"Now - let me add this. We're not going to have all the answers. There will be some things like the issue of light from the farthest star in a young universe... we don't have all the answers."
--Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis iTunes Podcast "Sermon: Six Days & The Eisegesis Problem", time into program: 1:09:12
"Ken Ham's answer is consistent with his response on this question from his 'Answers' book. The last question is this and he attempts to offer an explanation for it by saying that some YECs support an 'Appearance of Age' hypothesis but Ham agrees that hypothesis is unsatisfactory since that makes God looks deceptive. Ham concludes in his book with very similar language as his iPod broadcast that we really just don't know, and have to trust. This really was unconvincing to me as this was the first book I read when I was searching out this issue and this lack of response on this issue was instrumental in leading me away from YEC to the RTB position."
--John Walley [a Christian] on the ASA listserv
CREATIONISTS ADMIT THE EVIDENCE FOR STELLAR EVOLUTION POSES PROBLEMS
"Perhaps the most important remaining question [in astronomy] for [young- universe] creationists is the origin of the turnoff points in the H-R diagrams of different clusters. The stars are real physical objects and presumably follow physical laws; we would rather not take the easy way out by saying simply that `God made them that way.' But if creationists take the position of rejecting stellar evolution, they should provide a feasible alternative."
--PAUL STEIDL [young-universe creationist], The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), p. 153 -- as quoted by Howard J. Van Till in The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us about the Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 239
"...the theory of stellar structure appears to be founded on a good physical basis and...stellar evolution is intimately related to stellar structure...
"If creationists wish to scrap stellar evolution completely, then it is incumbent on us to rework stellar structure and/or physics in a convincing fashion...
"The standard observational tool used in studying stellar structure and evolution is the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram... It consists of a plot of stellar luminosity increasing upward and temperature increasing to the left...Most stars are found on a roughly diagonal band called the main sequence (MS)...
"This agreement is quite impressive and the physical assumptions that go into it are so well founded it is doubtful that many creationists would have much to argue with in main sequence (MS) stellar structure. However, what is generally called post MS evolution is not far removed from the brief outline of stellar structure given above.
"The most massive stars may pass through successive steps of fusing helium nuclei with increasingly more massive nuclei up to iron...Note that these transitions have not actually been observed. However, they are based on physics principles and will naturally occur...
"The upshot is that the most massive stars have MS lifetimes of only a few hundred thousand years (of course, still much longer than young-age creationists would allow), while the lowest mass stars have MS lifetimes approaching 100 billion years...
"And evolutionary assumption concludes that the stars in a star cluster should form from a single cloud so that the members represent...a homogenous group. Different clusters should have different ages, and though they technically have different compositions, even large differences in composition do not seriously affect the overall appearance of an H-R diagram...
"The agreement of the theory [of stellar evolution] is quite impressive...
"[The expected evolutionary] trend between globular and open clusters is observed...
"Evidence [exists] that the formation of planetary nebulae and the evolution of white dwarfs are related...These two ages have a very good correlation...
"A similar relationship holds for neutron stars and supernova remnants. As with planetary nebulae, the expansion velocity and observed size of the remnant can be used to estimate the time since the explosion...Where a pulsar can be identified in a supernova remnant, the ages of the remnant and the pulsar are well correlated.
"Very brief discussions of stellar structure and evolution have been presented. Though it would seem that creationists would not have much with which to quarrel in the former, most would largely dismiss the latter. However, the two are intimately related, and one cannot be rejected without seriously calling into question the other. We are appealing to readers to give much attention to the study of stellar evolution..."
--DANNY R. FAULKNER and DON B. DE YOUNG [young-universe creationists], "Toward a Creationist Astronomy," Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 28, Dec. 1991, pp. 87-91
ADMISSIONS BY CREATIONISTS REGARDING THE EVIDENCE FOR AN OLD EARTH
Young-earther creation-evangelist Duane T. Gish has refused to debate the age of the earth and has even admitted (much to his fellow creationists' chagrin) that the evidence for fossil succession is a challenge that his fellow young-earthers at ICR have not adequately met:
"When I visited the Institute for Creation Research towards the end of 1978... The associate director is Duane T. Gish, who has a PhD in biochemistry from Berkeley. ... Considering that I believe living things have a common origin and have evolved over a long period of time, and Duane Gish doesn't, there turned out to be a surprising amount of shared ground between us. ... Duane Gish and others of his standing are well aware of this problem [for their young-earth views, i.e., the problem of the age of the earth], but in the end they let their faith over-ride it. When I asked him what were the biggest difficulties for creationist science the points in a debate which he felt least comfortable in answering - he answered after a moment's thought that it was the apparently great age of Earth as shown by the fairly recent advances in radiometric dating; and that the the fossil record could be interpreted as showing ecologically complete ages - the age of invertebrates, the age of fishes, the age of reptiles, and so on up to the present." [from Hitching F., The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong, Pan: London, 1982, pp.115-121]
In 1938 Harold Clark (a disciple of the Flood geologist, George Macready Price, whose work also inspired Henry Morris for hypothesis "flood geology" as an explanation for the geological record) was invited by a student to visit the oil fields of Oklahoma and northern Texas, where Mr. Clark saw with his own eyes why geologists believed as they did. Observations of deep drilling and conversations with practical geologists gave Clark a real shock that permanently erased any confidence he had left in Price's vision of a topsy-turvy fossil record. Clark wrote to Price:
"The rocks do lie in a much more definite sequence than we have ever allowed. The statements made in your book, The New Geology, do not harmonize with the conditions in the field. All over the Midwest the rocks lie in great sheets extending over hundreds of miles, in regular order. Thousands of well cores prove this. In East Texas alone are 25,000 deep wells. Probably well over 100,000 wells in the Midwest give data that has been studied and correlated. The science has become a very exact one. Millions of dollars are spent in drilling, with the paleontological findings of the company geologists taken as the basis for the work. The sequence of the microscopic fossils in the strata is remarkably uniform. The same sequence is found in America, Europe, and anywhere that detailed studies have been made. This oil geology has opened up the depths of the earth in a way that we never dreamed of twenty years ago." [Cited by Donald R. Prothero, A Review Essay of The Creationists by Ronald L. Numbers]
ANOTHER CHALLENGE FOR YOUNG-EARTH CREATIONISM
When dealing with stellar matters it's not simply a question of "apparent age," it's also a question of "apparent HISTORY IN THE MAKING." We see galaxies turning that never really turned, pulsars pulsing that never really pulsed, rings of matter expanding that never really exploded in the first place, stars changing in brightness and frequency but such events are not really taking place, they never took place, not ever. Stars exploding, but no such explosions ever took place. Our galaxy (one of over 50 billion such galaxies) contains about a hundred billion stars and is about 100,000 light-years in width. If you are a young-earth creationist that means all the light beyond 6,000 light years distance is "created light," which means that most of the light from stars in our galaxy is telling us about the changing histories of stars and other matter that is completely fabricated history, such history never took place, but we SEE IT TAKING PLACE as if it had. And that's just for our galaxy, beyond our galaxy lay over 50 billion more galaxies, all far far beyond 6,000 light years away. And all that we see is fabricated history taking place before our eyes.
So why even create the rest of the cosmos, maybe nothing really exists beyond 6,000 light years around the earth but a projection screen and God is showing a movie of things that don't exist and never really happened, but we just see it happening.
Think about it, the young-earth cosmos only presents us with true history from 6,000 light years away, and even THAT history, at the outskirts of 6,000 light years away, only just NOW kicked in. But the cosmos is BILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS ACROSS, that's a heck of a lot of false history unfolding before our eyes of things that never ever happened, but we SEE IT HAPPENING, UNFOLDING, BECOMING, PASSING THOUGH STAGES, NONE OF WHICH EVER REALLY HAPPENED?
Supernova 1987A and a 6000 Year Old Universe
Numerous articles on a classic piece of astronomical observation that poses multiple insoluble problems for young-earth astronomy: SUPERNOVA 1987http://www.evolutionpages.com/SN1987a.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/ancientproof/SN1987A.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-add.html
Scroll down the above web page for info on SN 1987A )http://home.entouch.net/dmd/age.htm( Scroll down the above web page for infor on SN 1987A )
--------
YEC's admitting that SN 1987A poses a problem
http://www.asa3.org/archive/ASA/200101/0168.html
( The above webpage consists of an email thread from a discussion group at the American Scientific Affiliation website, a major national organization consisting of Christian men and women who are professional scientists, most of whom are old-earth creationists and theistic evolutionists, with some young-earthers. It is older than Henry Morris' ICR and Morris actually quit the ASA to form the ICR after having some of his pet young-earth hypotheses questioned by scientists who were ASA members. )
See also this discussion of SN 1987a
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/marslist12.html
Ed (Edward T. Babinski, editor of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists)
Creationists like
Todd Wood of
Bryan College have admitted that viewing humans and chimps as completely different "kinds" is a "problem" because humans and chimps are nearer to one another genetically than species that creationists view as a single "kind," like "cats" for instance. Wood's technical paper discusses a number of specific "problems" for creationism. Below are edited portions, along with portions of articles by others on the topic, and a suggested reading list.
"The Chimpanzee Genome and the Problem of Biological Similarity" by Todd Charles Wood, creationist [Center for Origins Research, Bryan College, Dayton, TN, USA], 2006
"Abstract. Evidence for the great similarity between chimpanzees and humans was recently reinforced with the publication of a rough draft of the chimpanzee genome...
"If the entire chimpanzee genome had been sequenced, it would probably reveal 40-45 million nucleotides unique to each species. That difference... may sound profound, but remember that the majority of nucleotides are contained in simple repeats, either of satellites or transposable elements. Further, even a length variation of 90 million nucleotides constitutes only 3% of the entire genome."...
"When comparing the chimpanzee and human genomes, we find a near identity of gene sequences but important differences in transpositional features (including differences in chromosome number, chromosomal inversions, and transposable element content). As noted above, this implies that the important biological differences are not so much in the genes themselves but in how the genes are expressed, which may be related to the substantive differences between the genetic context that arise from transposable or repetitive elements. [See for instance the "60-second science" video, "What is Evo-Devo," in which Christopher Mims, an editor of Scientific American magazine, explains the role that differeing "gene expression" plays in evolution: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/02/what_is_evodevo.html ]
"The high degree of genetic similarity between apes and humans has been repeatedly confirmed since King and Wilson’s (1975) summary. Chromosomal banding patterns revealed a high degree of correspondence between human and chimpanzee chromosomes (Miller 1977, Yunis et al. 1980, Yunis and Prakash 1982). Major chromosomal differences detected were a putative fusion of chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13 to form human chromosome 2, and pericentromeric inversions on human chromosomes 4, 5, 9, 12, 15, and 16 (Yunis and Prakash 1982)."... "Human chromosome 2 corresponds to two separate chromosomes in chimpanzee. These findings have subsequently been confirmed in studies using fluorescence in situ hybridization (Müller and Wienberg 2001).
"The evolutionary explanation for human chromosome 2 corresponding to two separate chromosomes in the great apes is that two chromosomes in a human ancestor fused at their ends (telomeres), with one of the centromeres becoming inactive. By examining the putative 'fusion' point, researchers have discovered an inverted array of telomeric repeats (TTAGGG)n (Ijdo et al. 1991) and other sequences found in subtelomeric chromosomal regions (Fan et al. 2002). Centromeric alpha satellite sequences have been detected on the long arm of chromosome 2, which seem to correspond to an inactive centromere (Alexandrov et al. 2001)."...
"...it is difficult to imagine a scenario other than chromosomal fusion to explain the inverted array of telomere and subtelomere repeats at the putative fusion site on chromosome 2 (Ijdo et al. 1991)."
"PREVIOUS CREATIONIST RESPONSES -- Since the Bible clearly teaches the special creation of human beings (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:7, 21-22), what does the similarity of humans and chimpanzees mean for creationists? Creationists have responded to these studies in a variety of ways. A very popular argument is that similarity does not necessarily indicate common ancestry but could also imply common design (e.g. Batten 1996; Thompson and Harrub 2005; DeWitt 2005). While this is true, the mere fact of similarity is only a small part of the evolutionary argument.
"Far more important than the mere occurrence of similarity is the kind of similarity observed. Similarity is not random. Rather, it forms a detectable pattern with some groups of species more similar than others. As an example consider a 200,000 nucleotide region from human chromosome 1 (Figure 2). When compared to the chimpanzee, the two species differ by as little as 1-2%, but when compared to the mouse, the differences are much greater. Comparison to chicken reveals even greater differences. This is exactly the expected pattern of similarity that would result if humans and chimpanzees shared a recent common ancestor and mice and chickens were more distantly related. The question is not how similarity arose but why this particular pattern of similarity arose. To say that God could have created the pattern is merely ad hoc. The specific similarity we observe between humans and chimpanzees is not therefore evidence merely of their common ancestry but of their close relationship.
"Evolutionary biologists also appeal to specific similarities that would be predicted by evolutionary descent. Max’s (1986) argument for shared errors in the human and chimpanzee genomes would be an example of a specific similarity expected if evolution were true. [Max's article was updated in 2003, including responses to creationists: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/ ]
"This argument could be significantly amplified from recent findings of genomic studies. For example, Gilad et al. (2003) surveyed 50 olfactory receptor genes in humans and apes. They found that the open reading frame of 33 of the human genes were interrupted by nonsense codons or deletions, rendering them pseudogenes. Sixteen of these human pseudogenes were also pseudogenes in chimpanzee, and they all shared the exact same substitution or deletion as the human sequence. Eleven of the human pseudogenes were shared by chimpanzee, gorilla, and human and had the exact same substitution or deletion. While common design could be a reasonable first step to explain similarity of functional genes, it is difficult to explain why pseudogenes with the exact same substitutions or deletions would be shared between species that did not share a common ancestor.
"Creationists have addressed these more specific arguments in a variety of ways. Batten (1996) makes three arguments: (1) similarity is necessary to reveal a single Creator, since dissimilarity implies multiple creators (also in ReMine 1993, p. 23), (2) biochemical similarity is functionally necessary in order for humans (and other organisms) to obtain food (also in Wise 1992), (3) the anatomical similarity of humans and chimpanzees should imply a molecular similarity as well (also in Wise 1992; Rana 2001; Wieland 2002). The first two arguments are good reasons to create some degree of biological or biochemical similarity but they do not explain degrees of similarity. If there were no nonhuman primates, humans would still be recognizably mammalian and therefore revealed as part of the design of a single Creator, but humans would also stand out as special mammals not closely similar to any other particular group of mammals. The necessity for a common biochemistry for nutrient cycles does not explain why chimpanzees exist. They neither form a major source of dietary nutrients for most humans nor share a significant fraction of the diet of most humans. Further, common biochemistry would not explain shared pseudogenes. The third argument merely shifts the problem to the anatomical level. The question remains as to why God created an animal that is so similar to humans.
"More recently, creationists have begun to argue that the similarity between chimpanzees and humans is less – sometimes much less – than claimed by evolutionary biologists (DeWitt 2003, 2005; Criswell 2005; Thompson and Harrub 2005)... Differences are certainly important, and there are many differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes, as detailed above. However, emphasizing these differences does not resolve the problem of similarity. Even if the chimpanzee genome were more than 5% or 10% different from the human genome, the differences are still vastly outnumbered by the similarities (at least 9 to 1). The major pattern that requires explanation is the surprising degree of genomic similarity, as King and Wilson (1975) noted thirty years ago. Listing differences between the genomes does not alter the overall pattern. If anything, the differences are more striking because of the overwhelming similarity.
"AN ALTERNATIVE CREATIONIST RESPONSE -- Having found most popular arguments about the human/chimpanzee genome similarity insufficent, I find myself in the unenviable position of devising my own explanation. Since I have none, I will attempt instead to develop some principles that could guide research into this problem... As mentioned already, the common creationist response... is to appeal to a designer as the source of the similarity. Although this is undoubtedly true, it is trivial. The point Darwin makes is not that similarity alone indicates common ancestry but that the particular pattern or scheme of similarities across all organisms is the same pattern we would expect from common descent. As Darwin noted in the quote above, appealing to the will of the Creator does not explain the particular pattern of similarity that we observe, except in an ad hoc fashion. Creation biology needs an explanation of the pattern of similarities, not merely an ad hoc appeal to a common designer...
"...Robinson and Cavanaugh (1998b) concluded that all extant felids [cats] belong to the same baramin and presumably descended from a single pair of cats on the Ark, but Slattery and O’Brien (1998) found distances greater than 5% among felid Zfy genes and greater than 3% among felid Zfx genes. Certainly if felid sequences can vary by that amount, what is to preclude the conclusion that the much lower differences observed between human and chimpanzees genomes indicates their cobaraminic status? ["co-baramic" means "belonging to the same 'baramin' or 'kind'"] ... As with the genetic diversity of cats, what is to preclude application of this same argument to chimpanzees and humans with the conclusion that we share a common ancestor with an animal? To put this question another way, how can we maintain that felids share a common ancestor with their genomic differences, and deny that the smaller differences between humans and chimpanzees could not also arise from a common ancestor? The only way to do this is to favor other data in baraminology, and to deny the primacy of the genome in determining true phylogenetic or baraminic relationships.
"THE FUTURE OF CREATIONIST GENOMICS -- The genome revolution, exciting though it is, is not an obvious victory for creationism. Although more data allows for better testing of ideas, the data that we have present significant challenges to creationist theory, particularly in the realm of biological similarity... If we wish to be good stewards of our very limited resources, we should avoid projects that are unlikely to be productive (e.g. overemphasizing potentially insignificant differences or trivializing the striking similarities) and focus instead on one of the most pressing problems in biology, biological similarity."
~~~~~
EVIDENCE OF SIMILARITY THAT THE CREATIONIST ABOVE IS SPEAKING ABOUT
2003 -- New genetic evidence demonstrates that lineages of chimps (currently Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens) diverged so recently [i.e., so closely resemble one another] that chimps should be [reclassified] as Homo troglodytes [i.e., members of the same genus, which is eactly how other species are classified whose genomes resemble one another so closely]. The move would make chimps full members of our genus Homo, along with Neandertals, and all other human-like fossil species. 'We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes,' says the study... Within important sequence stretches of these functionally significant genes, humans and chimps share 99.4 percent identity. (Some previous DNA work remains controversial. It concentrated on genetic sequences that are not parts of genes and are less functionally important, said Goodman.) ["Chimps Belong on Human Branch of Family Tree, Study Says" John Pickrell in England for National Geographic News May 20, 2003]
2005 -- The first comprehensive comparison of the genetic blueprints of humans and chimpanzees was reported. The DNA sequence that can be directly compared between the two genomes is almost 99 percent identical. When DNA insertions and deletions are taken into account, humans and chimps still share 96 percent of their sequence [with perfect identity].
The typical human protein has accumulated just one unique change since chimps and humans diverged from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago. To put this into perspective, the number of genetic differences between humans and chimps is approximately 10 times LESS than between the mouse and rat. [And just think of how similar a mouse and a rat appear to be, such that some creationists probably are willing to guess that mice and rats arose from the same "kind" via "micro-evolution." Yet humans are 10 times nearer to chimps than rats are to mice, genetically speaking]
On the other hand, the number of genetic differences between a human and a chimp is about 10 times more than between any two humans.
The researchers discovered that a few classes of genes are changing unusually quickly in both humans and chimpanzees compared with other mammals.
These classes include genes involved in perception of sound, transmission of nerve signals, production of sperm and cellular transport of electrically charged molecules called ions. Researchers suspect the rapid evolution of these genes may have contributed to the special characteristics of primates, but further studies are needed to explore the possibilities.
The genomic analyses also showed that humans and chimps appear to have accumulated more potentially deleterious mutations in their genomes over the course of evolution than have mice, rats and other rodents. While such mutations can cause diseases that may erode a species' overall fitness, they may have also made primates more adaptable to rapid environmental changes and enabled them to achieve unique evolutionary adaptations, researchers said.
Despite the many similarities found between human and chimp genomes, the researchers emphasized that important differences exist between the two species... Most of these differences lie in what is believed to be DNA of little or no function. However, as many as 3 million of the differences may lie in crucial protein-coding genes or other functional areas of the genome.
"As the sequences of other mammals and primates emerge in the next couple of years, we will be able to determine what DNA sequence changes are specific to the human lineage. The genetic changes that distinguish humans from chimps will likely be a very small fraction of this set," said the study's lead author, Tarjei S. Mikkelsen of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. ["New Genome Comparison Finds Chimps, Humans Very Similar at the DNA Level," The National Human Genome Research Institute, 2005]
~~~~~
The human genome is nearly 99% chimp, which also means that the chimp genome is nearly 99% human. And if you changed base pairs in each -- one base pair at a time --making both human and chimp draw even nearer to one another genetically, you would eventually reach a point where changing just a single base pair in the genome would make that human a chimp or make that chimp a human. Of course by that time the line between human and chimp would have grown very fuzzy indeed.
Ed (Edward T. Babinski, author of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists, paperback 2003, Prometheus Books)
~~~~~
GENETIC EVIDENCE EXISTS THAT SUGGESTS THAT SOON AFTER THE SPECIES THAT WERE TO BECOME "CHIMPANZEES" AND "HUMANS" DIVERGED FROM A COMMON ANCESTOR, THEY CONTINUED TO INTERBREED FOR A WHILE
December 10, 2006
Human-Chimp Hybrids
By STEPHEN MIHM
"On hearing of Darwin’s theories, the wife of the bishop of Worcester supposedly exclaimed: “Descended from apes? My dear, let us hope that it is not true.” Now the geneticist David Reich of the Broad Institute at Harvard and M.I.T. has advanced a theory that the bishop’s wife would have found even more disturbing: human and chimp ancestors, after diverging into separate species millions of years ago, came back together and interbred.
"Reich came up with the idea after comparing the genes of humans and chimps. When two species split from a common ancestor, their genes will continue to diverge, or mutate, at a regular clip over time. Reich and his team of researchers, after comparing some 20 million base pairs (the “rungs” of DNA) from humans and chimps, found that different genes began diverging at different times — with genes located on the X chromosome of humans and chimps parting ways most recently.
"Reich’s explanation is that the two populations interbred on repeated occasions over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, producing hybrids of protohumans and protochimps. The male hybrids were likely to be sterile, but Reich posits that the female hybrids (with their two X chromosomes) were able to mate with males of one of the original species. This would explain why genes on the X chromosome of humans and chimps diverged more recently.
"It’s a radical concept. Conventional wisdom holds that the development of separate species happens quickly, most often when populations become separated by a geographical barrier. Even if these groups meet again and manage to mate before diverging too far from one another, their offspring will be unfit and die out. Or so the thinking goes.
"By contrast, Reich argues that hybrids could play an important and positive role in speciation, introducing advantageous traits into a gene pool — including ours. If Reich is correct, the customary image of the human family tree, with its neat and discrete divisions, should be replaced by another metaphor: a dense and impenetrable thicket of branches concealing countless acts of interspecies sex. It’s enough to make a bishop’s wife blush."
~~~~~
NATURE magazine, 2006
Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees
Nick Patterson1, Daniel J. Richter1, Sante Gnerre1, Eric S. Lander1,2 & David Reich1,3
"The genetic divergence time between two species varies substantially across the genome, conveying important information about the timing and process of speciation. Here we develop a framework for studying this variation and apply it to about 20 million base pairs of aligned sequence from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and more distantly related primates. Human–chimpanzee genetic divergence varies from less than 84% to more than 147% of the average, a range of more than 4 million years. Our analysis also shows that human–chimpanzee speciation occurred less than 6.3 million years ago and probably more recently, conflicting with some interpretations of ancient fossils. Most strikingly, chromosome X shows an extremely young genetic divergence time, close to the genome minimum along nearly its entire length. These unexpected features would be explained if the human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged, then later exchanged genes before separating permanently."
~~~~~
READING LIST
Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA (Published Dec. 2007)
Darwinian Detectives: Revealing the Natural History of Genes and Genomes (Oxford U. Press, July 2007)
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (W.W. Norton, Sept. 2007)
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
~~~~~
AND ON THE FOSSIL FRONT... MORE CREATIONIST ADMISSIONS
"I was surprised to find that instead of enough fossils barely to fit into a coffin, as one evolutionist once stated [in 1982], there were over 4,000 hominid fossils as of 1976. Over 200 specimens have been classified as Neandertal and about one hundred as Homo erectus. More of these fossils have been found since 1976."
--MICHAEL J. OARD, Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 30, March 1994, p. 222
"The current figures [circa 1994] are even more impressive: over 220 Homo erectus fossil individuals discovered to date, possibly as many as 80 archaic Homo sapiens fossil individuals discovered to date, and well over 300 Neandertal fossil individuals discovered to date."
--MARVIN L. LUBENOW, author of Bones of Contention--A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, in a letter to the editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 31, Sept. 1994, p. 70
~~~~~
Ape-Hominid Species In Relative Geological Order Along With Their Cranial Capacities
Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Cranium size, 350 cubic centimeters
Australopithecus [= "Southern Ape" in Latin] afarensis
Cranial capacity varied from about 375 to 550 cc.
Australopithecus africanus Brain size may also have been slightly larger, ranging between 420 and 500 cc. This is a little larger than chimp brains (despite a similar body size)
Australopithecus aethiopicus
The brain size is 410 cc
Australopithecus robustus
The average brain size is about 530 cc.
Australopithecus boisei (was Zinjanthropus boisei)
The brain size is about 530 cc.
Homo habilis
500-800 cc
H. habilis, "handy man", was so called because of evidence of tools found with its remains. The face is still primitive, but it projects less than in A. africanus. The back teeth are smaller, but still considerably larger than in modern humans. The average brain size, at 650 cc, is considerably larger than in australopithecines. Brain size varies between 500 and 800 cc, overlapping the australopithecines at the low end and H. erectus at the high end. The brain shape is also more humanlike. The bulge of Broca's area, essential for speech, is visible in one habilis brain cast, and indicates it was possibly capable of rudimentary speech. Habilis is thought to have been about 127 cm (5'0") tall, and about 45 kg (100 lb) in weight, although females may have been smaller.
Habilis has been a controversial species. Originally, some scientists did not accept its validity, believing that all habilis specimens should be assigned to either the australopithecines or Homo erectus. H. habilis is now fully accepted as a species, but it is widely thought that the 'habilis' specimens have too wide a range of variation for a single species, and that some of the specimens should be placed in one or more other species. One suggested species which is accepted by many scientists is Homo rudolfensis, which would contain fossils such as ER 1470.
Homo georgicus
600-780 cc
This species was named in 2002 to contain fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia, which seem intermediate between H. habilis and H. erectus. The fossils are about 1.8 million years old, consisting of three partial skulls and three lower jaws. The brain sizes of the skulls vary from 600 to 780 cc. The height, as estimated from a foot bone, would have been about 1.5 m (4'11"). A partial skeleton was also discovered in 2001 but no details are available on it yet. (Vekua et al. 2002, Gabunia et al. 2002)
Homo erectus
750-1225 cc
H. erectus existed between 1.8 million and 300,000 years ago. Like habilis, the face has protruding jaws with large molars, no chin, thick brow ridges, and a long low skull, with a brain size varying between 750 and 1225 cc. Early erectus specimens average about 900 cc, while late ones have an average of about 1100 cc (Leakey 1994). Study of the Turkana Boy skeleton (from Africa) indicates that erectus may have been more efficient at walking than modern humans, whose skeletons have had to adapt to allow for the birth of larger-brained infants (Willis 1989). Homo habilis and all the australopithecines are found only in Africa, but erectus was wide-ranging, and has been found in Africa, Asia, and Europe. There is evidence that erectus probably used fire, and their stone tools are more sophisticated than those of habilis.
Archaic Homo sapiens (also Homo heidelbergensis)
1200 cc on average
Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The term covers a diverse group of skulls which have features of both Homo erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the other.
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (also Homo neanderthalensis)
1450 cc on average
Neandertal (or Neanderthal) man existed between 230,000 and 30,000 years ago. The average brain size is slightly larger than that of modern humans, about 1450 cc, but this is probably correlated with their greater bulk. The brain case however is longer and lower than that of modern humans, with a marked bulge at the back of the skull. Like erectus, they had a protruding jaw and receding forehead. The chin was usually weak. The midfacial area also protrudes, a feature that is not found in erectus or sapiens and may be an adaptation to cold. There are other minor anatomical differences from modern humans, the most unusual being some peculiarities of the shoulder blade, and of the pubic bone in the pelvis. Neandertals mostly lived in cold climates, and their body proportions are similar to those of modern cold-adapted peoples: short and solid, with short limbs. Men averaged about 168 cm (5'6") in height. Their bones are thick and heavy, and show signs of powerful muscle attachments. Neandertals would have been extraordinarily strong by modern standards, and their skeletons show that they endured brutally hard lives. A large number of tools and weapons have been found, more advanced than those of Homo erectus. Neandertals were formidable hunters, and are the first people known to have buried their dead, with the oldest known burial site being about 100,000 years old. They are found throughout Europe and the Middle East. Western European Neandertals usually have a more robust form, and are sometimes called "classic Neandertals". Neandertals found elsewhere tend to be less excessively robust. (Trinkaus and Shipman 1992; Trinkaus and Howells 1979; Gore 1996)
Homo floresiensis
Ancient extinct dwarf human species
Homo floresiensis was discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Fossils have been discovered from a number of individuals. The most complete fossil is of an adult female about 1 meter tall with a brain size of 417cc. Other fossils indicate that this was a normal size for floresiensis. It is thought that floresiensis is a dwarf form of Homo erectus - it is not uncommon for dwarf forms of large mammals to evolve on islands. H. floresiensis was fully bipedal, used stone tools and fire, and hunted dwarf elephants also found on the island. (Brown et al. 2004, Morwood et al. 2004, Lahr and Foley 2004)
Modern Homo sapiens sapiens
1350 cc on average
Modern forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 195,000 years ago. Modern humans have an average brain size of about 1350 cc. The forehead rises sharply, eyebrow ridges are very small or more usually absent, the chin is prominent, and the skeleton is very gracile. About 40,000 years ago, with the appearance of the Cro-Magnon culture, tool kits started becoming markedly more sophisticated, using a wider variety of raw materials such as bone and antler, and containing new implements for making clothing, engraving and sculpting. Fine artwork, in the form of decorated tools, beads, ivory carvings of humans and animals, clay figurines, musical instruments, and spectacular cave paintings appeared over the next 20,000 years. (Leakey 1994) HUMAN EVOLUTION DURING THE LAST 100,000 YEARS
Even within the last 100,000 years, the long-term trends towards smaller molars and decreased robustness can be discerned. About 30,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic the face, jaw and teeth of humans were 20 to 30% more robust than the modern condition in Europe and Asia. About 10,000 years ago in the Mesolithic the face, jaw and teeth of humans were about 10% more robust than ours. Today the smallest tooth sizes of modern day homo sapiens are found in those areas where food-processing techniques have been used for the longest time. This is a probable example of natural selection which has occurred within the last 10,000 years (Brace 1983). Interestingly, some modern humans (aboriginal Australians) have tooth sizes that are larger and more typical of archaic species of homo sapiens.
My friend
Eddie Tabash is one of the leading defenders of the separation of church and state in America today. You can see him argue for it
here. I think this is an idea that should be accepted whether a person is religious or not. So although I've declared politics off limits here in the past, since this is a very important election year and since the separation of church and state is so very important to me, I'll be posting a few things from time to time that I find interesting in this year's Presidential election.
From the Secular Humanism Online News
Vol.4 No.9
The Danger of the Religious Right in this Presidential Election
By Edward Tabash.The fact that Barack Obama and John McCain had their first joint appearance, sort of, at an evangelical church has ominous implications. It shows that both candidates know that evangelicals are still recognized as the largest single voting block in these elections cycles. This is bolstered by the way McCain’s unabashed embracing of the religious right agenda only helped him in the national polls. Obama’s more measured and somewhat hesitant way of answering questions regarding abortion and gay rights did not sell with biblical literalist voters who want an absolute commitment that the next president of the United States will be devoted to infusing religious dogma into the law of the land, under which we all must live.
McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, a truly inexperienced first-term governor of a remote and sparsely populated state, primarily because she is a Christian fundamentalist, shows that the religious right has not lost power but has more political might than ever before. Most news reports have claimed, and McCain has never denied it, that he would have preferred the pro-choice Orthodox Jewish Democrat Joe Lieberman as his running mate. However, the Christian right nixed this because Lieberman supports abortion rights. If McCain dies in office, Lieberman as the new president would put church-state separationists on the Supreme Court, regardless of his own frequently overblown religious rhetoric.
As secularists, however, our concern cannot be with the rhetoric of a campaign. Our concern can only be with the Supreme Court. We shouldn’t care what a candidate says in order to get elected in a nation where religious voters are still the most powerful plurality. We should rather focus on the type of justices that a candidate would appoint to the Supreme Court. Right now, with a shift of even one vote on the Court, we would lose, entirely, government neutrality in matters of religion, which is the core of church-state separation.
During the joint appearance at Saddleback Church, McCain stated unambiguously that he views life as beginning at the moment of conception. If this view prevails not only is abortion outlawed but so are all post-fertilization means of birth control. When the anti-abortion movement was initially gaining power from about 1973 onward, there were some anti-abortion members of the United States Senate who would not ban anything that destroyed a fertilized egg prior to implantation. Republican Mark Hatfield of Oregon was an example of this type of politician. With the McCain view, many birth-control pills and all IUDs would be banned because they prevent an already fertilized egg from implanting on the uterine wall. The only means of contraception that would still remain legal would be those that prevented the union of sperm and egg.
Some people are very optimistic about an impending expansion of secularism in American culture. I am afraid that I do not share this optimism. The only way that secularism stands a chance is if we continue to have in place a Supreme Court that continuously says, as has been the case since 1947, that no branch of government can favor the believer over the nonbeliever. Once a new Court majority would allow branches of government to favor belief, collectively, over nonbelief, the floodgates of religion-favoring legislation would open in virtually every state.
The ideal would be to achieve a political culture in which, if someone declares themselves to be a resolute supporter of secular government and church-state separation, we could not predict from that, alone, if the person were otherwise a liberal or a conservative. Someone can have very right-wing views on many issues and still demand secular government and even be a total nonbeliever. There is no internal inconsistency, for instance, in being a member of the National Rifle Association and opposing the agenda of the religious right.There is no internal inconsistency between supporting the war in Iraq and being an atheist, as Christopher Hitchens demonstrates. However, we are a long way from the goal of attaining a society in which support for secular government is a frequently seen universal view. It is our task to make sure that such a society becomes a reality.
Edward Tabash is Chair of the First Amendment Task Force, a project of the Council for Secular Humanism.
The delightful tribe of Triablogue has continued the dialogue on the Sargon legend with a
recent post attempting to crow victory on the issues which we have debated at length.
To fully appreciate the lengths the tribe will go to, it's necessary to revisit the sentence I wrote that started the whole fracas in the first place. I made a simple, declarative sentence:
I think the story of Sargon being floated in a basket of reeds down the river as an infant is a myth (that predates the Moses myth).
This created multiple posts over on Triablogue that were apoplectic about how awful I was for suggesting such a thing. So now we have their "post-mortem" on the issue and I would like to see if they have succeeded at disproving my original claim. There are eight authors who they have selected as experts and we'll evaluate their statements in turn to see if anyone disagrees with my basic, initial assertion.
Their first author is a no-show that's really just a tease for some future "dismantling" that we can all just hold our breaths and wait for.
Their second author is Dr. James Hoffmeier. The crux of his statement in support of the tribe is this:
Indeed the Sargon legend may well be the earliest example of the expose child motif, but that does not mean that Exodus 2 could not be completely independent. To ignore the clear Egyptian linguistic elements of Exodus 2 (one that does not fit a Mesopotamian setting) is shear obscurantism!
Wow! First, he thinks that obscurantism can be taken off like wool ... an odd thought that. Secondly, he admits exactly what I stated in my first statement on the issue and the tribe is kind enough to quote him on it. Post-mortem indeed. Their argument is buried by their own expert!
Third up is Richard Hess:
I am not quite sure what the point here is. The Sargon story is generally as Avalos says. Lewis' book has been around and well known. He cites dozens of Sargon story types in the ancient Near East and later, ending with the story of Superman's birth in DC comics. The form of the Sargon legend involves a first person intro and an an epilogue that concludes with 1 of the 4: blessings/curses, didactic lesson, temple donation, or prophecy. None of this applies to the Moses story; so if there was a borrowing it was more general than Avalos would like to admit. The general motif of the rescue of a leader as a baby and his/her being brought up by strangers is certainly well known in the ancient world and around the rest of the world. So what? No doubt the author and early readers of the exodus account saw the motif in the Moses story. That says nothing about its historicity.
Yes, that's right. Once again there is not a speck of support for the idea that the Sargon legend didn't pre-date the Moses legend. Their expert supports Avalos by agreeing with him. He brings up no evidence to suggest the story of Moses has any greater historical validity than the legend of Sargon.
Next they go to John Currid:
Indeed, within ANE literature there is a common motif of a birth story in which a child is under threat but survives to become king or leader of his people. The Legend of Sargon is such a story, and many scholars identify it as the very basis of Exodus 2. To go from Exodus to Mesopotamian literature has been the bias of ANE scholarship for a long time (creation and Enuma Elish; flood and Epic of Gilgamesh, etc.). But the reality is, and many do not want to admit it, is that Exodus is set in Egypt (seems obvious, but apparently not!) -- the book is imbued with Egyptianisms (see my Ancient Egypt and OT, for example). Consequently, I think that we ought to be looking in Egyptian literature for any such paradigm: The Myth of Horus contains similar motifs as Exodus 2.
Looking closely, I see only the suggestion that both the legend of Sargon and the legend of Horus pre-date the legend of Moses. With experts like this, the tribe doesn't even need Dr. Avalos to debunk them. They can just read their own sources to prove that the story of Moses is a legend. I'm perfectly happy to admit that the culture of the Hebrews could easily have borrowed from both and of course there's nothing in the text of the Pentateuch to suggest this is not the case.
This concludes all the expert testimony that the tribe was able to get from actual experts who had reviewed whatever they sent in. It's nice to see that not a single one of them support the position that the legend of Moses pre-dates the legend of Sargon. The general rule when debating apologists is just to read the source of the apologist thoroughly and you usually have more than enough debunking ammunition within their own source, but rarely has the case been shown more conclusively than here.
The rest of the reports are all from sources that were dug up from the library or the internet or wire services and yes, not a single one suggests that the legend of Moses pre-dates the legend of Sargon. To pad the list, they even post something about medieval foundlings, a topic that is not particularly germane to the question of whether one foundling legend predates another.
So once again the tribe swings repeatedly and hits air. It's nice they at least properly titled this corpse of a post.
In
his review of
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Alvin Plantinga, the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, admitted that he has propounded some invalid arguments in his life. It's good to know that he is aware of this fact but he seems to have done it again with his most recent argument.
His recent article in Christianity Today manages to misunderstand probability, biological evolution, Bayesian analysis and neurophysiology all at once in the service of his presuppositions. To start with, it's important to realize that although Plantinga is not himself a young-earth Creationist, he is sympathetic to them. He said in an earlier formulation of this argument:
Nonetheless a sensible person might be convinced, after careful and prayerful study of the Scriptures, that what the Lord teaches there (the book of Genesis -- ev) implies that this evidence is misleading and that as a matter of fact the earth really is very young. So far as I can see, there is nothing to rule this out as automatically pathological or irrational or irresponsible or stupid.
Plantinga himself believes that the earth is old because multiple lines of evidence converge to show this to be the case. Yet he is willing to accept the sensiblity of someone who does not accept the evidence that he does, because they are using their faith in scriptures and praying about it. If this is an adequate epistemology for a philosopher one wonders if there will be much in the rest of his philosophy to dream of or wonder about.
This credulity (that scripture and prayer are valid sources of knowledge for the Christian theist) is the crux of Plantinga's fallacy. He seems to accept the validity of Christian theism first and then adjudicate all positions in the light of this position in standard "presuppositionalist" ways. However these presuppositions simply don't conform with the evidence we have available. Of course, in Plantinga's mind, that is the fault of human minds. If our reason and the evidence lead us to doubt God, it is likely that our reason and evidence are wrong.
Specifically he says this:
I said naturalism is in philosophical hot water; this is true on several counts, but here I want to concentrate on just one—one connected with the thought that evolution supports or endorses or is in some way evidence for naturalism. As I see it, this is a whopping error: evolution and naturalism are not merely uneasy bedfellows; they are more like belligerent combatants. One can't rationally accept both evolution and naturalism; one can't rationally be an evolutionary naturalist. The problem, as several thinkers (C. S. Lewis, for example) have seen, is that naturalism, or evolutionary naturalism, seems to lead to a deep and pervasive skepticism. It leads to the conclusion that our cognitive or belief-producing faculties—memory, perception, logical insight, etc.—are unreliable and cannot be trusted to produce a preponderance of true beliefs over false. Darwin himself had worries along these lines: "With me," says Darwin, "the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
Now I am certainly one to congratulate and reward someone who has a deep and pervasive skepticism. Skepticism is one of the very best tools to keep your wits, your money and your body safe. Yet skepticism is hardly a characteristic of naturalists alone. Christian theists are also skeptical, including Plantinga himself, who doubts that the Bible is correct on the age of the earth. One must wonder exactly what mechanism Plantinga imagines allows him to have the correct apprehension of this particular fact when so many of his "sensible" coreligionists and theists in general disagree with him on this point vehemently. Does he believe that his brain is working better than theirs? Yet this could not be for Plantinga, because he believes that brains don't detect true beliefs.
I know you think I'm kidding, but really, that is his position. He believes that brains by themselves are evolved organs and therefore can only be "adaptive" but that being adaptive does not entail the truth of a given conclusion arrived at by an adaptive organ.
Let's look again at his position about what he calls "neurophysiology":
Your beliefs may all be false, ridiculously false; if your behavior is adaptive, you will survive and reproduce. Consider a frog sitting on a lily pad. A fly passes by; the frog flicks out its tongue to capture it. Perhaps the neurophysiology that causes it to do so, also causes beliefs. As far as survival and reproduction is concerned, it won't matter at all what these beliefs are: if that adaptive neurophysiology causes true belief (e.g., those little black things are good to eat), fine. But if it causes false belief (e.g., if I catch the right one, I'll turn into a prince), that's fine too. Indeed, the neurophysiology in question might cause beliefs that have nothing to do with the creature's current circumstances (as in the case of our dreams); that's also fine, as long as the neurophysiology causes adaptive behavior. All that really matters, as far as survival and reproduction is concerned, is that the neurophysiology cause the right kind of behavior; whether it also causes true belief (rather than false belief) is irrelevant.
But this metaphor is absurd and wrong on the face of it. For a frog to catch a fly he first needs to adequately apprehend that there is a fly to be caught. This belief MUST be true for a frog to catch it. The frog's eye must accurately determine there is a fly in the field of vision. It must accurately gauge the speed and distance of the oncoming fly. It must accurately know the position of its tongue in its mouth and accurately direct its head and mouth at the correct angle to catch the fly. All of these things are things the frog's brain must believe first, before it can create an overarching belief that drives it to catch and eat the fly. Therefore Plantinga must admit that at least some of the beliefs the frog needs to have must correspond accurately to the external world. And of course, even in his example, the simplest belief is the one that is most correct, namely that the fly will feel better if it eats.
Plantinga's skepticism about neurophysiology assumes the accuracy of perception. Yet we all know that many perceptions themselves can be flawed. A few minutes with a magic-eyes book or even a glass of water and a pencil can show a child that. So if Plantinga's main point is that perception, memory, the brain's physics, working logic and apperception can be inherently flawed yet still adaptive, his point is one that neuroscientists have been making for several decades.
Yet Plantinga wants to take healthy skepticism and reduce it to a ridiculous solipsism that would be destructive to all knowledge. His way out is obvious:
Clearly this doubt arises for naturalists or atheists, but not for those who believe in God. That is because if God has created us in his image, then even if he fashioned us by some evolutionary means, he would presumably want us to resemble him in being able to know; but then most of what we believe might be true even if our minds have developed from those of the lower animals.
As a side point, the use of the term "lower animals" is simply another example of his lack of understanding of biology. A high-school level understanding of biology as it is taught in the 21st century would teach Plantinga that all life forms on earth are equally evolved. They have all derived from a common ancestor and have been adapting to changing environments and ecologies since then and all lineages extant have survived to this point. There are no "lower animals" unless you already accept creationism. But back to his main point.
According to Plantinga, while brains cannot evolve a method for detecting truth, God can give them that ability through his creation. Yet of course there is simply no logical connection between the existence of a theistic deity and the belief systems of organisms evolved under such a deity. I will give some alternatives that Plantinga fails to even consider, much less address, that show how limited his "supernaturalism" really is.
Example 1: There is a theistic deity. He does wish to make creatures in "his image" and intends to at some point in the future. We are "lower creatures" who can discern some of the deity's plans but remain ignorant about our role in them.
Example 2: There is a theistic deity who is evil and enjoys making a mockery of the creatures he watches evolving. They live and die with ridiculous beliefs about him and he chuckles about it like a pet owner chuckling at his dog when he puts peanut butter in his mouth.
Example 3: There is a deistic deity.
Example 4: The deity is panentheistic and is part of the entire process of creation and can only direct it from within matter, and thus is subject to the rules of matter.
Example 5: There are multiple supernatural beings who vie for control of the supernatural realm in a type of supernatural selection to propagate themselves and the supernatural substance they are created from.
There is simply no logical or philosophical reason to select Christian theism as the only rational alternative to methodological naturalism. Certainly there is no reason to assume the probability of one supernatural hypothesis over any other as there is simply no accepted supernatural data. Plantinga knows, however, that most of his readers are either Christian or former Christians and thus artificially limits his calculus to those two possibilities to make his outcome look superficially more plausible.
I specifically reject his use of Bayesian analysis in this article and the reason is the same one I give generically in all these situations. Bayes was discussing decisions made when there is a knowable a priori probability being discussed. The data that we have are then plugged in to that equation and an a posteriori calculation is then performed to determine the probabilities after the data is analyzed.
Yet our knowledge of universes is limited to an n of 1. Our universe, so far as we are able to talk with evidence about it, is sui generis. Therefore there cannot be a knowable a priori probability of a given type of universe existing from a pool of all possible universes. In fact, we can't even make a rational guess at how likely any given universe might be. This is like using a hammer to drive on the road. It's simply a ridiculous misuse of a tool.
When math is used improperly, it generates results that make no sense, and this is what happens when Plantinga uses it here. He is doing the equivalent of a sophomoric trick by dividing by zero unknowingly.
Even accepting his Bayesian analysis (which I do not) does not rescue his position however, because he is arguing that if most beliefs are false then all beliefs are false, which is unworthy of someone who has never taken a philosophy course, much less a professor. Certainly someone who has written three volumes on belief must know that there are techniques philosophers have devised over the centuries to separate true from false beliefs and that these techniques are far from universally employed -- even by philosophers, even by himself. While he does believe that he has had some true beliefs, he has admitted in his review of Dawkins that some of his arguments in the past have been invalid. How is it possible for his God-given truth detector to have allowed this?
After reviewing these facts and the gross misapprehension of how Bayes theorem works, it's fun to review another quote from his review of Dawkins:
You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. This, combined with the arrogant, smarter-than-thou tone of the book, can be annoying. I shall put irritation aside, however and do my best to take Dawkins' main argument seriously.
In that spirit, I shall put irritation aside, however and do my best to take the rest of Plantinga's argument seriously.
So Plantinga goes on to argue that if evolution is true than naturalism is disproved, because some of our perceptions are apparently true and adaptive. He believes that this can only be explained by the presupposition of theism:
Returning to methodological naturalism, if indeed natural science is essentially restricted in this way, if such a restriction is a part of the very essence of science, then what we need here, of course, is not natural science, but a broader inquiry that can include all that we know, including the truths that God has created life on earth and could have done it in many different ways. "Unnatural Science," "Creation Science," "Theistic Science"-call it what you will: what we need when we want to know how to think about the origin and development of contemporary life is what is most plausible from a Christian point of view. What we need is a scientific account of life that isn't restricted by that methodological naturalism.
Note that Plantinga simply asserts the "truth" that God has created life on earth. He gives no evidence for this position and also suggests that the entire scientific enterprise itself is somehow suspect because of his argument about methodological naturalism. Yet is this the case?
No.
Here's why not: Most beliefs are worthy of skepticism. The fact that most beliefs may be wrong is simply not an argument. Of course many or most beliefs may be wrong. It is the job of philosophers to counteract wrong arguments and beliefs by coming up with ways to avoid them. Yet if we assume, as Plantinga does, that the only way we can have correct beliefs is because God is letting us have them, there is simply no job left for the philosopher. He may abdicate his job and let the workings of the deity do its business.
Yet of course, Plantinga must be aware of the proliferation of false beliefs on this earth and their ubiquity. In a day's conversation he must encounter multiple false beliefs. Yet he gives no explanation about how a God-given method for detecting truth would operate. He has certainly never demonstrated a technique that differs from that of methodological naturalism. Is there a way to show that true beliefs can only exist for those whom God is blessing with them?
Given the nearly universal presence of false beliefs, this is a strong acid that Plantinga is playing with, and from my point of view it dissolves the bottle that he is trying to carry it in.
To wit, if we accept his proposition, arguendo, that organisms that have evolved in a natural world may very well evolve to have adaptive but false beliefs that are widespread, does that not comport pretty well with the world we see? In fact, assuming naturalism, would we not expect to see hierarchies of beliefs that coexist and a mixture of some falsehood and some truth within those hierarchies of belief?
In fact what we see is nearly universal acceptance of directly perceived facts. Only the craziest among us will doubt there is a yellow lemon in the room when we are all staring at one. This is a directly perceived object which fits neatly in a perceptual category for which we have a concrete word. The same goes for our beliefs when driving a car. There is little room for skepticism about an oncoming car and false beliefs about such a thing will rapidly result in negative consequences for the individual that has them.
Our brains and perceptual systems of course are not evolved to create true beliefs, Plantinga is certainly correct about that, but they are evolved to create accurate perceptions. And each perception that we have insinuates itself into a rounded and whole set of beliefs, each of which is reinforced by the other.
However some beliefs have very few perceptions on which to base themselves on. For example, a sense of awe at seeing something greater than oneself is quite remarkable when it happens, but differing things awe different people. One person is awed by the Taj Mahal, another by Yosemite, and another by the starry sky at night. There simply is no general agreement on awe. And thus, when people discuss awe, there is more nuance, less agreement, and more difficulty at achieving a consensus of truth.
Even moreso when we get to beliefs based on no direct perceptions at all: Mohammed rode a winged horse to Jerusalem. The Buddha forewent nirvana to become a bodhisattva. The Great Spirit will protect the plains and their bison. Quetzalcoatl has appeared in Veracruz and is on his way to Tenochtitlan to usher in the next age.
The Christian theist must -- if he accepts Christianity as true, be skeptical about all these strongly held beliefs. Yet by what mechanism then does he trust his own beliefs about his own religion? According to Plantinga, God allows him to see the truth of them. Yet is it not possible, yea, even probable that God is allowing someone else to see a truth and not allowing the Christian?
Plantinga simply fails to address this possibility.
His argument seems to fail in two directions then. In one direction it simply asserts a truism of philosophy that has been known since the presocratics, namely that some perceptions and some beliefs that are accepted as accurate by those who hold them are wrong. The proper response to this as far as I can tell is, "Duh."
The second way it fails though is the much more spectacular, for by expressing contempt for methodological naturalism, it eviscerates all but the most uncritical, fundamentalist theism, something Plantinga himself seems to think is "sensible" but that he does not yet wish to fully endorse.
His lack of a method for God's image to function as a truth-maker leaves his corrosive skepticism for naturalism eating away at the vessel he carries it in until they both lie on the ground at his feet, bubbling, oozing and evaporating away into the air.
This is the book I wish I could write.
Loftus includes everything: absurdities, superstitions, interpretations, persuasive psychology, pseudoscience, morality, philosophy, proofs, logistical issues, history, miracles, methodology, prayer, creation, canonization, legendary embellishment, etc. Whereas pop writers like Dawkins and Harris scoff at the obvious stupidity of Christianity, and textual scholars like Ehrman and Price focus on apologetic issues without hardly mentioning that Christianity doesn’t deserve the air of respectability it gets, Loftus tackles both methods.
John does a wonderful job of pointing out how apologists are all extremely confident of their positions even if the contrast among one another, yet he also doesn’t lose sight of the fact that a neutral start for these apologists would never prompt them to offer their conclusions. It is probably the best comprehensive book of the issues I’ve read. Fifteen dollars will net you fifteen hours worth of intense reading. Yes, ninety percent of the material can be found elsewhere, but this is to be expected when there is no true point of concentration in the book. It is a jack of all trades, and Loftus pulls it off beautifully.
Loftus, like very few writers, takes the time to explain why we start our observations “from below” rather than “from above.” Persuasive psychology is briefly mentioned, and since I write on it frequently, I was extremely happy to see it (even if I would have liked to have seen more). What I really support is his focus on fundamental questions, which I believe deconvert more individuals than textual analysis ever could. These questions include why God needs worship, why religions distribute predictably, and why the Bible has no declaration against slavery. I also learned a few things while reading, such as William Lane Craig’s ridiculous arguments for why God has religious diversity (while ignoring the obvious answer of societal conditioning) and Francesco Sizzi’s equally ridiculous arguments for divinity in space.
While ninety-nine percent of this book is fantastic and I could write pages on how great it is, in the interest in balancing praise with criticism, I’ll quickly point out a few things I would have done differently. The personal story (kind of boring, until Linda!) could lead critics to argue that John left for emotional reasons (even though he specifically states what should be obvious: the emotions merely got him thinking). The book isn’t as entertaining as Shermer, Sagan, Mills, etc or as easy to understand at times because it isn’t geared toward a mainstream audience. The text is beyond ninety percent of America because you need some good knowledge of the Bible to grasp all of it. For instance, Uzzah is mentioned in one chapter, but several dozens and pages later, he is mentioned (but not explained) again. If you don’t remember who he is, John’s point is missed at the second mention.
Loftus extensively quotes scholars without briefly mentioning their positions, and there are a slew of them because he has a terrific appreciation for the arguments in the field. He also uses terms that will be unfriendly to beginners (e.g. Pauline). John also made the same choice I did in my first book, which is to make laborious lists that aren’t necessary to make a point (especially on visions). Most readers, I suspect, would become bored with it. In my opinion, he wastes time and paper on the Trinity and bodily resurrections. Arguing over how miracles work plays into the apologetic game. I love his term “chronological snobbery” for why social conservatives are consistently wrong, but it is already known as the “Planck Problem.” He lists Job as intertestamental even though almost all scholars regard it as the earliest book in the Bible. He says historic Japan is “a great [society] by all standards of history,” which I have to take exception with as a student of ancient Japan, since women were possessions, the warrior class could kill without accountability, and foreigners were immediately killed for stepping on Japanese land.
There are some editing issues as well. For example “and1563” on p309 is missing a space (spell check doesn’t look for words with number/letter combinations by default) and “when did he know Jesus had died” is used on p368 instead of “how did he know when Jesus had died” (again, something spell check wouldn’t grab).
None of these complaints really detracts at all from the book. In short, Loftus has left humanity much better than he found it, which is what all nonbelievers can only strive to accomplish.
The best way to understand something is to build it.
In my recent articles I have been facilitating discussion on Adam and Eve and I have been collecting explanations about how Adam came to disobey god. This article identifies the parts of those arguments and diagrams one of them, and tries to tease out whether Adam could in any reasonable way be held accountable by his maker for his transgression and the resultant overall negative result that emerges from Gods Creation. However if we take Adam and God out of the equation, then the properties that emerge from nature are what we should expect once we understand them, and labeling them "good" or "bad" outside of any context becomes meaningless.
Emergence
Wikipedia says that the term “Emergence” was coined by G. H. Lewes. Its an old concept recognized as far back as Aristotle.
Basically it is self-organization or a property or behavior of a thing that results from the combination of all its other properties and its interaction with its environment.
Some examples of Emergence from Wikipedia and some I thought up.
Feel Free to suggest some more in the comments.
NATURE
- Hurricanes
- Termite "Cathedrals"
- Patterns in plants in nature
- Color
- Patterns in Clouds
- Friction
- Classical Mechanics
- Statistical Mechanics
- Weather
- Patterned ground
- Temperature
- Convection
- Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology
- Flocking
- Herds
- Patterns that birds make when they fly together
- Fractals
CULTURE
- Traffic Patterns
- Forming Lines
- Cities
- Political systems
- Economics
- The Stock Market
- The World Wide Web
- Placement of pathways in building complexes
MATHEMATICS
- Mobius Strip
- Chaos theory
- Clustering in Probablity
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE [link to an AI Lab where they depend on emergence to build robots]
- Self-assembling robots, [video] [more links]
- Morphological properties of components for locomotion
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
- Emotions, Fear, Joy, etc
- Some actions, scratching and itch, catching a ball,
- Unconscious Decision Making (AKA Intuition)
- and in my opinion, the SUPERNATURAL emerges from the poor reasoning schemes of an untrained mind.
Emergence is highly efficient and economical. That is exactly what should be expected from a perfect being. If a perfect being created something, we could reasonably expect the perfect being to build is so that it would be self-organizing, efficient and economical meaning that additional properties would emerge from the raw material.
If that is the case then the way the world is, is the only way it could have turned out, which means that Adams transgression emerged out of the way he was made.
While I haven't yet got a Christian to put any culpability on God for anything that supposedly went on in "the fall of man", they do accept every premise up to the conclusion, and circle back to the fact that "Adam made the choice" while affirming that God knew what was going to happen and the fact that it was predestined.
Comments from an article accumulated from two Christians
In the discussion below, the components of the arguments are labeled with initials.
HP. stands for Hidden Premise. A Hidden Premise is a premise that the argument depends on but is not explicitly stated. The commenters did not state these premises but they were understood as a dependency.
P. Stands for the premise. Premises are effectively data, or conclusions of other arguments used to support the inferrence to the conclusion.
C. The conclusion is derived from the inferrences made from the premisses.
xxxxxxx said...
Yes, I agree, that according to scripture,
HP1. God is omnipotent
HP2. God is omniscient
HP3. God made adam
HP4. God has a plan
P1. God knew that Adam would disobey,
P2. and not only knew it, but predestined it.
C. Scripture says that this happened so that the second Adam (Christ) would come into the world to accomplish what Adam failed to do and to redeem his people from the curse of sin.
In the Diagram below, the Hidden premisses HP1, HP2 and HP3 collectively support the premise that God knew that Adam would disobey. HP4 supports the premise that adams transgression was predestined. The two premises explcitly stated support the conclusion.
Diagram for the Argument Above
The Best Way To Understand Something Is To Build It
The arguments that follow are restatements and variations of the argument above from Christian comments
xxxx said...
I agree with most of the article.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. I think that God not only knew Adam would transgress,
P. he counted on it and
C. that was part of the plan of salvation.
xxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. The way this seems is that God had a plan,
P. he put it into action and
P. put Adam and Eve here to start, the first two people out of the gate failed
C. so he had to go to plan B. If it wasn't planned, there would be no need to label Christ as the redeemer from the foundation of the earth.
xxxxx said...
I would disagree that God had a plan B.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
C. God has one plan and one plan only and it always comes to pass.
xxxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Not to mention that it is said that he failed, except he was part of a plan that played itself out.
C. So it seems that the failure on Adams part would have been to not eat the fruit. I never see anyone give him the opportunity to be a part of an infinite atonement.
xxxxxx said....
My intent is to agree with much af what Lee has brought up in his post. I don't think Adam is a villian,
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. he did exactly what he was suppose to do,
P. and just like every single other person who makes a mistake,
P. he was forgiven of his sins
C. just like we can be.
xxxxx said....
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Adam's transgression separated us from God,
C. which left us the ability to be able to choose for ourselves between the recently aquired knowledge of good and evil.
Reconstructing Gods Plan From What We Know
1. Gods plan was to make Adam and Eve,
2. give them free will, desire, speech, cognitive bias, but not the knowledge of good and evil.
3. put them in the Garden, wait long enough for Adam to Disobey (disobeying a God that you can have a discussion with is insane in itself)
4. then use that as a reason to kick them out of the Garden,
5. introduce sin into the world,
6. kill everyone in a worldwide flood because they were so sinful,
7. make a covenant with Abraham, who had strong reasons not to disobey
8. impregnate a virgin with his holy seed, without giving her a choice
9. occupy the body of a sinless human who had compelling reasons not to disobey, effectively compromising any free will he had
10. come into jerusalem on the passover,
11. have one of his disciples report him, who may or may not have know the consequences, had no choice since he was key player in the plan and consequently died a horrible death
12. get crucified as a human sacrifice during the passover so that he could meet the ritual requirements,
13. take all the sins of the world onboard,
14. become resurrected in three days,
15. and take off to disappear into heaven.
16. And leave us with the free will to believe all this on meager evidence or not.
So now lets look at the results and see what has emerged from this plan.
Lets asign some values to some things and see how they play out.
God = 0, because he is perfect.
Christ = -1 because he was god but tainted by man
Adam = -2 because he was not perfect and sinned and he was not god
Please follow along in the chart below. The left side represents the values for God, Jesus and Adam and the bottom represents the timeline from creation to 3000 CE. I projected past today's date since Jesus is probably not coming anytime soon.
God Operating In The Red.
Diagram showing the resultant prolonged negative value over the course of 6000 years, projected beyond the current date to 3000 CE.
So now god creates Adam and things go to -2.
That's counter-intiutive in a perfect being.
Now we need a Christ to set things right so we subtract -1 and we are back to -1.
Things aren't perfect but hey, god can be imperfect if he wants to because because he can do anything.
God created just so he could create an overall negative? This is not very efficient or economical. There is a lot of wasted resources built into this plan.
If god was like the Greek gods, which seems to be the case throughout Genesis 1-11, then this would be more coherent. But he's supposed to be perfect which means that he should not need anything, even company. Creating this mess was worse than not creating.
However, if we take Gods plan out of the equation, we can reasonably deduce that it probably wouldn't be any worse than this.
Click on the image. The hits usually go down in the summer months, so to grow during the summer like we did is superior. I wonder how we'll do come Fall? Stay tuned. People are reading what we write!
Recurrent claim from Christians in comments:
"you seem to be questioning God. Why didn't God do this? why did God do that? The short answer is, because God does what he pleases and since he is infinite in knowledge, then God knows best, not us."
10:41 PM, August 23, 2008
According to Van Eemeren, Grootendorst and Walton, the first rule of a critical discussion is that
1. Parties must not prevent each other from advancing or casting doubt on each others viewpoints.
[Rules for Critical Discussion by Frans Van Eemeren & Rob Grootendorst, taken from "Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation" by Douglas Walton,Cambridge University Press, 2006.]
But what we see here is that some christians don't have a problem with trying to shut down critical questioning of biblical principles. When Biblical principles don't accurately reflect reality, then one of two things are happening. Biblical principles are flawed or reality is flawed. Pick your poison.
Breaking the law is risky behavior.
In my view, to go around breaking the law of society or of a God, is unnecessarily risky behavior. Those that do break the law have some other frame of reference. For example, they don't put as a high a value on the risk as I do, or they may be mentally handicapped in some way, and the former may follow from the latter. I know that if I broke the law I would worry about being caught, then perform some inconvenient tasks such as lying or hiding to resolve it, then, if I got caught I would pay some fine or spend some time in Jail. For the most egregious acts, the punishment can last a lifetime. For example, the punishment for murder can get a person put in Jail for the rest of their life, and on the other hand, for stealing a piece of fruit and eating it, you may get a fine if anyone cares enough to pursue litigation.
Teaching and changing behavior.
The reason people get fined and go to jail is to pressure them to change their behavior and to condition them to follow rules. It is a form of education. Education is important to facilitate sound judgment and conformance to societal standards. From the time children are born to the time they finish their formal schooling, they undergo conditioning. They learn such things as the rules of Grammar, Math, Science, Physics, Music, Art and the lessons of History. To advance to the next level they must satisfactorily demonstrate their grasp of the information, and their proficiency is monitored periodically along the way to ensure they are progressing toward the goal of advancing. Education and changing behavior is a sound principle, but it is not limited to people. It works on animals as well.
My dogs want to put their noses on the table.
I am an expert on the behavior of my dogs, but not to the degree that God must have been an expert in Adams behavior. When I have dinner, my dogs stay out of the kitchen, where the table is, because they like to put their nose on the table (they're big dogs). I can tell them a hundred times not to put their nose on the table but after awhile, they do it anyway. So I make them stay out of the kitchen and I do not feed them from the table.
When I want to spend time with my dogs, we laze about the house, tug on a stuffed toy and they get a little petting. We all love each other (I guess they love me) and I pet them, praise them, give them instruction in the form of a stern "no", or a "sit" or a "go lay down" and they understand me and comply. When they don't, I admonish them.
I do it in a nurturing way because I don't want them to become afraid of me or they will want to avoid me. I admonish them just enough so they respect me and follow my instruction. I know that because of their nature (how they are composed), they act a certain way and we work with it. In doing so we have a happy, healthy nurturing life together. I didn't make my dogs, but I know how they act, and I accommodate their behavior, adjust and compromise with them.
How much disobedience do I tolerate? I tolerate quite a bit. What type of transgressions would get them kicked out of the house? Biting the kids.
Decision/Event Tree for teaching my dogs not to put their nose on the table.
In the diagram below I would like to draw your attention to the box labeled “Teaching phase”.
If my dogs are not in the kitchen, they decide to sleep or chew toys and have no option to disobey. They don't worry that their free will is impeded, they understand that they just have a limited number of options because an infinite number of options would just confuse them.
If my dogs are in the kitchen with me they get a warning. They will either be with me or without me, but I'll focus on when they are with me because its analogous to Adam and Eve living in the Garden with God walking around. If they put their nose on the table I have three options but one of them is not obvious. The two obvious options are to ignore the behavior or to admonish them. Ignoring the nose on the table, in my view, is out of the question. So I opt for the admonishment option. This way I can reprove them and they will stop until they are overcome by their nature and I reprove them again or they learn that to stay in the kitchen with me, they have to keep their nose off the table.
The other option that is not so obvious is the option to abandon them to the street and never have any animals in the house again until one of them kills themselves to show me they can obey. I don't choose that option for a variety of reasons. The overriding one is that I'd never have thought of it without the story of Adam and Eve in the bible and another reason is that it is freaking stupid. In my view the admonishment and instruction is by far the best option to sustain a healthy loving relationship between myself and my dogs and this is the event labeled in the diagram as the “Teaching Phase”.
Decision/Event Tree for Adam in the Garden
We all know the story. Boy meets girl, girl gets motivated when she sees that snake, and carries her fruit over to her boyfriend to share it with him. Adam follows the script, disobeys God and God kicks them out of the garden until he and the holy spirit can come back four thousand or so years later as a perfect human that obeys himself to follow the course of events of his plan that ultimately end up with his human part dying as the perfect sacrifice and he and his holy spirit bail out just before the end. The happy ending is that the human part gets resurrected and disappears amid rumors that the body was stolen, or that he was taken down before he died. It usually takes longer than a few hours to die impaled on a cross. That is why the Romans used it. In fact Josephus talks about a couple of his friends that survived a crucifixion.
Once again I'd like to draw your attention to the area labeled “Teaching Phase”. You may have noticed that the Event Tree is the same as the Dogs Event Tree. The algorithm is exactly the same. The analogy is the same. The difference is that God did not choose the admonishment option. He chose to break off the relationship rather than nurture it.
How much and what type of transgressions should God tolerate and work with? I think that most people get along well enough and follow the rules to sustain a society. Are the transgression of these people, or should I say, are your transgressions serious enough to not warrant nurturing admonishment? Think about all the things you've done today. How many of them would you be embarrassed about? How many of them are even worthy of being “exalted” to a “TRANSGRESSION” [thunder and lightning in the background]
Being in a relationship means to nurture.
Parents don't kick their kids out of the house the first time they disobey, most of the time they put up with a lot of transgressions.
The Friendly Atheist comments on what "may be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen in my life." It's the book
Illustrated Stories from the Bible. He wrote about it
here.
Rick, a Young-Earth Creationist gave me a citation from Answers in Genesis in a comment thread earlier in an attempt to explain how Kangaroos got to Australia after the ark of Noah landed in Turkey. The citation is full of logical inconsistencies and lunacy and I
link to it to allow the reader a chance to peruse it for herself.
It is not a problem for us to rationalize why certain animals do not appear in certain parts of the world. Why, for example, does Australia have such an unusual fauna, including so many marsupials? Marsupials are, of course, known elsewhere in the world. For example, opossums are found in North and South America, and fossilized marsupials have been found elsewhere. But in many places, climatic changes and other factors could lead to their extinction.
It's not a problem. See? It just isn't. Hey, look over there, there's an opossum. The Young-Earth Creationist doesn't even deal with the fact that animals cannot migrate long distances through deserts or ice fields without dying first. They adapt to conditions in the location which they exist and if the ecology changes in that location and they cannot complete their life cycle, they die. There's no attempt there to explain how a koala bear, who can only eat Eucalyptus leaves could travel from Turkey to Australia without going extinct first. There's no attempt to explain how an aquatic species like a duck-billed platypus could complete its life cycle during the "mini-Ice Age" that followed the flood while all the water was frozen. The truth of the Genesis account is simply asserted and no explanation is given for these problems.
The lack of great marsupials in other continents need be no more of a problem than the lack of dinosaurs. As with many species today, they just died out—a reminder of a sin-cursed world. One proposed theory is that marsupials—because they bore their young in pouches—were able to travel farther and faster than mammals that had to stop to care for their young. They were able to establish themselves in far-flung Australia before competitors reached the continent.
Yes, kangaroos managed to get all the way from Turkey to Australia bearing their tiny live young from a founder population of two (2) individuals and the reason they got there is because they were faster than the cheetahs, gazelles, horses and other slow placental mammals who were bogged down by the need to care for bigger offspring. I really can't imagine an adult finding this explanation compelling. But it has to be compelling if you can't give up the Bible.
At one level, the authors realize this is one of their weakest positions. They know these explanations will not satisfy a critical reader. The article ends in the following way:
We must not be downhearted by critics and their frequent accusations against the Bible. We must not be surprised that so many people will believe all sorts of strange things, whatever the logic.
I believe this is not even intended to be ironic. Yet the unintentionality of it makes the irony drip off it even more. They continue:
Starting from our presupposition that the Bible’s account is true, we have seen that scientific models can be developed to explain the post-Flood migration of animals. These models correspond to observed data and are consistent with the Bible’s account. It is notable that opponents of biblical creationism use similar models in their evolutionary explanations of animal migrations. While a model may eventually be superseded, it is important to note that such biblically consistent models exist. In any event, we have confidence in the scriptural account, finding it to be accurate and authoritative. The fact of animal migration around the world is illustrative of the goodness and graciousness of God, who provided above and beyond our needs.
Notice that only if they start from the presupposition that the Bible is true can they find any reason to believe the Bible. However the models do NOT correspond to the observed data unless you consider a model that can be torn apart by a teenager who's seen a couple of shows on Discovery channel to be valid.
The authors are to be scolded for foisting off such poor explanations to an uncritical fundamentalist audience. Commenters like Rick and DSHB should demand more of them.
