Feedback for October 2005

After satisfying those obligations, I was reminded of Mr. Balter's essay when he posted to the TalkOrigins feedback. My full response to this became rather long, and so it is posted separately at The Panda's Thumb.

Near the end of Mr. Balter's essay he makes the following assertion,

Given the opportunity to debate, scientists should say: "Bring it on."

This is so foolish that I could be amused. I reiterate from the clerical letter on Religion and Science, that promoting creationism is to embrace ignorance and to transmit ignorance. Mr. Balter, that is also the sum of your proposals.

The universe was sneezed from the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure.

[Now where did I leave my towel…]

I do not think oxygen would have been a problem in a global flood. First, there is plenty already in the atmosphere to supply one boatload for years, even if there were no source for fresh oxygen. Second, the turbidity would likely stir up nutrients that would allow phytoplankton to grow even more than normal; they would suffer for forty days or so, but I would expect them to do very well after things calmed down a bit.

By trying to force 500 million years of earth history into one year, the creationists already supply enough heat sources to poach everything many times over. More CO2 seems a negligible addition.

We've certainly heard of Kent Hovind; he is one of the most notorious and shonky characters in this game. Since he is so prominent, we have whole section on Hovind. He's a solo maverick, widely considered as an embarassment by larger young earth creationist organizations.

Kent is, by all accounts, a good debater simply by virtue of playing to stacked audiences, and using a shameless rapid fire delivery of nonsense with errors and distortions and bad assumptions in every sentence. Debating a clown like Kent is a bad idea. The right approach is to engage individual subjects carefully, one by one, in print where it can be read and checked. That is what we do here.

Light receptors come in two types, called "rods" and "cones." Rods work well in low light but do not distinguish color. Cones are color sensitive but require more light to operate. Nocturnal animals tend to have more rods and fewer cones because they need to see in dim light, and as a result their color vision would be weaker, maybe so weak as to be useless.

Animals with three cone types (like humans) can distinguish a wide range of colors. Most vertebrates (including dogs, cats, and horses) have two cone types, which suggests an ability to distinguish some colors, but not the richness of human color vision. There are humans with dichromatic (two cone pigments) color vision: those who have red-green color blindness. They can see some color, though not as many colors as the rest of us.

For further information:

• Handprint: Light and the eye
• The distribution and nature of colour vision among the mammals, Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 1993 Aug;68(3):413-71.
• The talk.origins archive Evolution of Color Vision FAQ by Mickey Rowe
• Cats' Color Vision (Los Angeles Natural History Museum)

You seem to think that this is significant. There are namy kinds of rock, but we generally group them in just three kinds. Now, consider a "rock layer" that is formed out of the sands that eroded out of that lava flow which then were recemented by dissolved carbonates which were then recrystalized. This is the "mineral cycle" taught to elementry school children; igneous rock to sedimentary rock to metamorphic rock. We have evidence of fossil life in all but the igneous rocks going all the way back to 3.7 billion years ago.

The theory of evolution is just that -- a theory. According to "The American Heritage Dictionary," a theory is:

A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Evolution is a set of principles that tries to explain how life, in all its various forms, appeared on Earth.

It goes on to say that the theory is a work in progress. The site correctly identifies speciation as the macroevolutionary boundary. Overall I would have to say it is a pretty good site.

Harland et al., A Geologic Time Scale (Correlation with stratigraphic position.)

Renne, P. R., W. D. Sharp, A. L. Deino, G. Orsi and L. Civetta, 1997. "⁴⁰Ar/ ³⁹Ar dating into the historical realm: Calibration against Pliny the Younger." Science 277: 1279-1280. (Correlation with known historical events.)

There are also significant correlations with absolute (but less precise) longer-term dating methods, such as the number of days of ancient fossilized annual cycles (changes to the Earth's rate of rotation). See for example Pannella, G., C. MacClintock, and M. N. Thompson. 1968. "Paleontological evidence of variations in length of synodic month since late Cambrian." Science 162: 792-796

I have not heard anything about lizards encased in stones, but they commonly live in small gaps between stones, which might give the illusion of finding them in stones.

There is a story of a live pterodactyl emerging from quarried limestone, but it has no credibility whatsoever.

1. Become informed on the issues (I think that you are doing that).
   
   
2. Use your information in public. By this I mean talk to your family, neighbors, friends and co-workers about these issues.
   
   
3. Vote!
   
   
4. Attend public meetings and speak out.
   
   
5. Run for public office such as school board.
   
   
6. Join and support pro-education groups. For a list of these groups, go to this list of links.

Good luck to us all.

It depends what sort of "facts" you are talking about. For current views on Syrian/Palestinian archaeology, particularly as it relates to history of Judah, and Israel I recommend

Dever, William 2001 What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know IT?: What Archaeology can tell us about the reality of ancient Israel Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Finkelstein, Israel, Neil Silberman 2001 The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts New York: The Free Press

Both of those books assume you are familiar with the following:

Mazar, Amihai 1992 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000-586 B.C.E. The Anchor Bible Reference Library New York: ABRL/Doubleday

Stern, Ephraim 2001 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. II: The Asserian, Babylonian and Persian Periods (732-332 B.C.E.) The Anchor Bible Reference Library New York: ABRL/Doubleday

2) Where are any older written, at or near the time of the happenings of the beginnings, records?

There are several very accessable books you should be reading:

Dalley, Stephanie 2000 Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Revised Oxford: Oxford University Press

Friedman, Richard Elliott 1987 Who Wrote the Bible New York: Harper and Row (Paperback Edition)

Schmandt-Besserat, Denise 1992 Before Writing Volume I: From counting to cuneiform Austin: University of Texas Press

3)If evolution is fact, there must be some partially evolved "beings" that are capable of being taught to read / write / etc.

Well, I often suspect they are the creationist members of school boards. (I am just KIDDING)! Factually, you need to learn some basics about evolution. I suggest, Introduction to Evolutionary Biology.

You might like to check out Pharyngula and The Loom, two blogs on evolution that often have nice diagrams.

2. Species are not rigid, and there are fluid boundaries. They are called "hybrid zones." Search for "hybrid zone" here and/or on the web in general for more information.

3. The platypus is unusual but hardly "messed up." Many of its unusual features are adaptations to hunting in muddy rivers. See here for more information.

While I understand that it makes you feel good and strengthens your sense of community identity to attack the opposition verbally like this, I really hope you don't think it's going to convince anyone, do you?

I thought we should share more of your erudition.

If God can be uncreate, why not the universe? If the universe requires a Mover, why not God? It is either Movers all the way down or it is an arbitrarily chosen stopping point.

I don't argue this to disprove a theist view of things. I argue this to show you that rational argument for the necessity of a god to make scientific explanations hasn't been proven, reasonably or rationally. Science can only proceed with local problems, and the requirement that we can't answer any questions until we can answer all of them is too onerous.

Evolution explains biodiversity through the mechanism of known facts about biological organisms, and on that basis tries to work out as much of the past as it can, like any good science dealing with historical problems. If the universe began by a word or a bang, it is irrelevant to evolutionary theory.

Moreover, it remains to be seen if an evolutionary account of the origins of life is going to work or not. If not, we cannot immediately leap to a divine intervention model. It may be that life is built into the fundamental properties of chemistry. You can explain the nature of the universe as the result of divine action, and I cannot decry that, even if I don't accept it. But once your theology meddles with science, then I can decry it.

Burnie, Davin 1999 Get a Grip on Evolution London: The Ivy Press

Carroll, Sean B. 2005 Endless Forms Most Beautiful New York: Norton

Darwin, Charles 1859 The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Six editions between 1859 and 1872)

Eldredge, Niles 2001 The Triumph of Evolution: And the Failure of Creationism New York: W. H. Freeman & Co.

Ken Miller 1999 Finding Darwin's God New York: HarperCollins

Tattersall, Ian 1995 The Fossil Trail Oxford University Press

And I just bought

Scott, Eugenie C. 2005 Evolution vs Creationism University of California Press

I think that the book by Burnie was the most fun to read, but these are all good.

Enjoy.

If an ark were discovered, I would very much want a detailed archaeological study of it and the site around it to find out as much as possible about it -- what animals it carried, what region and time it was from, etc. Such a study would be necessary anyway to authenticate the find and verify that it is not just any old barge. Many people have proposed that the story of Noah might have been based on a local flood. I tend to doubt that, but a genuine Noah's (or Utnapishtim's or Ziusudra's) Ark could convince me otherwise.

I have not faced your situation myself. If you have not already, consider joining the National Center for Science Education, which can put you into contact with people who have.

Further, prior to the development of reliable isotopic dating technology, nobody could claim to know the Earth's age with any confidence. Estimates of the Earth's age varied wildly, and did not uniformly increase as you argue. For example, various histories proposed by Buffon in the late 1700s involved ages from less than a hundred thousand up to several billion years.

"Testing" of traces of past events is quite possible, without requiring a written record of those events. Assessments of meteorites, and later of Moon rocks, provide multiple means to test theories on the age and history of the Solar System. In all cases the same answer is yielded, and for that reason the mainstream age of the Solar System is considered quite solid. See my Age of the Earth FAQ for details.

Finally, you seem to exhibit confusion in lumping several diverse sciences into one group. "Big bang theorists" are astrophysicists. Most people concerned with the age of the Earth are geologists. People for whom Darwin is a hero are usually biologists. Geologists don't take marching orders from biologists on what the age of the Earth should be, though creationists often seem to indulge in laughably weird conspiracy theories to that effect.

We try to maintain a high standard; and your comments about bad words suggests you are confusing your websites, or not looking at where those words are used. They do not appear in our information FAQs, except in one or two instances where they are being quoted.

For example... the word "asinine" appears only three contexts. It is used by the creationist John Woodmorappe in his response to one of the FAQs, a response we have included within the site. It also shows up in one of the feedback comments, and in a "post of the month" entry.

The word "idiotic" is used by the Flat Earth Society as they rail against conventional science, in a pamphlet of theirs that we have made available. It also appears in some feedback comments from readers; though not in our replies; and it appears in a POTM quoting some other article.

The word "stupid" shows up frequently in feedback comments from our readers; usually from those who think we are stupid. It shows up in a couple of POTM entries, and in one or two instances when quoting some other source. The closest to a use in one of our FAQs is where it appears in a quoted comment used in a supernova article.

The comment on quantum mechanics makes little sense. You appear to be refering to the special role of an observer in quantum mechanics, but this does not correspond to a central conciousness. Quantum mechanics and observation is a frequently misunderstood aspect of physics; but we need not go into that here, because there is nothing in evolutionary psychology that that denies conscious observers.

If the world were truly 6,000 years old, and not created with a forged appearance of advanced age (which is merely an excuse for ignoring the evidence), isotopic methods would easily establish that as a fact.

Extensive studies have been performed on lava flows that happened in historic times. See for example: Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1969, "⁴⁰Ar/³⁶Ar analyses of historic lava flows" in Earth and Planetary Science Letters 6: 47-55. The results of such studies provide no comfort to the young-Earth cause -- i.e., your "prediction" is already disproven. Excess ⁴⁰Ar is found in some cases, but it is fairly uncommon -- and even when it is found, it is not present in sufficient quantity to interfere with long-age determinations. (Sufficient excess ⁴⁰Ar to cause an error of 300,000 years was found in one case. That is enough to render the result useless for a 5,000-year-old sample. But on a 400,000,000-year-old sample, a 300,000-year error is insignificant.)

Dating methods do occasionally fail, and that is not at issue. That Austin was able to intentionally engineer a failure is not really noteworthy. The problem for young-Earth creationists is that dating methods work a pretty large percentage of the time. See my article near the top of the January 1999 feedback, or Radiometric Dating Does Work! by Dr. G. Brent Dalrymple, for some examples of large suites of data that all agree on a precise value (as opposed to Austin's results which were all over the map and therefore would not be taken seriously). A single contrived failure, or even a laundry-list of cases where the methods fail, does not address the pattern of results, and certainly does not explain how it the observed data is a necessary and expected consequence of the young-Earthers' desired timescale.