something present in late African Homo ergaster. More pieces of the puzzle.

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Off Topic: Ray Bradbury Has Died

Ray Bradbury has died at the age of 91. I believe he was the last great of the Golden Age of Science fiction that produced Isaac Asimov, Lester DelRey, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Joe W. Campbell and others of note. I read his short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” when I was in junior high school and the story has haunted me ever since.

RIP

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Gallup: “In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins”

Here is the original Gallup poll report.

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I am in a weeklong summer teaching institute so I probably will not get a chance to post this week. In the meantime, have a look at a new Gallup poll on acceptance of evolution. HuffPo has a post by Michael Dowd. It is disappointing.

Hat Tip to the best man at my wedding, Jon Reid.

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Women Are the Key to Male Choices

This simply doesn't come as much of a surprise. Sergey Gavrilets, just down the road at the University of Tennessee, has researched the role of female choice in evolution and how it led to the modern family structure. Science Daily writes:

The "sexual revolution" entailed males first competing with other males for dominance, as a way to get matings. However, low-ranked males—and eventually all males except those with the highest societal stature—began supplying females with provisions in what is called "food-for-mating" to get a leg up on the competition. Females showed preference for the "provisioning" males, leading males' energy to be spent on providing for females and females becoming increasingly faithful. This spurred self-domestication and the modern family as we know it today.

One cannot help but wonder if this change coincided with the expansion of the braincase that began to take off around 1.5 million years ago, the time in which we first encounter stone tools and the first inferences of some form of rudimentary culture. With the increase in the strong pair-bond, you have the basis for providing the offspring with the stability of a strong nuclear family. This, then appears to be the natural order of things. It is ironic that this nuclear family structure has, for many aspects of western society, broken down in recent years in the face of “free thinking” and lack of personal responsibility.

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Barbara Cargill and Ken Mercer Win Texas School Board Re-elections

I am Disappointed:

For the District 8 spot in Southeast Texas, social conservative Barbara Cargill, chairwoman of the board, had almost 69 percent of the vote with 38 percent of the precincts counted.

Her challenger, Linda Ellis, had 31 percent.

And in District 5 in Central Texas, incumbent Ken Mercer had 71 percent of the vote with 37 percent of the precincts tallied. Mercer, a software engineer from San Antonio, was defeating physician assistant Steve Salyer, who had 29 percent.

As I wrote in my post on the Garden State, people on school boards who don't have the first clue what evolution is present as much of a problem as organizations like the ICR and AiG. Barbara Cargill never did respond to my letter.

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Jeff Meldrum on Taking Sasquatch Seriously

Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University is presenting a talk in Montpelier, Idaho on June 2 called “Sasquatch on the Oregon Trail.” He writes:

Ancient tribal artists of the Intermountain West were not overt in their depiction of these creatures, but cryptic petroglyphs from the red sandstone cliffs of Wyoming to the basalt columns of the Snake River Plain depict footprints and caricatures of the wildman of the woods. Modern tribal artists, such as Willie Preacher of Fort Hall, depict traditional stories with oil and canvas.

Once the pioneers arrived in Oregon’s verdant Willamette Valley flanked by the Cascade and Coastal ranges, or the mountain-surrounded gold fields of northern California, they would hear more stories of mountain devils and giant hairy man-like monsters. It would be a century later before footprint casts and films and photos would introduce the world to the Pacific Northwest’s wildman of the woods – Bigfoot or sasquatch; yet an additional half century before science would begin to consider the evidence seriously.

Ah, the power of the local story...it doesn't matter that there is not and has never been a shred of physical evidence of these creatures anywhere on the planet in recent memory. If these creatures were shot at by Lewis and Clark and chased by the Shoshone Indians, we would have remains. We do not. If they had any time depth to the region, we would have remains. We do not. Remember the big rubber suit from last year?

These are nothing but stories that have migrated east from fossil sightings of Gigantopithecus in China and Vietnam. There hasn't been anything around like this for five hundred thousand years.

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New Explanation for Brain Evolution in Australopithecines

Science Daily is reporting on new examinations of the famous Taung brain endocast that provides insights into human evolution. They write:

"These findings are significant because they provide a highly plausible explanation as to why the hominin brain might grow larger and more complex," Falk said.

The first feature is a "persistent metopic suture," or unfused seam, in the frontal bone, which allows a baby's skull to be pliable during childbirth as it squeezes through the birth canal. In great apes -- gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees -- the metopic suture closes shortly after birth. In humans, it does not fuse until around 2 years of age to accommodate rapid brain growth.

The second feature is the fossil's endocast, or imprint of the outside surface of the brain transferred to the inside of the skull. The endocast allows researchers to examine the brain's form and structure.

The argument is that the metopic suture stays open in hominins longer to allow the brain to grow more postnatally, something we have known for some time. It is the new imaging techniques that have allowed us to get a better handle on this. The endocast has been around for almost ninety years and has been subject to all kinds of studies, some of which have led to riotous disagreements between researchers. More pieces of the puzzle.

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Richard Leakey is Optimistic

PhysOrg profiles Richard Leakey, who thinks that the debate over evolution will be over soon. They write:

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."

Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.

I have seen this unbridled optimism before, in scientists (including myself) who cannot possibly understand that, despite the amazing amount of evidence, there are still those who do not accept evolution and that the reasons they do so are not scientific. They continue:

"If you don't like the word evolution, I don't care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God."

Leakey, like many atheists, has little understanding of how tenacious religious belief is, and young earth creationism is wrapped in a particular understanding about how the universe was created that doesn't accord with modern science. Richard Leakey is optimistic.

Me, not so much.
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Meanwhile, Over in the Garden State...

Apparently, half of those polled in New Jersey don't accept evolution. According to Shannon Mullen of MyCentralJersey:

Support for the idea that humans evolved from lower forms of life stands at 51 percent in New Jersey, according to a new Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll. (The Courier News is a sister paper of the The Press.) Forty-two percent said they didn’t believe in evolution, while 7 percent said they don’t know.

This further argues that the pathetic state of science education in this country knows no bounds. It, along with general scientific knowledge, is probably this bad everywhere. This information came in the context of a poll on a larger set of questions and the results can be found here. The question asked was:

I’m going to read a list of items. Please tell me whether or not you personally believe in each one. Just a quick yes or no:
The theory of evolution – that humans evolved from lower life forms

The results were predictable in other ways: For those who had a high school education or less, 37% answered yes, some college 52% and at least a college education 69%, while Democrats polled ten points higher than Republicans (I thought this would be a larger margin). Oddly, men answered yes eight percentage points higher than women, 55& to 47%. The authors make no comment as to why this last point might be.

As a comparative note, they point out:

New Jerseyans with a Darwinian bent may despair at the 42% of their fellow Garden State residents who cannot countenance the idea that humans may have evolved from lower life forms. However, they may take solace from the fact that recent polls in other places put that number significantly higher. For instance, large majorities of Republican primary voters in Southern states do not believe in evolution – 60% in Alabama and 66% in Mississippi, according to a March 2012 PPP Poll. However, that number was a much lower 43% among Illinois Republicans. Here in New Jersey, 49% of Republicans do not believe in evolution, compared to 41% of independents and 39% of Democrats.

42% is still way too high.

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Abominable Snowman Search Goes Hi-Tech: Update

But just in case you find one, it is legal to shoot it in Texas, but not in California.

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Abominable Snowman Search Goes Hi-Tech

At least it is not our tax dollars at work. The Daily Mail reports that a group from Oxford University has begun using DNA samples from around the world to track, oh, I had better let them explain:

An Oxford college is to analyse samples of Yeti hair and teeth in one of the most serious attempts yet made to track down the elusive and possibly mythical species.

Wolfson college is asking for samples of hair and teeth of 'cryptids' - unknown animals such as the Yeti - and is to use the latest DNA technology to analyse samples from around the world.

'As part of a larger enquiry [sic] into the genetic relationship between our own species Homo sapiens and other hominids, we invite submissions of organic material from formally undescribed species, or ‘cryptids’, for the purpose of their species identification by genetic means,' says the college.

According to the story, individuals can submit their samples anonymously. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Wonder how many Neandertals will turn up?

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Alan Thorne Has Died

Alan Thorne, one of the principle architects of the multiregional evolution model of modern human origins has died. ABC News reports:

Dr Thorne is best known for his research on the Mungo Lake skeletons found in western New South Wales, and his theories on the regional development of early humans.

The research on 'Mungo man' dated the skeleton to 40,000 years ago.

ANU research colleague Colin Groves says the death of Alan Thorne is a big loss for Australian archaeology.

This is a very sad loss and a big one for the palaeoanthropological community.

“Critical Thinking” Bill Fails in Missouri

Another bill couched in science language but aimed solely at evolution has failed in the Missouri legislature. The text of the bill reads in part:

The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, superintendents of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution.

Whenever I read these bills, I wonder, how is it that these legislators have concluded that every single other branch of science has got it completely right and yet the biologists have somehow completely gotten everything wrong? I am just astounded that none of these bills are ever aimed at the discrepancies between traditional Newtonian physics and quantum physics, for example. Are there not theoretical issues in that field that are controversial? Of course there are. But as long as we have legislators who don't know better, and there is always a well-funded young earth creationist machine behind it, these anti-evolution bills (for that is what they are) will keep coming.

Hat Tip to Robert Luhn
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Crocodile From Hell, East African Version

Again from Discovery News, it turns out that there was a horned crocodile that lived around the time of the Australopithecines and likely ate more than a few of them for lunch. Jennifer Viegas writes:

Remains of the enormous horned croc, named Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni, were unearthed in East Africa. The impressive aquatic reptile exceeded 27 feet long and is described in the latest Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The croc was the dominant predator of its ecosystem, so there is little doubt that it preyed upon our distant ancestors, especially since remains of Australopithecus (a now-extinct genus of hominids) were found nearby.

These relatively tiny individuals would have had no choice but to enter the crocodile's territory for much needed water.

These early hominins had to contend with large cats on the savanna as well so survival was never guaranteed.

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Turtle From Hell

What is it with the Cerrajon Formation in Colombia? First we had the Snake from Hell, then we had the Crocodile from Hell and now we have the Turtle from Hell. Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News writes:

Remains of an enormous turtle, which was the size of a Smart car, have been unearthed in a Colombian coal mine.

The shell alone of the 60-million-year-old turtle, Carbonemys cofrinii aka "coal turtle," is large enough to be a small swimming pool. Its skull is roughly the size of a regulation NFL football. The coal mine where it was found is part of northern Colombia's Cerrejon formation.

"We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site," Edwin Cadena, a North Carolina State doctoral student who discovered the turtle, said in a press release. "But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period -- and it gave us the first evidence of giant-ism in freshwater turtles."

How nasty was this turtle in relation to modern ones?

Turtles today are usually seen slowly chewing plants, but this prehistoric species had massive, powerful jaws that would have enabled it to eat anything nearby, from mollusks to smaller turtles or even crocodiles.

Not a nice place to live, I don't think.

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Credit for Creationism Class Bill

Glenn Branch of the NCSE has shown light on a bill in the Alabama legislature that has, mercifully, died. This bill would have allowed local school districts to allow students to take a class in creationism and receive credit for it. According to the NCSE:

House Bill 133, if enacted, would have authorized "local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students." Its sponsor, Blaine Galliher (R-District 30), explained his purpose in introducing the bill to WAFF in Huntsville, Alabama (February 5, 2012): "They teach evolution in the textbooks, but they don't teach a creation theory ... Creation has just as much right to be taught in the school system as evolution does and I think this is simply providing the vehicle to do that."

I guess my take on this is that you should always allow students to take courses that involve religious instruction since it is such an integral part of the framework of American life. Such a course would, ideally, fulfill a credit in the social sciences and might be a benefit to the individual students, especially as a discussion forum.

But that is not what is going on here. It is evident from the words of representative Galliher that he envisions such a class to count as a science credit. Such a position is absolutely indefensible. There is no validity to the young earth creationist position and to teach it in public schools as legitimate science would be tantamount to miseducation. Young earth creationism should only be taught as an object lesson in science as a theory that has been discarded in favor of new knowledge. To suggest a course swap like this is simply ignorant. The students of Alabama dodged a bullet this time.

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Ken Ham: Horse Expert

This occurred during the first couple of days after my surgery so I couldn't comment on it then but I thought it mighty amusing at the time. It seems that, during the running of the recent Kentucky Derby, there was a display on the evolution of the horse at the International Museum of the Horse.

Not to be outdone by the spectacle of the Kentucky Derby, Ken Ham, head of the Kentucky Creation Museum, just to the south, complained about the evolutionary aspects of the exhibit. As Kentucky.com reports:

Ham contends the idea of horse evolution is false, and he particularly disputes the line of prehistoric horses that scientists link to the modern horse.

Ham writes that in the display, two early horses, Miohippus and Merychippus, grow steadily bigger.

“What's the problem, though, with the belief that horses somehow evolved into larger and larger animals? If that were true, shouldn't we see only very large horses today? But we don't — horses vary in size from the Clydesdale to the much smaller Fallabella (just 17 inches tall).”

Ham concludes: “This example of a poor, unscientific display at the Horse Park is just another good reason why you need to visit a place that will tell your children the truth — the Creation Museum!”

His persistently poor grasp of evolutionary theory is really quite astounding. Given the amount of time that he has spent opposing it, you would think that he would have learned at least something about it. Apparently not.

And I bet the display has quite a bit to say about recent artificial selection which is responsible for the differences in the size of the horses just as it is for the size differentials in the different breeds of dogs and cats. Did this never occur to him??

But beyond the artificial selections issues, just because you had small horses in the past and larger horses today doesn't mean that ALL horses are going to be large, just as it doesn't mean that all cats are going to be large. Selection operates on the animals living in certain environments. In India and Siberia, it is optimal for the tiger to be large and, likely due to Bergmann's Rule, the Siberian tigers are slightly larger than the Bengal tigers. It is optimal for a lynx or a bobcat to be small in the dry, southwestern U.S.

Horses diversified and the modern Equus genus dates to around 3 to 4 million years ago. Between about 5 million years ago (end of the Miocene) and 12,ooo years ago (beginning of the Holocene), there was a gradual cooling and horses generally got larger. That came to a crashing halt with the end of the Late Würm glaciation when the climate began to warm substantially and most of the large horses disappeared. The domestication of horses appears to have begun as early as 6,ooo years ago and the modern horses that race are the result of that.

With his completely ignorant understanding of horse evolution and his blatant plug for his own for-profit creation museum, Ken Ham demonstrates that there are, in fact, more horses asses in the world than there are horses.

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Injecting A New Idea Into the Debate

Ow. Still hurts to type. Charles Haynes suggests a new tactic in the effort to educate students about the vacuity of ID and creationism in the classroom. Working off the passage of the new “monkey bill” in Tennessee, he writes:

Under the new law, Tennessee teachers apparently get to decide what counts as science (and what counts as "weakness" in scientific theories) -- even if most scientists disagree. Critics of the law see this as a green light for teaching creationism or other religiously based ideas as science.They may be right. What Tennessee lawmakers tout as academic freedom (a freedom, by the way, denied to teachers in every other subject), is very likely to be used as a Trojan horse for inserting religious convictions into the science curriculum.

A far better approach would be to address the religion-science debate up front by preparing teachers to teach students something about the history and philosophy of science, including the interaction between religion and science over time. Helping students understand the context for the culture-war fight over evolution may help them accept what modern science has to say.

I think this is a good idea. When I teach my Introduction to Human Origins class, I include a section on the history of science and where some of the young earth creationist ideas came from. One of the best books I have recently read is Davis Young's The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence which he excerpted here. It is a great case study in the struggles of geologists and their attempts to understand the new evidence that the earth was revealing and why flood geology was abandoned 150 years ago. That it is still accepted by young earth creationists after all this time is a sad testament to their lack of scientific credibility. There is more evidence that the earth is flat.

I wonder if my idea that simply teaching creationism in science class would expose the stinkweediness of it is a good idea. It would only work if every teacher to a man or woman were honest about the scientific evidence but, as we have seen from recent polls, one in nine high school science teachers accepts creationism. Somewhere, an entry-level quiz is systematically being omitted. I would expect that if you want to teach science in a science class, you would have to have a basic understanding of what is science and what is not. I guess not.

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Oh, The Horror, The Horror

Parents, save your kids before its too late.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Just had wrist surgery today.  Nothing for a bit.

Meanwhile, Over in North Carolina...

The Raleigh NewsObserver is reporting on the doings of a Wake County high school science teacher who has given an assignment asking students to, if they so desire, write a paper supporting a recent earth creation model of the earth's origins.  The authors write:

School officials say the assignment, in which the teacher gave his students the option of doing an extra-credit project on evolution or creationism, was inappropriate because the state curriculum doesn’t include creationism. The situation at Wakefield Middle School in North Raleigh highlights the challenge public schools face when discussing how life began...At Wakefield, eighth-grade science teacher Adam Dembrow gave students an extra-credit opportunity last month to do a poster and paper either on “your interpretation of a religions (sic) Creation” or on “any evidence on the theory of evolution, which can be used to support the theory of evolution.”

Much is unclear in this report. Is he trying to get his students to understand the shortcomings of the YEC model? Is he trying to get them to compare standard science with YEC? Even I make cursory mention of the YEC model in my “History of Science” lecture for my intro to physical anthropology class.  I also have, as an extra credit assignment, assigned a question such as "read an article on the intersection of science and religion and evaluate it."  Additionally, it is never a problem to give an assignment asking students to address evidence for evolution.  That gets them into the evidence, itself. 

While the recent Tennessee law is clearly a bad idea, I do not think that we need to jump out of our skins every time a teacher mentions the young earth model.  That is just overreacting. 

It has always been my contention that if we actually brought creationism into the classroom and taught the evidence for it honestly and with scientific integrity, students would see it for the stinkweed that it is and not embrace it.

Tennessean: TN evolution law may change nothing

According to an article in the Tennessean, the new “monkey bill” may change nothing about the way science is taught. Here is the accompanying video. The first speaker intelligently lays out her opposition to the bill, the second one not so much.



Heidi Hall writes:

Supporters of Tennessee’s newest education law envision classrooms where teachers lead robust conversations about evolution, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses with students who are freshly engaged with this new approach.

Creationism wouldn’t be mentioned, they say. Neither would intelligent design. Teachers know those would violate the First Amendment, plus the new law expressly forbids promoting religious doctrine.

“I trust science teachers are smart enough to keep the discussion on a scientific level,” said Casey Luskin, a policy analyst with the Discovery Institute, which wrote a model bill Tennessee lawmakers consulted. “I don’t see why anyone would bring religion into the discussion.”

I sometimes wonder if Casey says these things because he actually believes them or if he hopes that his listeners will. It is remarkably naive because he knows good and well (or he ought to) that, when polled, over 10% of science teachers actually support teaching creationism. It is also naive in that, during the Dover trial, it became clear that some members of the school board were committing terminological inexactitudes. They said they wanted "critical thinking" about evolution when they really wanted creationism. She continues:

Tennessee’s law isn’t the same as the Dover school board’s policy, but it sets up conditions for a lawsuit, said Vic Walczak, an ACLU attorney who represented the Dover, Pa., families.

“It basically neuters school boards and administrators from disciplining teachers who run off the rails,” he said. “And when the district gets sued by a parent, the teacher gets off scot-free? Why would you do that?

You would do that if you wanted creationism taught in the public school.

New BioLogos Post is Up

My latest installment at BioLogos on human origins is up and can be found here. As always, comments are welcome both here and there.

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Haslam Lets ‘Monkey Bill’ Stand

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has allowed SB893 to stand, effectively making it law. As he is quoted in the Nature News story:

“I do not believe that this legislation changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools or the curriculum that is used by our teachers,” Haslam said in a written statement explaining his equivocal stance. “However, I also don’t believe that it accomplishes anything that isn’t already acceptable in our schools.”

The Nature News story points out a way in which the bill differs from the one in Louisiana.

But in Tennessee, unlike in Louisiana, the law requires teachers to stay within the state science curriculum. So the ramifications of the law will depend on how local teachers and school boards interpret that requirement. “There are school districts in Tennessee that don’t pay any attention to the state curriculum,” says Timothy Gaudin, a biologist at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. “So there are some people who are going to do what they want to do no matter what.”

This gives them the cover to do so. I suppose the question I have for Governor Haslam is that if it is not going to accomplish anything, and you don't want to sign it, then why not veto it? This just smacks of political pandering, especially in light of the scientific opposition to the bill. Not a bright and shining moment for Tennessee.

John Derbyshire Fired By National Review

John Derbyshire has been fired by the National Review for controversial remarks he made in a post for Takimag. Whether he should have been fired or not I have no idea since I cannot get the Takimag link to work. I do know that he, once upon a time, wrote an extraordinarily insightful post on George Gilder and Intelligent Design, to wit:

George’s own Discovery Institute was established in 1990; the offshoot Center for Science and Culture (at first called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) in 1992. That is an aggregate 30 years. Where is the science? In all those years, not a single paper of scientific standing has come out of (nor even, to the best of my knowledge, been submitted by) the DI or the CSC. I am certainly willing to be corrected here. If the DI or CSC have any papers of scientific standing — published or not — I shall post links to them to NRO for qualified readers to scrutinize.

Scientists discover things. That’s what they do. In fast-growing fields like genomics, they discover new things almost daily — look into any issue of Science or Nature. What has the Discovery Institute discovered this past 16 years? To stretch my simile further: Creationists are walking into that room full of pilots and aeronautical engineers right at the peak of the Golden Age of flight, never having flown or designed any planes themselves. Are they really surprised that they get a brusque reception?

If his firing is warranted, that is too bad. At times, he could be smack on the money.

No Posts for a bit

My wife's father passed away this week and the funeral is this coming week. Add to that I have to get my class written and I have to get a BioLogos post resubmitted and it adds up to no posts for a bit. Sorry.

Lauri Lebo Rips the Cover Off of HB368/SB893

Lauri Lebo, writing for Scientific American, has written an expose on the origins of HB368/SB893. In it, she points out that these academic freedom bills have particular origins which underlie their true point:

Sponsor Rep. Bill Dunn (R–Knoxville) said [David] Fowler [head of the Family Action Council of Tennessee] submitted the legislation to him in early February. The latter's organization is associated with James Dobson's conservative Christian Focus on the Family and advocates for "biblical values" and "godly officials".

Dunn could not explain why a Christian organization would be pushing legislation that supposedly has nothing to do with inserting religion into science class. He referred the question to Fowler.

Fowler, who would not say whether he is a young earth creationist ("I think that's irrelevant," he noted), said he is trying to correct the "dogmatic" presentation of science in the classroom. "This is about open discourse," he said, adding, "Good education requires critical thinking."

Fowler has spoken with members of the Discovery Institute—he would not say specifically whom—and said he drafted the Tennessee bill based on sample legislation the Institute created.

Dunn explains: "We've reversed the roles of the Scopes Trial. All we're saying is let's put all the scientific facts on the table."

Why, indeed, is a bill such as this being pushed so heavily by a Christian organization if it has no religious elements to it? What is “in it” for them? Here is where the bulls**t detector goes off. Just once, I would like one of these organizations to be honest about why they want this legislation passed. Is it too much to ask that of fellow Christians? This kind of thing leaves a very bad taste in the mouth of your average scientist, who already regards organized Christianity as hostile to them (and why wouldn't they?). It has the same effect on your average EC, and just reinforces the notion that modern evangelicalism is sadly off-base and headed in the wrong direction.

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Where is Todd's Letter?

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

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

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

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

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

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