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How Not to Write a Doctoral Dissertation

(Originally posted at The Clever Badger.)

(I first learned of this from James McGrath's site, so the HT goes to him.)

One of the more well-known names in Young-Earth Creationist circles is Kent Hovind.¹

Hovind, also known as Dr. Dino, ran a "theme park" in Florida called Dinosaur Adventure Land (which is now closed, the land earmarked to satisfy Hovind's tax obligations) that can be thought of as a low-budget precursor of Ken Ham's Creation Museum here in Kentucky.

Hovind has drawn criticism from other Young-Earth Creationists (in addition to the usual cadre of Old-Earth Creationists and non-creationists) for using long-discredited arguments and poorly representing the YEC viewpoint.²

Anyway, Hovind has always made a big deal about the "Dr." in front of his name. His "degree", as it turns out, is from a place called Patriot University in Colorado. Patriot University (now known as Patriot Bible University) is nothing more than a diploma mill.³

Normally, doctoral dissertations are published. Hovind's wasn't, and both Hovind and Patriot refused numerous requests to make his dissertation available. Well, recently that particular piece of "academic" work turned up on WikiLeaks, where it can be perused in all of its glory. (Ed Brayton, at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a post providing details of the provenance of the document.)

And what glory it is. Reading the paper, one would be tempted to conclude that it isn't authentic, but it's reported to match a known copy of Hovind's dissertation in the possession of the NCSE offices.

Any dissertation that begins with "Hello, my name is Kent Hovind" is starting at a disadvantage, and it doesn't get any better from here. What we have with this document is a 102 page screed against evolution that wastes no time in trying to declare evolutionary theory to be a tool of Satan.

On page one of his paper (after the three page dedication), Hovind writes:

In the twentieth century the major attack Satan has launched has been against the first eleven chapters of Genesis. He knows that the entire Bible stands or falls on the validity of these chapters. I believe that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant, inspired perfect Word of God. I believe that the Bible needs to be read and believed as it stands.

Now, while Hovind certainly has every right to his own beliefs, he's effectively declared that any evidence that contradicts his beliefs is automatically wrong. (It's also worth pointing out that his claim of believing the Bible "as it stands" is at odds with many of the twisted interpretations that he makes in this document and elsewhere, and that claims of infallibility and inerrancy are extremely difficult to support. Very telling is his next sentence: "Christians are often guilty of neglecting or twisting the Bible to fit their lifestyle or their preconceived ideas." Pot. Kettle. Black.)

I have a strong suspicion that Hovind began writing this piece with the intention of publishing it in book form - he refers to his dissertaion internally as a "book" several times, starting on page two. Hovind also claims 16 chapters in the document, but he ends with chapter four.

His chapter descriptions are all pretty much standard material - claims that evolution is a religion and not science (ch. 2), "effects" of evolution in the world (ch. 3), the age of the earth (ch. 4 - the last one in the dissertation as it stands now), dating methods, the conflicts between the first and second chapters of Genesis.⁴

His first chapter deals with the "history of evolution", wherein he gets straight to the business of misunderstanding the first and second laws of thermodynamics:

The first and second laws of thermodynamics are well established scientific laws that have never been observed in the universe to be broken. The first law says that matter cannot be created nor destroyed by ordinary means.

Ummm. No. The first law of thermodynamics doesn't say that. The first law of thermodynamics deals with energy conservation and the transformation of energy between forms.

He spends some time ranting about evolution being a response to people wanting to avoid God (which is contradicted in Darwin's own writings), and makes the claim that there is no evidence to back up "macro-evolution" (though he acknowledges that "micro-evolution" occurs, he does not appear to understand that the only difference between the two is the timescale⁵) before taking a backhanded swipe at the second law of thermodynamics:

The idea that evolutionists try to get across today is that there is a continual upward progression. They claim that everything is getting better, improving, all by itself as if there is an inner-drive toward more perfection and order. This is totally opposite of the first and second law of thermodynamics.

There is so much wrong here that it's hard to know where to begin. Evolution does not require "upward" progress in any conventional sense of the term. Evolution, to put it extremely simply, requires change. Change that might be considered "upward" with respect to one environment might be quite detrimental in another. Any sense of "perfection" is heavily dependant on an organism's context. Hovind is also implicitly using a flawed version of the second law of thermodynamics. At the heart of his claim, even though he doesn't explicitly state it, is an assumption that the second law says that everything tends towards disorder. The main flaws in this assumption are that the second law deals with isolated systems, and the Earth is not an isolated system (there's a big ball of burning hydrogen 93 million miles away that provides energy to the Earth), and the word "disorder" as it is commonly understood is not equivalent to "increase in entropy".⁶

A large amount of text is spent attempting to claim that Satan was responsible for evolutionary thought. Hovind has a thing against pride (there goes another irony meter), and weaves his bizarre history of evolution with various Biblical stories where God punishes humanity for their pride. I won't argue that there aren't a number of stories where pride leads to punishment, but it seems to be a stretch to cite Genesis 9:22 as somehow encapsulating evolutionary ideas. He continues with a discussion of how different "branches" of evolution...well...evolved in the Eastern and Western parts of the world, careening off of Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, Democrates, and Alexander the Great (among others), at each step identifying connections between those individuals and either evolution, atheism, or both (in Hovind's mind the two are almost indistinguishable.) He takes shots at Hinduism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism (he conflates the religion with Zoroaster the man), Buddhism, and Taoism, and eventually goes after any flavor of Christianity different from his own.

In due course, at page 29, he manages to get to Charles Darwin, by way of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (who, as we are informed by Hovind, was "so fat they had to cut a curve in the dining room table so that he could get up to the table"). He drags in Communism. He makes the bizarre claim that "religion has not evolved". He claims that evolution is a religion (and shows that he doesn't understand either very well),

And so it goes. Page after page of irrelevant ad hominem, mischaracterizations and misunderstandings of various sciences (such as geology).

Hovind trots out an impressive number of typically bad arguments, very few of which have anything at all to do with the science of evolution:

1. He displays no obvious understanding of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


2. Around page 40, he runs afoul of Godwin's Law when he plays the Hitler card.


3. He quotemines scientists like the late Stephen Jay Gould, and in doing so completely fails to grasp Gould's explanation of punctuated equilibrium.


4. He comes back to the absurd "evolution is a religion" argument numerous times. Perhaps he thought that if he repeated that claim often enough, it would become true.

At page 60, Hovind re-establishes that he actually knows very little about evolution with an example about canaries on an island (a not-particularly-subtle swipe at Darwin's finches):

Let's suppose we let loose five hundred canaries on an island. The only food for the canaries to eat on that island are nuts with a relatively tough shell around them. Only the canaries that had a tough beak would be able to eat the nuts and survive. The others would starve to death. Therefore, those that had tougher beaks would be able to reproduce the next generation.

So far, so good...

If we came back to that island in about two hundred years, we would find that all of the canaries on the island have tough beaks. That is not evolution. That is simply variation. You would still have canaries.

And away we go, off the rails and careening down into the canyon. Sorry, Kent. This is precisely what evolution is. Come back in another few hundred years or so with some of your orignal canaries and see what happens. You'd have evolution and perhaps speciation to look at. Hovind continues:

The trait of having a tough beak was in the genetic structure to begin with. Nothing new has been added. We have only selected a certain portion of the population to survive. That is variation, not evolution.

OK. The variation in this example is the continuum of beaks present in the original population. The selection pressure is the availability of nothing but hard-shelled nuts. The selection pressure favors birds with sturdy beaks, so sturdy beaks become more prevalent in the population. That's evolution. Concepts like this are introduced to elementary students by the fifth grade. Hovind wraps up this particular example of misunderstanding with the following:

Those canaries will never, given all the time you want, will never change into elephants, or dinosaurs, or trees, or tomatoes. If they did, that would be macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is small little variations between the species that have been in the genetic structure by [sic]. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the terms that are used today about evolution.

I need a three-facepalm picture. Micro- and macro-evolution are terms that creationist authors like to throw around a lot, but they don't quite mean what Hovind wants them to mean. Micro-evolution is usually used to refer to small changes within a population over a few generations. By this definition, the shift in distribution of beak types in Hovind's hypothetical canaries would be micro-evolution. Macro-evolution is essentially micro-evolution over many generations. The same mechanisms are in play, with the key difference being time.⁷

The remaining material in Hovind's paper is more of the same, with a liberal seasoning of quotemines and wrapping up with a chapter on the age of the earth. Hovind claims that the earth is merely "six or seven thousand years old", not several billion. This is why he can accept "micro-evolution", but can't get a handle on "macro-evolution" - there isn't enough time in his worldview. He spends quite a bit of time giving what I can only describe as a rambling, incoherent monologue about the nature of time, which culminates in a poem. Much of his argumentation is of the form "evolutionists⁸ believe something but I believe something else, and I can't explain why I believe it, I just do, so there!"

Hovind isn't much of a factor in the creationist camp these days - it's difficult to work from jail - but the arguments used in his dissertation are fairly standard. The interesting thing about Hovind's paper isn't its originality. The interesting thing is the audacity. By investing a small amount of money and apparently a smaller amount of time, one can essentially purchase a Ph.D. degree from a place like Patriot. One can then use that otherwise worthless degree to lend oneself an air of authority. Many people, perhaps most people, assume that someone with a Ph.D. after their name is credible and knowledgable, and that's just not the case.

Charlatans like Hovind depend on people not investigating their claims. They depend on readers and listeners accepting their words at face value. And they depend on people being frightened by the prospect of looking into things for themselves.

They depend on ignorance.

Jay

----------

¹Maybe not so well-known now, since he's been in Federal prison for the last few years after being convicted of tax fraud (among other things).

²Hovind also adds an element of tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory to the mix...

³For those unfamiliar with the term, a diploma mill is basically a non-accredited institution that will award a degree to pretty much anyone willing to pay the price. Sometimes there is some rudimentary coursework involved.

⁴The disagreements between Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 are numerous and significant. There are major discrepancies in both the order and timing of creation events, and it's impossible to harmonize the two without either dismantling one of the stories or introducing fanciful explanations that aren't supported by the texts. When understood as foundational myths, they work pretty well and the two stories give different perspectives. When understanding them as literal historical accounts, they simply don't hold together.

⁵He also tries to define macro-evolution as "changing into a different kind of animal", which seems to evoke the old canard of a cat giving birth to a dog. Seriously - if you're going to claim that evolution is wrong, at least do yourself the favor of actually understanding it.

⁶Which has higher entropy - a cookie or the set of ingredients arranged on the table? Which seems more "disorderly"?

⁷There is a certain probably unintentional humor to Hovind's comment about canaries changing into dinosaurs.

⁸Or atheists. Hovind seems to be of the opinion that anyone who accepts evolution is an atheist.

Hi! I'm the New Guy

Just a short post to introduce myself.

I'm Jay. For about the last year and a half, I've been blogging at The Clever Badger. Over there, I typically write about evolution, creationism, some light religious criticism, and more mundane things like bad horror films. The occasional book review creeps in from time to time, and one of those was of James McGrath's The Burial of Jesus. It was via James' site, Exploring Our Matrix, that I found my way over here.

I've been active to various degrees at several of the evolution-related forums through the years, and still have connections to some. If those become relevant, I'll go into more detail.

I live in Kentucky, home of Ken Ham's Creation Museum, and within a short drive from my house are no fewer than a dozen conservative/fundamentalist churches, including a huge mega-church that has its own coffee shop. I get to see letters in the paper claiming that evolution is not science but is rather religion. I know adults who have no concept of how old the Earth is, and more than a few cars in the parking lot of my local grocery have this thing on their bumpers:


I think there's a problem here.

The best thing that we can do to solve the problem, I believe, is to educate. Many, I might even argue most, of the people who have badges like the one above on their cars don't have any sort of working understanding of what evolution actually is. There are multiple reasons for that, but the bottom line is that they're arguing from a position of ignorance, perhaps reinforced by fear.

Those can be overcome.

Resources like this are one tool that can help.

-Jay

I'm Looking for Someone With Knowledge and Passion to Take This Blog Over

If so just let me know.

Genesis 1 (Revised Reality Version)

Response to Jonathan Wells, Part 2

This is a continuation of my response to Jonathan Wells’ review of The Language of God by Francis Collins. His words will be in italics. In this post we’ll look at his attempts to poke holes in evolutionary theory through inconsistent family trees (showing relationships of living things to one another):

Not only can phylogenies constructed with DNA conflict with each other, but they can also conflict with phylogenies based on morphology. Take whales, for example – fossils of which Collins asserts are “consistent with the concept of a tree of life of related organisms.” On morphological grounds, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen proposed in the 1960s that modern whales are descended from an extinct group of hyena-like animals.13

I’ve read Wells’ citation, and it seems that this paper proposes that whales are descended from Mesonychians, a group of carnivores. Note that Mesonychians are artiodactyls, so the discrepancy in this hypothesis and more recent findings is not quite as dramatic as one might think (artiodactyls are still the group which whales belong to).

Then, in the 1990s, molecular comparisons suggested that whales are more closely related to hippopotamuses 14. In 2001, however, evolutionary biologist Kenneth D. Rose reported that “substantial discrepancies remain” between the morphological and molecular evidence 15.

This is true. However, it seems to me that Wells is sensationalizing this a bit. As Ken Rose’s paper demonstrates, there are three major hypotheses to take into consideration: That whales evolved from mesonychians, or that they evolved from artiodactyls (there are two hypotheses here, one being that hippopotami are more closely related to whales and the other being that hippopotami are more closely related to other artiodactyls). This debate seems to me to be a simple argument not over which groups are related, but precisely how closely they are related. It’s simply not worthy of the sensationalism Wells gives it.

Furthermore, he overplays controversies while failing to recognize the overwhelming consistency of phylogenies. For instance, molecular biologists had long been saying that hippopotami were closely related to whales (making whales artiodactyls and not mesonychians) and fossil evidence later confirmed this view, as Rose’s paper shows.
Even more intriguing is that one of the papers he cites says the following:

“‘Every gene I've ever sequenced says the same thing. The molecular data is all fairly consistent,’ says John Gatesy of the University of Wyoming in Laramie, one of the first who reported the whale-hippo connection. Some researchers have taken to calling this the whippo hypothesis.”**

And in 2007, J. G. M. Thewissen and his colleagues pointed out that since whales appear in the fossil record 35 million years before hippopotamuses “it is unlikely that the two groups are closely related.” Thewissen and his colleagues concluded from morphological comparisons that whales are descended from a raccoon-like animal instead. 16

I emailed Dr. Thewissen about this paragraph, and here is how he responded:

“Not a very honest citation of my 2007 work. My paper found that the closest relative to whales is among the even-toed ungulates, and says so explicitly. We did comment on the large gap in the fossil record, but only to make the point that there must be closer, extinct relatives to whales than hippos are. Our analysis shows that that gap is filled by a small even-toed ungulate from India. However, our analysis did not discuss the modern even-toed ungulates very exhaustively (which we state explicitly in that paper). After our paper, that has been done by Theodor and Geisler (in 2009 also in Nature), and they did confirm our results that the Indian fossil even-toed ungulate is the closest relative to whales and further found that hippos, in spite of the absence of very old fossils for them, are the closest living relative, to whales, thus confirming what the molecular scientists had found. As often happens in science, when new evidence is discovered and evaluated, scientists have the opportunity to test hypotheses they had. In this case, new evidence brought the morphological and molecular evidence in line and the discrepancy that existed before is resolved.
“The gap in the hippo fossil record remains. Scientists use the phrase ‘ghost-lineage’ to describe this. There must be a substantial period when hippos were around, but there is no fossil evidence for them, or they cannot be recognized in the fossil record (because the fossil material is very incomplete). In that period, hippos were a ghost lineage.”

One more thing I’d like to address: What about the minor discrepancies seen in phylogenetic trees? Well, as Talk.Origins put it,

“A few inconsistencies are to be expected, because biology is messy. Genes need not always evolve at the same rate in different lineages. Some molecules may converge as a result of selection or chance. Horizontal gene transfer occasionally occurs. Such exceptions will be rare, but there will be a few of them among the vast body of consistent results. Most inconsistencies can be resolved by basing an analysis on multiple genes (Rokas et al. 2003).
“Other inconsistencies will occur as a result of methodological and interpretive mistakes (Sanderson and Shaffer 2002). Phylogenetic analysis is a very complex subject; people who do not understand it well cannot be expected to get it right all the time.”

I would like to thank Dr. Hans Thewissen for his helpful comments on this writing.

** Dr. Thewissen suggested that this had little bearing on my argument, since it concerned only molecular data. However, since Wells seems to be trying to play up the inconsistencies in phylogenetic trees, I think that pointing out consistencies in molecular data is pertinent because it contradicts his overall thesis.

Reply to Jonathan Wells, Part 1

Recently, I visited the new website, faithandevolution.com, which was set up by the Discovery Institute to discuss religion and evolution. While I was there, I found a review of Francis Collins’ book “The Language of God” by creationist Jonathan Wells. Although the entire review is full of error and misrepresentation, I want to focus on a few key issues.


First, the issue of ‘junk’ DNA. Collins states that this nonfunctional DNA is evidence of common ancestry, since it is more similar between closely related species and less similar between more distantly related species. Collins also notes that it is possible that some small fraction of this junk DNA has some function. Wells counters this argument by pointing to studies which show that a small fraction of junk DNA has some function:

[I]n 2006 Japanese and American researchers discovered that “a large number of nonprotein-coding genomic regions are under strong selective constraint” – meaning that they have functions, otherwise selection would not affect them. The researchers wrote: “Transposable elements are usually regarded as genomic parasites, with their fixed, often inactivated copies considered to be ‘junk DNA’… [but many such] sequences have been under purifying selection and have a significant function that contributes to host viability.” In other words, the very “decapitated and utterly defunct” transposable elements that Collins considers his best evidence are turning out not to be functionless after all.

I’m willing to grant that ‘many’ (whatever such a vague word means) transposable elements have some function, on the condition that this does not show that all junk DNA is useful. In fact, one study, in which millions of nucleotides of junk DNA were deleted, showed that this junk really is junk: All of that missing junk DNA had no effect on the organisms tested.
Further in the review, I was struck by something that Jonathan Wells said: “[How does] Collins know what a Creator would do?” I had a profound realization when I read this. How do we know what a creator would do? We don’t. The only way we could is by making certain assumptions about the creator’s nature. And this is a problem for intelligent design: Unless they openly admit to making assumptions about the creator’s nature, they can’t make any predictions. IDers want to have it both ways: If we find lots of junk DNA that points to common ancestry, they say, “How do you know a creator wouldn’t put it there?” If we find that this junk DNA has a function, then that proves intelligent design because ID predicted it. Listen to what Stephen C. Meyer said when it was discovered that some junk DNA might have a function,

It is a confirmation of a natural empirical prediction or expectation of the theory of intelligent design, and it disconfirms the neo-Darwinian hypothesis. (Source)

Now why would that be? Is Meyer assuming that the creator has to create only functional things? But that’s exactly the presumption Wells just argued against. Sorry IDers, but you can’t have it both ways. I suspect that the conflict here comes because what Meyers really thinks is that God created life, and God wouldn't be expected to create junk, would he? And yet when its convenient IDers have no problem retreating from disconfirming evidence by feigning ignorance on the nature of the designer.

Tomorrow I'll write another post on Wells' review.

New Support for the 'RNA World' Hypothesis

From Nature:

"An elegant experiment has quashed a major objection to the theory that life on Earth originated with molecules of RNA.

John Sutherland and his colleagues from the University of Manchester, UK, created a ribonucleotide, a building block of RNA, from simple chemicals under conditions that might have existed on the early Earth."



"Sutherland points out that the sequence of steps he uses is consistent with early-Earth scenarios — those involving methods such as heating molecules in water, evaporating them and irradiating them with ultraviolet light. And breaking RNA's synthesis down into small, laboratory-controlled steps is merely a pragmatic starting point, he says, adding that his team also has results showing that they can string nucleotides together, once they have formed. 'My ultimate goal is to get a living system (RNA) emerging from a one-pot experiment. We can pull this off. We just need to know what the constraints on the conditions are first.'"

However, another website reported that,

"'But while this is a step forward, it’s not the whole picture,' Ferris points out. 'It’s not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It’s a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn’t happen in the ancient world.'"

I'm curious about how this stopping and purifying affects things. I assume purifying means removing chemicals not related to those involved in RNA synthesis. Do these chemicals prohibit any reactions related to RNA synthesis? I have no clue, though I would assume that these researchers are competent enough to either know that they don't or to have proposed a natural mechanism that would remove such chemicals. Maybe these chemicals can also bind to RNA precursors. In that case the odds of RNA production on the early earth would be lower than in the lab, but of course the early earth is vastly larger than any lab setup and has millions of times more time than any experimenter could afford to spare.

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis Declares Moral Outrage Over an Action He Performed

Here's a news gem from Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project (and of Butler University) that is well worth sharing:

This item falls well within the dictionary’s definition of hypocrisy! Ken Ham, the head of Answers in Genesis, the group that built the $27 million Creation Museum-cum-theme-park in Kentucky, has recently railed against the BBC for “ambushing” a member of his staff. As you’ll see if you read the link, Ham claims that Jason Lisle was surprised to find that his scheduled interview on the BBC was actually to be a debate with Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. (I’ve not checked with Genie to get her side of the story since it is actually not relevant to the point I’m making here!) Here’s how Ham summarizes the situation: “By the way—the BBC has not responded to our publicist who has challenged them concerning their deception. Then again, for those people who don’t believe in God and there is no absolute authority, not telling the truth and deception would not be ethically wrong—as they have no basis for right and wrong!”

What makes Ham’s complaints so incredibly ironic and hypocritical is that this is exactly what he did to me a year ago. I was scheduled to do an interview last year on a fundamentalist Christian radio show only to discover, upon going on the air, that Ken Ham was also on the line, ready to debate me. When asked why neither the host nor Ken had the courtesy to inform me that I was to participate in a debate rather than in an interview, I was told that they believed that I wouldn’t have accepted their offer had I been told the truth. When I questioned them about the deception, I was told that since the debate was to further God’s wishes, a minor deception of this sort was acceptable.

That’s quite a double standard!

More Walt Brown

I'm continuing with my series of discussions about Walt Brown's disingenuous "textbook" that he has posted online for us to view. In the first part of this series we discussed his caricature of the idea of evolution by means of natural selection. But the hits just keep on coming.

In his second chapter, titled "Organic Evolution Has Never Been Observed," Walt Brown continues to redefine key terms and ignore the consensus of scientists in the service of his apologetic goals. His first sub-heading discusses the fact that abiogenesis has never been observed to occur. While this is technically still true, multiple lines of evidence, and more recently the finding that RNA can reproduce itself in vivo have made this fact less and less relevant. It is no stretch to imagine a seamless transition between chemical evolution by natural selection and biological evolution by natural selection now. The RNA in the experiments done in La Jolla became better at reproduction over successive generations, far exceeding the ability of the original over time. This is just what we would expect for abiogenesis. Thus a key support for Brown has been recently kicked out from under him by continued investigation.

However, Brown's full argument on this page is a form of trickery. He says, "Evolutionary scientists reluctantly accept the law of biogenesis. However, some say that future studies may show how life could come from lifeless matter, despite the virtually impossible odds." However, the theory of abiogenesis and the theory of evolution are two completely different theories. He tacitly acknowledges this by saying, "Others say that their theory of evolution doesn’t begin until the first life somehow arose. Still others say the first life was created, then evolution occurred." However, this proves that his statements are irrelevant to the fact at hand. The theory of biological evolution doesn't depend on abiogenesis. It stands as an explanation for the diversity of life seen on earth after one or a few common ancestors arose.

Darwin himself mused, "When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled." Thus, even Darwin was aware that his theory did not cover the origin of life. Brown cannot be writing a textbook about this without having knowledge of Darwin's seminal work, and therefore this is yet another deception.

Walt Brown's Nutty Textbook

Walt Brown is a creationist with a long history of prickly relationships with the rest of the world, including other creationists. But he has done us the favor of putting up a full "textbook" of creation "science" on the internet for all to see.

Titled non-ironically In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, the book is a wonderful place to examine the beliefs of one of the leading proponents of Young Earth Creationism (YEC). I'll be sampling some of the chapters over the next few months to show how bankrupt the ideas put forward are scientifically.

Walt Brown has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. It is obvious from his writing that he does not have a degree in the life sciences and even more obvious that he is not even conversant in modern biological theory. His first chapter in the section on life science is a minefield of fiction and falsehood, designed only to convince the gullible.

Digging in:

Before considering how life began, we must first understand the term “organic evolution.” Organic evolution, as theorized, is a naturally occurring, beneficial change that produces increasing and inheritable complexity. Increased complexity would be shown if the offspring of one form of life had a different and improved set of vital organs.

Anyone who has read Darwin, or taken a basic biology class, or opened an encyclopedia will know that this is simply a false strawman presentation of what evolution is. The dictionary definition under the heading of Biology states this:

3. Biology
a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.

Darwin postulated two things: 1) Common descent of all organisms and 2) Natural selection leading to variations in organisms based on their environment, eventually creating differing species. Walt Brown knows this can't really be disputed if he accepts microevolution, so he changes the goal posts, without telling people what he's doing.

Walt Brown ignores the fact that that vast majority of organisms on earth are single-celled, as is the vast majority of biomass on the earth, and requires vital organs of all organisms that evolve, even though a majority of the organisms on earth lack organs.

He goes on to state:

Microevolution, on the other hand, does not involve increasing complexity. It involves changes only in size, shape, or color, or minor genetic alterations caused by a few mutations. Macroevolution requires thousands of “just right” mutations. Microevolution can be thought of as “horizontal” (or even downward) change, whereas macroevolution, if it were ever observed, would involve an “upward,” beneficial change in complexity. Notice that microevolution plus time will not produce macroevolution. (micro + time ≠ macro)

Walt simply makes this up. No scientific study has ever shown anything remotely like this and he gives no source for this bizarre and unsubstantiated claim. In his frontispiece for this page, he shows a diagram of multiple dog breeds, but fails to include pictures of a coyote, a wolf, a dingo, a fox and a hyena.

Yet if he had included those pictures, it would difficult for a person who is not a dog fancier to distinguish which are domestic dogs and which are different species. This seems to specifically challenge the claims Walt makes in his macro/micro discussion.

Reading the literature of creation scientists is a hard task, it makes me feel so dirty. If you have any doubt, look at the picture he uses to illustrate the absurdity of macroevolution.

In this image, he shows what I will imagine is a salamander evolving in 7 intermediate steps directly into a woodpecker. He appears to have done this by simply juxtaposing the two images and changing the contrast.

This is simply ludicrous. The standard belief for the number of transitional forms between the most bird-like dinosaur and an ancient and dinosaur-like bird shows at least 4 organisms in transition. The transitional forms that would be entailed in the change from a salamander to a woodpecker would be factorially higher than 7. It's as if Walt showed a picture of a baby and then in 7 transitional pictures changed it into a nonagenarian and tried to show how ludicrous this possibility was.

I'll be digging more into Walt Brown just for amusement's sake. But YEC adherents should be made aware that his arguments are roughly as good as any others for YEC and he lies no more or less than they do.

RNA can reproduce itself -- Another blow to ID/Creationism

In a fascinating new lab experiment, researchers at the Scripps institute in California have created strands of RNA that can replicate themselves without any proteins or DNA. The study is in Science, and the work was done by Lincoln and Joyce. The citation is: Lincoln TA, Joyce GF (2009) Self-sustained replication of an RNA enzyme. Science Jan 8.

Previously I have speculated that we were not far from such a system, and now we have the experiment. This shows conclusively that self-replication could, over millions of years on a planet, have developed spontaneously given proper conditions and is devastating to the last hope of creationists, that somehow life was too complex to have started out without intelligent assistance.

WLC and Pagan Parallels

This is a response to William Lane Craig:.

When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, “Do you really believe that?” Act as though you’ve just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. You could say something like, “Man, those old theories have been dead for over a hundred years! Where are you getting this stuff?” Tell them this is just sensationalist junk, not serious scholarship. If they persist, then ask them to show you the actual passages narrating the supposed parallel. They’re the ones who are swimming against the scholarly consensus, so make them work hard to save their religion. I think you’ll find that they’ve never even read the primary sources.
-William Lane Craig

Here I have found two gods, one Greek and one Roman, who bear striking similarities to Jesus. I have cited primary sources (translations of the original ancient texts) all of which you can read for yourself via Tufts University’s Perseus Project or through equally reputable University resources.

Romulus
Written about by Titus Livius (who died in 17 CE) in his book “The Early History of Rome” and by Plutarch in “Numa Pompilius”(written circa 75 CE, around the same time Mark’s gospel was written).

The Parallels:
Romulus is born of a vestal virgin, which was a priestess of the hearth god Vesta sworn to celibacy (Early History of Rome, 1.3-1.4). His mother claims that the divine impregnated her, yet this is not believed by the King (there is a certain irony to this since Romulus is later hailed as “God and a Son of God”, meaning that his mother’s seemingly far-fetched tale was true after all). Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, are tossed in the river and left for dead (A “slaughter of the innocents” tale which parallels that of Matthew 2:13-16).

Romulus is hailed as the son of god. He is “snatched away to heaven” by a whirlwind (It is assumed that the gods took him), and he makes post mortem appearances (See The Early History of Rome 1.16). In his work Numa Pompilius, Plutarch records that there was a darkness covering the earth before his death (Just as there was during Jesus’ death according to Mark 15:33). He also states that Romulus is to be know afterwards as ‘Quirinus’; A god which belonged to the Archiac Triad (a “triple deity” similar to the concept of the Trinity). This information may be found in the second paragraph of the translation of Numa Pompilius (hyperlinked above).


Heracles (Hercules)Written about by Diodorus Siculus in the "Library of History" Book 4. Diodorus lived from 90 to 21 BCE (According to his entry in Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia).
The Parallels:
Heracles is the Son of a god (Zeus).
In Library of History 4:9:1-2, it is recorded that Zeus is both the father and great-great- great grandfather of Heracles, just as Jesus is essentially his own grandpa, being both “The root and offspring of David” (Revelation 22:16) as he is part of the triune God which is the father of Adam and eventually of Jesus. Both are doubly related to the Supreme God.

Diodorus writes that,
"For as regards the magnitude of the deeds which he accomplished it is generally agreed that Heracles has been handed down as one who surpassed all men of whom memory from the beginning of time has brought down an account; consequently it is a difficult attainment to report each one of his deeds in a worthy manner and to present a record which shall be on a level with labours so great, the magnitude of which won for him the prize of immortality."-Library of History, 4:8:1

Jesus is also said to have done a very large number of good works. John 21:25 says that: "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."
Hera tries to kill Heracles as an infant by sending two serpents after him (Library of History, 4:10:1) yet Heracles survives by strangling them. This parallels Herod's slaughter of the innocents in an attempt to kill Jesus (Matthew 2:13-16).Heracles makes a descent into Hades and returns from it with Theseus and Peirithoüs (4.26.1), just as Jesus descends into the “lower parts of the earth” or Hades (Ephesians 4:7-8); Though Jesus does not bring anyone up from it.Heracles' body is not found and he is assumed to have been taken by the gods:"After this, when the companions of Iolaüs came to gather up the bones of Heracles and found not a single bone anywhere, they assumed that, in accordance with the words of the oracle, he had passed from among men into the company of the gods." (Library of History, 4:38:5)

Evolution Survey

Michael Shermer and the Skeptic Society have put up a website with a survey about evolution:

http://www.evolutionsurvey.com/

I encourage everyone to fill it out, as it only takes a few minutes and will help Skeptics and Scientists to communicate evolution more convincingly and concisely to the public.

Help a brother out

Reginald Finley, aka host of the Infidel Guy show, has fallen on hard times now, and his show, which supports rationalism and freethought, is in danger of going offair. His shows are cheap, usually only a dollar or two each, and are well worth the money (they are highly entertaining and educational). I am going to leave a link to a page of his where you can download shows on creation and evolution.