Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Creation and Evolution

  • Differences of Opinion, Lies, and Seeing the Other Side

    I got started this morning on this topic by reading this post at Quintessence of Dust. Dr. Matheson is looking for a good model to use in referring to creationists and their arguments. The temptation is to regard all false statements as lies. But at the same time we have to ask why people who are otherwise honest, and doubtless wouldn’t cheat on tests or steal from their neighbors nonetheless would say so many things that are simply not so.

    Matheson is looks at the model of folk science. I left a comment on his blog in which I question just how well this works. But I’m working on this one myself. I have to ask myself how a microbiologist, for example, could manage to believe in creationism. There is always Kurt Wise (paleontologist), who admits the strong evidence for evolution, but believes that the Bible must be true, and thus no matter what the evidence looks like, eventually he’ll find the proper evidence for young age arguments. Now I can at least understand the mental process in Dr. Wise’s case, though it still astounds me that one could look at the strength of the evidence and study it as a paleontologist and still come out not just a creationist, but a young earth creationist.

    I had already bookmarked his post for a link, if not a substantial response, when I came across this article (HT: It seems to me ….) In a weird sort of way, this article is making a point similar to what Dr. Matheson is making, though perhaps with greater humor and less finesse–there are some beliefs and viewpoints that are comforting to us, and we cling to any means by which we can avoid losing those beliefs.

    I think it’s quite possible that many creationists simply cannot imagine a world in which man is not a separate creation, especially put here by God with a unique and special relationship. It is quite possible that their lives would lose meaning–or at least they feel viscerally that they would–should any element of this prove wrong. If one’s identity is at stake, just how much might one be able to rationalize?

    Just as I was preparing to write this post, I found this post on Pharyngula, in which the Discovery Institute is shown to have taken e-mails out of context (gasp!) regarding the Gonzalez case as ISU. Here, of course, we have a greater level of interpretation involved, but it still is hard to see how the DI got what they did from their source. Liars? Good PR men? Different point of view?

    And immediately after that one, my RSS reader turned up another one, titled Gene Duplication and the GENE project’s … Duplicity?. Again, the author, generally a very polite man and one I respect after reading quite a number of his substantial blog entries, is having trouble finding out just what you call it. ICR is gathering scientists to study the genome, and their going to conclude–you guessed it–that humanity is not related to the other animals. And they haven’t even started yet!

    Now I know that it is very easy to regard a difference of opinion as good evidence of skullduggery on the part of one’s opponent. Sometimes opinions are simply so different that it’s hard for us to imagine that the other guy can possibly have good motivations or can be honest. After all, we know that we are careful with the facts, and our brains are all highly logical. So if we come to conclusion A, and they come to conclusion Z, it can’t be a legitimate difference of opinion–it has to result from questionable morals.

    Of course, sometimes things are what they appear to be on the surface. Not always, perhaps not even frequently, but sometimes. There are people who hold a particular position to keep their power, or because they just can’t admit to having been wrong. But I think there are relatively few people who consciously say, “I know that X is true, but I’m going to say I believe Y instead.” Whatever the motivation, one is going to think of it in some very different way. Which leads us to this question: Is it a lie if the person telling it deceived himself first, and believes he’s telling the truth? I do know one thing–if a person believes he’s telling the truth, it will be hard to influence him by telling him he’s actually a liar. “Truthful” is part of his self-image.

    I would say something to creationists, however. I once was one of you. I made it about half way through college. When I was a child, I started collecting creationist books and reading them. I was totally convinced that evolution was not only evil but stupid, so stupid, in fact, that only evil people could possibly believe it. To me, as is still the case for many creationists, evolutionists were great liars and conspirators, since the truth that God created the earth in a literal week 6,000 years ago was so plain.

    Now I first encountered the problems with the facts when I looked at Biblical genealogies. In doing so, I spent enough time with ancient chronology to see that the hardline young earth position, about 6,000 years (not 10,000!) was in conflict not only with geology, but with archeology, and even with written history. Civilizations would have drowned in the flood, civilizations that had clearly done no such thing.

    But then I was faced with the science side. Now I spend a great deal of time reading popular level science. But I’m a high school dropout, so I never had high school science. I took a GED test and took as little science in college as I could get by with, which turned out to be one year of chemistry. My college allowed one to make it up with math, which I did. So when I first started, the vast majority of the “science” I knew came from those young earth creationist books. How was I to judge the material?

    Well, I concluded I wasn’t very qualified to do so. What I was qualified to do was to see how well creationists represented evolution. What I found out there was that the presentation of evolution in creationist books bore no resemblance to the presentation in books favoring evolution. They were, in fact, talking about two things. Further, when creationists quoted scientists, they generally got the quotation wrong. For me, that was pretty substantial evidence that there was a problem in the creationist camp.

    Since then, I’ve found nothing to suggest to me any differently. One of the best arguments against creationism for the layman (in scientific terms) is that the creationists can’t get their facts straight about evolution. I personally think Dr. Matheson is right, and they don’t do so because they’re congenital liars, but rather because they’re engaging in some form of “folk science.” Or perhaps it’s Santaism as defined in the Ship of Fools article.

    Bottom line: differences of opinion, lies, and failure to see the other side? It’s damn hard to tell the difference!

  • Inside Higher Ed on Dr. Richard Colling

    Inside Higher Ed has an article, Academic Freedom and Evolution which discusses the AAUP response, amongst others, to the situation at Olivet Nazarene University where Dr. Colling is no longer assigned to teach a general biology course he had taught for years, and his book Random Designer cannot be used as reading in any class. The article also notes the rather interesting lack of response from the Discovery Institute.

    Since I’m currently blogging my way through Dr. Colling’s excellent book, I thought readers would be interested. I will note that I do not object to privately funded, religious schools having theological requirements for their professors, provided everyone knows about those tests and can respond accordingly. In this case, it is not the theology of the denomination involved, nor a standing policy of the school, but rather a response to donor complaints that is driving the case of an already tenured professor who is simply teaching good science.

  • Random Design and New Information in the Genome

    Last night I wrote a response to chapters 9-11 of Dr. Richard Colling’s book Random Designer, and I really thought my post was inadequate. Those chapters discuss the very core of evolutionary theory–variation (specifically mutation) and natural selection, including the balance between preserving information through accurate copying, but also allow new information through copying errors.

    Of course, this jumps right into one of the key objections of anti-evolutionists–the production of new information. They repeatedly make the claim that variation + natural selection cannot produce new information, and they produce substantial formulas to “prove” it. Sometimes people tell me that I can’t be a Christian and accept the theory of evolution. My normal response is, “And yet here I am.” In this case I’m tempted to respond, “And yet there the new information is!” Of course, that wouldn’t answer the question.

    But Dr. Steve Matheson has provided an answer on his blog, which I read shortly after writing the other piece. I was particularly glad that I read his piece right after reading Dr. Colling’s very simple explanation, because the basics of the process were fresh in my mind. It’s often hard for me to follow this information–they didn’t teach me about gene duplication in Greek class!

    In any case, Dr. Matheson goes to work on a gene duplication in yeast, in a case where we can observe the operation of yeasts that have the unduplicated and unmutated form of the gene, and others that do. I’m not even going to take a stab at summarizing the science, but it’s there. The weakness of Dr. Colling’s presentation is that there are few examples. Now his book is such that it would be inappropriate to fill it with lengthy examples. One would never get to the end. But of course there will be those who say, “We can’t just take his word for this!” Well, don’t. Steve Matheson has provided some of the science that backs this up.

    I should mention, of course, that for those with the stamina, you can find a great deal more in Ernst Mayr’s book What Evolution Is. The problem there, however, is that for someone like me who is not a scientist, it’s hard going. I had a dictionary in one hand and my browser open to an online encyclopedia (not Wikipedia!) throughout just so I could look up the examples. But folks like Drs. Colling and Matheson cut it down to size.

    What becomes clear is that it’s really quite easy for new information to appear in the genome, and that it has happened many times. The real question is what pathways are used. The mark of a scientists is looking for new answers. The mark of a non-scientists is declaring questions closed. Scientists expect peer review. It may not always be fun, but it’s generally beneficial. Non-scientists want to get their junk out to the public who are not qualified to check it. I particularly liked this quote:

    I’m a developmental biologist, and therefore partial to many of the arguments of evo-devo thinkers. I’m excited about the union of evolutionary and developmental biology, and I do think that many of the new evo-devo ideas are thought-provoking and potentially fruitful. But the debate is riveting and informative, and I find Lynch and Coyne and their talented colleagues to be alarmingly convincing. I’m worried about some of those cool ideas, but I do take some comfort in this thought: any idea that can survive the onslaught of Lynch and Coyne is a hell of a good idea.

    The public needs to realize that scientists are generally operating with this type of an attitude. If they actually realized this, I believe they would be much less susceptible to the blandishments of pseudoscience.

  • Random Designer IV

    This is a continuation of my series blogging through the book Random Designer by Dr. Richard Colling. The previous entry is Random Designer III.

    In chapters 9-11, Dr. Colling continues to present the basics of evolution and the history of life on earth in language that is comprehensible to the layman. I’m very glad to have found this book, if nothing else than for the clear explanation of what’s involved in the theory of evolution and the basic outlines. There is a certain amount about faith in this first section, but primarily these chapters are about the process of evolution and the history of life on earth, and the level of evidence involved.

    Chapter 9, titled “The Platform of Life” discusses the basic genetic material that all creatures have in common and how changes occur. The basics of evolution, mutation and natural selection are introduced. In chapter 10 we go on to discuss good, bad, and neutral mutations, and how cells manage to copy accurately. There is a balance between changes and stability that allows life to continue to diversity.

    Chapter 11 moves from a discussion of the mechanics and the details of cells and looks at the age of the earth and how life has developed. One thing that I noticed was that for 2 billion years bacteria were the sole inhabitants of the earth. I had known this, but it just hadn’t struck me before. The process of developing an oxygen atmosphere took a long time. In addition, I hadn’t realized that the cells had to develop a way to deal with one byproduct of oxygen.

    Dr. Colling strongly emphasizes the strength of the evidence for all of this, including the lines of evidence from multiple fields. This may contradict a literal reading of Genesis, but it is clearly true, and thus we need to examine how we understand the scripture passages.

    This takes us to Part II which deals with the issues of faith and evolution. I am likely to end up blogging more on that part than I did on this.

  • Intelligent Design and Faith

    An interesting discussion broke out in the comments to this post on The Panda’s Thumb, regarding the nature of faith and how intelligent design relates to faith. On the one hand we have some who hold that anything that provides evidence for God works contrary to faith, i.e. the purest faith is based on no evidence whatsoever. On the other we have the claim that faith is largely trust rather than belief, and thus that the issue is irrelevant.

    I’ve written a number of posts on theological problems with intelligent design (ID), and I have tried to stay general for the most part. What are the theological problems with ID that would be recognized by most theologians? What are the hidden problems, if any, that would be of concern to a variety of Christians? I recognize that there are very few things one can criticize in theology without reference to a particular theology, but I have tried to address the broadest base possible.

    In this post, however, I’m speaking directly from my own theology, which is moderate to liberal Christian. To anchor the discussion, what does that mean? Well, I’m a Christian believer who accepts such central doctrines of Christianity as the incarnation and the Trinity. I can say the apostles creed without crossing my fingers, but I’m not rigid on the details of interpretation. When I say “I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth” I see myself in fellowship with a range of beliefs about how God accomplished this creation. When I say that Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, and rose the third day, I’m not extremely tense about just how one believes that accomplishes salvation.

    Hidden in that short statement is the idea that I accept the possibility of divine intervention in the physical universe. While “Trinity” may be seen as language for us limited mortals to use in talking about God, a reality that would probably be shocking if we could actually come to comprehend it, “incarnation” involves intervention. God, in some way, becomes more part of his creation in this one person than at any other time or place. My observation is that in most miracle claims the issue is communication, rather than an alteration of reality. In other words, I don’t believe that God intervenes generally to do things all the way from emptying parking places for people to eliminating or preventing the results of a madman like Adolph Hitler. (I’ve addressed the issue of why this would be so briefly in my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic. I’ve also discussed the notion of miracles more extensively in my series of essays on the Hand of God, part 1, part 2, and part 3.)

    The key element here is that God created a universe that is functional, and that God lets that universe function according to consistent, observable rules as much as possible. I think at a minimum we can observe that God doesn’t intervene on a constant and regular basis in our daily lives. If God behaved in that way, one could get much clearer results from all these “prayer studies.” If God consistently altered the general chain of cause and effect for believers, all you would have to do would be to separate a group of believers from a group of non-believers (including those who believe differently than your target group), and watch what God does. While there may be statistical arguments about God’s intervention based on studies of prayer at a distance, unknown to those who are prayed for, those are marginal numbers. No study suggests that every Christian in the group, for example, is healed, or that everyone prayed for by a Christian is healed.

    I’m not saying here that nobody is healed as a result of prayer–I’m remaining agnostic on that point for purposes of this essay. What I think the evidence demonstrates quite clearly is that there is no regular, predictable form of intervention going on. This can be a critical point. I know of quite a number of people who believe that if a believer prays for something and has faith, that thing will happen. This is especially asserted in terms of healing. The excuses, of course, are always with us. If someone is not healed, someone didn’t pray with enough faith. Some would say that if a group prays for someone’s healing and one person in the group lacks faith, then the healing won’t take place. As a result, it’s hard to present airtight counterexamples. But if you look at the general picture, there are many people praying and believing, and relatively few people getting better. The data certainly counterindicates a consistently favorable result.

    (more…)

  • Random Designer III

    Continuing to work through this book, chapter 6, “Magnificent Molecular Micro-Machines” presents a great deal of the complexity of the cell, and its form and structure. I’m going to start this time with a quote:

    At first glance, it would seem impossible to generate such increidble diversity from such a small pool of amino acid building blocks. However, in living organisms where random design has been effectively operating for billions of years, the task is actually quite simple. ( p. 54)

    One of the serious problems, I think, for Christian readers of books like Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, is that they may have learned just how complex cells are in the book for the first time. That leaves those who are uninformed with the impression that scientists are kind of ignoring all this complexity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Scientists are constantly working on learning just how all of this works. This chapter in Colling’s book will put the incredible complexity into some perspective, and show how it is quite workable within evolutionary theory. In fact, Dr. Colling calls this “incredibly productive.”

    Chapter 7 continues with a basic description of RNA and DNA, and their functions. This is fairly routine stuff, though critical, of course, and again Dr. Colling lays it out in a way that the lay reader can easily understand.

    I’m going to conclude this entry by looking at chapter 8, “Trial and Error-or is it Trial and Success.” The production of many options and a selection of only a few was introduced earlier concerning the production of various complex molecules. Generation of random options with selection of working results looks very interesting when we’re talking about molecules, but when it comes to living creatures. We’re OK with molecules falling apart. Few of us are even concerned about the death of bacteria, but what about puppies? Or people?

    Dr. Colling makes the strong case that the principle of Random Design applies everywhere, even to human beings. Human beings may be more than physical beings–he believes we are–but we are also biological entities and the laws of biology act upon us fully. Whatever spiritual nature we possess, it doesn’t exempt us from the same rules that apply to all other life.

    This is probably the hardest thing for a Christian to present regarding evolution. Dr. Colling presents it very positively, as his optimistic chapter title indicates. But if Christian readers are going to stumble, they’re probably going to do it right her in this one chapter. But the bottom line is that the evidence is too overwhelmingly strong that random design does apply to all living creatures, including human beings, and if one believes in God the creator, it must be God’s product.

  • Creation-Evolution Posts and Reading Recommendations

    I’ve been posting a good deal about evolution since the Florida science standards have been rewritten and it’s time for comments. Early next year we’ll be dealing with a vote. Generally people think the new standards are good, but as is not uncommon, a different standard is applied to evolution than to other scientific theories.

    The issue is often framed either as faith vs. evolution, i.e. all who accept evolution are atheists, and atheists are bad, so we should reject evolution. As a subset the issue is framed as Christianity vs. evolution. Every aspect of that framing is wrong. Evolution is a well-supported scientific theory. It’s unfortunate that one can smear a theory by associating it with a certain category of people, but in the case of atheists that seems to work. It’s wrong, but there it is. But one of the advantages to science is that its results can be replicated, and they look the same to a Hindu, a Christian, or an atheist. One’s religious beliefs don’t change the information. Thus who it is that produces the information is not the issue.

    To back up some of my current writing, I’d like to point to some of my past post, taking on the religious issue first. There is not just one creationism. Even Christians subscribe to a number of different posts. In my review of What Is Creation Science? I commented on the attempt by the authors to separate the flood geology, the age of the earth, and what they call the “fact” of creation. This is an astounding claim. How can one make predictions about the fossil record without any timeline? How can one make predictions about it without regard to a universal flood? If such a flood happened, then it would certainly leave evidence. This situation is only made more complex by views such as old earth creationism, ruin and restoration creationism, and some minimal forms of ID that claim that perhaps God either tweaked the creation just a little bit here and there, or perhaps only created the first life-form with front-loading.

    I wrote a series of posts early in the days of this blog outlining these various views and also relating them to basic Christian doctrines. The major posts in that series were:

    For those interested in the religious aspects in particular, combine this with my series on my Participatory Bible Study blog. That series actually starts with Genesis 3, but it references my pre-blog (though updated) essay, Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship, and then continues with Genesis 3.

    You can get the whole series using this link, or by clicking on “Genesis” in the tag cloud in the right sidebar (at Participatory Bible Study).

    To the list of suggested readings, I would now have to add at least John Haught’s book God After Darwin, and Richard Colling’s book Random Designer, which I’m reading right now.

  • Barbara Forrest makes Statement on Firing of Chris Comer

    I blogged before about the firing of Chris Comer. PZ Myers now has a post that includes the full statement by Barbara Forrest about this. Comer was apparently fired for forwarding a memo announcing Barbara Forrest’s talk in Austin. It’s a good statement.

  • Random Designer II

    I’m continuing to blog through this interesting book by Dr. Richard Colling, and I’m enjoying it a great deal. I want to note that this isn’t a review; rather, it’s simply journaling the experience of reading the book. I’m doing this because this book appears to me to be a powerful experience in itself. It’s not about being a microbiologist, accepting evolution, and incidentally being a believer. It is clear throughout that Dr. Colling takes his faith seriously.

    In fact, I get a bit of a feeling of retelling Genesis. That may sound odd to many readers, so let me digress. There are many positions on how to interpret Genesis, from taking it as narrative history, which results in the young earth creationist position, to a symbolic interpretation, such as taking each day as a long period of time, but trying to fit the days into the scientific facts. My own position is that Genesis expresses God’s message of involvement in the creation in the context of that era’s cosmology. God is not trying to convey cosmology; the writer provides the cosmology from what he knows. God’s message would come through clearly to those who accept that cosmology.

    Modern Christians interpreters can be compared, I believe, to someone who receives a letter and gets all his information out of the envelope and the paper, missing the actual message. Now please be aware that this is my position. I do not know what Dr. Colling’s position is on Genesis. Perhaps he expands on that in later chapters, but I’m blogging as I read. In today’s reading I got the distinct sense of a writer perceiving God’s presence everywhere, and conveying that in modern terms. You can take that for what it’s worth, but that’s my impression thus far.

    At the end of my previous blog on this topic, I mentioned that chapter 3 (I accidentally said chapter 2) discusses the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and describes this not as a problem for evolution, and it is sometimes presented by creationists, but rather as the driver (that’s the title of the chapter).

    I vaguely recall when I first encountered this issue, and someone explained how evolution could not possibly work, because everything tends towards maximum disorder, and evolution has it going the other way. My own thought was, “and yet here we are,” since living creatures, when they’re growing, certainly do appear to go the other way. Later I read some explanations that clarified things for me quite a bit.

    In chapter 3, Dr. Colling discusses the second law in layman’s terms. The explanation is the simplest and most straightforward that I’ve ever read, and yet I don’t see any omissions of things that should be expected at this level. I’m sure this isn’t ready for a physics text, but it works for this Bible teacher! He continues (p. 27) with constructive synthesis reactions and their required input–energy, and finally describes these reactions as creative.

    That really doesn’t do justice to the chapter, but I don’t think I am capable of boiling it down and still getting in the essentials. The next chapter is titled “Upon this foundation” and subtitled “The Universe is Born.” Together those pretty much tell the tale. This chapter goes from the big bang approximately through the formation of the earth, looking at how the various elements are formed and why.

    I’m going to conclude by discussing chapter 5, in which we find a discussion of the ins and outs of the formation of life (abiogenesis, though Dr. Colling doesn’t use the term). This is the first time I’ve found a good introduction for the layman to this complex topic. Normally folks distinguish abiogenesis from biological evolution, and well the should. Biological evolution, starting with the presence of at least a living cell is much better understood, and one can assume the miraculous appearance of the first life, and yet accept the theory of evolution.

    Dr. Colling details the major elements that have been studied, those cases in which we have possible pathways, and being very clear that this is not a field in which anyone has solid answers, or is likely to have any soon. Yet there is a good deal of material available that suggests that natural processes may be found given time. I like the enumeration of the pieces we need, those we have, and those we need, along with the caution that just because we have a possible pathway to the formation of certain molecules doesn’t mean that’s the only one, or the one that actually occurred.

    This is a chapter that those who have problems delineating the boundaries of science. Many criticisms of evolutionary theory simply involve pointing out stuff we don’t know yet. But “stuff we don’t know” is the sort of stuff that excites real scientists, and sets them off on the path of discovery. I would say that a good way to distinguish a scientific attitude is by one’s reaction to the unknown. The person who views the absence of knowledge as a stop sign does not have the attitude of a scientist.

    On that note, let me use a brief quote. After describing some of the complexity of biomolecules, Dr. Colling says (p. 39):

    But obstacles like these do not discourage scientists. They have a profound belief, based upon experience, that the physical world will ultimately make sense. Therefore, just as a skilled detective pieces together the various elements of a crime scene to recreate past events, modern scientists are using he growing wealth of scientific information to knit together a relatively coherent picture of how life on earth developed.

    Now that’s a scientific attitude. In addition, creationist criticisms of evolutionary theory are often based on the expectation that an answer will answer everything at once. Perhaps this expectation is based on the overwhelming breadth of “In the beginning God …” But in studying complex topics scientists often have to spend years studying minute portions of the puzzle, knowing that a broader answer will only result after their work has been combined with that of others.

    For example, back in chapter 4, Dr. Colling cites the work of Stanley Miller. I have heard this experiment criticized over and over because, as some folks say, he did all that work and he still couldn’t create life. This assumes, of course, that he was trying to create life. Perhaps we’re also inclined to this kind of expectation by the movies. The hacker sits down at a computer keyboard, and in 30 seconds has hacked his way into a major government installation. The scientist clones a human in his basement, solving the question of cloning in one big package. But in fact each of these processes involves many complex steps. Miller provided one pathway. As I understand Dr. Colling’s summary, it’s not likely to be the right one, but he still provided the knowledge that there were conditions under which such complex molecules could form.

    I’ve read a couple more chapters, but my normal tendency to be long winded is getting ahead of me, and I should probably not make this any longer. I’ll be continuing with chapter 6, “Magnificent Molecular Micro-Machines.”

  • Florida Science Standards go from F to High B

    . . . and I think they’re headed for an A. The writing committee is to be commended for their hard work. The National Center for Science Education and Florida Citizens for Science have issued a press release giving an evaluation of the new standards by one of the experts who participated in giving the old ones an F.

    This is good news for Florida’s science education in many ways. There are those who are trying to make this all about evolution, and I won’t deny that I personally regard it as extremely important that evolution be included fully in the standards as an organizing principle of biology. It should be thoroughly understood by our students. But there is much more to these standards.

    It’s time to increase our expectations in science education. At the same time, we need to be prepared to support our educators as they carry these out.

    [Note: I am a board member of Florida Citizens for Science.]