Nuclear DNA From the Simo de los Huesos Fossil Material

Nature has a paper that focuses on DNA that has been extracted from the Sima de los Huesos fossil material from the site of Atapuerca, in northern Spain.  The letter does not appear to be behind the pay wall, at the moment.  In 2014, researchers completed a mitochondrial genome sequence for a hominin and the results were interesting, to say the least.  Here is the abstract from the 2014 paper:

Excavations of a complex of caves in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain have unearthed hominin fossils that range in age from the early Pleistocene to the Holocene¹. One of these sites, the ‘Sima de los Huesos’ (‘pit of bones’), has yielded the world’s largest assemblage of Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils^{2, 3}, consisting of at least 28 individuals⁴ dated to over 300,000 years ago⁵. The skeletal remains share a number of morphological features with fossils classified as Homo heidelbergensis and also display distinct Neanderthal-derived traits^{6, 7, 8}. Here we determine an almost complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos and show that it is closely related to the lineage leading to mitochondrial genomes of Denisovans^{9, 10}, an eastern Eurasian sister group to Neanderthals. Our results pave the way for DNA research on hominins from the Middle Pleistocene.

The authors argued at the time that Denisovans and the population from Sima de los Huesos shared a common ancestor, with a split of about 700 kya, and that both are more closely related to each other than either is to Neandertals.  This strongly suggests that Neandertals are a later derivation from a common crown group that represented the progenitors of all three groups.  The authors suggest that these findings are unexpected because of the incipient Neandertal traits found in the Sima collection, including occipital bunning in the back of the head and some mid-facial prognathism (it looks like the maxilla is puffed out).  Arsuaga and others have stated previously that they thought all of the Sima de los Huesos material belonged to the Neandertal lineage. That, apparently, is not the case.  As these authors point out, there may have been more than one evolutionary lineage roaming the valleys and forests of Europe.

Now the nuclear DNA has been  sequenced and these results strongly suggest that the people represented by the SH population were, in fact, early Neandertals.  From the paper by Meyer et al:

The nuclear DNA sequences of femur AT-5431 and the incisor show that they belonged to the Neanderthal evolutionary lineage, and the limited data available for the molar suggest that the same is true for this specimen. Thus, the results show that the SH hominins were early Neanderthals or closely related to the ancestors of Neanderthals after the divergence from a common ancestor shared with Denisovans. Although it is difficult to determine the age of Middle Pleistocene sites with certainty, geological dating methods¹, as well as the length of the branches in trees relating the mtDNAs from femur XIII and an SH cave bear to other mtDNAs^{2, 12}, suggest an age of around 400,000 years for the SH fossils. This age is compatible with the population split time of 381,000–473,000 years ago estimated for Neanderthals and Denisovans on the basis of their nuclear genome sequences and using the human mutation rate of 0.5 × 10⁻⁹ per base pair per year⁷

These authors now suggest that, in combination with the MtDNA results from last year, that the SH hominins are ancestral to Neandertals and that the MtDNA found in later Neandertals is derived relative to that in the SH hominins and that the SH hominins may have had several different MtDNA strands. 

It appears that the evidence supports a model in which the classic Neandertals from France and Germany, which are dated to between 50 and 70 kya, represent a more stabilized, homogenous genome relative to that of earlier hominins.  I have always been struck by the similarities between the Atapuerca 4 cranium and Petralona, from Greece, and this suggests that there may have been extensive migration between regions and considerable gene flow between groups (J. Lawrence Angel, again).  We know that the range of Neandertals extended from the lower Iberian peninsula to Teshik-Tash, north of the Taurus Mountains and Okladnikov, in Siberia.  It does not seem like a stretch that their precursors did the same thing. 

Hat tip to Todd Wood.

Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends...

Keith Emerson, formerly of the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer, has passed away.  Reports are that he had been in spotty health and had a degenerative neurological disease in his right hand that was robbing him of his ability to play the keyboards, and there is speculation that this led him to take his own life.  That is such a great loss.

I got plugged into ELP in the early 1970s, when I was 12 and followed them through their break-ups and reunions.  Rolling Stone has put together a “Ten Essential Songs” page with commentary on each song.  Of those, probably Emerson's adaptation of Aaron Copeland's Hoedown shows off his technical skill the best.

It has been a bad last twelve months for those of us that grew up in the 1970s. Chris Squire, Paul Kantner, Glenn Frey, David Bowie, and now Keith Emerson. I saw Todd Rundgren in Atlanta last month. Who knows how many more shows he is going to do, as he is pushing 70. Going to the Steve Hackett show in April. He is 66. Time marches on.

Rest in Peace.

Klinghoffer Responds to the Retraction

David Klinghoffer followed up his initial post about the grasping hand paper with a post involving its inevitable retraction.  Called Censorship in Real Time, he writes:

That was fast. The sound of one hand clapping? Now, it's no hands. Besieged by a furious mob of censors, the editors at the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE have retracted a paper on the "architecture" of the human hand that repeatedly invoked notions of "design" and a "Creator."

This was in the works so it is not a surprise that it happened. It is true that there was a good deal of hand-waving in the process but the claims had no place in a paper of that sort. Then Klinghoffer writes this:

I must note here that the theory intelligent design does not infer a "Creator," a religious idea that goes beyond what the scientific evidence says. ID infers a source of intelligence, and leaves it to others to argue about the identity of the source.

This comment is illogical on its face and cuts to the heart of the position that the Discovery Institute has tried to take.  Something either arose by chance or it was created.  It cannot be neither.  If it did not arise by chance, which is the position of many of the DI fellows on different aspects of our anatomy (eye, blood-clotting cascade), then it was created.  If it was created, then by whom or what?  ID absolutely does infer a creator.

While it is quite true that they do their best to deflect attention away from the Christian God as the source of these creations,  it was shown pretty conclusively at Dover that the two are linked at the hip.  This is further exacerbated by public pronouncements by prominent ID proponents such as William Dembski that ID represents the Logos of John's Gospel restated in information theory (1999) as well as their preferred choice of venues for conferences.

That being said, whether or not it is the Christian God or Cosmic Muffin,  it is a “creator.” 

That Didn't Take Long...

Sure enough, the Discovery Institute's David Klinghoffer has penned a response to the ruckus involving the retracted paper in PLoS ONE about the human grasping hand.  Called Mob with Pitchforks Forms as Science Journal PLOS ONE Acknowledges "Proper Design by the Creator", complete with picture of an angry mob from what looks like the 1930s. In this post, he recounts some of the comments that appeared in response to the publication of the paper:

Another self-identified editor: "As an editor of PLOS ONE, I am ashamed this ever got to be published, and I am ready to resign if this is not retracted immediately."

Still another: "There is no room in the scientific literature for Intelligent Design. This is more than just a 'language issue'."

More:

"Plos One must here intervene to avert damage from all Plos ONE publishers."

"I published three times in P One. Is my career ruined?"

"It is assumed by the scientific community that PLoS ONE is a science-driven journal. If so, this manuscript must be retracted."

"PLoS must remove this article in total, along with the Editor who handled the manuscript."

"I am appalled by this paper and its reference to a 'Creator'. This paper should be retracted immediately."

It goes on. The note of career anxiety -- no, panic -- is telling. These folks don't want to be rendered ritually impure by contact with a bit of injudicious language. Predictably, Twitter is aflutter. And the ever-useful website Retraction Watch has already reported on it. The paper's editor apologized: "I am sorry for this has happened. I am contacting PLoS one to see whether we can fix the issue."

To be sure, a good bit of this is hyperbolic. This paper ruined nobody's career. It did, however, give pause because, briefly, science is in the business of explaining the natural world in terms of natural causes. As Dennis Lamoureux once remarked (paraphrased), it is quite possible that the socks that are missing from my dryer were taken by fairies, but it is much more likely that they got sucked out the drain tube and that is something we can test.

The position that the grasping hand reflects the genius of the creator is broadly analogous to the claim made by Ray Comfort that the Banana must have been crafted by God rather than by evolution because it fits perfectly in the hand, although no such anti-evolutionary claim was made by the authors of the hand paper and Ray Comfort's claim was idiotic, in light of what we know of artificial selection of the banana.

The problem that is giving people the vapors is that the grasping hand claim is baldly non-scientific.  Science is simply not capable of determining whether or not the hand's ability to grasp is divinely bestowed or not.  That is a matter of faith.

And Just In Case You Wondered...

...what the major scientific organizations think about Intelligent Design, here are short, paragraph-long summaries of their positions.  For example:

National Academy of Sciences:

Those who oppose the teaching of evolution in public schools sometimes ask that teachers present evidence against evolution. However, there is no debate within the scientific community over whether evolution occurred, and there is no evidence that evolution has not occurred. Some of the details of how evolution occurs are still being investigated. But scientists continue to debate only the particular mechanisms that result in evolution, not the overall accuracy of evolution as the explanation of life's history.

The American Association for The Advancement of Science:

The [intelligent design] movement has failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support their claim that ID undermines the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution... the lack of scientific warrant for so-called intelligent design theory' makes it improper to include as a part of science education.

The Paleontological Society:

Because evolution is fundamental to understanding both living and extinct organisms, it must be taught in public school science classes. In contrast, creationism is religion rather than science, as ruled in recent court cases, because it invokes supernatural explanations that cannot be tested. Consequently, creationism in any form (including scientific creationism, creation science, and intelligent design) must be excluded from public school science classes. Because science involves testing hypotheses, scientific explanations are restricted to natural causes.

There are many more on the page, as well as links to the statements of other organizations.  One might almost get the idea that they don't think too highly of it as a scientific theory.

St. Paul's Cathedral Ceiling Shows Evolution?????

Really? That would be quite something, if true. Hannah Tooley writes in Premier:

Google Cultural Institute's feature means that online visitors can explore the building on Streetview and see of in-depth details that are usually too far away in the high ceilings to be seen with the naked eye.

The access is significant because, for more than 1,000 years, the three domes in London's famous Cathedral were thought to show beasts, birds and fish as God created them - however, new technology appears to suggest the images portray something different.

The images, painted by William Blake Richmond in 1890, could appear to depict the theory of evolution.

The cathedral's head of collections, Simon Carter, told The Times newspaper that the mosaic appears to support Darwin's theories about the survival of the fittest - which he said is shown through a depiction of a fish with teeth "fighting for survival."

This will not sit well.

PLoS ONE Intelligent Design Paper on Grasping Hand Retracted

A paper published in the journal PLoS ONE has raised a huge ruckus with the scientific community and has led to (apparently successful) calls for its retraction.  Doug Bolton of the Independent writes:

The paper, titled: 'Biomechanical characteristics of hand coordination in grasping activities of daily living' was written by a team of four researchers, three from Huazhong University in China, and one from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

Published in the PLOS ONE journal, the fairly conventional study looked at the mechanics of how we grasp things, and involved the measurement of the hand movements of 30 participants.

However, members of the scientific community have demanded the paper be retracted, for its several perceived references to the pseudoscientific theory of intelligent design and a possibly divine 'Creator'.

In the opening sentences of the study, it claims the link between muscles and hand movements is the product of "proper design by the Creator."

Later, it says human hand coordination "should indicate the mystery of the Creator's invention," and concludes by again claiming the mechanical architecture of the hand is the result of "proper design by the Creator."

If you want a copy of this paper, you should probably hurry. It is going through the retraction process even as we speak:

“In light of the concerns identified, the PLOS ONE editors have decided to retract the article, the retraction is being processed and will be posted as soon as possible. We apologize for the errors and oversight leading to the publication of this paper.”

The authors, themselves, have retreated to the excuse that the uses of language that appear to support intelligent design were “translation errors.”

Hat Tip to Rob Mitchell.

UPDATE: There is now a retraction notice on the page that reads thus: 

Following publication, readers raised concerns about language in the article that makes references to a 'Creator', and about the overall rationale and findings of the study.

Upon receiving these concerns, the PLOS ONE editors have carried out an evaluation of the manuscript and the pre-publication process, and they sought further advice on the work from experts in the editorial board. This evaluation confirmed concerns with the scientific rationale, presentation and language, which were not adequately addressed during peer review.

Consequently, the PLOS ONE editors consider that the work cannot be relied upon and retract this publication.

The editors apologize to readers for the inappropriate language in the article and the errors during the evaluation process.

4 Mar 2016: The PLOS ONE Staff (2016) Retraction: Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151685. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151685

I am quite sure the Discovery Institute will weigh in at some point about this.

Neandertals and Modern Humans Had Longer Period of "Intimate" Contact

New research suggests that the earliest time that Neandertals and moderns humans got jiggy with it was around 100,000 years ago.  This is a break from the conventional (if you can call an argument five years old “conventional”) argument that most of these interactions occurred between 50 and 60 thousand years ago.  According to Jennifer Viegas, in Discovery News:

Remains of a Neanderthal woman who lived around 100,000 years ago in the Altai Mountains of Siberia reveal that human and Neanderthals mated much earlier than previously thought.

One or more of her relatives were actually humans, a new study shows.

It has been known that Neanderthals contributed DNA to modern humans, so people today of European and Asian descent retain Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, but the Neanderthal woman offers the first evidence that gene flow from interbreeding went from modern humans into Neanderthals as well.

The study, published in the journal Nature¹, "is also the first to provide genetic evidence of modern humans outside Africa as early as 100,000 years ago," Sergi Castellano, who co-led the study and is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, told Discovery News.

Given the now closely intertwined histories of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, Castellano added that "it is better to refer to Neanderthals and modern humans as two different human groups, one archaic and one modern, and not different species."

This last point is hotly contested. The prevailing wisdom is that they were two different species that could interbreed when they came into contact but had their own stable genomes. If the time of contact can be stretched from 100 kya to 50 kya, though, it lends more credence to the ideas that their lifestyles were largely compatible, especially given the new information from Schöningen, which seems to indicate complex patterns of subsistence emerging as early as 300 kya. Oddly, missing from the story is that the researchers suggest that these hybridizations may have occurred in the ancestors of the Neandertals in Southwest Asia, not northern Europe.  This would one of the natural corridors for people coming out of Africa, although recent research has focused on the Arabian peninsula for that migration.

¹Kuhlwilm, Martin, Gronau, Ilan, Hubisz, Melissa J., de Filippo, Cesare, Prado-Martinez, Javier, Kircher, Martin, Fu, Qiaomei, Burbano, Hernán A., Lalueza-Fox, Carles, de la Rasilla, Marco, Rosas, Antonio, Rudan, Pavao, Brajkovic, Dejana, Kucan, Željko, Gušic, Ivan, Marques-Bonet, Tomas, Andrés, Aida M., Viola, Bence, Pääbo, Svante, Meyer, Matthias, Siepel, Adam, & Castellano, Sergi. (2016). Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals. Nature, 530(7591), 429-433.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16544

Idaho Bible Reference Bill Amended to Omit Science

ID Education News is reporting that a bill that had been drafted that would permit the use of the Bible as a reference for various school subjects has been amended to omit the sciences. According to Kevin Richert:

A bill designed to clarify the role of the Bible in public schools is headed to the Senate floor — for some rewrite.

The Senate State Affairs Committee voted unanimously to send Senate Bill 1342 to the floor for amendments. And the committee discussion offered a glimpse into how the bill might be reworked.

For one thing, senators said they wanted to delete references to using the Bible to teach astronomy, biology and geology. They also said they wanted to rework the bill to address not only the Bible, but other religious texts.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, said she was amenable to both changes.

As currently written, SB 1342 would allow the use of the Bible as a reference work, “to further the study of literature, comparative religion, English and foreign languages, United States and world history, comparative government, law, philosophy, ethics, astronomy, biology, geology, world geography, archaeology, music, sociology, and other topics of study where an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant.”

Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, suggested striking the sciences from this list — as a safeguard against using the Bible to teach creationism. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against teaching creationism in public schools.

Good idea, since the Bible is not a science textbook.  Hat tip to the NCSE.

Human/Gorilla Split at Eight MYA?

Scientific American is running an article, which details work by Gen Suwa and colleagues, in the Afar Triangle, where nine gorilla-sized teeth were found in 2007 that have now been securely dated to around eight million years ago.  The researchers named the species Chororopithecus abyssinicus.  Charles Choi writes: 

The age and location of these fossils strengthen the view that the human and the modern ape lines originated in Africa and not Asia, the researchers said.

"Until now, no mammalian fossils south of the Sahara have been securely dated to 8 million to 9 million years ago," Suwa said. "Any and all fossils from this crucial time period of Africa would help unravel the story of human origins and emergence. These are the first such fossils."

In addition, until recently, "most scientists, especially geneticists, thought that the human-chimp split was as recent as 5 million years ago, and that the human-gorilla split was only about 7 million to 8 million years ago," Suwa said. "This contradicted the fossil record. For example, fossils thought to be on the human side of the split such as Ardipithecus kadabba from Ethiopia and Sahelanthropus from Chad were 6 million years old — or, in the case of the Chad fossil, perhaps 7 million years old."

The new findings suggest that Chororapithecus is 8 million years old, so "the actual gorilla-human split must then have been up to several million years before that," Suwa said.

More pieces to the puzzle. The other mystery, of course, is when the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived.

Update: Mississippi Bill Dies in Committee

NCSE is reporting that HB 50, the Mississippi “Academic Freedom” bill proposed by Mark Formby has died in committee.

Mississippi's House Bill 50, whose principal sponsor acknowledged was intended to allow teachers in the public schools to present creationism, died in the House Education Committee on February 23, 2016, when a deadline for bills to be reported out of committee expired. HB 50 was the first antiscience bill in the state since 2010.

If enacted, the bill would have allowed teachers "to help students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught" — and blocked administrators from preventing the teaching of pseudoscience.

Things might have gone okay for the bill had it not been for the fact that Formby tipped his hand by suggesting strongly that the bill could be used by teachers to teach creationism. The publicity that generated was probably enough for the committee to realize that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that, if enacted, the law wouldn't be challenged in court.

Aside: while the Discovery Institute went public recently with its repudiation of the bill's intent (to teach creationism), it is naive, given what we know of what happened in Dover and the general leanings of the promoters of these sorts of bills, not to think that the ultimate goal of most of them is to either teach creationism or attempt to take evolution out of the curriculum. Despite the lofty ideals of “academic freedom,” every one of them has focused almost exclusively on evolution. Sometimes climate change and synthetic biology are thrown in just to disguise the bill's true intent. It is here, in Mississippi, however, that we have the smoking gun.

Discovery Institute Weighs in on the Mississippi Academic Freedom Bill

On the website Evolution News and Views, Sarah Chaffee of the Discovery Institute attempts to distance the position of the DI from that of young earth creationists—a position I have not known them to take up to this point.  She writes:

In most states where academic freedom bills for science education are considered, it's the critics who are wrongly claiming that the bills would authorize the teaching of creationism.

But if media accounts from Mississippi are accurate, it appears that at least some legislators who support academic freedom legislation wrongly think it would permit creationism. The Mississippi legislature is currently considering HB 50, which was taken virtually verbatim from Discovery Institute's model academic freedom bill for science education. The language of the bill clearly does not authorize the teaching of creationism. It does not even authorize the teaching of intelligent design. Unfortunately, some of the bill's sponsors apparently think otherwise.

To clear up the confusion, Discovery Institute has sent a letter to the Mississippi House Education Committee explaining what the language of the bill would really do and asking the Committee either to drop the bill because of the inaccurate statements put out by some of its sponsors or to make clear that the legislature understands that the bill does not protect creationism.

This is a critical stance for the DI because, while they have always hidden behind the “academic freedom” legislation as being good for academics in general (when in fact, the central premise behind the vast majority of the academic freedom bills has been to bring creationism in through the back door) they have never explicitly endorsed young earth creationism, likely because they know that academically, it is a scientific non-starter and cannot be separated from a narrow, early 20th century misreading of the early chapters in Genesis.

The letter is produced in the post and has the stark admission that the current Mississippi bill was drafted used a model bill for academic freedom that came from the DI, itself.   There are problems with how evolution is presented in the letter, however.  The DI still seems focused on the role of mutation and natural selection, without considering all of the other ways in which evolution acts.  This is especially evident in their continued use of the partial Lynn Margulis quote in which she argues that mutations don't create new species.  Of course they don't.  But in combination with genetic drift, flow, selection and a host of other mechanisms, they provide one part of the puzzle to how new species form.

I will be curious to see how this bill fares, now that the mask is off regarding its proposal and also how this letter from the DI is received. 

Ken Ham and the Church of Darwin

Ken Ham was the subject of an article on Christian News Service, which began the piece with the astounding claim that Ham is "a biologist."  He has a bachelor's degree in applied science, with an emphasis in environmental biology.  That doesn't make him a biologist.  No matter.

Michael Chapman writes:

In an interview on VCY America on Feb. 10, two days before the international Darwin Day, host Jim Schneider said to Ken Ham, “I was disturbed in my spirit to hear we have House now and Senate resolutions declaring Feb. 12 to be Darwin Day, and as much as that grieved me, it grieved me even more though to see that churches are doing the very same thing.”

Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, said, “Churches are doing the very same thing. And think about this: At the same time, they’re trying to throw nativity scenes out of public places, take Christ out of Christmas, and then they claim there’s separation of church and state but there is no such thing as church and state.”

“The First Amendment doesn’t even have that terminology in it,” said Ham. “The establishment clause is about the state not establishing a church. But the state has established a church, it’s the Church of Evolution, with Darwin as the high priest, if you like, and a lot of these teachers and professors as priests in this religion of evolution that they’re imposing through the schools.”

Welllll...where to start.

January 13 is Stephen Foster Memorial Day, January 15 is Lee Jackson day, January 18 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, February 4 is Rosa Parks Day, February 15 is President's Day, February 15 is Daisy Gatson Bates (I had to look her up) Day, February 28 is Linus Pauling Day, March 7 is Casimir Pulaski Day (Had to look him up, too)...Do I need to go on?

So why would “Darwin Day” be a problem? It is a problem because, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, Ham thinks evolution is a religious point of view. There is not a shred of evidence for this perspective but that is the one he has. Consequently, to create a Darwin Day is to create a “church” holiday. The post continues:

“Molecules-to-man evolution is a fairy tale,” said Ham, author of The Lie: Evolution. “That’s really what it is. It’s man’s story, in rebellion against God, to try to be his own god, to try to explain life without God. We need to make people realize what it is.” “We actually, we have this on our website too, we actually will encourage you to say ‘not the theory of evolution but belief in evolution,’” said Ham. “The reason is because when people say theory, the idea of a theory is that there’s evidence for it. There’s no evidence for evolution, so it’s not even a theory.”

It is unconscionable for Ham to regard evolution as having no evidence when quite the reverse is true.  This brings me to a harsh accusation.  Even Todd Wood, the young earth creationist in Dayton, Tennessee, who actually works with biological data, recognizes that there is a mountain of evidence for evolution, even if he chooses not to accept it. 

For Ham, on the other hand, to continually state that evolution has no evidence despite the multitude of people who have shown him otherwise is a lie.  It simply is.  Ken Ham makes no effort to learn even the basics of evolutionary theory because he chooses not to.  That is his choice, but to pontificate from AiG and state that evolution has no evidence is irresponsible, arrogant, duplicitous and mendacious. 

40,000 Year-Old Bracelet Found at Denisova Cave

A bracelet has been discovered at the site of Denisova Cave that excavators have dated to c. 40,000 years BP.  Archaeology Hub has the story:

In what is quite an amazing discovery, scientists have confirmed that a bracelet found in Siberia is 40,000 years old. This makes it the oldest piece of jewelry ever discovered, and archeologists have been taken aback by the level of its sophistication.

The bracelet was discovered in a site called the Denisova Cave in Siberia, close to Russia’s border with China and Mongolia. It was found next to the bones of extinct animals, such as the wooly mammoth, and other artifacts dating back 125,000 years.

The cave is named after the Denisovan people — a mysterious species of hominins from the Homo genus, who are genetically different from both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

Here is the image of the bracelet from this site:

We know very little about the Denisovans, except that they coexisted with Neandertals and early modern humans and that their genetic fingerprint is present in modern-day Melanesian populations.  Here is a link to the National Geographic special that was done a few years back that covers the basics behind these mysterious hominins.  This find gives us a window into their culture. 

The Importance of Schöningen to the Story of Human Evolution in Europe

A lake site in northern Germany, near Schöningen, has lifted much of the veil of how advanced Homo heidelbergensis was during the later Lower Palaeolithic.  As Heritage Daily reports:

The excavations in the open-cast coal mine in Schöningen running from 1994 until today show that we have long underestimated the cultural capacities of Homo heidelbergensis. Schöningen is a key site for documenting both a high resolution record of past climatic change and how hominins lived in northern Europe during the Ice Age. Since 2008 Professor Nicholas Conard and Dr. Jordi Serangeli of the University of Tübingen have led the excavations with a major international research team in close cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Office of Lower Saxony.

the Journal of Human Evolution is making available for a time, all of the papers of a special issue on the site. That is how important it is. That link is here. 

What has been discovered, since the opening of the excavations, is that Homo heidelbergensis created advanced bone and stone implements, engaged in complex hunting behaviors and exhibited behaviors consistent with a high level of “planning depth.”  Further, they appear to have lived in a society with divisions of labor and a highly advanced communication system.

This has been referred to by the authors of one of the papers as “paradigm shifts in human evolution” and appears to represent, at least at this site and at this time period, a radical change in the way that humans were dealing with their surroundings.  In other words, at around 300,000 years ago, we seem to have the roots of modern human behavior, in Europe.  How much earlier this behavior actually shows up is, at the moment, anybody's guess.

Human Evolution in Two Minutes

I missed this when it came out.  The Indian Express has a link to a video done By Yale University Press by John Gurche, the same artist who did the Tower of Time, a wonderful mural that adorned the halls of the Natural History Museum, in Washington D.C. for years.

This video shows human evolutionary change as a morphing set of images.  Here it is.

Here's Irony For Ya...

A study has found that residents of South Africa, historically the hotbed of human evolutionary studies, have a poorer understanding of human evolution than their neighbors.  Jacaranda FM reports:

The study, published in the South African Journal of Science this month, used responses from visitors to the Cradle of Human Kind World Heritage Site near Johannesburg. “South Africans were less likely to accept human evolution than their international counterparts,” the article said. “The survey I did was mainly of adults who would never have learned of evolution at school,” said author of the study, Professor Anthony Lelliott from Wits University in Johannesburg. The study surveyed more than 800 visitors and assessed their understanding of human evolution and the concept of “cradle”. The article explained that 60 percent of the people who rejected evolution used a religious foundation as the reason.

I guess that in a rural setting, most of the people living in South Africa would not encounter this information or understand its true significance. Still, the entire region has been at the forefront of this research for decades, and yet most people still reject it. The hold of creationism is strong, it seems, no matter where you go.

Indigenous Arabs Direct Descendents of Modern Human Wave From Africa?

PhysOrg is running a story about research coming out of Weill Cornell Medicine and Qatar.  Abigail Fagan writes:

The investigation, published online Jan. 4 in Genome Research, sequenced the genomes of 104 Arabian Peninsula natives and compared them with 1,092 genomes from worldwide populations. The researchers compared each pair of genomes in the sample, which allowed them to cluster research participants by genome similarity so that an evolutionary tree emerged. The genomes of indigenous Arabs resulted in a unique cluster separate from the initial African population, illustrating the formation of a distinct population. European and Asian clusters diverged after the Arab population.

These data reinforce the "southern route" model of early modern human origins, which argues that early modern humans left Africa initially by crossing over or ferrying over the northern tip of the Gulf of Aden, near what is currently Djibouti.

Sorry for the light posting

I have been in poor health for the last month or so and have not been able to post much.  Sorry for the absence.

Mural Depicts Plant Evolution

The Amherst Bulletin has a story on a unique mural that adorns the botanical museum at Smith College, in Northhampton, Massachusetts.  Mickey Rathbun writes:

The mural is situated in a long, light-filled corridor that runs between the Church Exhibition Gallery and the Palm House at the Lyman Greenhouse. Until now, says the botanic garden’s director, Michael Marcotrigiano, “This had been an absolutely unvisited hallway. The only time people came in here was when they came to the spring bulb show and were waiting in line for the bathroom. I thought it would be the perfect place for a plant history mural.”

Marcotrigiano, who came on board at the botanic garden in 2000, said he first broached the mural concept in the early 2000s with Madelaine Zadik, the garden’s manager of education and outreach. But nothing came of the idea until 2006, when Zadik noticed a photograph in the Gazette of a Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation van, the side of which was adorned with a realistic forest scene. Zadik showed Marcotrigiano the picture and asked, “You’re looking for a muralist?”

Here is an image from the mural, which is sixty feet in length.

Neat.

A Huge Win For Ken Ham

Ken Ham has, apparently, won the ongoing battle involving hiring practices for the Ark Encounter.  Religion News Service reports:

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove wrote in his 71-page opinion on Monday (Jan, 25) that while Answers is “clearly a religious organization,” tourist destinations could be affiliated with religion if they serve the state’s “secular” goal of boosting local revenue.

“Bringing non-residents into Kentucky who will spend money on food, lodging, gas, and tourist attractions will increase revenues and benefit the state’s economy through jobs and spending,” Tatenhove wrote. “Such a purpose is plainly secular.”

The 510-foot replica of the Ark will be used to tell the story of the great flood from the biblical book of Genesis. Developers have said that the incentives would be used to help fund future projects, which would be based off other biblical stories.

“The law is crystal clear that the state cannot discriminate against a Christian group simply because of its viewpoint, but that is precisely what happened here,” Answers in Genesis President Ken Ham said in a statement. “The decision today is a victory for the free exercise ofreligion in this country.”

Ken Ham has argued that the Ark Encounter has been unfairly persecuted by people that have worked to keep it from being built. This is a huge win for him.

A Plea For the Importance of East Asia in Human Origins

In response to the discovery of new archaeological evidence from the island of Sulawesi, the Conversation makes a plea for the role of East Asia in human origins, who argue that eurocentrism and Africacentrism have ruled the roost in hominin research.  The article lays out some of the research that has gone on in the last 150 years or so, ending with the recent discovery and controversy surrounding Homo floresiensis.  The author suggests that we are missing some very important information:

Stone tools and animal fossils dated to between 100,000 and more than 200,000 years old have been found in Walanae Basin of Sulawesi: the oldest archaeology in the island, and showing it was inhabited by a unknown archaic species long before modern humans were on the scene.

Sadly, no human bones were found, so we have no idea who made the tools.

I suspect they were made by a species that we don’t see anywhere else. Not Homo erectus, nor Homo floresiensis, but a novel one. Why?

Sulawesi sits on the eastern edge of the famous biographic zone ‘Wallacea’ - marking the transition from an Asian ecology to an Australasian one - and has a truly remarkable fauna and flora.

It’s also located just to the north of Flores and so was probably on the North-South migration path for many animals including early humans.

The mammals that inhabit Sulawesi today are remarkable for their diversity: of the 127 endemic mammals that inhabit Indonesia, 62 percent are unique to Sulawesi.
Among the primates, there are seven endemic species of the monkey genus Macaca and at least seven Tarsier species probably more.

In my view, the same kinds of evolutionary pressures that led to this remarkable diversity of non-human primates would have acted also on the early humans inhabiting the island.
A couple of hundred thousand years is plenty of time for new species to form.

This is not the first argument to be made for non-existent evidence. That argument has been made variously to explain the transition from one of any number of australopithecines to early Homo and archaeological evidence for Middle Palaeolithic populations in Japan is sitting off the coast of south Japan in several different scenarios.While it is quite interesting to contemplate the peculiarity of the faunal diversity of Sulewesi, it is a far cry to posit a new species responsible for the tools that might be there.  It is quite true that we do not know exactly what is going on with H. floresiensis or the strange island from which it hails, but that does not warrant a separate species.

He is, however, correct that East Asia has often been seen as secondarily important in hominin circles, and the recent discoveries in south China ought to strongly suggest that this is not so. 

Off-Topic: The Scapegoating of Larycia Hawkins and Another Evangelical Becomes Disillusioned

I have not been following the Larycia Hawkins Wheaton College controversy as well as I should.  I know that Wheaton is terminating her contract because of her public statements that Muslims and Christians worship the same God (a statement absurd on its face) but there is, as usual, considerably more to the story that Benjamin Corey, over at Patheos, delves into.  About the actual controversy, he writes:

At first it seemed like Dr. Larycia Hawkins would clearly be reinstated. Her statement that Muslims and Christians were both “people of the book” and people who, along with Jews, worship the God of Abraham, has been supported by well-respected evangelical theologians. When asked for clarification of her views in comparison to Wheaton’s statement of faith, Dr. Hawkings has consistently complied in great detail– fully affirming Wheaton’s entire statement of faith. I’ve read her personal statement of faith myself, and it’s not some liberal manifesto– it’s solidly evangelical. I could see how her statement of faith would put her at odds with liberal colleges, but evangelical ones? Absolutely not.

Yet, it seems that they are going about terminating her anyway.  Why?  Corey has some ideas:

Evangelicalism now is far closer to the fundamentalism they reacted against than perhaps anyone would have anticipated. Evangelicalism is the fundamentalism of our time. It’s fascinating from an anthropology standpoint, but tragic for the Kingdom Jesus came to establish. And this brings me to the real reason Dr. Hawkins is being terminated from Wheaton College:

The glue that holds fundamentalism together is the agreement upon a common enemy to fight, and Dr. Hawkins has rejected the notion that Muslims are the common enemy.

And this is a deal-breaker for Wheaton, whether they’ll have the courage (and self-awareness) to admit it or not. Even an informal student of culture can easily see that evangelicals in America, for the last several years, have consolidated around the agreement that Muslims are the great enemy of our time (Exhibit A: Franklin Graham’s Facebook page). For Dr. Hawkins to say she “stands in solidarity” with Muslims is a betrayal of one of their deepest held beliefs, and this (to them) makes her untrustworthy.

Read the whole piece.  I have read Dr. Hawkins' statement of faith and, while I accept that she wants to bring solidarity with Muslims into the mix by arguing that Muslims worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,  that makes a hash of many other aspects of Christianity.  For starters, Muslims are staunchly unitarian, while one of the basic tenets of Christianity is the trinity.  Secondly, and relatedly, they reject the divinity of Jesus—and that is a deal-breaker— and elevate the profit Mohammed to a level that makes the Catholic veneration of Mary look positively mild by comparison.

So, we have established that Islam is not Christianity.  But what of Judaism?  If Dr. Hawkins had worn a Sheitel instead and pledged solidarity with Jews everywhere by saying we worship the same God, would she have gotten the same reaction?  Franklin Graham has recently argued that we need to support Israel because, in the final analysis it wasn't the Jews who nailed him to the cross, it was all of us.  Although this is a historically myopic position, Graham received no rebukes for these statements.  Consequently, I wonder if the primary reason for Dr. Hawkins' removal is not that she broke with received evangelicalism/fundamentalism, but that she supported, in at least some small way, Islam.  After all, it is the self-same Graham that has recently also argued that Islam needs to be repelled at all cost and Mr. Graham is held in very high esteem (as he should be) by most evangelicals.  

I would, therefore, suggest that, in the context of the current geopolitical climate with constant news stories of radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the rise of ISIS, any support of Islam, however faint, is seen as conspiring with the Devil.  The College Board of Directors, to preserve its role in the fight (and to make sure that donor dollars keep pouring in) may have felt they had no choice but to go through with the termination, even in the face of limited evidence that Dr. Hawkins really had gone off the rails. 

I am not debating the merits of either Judaism or Islam in relation to Christianity.  I am staunchly Christian and find much in Islam very troubling.  Even moderate Islam seems deeply misogynistic and cruel by western and Christian standards.  I am, however, suggesting that Dr. Hawkins is being served up as a scapegoat in the broader war that evangelicalism is waging against one of its “enemies.”

Another Example of Why There Should Be Science Tests For People Serving on Education Committees

This story made the rounds last week and the commentary I found was on Patheos.  Evidently, the Arizona Senate has selected Sylvia Allen to be their chairwoman.  Why is this an issue?  She is a young earth creationist, that is why.  From the story by Michael Stone:

In an assault on public education in Arizona, a Republican lawmaker who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old has been selected to lead the legislative committee overseeing education.

Senator Sylvia Allen of Snowflake, Arizona is the new chairwoman of the state Senate committee that oversees education-related legislation. Allen was selected by fellow Republican and Senate president Andy Biggs on Monday to be the new chair of the Arizona Senate Education Committee, according to a report issued by 12News.

Allen is a controversial figure: a radical Christian extremist who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old, she previously suggested legislation that would mandate that every citizen be compelled “to attend a church of their choice” every Sunday.

In addition to her religious extremism, she is also a conspiracy theorist, who believes the U.S. government regularly sprays its citizens with mind-controlling chemtrails.

Once again, there should be a basic science test that people in public office should have to take before they are selected to education committees. It took Texas years to rid themselves of Don McLeroy and his position that someone had to “stand up to the experts.” Yet another Republican beclowns themselves. 

Brad Kramer Profiled on Slate

Brad Kramer, the content manager for BioLogos has been profiled on Slate.  In an article titled How an Evangelical Creationist Accepted Evolution, the focus of the post is how he came from a background in young earth creationism to accepting the science of evolution. There is, however, a good deal on how the acceptance of evolution is changing among today's late teens and early tweens:

The number of young evangelicals who hold this softer position is growing, says Jonathan Hill, a sociologist who has studied trends in attitudes toward science among the religious. They aren’t necessarily embracing evolution, but there is hope. “Younger evangelicals are no more likely to accept evolution than older evangelicals, but they are less likely to reject it,” says Hill, based on his research for the survey National Study of Religion & Human Origins. “And they are especially less likely to be ‘hardcore’ evolution rejecters who are certain of their beliefs and believe this is an important issue.”

Uncertainty, in this case, is a good thing: It means they’re open to considering new ideas. Among young evangelicals Hill surveyed, 25 percent of respondents reported that they simply had no idea what they believed about evolution, compared to 14 to 15 percent among those 30 and older.

For Kramer, and probably many others who travel down this path, the journey was grueling and tortuous. When sent by a friend to the Talk Origins and Panda's Thumb sites:

To Kramer, the sites sounded hostile—as if they were “written as a direct attack on my faith” and “intentionally trying to jab a sharp stick in the eye of the Christians.” But they also sounded true. It was as if he had stumbled into a Pandora’s box, opening up question upon question that he felt ill-equipped to answer. For instance: OK, let’s say that an evolutionary process did take place. But if God was perfect, and God had chosen to use evolution, then why was evolution so flawed? “It was almost like my beliefs were colliding with reality,” he says. “There were just pieces in my mind that I could not put together … It was very scary.”

Kramer felt sick. “That’s when things got kind of messy,” he says. For about six months, he left his church and began questioning his faith. While he never fully embraced atheism, he experimented with being agnostic, trying to reconcile the puzzle pieces in his head. But despite his doubts, in the end there were just too many compelling reasons to come back: He liked his faith, his community, and, OK, also a girl in his youth group. “I kind of hobbled back to my faith,” he says. “Evangelicals were my tribe. And it’s kind of hard to let go of something.”

In many ways, his journey mirrors that of Glen Morton, a geologist who began to doubt the validity of the young earth geological arguments.  Morton also spent some time in the dark before finding his way back to the fold.  His final thoughts are those of many of us who walk this fine line:

“We call ourselves creationists, and we’re stubborn about that,” says Kramer of BioLogos. “We purposely live between the cultural categories, because we disagree with the way in which the lines are drawn.” If you asked Kramer whether he believes in the words of Genesis or the words of Origin of Species, in the biblical God or the science of evolution, he knows what he would choose. It’s the same answer he’d give if you asked him whether the recent Homo naledi discovery is scientific or divine, or whether his 2-year-old daughter Josephine is a gift from God or nature. “I’d say both,” he says. “One hundred percent both.”

Amen.

Am I a Theistic Evolutionist?

I am reading Long March of the Koalas and the author, Fred Clark, makes some interesting points about the term “Theistic Evolutionist.” He suggests that it is a term without meaning for several reasons:

• It does not necessarily apply to all who might be Christians that accept evolution—it includes people that are not scientists, despite making use of the “ist” suffix. 
• He argues that we cannot apply the word “theistic” to the word evolution.  It is an inappropriate use of the word because it is being applied to the discipline of evolution, which is non-theistic. He writes: “Sir Isaac Newton earnestly believed in God's active, pervasive providence, but he never saw fit to christen his theory as “theistic gravity.” 
• His final argument is that when we merge the two terms “theistic” and “evolution,” we conflate the metaphysical understanding of the process and the observational understanding of it.

I will have to think on his argument some, but he makes some valid points. He does not, however, tackle the phrase “evolutionary creationist”  Thoughts?

A Few Other Things I Picked Up

I also snagged these on Amazon.  It may take a bit to get through them but they look interesting.



The first one is written by folks from the Interdisciplinary Bible Institute. The second one by “Progressive Christian blogger” Fred Clark, who writes the "Slacktivist" blog for Patheos. Both are inexpensive. 

D.H. Williams: Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants

Just purchased this from the Amazon Store:



As readers of this blog will have guessed, I am growing increasingly disenchanted with modern evangelicalism (actually I have been this way for some time) and am trying to figure out “where to go from here.” I am not burned out on God, I am burned out on how modern evangelicalism is practiced by so many that I see: completely devoid of any engagement with the world on its terms. We don't try to help people understand our way of life or viewpoints, we just take potshots at modern science and wage a “war on culture.” Further, because the modern evangelical movement is so divorced from its roots, we can't tell people why we believe what we do. We have thousands of years of some of the best thinkers of all time on our side and we don't even know who they are or what they wrote.

In some senses, I am no different, because I have immersed myself so heavily in the science end of things. Consequently,I know why the science arguments put forth by many modern evangelicals are junk. The problem is that, because they don't want to engage the people promoting mainline, established science, the junk science keeps being recycled. The Ken Ham/Bill Nye debate was not really a debate and, in hindsight, little of value came out of it.

The one thing I have not done is construct a concrete, concise understanding of why I do believe what I do. Hopefully, this book, along with prayer, will help me clarify my thoughts

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas From Our House to Yours!!

From Jim, Melanie, Marcus, Madeline, Daniel and Daphne.

John Wilsey: Is the Evangelical Right Actually Conservative?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case of Eric Metaxas or "Evolutionary Theory as Bug Zapper."

Eric Metaxas is, by all accounts, a very dynamic and charismatic speaker, who has written a very highly regarded book called Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness.  This book, which has been read by my son Marcus, who thoroughly enjoyed it, was on the New York Times bestseller list for some time.

Unfortunately, as with all Christian public speakers, eventually, they get drawn to evolution.  They simply cannot help themselves.  We saw this recently with Ben Carson, now we see it with Eric Metaxas.   He has an article on the Christian Post called "Unlocking the Darwin Debate."

Aside: Okay, I get the need for revenue but The Christian Post has to be one of the most irritating websites I have yet encountered.  It has obnoxious video ads that you cannot turn off, bottom banners that keep popping up even after you have read them and buggy scripts that freeze the browser. I have already complained once to them.  

Onward. He writes:

Of course, like digital code on a hard drive, DNA can be corrupted. The most recent iteration of Darwin's theory claims that these corruptions — called mutations — are the engines of evolution.

But here's the problem: We don't have a single example of a mutation resulting in a net gain of information. Not one.

How does he know this? Has he read the genetic literature?  What does he mean by a “net gain of information?” Mutation is not the engine of evolution. That is a simplistic, inaccurate view of evolution, written by someone who hasn't done the basic research on the topic. Evolution is a complex process that involves not just mutation but genetic drift, flow and selection.  Even that is a simplistic description.  The idea that mutation cannot lead to a gain in information is nonsense.  There are plenty of examples of mutations in which there is a gain of information.  In fact, when a mutation happens, there is not a loss of information, there is simply a change of information.  What happens when a mutation happens that is beneficial and selection acts upon it to spread it throughout the population?  How is that a loss of information?  Further, there are numerous instances in which genes have been duplicated through mutation, resulting in gain of information.  As the New Scientist points out:

Several species of abalone shellfish have evolved due to mutations in the protein “key” on the surface of sperm that binds to a “lock” on the surface of eggs. This might appear impossible, but it turns out that some eggs are prepared to be penetrated by deviant sperm. The same thing can happen in fruit flies, and likely in many other groups too. In yeasts, the mutations that led to some new species forming have not only been identified, they have even been reversed.

The idea that mutation conveys loss of information is also clearly refuted by the evidence from the fossil record of common descent. We can see in the fossil record where species have arisen. This can only happen through the processes of drift, flow, mutation and selection. In all cases, this is clearly a gain of information.

It is disappointing that speakers like Metaxas feel that they must tackle evolution with the gusto that they do other areas of their faith.  That he is such a dynamic speaker is surely a draw to the modern evangelical crowd.  That he knows nothing about evolution is lost on both him and his audience. 

Rise of Anti-Evolution Bills: UPDATE

PhysOrg also has a post on this research that includes an animated GIF to show the progression.  From the post:

The study also found that antievolution bills show evidence of 'descent with modification,' suggesting that anti-evolutionist legislators copy bills recently proposed or passed, rather than writing new bills from scratch. In addition, although the antievolution bills usually avoid mentioning creationism, most could be tied directly to creationism through statements in the legislation or by the bills' sponsors.

"Creationism is getting stealthier in the wake of legal defeats, but techniques from the study of evolution reveal how creationist legislation evolves," Matzke said.

I will be curious to see how the Discovery Institute spins this.

Nick Matzke Tracks the Rise of Anti-Evolution Bills in the United States

The Los Angeles Times is running a story about Nick Matzke's efforts to chronicle the rise of anti-evolution bills in the United States.  The catch: he is using evolutionary principles of descent with modification to show where they came from and how they "adaptively radiated."  Karen Kaplan writes:

The forces opposed to teaching evolution in U.S. public schools just got a new reason to resent the bedrock scientific theory: A researcher has used the principles of evolutionary biology to show that laws ostensibly aimed at improving science education are firmly rooted in efforts to make classrooms safe for creationism.

The analysis of dozens of bills introduced in state legislatures around the country reveals how a single innovation from a small Louisiana parish (population 156,325) was incorporated into 32 subsequent bills through a process the study describes as “descent with modification.” Two of those 32 bills became law and now “negatively affect science education” for students throughout Louisiana (population 4.7 million) and Tennessee (population 6.5 million)

The article is a phylogenetic masterpiece, showing stem and crown groups, based on the wording of different bills in different states.  There is one takeaway that is obvious, based on looking at the graph.  Bills have been forwarded in the following states:

• Alabama
• Florida
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• Michigan
• Missouri
• Montana
• New Mexico
• Oklahoma
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Virginia

In other words, “all over the map.”  Only five of those are southern states, belying the notion that the Bible Belt is the only place you find this kind of legislation. His conclusion:

The creationist antievolution movement has reinvented itself not once but twice in the decade since Kitzmiller. The first guise was “academic freedom,” but after the success of the Louisiana SEA [Science Education Act], AFA [Academic Freedom Act] proposals were almost completely replaced with SEAs. The inclusion of global warming in the SEAs indicates that societal debate over evolution education has the potential to leak into other societal debates where high-quality science education is inconvenient to certain established interests. The passage of SEAs in Louisiana and Tennessee have spread language devised in Ouachita Parish, population ~150,000, to negatively affect science education in two states with ~11.2 million people. Additional policies on the books in other states (table S1) indicate that science educators have substantial work to do to ensure that science classes teach the best science available, rather than false critiques and controversies promoted by creationists. Advocates for science education should not be dissuaded by the strategic vagueness of SEAs: The creationist origins of modern antievolution strategies are clear (table S1), and at least 63 of 65 antievolution bills considered here can be tied directly to creationism through statements in the legislation or by sponsors (SM).

The article is free to non-subscribers (or at least it is at the present moment) and, despite being somewhat technical, is a good snapshot of how these bills have proliferated.

ICR Planning Its Own Museum

Not to be outdone by the Petersburg, Kentucky, the Institute for Creation Research is planning a creation museum at its headquarters in Dallas, Texas.  Robert Wilonsky, of City Hall Blog, writes:

The institute, which spent months in court fighting the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for the right to dispense master’s degrees in creationism, has been trying to raise funds to build the 30,900-square foot museum for years. There’s a concept proposal floating around that dates back to 2011.

In the September issue of its magazine Acts & Facts, its chief executive officer, Henry Morris III, says he finally got enough money to move ahead with the project.

The ICR, if you will recall, was once located in sunny California, near San Diego, but relocated to Dallas because they wanted to confer masters degrees in creationism to their students and the California Higher Education Commission said no.  They lost the fight in Texas as well and still cannot dispense graduate degrees in creationism.

The ICR has to get the project past city hall, which may be quite a hurdle because the location of the ICR is zoned for “Industrial Research.” It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.

It Pains Me To Think...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing short of amazing.  

Ted Cruz on NPR

On the way in to work this morning, I heard part of an interview with Ted Cruz, who was asked pointedly if he accepted the current position on global warming.  He clearly said that he did not and said that the pursuit of climate change strategies are, in fact, thinly disguised attempts by liberal politicians and crony capitalists to gain power.  I think that he is, perhaps, at least partially correct about that.  I also know that the climate of the planet does change.  Our planet is 4.5 billion years old and has undergone considerable change.  What is not clear is how much we are responsible for the current trajectory.  Some, I am sure, but how much I honestly don't know.

Then, because he clearly rejected the science on climate change, he was asked if he accepted other mainstream science perspectives, such as, pointedly, evolution.  He refused to answer the question. Rarely have I seen a better evasion of a question. He remarked that it was the job of scientists to question all of science and then went right back to climate change.

He clearly doesn't want to rile a large segment of his base by coming right out and agreeing with evolution but he also doesn't want appear anti-science. I am quite sure that he has advisers that are keenly aware of how most Republicans are perceived with regard to science and they want to avoid the recent example of Ben Carson's missteps in this area. That Cruz launched his candidacy from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia did not help, or that his father was quoted as saying that evolution is a lie perpetrated by Marxists. He has taken no official stance on this issue (unlike Carson, who thinks that Satan had a hand in crafting the theory!) but is not going to be able to avoid the question forever.

The Discovery Institute Reports on Why College Students Leave the Faith and Fails To Ask the Important Questions

According to a story in the Religion News Service, more people are turning away from the faith because of their belief that science and religion are incompatible.  Tessa Rath writes:

In the report, Are Young People Losing Their Faith Because of Science?  John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which is the international hub of the intelligent design movement, highlights the challenge young people face dealing with matters of science and faith. For helpful information and resources, download the report here.

I am always just a hair suspicious when I read things by John West because the DI has a noticeable and biased slant on this kind of news against evolutionary theory.  You have to sign up for the newsletter Nota Bene to get the report but can unsubscribe at any time, the site reads.

The report really isn't a report, in the formal sense.  It is more of a boiled down summary of one, with some references to previous research.  It begins with an anecdote about one Jesse Kilgore, who grew up in an evangelical environment and then, in turmoil because of what he was taught in a biology class, committed suicide:

Jesse had been raised in a devout evangelical Christian home, and his
father served as a military chaplain. He enjoyed defending his faith to his
friends and acquaintances. However, in the last months of his life, Jesse had
been hiding a deep secret from his father: A college professor had
recommended that Jesse read atheist biologist Richard Dawkins’ book The
God Delusion, which argues that science refutes belief in God. The book left
Jesse devastated.

In the days following Jesse’s suicide, Jesse’s father learned that his son
had revealed his growing inner turmoil to a few selected friends. In fact, just
an hour before he took his own life, Jesse confided in his uncle, Rich May:

He started telling me about the fact that he had been taking this biology class and as a result there were a lot of things that really challenged his belief and kinda shaken him and made him lose his faith in what he believed in. [He] specifically mentioned, too, that his professor recommended that he get The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

This story is absolutely tragic, but I suspect that there is considerably more to the story than this, especially since the young man had made references to suicide before he encountered Dawkins or evolution.  Furthermore, as the Sensuous Curmudgeon reports, Kilgore was a young earth creationist and probably hit some pretty hard walls when he got to college.

This brings into sharp focus the possible reason that many people might be leaving the faith when they get to college and to some very important questions of the young adults that are leaving the church that West never gets around to asking, such as:

• Were you taught that the earth was created six thousand years ago?
• Were you taught that evolutionary theory was wrong and misguided?
• Were you taught that there was a world-wide flood that destroyed all life on earth?
• If you were taught young earth creationism, how did it affect your faith when you found out that there is no scientific support for it?

There are probably some other questions that could be asked, but these would give a good indication of the backgrounds of some of the kids that leave the faith, and whether or not (as I believe), young earth creationism played an important role in that decision.

Much of what the “report” purports to say has already been written and there is really nothing new here that hasn't been known about the faith “fall-off” for some time. It is unfortunate that the Discovery Institute never saw fit to ask the important questions about why this is happening.

Google Graphic

Google has a graphic of the timeline of human evolution that is pretty cool.  The rest of the graphic is, as nearly as I can tell, long bone and skull fragments.  Go to Google to see it.

Scorecard on What YEC Sites Think of Homo naledi

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

Hat Tip to Todd Wood at CORE.

New DNA Information From Denisova Teeth

Many news outlets are reporting on new findings from the Denisova teeth that were discovered a few years ago.  Here is what the Chicago Tribune has to write:

According to a new analysis of a huge, recently-discovered fossilized molar, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Denisovans lived for roughly 60,000 years in Asia alongside both Neanderthals, their close cousins, and more distantly related Homo sapiens - us. Their complicated genetic legacy suggests that they interbred with both species, and, possibly, with another hominid group that has yet to be discovered.

"The world at that time must have been far more complex than previously thought," Susanna Sawyer, an author of the study, told National Geographic. "Who knows what other hominids lived and what effects they had on us?"

It is taking us a bit long to wrap our brains around the fact that we are the only version of Homo on the planet now and have been for probably fifty thousand years. Prior to our ascendancy, there may well have been three or four related species—part of a syngameon—that occupied the landscape at approximately the same time and, as the researchers point out, likely interbred.  We know that archaic Homo sapiens in Africa interbred with the moderns there and that the moderns that left Africa interbred with the Neandertals and the Denisovans that they encountered.  One big happy family until we ruined the party.  More to come I am sure.

New BioLogos Post on the Daoxian Modern Human Teeth

My BioLogos post on the new anatomically modern human fossil remains from the South China Daoxian Cave is up.  As always, comments welcome here and there.

Deal Breaker

Ring of Fire has a post on Ben Carson and, if he is being quoted in context, then he has said some truly daft things.  That Dr. Carson is an evangelical Christian is not in dispute, and I personally think it is good to have someone who is so up-front about their faith on the campaign trail.  That is not the problem.  Here is what Justin Lane writes:

During a recent campaign event at a church in Nashville, TN, Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson explained that he believes in creation and thinks the theory of evolution is the work of Satan.

“They say, ‘Carson, ya know, how can you be a surgeon, a neurosurgeon, and believe that God created the Earth, and not believe in evolution, which is the basis of all knowledge and all science?'” Carson posited.

“Well, you know, it’s kind of funny. But I do believe God created us, and I did just fine. So I don’t know where they get that stuff from, ya know? It’s not true. And in fact, the more you know about God, and the deeper your relationship with God, I think the more intricate becomes your knowledge of the way things work, including the human body,” he said.

Carson went on to explain that the theory of evolution, specifically, is the work of the devil.

“I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary,” he said.

Evolution is one of the most highly documented, well-supported scientific theories on the planet and he thinks that it came from Satan? Really?  This is, ostensibly, a highly educated man.  I simply cannot take seriously anyone who thinks this, no matter what their other accomplishments might be.  Nor can I vote for a person who thinks this. 

I simply cannot.

Carson is also on record as saying that he thinks that the pyramids in Giza were built by Joseph to store grain.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post adds this:

Ben Carson’s ideas about things like the pyramids, combined with what he has said about other more immediate topics, suggest not only that his beliefs are impervious to evidence but also an alarming lack of what we might call epistemological modesty. It isn’t what he doesn’t know that’s the problem, it’s what he doesn’t realize that he doesn’t know. He thinks that all the archeologists who have examined the pyramids just don’t know what they’re talking about, because Joseph had to put all that grain somewhere. He thinks that after reading something about the second law of thermodynamics, he knows more about the solar system than the world’s physicists do. He thinks that after hearing a Glenn Beck rant about the evils of Islam, he knows as much about a 1,400-year-old religion as any theologian and can confidently say why no Muslim who doesn’t renounce his faith could be president.

In this way, he is not very different from many evangelical Christians who seem to be afflicted by an illness that convinces them that they can dismiss any scientific theory they don't like by reading one article on the subject.  If Carson does not moderate his public speaking on these subjects, he will continue to look foolish.  That is a shame because I think he genuinely wants to help the country and has some good ideas.  Just not the scientific ones.