Debunking Creationism

Rethinking "Out of Africa"

2012-02-01T00:04:00.000-06:00

I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don’t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa.
Go To Article

Genesis Weak

2012-01-31T23:48:00.000-06:00

Published by Steven Novella under Creationism/ID

I advise you to please turn off your irony meters before reading further or clicking the link to the video I will be discussing today. You may also want to take a couple of deep relaxing breaths to help preserve your neurons from the irrational assault they are about to suffer.

I was recently asked to take a look at Genesis Week with Ian Juby (Wazooloo), a slick YouTube series in which Juby takes us on a mystical journey through the looking glass of creationist nonsense. In his world science and reason are flipped completely upside down. It is, as they say, a “target rich environment” – too rich for any one blog post, so I will pick out a few gems.

The title of this episode is “I’m hooked on a feeling,” referring to new research showing that acceptance of evolution is strongly influenced by a gut “feeling of certainty” that people have about the theory. Juby makes much of this study (without, of course, putting it into any context) concluding that people believe in evolution despite the evidence (what he describes as overwhelming evidence for creation) rather than because of it.

The study itself reviews prior research on this question, summarizing it:

Despite the variety of studies that have been reported, there are no convincingly clear findings about the relationships among knowledge level, beliefs, and acceptance level regarding the theory of evolution. While some studies have provided evidence for a robust relationship between knowledge level and level of acceptance (Paz-y-Miño & Espinosa, 2009; Rutledge & Warden, 1999), others found no evidence of a straightforward relationship (Sinatra et al., 2003), and little evidence that instructional treatments affect acceptance levels (Chinsamy & Plagányi, 2007), even when learning gains have been substantiated (Nehm & Schonfeld, 2007). It has also been suggested that the nature of relationships change when acceptance of evolutionary theory is framed in the context of macroevolution rather than microevolution (Nadelson & Southerland, 2010).

So – it’s complicated. Results of research seem to depend upon how the study was conducted, meaning that confounding variables have not adequately been controlled for so they determine the outcome of individual studies, which therefore have conflicting results.

However, at least so far there does not appear to be a clear relationship between teaching students about evolutionary theory and their acceptance of it. This is actually not surprising and in line with the consensus of psychological research, which shows that people form opinions largely for emotional and ideological reasons, and then cherry pick the facts they need to support those opinions.

The findings of the current study are therefore nothing new, and there is no reason to think that this phenomenon is unique to belief in evolution.

But to put this study into its proper context – this is about affecting the opinions of students by confronting their emotional reactions to evolution. It is not about how scientists form their opinions about evolutionary theory.

This is a common logical error that creationists make – confusing public opinion with expert scientific opinion. Juby tries to make it seem that this study shows that acceptance of evolution in general (including among scientists and educators) is about feeling rather than evidence.

He then goes on to another common claim of creationists that reflects their astounding intellectual dishonesty. He lists a few biologists who are creationists – as if their opinions are evidence based, and contrasting them with the emotion-based acceptance of evolution.

Among scientists, however, >99% accept evolutionary theory – a relevant fact that Juby failed to mention. This is also in line with other research, showing that only at the highest levels of science education do facts trump emotion in forming our beliefs about controversial or emotional topics. Among the experts there is a strong consensus – the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that all life on earth is related through an evolutionary process. Juby, however, rattles off a couple of creationist exceptions as if they are the rule.

It is hard to imagine that Juby is not aware of these facts. We are left to conclude that he is either living in a creationist bubble or is flagrantly dishonest in dealing with the question of scientific acceptance of evolution.

Eventually Juby gets around to listing some of the alleged overwhelming evidence for creation, including irreducible complexity and lack of a mechanism for increasing genetic information. He lists a bunch of old long-discredited creationist canards, and that is his “overwhelming evidence.”

Creationists proposed the notion of irreducible complexity over a decade ago, and really it was just a reformulation of arguments they have been putting forward for a century and a half – since Darwin proposed his version of evolutionary theory. It has been debated and discussed among scientists, and found to be a fatally flawed idea. It’s flat out wrong – disproved by numerous counter examples. I first wrote about it myself in 1999, and the arguments haven’t changed.

The alleged lack of a mechanism for generating new genetic information is nonsense – not a serious scientific or even philosophical argument. (I first debunked this one in 2002.) The combination of random mutations and selective pressures, combined with gene duplication and other genetic mechanisms, are fully capable of increasing overall genetic information and creating new information.

Creationists like Juby have no counterarguments to the scientific consensus clearly demonstrating that irreducible complexity and creationist abuses of information theory are false. They simply trot out the same discarded claims over and over again with arrogance and casual dismissiveness of the scientific consensus – a consensus slowly built on a mountain of evidence.

I’m not bothered by the fact the people like Juby can promote their nonsense on an open forum like YouTube. He is unlikely to change anyone’s opinion. He also provides yet another opportunity to point out the terrible logic and questionable honesty of the creationists. They do make it easy in that they have nothing new to say. Science changes and new ideas and new evidence are brought to bare. Creationism is stuck in its prescientific conclusion, and continue to rely upon long discredited arguments – even when dressed up in a slick YouTube video.

Viral Attacks on Bacteria Reveal a Secret to Evolution by Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer

2012-01-27T08:37:00.000-06:00

An image of a protein, LamB, found on the surface of the bacterial cell. Scientists examined what happened when a virus could no longer infect the bacteria through this protein.
CREDIT: Justin Meyer

View full size image

VIRAL ATTACKS ON BACTERIA REVEAL A SECRET TO EVOLUTION

The arms race between a virus and the bacteria it attacks has helped scientists better understand one of the mysteries of evolution: How new traits evolve.

In a series of experiments, the bacteria-infecting viruses repeatedly acquired the ability to attack their host bacteria through a different "doorway," or receptor on the bacteria's cellular membrane, explained Justin Meyer, the lead researcher and a graduate student at Michigan State University. [Video: The Virus Mutates]

Their results offer insight into a difficult question about evolution: Where do new traits come from?

According to evolutionary theory, natural selection can favor certain members of a population because of traits they possess, such as camouflage or an ability to get at food others can't reach. These favored organisms are more likely to reproduce, passing on the genes for their helpful traits to future generations. While it's clear how natural selection causes a population to change, or adapt, explaining how new traits arise has been trickier, Meyer said.

For instance, do random genetic mutations gradually accumulate until they produce new traits? Or, does natural selection drive the process from the start, favoring certain mutations as they arise, until a whole new trait appears?

To get an idea, he and others, including two undergraduate researchers, prompted a virus to evolve a new way to infect the bacteria, then looked at the genetic changes associated with this new ability. They also found that changes in the bacteria could prevent the virus from acquiring this new trait.

An E. coli cell. In the experiment, bacterial cells like this one evolved resistance to a virus, prompting the virus to evolve a new way to attack..
CREDIT: Brian D. Wade and Alicia Pastor, Center for Advanced Microscopy, MSU

View full size image

In 102 trials, they combined E. coli cells with the virus, called lambda. Lambda normally infects the bacteria by targeting a receptor, LamB, on the bacterium's outer membrane. The virus does this using a so-called J protein at the end of its tail; this protein unlocks the door into the bacterial cell, Meyer said.

When cultured under certain conditions, most E. colicells developed resistance to the virus by no longer producing LamB receptors. To infect the bacterial cells, then, the virus had to find another doorway into the cell. (Once inside, the virus hijacks the bacteria's cellular machinery to copy its own genetic code and reproduce.)

In 25 of the 102 trials, the virus acquired the ability to infect bacteria through another receptor, called OmpF. The viruses were genetically identical at the beginning of the experiment, so the researchers looked to see what genetic changes had occurred.

They found that all the strains that could infect the bacteria shared at least four changes, all of which were in the genetic code for the J protein, and which worked together, according to Meyer.

"When you have three of the four mutations, the virus is still unable to infect [the E. coli]," Meyer said. "When you have four of four, they all interact with each other. … In this case, the sum is much more than its component parts."

However, natural selection appears to have driven the rise of these individual mutations, he said, because the same mutations arose over and over again, and because they appear to affect the function of the J protein.

"The mutations are really centered on a small part of the gene and genome that would affect binding," he said.

Two lambda viruses. Four genetic mutations in viruses like these lead them to find a new way to attack their bacterial hosts.
CREDIT: Brian D. Wade and Alicia Pastor, Center for Advanced Microscopy, MSU

View full size image

So, why, in most cases, did the virus fail to acquire the ability to enter through the OmpF doorway? The researchers looked to see if other changes in the virus, or changes in the bacteria, interfered.

They found that while other changes in the virus did not seem to interfere, a specific change found in the E. coli populations from 80 trials did. Disruptions appeared in bacterial genes responsible for producing a protein complex, called ManXYZ, in the inner membrane. That change in the inner membrane meant the virus couldn't get all the way inside the cell, whether through LamB or OmpF.

"So there is this interesting co-evolutionary dance," Meyer said. "One mutation in the host and four mutations in the virus lead to a new virus. One mutation [in the host] and only a few mutations in the virus and a second mutation in the host, and the whole system shuts down."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and onFacebook.

Why Do So Many Have Trouble Believing In Evolution?

2012-01-25T09:24:00.002-06:00

Why Do So Many Have Trouble Believing In Evolution?

by MARCELO GLEISER

EnlargeJunko Kimura/Getty Images

Sometimes the fossil record comes with teeth: Mapusaurus roseae on display in the "Dinosaurs of Gondwana" exhibit in 2009 at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.

Updated on Thursday at 1:15 p.m.: After reading your comments, I feel it's important to clarify a couple of points concerning human hereditary descent and horizontal gene transfer. Please see the bracketed additions below.

The evidence is clear, as in a February 2009 Gallup Poll, taken on the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday, that reported only 39 percent of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36 percent don't have an opinion either way.
Go To Article

2012-01-19T14:47:00.003-06:00

Symphony of Science - The Greatest Show on

Earth! A music video about Evolution

Climate Change, Disbelief, and the Collision between Human and Geologic Time by Peter H. Gleick

2012-01-19T14:28:00.000-06:00

Climate Change, Disbelief, and the Collision between Human and Geologic Time

Geologic time scales are long – too long for the human mind to really comprehend. Over millions, and tens of millions, and hundreds of millions of years, the Earth has changed from something unrecognizable to the planet we see on maps, plastic globes, and photos from space. The Atlantic Ocean didn’t exist eons ago and it will literally disappear in the future as the continental plates continue to move inch by inch. A visitor from outer space millions of years ago would have looked down upon land masses and land forms unrecognizable today. As John McPhee notes in his book, Assembling California, “For an extremely large percentage of the history of the world, there was no California.” Or North America, China, Australia, Hawai’i, Mt. Everest, Grand Canyon, or any of the other landforms and natural symbols we think of as immutable.

Go To Article

Also, the sharks are smarter than Eric Hovind by PZ Pyers

2012-01-12T10:05:00.001-06:00

Also, the sharks are smarter than Eric Hovind by PZ Myers

The news a few weeks ago was that hybrid sharks had been found off the coast of Australia. They looked like tropical Australian black-tip sharks, but genetic testing revealed that they’d hybridized with the common black-tip, which has a wider range; these hybrid black-tips were similarly extending their range and living in colder waters.

This is an excellent example of evolution: it’s a population shifting its range, correlated with an observation of novel genetic attributes. This is exactly the kind of gradual transition that we’d expect to be compatible with evolutionary theory.

Unless you’re a creationist, of course. Or an idiot. But I repeat myself.

I wonder if they ever considered that when you stand back and look at them, they are all sharks. That means they are the same kind of animal. That is not evolution taking place; there is no changing from one kind of animal into another kind of animal happening here. We started with a shark and now we have a shark. That is not evolution!

That’s Eric Hovind’s take on the story. First of all, “kind” is not a valid taxonomic unit; it makes no sense at all to demand that a “kind” turn into a different “kind” when “kind” is undefined, undefinable, and unmeasurable. What was seen was a population with a measurable change in their genetic characteristics, and a natural mechanism, hybridization, to explain the shift, and a possible selective force, climate change, to drive the process. That’s the science.

Secondly, what does he expect? That a shark would turn into a mouse?

Thirdly, Eric Hovind does not get to define what evolution means. Biologists get to do that. Eric Hovind does not qualify. Eric Hovind has qualifications equivalent to those of his father: he is a “graduate” of Jackson Hole Bible College, an unaccredited and glorified tourist lodge in the Rocky Mountains which offers a one year course leading to a Diploma of Biblical Foundations, whatever the hell that is. That diploma and an application might qualify him for a job at McDonald’s.

Especially since I looked at their class schedule: not one lick of biology, but lots of evangelism, acts of the apostles, church history, prophecy, mangled geology, apologetics, and most importantly of all, “Intro to Finance”.

Evolution of complexity recreated using 'molecular time travel'

2012-01-12T10:00:00.000-06:00

Scientists find that small, high-probability mutations can produce complex system

Much of what living cells do is carried out by "molecular machines" – physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function. How the minute steps of evolution produced these constructions has long puzzled scientists, and provided a favorite target for creationists.

In a study published early online on Sunday, January 8, in Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon demonstrate how just a few small, high-probability mutations increased the complexity of a molecular machine more than 800 million years ago. By biochemically resurrecting ancient genes and testing their functions in modern organisms, the researchers showed that a new component was incorporated into the machine due to selective losses of function rather than the sudden appearance of new capabilities.

"Our strategy was to use 'molecular time travel' to reconstruct and experimentally characterize all the proteins in this molecular machine just before and after it increased in complexity," said the study's senior author Joe Thornton, PhD, professor of human genetics and evolution & ecology at the University of Chicago, professor of biology at the University of Oregon, and an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"By reconstructing the machine's components as they existed in the deep past," Thornton said, "we were able to establish exactly how each protein's function changed over time and identify the specific genetic mutations that caused the machine to become more elaborate."

The study – a collaboration of Thornton's molecular evolution laboratory with the biochemistry research group of the UO's Tom Stevens, professor of chemistry and member of the Institute of Molecular Biology – focused on a molecular complex called the V-ATPase proton pump, which helps maintain the proper acidity of compartments within the cell.

One of the pump's major components is a ring that transports hydrogen ions across membranes. In most species, the ring is made up of a total of six copies of two different proteins, but in fungi a third type of protein has been incorporated into the complex.

To understand how the ring increased in complexity, Thornton and his colleagues "resurrected" the ancestral versions of the ring proteins just before and just after the third subunit was incorporated. To do this, the researchers used a large cluster of computers to analyze the gene sequences of 139 modern-day ring proteins, tracing evolution backwards through time along the Tree of Life to identify the most likely ancestral sequences. They then used biochemical methods to synthesize those ancient genes and express them in modern yeast cells.

Thornton's research group has helped to pioneer this molecular time-travel approach for single genes; this is the first time it has been applied to all the components in a molecular machine.

The group found that the third component of the ring in Fungi originated when a gene coding for one of the subunits of the older two-protein ring was duplicated, and the daughter genes then diverged on their own evolutionary paths.

The pre-duplication ancestor turned out to be more versatile than either of its descendants: expressing the ancestral gene rescued modern yeast that otherwise failed to grow because either or both of the descendant ring protein genes had been deleted. In contrast, each resurrected gene from after the duplication could only compensate for the loss of a single ring protein gene.

The researchers concluded that the functions of the ancestral protein were partitioned among the duplicate copies, and the increase in complexity was due to complementary loss of ancestral functions rather than gaining new ones. By cleverly engineering a set of ancestral proteins fused to each other in specific orientations, the group showed that the duplicated proteins lost their capacity to interact with some of the other ring proteins. Whereas the pre-duplication ancestor could occupy five of the six possible positions within the ring, each duplicate gene lost the capacity to fill some of the slots occupied by the other, so both became obligate components for the complex to assemble and function.

"It's counterintuitive but simple: complexity increased because protein functions were lost, not gained," Thornton said. "Just as in society, complexity increases when individuals and institutions forget how to be generalists and come to depend on specialists with increasingly narrow capacities."

The research team's last goal was to identify the specific genetic mutations that caused the post-duplication descendants to functionally degenerate. By reintroducing historical mutations that occurred after the duplication into the ancestral protein, they found that it took only a single mutation from each of the two lineages to destroy the same specific functions and trigger the requirement for a three-protein ring.

"The mechanisms for this increase in complexity are incredibly simple, common occurrences," Thornton said. "Gene duplications happen frequently in cells, and it's easy for errors in copying to DNA to knock out a protein's ability to interact with certain partners. It's not as if evolution needed to happen upon some special combination of 100 mutations that created some complicated new function."

Thornton proposes that the accumulation of simple, degenerative changes over long periods of times could have created many of the complex molecular machines present in organisms today. Such a mechanism argues against the intelligent design concept of "irreducible complexity," the claim that molecular machines are too complicated to have formed stepwise through evolution.

"I expect that when more studies like this are done, a similar dynamic will be observed for the evolution of many molecular complexes," Thornton said.

"These really aren't like precision-engineered machines at all," he added. "They're groups of molecules that happen to stick to each other, cobbled together during evolution by tinkering, degradation, and good luck, and preserved because they helped our ancestors to survive."

###

The paper, "Evolution of increased complexity in a molecular machine," appears in the January 18, 2012, issue of Nature [doi: 10.1038/nature10724]. The work was a collaboration of Thornton's molecular evolution lab with the research group of Tom Stevens, a yeast geneticist at the University of Oregon. Other authors include Gregory C. Finnigan and Victor Hanson-Smith, of the University of Oregon.

Funding for this work was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Contact: John Easton
john.easton@uchospitals.edu
773-795-5225
University of Chicago Medical Center

Regardless, The Dead Sea Does by Brian Thomas

2012-01-06T09:12:00.004-06:00

Regardless, The Dead Sea Does

Posted 06/01/2012 by eyeonicr in Daily (pseudo)Science Updates, Quick DpSU's. Tagged: Brian Thomas, Creationism,Dead Sea, Evolution, Ice Age, ICR, Science, Skeptic, Skepticism. Leave a Comment

It goes without saying that the title for Wednesday’s Daily (pseudo)Science Update is a bit of an exaggeration: Dead Sea Sediment Core Confirms Genesis.

The last time that style of title was used it was for Genetics Analysis of Jews Confirms Genesis, in which we were told that a genetic study showed that Jews had interbred to some degree with sub-Saharan Africans – which of course proves that one of the sons of Jacob married an Egyptian as reported in the bible, that Moses married an Ethiopian, and that Science has Confirmed Genesis.

The dead sea is a highly saline body of water located in the Middle East. It’s so saline that it was apparently previously believed that it could not shrink more than 150 metres below its present depth, a maximum of 377 metres.

However, a sediment core turned up, 235 metres down (corresponding to 120,000 years ago, I might add), a layer of pebbles probably corresponding to a time when that part of the lake was the shore, showing that at the time the lake all-but dried up.

How does this confirm Genesis? It’s a bit of a stretch, as you might expect. First, remember that the YECs compress the remaining thousands/millions of years after the sediments deposited by the Flood into the period of roughly 2500 BCE to 1 CE. They believe that the Flood caused an ice age, which produced the features we attribute to the various glaciations of the present ice age, but really fast. For some context, the Dead Sea (or whatever was there at the time) went up with the glaciations, and down with the warmer interglaciations – the drying that caused the pebble layer would have been particularly severe.

According to the Bible, in around 2000 B.C. what is now the Dead Sea used to be a plain that probably served as farmland for people of the nearby debauched city of Sodom. Genesis 14 first named the valley during the time of Abraham (then called Abram) as “the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.” So, the area was apparently a vale, or valley, but had been relabeled “the salt sea” by the time the original writings were edited and compiled, probably by Moses some 400 years after Abraham.

Which, aside from anything else, is a nice admittance of the bible not quite being the ‘unchanging word of God.’

There are a few problems here. For one, around 25 thousand years ago the area was flooded by a ‘Lake Lisan’ to the extent that it filled the whole area all the way up to the Sea of Gallile. It’s a little odd that that was never mentioned in the bible, isn’t it? It would change a lot. For more information on the ‘limnological history’ of the Dead Sea try this pdf, from which I’ve stolen the map at right (you can’t read it? Click the link). Again, you’d think somebody would’ve noticed.

Additionally, the Science NOW article being used as a reference for all this mentions that:

Most of the core is a series of black and white layers of sediment, representing seasonal variations. Dark sediments containing mud and silt from winter floods alternate with summertime sediment rich with white calcium carbonate precipitated from a seasonally shrinking lake. “It’s an absolutely phenomenal record,” Goldstein said. Overprinted on those finely detailed, seasonal layers in the core is a similar but larger-scale variation between wetter ice ages and drier interglacial warm periods. “Salt represents the Dead Sea declining and precipitating out the salt, which wasn’t happening during the ice ages,” Goldstein said.

Woah there! Varves? If they make up ‘most’ of the core, and the core was a full kilometre long, then there is probably a few more than, oh, 6000 of them? If so, how would Mr Thomas explain them?

Finally, for all this talk of “a plain that probably served as farmland for people of the nearby debauched city of Sodom,” the layer of pebbles is on top of a layer of salt, forty metres thick! Could be difficult to farm there…

So, does it ‘confirm Genesis’? No. Frankly, it does a better job of contradicting the YEC story.

Nice argument for the age of the earth | Pharyngula

2011-12-29T19:36:00.001-06:00

Nice argument for the age of the earth | Pharyngula: Nice argument for the age of the earth
December 29, 2011 at 4:39 pm PZ Myers

"Geoffrey Pearce sent me this argument he uses with creationists, and I thought others might find it useful, too.

I am regularly approached by young Earth creationists (yes, even in the bedlam of sin that is Montreal…) both on the street and at home. If I have the time I try to engage them on the age of Earth, since Earth is something whose existence them and I agree upon. They will tell me that Earth is somewhere between 6,000 – 10,000 years old, and, when prompted, that the rest of the universe is the same age as well. I have taken the approach of responding to this assertion by pulling out a print of the far side of the Moon (attached, from apod.nasa.gov)."
Go To Article

What Scientists Do and Creationists Don't

2011-12-28T17:52:00.001-06:00

By Skip @ Panda's Thumb

What Scientists Do and Creationists Don't:

A favorite creationist mantra these days, and one you especially hear from young earthers, is that creationists and scientists both have the same facts, they just look at them differently. To laypeople that may sound reasonable. The handful of guys at Answers in Genesis look at the Grand Canyon and say it was formed by a flood about 4400 years ago when God got all pissed off at humans. The 24,000 members of the Geological Society of America (and virtually every member of the literally dozens of geological organizations listed at their web site*) look at the Grand Canyon and say it was formed over millions of years by natural processes that continue today.

Same facts; different conclusions. Some of us laypeople often hear these two positions and see them as equally valid positions on either side of a debate. But some of us scratch the surface, and it doesn’t take a very deep scratch to see a significant difference. Scientists do science and creationists don’t.

I’m currently making my way through the December 2010 Evolution: Education & Outreach, a special issue dealing with the teaching of phylogenetics. On page 507 in an article titled “How to Read a Phylogenetic Tree,” by Deborah A. McLennan, I came across the following. “…butterflies can be distinguished from cats and people because they have an exoskeleton made out of chitin (a tough, waterproof derivative of glucose).” This was one of those “how do they know that” moments for me. Having read Genetics for Dummies and other books in my efforts to start getting a handle on genetics, I’m really getting into how genetic relationships reveal evolutionary history. Could this be another one of those cases?

But first I wanted to at least know what chitin is. Wikipedia says it “is the main component of the cell walls of fungi, the exoskeletons of arthropods such as crustaceans.” Interesting enough. It also says in terms of function it’s comparable to the protein keratin, and that it has several useful medical and industrial applications. Neat-o! But what about evolution? Does evolution have anything to say about where this stuff came from?

Plugging “evolution of chitin” in Google returns a bunch of links, and the very first one I clicked on said, “[a]nalysis of a group of invertebrate proteins, including chitinases and peritrophic matrix proteins, reveals the presence of chitin-binding domains that share significant amino acid sequence similarity. The data suggest that these domains evolved from a common ancestor which may be a protein containing a single chitin-binding domain.” So it looks like these researchers have a pretty good idea about chitin’s history, and where it came from.

But the abstract also says that “comparisons indicated that invertebrate and plant chitin binding domains do not share significant amino acid sequence similarity, suggesting that they are not coancestral…We propose that the invertebrate and the plant chitin-binding domains share similar mechanisms for folding and saccharide binding and that they evolved by convergent evolution.”

So this research concludes that chitin in invertebrates evolved from a common ancestor, but invertebrate and plant chitin evolved independently.

Want to know more? how about a possible history of the stuff in humans traced all the way back “to the time of the bilaterian expansion (approx. 550 mya).” Furthermore, this paper documents some real twists and turns in chitin’s history: “The family expanded in the chitinous protostomes C. elegans and D. melanogaster, declined in early deuterostomes as chitin synthesis disappeared, and expanded again in late deuterostomes with a significant increase in gene number after the avian/mammalian split.” Someone has clearly done their homework!

This little exercise took me about 15 minutes, and I learned a little bit about chitin: what it is and got a glimpse into where it came from and how scientists are learning its history. Scientists doing science.

What do creationists say about chitin? I plugged the term in the search engine at Answers in Genesis and found an article called “What a Body!” by Professor Wolfgang Kuhn, who describes chitin as a “wonder substance” composed of protein and sugar. He further describes it as a “miracle body” and says that “even if we could produce chitin itself, all our modern technology would be unable to imitate this fine microstructure so as to make a sports car body out of it, for instance.”

What is the takeaway message of Kuhn’s article? “Next time you see this humble beetle, consider the incredible amount of programmed information needed just to construct this super-high-tech marvel, its outer coat. Such information is passed on generation after generation, silent testimony to the Master Programmer.”

Creationism is so easy! When the earth is only a few thousand years old, and plants, animals, everything on earth has no real history or past different from the present, it’s enough to call things “wonder substance” and “miracle body”. Poof! God did it… class dismissed.

I’ve often read creationists complain about the amounts of funding real scientists receive and how much is distributed by the NIH and the NSF. If only creationists had this kind of funding, they could do amazing research! But would they?

Answers in Genesis, perhaps the most visible and well-funded anti-evolution organization in the country, spent approximately $27 million building its creation “museum” in Kentucky. AiG is presently raising money for their latest venture, a Noah’s Ark theme park, estimated to cost $24.5 million when completed. I have a suggestion for Ken Ham and the folks at AiG. Why not spend a fraction of that 24 and a half million to actually do a scientific experiment? For instance: build a real ark, fill it with animals just like Noah is claimed to have done and float it out in the ocean for a year to test the hypothesis. Think of all the converts that would win when it worked! Hell, I’d get saved myself!

I emailed Dr. John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and asked him about funding scientific research and he replied, “Last year NIH spent $8 million on the Cancer Genome Atlas, bringing it to a total of $43 million. This project works on the principle that cancer cells are engaged in an evolutionary process in the body that will often be convergent in different people, so that building a systematic atlas of the genes involved will help us understand and find effective strategies to treat different cancers.”

So for less than the cost of two huge, embarrassing testaments to ignorance and misinformation AiG could have funded something like the entire Cancer Genome Atlas. But then again, at the creation “museum” they have a Triceratops with a saddle!

It’s clear that for a fraction of what the creationist organizations spend on propaganda, they could easily fund lab work and research to publish evidence of their claims. But what they do publish is nothing more than distortions of real research. PZ Myers exposes a typical example about, coincidentally, chitin.

Even some lower-tier creationists pull down some pretty serious dough. Eric Hovind, son of federal prison inmate and notorious huckster Kent Hovind, is raising $1.5 million to make a film about the book of Genesis. In the 2011 Winter issue of his publication Creation Today, Son of Hovind claims he’s raised over $255,000.

Well, Eric Hovind has a high tech studio he makes his videos in, and I bet he has a few computers around there. What more does he need? Reed Cartwright, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, tells me, “For a lot of computational genomics research, the data is already available and the only costs are for computers and salaries. And purchasing time on supercomputers is currently cheap.” So here’s another suggestion: Why doesn’t Hovind fund a couple of creationist geneticists to do some research when his computers are otherwise unoccupied? I’m sure he’d discover that every species on earth went through a genetic bottleneck about 4400 years ago that reduced the entire population to just two individuals … on a boat. Right, Eric?

Opportunities abound for creationists to fund real scientific research. Nick Matzke sent me this link. Use the Award Search feature and spend a few minutes checking out all the great research done on much smaller budgets than a theme park, or feature length film production.

Maybe scientists and creationists have the same facts. But if they do, it’s because one of those groups actually cared enough about truth to find out what the facts were. It’s not the creationists. Only one of those groups selfishly obsesses over their personal beliefs to the point of ignoring and distorting legitimate scientific research to further a social and theological agenda. And it’s not the scientists.

Note: As has been pointed out to me, what I have discovered in these papers is research on the evolution of chitin-binding proteins, not chitin itself. This layperson has learned that chitin is made from and digested by proteins that do evolve, and that’s what the research I found was all about.

* I say ‘virtually’ because with the tens, or hundreds, of thousands of members across all those organizations there are probably a couple of young-earthers. But I’ll bet you can’t find one geologist, anywhere, who thinks the earth is six thousand years old who doesn’t regard the Bible (or whatever their favorite holy text is) as without error.

(Finally, this piece is cross-posted to my brand new blog, sciencedenial.com, so come on over to my place and give me some of your Internet love, you bunch of bad low motor scooters.)

Over 65 Million Years, North American Mammal Evolution Has Tracked With Climate Change

2011-12-28T09:45:00.001-06:00

ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2011) — Climate changes profoundly influenced the rise and fall of six distinct, successive waves of mammal species diversity in North America over the last 65 million years, shows a novel statistical analysis led by Brown University evolutionary biologists. Warming and cooling periods, in two cases confounded by species migrations, marked the transition from one dominant grouping to the next.
Go To Article

Dinosaur Denialism by Donald Prothero

2011-12-24T13:08:00.000-06:00

Dinosaur Denialism:

Order the book from Skeptic.com

I have written frequently in these blogposts about the numerous forms of denial of science and reality that are out there, from global warming denialism, to AIDS denialism, anti-vaxxers, and creationism. They all have a lot in common, from their insular exclusionary attitude that refuses to accept evidence that doesn’t fit their world view, to the various strategies they use to reduce cognitive dissonance and fight against reality, all borrowed from the Holocaust deniers. These include: quoting out of context (“quote-mining”) to dishonestly suggest that the quoted person agrees with them, cherry-picking data to show the exact opposite of what the data really show, making phony lists of “experts” who agree with them, picking on the small differences within the scientific community as evidence that the “science is not settled”, picking on one small factoid (usually misinterpreted and out of context) as evidence that the whole of science is false, and so on. Usually, these obvious strategies to deny an overwhelming body of evidence are so transparently self-delusional that we can laugh at them.

But then I ran into something that staggered even my sense of how low these people can go. We are all familiar with how creationists use ad hoc explanations and special pleading to rescue the absurdities of their world view, from trying to cram all of the animals into Noah’s ark and dismissing the huge numbers problem through their non-biological concept of “created kinds”, to doing all sorts of violence to the geologic record to justify the Noah’s flood story, to even insisting that men have one less rib than do women (the last one is easy to check, but they don’t). As I have discussed in several previous posts, the more extreme Biblical literalists also believe in a flat earth and reject the heliocentric solar system. But I was flabbergasted to read of a whole group of extreme creationists who deny that dinosaurs existed! Usually, the creationists not only come to terms with the evidence of dinosaurs, but many have even tried to co-opt their popularity with kids under 10 by making them a prominent part of their propaganda (as does Ken Ham of the “Answers in Genesis” ministry and the “Creation Museum” in Petersburg, Kentucky). With something as widely accepted and exciting and popular as dinosaurs, which anyone can see for themselves in their local museum, how could any person in the 21st century argue they are not real?

Yet that is exactly the position of this bizarre creationist subcult, which would be unknown and invisible to most of us were it not for their web presence (and their web design is not as garishly bad as most crackpot websites). You can scan their website linked above and see just far off the deep end of batshit crazy they have plunged. A representative quote for how these paranoid people argue that paleontologists are creating fraudulent dinosaur fossils is as follows:

What would be the motivation for such a deceptive endeavor? Obvious motivations include trying to prove evolution, trying to disprove or cast doubt on the Christian Bible and the existence of the Christian God, and trying to disprove the “young-earth theory”. Yes, there are major political and religious ramifications.

The dinosaur concept could imply that if God exists, he may have tinkered with his idea of dinosaurs for awhile, then perhaps discarded or became tired of this creation and then went on to create man. The presented dinosaur historical timeline could suggest an imperfect God who came up with the idea of man as an afterthought, thus demoting the biblical idea that God created man in His own image. Dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.

Highly rewarding financial and economic benefits to museums, educational and research organizations, university departments of paleontology, discoverers and owners of dinosaur bones, and the book, television, movie and media industries may cause sufficient motivation for ridiculing of open questioning and for suppression of honest investigation. [That's a real laugher! Most paleontologists are poorly paid and cannot even get a job in paleontology!]

So, based on the premise that dinosaurs are a fiction designed to disprove creationism and drive us away from God, the writers of this website go into extremely bizarre thinking about dinosaurs and paleontology. There is a long section, using quotes out of context from the Berkeley evolution website, that claims that scientists dreamed up the whole thing as a big scam to undermine religion. Never mind the fact that all the early dinosaur discoveries were made by religious people such as Gideon Mantell, Rev. William Buckland, Mary Anning, and Richard Owen, and many later paleontologists (like Edward D. Cope) were also quite religious. This writer knows how to clip little bits of simplistic web histories out of context, but doesn’t know enough history to know the difference.

The next section on the website is another long, bizarre example of quote mining, where the author clearly knows nothing whatsoever about fossils and how they are found. The author jumps from one paranoid speculation to another, all in an attempt to suggest that dinosaur bones are forgeries planted in the outcrop by crooked paleontologists, and there is no way they could have gotten there without fraud. The list of mistakes and lies and misconceptions about fossils and geology is so long that I don’t have space to even begin listing them all. Because fossil skeletons are incomplete in the field, it is common practice to mold replicas to complete the skeleton for display. But the author of this website then jumps to the absurd conclusion that all the bones in every dinosaur skeleton on display are faked!

From there, this crazy site goes into the old shopworn (and long debunked) creationist attacks on radiometric dating and geology, using the classic tactic of quoting out of context to show the opposite of what the text really intended. Then the author savages other crazy creationists, including those who use the great size of dinosaurs to justify an expanding earth with stronger gravity today than in the past, and others who quote the passages about the “Behemoth” in the Book of Job as evidence that the Bible talks about dinosaurs.

Then the site jumps into other crackpot ideas, like Tom Gold’s abiogenic origin of petroleum (long ago falsified), and presents a list of 19th century naturalists who talked about dinosaurs because they allegedly made up their discoveries in order to promote evolution! Once again, this doofus is so ignorant of history that he has no idea that half that list consisted of devout individuals who were “creationists” and most of them worked on dinosaurs in a religious context. Not only that, but they were not trying to “prove evolution”—their work was done decades before Darwin’s book came out in 1859. Give this guy an “F” in history….

Finally, he trots out the laughable idea that paleontologists concocted this whole forgery to get rich, but clearly he knows nothing about real paleontology. Most of my colleagues have turned down more lucrative careers in law or medicine or business to work on fossils at a mere fraction of the salary that they could be getting elsewhere. Nor do professional paleontologists get rich from selling their fossils, either—only the commercial collectors who are not professionally trained or doing research. but simply in it for the money do so.

So how can anyone become so delusional and get so many things wrong that are easy to check? As we discussed in my Nov. 16 post, many creationist communities are highly insular and not only avoid secular media, but only hear and read what their church leaders tell them to. If you read only creationist crap for a long time, and surf websites looking for things that you can quote out of context, you too can become the kind of crackpot who can manage to get every fact in the article 100% wrong! As long as your faith in Biblical literalism is more important than checking the facts out for yourself, you can twist anything to suit this delusional world view.

So read this website if you dare. You need a strong stomach for lies and self-deception, and hopefully you will not be shocked by the low view of humanity that emerges from reading it….

A tooth, a myth—and creationist lies. By Donald Prothero

2011-11-30T13:42:00.001-06:00

"People love to touch old objects and feel a connection to the past, whether it be the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, ancient ruins in China or India or Egypt or Europe, pieces of fossil bone on display in a museum, or the oldest objects known, the 4.6 billion-year-old meteorites. Each time I travel to do research in historic old museum collections, it feels a bit like time travel."
Go To Article

The Armor of God, or, The Top One Reason Religion Is Harmful | Greta Christina's Blog

2011-11-23T10:33:00.000-06:00

"So what is it about religion — exactly — that’s so harmful?

I’ve argued many times that religion is not only mistaken, but does more harm than good. But why do I think that is?

Sure, I can make a list of specific harms religion has done, from here to Texas. I’ve done exactly that. But that’s not enough to make my case. I could make long lists of harms done by plenty of human institutions: medicine, education, democracy. That doesn’t make them inherently malevolent."
Go To Article

How not to examine the evolution of proteins

2011-11-08T22:05:00.003-06:00

"The Discovery Institute has me on a mailing list for their newsletter, Nota Bene. That's probably unwise: usually I just glance at it, see another ignorant bit of fluff from Luskin or Nelson or one of the other usual suspects, and I snigger and hit 'delete', but sometimes they brag about how they're really doing science, and I look a little closer. And then I might feel motivated to take a slap at them."
Go To Article

Shared Genes With Neanderthal Relatives: Modern East Asians Share Genetic Material With Prehistoric Denisovans

2011-11-08T21:53:00.001-06:00

"During human evolution our ancestors mated with Neanderthals, but also with other related hominids. In this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Uppsala University are publishing findings showing that people in East Asia share genetic material with Denisovans, who got the name from the cave in Siberia where they were first found."
Go To Article

Skepticblog » Flip-flopping creationists

2011-10-12T10:01:00.001-05:00

"I’ve posted frequently (see my July 24 post) on the religious kooks who insist that Galileo and Copernicus and all later astronomers were wrong and that the earth, not the sun, is the center of the solar system. They base this weird notion on their own version of biblical literalism, since there are many passages in the Bible (e.g., Isaiah 11: 12, 40:22, 44:24; Joshua 10:12-14) which clearly present a geocentric world viewpoint (as was widely held in almost all ancient cultures and not overturned until the 1500s)."
Go To Article

Reflections from the Other Side: Those Pesky Craters

2011-10-11T23:14:00.001-05:00

"Young earth creationists have a pretty serious problem. They're burdened with the task of explaining how all of this happened in just 6,000 years. We see craters like these on most solid bodies in our solar system, but for the sake of simplicity let's focus just on lunar craters for now. "

Go To Article

No Dinosaurs in Heaven

2011-09-30T12:40:00.001-05:00

"No Dinosaurs in Heaven is a film essay that examines the hijacking of science education by religious fundamentalists, threatening the separation of church and state and dangerously undermining scientific literacy. The documentary weaves together two strands: an examination of the problem posed by creationists who earn science education degrees only to advocate anti-scientific beliefs in the classroom; and a visually stunning raft trip down the Grand Canyon, led by Dr. Eugenie Scott, that debunks creationist explanations for its formation. These two strands expose the fallacies in the “debate,” manufactured by anti-science forces, that creationism is a valid scientific alternative to evolution."

Go To Video

Invasion of genomic parasites triggered modern mammalian pregnancy, study finds

2011-09-30T11:58:00.001-05:00

"ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2011) — Genetic parasites invaded the mammalian genome more than 100 million years ago and dramatically changed the way mammals reproduce -- transforming the uterus in the ancestors of humans and other mammals from the production of eggs to a nurturing home for developing young, a new Yale University study has found."

Go To Article

A Simple Rebuttal « Science-Based Life

2011-09-20T23:24:00.001-05:00

"Intelligent Design=Creationism

Here is a simple yet solid intelligent design rebuttal that would make any creationist pee a little."
Go To Article

Understanding Evolution: 17 Misconceptions and Their Responses « Science-Based Life

2011-09-10T23:18:00.001-05:00

"Evolution is one of the best supported, most elegant, and most powerful theories in all of science. As it stands, it is the best explanation that we have for the diversity of life on Earth. Understanding evolution, as a scientifically literate society, is then a primary goal for anyone who was ever at least curious about the various forms of life we encounter. However, because evolutionary facts are thought to step on the toes of modern religious interpretations of life’s diversity (that all humans came from the interbreeding of a family generated from a rib bone, for example), there are many misconceptions that have been thrown in the way to act as obstacles to true understanding."
Go To Article

Skepticblog » Bird Fossils and Clueless Creationists

2011-09-07T23:32:00.001-05:00

"About a month ago, there was big publicity about the discovery and description of a new fossil bird from China, Xiaotingia zhengi. It is one of a long line of amazingly preserved bird fossils that have come from Jurassic and Cretaceous beds in Liaoning and other areas in China, and have completely revolutionized our understanding of early bird evolution. "
Go To Article

Jumping genes helped evolution (Science Alert)

2011-09-03T16:11:00.002-05:00

"Local research theory gives further proof to evolution and may help explain big evolutionary jumps in species.

Murdoch Univeristy Professor Wayne Greene and PhD student Keith Oliver have posited that transposons —also known as jumping genes—have had a larger role in primate and human evolution than is traditionally thought."
Go To Article

Evidence against a recent creation - RationalWiki

2011-09-03T08:35:00.002-05:00

There is perhaps no greater attack upon science and rational thought than the doctrine of a recent creation. Young earth creationists deny much of astronomy, geology, biology, palaeontology, chemistry, geomorphology and physics in favor of pseudoscience and their biblically based view that the world is only 6,000 years old.

This article presents some of the reasons why we know that the world is not "young". The entries below are listed in alphabetical order, while in the contents box at the right they can be found listed by the approximate minimum they put on the age of the earth. It is also important to note that these dating methods are not mutually exclusive and where their range, accuracy and applicability overlap, the dates they produce are concordant with each other.

Some young earth creationists accept that this evidence is convincing, but simply argue that God created the universe 6,000 years ago, but set it up so that it would look exactly like a 4.54 billion year old Earth, with fossils, DNA evidence, and eroded rocks created in the state that we would expect them to be in if they were much older - Phillip Gosse, the 19th century English naturalist, was a strong proponent of this view. This view is unpopular even with much of the YEC community,^[1] since it raises the question of why God would create fake fossils and a fake history - do they exist to test our faith, separate the weak from the strong, or does God simply find them funny? These rationalisations tend to be unsatisfying to believers and skeptics alike. We cannot falsify this claim, since there would be no difference between a universe created 6,000 years ago that was indistinguishable from a much older one, and the much older universe of science; however, like other similarly unfalsifiable arguments, it is of little value.
View Site

Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact - On Faith - The Washington Post

2011-08-23T22:39:00.001-05:00

"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job." Go To Article

Skepticblog » Denial of evolution can be hazardous to your health…

2011-08-10T06:48:00.001-05:00

"The continuing problem of creationists and their efforts to hamper science education and research in this country never seems to abate. Some people throw up their hands in resignation and say, “We can never change their minds, so let’s just ignore them.” As I pointed out in my book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters, we cannot afford to ignore the creationist threat to science. Not only do they undermine the proper teaching of biology in our schools, but they have made no secret that their goal is to suppress any science that is not consistent with their literalistic view of the Bible. Good bye, astronomy and cosmology. Good bye, physical anthropology and human paleontology. Good bye, geology (and forget finding oil or coal or gas ever again). Good bye molecular biology, and its evidence for evolution. And forget all the benefits that these sciences provide us, or the richer perspective on life that we gain by understanding our true place in the universe, rather than the version handed down by some Bronze Age shepherds." Go To Article

Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve : NPR

2011-08-10T06:43:00.001-05:00

"Let's go back to the beginning — all the way to Adam and Eve, and to the question: Did they exist, and did all of humanity descend from that single pair?

According to the Bible (Genesis 2:7), this is how humanity began: 'The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' God then called the man Adam, and later created Eve from Adam's rib. Go To Article

Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It's a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity, from evangelicals to confessional churches such as the Christian Reformed Church.

But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: 'That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.'"

The Evidence for Evolution | NCSE

2011-08-03T14:22:00.001-05:00

"Does evolution really happen? Here's ammo for that next encounter with a creationist. An exclusive excerpt from The Evidence for Evolution" Read the excerpt

Skepticblog » Shindigs of Pseudoscience

2011-07-27T14:20:00.001-05:00

"Whenever I read about the conventions held by creationists, it is always staggering to see so much ignorance of science and scholarship on display. If you read through one of their programs or peruse the abstracts, your mind is boggled at the bizarre thinking and intellectual contortions these people must attempt, from weird ideas of how to fit all living thing into Noah’s ark to odd explanations of where the flood waters came from and where they went, to even weirder ideas of why the universe appears to be 13.7 billion years old (but is only really 6000 years old), or why radiometric dating doesn’t work or how to explain the complex geologic history of the earth with Bronze Age myths of superstitious shepherds." Read More

Epigenetic 'memory' key to nature versus nurture

2011-07-27T14:12:00.001-05:00

"ScienceDaily (July 25, 2011) — Researchers at the John Innes Centre have made a discovery, reported this evening (24 July) in Nature, that explains how an organism can create a biological memory of some variable condition, such as quality of nutrition or temperature. The discovery explains the mechanism of this memory -- a sort of biological switch -- and how it can also be inherited by offspring." Read More

The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology | Senter | Reports of the National Center for Science Education

2011-07-20T10:20:00.001-05:00

"The ironic demonstration that there is no trace of the Genesis

Flood in the geologic record" Read More

Fish fins and mouse feet controlled by the same ancient genetic switch | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine

2011-07-20T06:55:00.001-05:00

"Whenever you pick up a book or take a step, you’re relying on a genetic legacy that’s been handed down since your ancestors swam about in prehistoric oceans. Your hands and feet– intricate bundles of bones and muscle – are your versions of the fins of fish. They may look very different, but they were sculpted from embryonic flesh using similar genetic programmes." Read More

Skepticblog » An eyeful of creationist IDiocy

2011-07-14T06:52:00.002-05:00

"A few weeks ago my email box was full of gloating messages from creationists claiming that the latest discovery of complex eyes in the Cambrian “proved” creationism and “refuted” evolution. As usual, creationists demonstrate a remarkable ability to completely misunderstand and misinterpret real science, and get the message of the paper ass-backward." Read More

RNA reactor could have served as a precursor of life

2011-07-14T06:49:00.001-05:00

"(PhysOrg.com) -- Nobody knows quite how life originated on Earth, but most scientists agree that living cells did not abruptly appear from nonliving cells in a single step. Instead, there were probably a series of pre-cellular life forms that arose from nonliving chemicals and eventually led to a living cell, one that could undergo metabolism and reproduce. One of the most well-known theories of pre-cellular life is the RNA world theory, which proposes that life based on RNA predates current life, which is based on DNA, RNA, and proteins. But recently, scientists have been wondering what may have preceded RNA. In a new study, a team of scientists from Germany has suggested that the ability to self-replicate may have first emerged in the form of an RNA reactor, which they show can transmit information." Read More

Complex eyes in the Cambrian

2011-07-10T20:42:00.003-05:00

"I got a letter from a creationist today, claiming that "Darwinism is falsified," based on an article in Nature. It's kind of amazing; this article was just published today, and the metaphorical digital ink on it is barely metaphorically dry, and creationists are already busily mangling it." Read More

10 facts of Darwinian evolution young-earth creationists donÍt want toæunderstand - Born Again Pagan

2011-07-10T20:33:00.001-05:00

"10. Beyond a shadow of doubt, human DNA and chimpanzee DNA are 98% identical. We diverged from the same common ancestor 5 million years ago. This isn’t idle speculation, it is a fact bound up in deductive logic. We are the modern descendants of ancient apes, just as modern apes are the descendants from that same ancestral tree but on a different branch to humans. Just as the VW Beetle is the ancestor of the Porsche Carrera GT, one does not cease to exist because of the emergence of the other. But where car designs are engineered and refined by man, life is shaped by genetic mutations, which over time, gives rise to entirely new species." Read More

Pictures: Nine Fish With "Hands" Found to Be New Species

2011-07-09T19:10:00.001-05:00

"Using its fins to walk, rather than swim, along the ocean floor in an undated picture, the pink handfish is one of nine newly named species described in a recent scientific review of the handfish family." Read More

inFact: Logical Fallacies 1

2011-07-08T07:56:00.000-05:00

"Ever hear someone argue a point that was effective, even though it didn't quite ring true? Chances are they used a logical fallacy." Watch Video

Transcript from video:

In this first of three videos, we're going to look at some common fallacious arguments; ways that people make their points sounds convincing even when they're not true. A common one is:

The Ad Hominem

Arguing against the person rather than against the argument. Let's say some guy is trying to convince you that Einstein's theory of relativity is wrong:

Einstein? That guy married his cousin. How can you trust his calculations?

Flip it around and you have:

The Bandwagon Fallacy

Which tries to claim that something must be true because so many people believe it:

50 million people have read The Secret. That many people can't be wrong.

Oh yes they can. How about the people whose religious or political beliefs are different from yours? That's a lot more than 50 million right there.

You can also use:

The Argument from Antiquity

To prove that something must be true because people have believed it for a long time.

Chinese medicine's been around for 5,000 years. It wouldn't have lasted that long if it didn't work.

Being ancient only proves that an idea comes from prescientific times. Maybe it works, like the wheel; maybe it doesn't, like burning witches (some more great ancient wisdom).

A related tactic is to pull out

The All-Natural Fallacy

This is a way to sell a product by raising the specter of concern about competing products that might be... "tarnished" by modern knowledge.

You should sprinkle some of this Haitian zombie powder in your wound. Ground human bones, hemlock, stinging nettle, pufferfish neurotoxin... it's all natural.

The Argument from Authority

Ignores the need to have good information and instead relies on an authority figure.

It doesn't matter what your research shows; my information came from a scientist. So it can't be wrong!

But if all else fails, fall back on:

The Appeal to Quantum Physics

This is why people think Deepak Chopra knows anything; he throws around terms like this to make whatever he says sound scientific and advanced.

Quantum physics links our metaphysical beings through quantum entanglement.

Hey it sounded over my head; he must know what he's talking about.

Next time we'll look at some ways that language itself can be misused to accomplish the same thing.

Brian Dunning

BBC - Wonder Monkey: Can religious teachings prove evolution to be true?

2011-07-07T14:01:00.001-05:00

Matt Walker | 16:38 UK time, Tuesday, 5 July 2011

"It is one of the great questions of the past 150 years.

Did God or evolution drive the emergence of life in all its resplendent variety?

This blog, the US education system, and even American politics have to a degree all become dominated by the debate at various times, which goes to the heart of our world view and our ideas of where we, and all other forms of life, came from." Read More

YouTube - Epic creationist fails of our time

2011-06-29T13:43:00.003-05:00

"Another nominee for the coveted Golden Crocoduck braves the waters of science with the leaky boat of creationist ignorance." Watch Video

Mammalian brain followed a scented evolutionary trail : Nature News

2011-06-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

"As species go, humans aren't renowned for their sense of smell. But an improved ability to suss out scents in our 200-million-year old ancestors may have laid the groundwork for the bulging brains of humans and all other mammals." Read More

BBC News - Why is there only one human species?

2011-06-24T07:22:00.001-05:00

Not so very long ago, we shared this planet with several other species of human, all of them clever, resourceful and excellent hunters, so why did only Homo sapiens survive? Read More

BBC News - Why is there only one human species?

Jerry Coyne on Evolution | FiveBooks | The Browser

2011-06-22T17:27:00.002-05:00

The evolutionary biologist tells us why Darwin is still essential reading and sifts the vast amount of more recent writing on evolution for books that are both inspiring to scientists and accessible to general readers. Read More

Jerry Coyne on Evolution | FiveBooks | The Browser

Evolution Made Easy

2011-06-07T09:39:00.001-05:00

http://i.imgur.com/xWpvw.jpg

Skepticblog » Reality Check

2011-04-20T10:27:00.001-05:00

In recent years, both philosophers and science deniers (such as creationists) have repeatedly attacked the objectivity of science and scientists. Creationists claim that scientists are big frauds, deceived by a mass delusion about evolution. They argue that the stratigraphic sequence of fossils in the rock record is faked by evolutionists who shuffle the fossils and the strata in the order they need to prove evolution, then allegedly point to the same sequence as proof of evolution. (Never mind the fact that the objective, empirical sequence of fossils through geologic time was worked out by devoutly religious naturalists like William Smith and Georges Cuvier before 1800, at least 50 years before evolution was published by Charles Darwin).
Read On

Africa the birthplace of human language, analysis suggests

2011-04-16T10:47:00.002-05:00

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2011) — Psychologists from The University of Auckland have just published two major studies on the diversity of the world's languages in the journals Science and Nature.

The first study, published in Science by Dr Quentin Atkinson, provides strong evidence for Africa as the birthplace of human language. Read More

Top 15 Misconceptions about Evolution

2011-03-15T23:17:00.001-05:00

Biological evolution is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations). Evolution helps us to understand the history of life. While evolution is very widely accepted, many people hold to misconceptions about it. This list should help to dispel some of those myths.

Top 15 Misconceptions about Evolution

Top 10 Signs Of Evolution In Modern Man

2011-03-15T22:38:00.001-05:00

Through history, as natural selection played its part in the development of modern man, many of the useful functions and parts of the human body become unnecessary. What is most fascinating is that many of these parts of the body still remain in some form so we can see the progress of evolution. This list covers the ten most significant evolutionary changes that have taken place – leaving signs behind them.

See the top 10 here.

Watch out! Record number of creationism bills in 2011

2011-03-13T06:41:00.000-05:00

Yes, there is a record number of creationism bills being introduced in 2011, and it's still the early part of the year! Religious Dispatches has the story here.

The Missing Link Fallacy

2011-02-11T07:01:00.001-06:00

"its a bacchanalian romp of differing misconceptions and twisted logic - basically, nothing out of the ordinary for a creationist, for whom apparently the addition of even more terrible ideas can only strengthen your argument. Very quickly, I got bored of the tedious process of writing a comment correcting these misconceptions, and I was just about to ignore it and start writing my next article." Read More.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

International Darwin Day!

2011-02-10T19:02:00.001-06:00

February 12th is International Darwin Day!

No one ever found Noah's Ark

2011-01-30T11:32:00.001-06:00

The hard-core fundamentalists love forwarding links to sites like this one, alleging to provide archeological proof of various fantasies from The Bible -- such as Noah's Ark.

Here is a good resource for understanding the bunk behind these alleged findings.

What's funny, I think is how they keep finding Noah's Ark. It seems one time just wasn't enough! Check this link for more.

Anyway, even Answers in Genesis knows all this Ark nonsense is totally absurd.

But, if you still need to know more, this is a great link on the science that would be necessary for a global flood. And even if you only believe half of the science, the story is still ridiculous.

Just like other flood stories we all know are fiction, like Atlantis.

Why do creationists distance themselves from flat-earthers?

2011-01-23T17:08:00.000-06:00

Firstly, let's remember that creationists say they take the bible literally. Well, what about all the evidence in the bible that supports a flat earth? And in the event you did not know -- the flat-earthers are not a novel piece of ancient history. No! They are still active. You can see their website here!

Here are some key excerpts from this great item about flat-earth descriptions in the bible.

The Shape of the Earth

Disregarding the dome, the essential flatness of the earth's surface is required by verses like Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” If the earth were flat, a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth. Likewise, in describing the temptation of Jesus by Satan, Matthew 4:8 says, “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory.” Obviously, this would be possible only if the earth were flat. The same is true of Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him...”

Or this tid-bit:

Again, Enoch says, “I went in the direction of the north, to the extreme ends of the earth, and there at the extreme end of the whole world I saw a great and glorious seat. There (also) I saw three open gates of heaven; when it blows cold, hail, frost, snow, dew, and rain, through each one of the (gates) the winds proceed in the northwesterly direction (1 Enoch 34:1-2).” This accords well with Jeremiah 51:16 which says, “he brings up the mist from the ends of the earth, he opens rifts for the rain and brings the wind out of his storehouses.” In subsequent chapters, Enoch journeys “to the extreme ends of the earth” in the west, south, and east. In each place he saw three more “open gates of heaven.”

Here is my point: modern creationists believe that the earth is round. They believe the pictures from space. (They don't believe all visual evidence, though -- such as light-speed, or fossils. With those, they invent convoluted arguments to maintain their world view.)

But why the exception for the flat earth? Why not defend that, too? There are actually people out there doing exactly that!

For example, consider "Tom Bishop," over at the Flat Earth forums. Just check out this post.

Curvature results from the fact that on a flat earth we are looking down at a flat circle. And a circle is always curved in two dimensions. The Antarctic coast and other distant continents of the earth are still tens of thousands of miles away horizontally from the observer at an altitude of 100 miles (edge of space), and thus beyond the resolution of the human eye and merged with the line of the horizon, indiscernible and faded with the thickness of the atmosphere. This is why the view is limited to the immediate vicinity below the observer, and why the land fades into a blueish fog as it recedes.

We can confirm that we are looking down at the circle of the earth by noting that shots from amateur high altitude balloons show an elliptical horizon. If the earth were a globe, curving downwards in three dimensions, all curvature seen in photographs would appear as an arc of a circle. However, curvature does not appear as an arc of a circle. The Earth is elliptical in Russian, Chinese, and amateur space photographs. A striking indication of a Flat Earth.

The only pictures which show the horizon as an arc of a circle are NASA's Apollo shots. The Apollo missions did not occur.

So what's my point? That the creationist will pick-and-choose what kind of science to accept, and what kind of science to "debunk," depending on what is easy. It's pretty easy to get people confused when you talk about things like quantum physics, modern cosmology, or even just the technical details of natural selection. That gives them tons of space for subterfuge.

But they know the vast majority of their potential clients cannot reject the model of the spherical earth. But I submit to you the idea the creationist has no valid claim to dismiss flat-earth notions! And the fact they do dismiss flat-earth nonsense is a testament to their manipulative nature.

"Teaching the Controversy" is total nonsense.

2011-01-23T06:49:00.002-06:00

This is the first I've heard of creationists attempting to push bunk science masquerading as "Intelligent Design" into Ohio's public schools. Since I'm from Cincinnati, this struck me, and I thought it even more interesting because the TalkOrigins web page features an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2002 as emblematic of the creationist perspective, along with details for debunking that nonsense.

Some creationists will say that schools should "teach the controversy" when it comes to evolution versus intelligent design. There is just one small problem with this concept: there is no controversy! Not in science. Only when we consider the uninformed opinions of crazy people with political agendas. I mean, some racists might say black people are inferior. Should schools "teach the controversy" on that issue, too? Of course not!

Check out this page at TalkOrigins. The claim they dispute at that link: "Students should be taught all sides of a controversial issue. Evolution should not be taught without teaching the controversy that surrounds it." Now check the source: Meyer, Stephen C., Teach the controversy on origins. Cincinnati Enquirer, 30 March, 2002.

Find that article here.

So right here, in my own backyard, Ohio and Cincinnati became part of the battleground for the new war on reason. I'm sure they'll return, which is why it's imperative we educate as many people on this as possible.

Here's TalkOrigin's number one response:

On the fundamental issues of the theory of evolution, such as the facts of common descent and natural selection, there is no scientific controversy. The "teach the controversy" campaign is an attempt to get pseudoscience taught in classrooms. Lessons about the sociological issues of the evolution-creation controversy may be appropriate in history or other nonscience classes.

If the object is to keep bad science from the classroom, the same standards should be applied to the counterarguments from creationists, which are all bad science.

I recommend reading the whole page to learn more details.

There ARE transitional fossils

2011-01-23T05:35:00.004-06:00

Creationists love to pretend there are no "transitional fossils." See for yourself. But they are lying. It's maddening.

From Answers in Genesis:

None of the five museum officials whom Luther Sunderland interviewed could offer a single example of a transitional series of fossilized organisms that would document the transformation of one basically different type to another.
Dr Eldredge [curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the American Museum] said that the categories of families and above could not be connected, while Dr Raup [curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago] said that a dozen or so large groups could not be connected with each other. But Dr Patterson [a senior palaeontologist and editor of a prestigious journal at the British Museum of Natural History] spoke most freely about the absence of transitional forms.

TalkOrigins.org has an extensive list of resources debunking this creationist nonsense. Follow the link. Some of the examples give way to even more documented examples, such as this link regarding dinosaurs and birds. Spend just a bit of time, and you can find all kinds of resources. Just search for any of the types, and you can find things like encyclopedia entries with illustrations, such as here.

When the creationists say there are no transitional fossils, they are lying. Or they are showcasing their utter ignorance.

Of course we can't find every single fossil that ever existed through all of time, but that seems to be what they want. Still, consider the expansive fossil record, and remember: this is more evidence than anyone requires them to produce for their fantasy storybook.

Debunking Creationists

2011-01-22T14:33:00.001-06:00

Have you seen the TalkOrigins web site? They have a great resource, showcasing TONS of claims by creationists, and then documenting why they are complete nonsense.

Find it here.

Why is evolution called a "theory"?

2011-01-22T14:30:00.001-06:00

Here is the big secret creationists don't want you to know: the word "theory" has a different definition when used in science than when used in casual conversation! So why is evolution a "theory"? Well, it's not... Not really. It is a fact, in terms of what is plainly observable. It's pretty easy to understand the terminology, which means creationists who try to make people confused about this word are dishonest!

A colleague gave me a great summation recently:

In science, a theory is an explanation for something that is seen in nature. By that definition, evolution is, indeed, a theory because it explains the mechanisms (the how, the why) that lead to the changes that we see in animals (us included).

We recognize, however, that any theory could eventually be replaced with a better theory if that better theory did a better job explaining why we see what we see.

A law is typically used for simply describing some relationship that we see in nature. For example, there’s Charles’s Law that states that for a gas, as the temperature rises, the volume of the gas rises, too. That’s irrefutable. It’s a relationship that has been seen over and over again and holds true all the time.

The theory would be what explains why that law exists. For example, you could have a theory saying that gas particles move around…when you heat them, they move faster and push the walls of the container (like a balloon) outward to cause the volume to increase. The theory explains why or how. The law just tells us the relationship.

The confusion comes when the word theory is used in a non-science way to suggest some guess – sometimes unsupported, often wrong – to explain why something happens. There’s a theory about the 9-11 attacks about Jewish people controlling the world, for example.

In science, a theory has been tested over and over and seems to hold true. Otherwise, it would already have been abandoned.

To me, evolution is not a law because evolution describes the mechanisms of how and why organisms change over time. In all honesty, no scientists disbelieve evolution at this point. There is disagreement on some of the details of the theory – the details of the how and why – but not the big questions that things evolve or even the general ideas of how and why.

This issue was taken up in the July, 2002 issue of Scientific American. Find a web imprint here (but you need to pay for the whole article).

Here is an excerpt on this notion of evolution as a "theory":

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling. All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

I would recommend downloading the whole article for your benefit!

The Science of Denial

2011-01-22T14:21:00.001-06:00

My perspective may be different than most because I was a young-earth creationist for a good part of my adult life. Sadly, I wasn't much for hunting the truth, I was happy to accept my faith and trust in God.

To be honest, I didn't really think about it much until later but was a fairly fundamentalist Christian, accepting the Bible as inerrant, special creation, and even "speaking in tongues" which is also part of scripture. So when presented with the argument that we must believe Genesis literally, including that the Earth is young, that seemed like a natural. I had nothing vested in evolution or the age of stuff so it wasn't a big deal. In fact, it was fairly easy to accept the arguments presented by religious sources and look no farther.

That changed when a series of events led me to first doubt my beliefs about creationism then discover that they were pure and utter fantasy. Through the help of an Australian friend who answered some of my questions with specific examples, and the "Evolution 101" podcast of Zachary Moore, I realized that I'd been hoodwinked.

I was pissed.

It turns out that the scientific evidence for an old earth, for an evolutionary progression of life, and the validity of dating methods, is extremely well understood and well accepted by essentially everyone outside of religion. It says a lot that 95% of all working biologists accept evolution and an old earth, but it says even more that the remaining 5% are almost exclusively defending their religion. That's not science.

Geologists are another group that overwhelmingly accepts a billion+ year old earth. It's telling that even most Christian Geologists accept this as apparent by looking at the Affiliation of Christian Geologists website. Here's their statement about an old earth.

Since tossing the "god glasses" I've been thrilled to discover an incredible world of science that, as a method, has advanced our capability in everything from feeding a growing population to making really cool stuff like cars and powered paragliders. I've also learned that there's quite a science behind belief.

When someone has lots of social connections they are looking for ways to reinforce their core beliefs. That makes sense, of course, nobody wants to think of themselves as "close minded"; we want to think that we have good reason for those beliefs. So we seek out "supporting" evidence which is exactly what I did.

Answers in Genesis was where I turned for those questions that seemed intractable. And frequently their non-answer was disappointing but I always chalked it up simply not knowing the mind of god. "We'll find out in heaven" was a common refrain. It wasn't until my social circle changed that I was able to finally start looking elsewhere. When my Australian friend questioned my blind belief in a friendly but direct way, and I had no good answers, I started looking at other evidence.

Wow. That evidence is truly overwhelming for those who are interested in knowing, not just believing. It takes a lot but the trappings of reality are worth the journey.

Happy hunting.