Saturday, July 4, 2009

Darwin was a creationist

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. -Charles Darwin

A friend of mine pointed out my posts so far have sometimes used the generic term "creationist" when I really mean "young earth creationist." He's right. There's a big difference between young earth creationists who believe the earth is maybe just 6,000 years old and those creationists who believe in evolution albeit with varying doses of divine intervention.

Some "old-earth" creationists believe evolution has been primarily responsible for speciation, but that a supernatural designer has stepped in along the way to help evolution bridge gaps that it otherwise couldn't overcome (like the step from apes to humans). Other "old-earth" creationists think evolution has progressed along fine on its own, but to get things started the Creator had to craft the first one or two organisms, as Darwin apparently believed.

Interestingly, scientists tend to view all of these viewpoints with the same disdain. This may not be too surprising given recent conflicts over science education standards. Creationists (even the young-earth variety) have shifted towards supporting the teaching of "mostly evolution with a dash of creationism." As of this writing they call it Intelligent Design, but that has changed in the past and is likely to change again in the future.

Still, there is some irony in that even Charles Darwin wrote in his last sentence of "The Origin of Species" (quoted above) that he believed in a form of creationism! It's important to remember that even the father of natural selection taught that an intelligent designer was in the mix--at least in the beginning.

My point in all this is not that Darwin was right. (Even biologists today agree he was wrong about many aspects of his theory.) Instead, I want to emphasize the importance of recognizing the wide spectrum of viewpoints that fall under the generic banner, "creationism." It's not fair to equate all old-earth creationists or even "Intelligent Design Theorists" with young-earth creationists. Many creationists put forth theories that are 99% consistent with accepted science.

So why aren't scientists more warm to even Darwin-style creationism? Again, I think it's mostly due to the fact that these new forms of "soft-creationism" are being used primarily to get non-scientific (read: religious and philosophical) ideas into the science classroom.

And that's a shame, because even today most scientists I know agree they don't have all the answers and that philosophy and religion can contribute to our perspective on life. But they usually don't think--and I agree--that philosophy or religion should be taught as science. Which is probably why Darwin devoted the entirety of "Origin of Species" to building a scientific theory based on observable facts, and left philosophical speculation to the last sentence of his book.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Three new dinosaurs died in calm waters

Sometimes it's hard to comprehend the time involved when scientists claim the earth is billions of years old. Could 30,000 feet of rock really be the result of millions and millions of years of slow deposits, or were sediments (and the fossils in them) laid down quickly?

Creationists especially like to insist that a single cataclysm--Noah's flood--is responsible for most of the sedimentary deposits around the globe. They are quick to point to rock formations that show signs of turbulent, violent, high-energy forces that we might associate with floods.

Often, these creationist examples are dead-on. There are lots of areas around the world that show signs of catastrophism. However, creationists like to pick and choose their data. They don't point out the endless supply of deposits that clearly attest to slow-moving rivers, quiet lakes, and non-water-based action like sandstorms.

The discovery announced today of three new dinosaurs from Australia provides just such an example. As I explain in a news article at Prehistoric

The meat-eater and one of the plant-eaters were found buried close together in what appears to have been an ox-bow lake. These types of lakes are associated with very slow-moving, meandering rivers in which an extremely arced bend of a river becomes cut-off from the rest of the flow, creating a curved lake. The other skeleton was found in what looks to have been the sandy bank of a gently-flowing river.

The fact that some rock layers were laid down quickly is no problem for evolutionists. We would expect that regional floods and fast-moving streams were at work in the past. Rock layers around the world were clearly the result of a combination of all kinds of depositional forces from fast moving floods, to slow, meandering rivers.

While evolutionists are honest about this assessment, young-earth creationists have a big problem explaining how in the middle of Noah's flood there could be deposits from a gently-flowing river and a quiet lake.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Deception in the creationist orchard

I believe the most convincing evidence for evolution is the fossil record. The fact that animal fossils are layered from primitive to modern species from the bottom to the top of earth's rock layers is the most powerful proof that life evolved on earth. We can literally see the history of progression through the geologic column.

Creationists try to avoid this issue by saying that the fossil record is incomplete (true, but the general evolutionary pattern is clear), the fossil record is mixed up in places (true, but the general evolutionary pattern is still obvious), and that the fossil record is not really one of progression. This last claim--that rock layers do not actually record a progression of bacteria to modern life--is false.

One example of this deceptive claim occurs in the Answers In Genesis book "Refuting Evolution." On page 39, Jonathan Sarfati presents a diagram that he claims represents the history of life on earth:

Now the thing you must understand about this supposed graph of life is that creationists don't believe that one kind of animal evolves into another. They believe that groups of animals (like bears) can vary in form (like polar bears and black bears) but that these groups (or "kinds") are fixed and a bear could never evolve into some other kind animal.

So while Sarfati did not label the "trees" in his diagram, as a creationist he believes that each tree represents a family, or some other fixed group of animal like bears, dolphins, hawks and so on.

The problem with the creationist diagram then is that the trunks of all of these trees reach all the way to the ground. The diagram suggests that every major group of animals can be found down through every layer of the earth's fossil-bearing rocks--all the way back to the beginning.

Unfortunately for the creationist, this is absolutely not observed in the real world. Interestingly, another creationist book provides a more accurate and honest depiction of the fossil record. On page 95 of "Darwin's Enigma," creationist Luther Sunderland provides this diagram:

Note that I have rotated the diagram 90 degrees counter-clockwise so the vertical dimension represents the orientation of the rock layers (as if you are looking side-on with the edge of the earth). Sunderland's animal groups look like non-branching trees (he is trying to make the point that groups of animals don't evolve into other groups/kinds), but note that these tree trunks do not appear to all stretch back to the deepest layers of geologic column. The groups/kinds are not found all the way down through the geologic column.

This creationist diagram confirms the point that I can rarely get creationists to admit: that fossils in the earth's crust are ordered in an evolutionary pattern from simple organisms at the bottom to more complex and modern ones at the top. Look at the diagram: Bacteria and Algae appear first on earth. Then worms. Later, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

If the diagram was more complete, we'd see that primitive birds (with teeth and short wings) appear before modern birds (eagles and robins). Jawless fish appear before jawed fish. And yes, monkeys and apes appear before humans in the fossil record.

The Answers in Genesis diagram is deceptive. It suggests that all kinds of life from dogs to dodos to dinosaurs appeared all at once at the beginning of time. The truth is just the opposite. Plant and animal fossils are arranged in an evolutionary sequence, and any theory of life on earth must explain this historical record.

Common design doesn't explain homologous structures

Okay, first let me define "homologous structures." Bears and humans both have five toes on their their feet (and hands, in the case of humans). This similar arrangement is called a "homologous structure." Such similarities are the study of comparative anatomy, which investigates the arrangements of various animals and tries to determine whether similar structures are a result of ancestry.

One argument for evolution is that all vertebrate animals (animals with backbones--almost every kind of creature we think of as an animal in the common sense) appear to share the same basic bones in their skeletons. Even structures as diverse as bat wings and cougar legs appear to be variations of the same arm bones.

Some animals, such as horses, have very unique limbs and digits. In the case of the horse, there are not five toes, but just one on each foot. However, the rear feet of modern horses have tiny extra toes hidden alongside the main toe bones. Furthermore, horses are sometimes born with three toes, and early fossil horses had up to five!

Creationists explain these homologous features by suggesting a designer could have simply used the same basic "plan" when designing all the animals. Four legs, one upper arm bone, two lower arm bones and five fingers was just the blueprint used by the designer.

The problem with this argument is that no real designer ever restricts themselves in this way. Imagine if airplane designers began every blueprint for airplanes with the frame of a car. And cars frames were simply enlarged, stretched out versions of bicycles, and so on back to wagons. This is simply not how designers work. This is how heredity works!

You look like your parents because you're related to your parents. Animals share skeletal arrangements because they are related to one another.

Again, human designers were not foolish enough to restrict themselves to a single template for their designs. Why would we expect a supernatural designer to do so?

And if you say, "well some early car designs were based on wagons, and some rocket ships borrowed from aircraft designs," you are either missing the point or being disingenuous. Humans do sometimes borrow from other objects when they design something new, but we do not see a single template arbitrarily applied across the breadth of human designs. Again, vertebrate animals all share the very same template from fish to birds to humans. This is not a mark of design.

But if humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

I hear this question frequently from people (especially creationists). The answer is actually pretty simple. A better question would be, "if humans evolved from fish, why are there still fish?" Fish don't have lungs, can't walk on land, can't fly and are slimy. Surely us modern mammals like humans, bats, and tigers are so much more advanced! Why haven't fish gone extinct?

The easy answer? Fish are still around for the same reason bicycles are still popular years after the invention of cars and rocket ships: they are configured for different environments. Sure, fish can't do some of the great things that humans and birds do, but the job they do (swimming), they do very well. A bicycle is no moon rocket, but it's a much better vehicle for a quick run through the city park--or crowded streets. Heck, even after all these years of bicycles and cars, policemen still oftentimes ride horses!

Creationists make hay over the occasional discovery of a "living fossil." Once in a while we find a living animal that we previously thought was extinct. Sometimes the living animal is very similar to million-year-old ancestors. But again, in the case of a fish (like the famous coelacanth), evolution long ago arrived at the best shape for living in the oceans. Why would we expect it to look different?

Explaining the persistence of perfectly functional animals like fish or apes is not at all difficult. Evolution adapts animals to their environments. As long as those environments are still around (oceans, deserts, forests, etc.), animals that are well-adapted to them have a shot at being around for a long time as well.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009





























Here are just a few other dramatic facts about fossil groupings:







Tuesday, June 30, 2009

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